While Democracy Works is on summer break, we bring you an episode from our friends at Making Peace Visible, a podcast that ignites powerful conversations all over the world about how the media covers peace and conflict. This episode features journalist and author Amanda Ripley. We've wanted to have Amanda on the show for a long time and are grateful to the Making Peace Visible team for sharing this conversation with us!

After over two decades as a journalist, including ten years covering terrorism and disasters for TIME Magazine, Amanda Ripley thought she understood conflict. But when momentum started to build around the candidacy of Donald Trump, she questioned what she thought she knew. Ripley interviewed psychologists, mediators, and people who had made it out of seemingly intractable conflicts for her book, High Conflict: Why We Get Stuck and How We Get Out.  

In this conversation with host Making Peace visible host Jamil Simon, she shares insights about how people in conflict can move forward, and how journalists can get at the "understory" of what's beneath any conflict. 

Order Amanda Ripley’s book, High Conflict: Why We Get Stuck and How We Get Out. Watch Amanada’s talk on High Conflict for The Alliance for Peacebuilding. Follow her column in the Washington Post.

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We've reached the end of another school year and another season of Democracy Works. Before we go on summer break, Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, and Candis Watts Smith reflect on recent events and what's to come this summer. We do this by taking a look back at some of our previous episodes:

The real free speech problem on campus: Penn State's Brad Vivian on the problems with "campus free speech" discourse and media coverage. We discuss how this narrative has been applied to protests about the war in Gaza that happened on some campuses near the end of the spring semester. Follow Brad's Substack for his more recent work on the Gaza protests and more.

A different kind of political divide - Yanna Krupnikov from the University of Michigan on the divide between people who follow politics closely and those who don't. We're seeing this divide play out in recent polling that shows support for Donald Trump is higher among people who say they are not politically engaged, while support for Biden is higher among those who follow news and politics more closely. 

Debating the future of debates: John Hudak from Brookings talks about the value of presidential debates to democracy. We recorded this episode in 2022 after the RNC announced it would not participate in events organized by the Commission for Presidential Debates. Now that two debates are scheduled for the next few months, we discuss whether they'll actually happen and how much they'll matter. 

This is our last new episode until early September. We'll use the next few months to plan for our fall season. Please send us an email if you have ideas for topics we should tackle or guests we should interview.  Have a great summer!

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As a Democracy Works listener, you probably follow politics pretty closely. And we're going to go out on a limb and say that many of the people in your life do, too. But what about everyone else? People who casually keep up with political news or maybe tune iit out entirely. 

Scholars Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan argue that America might not be as polarized as we think because the media and political observers over-index on people who are deeply invested in politics at the expense of those who are not as engaged. They call this phenomenon "the other divide" and it's the subject of their most recent book. Krupnikov and Barry Ryan join us on the show this week to share their research on levels of political involvement and how it translates to media coverage.

As Candis Watts Smith says at the end of the episode, we hope that this conversation will inspire some epistemic humility. 

Krupkniov is a professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan. Barry Ryan is associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan. They are the authors of The Other Divide: Polarization and Disengagement in American Politics.

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We're back after our summer break. Michael, Chris, Candis, and Jenna catch up on what happened over the summer, from COVID vaccine mandates to school board chaos to the refugee crisis in Afghanistan. The underlying theme of it all is one of democracy's central tensions — the collective vs. the individual. 

The tension between individual liberty and the common good plays itself out in America's COVID response, debates over how race and history are taught in schools, and how we respond to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. We discuss all of those issues this week and reflect on what our responsibilities are as democratic citizens. 

Refugees and the politics of displacement

The clumsy journey to antiracism

Chris Beem in The Conversation: Why refusing the COVID-19 vaccine is immoral and un-American

Candis Watts Smith in The Fulcrum: Experts fear ban on critical race theory could harm civics education

Hurt Your Brain newsletter

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As redistricting begins across the country, we revisit our conversation with journalist and author David Daley about the consequences for American democracy if gerrymandering happens again this time around.  This episode originally aired in January 2021, not long after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Daley has spent the past decade covering attempts by politicians to draw those maps to their advantage in a practice known as gerrymandering. He's also covered the groups of citizens across the country who pushed back against them to win some major reforms that will make the process look different now than it did in 2010.

Daley is a journalist and author of Unrigged: How Citizens are Battling Back to Save Democracy. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, and New York magazine. He is a senior fellow at FairVote, the former editor of Salon, and lives in Massachusetts.

Daley's op-ed on democracy deserts in The Guardian

Unrigged: How Americans are Battling Back to Save Democracy

Daley on Twitter

One state's fight for fair maps

Next-generation democracy: An interview with high school student Kyle Hynes, who won Pennsylvania's citizen mapmaking contest.

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Democracy and populism diverge at a single point. It’s like a fork in a road where both traditions depend on a common history, but they split in two. At first it may seem the choice doesn’t matter. You believe that eventually they will both lead to the same destination except they don’t. The choice leads to two different outcomes. Populism uses some of the same language of democracy. It has a similar vocabulary. But as we go farther down its path, the less in common they have with each other.

Jan-Werner Müller is among the most recognizable voices on the subject of populism and democracy.  This conversation from the Democracy Paradox podcast touches on some of their most challenging aspects from political leadership to majority rule to militant democracy. This conversation explores some of the ideas at the heart of this podcast. Ideas that give definition to the very meaning of democracy.

Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and author of Democracy Rules and What is Populism? 

Democracy Paradox

Democracy Rules

Jan-Werner Müller at Princeton Politics

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Some of the most talked-about issues in Congress these days are not about the substance of policies or bills being debated on the floor. Instead, the focus is on the partisan conflict between the parties and the endless debate about whether individual members of Congress will break with party ranks on any particular vote. This behavior allows the parties to emphasize the differences between them, which makes it easier to court donors and hold voter attention.

Some amount of competition between the parties is necessary in a healthy democracy, but have things gone too far? Frances E. Lee joins us this week to explain.

Lee is jointly appointed in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where she is Professor of Politics and Public Affairs. She is the author of Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign and The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era with James M. Curry.

Lee's book, Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign

Her lecture at Penn State on lawmaking in a polarized era

Lee's website

Congressional oversight and making America pragmatic again

Unpacking political polarization

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Many of us can recall the experience of scrolling through our phones or streaming TV apps without ever choosing something to focus on. Pete Davis describes this an "infinite browsing mode" and argues that it creates a culture where democracy can't fully thrive. 

Davis is cofounder of the Democracy Policy Network and author of Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing. His work is grounded in the notion of "long-haul heroes," or the people who show up day in and day out to make progress on the issues they care about while building stronger communities in the process. This could be anyone from the go-to event organizer in your town to people who work on nationwide campaigns for issues like racial equality and LGBTQ rights. 

This work has always been difficult, but Davis argues it's even harder now because of the constant distractions that our media environment provides, along with the FOMO and related feelings that prevent us from dedicating ourselves to anything in the long term. We unpack all of that in this episode and discuss how Davis is turning his ideas into action through the Democracy Policy Network.

There is no "I" in democracy

Dedicated : The Case for Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing

Democracy Policy Network

This is What Democracy Looks Like podcast

Pete Davis on Twitter

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Three pillars hold up autocracy in Russia, author and New Yorker staff writer Masha Gessen says: media control, sham elections and downright terror. But the opposition movement spearheaded by imprisoned activist Alexei Navalny has struck at the heart of all three. This time on the show, Gessen explains how — and measures the power of democratic aspirations in a country struggling against corruption with hope, against the past with visions of a happier future.

Navalny, a lawyer who has become President Vladimir Putin’s chief political rival, leads the Russia of the Future party, whose motto is “Russia will be happy.” In prison, his health failing, and recently off a 24-day hunger strike, Navalny continues to command respect — and a vast YouTube following — in part because he is brave enough to fight the system, even if it costs him his life, Gessen says. 

It’s a powerful message for a generation from whom many of the tools of critical social analysis have been withheld. Against the odds, Navalny’s resistance is inspiring young people who have grown up with no ruler other than Putin, a former KGB officer who views the totalitarian past with nostalgia.

This episode comes from our colleagues at Democracy in Danger, a production of the Deliberative Media Lab at the University of Virginia. 

Democracy in Danger podcast

Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen

Will Alexi Navalny make Russia more democratic?

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Can transparency, oversight, ethics and accountability save American democracy? What can Congress do to create lasting ethics reforms? How would the For the People Act change ethics rules for the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the U.S. government and are the changes enough? How can the Office of Government Ethics and Office of the Inspector General contribute to democratic accountability? How can Congress get a toe hold into reigning in presidential power?

In this episode of the Democracy Matters podcast from the JMU Center for Civic Engagement, hosts Abe Goldberg, Carah Ong Whaley, and Angelina Clapp talk with Walter Shaub, who leads the Ethics and Accountability Initiative at the Project on Government Oversight about what elected and other government officials and the public can do to create and implement long-lasting reforms to shore up the barricades against authoritarianism.

Democracy Matters podcast

Project on Government Oversight

Walter Shaub on Twitter

JMU Civic

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Local news and democracy have been intertwined since the days of Alexis de Tocqueville. As we've discussed on this show before, news outlets are one way that people who live in a city or town keep up on what's happening in their local government. However, our guest this week argues the "watchdog" effect of local journalism might be overstated, along with the correlation between local news consumption and political participation.

Nikki Usher is an associate professor in the College of Media at the University of Illinois and author of News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism.  In the book and in this conversation, Usher recasts the challenges facing journalism in terms of place, power, and inequality. She questions longstanding beliefs about the relationship between local news and civic engagement and separates observed behavior from myths about American democracy and the media's role within it. 

This conversation originally appeared on New Books in Journalism, part of the New Books Network.

Additional Information

News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism

New Books Network

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Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America. He is the author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America and The Business of America is Lobbying. He is also the co-host of the podcast Politics in Question, and writes for the New York Times, Vox, and FiveThirtyEight, among other outlets. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California.

Hear more from Drtuman at a virtual event on "Democracy's Crises and Failure of Imagination" sponsored by The Democracy Group podcast network. Lee will be joined by Carah One Whaley of James Madison University, democracy entrepreneur Turi Munthe, and Democracy Works host Jenna Spinelle. Join us Wednesday, July 7 at 2:00 p.m. ET or watch the recording at democracygroup.org.  

July 7 event with The Democracy Group

Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America

Does Congress promote partisan gridlock?

Primaries, parties and the public

How the Tea Party and the Resistance are upending politics

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We live in an era defined by a sense of separation, even in the midst of networked connectivity. As cultural climates sour and political division spreads, our guest this week suggests there is no better time to reconsider ideas of unity in democracy.

