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.
Commentary
Election night 2026 produced a remarkable roll call of historic firsts. From the first Black woman elected governor of a U.S. state to the first Muslim elected to the Senate, voters broke barriers across state and party lines.
Podcast
On this week’s episode of the Terms of Engagement podcast, co-hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer welcome Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno, CEO of RepresentUs, to discuss what accountability could look like in the next two years.
Podcast
On this week of the Terms of Engagement podcast we have a special Post-Election Day Discussion with co-hosts Professor Archon Fung and Stephen Richer.
Policy Brief
This policy brief examines how states can strengthen partnerships between postsecondary institutions and state election officials to build sustainable civic infrastructure.
Additional Resource
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.
