Bright Line Watch shares key findings from expert and public surveys on the state of American democracy. READ MORE>
A layman’s guide to understanding what the For the People Act is and why America needs it. READ MORE>
Julie Sandorf of the Charles H. Revson Foundation discusses how pooled funds or giving circles to support local media could make a big difference in the media environment. READ MORE>
Sarah Ruger of Stand Together on why the extremism threatening our democracy’s health calls for a broad-based nonpartisan philanthropic response aimed at slowing the spread of the disease and eventually reversing it, and three places where grant makers can strategically direct their dollars. READ MORE>
Deep and accelerating inequality; unprecedented political polarization; vitriolic public discourse; a fraying social fabric; public and private narcissism--Americans today seem to agree on only one thing: This is the worst of times.
But we've been here before. During the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, America was highly individualistic, starkly unequal, fiercely polarized, and deeply fragmented, just as it is today. However as the twentieth century opened, America became--slowly, unevenly, but steadily--more egalitarian, more cooperative, more generous; a society on the upswing, more focused on our responsibilities to one another and less focused on our narrower self-interest. Sometime during the 1960s, however, these trends reversed, leaving us in today's disarray.
In a sweeping overview of more than a century of history, drawing on his inimitable combination of statistical analysis and storytelling, Robert Putnam analyzes a remarkable confluence of trends that brought us from an "I" society to a "We" society and then back again. He draws inspiring lessons for our time from an earlier era, when a dedicated group of reformers righted the ship, putting us on a path to becoming a society once again based on community. READ MORE>
The Ford Foundation’s Hilary Pennington explores how America can balance movements of reckoning and movements to bridge divides in order to build a truly pluralistic, multi-racial democracy. READ MORE>
Alex Daniels highlights pooled funds making a difference, including 3 in the democracy space. READ MORE>
This outline from Bridge Alliance provides anoverview of the democracy field -- i.e. the current work to promote healthy self-governance. This co-created and community updated outline document combines civic engagement, electoral reform, policy and issue work of the many unique organizations and funders working within the political and civic reform sectors. READ MORE>
For two hundred years, the grand project of liberal internationalism has been to build a world order that is open, loosely rules-based, and oriented toward progressive ideas. Today this project is in crisis, threatened from the outside by illiberal challengers and from the inside by nationalist-populist movements. This timely book offers the first full account of liberal internationalism's long journey from its nineteenth-century roots to today's fractured political moment. Creating an international "space" for liberal democracy, preserving rights and protections within and between countries, and balancing conflicting values such as liberty and equality, openness and social solidarity, and sovereignty and interdependence--these are the guiding aims that have propelled liberal internationalism through the upheavals of the past two centuries. G. John Ikenberry argues that in a twenty-first century marked by rising economic and security interdependence, liberal internationalism--reformed and reimagined--remains the most viable project to protect liberal democracy. READ MORE>
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the "strongman" playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin--enabling her to predict with uncanny accuracy the recent experience in America. In Strongmen, she lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future. READ MORE>
Our Declaration reinterprets the promise of American democracy through our founding text. Combining a personal account of teaching the Declaration with a vivid evocation of the colonial world between 1774 and 1777, Allen, a political philosopher renowned for her work on justice and citizenship reveals our nation’s founding text to be an animating force that not only changed the world more than two-hundred years ago, but also still can. Challenging conventional wisdom, she boldly makes the case that the Declaration is a document as much about political equality as about individual liberty. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Our Declaration is an “uncommonly elegant, incisive, and often poetic primer on America’s cardinal text”. READ MORE>
"Racism is an existential threat to America," Theodore Johnson declares at the start of his profound and exhilarating book; furthermore, it's a refutation of the American Promise enshrined in our Constitution--that all men and women are inherently equal. And yet corrosive racism has remained ingrained in our society. If we cannot overcome it, Johnson argues, while the United States will remain as a geopolitical entity, the promise that made America unique on Earth will have died.
When the Stars Begin to Fall lays out in compelling, ambitious ways a pathway to the national solidarity necessary to overcome racism. READ MORE>
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism.
From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. READ MORE>
David French examines the true dimensions and dangers of America’s widening ideological gap, and what could happen if we don't take steps toward bridging it - as well as what it would take to reestablish national unity. READ MORE>
Civic leaders, organizations, funders, and citizens increasingly recognize the power of technology to connect people, improve cities, and make government more effective.
A new report from Knight Foundation offers a first-of-its-kind analysis of the emerging civic tech landscape, including investments being made in this growing field and the organizations behind them. READ MORE>
Amid a global pandemic, the United States is grappling with deep polarization after a divisive presidential election and the events that followed. Moments of polarization, radicalization and extremism have increased public distrust in government, legislative gridlock, and violence in cities around the county. At this critical moment in history, Brookings President, John R. Allen and Darrell West look at how polarized discussions on race, ethnicity, religion, immigration and gender stem from years of income inequality, geographic disparities, systemic racism and the rise of digital technology, and propose policy solutions to chart Americans on a path towards national unity and reconciliation. READ MORE>
Ellen Friedman on the importance of increased public investment in elections. READ MORE>
Dan Cardinali on how nonprofits can continue building trust and participation in US elections by working with people on issues they care about. READ MORE>
A roundup of SSIR articles exploring ways to take on the unprecedented divides in America. READ MORE>
Sonal Shah and Hollie Russon Gilman on three co-governance models the new administration can use to genuinely empower people, create more-equitable policies, and rebuild trust in democratic institutions. READ MORE>
On November 21, 2022, PACE and DFN hosted a webinar to present newly developed evidence from four organizations–three of which were grantees from PACE’s Faith In/And Democracy Fund. During the webinar, each speaker presented evidence from their work and then participants engaged with the speakers in breakout room conversations.