In his book, The Ethics of Oneness, Jeremy David Engels argues that if the lessons of oneness are taken to heart, particularly as they were expressed and celebrated by Whitman, and the ethical challenges of oneness considered seriously, it is possible to counter the pervasive and problematic American ideals of hierarchy, exclusion, violence, and domination. 

Engels is professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State and the Barry Director of the Paterno Fellows Program. He's also a yoga and meditation instructor who has spent time studying yoga and philosophy in India. He is the author of The Ethics of Oneness: Emerson, Whitman, and the Bhagavad Gita, The Art of Gratitude, The Politics of Resentment, and Enemyship: Democracy and Counter-Revolution in the Early Republic. 

The Ethics of Oneness

Jeremy's website

Join The Democracy Group podcast network on July 7, 2021 at 2:00 p.m. ET for a virtual event on "Democracy's Crises and Failure of Imagination" featuring Lee Drutman of New America, Carah Ong Whaley of James Madison University, and Turi Munthe of Parlia. Register here or visit democracygroup.org to watch the recording.

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Chris Beem talks with journalist Tim Alberta about the role that Evangelical Christians play in the Republican Party — and what that means for the future of American democracy.

Alberta is a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the books The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age  of Extremism and American Carnage: On the Front  Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump. He's also the son of an evangelical pastor. 

This conversation covers both books and how the evangelical movement and the Republican party have been corrupted. They also discuss the role that religion should play in politics, and Alberta's answer might surprise you.

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The New York City mayoral primary is this week and will be the first one to use ranked-choice voting. This week, we revisit an episode that aired not longer after the city's voters approved ranked-choice voting via ballot measure  in November 2019. 

What is ranked-choice voting? How does it work? And, is it more democratic than the single-vote method we’re used to? This week’s guest has answers to all of those questions.

Burt L. Monroe is Liberal Arts Professor Political Science, Social Data Analytics, and Informatics at Penn State and Director of the university’s Center for Social Data Analytics. He says ranked-choice voting is generally a good thing for democracy, but not entirely without problems of its own. We also talk about bullet voting, donkey voting, and other types of voting that have been tried around the world.

As Michael and Chris discuss, ranked-choice voting falls into a category of grassroots organizing around pro-democracy initiatives like gerrymandering and open primaries. These efforts signal a frustration with the status quo and a desire to make the rules of democracy more fair and equitable.

Fairvote, an advocacy group for ranked-choice voting and election reform

Burt’s Google Scholar listing

How to end democracy's doom loop

The case for open primaries

One state’s fight for fair maps

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As we enter summer vacation season and emerge from pandemic isolation, Robert Talisse thinks it’s a good idea to take a break from politics. In fact, he might go so far as to say democracy is better off if you do.

Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and author of a new book called Overdoing Democracy: Why We Must Put Politics in Its Place. The book combines philosophical analysis with real-world examples to examine the infiltration of politics into all social spaces, and the phenomenon of political polarization.

Talisse's next book,Sustaining Democracy: What We Owe The Other Side, will be out later this year. He's also the host of the Why We Argue podcast.

Overdoing Democracy: Why We Must Put Politics in Its Place

Sustaining Democracy: What We Owe the Other Side

Why We Argue podcast

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We end this season the way it began, with a roundtable discussion on the state of American democracy. Michael, Chris, and Candis reflect on the January 6 insurrection, the one-year anniversary of George Floyd's death, and the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre.

On the one hand, it's easy to be pessimistic about where things are as state legislatures continue to pass restrictive voting measures and Congress seems more polarized than ever. Yet, it's our duty as democrats to persevere despite these challenges and push the limits of our imagination about what democracy can and should be.

We've touched on both of those dynamics this season — from journalists David Daley and Chris Fitzsimon talking about state legislatures creating "democracy deserts" to Harvard professor Danielle Allen discussing how we can establish a new common purpose as Americans and Peter Pomerantsev on how to combat misinformation online. If you missed any of those episodes, check out the links below.

This is our last new episode with the entire team for the summer. Over the next few months, we'll be airing bonus episodes, rebroadcasts, and episodes from other podcasts we think you might enjoy.

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American democracy's violent disruption

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Additional Information

The Vital Center podcast

On Opinion podcast

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This week, we explore the questions of who governs in a democracy and what happens when the power is taken away from the people. Ashley Nickels, associate professor of political science at Kent Sate University, examines these questions through the lens of a municipal takeover in Flint, Michigan in 2011 that replaced elected city officials with an emergency manager appointed by the state. Nickels also challenges the notion that policy can be removed from politics and treating it as such has implications for democracy. The focus on austerity and cost cutting set the stage for the Flint water crisis in 2014 and, Nickels argues, left the city's residents with little power to change the situation. 

Nickels is the author of Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan: Unpacking the Policy Paradox of Municipal Takeovers, which won the American Political Science Association's  Robert A. Dahl Award in 2020 — an award given to recognize scholarly work in the field of democracy. Michael and Candis discuss how Nickels's work picks up some of the questions that Dahl's landmark work on democracy introduced in the mid-20th century.

