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.
Article
In a new research article, Democracy Visiting Fellow Gordon Gauchat and co-author Kassandra Thompson offer an alternative framework for public understanding of science, focusing on “science’s role as a social system” shaped by institutional norms and practices, rather than traditional approaches centered on knowledge possession or trust in experts.
Newest
Book
Paper
When Portland’s TriMet released its raw bus and train data to the public, it had no idea what would happen next. Francisca M. Rojas traces how that one decision to open the books sparked an entire marketplace of apps — and asks why some transit agencies embraced it while others resisted for years.
Paper
Recovery.gov let anyone track $275 billion in stimulus spending, project by project, in real time — the boldest transparency experiment the federal government had ever tried. Francisca M. Rojas dug into six states to see who actually used all that data, and the answer wasn’t quite the army of “Citizen Inspector Generals” reformers had imagined.
Policy Brief
Article
A letter grade in a restaurant window changed diners’ behavior overnight. A federally mandated water-quality report, mailed quarterly, mostly ends up in the trash. David Weil digs into why some transparency policies reshape behavior and others just generate paperwork — and into the cases where governments have good reason to keep the curtain closed.
Book
Book
Article
Cap-and-trade bills can take years to pass — but a disclosure rule could pass tomorrow. Elena Fagotto and Mary Graham point to a 1984 chemical disaster that led to mandatory US toxic-emissions reporting and cut pollution nearly in half within a decade. Could the same trick work on greenhouse gases?
Policy Brief
Congress was debating climate bills that wouldn’t take effect for half a decade — meanwhile emissions kept climbing. Mary Graham and Elena Fagotto had a faster fix: make every factory and product disclose its greenhouse gas emissions now. It had already worked once before, after a very different disaster.