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Research & Resources

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.

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Additional Resource

How Americans Navigate Voting Information Ahead of the 2026 Midterm Elections

The Shorenstein Center’s 2026 Voting Information Trends project—developed in collaboration with the National Internet Observatory at Northeastern University, the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation’s Program on Democracy and the Informed Public, and The Civic Health and Institutions Project—provides new insights into the voter information landscape in the United States ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Among the resources, an interactive dashboard maps where Americans are finding voting information and learning about key aspects of the voting process—from sourcing polling locations to voter registration. Also included are a series of trends reports gauging perceptions of voting in the lead up to the 2026 midterm elections.

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Disclosing Chemical Hazards to Reduce Workplace Health and Safety Risks
Worker looking at chemical checklist

Case Study

Disclosing Chemical Hazards to Reduce Workplace Health and Safety Risks

A 1972 survey found a quarter of U.S. workers were exposed to one or more of nearly 8,000 workplace hazards — often without employers or employees even knowing it. The fix that emerged was a cascading disclosure chain: manufacturers tell employers, employers tell workers. Decades, lawsuits, and one UN standard later, hazard communication still ranks among OSHA’s most violated rules. So does all that paperwork actually keep anyone safer?

Disclosing Rollover Propensities to Improve Auto Safety
Mechanic reviewing hood of a car

Case Study

Disclosing Rollover Propensities to Improve Auto Safety

After a wave of fatal Firestone tire blowouts and SUV rollovers in 2000, Congress did something the auto industry had blocked for twenty years: forced automakers to publish a simple star rating for how likely each new model was to flip. Within five years, nearly every car on the lot had climbed to four or five stars — proof the system worked, or proof the stars stopped meaning much of anything?

Disclosing Corporate Finances to Reduce Risks to Investors
Scale from low to high risk

Case Study

Disclosing Corporate Finances to Reduce Risks to Investors

The rules requiring public companies to open their books trace back to a “modest first installment” cobbled together in 1933, after the market lost 83 percent of its value. Every decade or so since, a new scandal has forced Congress to patch the system again: conglomerate collapses in the 1960s, brokerage failures in the 1970s, Enron in 2001. Now regulators are trying to force the same disclosure logic onto something far harder to standardize than a balance sheet: a company’s carbon footprint.

Disclosing Medical Mistakes to Reduce Deaths and Injuries
Doctor holding medical error note

Case Study

Disclosing Medical Mistakes to Reduce Deaths and Injuries

In 1999, a landmark national report called for a simple fix: make hospitals publicly disclose their serious errors, the way New York already did for cardiac surgery. Bill Clinton backed it, half the country heard about it within weeks, and then doctors, hospitals, trial lawyers, and consumer groups spent two decades fighting over the details. By 2017, researchers could show that some hospitals killed patients at thirteen times the rate of others — but the data came with one catch that made it useless to the people who needed it most.

Disclosing Terrorism Threats to Improve Public Safety
Newspaper headline about terrorism

Case Study

Disclosing Terrorism Threats to Improve Public Safety

For nearly a decade, Americans lived with a five-color scale meant to tell them how worried to be about terrorism — yet polls found most people had no idea what color the country was even on, and a psychologist warned the system was turning citizens into “worriers, not warriors.” Archon Fung, Mary Graham, and David Weil trace how a transparency tool designed to guide action ended up guiding almost nothing at all.

Disclosing Sex Offenders’ Residences to Improve Public Safety
A digital map displaying crime hotspots in a city, with markers indicating recent incidents

Case Study

Disclosing Sex Offenders’ Residences to Improve Public Safety

Megan Kanka’s death in 1994 led to a wave of disclosure laws requiring states to publish the whereabouts of released sex offenders — and Washington State built one of the most aggressive versions, giving the public near-unlimited online access to names, photos, and addresses. But Archon Fung, Mary Graham, and David Weil found a wrinkle that disclosure advocates rarely mention: by one national estimate, roughly a quarter of offenders simply don’t register at all.

Disclosing Lending Practices to Reduce Discrimination

Case Study

Disclosing Lending Practices to Reduce Discrimination

In 1975, Congress forced banks to disclose, address by address, who got mortgages and who got turned away — a narrow bill that squeaked through the Senate by two votes. Fifty years, a savings-and-loan crisis, a subprime meltdown, and a new federal bureau later, regulators are still uncovering redlining, except now it’s harder to see: branches quietly placed outside Black neighborhoods, bias buried inside lending algorithms. The agency built to police all of it has spent much of the last decade fighting for its own survival in court.

Disclosing Campaign Contributions to Reduce Corruption
Shaddy handshake with exchange of money

Case Study

Disclosing Campaign Contributions to Reduce Corruption

Since 1910, the theory has held: force candidates and donors into the light, and corruption shrinks. Congress kept building on that idea for a hundred years — new disclosure mandates in the 1970s, tighter rules in 2002 — until a single Supreme Court case blew a hole in it. Today, PACs with names like “Best of America” and “Ready to Win” can legally hide the identities of the people actually writing the checks. Even the committee tasked with policing all of it couldn’t agree on basic rules for internet ads until December 2022, and still has none for ads generated by artificial intelligence.

Disclosing Union Finances to Minimize Corruption
Shaddy exchange of funds

Case Study

Disclosing Union Finances to Minimize Corruption

After two years of Senate hearings exposed bribery and racketeering inside major labor unions, Congress passed a law forcing them to disclose their finances to the 13 million workers they represented. But for decades, getting that information meant a trip to a Labor Department reading room or a mailed request with a per-page fee — and in a typical year, barely eight thousand people bothered to ask. It took a Republican administration four decades later, not union members themselves, to finally force the disclosures that mattered.