Additional Information

Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan: Unpacking the Policy Paradox of Municipal Takeover

Ashley Nickels's website

Growing Democracy podcast

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Shaylyn Romney Garrett is a writer, speaker and changemaker pursuing connection, community, and healing in a fragmented world. She is the co-author with Robert Putnam of The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again, which charts what the authors describe as the "I-We-I" curve in American democratic engagement and civic life. 

In the book and in this interview, Romney Garrett takes us back to the Gilded Age, another time when America was highly unequal and divided. We discuss the reforms that came out of that era and how it led to decades of a "we" culture that got us through war and economic hardship with a reimagined civil society.

These trends reversed throughout the 1970s and 80s, but Romney Garrett argues that we could be on the cusp of making a shift back to 'we" — if we're willing to put in the work to get there. As a social entrepreneur, she talks about some of the organizations and projects that she sees as starting down the path toward this transformation.

Additional Information

The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

Shaylyn Romney Garrett's website

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Colored Conventions show us where democracy really happens

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Misinformation, disinformation, propaganda — the terms are thrown around a lot but often used to describe the same general trend toward conspiratorial thinking that spread from the post-Soviet world to the West over the past two decades. Peter Pomerantsev had a front seat to this shift and is one of the people trying to figure out how to make the Internet more democratic and combat disinformation from both the supply side and the demand side. 

These issues came to a head in the United States last week as Liz Cheney was removed from her leadership position in Congress for not pledging her support to the lies surrounding a rigged 2020 election. Michael and Chris begin with a discussion of this dynamic before the interview.

Pomerantsev is a senior fellow at the London School of Economics and the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality and Nothing is True and Everything Is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia. He has a forthcoming project with Anne Applebaum that will examine why people believe in conspiracies and how to create content that fosters collaboration, rather than sows division. 

Additional Information

This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality

How to Put Out Democracy's Dumpster Fire - article with Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic

Peter Pomerantsev on Twitter

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Chris Beem takes the interviewer's chair this week for a conversation with political theorist Laura K. Field about her recent work that examines how the conspiracism described by Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead in their book A Lot of People Are Saying has made its way to prominent conservative intellectuals and the institutions that support them. The conversation ends with ways that listeners can take conspiracy-minded arguments with the appropriate grain of salt and perhaps disconnect from politics a little in the process. 

Field is a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center and scholar in residence at American University. She he writes about current political affairs from a vantage point informed by the history of political thought. Her academic writing spans antiquity and modernity, and has appeared in the The Journal of Politics, The Review of Politics, and Polity. She earned a Ph.D. in political theory and public law from the University of Texas at Austin.

Additional Information

The Highbrow Conspiracism of the New Intellectual Right: A Sampling From the Trump Years

Revisiting "Why Liberalism Failed:" A Five-Part Series

Laura K. Field on Twitter

The Niskanen Center's podcasts: The Science of Politics and The Vital Center

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Is the Federalist Society bad for democracy? There's nothing inherently wrong with groups of like-minded people organizing to share and disseminate their ideas — everyone from James Madison to Alexis de Tocqueville would agree on that. However, our guest this week argues that the group's outsized role in the courts has undermined the notion of judicial independence, one of the hallmarks of our democratic experiment.

Amanda Hollis-Brusky is an associate professor of politics at Pomona College. She is the author of Ideas with Consequences, which examines the history of the Federalist Society and how it's shaped the courts and their relationship to the other branches of government over the past 40 years.

Additional Information

Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution

Amanda's September 2020 congressional testimony 

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For nearly 100 years, African Americans gathered in cities across the United States to participate in state and national-level political meetings that went far beyond slavery and conventional racial narratives to discuss education, labor, and what true equal citizenship would look like. This rich history went largely unnoticed for decades until P. Gabrielle Foreman and her colleagues formed the Colored Conventions Project to collect and categorize convention records and associated documents.

Foreman and Colored Conventions Project Co-Director Jim Casey, both professors at Penn State, join us this week to explain what the Colored Conventions were and how they fit into the larger arc of the Black freedom struggle and the ongoing effort to make the United States a fully-inclusive multiracial democracy. In addition to co-leading the Colored Conventions Project, Foreman and Casey are also co-authors ofThe Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century, released in March 2021 by the University of North Carolina Press.

Additional Information

The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century

The Colored Conventions Project

P. Gabrielle Foreman on Twitter

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Srjda Popovic and Sophia A. McClennen have appeared on our show separately and are now joining forces to apply a research framework to dilemma actions, a nonviolent organizing tactic that works by capitalizing on a belief that's commonly held by the public but not supported by those in power. 

Rather than simply getting people together to protest in the streets, you organize them to do something that causes a scene, like kissing on a crowded subway platform or planting flowers in potholes that line a city's streets. Authority figures are faced with the dilemma of making themselves look foolish by taking the bait or doing nothing and looking weak. Either way, the pranksters win and can gain media attention, new members for their cause, and in some cases, a much-needed morale boost.

Popovic is co-founder and executive director of the Center for Applied Nonviolent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS), an organization that trains nonviolent activists around the world. McClennen is a professor of international affairs and comparative literature at Penn State. She studies how satire and irony impact political actions and behavior. Popovic and McClennen collaborated on the new book Pranksters vs. Autocrats: Why Dilemma Actions Advance Nonviolent Activism, written as part of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy's 2020 Brown Democracy Medal.

