At the Ash Center, we’re working to generate new ideas to reform our democratic institutions for the 21st century.
Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, Reimagining Democracy Program
Many of our most basic democratic institutions, from the Electoral College to Congress itself, were born in the eighteenth century when American democracy and America looked markedly different than today. At the Ash Center, we’re working to modernize and reform these institutions for a healthy 21st-century democracy.
As political polarization continues to test the strength of even our most bedrock political institutions, the Ash Center brings together scholars, practitioners, and policymakers from across the country to discuss how to protect and modernize our democracy.
Through working groups and convenings, case studies, and research projects, the Ash Center is working to identify reforms both large and small that will help strengthen the future of American democracy for generations to come.
Media Release
In a new paper in Political Analysis, Ben Schneer, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, alongside co-authors Maxwell Palmer, Associate Professor, Boston University; and Kevin DeLuca, Assistant Professor, Yale University; present a new method for drawing legislative boundaries, the Define–Combine Procedure.
Commentary
Elected representatives in government don’t always look like the people they serve.
Q+A
As divisions within the GOP were on vivid display last month during the tumult over the US House Speaker’s gavel, the Kennedy School’s Steve Goldsmith and UT-Austin’s Ryan Streeter ask whether conservatives should embrace a more aspirational, ideas-driven future?
Video
The Ash Center invites you to watch a book talk with contributors to When Democracy Breaks (Oxford, 2023), a new edited volume intended to deepen our understanding of what separates democratic resilience from democratic fragility — by focusing on the latter.
Media Release
In a recently published discussion paper from the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School, Stephen Goldsmith and Ryan Streeter propose a new ideological framework for the conservative movement in the United States centered around aspiration, opportunity, and personal responsibility to help drive upward mobility.
Commentary
Imagine that we’ve all – all of us, all of society – landed on some alien planet, and we have to form a government: clean slate. How would we govern ourselves?
Feature
According to Kennedy School’s Benjamin Schneer, the decision that an Alabama congressional map illegally weakened the power of Black voters has implications beyond the southern state’s borders.
Feature
From polarization to populism, democracy is facing off against formidable foes and we need big ideas to save it says expert panel.
Q+A
Natalie Tennant discusses the impact of states leaving the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a resource for maintaining accurate voter records across state lines
Q+A
French President Emmanuel Macron’s end run around parliament may be legally sound, but Ash Center Democracy Fellow Yves Sintomer argues the move was markedly anti-democratic.
Feature
Arguing that American democracy has been hacked, the computer security expert doesn’t want to just fiddle on the margins when it comes to re-envisioning what a new 21st-century American democracy should look like.
Commentary
The Democracy in Hard Places program has grown from an obsession with how countries that lack democracy can get it and keep it.
Feature
Archon Fung on the threats to American democracy and what we can do about it.
Video
On Thursday, March 9, 2023, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation Director Archon Fung, Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, spoke to Kennedy School community members about threats to American democracy and how we can overcome them.
Q+A
Aksel Sundström explores how the absence of young adults in our governing institutions is weakening our democracy.