Occasional Paper
By:
Katharina Liesenberg
Michael Lucas
Stefan Chavez-Norgaard
The democratic “recession” across the globe is emerging as a political hallmark of the 21st century. This is evidenced by the incremental breakdown of formal, political democratic practices and institutions among many nations, including in the North Atlantic states, as well as by the fear or anticipation of democratic erosion. This paper uses a pragmatist approach to demonstrate how, in the face of democratic breakdowns, resilient democratic practices are taking form in remarkably varied ways in the common structural context of settler-colonial nation-states that are nominally in stages of advanced democratic consolidation.
Policy Brief
The 2024 election saw Donald Trump make significant gains among young voters, increasing his support among 18- to 29-year-olds by 10 percentage points. This report aims to investigate the deeper issues at stake that are causing this historical shift.
Commentary
In its first 100 days, the Trump administration has taken sweeping, aggressive action against federal employees, impacting hundreds of thousands of workers and sending ripple effects across the country. Still, unions have stood strong, with the AFL-CIO, AFT, AFSCME, SEIU, and others filing over a dozen lawsuits to protect workers’ rights.
Commentary
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Policy Brief
In this paper, Mary W. Graham, co-director of the Center’s Transparency Policy Project, examines how unintended information inequities undermine critical health and safety alerts. Focusing on three key policies — wildfire alerts, drinking water reports, and auto safety recalls — she identifies common roots of these disparities and highlights efforts by policymakers to address them.
Commentary
Despite these unprecedented investments in mobilizing voters, overall trust in electoral health, democratic institutions, voter satisfaction, and electoral engagement have significantly declined. What might we be missing? Bruce Schneier and Hillary Lehr explore ways to enhance the voter experience in elections.
Feature
In their latest article for The Conversation, Justin de Benedictis-Kessner and Christopher Warshaw explain that there’s no empirical evidence linking crime trends to leadership by either political party.