Additional Information

Pranksters vs. Autocrats: Why Dilemma Actions Advance Nonviolent Activism

Center for Applied Nonviolent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS)

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The past few years haven't been easy for election officials and their teams. They had to pivot during the pandemic and face ongoing threats that have resulted in unprecedented staff turnover. This turmoil brings more scrutiny of errors that occur when people make honest mistakes. 

Despite these challenges, Tammy Patrick, CEO for programs at the National Association of Election Officials, is confident that the tens of thousands of people charged with election administrators across the country this year will deliver free, fair, and secure  elections. She's also optimistic about their ability to rise above threats and uphold their commitment to democracy.

Patrick has been working in the election administration space since 2003, most recently as the Senior Advisor to the Elections Program at Democracy Fund. Focusing on modern elections, she works to foster a voter-centric elections system and support election officials across the country.

In this conversation, we dive deeper into what's in store for election workers this year and how Patrick and her team are helping them prepare to stand up against everything from misinformation campaigns to threats of physical violence.

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The Trump administration infamously referred to public schools as "failing government schools," illustrating how education has been caught up in the broader attack on the roots of American democracy. While the language is new, Derek W. Black argues the sentiment very much is not.

Black is a professor of law at the University of South Carolina and one of the nation’s foremost experts in education law and policy, focusing  on school funding and equality for disadvantaged students He is the author of Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy. The book traces the legal history of public education, and how the right to education was challenged during Reconstruction, the Civil Rights era, and other pivotal moments in American history.

After the interview, Candis and Chris discuss the ways that neoliberalism has impacted public education, the promise and peril of teacher's unions, and how COVID-19  has further complicated our already complex relationship with public education.

Additional Information

Black's website

Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy

Black's talk for Penn State's Center for Education and Civil Rights

This week's featured show from The Democracy Group podcast network: How Do We Fix It? 

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Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner joins us to discuss the promise and peril of institutional reform and how he built a coalition of voters who are traditionally overlooked in politics. He spent his career as a civil rights attorney, not a as a prosecutor like his predecessors. He's part of a growing movement of progressive district attorneys who focus on ending mass incarceration, not solely on enforcing law and order. 

Krasner won in 2017 and increased voter turnout in an off-year election; he is up for re-election this year. He is the subject of the new PBS Independent Lens documentary Philly D.A., which follows his campaign and first three years in office. He is also the author of For the People: A Story of Justice and Power. Both the book and the documentary series will be released April 20.

Additional Information

Philly D.A. from PBS Independent Lens

For the People: A Story of Justice and Power

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The world's most punitive democracy

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According to the Brennan Center for Justice, legislators in 43 states have introduced more than 250 bills aimed at restricting access to voting in person, by mail, or both. Chris Fizsimon, director and publisher of States Newsroom, returns to the show to give us a birds-eye view of what's happening on the ground in state legislatures. 

We discuss how Republican legislators are pushing things like shortened mail-in voting windows, expanded voter ID requirements, and other cumbersome administrative changes under the guise of protecting or restoring election integrity after the 2020 election. After the interview, Michael and Candis reflect on the broader question of voting as a partisan issue and what that means for the future of American democracy.

States Newsroom is a nonprofit news organization with newsrooms across the country specifically focused on state politics. Fitzsimon joined us last spring to discuss COVID-19 protests at state capitols. 

Additional Information

States Newsroom

Brennan Center State Voting Bills Tracker

Chris Fitzsimon on Twitter

Leadership Now: How Businesses Can Support Democracy

Related Episodes

Give me liberty or give me COVID-19? - Fitzsimon's first appearance on the show

This Week's Democracy Group podcast network featured show: Our Body Politic

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Danielle Allen is a leader of two large-scale efforts to make democracy truly inclusive and reimagine the way we teach new generations of democratic citizens. She joins us this week to discuss both initiatives and how to build coalitions for effective change

Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and Director of Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. She is a leader and spokesperson for Our Common Purpose from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Educating for American Democracy, a collaboration among dozens of civics-focused organizations and educators.

These projects share a theme that democracy is in crisis and the only way out of it is to double down on democratic reforms while wrestling with our complicated past and admitting that the United States has never been a fully inclusive democracy. Allen says that reforms are achievable and desired by many people across the country and across the political spectrum. 

Getting there won't be easy, however. Chris describes these efforts as the "Manhattan Project for democracy," but Allen says she is a "not an optionalist," meaning that, if we want democracy to succeed, we have no other choice but to push forward despite the naysayers out there.

Additional Information

Our Common Purpose

Educating for American Democracy

Allen's lecture for the McCourtney Institute 

Allen on Twitter

Related Episodes

Citizenship, patriotism, and democracy in the classroom

Your guide to ranked-choice voting

The case for open primaries

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If you're listening to this podcast, you probably don't fit Ethan Porter's definition of a consumer citizen, but you probably know someone who does — someone who tunes out of politics and would rather focus on just about anything else. Porter argues that appealing to consumer behavior might be on way to spark civic engagement among this group. 

In The Consumer Citizen, Porter also makes the case that Americans would trust the government more if it did a better job of communicating about its services. He has some ideas about how businesses can join the effort to increase civics education for everyone, not just students in school. We cover all of those topics in this conversation, and Michael and Chris offer their reflections — and a healthy dose of skepticism — after the interview.

Porter is an assistant professor at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago in 2016. He is the author of The Consumer Citizen and the forthcoming False Alarm: The Truth About Political Mistruths in the Trump Era.  

