Danielle Allen
James Bryant Conant University Professor
Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
Renovating our democratic institutions for the 21st century.
The Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation aims to reinforce democracy through strengthening institutions, building interpersonal and informational trust, and reducing hyper-partisan affective polarization with research and field-building. Our multidisciplinary community of scholars, practitioners, and partner organizations work together to shepherd concepts and reforms into practice — to translate research into impact. From community-led initiatives to national-level policies and structural reforms, the Allen Lab works to renovate American democracy.
Our Vision: Justice is achieved by means of democracy: through robust political equality, fully inclusive institutions, and broad avenues for participation and connectedness, all of which rest on and support the material and social bases for human flourishing.
Our Mission: The Allen Lab develops the policy innovations needed to achieve healthy democracy in the 21st century. Our applied research converts the theory of power sharing liberalism into reality. Healthy democracy in the 21st century must deliver responsive representation and effective decision-making for large, complex, digitally-powered societies with significant heterogeneity operating in a globalized economy.
Research Workstreams
The lab currently supports four key research workstreams:
- New Political Economy: Develop exemplary policies in support of a new paradigm in political economy that prioritizes equal dignity, voice, community, sustainability, and social relations free from domination. We call this paradigm power-sharing liberalism. The policies that embody this paradigm draw on the benefits of markets, civil society organizations, and the public sector, deploying diverse combinations of these forms of human coordination to solve public goods problems.
- Technology and Democracy: Research and develop policies such that public and private sector AI governance policy is democracy sustaining, industry is defined by professional norms that lead to technology development supportive of human pluralism, and the pool of people able to bring merged ethical and technical expertise into policy spaces and industry meets the need. Learn more about our work here.
- Civic Education Policy: Advance policy to ensure high quality universal civic learning, where excellent civic learning opportunities are available in the K-12, higher education, and life-long learning sectors and shared across political divides.
- Governance Mechanisms: Develop innovative solutions to tough policy problems that are stuck due to systemic democratic failures. These select projects cross the three sectors vital to healthy democracy—political institutions, civil society, and civic culture. Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century, a report of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, provides the basis for this workstream.
Our work is carried out through the identification and development of exemplary policies that permit further testing and refinement of the power-sharing liberalism paradigm. The Lab is committed to supporting the development of emerging scholars and thought leaders, and our organizational structure reflects this commitment. Lab activities to support the development of emblematic policy solutions include team-based research collaborations (staffed by undergraduate and graduate level research assistants), independent Fellow-driven research, an active professional learning community, regular lab meetings and workshops, publications and special stakeholder convenings.
Lab Staff
Darshan Goux
Senior Lab Director, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
Sarah Hubbard
Associate Director for Technology & Democracy, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
Priyanka Sethy
Lab Program Manager, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation;
Doctoral student, Harvard Gov Department
Lab Members
Ben Barsky
Doctoral Student, Harvard Chan School of Public Health
Sofia Corona
Researcher, Harvard College
Owen Ebose
Researcher, Harvard College
Ami Fields-Meyer
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
July 2024-June 2025
Brian Highsmith
Doctoral Student, Harvard Government Department
David Knight
Principal Investigator;
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Columbia University
Hannah Kunzman
Researcher;
Doctoral Student, Harvard Government Department
Cristopher Moore
Visiting Scholar
Alexander Pascal
Senior Fellow, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
Charlotte Ritz-Jack
Researcher, Harvard College
Allison Stanger
Non-resident Senior Fellow, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation;
Co-Director and Co-Investigator, GETTING-Plurality Research Network
Andrei Stupu
Fulbright Doctoral Researcher, August 2024-May 2025
Shlomit Wagman
Faculty Associate, Berkman-Klein Center, Harvard Law School & Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School
Lab Alumni
Eli Frankel
Researcher, Harvard College
Woojin Lim
Researcher, Harvard College
Christian Schmidt
Researcher;
Master in Urban Planning Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Jama Willis
Communications, Harvard College
Upcoming Events
Online Book Talk—The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley
Online Event
Virtual Event
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm EST
The Latest News and Research
Feature
Conference on the Political Economy of AI
Experts gathered at the Allen Lab conference to examine the incentives and structures of AI development, as well as to discuss the past, present, and potential future of steering AI towards better serving the public interest.
Feature
Can Higher Ed Renew Our Democracy?
In new paper, Danielle Allen explores how higher ed can play a role in promoting the health of our democracy.
Feature
AI and the 2024 Elections
From misinformation to AI panic, experts joined the Allen Lab’s GETTING-Plurality event to discuss the threats the burgeoning technology poses to democracy.
