Book
In this book, Empowering Affected Interests, Archon Fung and Sean W. D. Gray explore the radical implications of the All-Affected Principle in a globalized world, bringing together leading theorists to examine how democracy might be reimagined to address cross-border interdependence on issues like immigration, climate change, and labor markets.
Many demands for democratic inclusion rest on a simple yet powerful idea. It’s a principle of affected interests. The principle states that all those affected by a collective decision should have a say in making that decision. Yet, in today’s highly globalized world, the implications of this ‘All-Affected Principle’ are potentially radical and far-reaching. Empowering Affected Interests brings together a distinguished group of leading democratic theorists and philosophers to debate whether and how to rewrite the rules of democracy to account for the increasing interdependence of states, markets, and peoples. It examines the grounds that justify democratic inclusion across borders of states, localities, and the private sector, on topics ranging from immigration and climate change to labor markets and philanthropy. The result is an original and important reassessment of the All-Affected Principle and its alternatives that advances our understanding of the theory and practice of democracy. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
In celebration of over 20 years as Harvard’s hub for democracy research, the Ash Center launched its Open Access Scholarship Initiative to enhance the accessibility and the democratization of key works by making them downloadable for free.
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.
Podcast
Jen Domagal-Goldman, the executive director of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, and Yael Bromberg, a constitutional rights attorney and leading scholar on the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, join Terms of Engagement to explore what’s at stake in the ongoing partisan battle over student voting rights and civic participation.
Podcast
American Enterprise Institute political economist Nicholas Eberstadt joints Terms of Engagement hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to discuss falling male labor force participation and what he says are its effects on politics and society.
Commentary
Allen Lab Fellow Tyler Fisher examines the untapped potential of city charters as a vehicle for deliberative democracy, arguing that advocates should work to embed tools like citizen assemblies, participatory budgeting, and town meetings directly into the governing architecture of cities, institutionalizing deliberative democracy one municipality at a time.
Feature
Books, reports, and articles exploring the front lines of American politics and democracy, as featured on the Terms of Engagement podcast.
Feature
Tova Wang, director of research projects in democratic practice at the Ash Center, shares her top picks for summer reads focused on making democracy more resilient, responsive, and inclusive.