The Consumer Citizen

Ethan Porter on Twitter

When the "business of business" bleeds into politics

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When the social fabric and institutions the hold a democracy together are weakened, it can create a breeding ground for extremism that radicalization that might eventually lead to acts of domestic terrorism like the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. It's a vicious cycle — weaker democracy breeds more distrust which leads to more extreme actions. As Anne Applebaum reminded us last week, democracy is not inevitable and takes hard work to sustain. 

This week, we break down what domestic terrorism is and how it largely spread unnoticed for much of the 21st century while the focus was on international terrorism after 9/11. Our guest is James Piazza, Liberal Arts Professor of Political Science at Penn State and an expert on the study of terrorism, including its socioeconomic roots, the role of minority rights, and state repression of terrorist activity. Piazza talks about why it seems to have taken so long for the U.S. to recognize domestic terrorism as a threat and what 20 years of studying international terrorism can teach us about radicalization and deradicalization.

Piazza's website

Piazza in The Conversation on hate speech and political violence

McCourtney Institute Mood of the Nation Poll on trust in the FBI

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Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, and a senior fellow at The Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She joined the McCourtney Institute for Democracy for a virtual event on February 17, 2021 to discuss her most recent book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. 

This episode includes the closing remarks from Applebaum's lecture, followed by a Q&A with Democracy Works host Jenna Spinelle that covers the future of the Republican Party, how the Cold War served as a unifier for Republicans and Democrats, and why she believes economic inequality and democratic erosion are not as closely linked as some people think. 

Video of Applebaum's Feb. 17 lecture

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

Applebaum's work in The Atlantic

Daniel Ziblatt on How Democracies Die

Viktor Orban's "velvet repression" in Hungary

Brexit and the UK's identity crisis

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Seizing Freedom is a new podcast from Virginia Public Media that tells the stories of Black Americans during Reconstruction who fought for the everyday freedoms that many of us take for granted, like the right to decide how to make a living or which causes to support. Drawing from host Kidada Williams's research on historical records of formerly enslaved people, the show brings to light voices that have been muted throughout American history.

Williams is associate professor of history at Wayne State University, author of They Left Great Marks on Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I, and editor of Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism and Racial Violence. 

Seizing Freedom podcast

Kidada Williams

The clumsy journey to antiracism

Civil rights, civil unrest

The ongoing struggle for civil rights

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Sinan Aral has spent two decades studying how social media impacts our lives, from how we think about politics to how we find a romantic partner. He argues that we're now at the crossroads of a decade of techno-utopianism followed by a decade of techno-dystopianism. How to reconcile the promise and peril of social media is one of the biggest questions facing democracy today.

Aral is the David Austin Professor of Management, Marketing, IT, and Data Science at MIT; director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy; and head of MIT’s Social Analytics Lab. He is the author of The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health — And How We Must Adapt .

In his book and in this conversation, Aral goes under the hood of the biggest, most powerful social networks to tackle the critical question of just how much social media actually shapes our choices, for better or worse.

The Hype Machine

Sinan Aral on Twitter

Facebook is not a democracy

Free speech from the Founding Fathers to Twitter

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Alexei Navalny has been a figure in Russian opposition for years, but garnered international attention recently though social media and what's widely believed to be an assassination attempt by the Russian government in the fall. This week, we unpack the complicated nature of Russian democracy and how the U.S. and other countries should respond — or not —  to what's happening there now.

Michael Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America and a non-resident allow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. From 2014 to 2016, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He is the author of two books on American history and culture, and he has published articles and essays on the transatlantic relationship, on U.S.–Russian relations, and on international affairs in The New Republic, The New York Times, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Additional Information

Kimmage's New Republic article on Russian democracy

Kimmage at the German Marshall Fund

Out of Order podcast

Related Episodes

Hong Kong's fight is everyone's fight

Brazil's tenuous relationship with democracy

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Happy New Year! We're starting off 2024 with a conversation about finding hope in politics. We often hear from listeners that our show brings feelings of hope, and this episode is no exception.

Rep. Derek Kilmer of Washington state joins us for a discussion on the Building Civic Bridges Act, a bipartisan bill that would provide funding for service projects aimed at bridging divides and reducing political polarization. We also discuss his work on the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which invited experts like Danielle Allen and Lee Drutman to discuss reforms including multi-member districts and increasing the size of the House of Representatives.

It's hard to listen to Kilmer without feeling at least a little hopeful about where politics might go in the coming year. We hope this episode will help you start 2024 on a good note.

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From gerrymandering to ranked-choice voting to expanding voting rights, the ballot initiative has been essential to expanding and reforming democracy in recent years. However, the initiative has also been used to constrain minority rights and push the public to act on polarizing issues like the death penalty and immigration.

Ted Lascher and Joshua Dyck are the authors of Initiatives Without Engagement: A Realistic Appraisal of Direct Democracy's Secondary Effects. In the book, they develop and test a theory that can explain the evidence that the ballot initiative process fails to provide the civic benefits commonly claimed for it, and the evidence that it increases political participation. Ultimately, they argue that the basic function of direct democracy is to create more conflict in society — something that runs counter to the way initiatives are often framed by scholars and democracy reformers.

Lascher is Professor of Public Policy and Administration at California State University, Sacramento. Dyck is  Associate Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Initiatives Without Engagement: A Realistic Appraisal of Direct Democracy's Secondary Effects

Joshua Dyck on Twitter

The democracy rebellion happening in states across the U.S.

