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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 Restaurant Hygiene to Protect Public Health
Restaurant letter grade

Case Study

Disclosing Restaurant Hygiene to Protect Public Health

In 1997, a local news crew snuck cameras into restaurant kitchens and found rats, roaches, and food left to rot at room temperature. Within a month, Los Angeles County had passed an ordinance forcing every restaurant to post a letter grade — A, B, or C — right in its window. Revenue at A-graded restaurants jumped nearly 6 percent while C-graded ones lost customers, and hospitalizations for foodborne illness fell by double digits. But one researcher later found the grades didn’t always mean what diners thought they meant.

Disclosing International Infectious Disease Outbreaks to Protect Public Health
Nurse checking patients temp

Case Study

Disclosing International Infectious Disease Outbreaks to Protect Public Health

For fifty years, global disease surveillance ran on an honor system: countries reported outbreaks to the WHO when they chose to, and reputation and trade concerns usually won out over early warning. That system quietly died in 2003, when cell phone messages out of Guangdong Province forced the world — and eventually Beijing itself — to confront a SARS outbreak the government hadn’t disclosed. Two decades, a rewritten rulebook, and a COVID death toll past six million later, the question isn’t whether informal networks can out-pace governments. It’s whether anyone funds the basic reporting systems meant to catch the next one before it spreads.

Full Disclosure: Using Transparency to Fight Climate Change
greenhouse gas with sunset in the background

Article

Full Disclosure: Using Transparency to Fight Climate Change

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?

Disclosing Plant Closings and Layoffs to Reduce Community Disruptions
Man leaving building after layoff

Case Study

Disclosing Plant Closings and Layoffs to Reduce Community Disruptions

After a wave of plant closings in the 1970s and ’80s, Congress settled on a modest compromise: companies above a certain size would have to warn workers and communities sixty days before a mass layoff. But the definitions of “mass layoff” and “covered employer” were carved so narrowly — and enforcement left so entirely to workers suing in federal court rather than any government agency — that researchers found the law barely touches most permanent layoffs. Even 9/11 and the offshoring wave of the mid-2000s, each triggering congressional hearings about expanding the rule, changed nothing.

Disclosing School Performance to Improve Public Education
Group of kids in a classroom

Case Study

Disclosing School Performance to Improve Public Education

After a 1983 federal report warned that American schools were falling behind, states rushed to publish school report cards, betting that transparency would push parents toward better schools and administrators toward better results. But by 1999, researchers found barely half of teachers and less than a third of parents had actually looked at one — and when No Child Left Behind forced every state to disclose more data in 2001, confusion multiplied just as fast as disclosure did, with some states juggling more than one report card per school. Two decades and a pandemic later, 45 states still publish their report cards in English only.

Labeling Genetically Modified Foods to Protect Health and the Environment
GMO Corn

Case Study

Labeling Genetically Modified Foods to Protect Health and the Environment

When genetically modified crops hit the market in the mid-1990s, Europe erupted — boycotts, “Frankenfood” headlines, Prince Charles weighing in — while American shoppers kept eating GMO corn and soy without a second thought. The transatlantic divide got so sharp that African nations facing famine turned away U.S. food aid rather than risk losing European export markets. Two decades later, Congress finally passed a national labeling law in 2016 — but only to kill off a patchwork of state rules, with no hearings, no debate, and a loophole letting up to 5 percent of a product be unlabeled GMO material.

Harmonizing Disclosure of Corporate Finances to Reduce Risks to Investors

Case Study

Harmonizing Disclosure of Corporate Finances to Reduce Risks to Investors

No treaty created it. No government voted it into being. Yet by 2005, a board of accountants headquartered in London — funded partly by the same “big four” firms whose clients it regulates — had convinced the European Union to make its rules binding law for seven thousand companies, with the US, Russia, and India weighing whether to follow. Businesses were already complaining the standards made their accounts “unreadable and irrelevant.” Enforcement was left entirely to the same national governments that had just given up control.

How to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions Now
Carbon Emission aerial view.

Policy Brief

How to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions Now

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.

Transparency Policies: Two Possible Futures
Team discussing responsibility

Policy Brief

Transparency Policies: Two Possible Futures

A color-coded terror alert system nobody understood. A calorie-labeling bill Congress kept burying. Archon Fung, Mary Graham, David Weil, and Elena Fagotto lay out exactly why some disclosure laws save lives and others just generate paperwork — and which future is winning.