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.
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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Ash Center’s Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Archon Fung discuss how without a more robust commitment to upholding and protecting multiracial democracy, the United States won’t be able to solve its democratic backsliding.
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Ash panel unpacks election reforms at stake during the midterms
Video
During the 2022 midterms, voters not only cast a ballot to decide the balance of power in congress, but in in many states voters decided on a range of consequential ballot initiatives impacting the nuts and bolts of the electoral process including voter-ID laws, party primary reform, ranked choice voting, and proportional representation. The outcomes of these statewide and local level ballot initiatives have direct implications for future elections and participatory democracy.
This midterm recap webinar goes beyond the candidate horse race and focus on analysis and perspectives from advocates and scholars on recent voting-related ballot initiatives, immediate implications for future elections, and what’s ahead for emerging electoral reforms at the state and local level. See panelists Deb Otis, Director of Research at FairVote; Jenny Lee, Deputy Director of the Coalition of Communities of Color; and Wendy Underhill, Director of Elections and Redistricting at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Ash Center Reimagining Democracy Fellow Nick Chedli Carter moderated.
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Events this week in JFK Jr. Forum examined what can be done to address grinding problems of race, internet’s power to exploit political, and cultural schisms to destructive ends.
Policy Brief