Winning the "democracy lottery"

Extreme maps, extreme politics

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We'll be back with a new episode of Democracy Works next week. In the meantime, we invite you to check out our partner podcasts in The Democracy Group podcast network. Here's a small sampling of what the network's shows have covered recently:

• Politics in Question examines the future of the Republican Party with the author of a new book on the Tea Party and insurgent factions in American policies.
• How Do We Fix It? explores free speech and big tech with former ACLU president Nadine Strossen.
• Future Hindsight discusses the link between Christianity and white supremacy in United States history. 
• Another Way by Lawrence Lessig shines a light on what political reform lessons the United States can draw from Alaska.
• Democracy Matters from James Madison University explores the history of insurrection and section in the United States with a panel of faculty experts.
• 70 Million explores the push for criminal justice reform in jails throughout the United States
• The Science of Politics from the Niskanen Center explores the politics of homeschooling
• Out of Order from the German Marshall Fund of the United States takes stock of Germany’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which recently ended.

Learn more about the network and subscribe to its newsletter for updates at democracygroup.org.

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Despite ongoing threats of violence, the wheels of democracy continue to turn, and in 2021, that means redistricting. States will draw new electoral maps this year using data from the 2020 Census. 

Our guest this week has spent the past decade covering attempts by politicians to draw those maps to their advantage in a practice known as gerrymandering. He's also covered the groups of citizens across the country who pushed back against them to win some major reforms that will make the process look different now than it did in 2010.

David Daley is a journalist and author of Unrigged: How Citizens are Battling Back to Save Democracy. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, and New York magazine. He is a senior fellow at FairVote, the former editor of Salon, and lives in Massachusetts.

Unrigged: How Americans are Battling Back to Save Democracy

David Daley on Twitter

Fair Districts PA on judicial gerrymandering

One state's fight for fair maps

Next-generation democracy: An interview with high school student Kyle Hynes, who won Pennsylvania's citizen mapmaking contest.

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Democracy Works hosts Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, and Candis Watts Smith reflect on the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and what it says about the condition of American democracy. They also discuss whether it's possible to learn from this moment and what guideposts they'll be looking for to determine whether all the talk about protecting and restoring democracy we've heard since the attack will translate into action.

This episode was recorded on Friday, January 8, 2021. 

Statement from Michael Berkman and Chris Beem on January 6, 2021 attack

Andrew Sullivan on democracy's double-edged sword

What really motivates Trump supporters

Daniel Ziblatt on "How Democracies Die"

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Neoliberalism is one of those fuzzy words that can mean something different to everyone. Wendy Brown is one of the world’s leading scholars on neoliberalism and argue that a generation of neoliberal worldview among political, business, and intellectual leaders led to the populism we’re seeing throughout the world today. But is it mutually exclusive to democracy? Not necessarily.

Brown joins us this week to help make sense of what neoliberalism is, and where things stand today. We were lucky enough to get an advance copy of her book, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, which will be released in July. It’s a follow up to her 2015 book, Undoing the Demos, and you’ll hear her talk about how her thinking has changed since then.

Brown is the Class of 1936 First Chair at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches political theory. 

Wendy’s books: In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, Undoing the Demos

Wendy’s website 

Our episode with David Frum

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From Pizzagate to Jeffrey Epstein, conspiracies seem to be more prominent than ever in American political discourse. What was once confined to the pages of supermarket tabloids is now all over our media landscape. Unlike the 9/11 truthers or those who questioned the moon landing, these conspiracies are designed solely to delegitimize a political opponent — rather than in service of finding the truth. As you might imagine, this is problematic for democracy.

Democracy scholars Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum call it “conspiracy without the theory” and unpack the concept in their book A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy. Russell is the Robert Clements Professor of Democracy and Politics at Dartmouth. Nancy is the Senator Joseph Clark Research Professor of Ethics in Politics at Harvard.

As you’ll hear, the new conspiricism is a symptom of a larger epistemic polarization that’s happening throughout the U.S. When people no longer agree on a shared set of facts, conspiracies run wild and knowledge-producing institutions like the government, universities, and the media are trusted less than ever.

A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy

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This episode was recorded on December 15, 2020, the day after the Electoral College voted to confirm Joe Biden as the next United States President. However, some Republicans refuse to accept the result and vow to continue fighting the result until Inauguration Day. Michael, Chris, and Candis discuss what these challenges mean for the long-term health and legitimacy of American elections and American democracy. 

They also discuss damage to the institutions that comprise America's liberal democracy and what it will take to repair them moving forward. Finally, they touch on increasing polarization and whether a generational shift will change the dynamics over time. 

This our final new episode of the year. We'll be on a winter break for the next few weeks, during which time we'll be rebroadcasting some episodes from our back catalog that you might have missed. If there are any guests or topics you would like us to cover in 2021, please email democracyinst@psu.edu to share your ideas.

Thank you to our colleagues at WPSU for helping us produce the show every week — Andy Grant, Emily Reddy, Kristine Allen, Anne Danahy, Jen Bortz, Chris Kugler, and Mark Stitzer.

From our team to your and your family, best wishes for a happy holiday season!