Video
AI and the 2024 Elections
The GETTING-Plurality Research Network at the Ash Center’s Allen Lab and Connection Science at MIT Media Lab hosted a webinar event focused on “AI and the 2024 Elections”. In this session, we hear from Danielle Allen, Harvard University; Sandy Pentland, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Nate Persily, Stanford University. Each presenter gives a lightning talk, followed by audience Q&A.
Video
GETTING-Plurality Conference on the Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence
The Political Economy of AI Conference was convened by the GETTING-Plurality Research Network, a project of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, housed at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
Additional Resource
Terra Incognita: The Governance of Artificial Intelligence in Global Perspective
GETTING-Plurality Research Network members Allison Stanger and Woojin Lim, along with other authors, published “Terra Incognita: The Governance of Artificial Intelligence in Global Perspective” in the Annual Review of Political Science.
Video
AI and the Future of Privacy
The GETTING-Plurality Research Network at the Ash Center’s Allen Lab and Connection Science at MIT Media Lab hosted a webinar event focused on “AI and the Future of Privacy”. In this session, we hear from Bruce Schneier, security technologist, and Faculty Affiliate at the Ash Center; Sarah Roth-Gaudette, Executive Director of Fight for the Future; and Tobin South, MIT Ph.D. Candidate and Fulbright Scholar. Each presenter gives a lightning talk, followed by audience Q&A.
Policy Brief
AGI and Democracy
We face a fundamental question: is the very pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) the kind of aim democracies should allow?
Additional Resource
Democracy as Approximation: A Primer for “AI for Democracy” Innovators
This essay was adopted from a presentation given by Aviv Ovadya at the Second Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy held on the campus of Harvard Kennedy School in December 2023.
Additional Resource
The Real Dangers of Generative AI
“The Real Dangers of Generative AI” by Danielle Allen and Glen Weyl was featured in the January 2024 Journal of Democracy.
Abstract: As perhaps the most consequential technology of our time, Generative Foundation Models (GFMs) present unprecedented challenges for democratic institutions. By allowing deception and de-contextualized information sharing at a previously unimaginable scale and pace, GFMs could undermine the foundations of democracy. At the same time, the investment scale required to develop the models and the race dynamics around that development threaten to enable concentrations of democratically unaccountable power (both public and private). This essay examines the twin threats of collapse and singularity occasioned by the rise of GFMs.
Occasional Paper
A Roadmap for Governing AI: Technology Governance and Power Sharing Liberalism
Video
Advancements in Global AI Policy
The “Advancements in Global AI Policy” webinar featured the following speakers and topics:
- Andrew Strait, Ada Lovelace Institute – Recent Developments in UK AI Policy
- Alex Pascal, Harvard Kennedy School – Biden’s AI Policy: Past, Present, and Future
- Chinasa T. Okolo, Brookings Institution – Globalizing Perspectives on AI Governance: Africa’s Role in International AI Cooperation
- Maia Levy Daniel, University of San Andrés & Wikimedia Argentina – AI Regulation in Latin America Requires a Thoughtful Process
- Armando Guio Español, Harvard Berkman-Klein Center – Generative AI: What Should Governments in Latin America Do?
Video
Regulating Web3: Global Trends and Challenges
“Regulating Web3: Global Trends and Challenges” webinar session featured the following speakers and topics:
- Peter Kerstens (European Commission) on EU Markets in Crypto Asset Regulation
- Carol Van Cleef (Luminous Group) on US Approach to Digital Asset Regulation
- Urszula McCormack (King & Wood Mallesons) on APAC Approach to Digital Asset Regulation
- Thomas Hardjono (MIT Media Lab) on Technical Standards for Web3
Additional Resource
Summit on AI and Democracy
On November 7, 2023, the Summit on AI and Democracy gathered experts across multiple institutions to discuss ongoing research, policy, and development efforts related to the recent advancements in artificial intelligence.
Additional Resource
Reimagining Democracy for AI
“Reimagining Democracy for AI” by Aviv Ovadya was featured in the October 2023 Journal of Democracy.
Abstract: AI advances are shattering assumptions that both our democracies and our international order rely on. Reinventing our “democratic infrastructure” is thus critically necessary—and the author argues that it is also possible. Four interconnected and accelerating democratic paradigm shifts illustrate the potential: representative deliberations, AI augmentation, democracy-as-a-service, and platform democracy. Such innovations provide a viable path toward not just reimagining traditional democracies but enabling the transnational and even global democratic processes critical for addressing the broader challenges posed by destabilizing AI advances—including those relating to AI alignment and global agreements. We can and must rapidly invest in such democratic innovation if we are to ensure that our democratic capacity increases with our power.
