Through our books, case studies, journal articles, papers, and surveys, the Ash Center is home to some of the world’s most advanced research and publications on issues related to democratic governance and self-governance.
To explore all research authored by Ash Center faculty, please visit the Harvard Kennedy School website. You can view the Ash Center’s open access policy here.
Paper
A new working paper by Randy Akee, Julie Johnson Kidd Professor of Indigenous Governance and Development, and co-authors examines the role of The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 in facilitating sustained private-sector growth for American Indian reservations through tribal casino development.
Newest
Article
Trust between citizens and the institutions that govern them is essential for effective policy, especially in public health. However, against a backdrop of escalating political polarization and rising levels of misinformation, there has been a stark decline in public confidence in government and health institutions.
Occasional Paper
In this report, Erica Chenoweth summarizes a December 2024 workshop on the specific issue of AI adoption within democracy movements and offers some key recommendations.
Video
Ash Center’s Tova Wang joined the CommNS and representatives from various professional sports organizations and their foundations to discuss the way athletes and teams are engaging in communities, causes, and giving processes.
Video
In this webinar, panelists drew upon lessons from around the world about how civil society groups can protect and promote democracy and the rule of law during episodes of democratic backsliding.
In this paper, Maya Sen and her co-authors examine enduring features of the American federal judiciary that systematically favor conservative political and policy outcomes. By situating the United States within a comparative context, the authors argue that these structural aspects of the judiciary contribute to a consistent ideological bias toward conservatism in legal decisions.
In this article, according to new research from Maya Sen and her co-authors, as political survey questions become more complex, people are more likely to choose the first options on a list, especially if they have less knowledge and the question is long—making it better for researchers to keep questions short rather than trying to simplify the wording.
Many Republican candidates ran on a ‘Tough on Crime’ platform, but new research from the Ash Center’s Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, using 30 years of data, suggests elected officials have little impact on city crime rates.
Open Access Resource
This paper aims to provide a roadmap for governing AI. In contrast to the reigning paradigms, we argue that AI governance should be not merely a reactive, punitive, status-quo-defending enterprise, but rather the expression of an expansive, proactive vision for technology—to advance human flourishing.
Article
In this paper, Justin de Benedictis-Kessner and his co-authors find that mayoral partisanship has little causal effect on crime, policing, or arrest rates in U.S. cities, though it may modestly influence the racial composition of arrests.