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Lee Hannah and Dan Mallinson have been studying marijuana policy for several years and watching as initiatives pass in states across the country. We discuss how the process of organizing around a ballot initiative has changed as the marijuana industry grows, and whether the growing number of states legalizing marijuana will lead to changes at the federal level.

Hannah is associate professor of political science at Wright State University and Mallinson is assistant professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg. Both received their Ph.Ds from Penn State, where they worked with Democracy Works host Michael Berkman.

This episode hits many of the items on the Democracy Works bingo card — federalism, states as laboratories of democracy, ballot initiatives, social justice, and more. 

Hannah and Mallinson's article on federalism and marijuana legalization for the London School of Economics

Hannah on Twitter

Mallinson on Twitter

The democracy rebellion happening in states across the U.S.

Using the tools of democracy to address economic inequality

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John Hibbing is the Foundation Regent University Professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska. He studies the manner in which these biological variations mitigate the way in which individuals respond to politically relevant environmental occurrences. His latest book is The Securitarian Personality: What Really Motivates Trump's Base and Why It Matters for the Post-Trump Era. 

The book draws from an original national survey that includes over 1,000 strong Trump supporters and Hibbing's own experience at a Trump rally in the Midwest. Hibbing argues Trump's base is driven by the desire for security, not fear or authoritarianism as others claim. In the book, and in this interview, Hibbing also provides insight into the approaches likely to increase levels of political civility in the future.

The Securitarian Personality: What Really Motivates Trump's Base and Why It Matters for the Post-Trump Era 

Hibbing's University of Nebraska faculty page

Hibbing on Twitter

We are conducting a listener survey in partnership with our colleagues in The Democracy Group podcast network. Take a few minutes to help us learn more about how we can make epodes that will better serve you in 2021 and beyond and receive a Democracy Group notebook. Take the survey.

Journalist Salena Zito on Trump voters and her book "The Great Revolt"

Jonathan Haidt on psychology and political polarization

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We are conducting a listener survey in partnership with our colleagues in The Democracy Group podcast network. Take a few minutes to help us learn more about how we can make epodes that will better serve you in 2021 and beyond and receive a Democracy Group notebook. Take the survey.

Geraldo Cadava is a professor of History and Latina and Latino Studies at Northwestern University. His book,"The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity from Nixon to Trump," examines little-understood history of Hispanic Americans with a cultural study of how post–World War II Republican politicians actively courted the Hispanic vote.

In the book and in this interview, Cadava offers insight into the complicated dynamic between Latino liberalism and conservatism, which, when studied together, shine a crucial light on a rapidly-changing demographic that will impact American elections for years to come.

The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity from Nixon to Trump

Cadava's lecture for Penn State Latinx Studies

Cadava's website

Cadava on Twitter

Latino immigrants and the changing makeup of American democracy

Street-level bureaucrats at the border

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For our final episode of 2023, we revisit some of our episodes from throughout the year and reflect on what's in store for democracy in 2024. We talk about:

• Mental health and media consumption
• Bureaucracy and the prospect of Project 2025
• The Republican party and threats to democracy

Plus, we share some recommendations of the books and TV shows we loved in 2023. Recommendations include:

TV: For All Mankind, Fargo, The Gilded Age, and Slow Horses

Books: The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet; Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody, Why We Did It by Tim Miller

Thank you to all of our listeners for another great year. We'll see you in 2024!

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Dawn Carpenter is the creator and host of What Does It Profit? - a podcast that explores how we can reconcile capitalism’s demand for profit with the long term well-being of people and the planet, She is a former investment banker who had a mid-career pivot to studying applied ethics, the nature work, and the responsibilities of wealth. 

Dawn and Jenna discuss the rights and responsibilities corporations have to both shareholders and stakeholders, and how those dynamics have evolved from the postwar Keynsian period through the neoliberal era to the crossroads we seem to be at today.

We'll be back with a full episode next week. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving from our team to yours and we hope you enjoy this interview.

What Does It Profit?

What neoliberalism left behind

When business bleeds into politics

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Will Friedman is president of Public Agenda, a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit research and public engagement organization that strives to strengthen democracy and expand opportunity for all Americans. One of the organization's major projects is the Hidden Common Ground Initiative, which challenges the increasingly dominant narrative of a hopelessly-divided America by identifying and elevating the areas and narratives where Americans agree on solutions to politically-polarized issues, and by fostering productive dialogue on those areas where we truly disagree.

This work, along with the Hidden Tribes initiative, Common Ground Committee, and others begs the question — if this common ground is already prevalent in our society and our democracy, then why is it hidden? We explore that question in this episode and ask how to work toward common ground in a way that does not simply maintain the status quo.

Hidden Common Ground Initiative

Trust, facts, and democracy in a polarized world

Does Congress promote partisan gridlock?

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Lieberman is co-author with Suzanne Mettler of the book "Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy." He is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University.

Political polarization, racism and nativism, economic inequality, and excessive executive power—alone or in combination—have threatened the survival of the republic, but it has survived—so far. What is unique, and alarming, about the present moment in American politics is that all four conditions exist.

By revisiting how earlier generations of Americans faced threats to the principles enshrined in the Constitution, Lieberman sees the promise and the peril that have led us to today and, in this conversation, we chart a path toward repairing our civic fabric and renewing democracy.

Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy

Robert Lieberman on Twitter

A brief history of "people power"

The ongoing struggle for civil rights

Using the tools of democracy to address inequality

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