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Authoritarian populists are gaining power from Ankara to Athens, from Warsaw to Washington. Meanwhile, popular support for democratic values is sliding in many countries around the world. Is our political system in existential danger? And what can we do to save it?
Creative expression takes many forms. Through history, art has provoked a range of feelings: emotion, empathy, fear, surprise, joy, compassion, anger. Now, amidst a time of national angst, where many in society might not hear the voices of those who don’t agree, a group of remarkable artists and political strategists are imagining ways that art can be used to catalyze dif...
The world is in turmoil. From Italy to Turkey, and from Hungary to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result, political scientist and author Yascha Mounk argues that democracy itself may now be at risk. How did we get here, and what do we need to do now? If we are unwilling to give up on either individual rights or the popular will, urgent a...
The notion of applying principles of democracy to governance has been around for centuries, increasingly popular as citizens across the globe discover the value of participatory government and the power that it invests in them. But is democracy working in the 21st century? Stanford historian Jack Rakove shares perspectives on the Founders' views of how the system should wo...
In the last decade, the people of democratic societies across the globe have elected autocratic leaders. These populist strongmen have undermined democratic institutions with a disregard for the rule of law, expertise, and the truth. Is their election the symptom of already advanced societal illnesses, or is it the disease itself? In countries where the damage to democracy...
Our politics is polarized, and, with Donald Trump poised for a comeback, democracy is in peril. Drawing on themes from his book, The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good?, Michael Sandel explains how we arrived at this rancorous political moment and suggests how we can repair our civic life. Followed by a discussion with journalists David Leonhardt and Annie Murph...
The vacuum created by the collapse of independent local news in America has given rise to ghost papers, partisan hackery, unverified rumors, and worse. Yet, new cohorts of news organizations are taking root to fill that void, often supported by philanthropy, public contributions, and new creative means of sustainability. At stake is the information that all citizens need t...
While more than 100 countries have adopted democracy over the last two centuries, it’s already been a decade since political scientist Larry Diamond posited a “democratic recession” sweeping the globe. The revolt of the middle class, the rise of China, and power grabs through military coups are just a few factors that suggest a disturbing trend of democratic deterioration....
When we speak and associate with others in real life, the First Amendment governs interactions, granting broad rights of individual speech and association. Yet when we interact online, we submit to terms of service from private companies. The consequence is that private platforms have become the new governors of speech and association. As if that weren’t bad enough, the pl...
Democracy is in danger, not only in foreign places where autocrats rule, but also here at home. We are divided between those who would let the people rule and those who would allow rule by the powerful, greedy few. Defending our democratic system takes a new kind of democratic practice. It’s not only the practice of communal celebration; it’s the cultivation of self. Presi...
The Founders created a representative republic rather than a direct democracy, designed to slow down deliberation so that majorities could rule based on reason rather than passion. But in the age of Facebook and Twitter, new social media technologies have unleashed populist passions and accelerated public discourse to warp speed, creating the very mobs, demagogues, echo ch...
This is not a moment to take democracy for granted. The 2016 emergence of Donald Trump and his populist counterparts in Europe didn’t signal the start of something new. Rather, they announced a long simmering, troubling trend away from liberal democracy in the United States and elsewhere. How did we get here? How are Western values shifting? What might the future hold?
In a well-functioning democracy, people do not live in echo chambers or filter bubbles; rather, citizens are exposed to myriad ideas and perspectives even if not their own. Constitutional scholar Cass Sunstein suggests that our current obsession with social media and our online friend groups narrow the scope of the kinds of daily and serendipitous interactions that might o...
The Democratic majority in Congress hangs by a thread, and with it the Biden administration’s ability to accomplish much of its agenda. What the past two years have shown us is a party with aging leadership, held hostage by two senators, and divided by different visions of its core mission and values. With the 2022 midterms just around the corner and questions already bein...
Americans speak with many voices, and nobody hears more of those voices than the people they elect to represent them and to fulfill the various tasks of governing. A member of Houston City Council, an eight-year mayor of a diverse California community, an elected public-service regulator from a few miles south of the Canadian border, and a state attorney general from a hig...
Around the world, people who are angry at stagnant wages and growing inequality have rebelled against established governments and turned to political extremes. Liberal democracy, history's greatest engine of growth, now struggles to overcome unprecedented economic headwinds — from aging populations to scarce resources to unsustainable debt burdens. Democracies risk falling...
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson united in support of the US Constitution, but they had very different ideas about how to strike the balance between national power and states’ rights, and between direct democracy and checks on the tyranny of the majority. Join David Rubenstein and Jeffrey Rosen for a conversation about the constitutional battles of i...
Platforms like Twitter and Facebook set the stage for a promising digital revolution, providing tools that helped foster global friendships, let new voices be heard, and served as the ultimate democratizing force for information. But critics argue that rather than uniting and informing, social media deepens social and political divisions and erodes trust in the democratic...
When, how much, and to whom people give is influenced by laws governing everything from the creation of foundations and nonprofits to generous tax exemptions for donations of money and property. Rob Reich, author of Just Giving, asks what attitudes and what policies should democracies have concerning individuals who give money away for public purposes? He posits that diffe...
Trust is democracy’s most valuable asset; we simply can’t work together to solve large problems without it. Yet, trust is at an all-time low. Polling reveals that a majority of Americans do not trust government or the media, and — perhaps more concerning — they do not trust each other. The Aspen Institute’s program on Philanthropy and Social Innovation argues that when it...