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.
Additional Resource
Over the past several weeks, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) within the Trump Administration has been embedding staff in a range of United States federal agencies. These staff have gained access to data maintained by the federal government. This guide explains what is in the data, what DOGE is doing with it, and why it matters to all Americans.
Newest
Policy Brief
In this short web ethics research brief, the authors unpack and comment on the four-step logic at the core of GETTING-Plurality’s foundational white paper, Ethics of Decentralized Social Technologies: Lessons from Web3, the Fediverse, and Beyond. They outline four assertions from the paper that demonstrate the power and the challenge of web ethics – and above all, the urgency – of placing human flourishing at the center of technology governance.
Policy Brief
The IARA project investigates new and existing strategies for antiracist transformation in the healthcare sector.
Policy Brief
The authors highlight why we believe the problem of “plural publics” to be a core challenge of data governance, discuss existing tools that can help achieve it and a research agenda to further develop and integrate these tools.
This paper argues that the plethora of experiments with decentralized social technologies (DSTs)—clusters of which are sometimes called “the Web 3.0 ecosystem” or “the Fediverse”—have brought us to a constitutional moment.
Book
Additional Resource
“The onset of tribal self-determination through self-government in the late 1980s ushered in the only policy that has ever worked to improve economic and social conditions in Indian Country.”
Policy Brief
The subjugation of the Wabanaki Nation’s self-governing capacities is blocking economic development to the detriment of both tribal and nontribal citizens, alike.
Policy Brief
This policy brief showcases how geographic information system (GIS) techniques can be used to identify public and/or protected land in relation to current and historic reservation boundaries, and presents maps showcasing the scope of landback opportunities.
Book