Building a robust, high functioning pluralist democracy in the U.S. capable of ushering in better futures for Americans requires us to think boldly and move away from reaction, apathy, and surrender. The extraordinary times we live in, full of rapid change, uncertainty and possibility, call upon us to identify and lift up positive disruptors who dare to dream and imagine what could be.
DFN’s report Imagining Better Futures for American Democracy is a call to action to imagine what our democracy could become. Informed by dozens of interviews with visionary thinkers and doers from a variety of fields and viewpoints, including futurists, activists, thought leaders, creatives, artists, religious leaders, and funders, the report shares their insights on why positive visioning matters, discusses how those visions of better futures relate to democracy and governance systems, and asks how we can inspire more Americans to dream bigger and develop a sense of agency to bring those ideas to fruition.
Below are the report’s key findings and recommendations:
Findings:
Enthusiastic and emphatic agreement that positive visions of the future matter tremendously because they help us to imagine better alternatives, motivate us, and guide us to achieving positive societal outcomes. They also reinforce the idea that we have agency to shape our individual and collective futures and those of our descendants.
Several points of disconnection –
Few interviewees saw governance as critical to achieving the better futures they articulated, or had thought about how to improve and reimagine democracy.
The future-oriented community seldom connects with the democracy community.
America lags in experimenting with new forms of future-oriented governance models and thinking.
The people we interviewed are also disconnected from each other, although there are some hubs and communities of practice that provide connective tissue that some interviewees are a part of.
Many obstacles (e.g., complex problems from the local to the planetary, conflict-driven media and political environments, dystopian narratives, racism and othering) currently stand in the way of positive visions of the future emerging at scale.
Positive stories about the future and narratives of mutuality and abundance exist but are barely breaking through in mass culture.
Recommendations:
While we have a strong foundation on which to build – great ideas, visionary leaders, real-world experiments, powerful stories about better futures, and media campaigns – we need more infrastructure and connective tissue to gain traction and impact. Accordingly, we recommend three types of strategies:
Strengthen the positive visioning ecosystem by investing in infrastructure and relationships
There are numerous ways to build and support an emerging ecosystem and to create connections between those broadly engaged in positive visioning and those working specifically on democracy issues. We recommend more networking, collaboration, and mapping, more productive chances to convene donors and working groups around the future of democracy, and greater use of futures thinking tools to change mindsets.
Model what’s possible and fund experimentation
We want to explore how to adapt governance innovations from outside the U.S. that incorporate a futures orientation, a longer planning horizon, and an intergenerational fairness lens. We also see promise in funding innovative efforts to strengthen and invigorate democracy in the U.S., especially at the state and local level, by using technology, engaging youth, creatives, game designers, and speculative fiction writers, and tapping into collective imagination exercises.
Strengthen narrative systems & amplify positive, futures-oriented content
We need strategies that elevate and sustain narratives of abundance, interdependence, and mutuality and that amplify current bright spots for greater impact. Content also matters. We need more of it that’s positive, inspiring, and hopeful about what we can build together. That means influencing which stories are told, by whom, and how.
The Constitution Drafting Project brings together three teams of leading constitutional scholars—team libertarian, team progressive, and team conservative—to draft and present their ideal constitutions. Team libertarian was led by Ilya Shapiro, then of the Cato Institute, and included Timothy Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute and Christina Mulligan of Brooklyn Law School. Team progressive was led by Caroline Fredrickson of Georgetown Law School and included Jamal Greene of Columbia Law School and Melissa Murray of New York University School of Law. Team conservative was led by Ilan Wurman of Arizona State University College of Law and included Robert P. George of Princeton University, Michael McConnell of Stanford Law School, and Colleen A. Sheehan of Arizona State University.
With U.S. democracy in crisis, guest contributors Mike Berkowitz and Rachel Kleinfeld argue that philanthropy cannot stick to its usual playbook. They outline five ways funders can improve how they approach this work.
In this moment of crisis, donors must use all the tools available to protect American democracy. Tax-deductible philanthropy alone is insufficient.
In case you missed DFN’s The Role of Faith Communities in Preserving Democracy program, PACE provided a summary of the webinar.
In this meeting, DFN explored key questions around the role faith communities can play in preserving American democracy: What can faith communities contribute to a pro-democracy movement? How can faith leaders and communities be mobilized to act in defense of democracy and resist embracing extremist and anti-democratic viewpoints? What are the potential benefits of faith engagement in the pro-democracy movement, and what do we risk by failing to engage religious communities?
READ MORE>
More in Common’s newest survey, Parties and Politics, focused on Americans’ attitudes towards the 2022 midterm elections and their feelings about how to best influence politics. It was developed in collaboration with the national NBC broadcast & streaming network, LX News, as well as our polling partner YouGov.
The top findings are :
Americans across party, race, and generations overwhelming see voting as the most effective way to influence politics. However, Gen Z Americans are much more likely than other generations to also see protesting as an effective way to influence politics.
Democrats and Republicans are much more likely to want more moderate candidates in the other party than in their own party. In contrast, Independents want more moderate candidates in both parties. Republicans and Democrats who want more moderate candidates in their own party were less ideologically extreme and more likely to say they belonged to their party because of their family or friends, as opposed to how their party aligned with their values.
Registered voters are ten times more likely to say they will vote in the 2022 general election compared to Americans who are not registered to vote.
As cases of political violence rise in America, PACE reviews five strategies for funders interested in preventing political violence to implement.
There is no shortage of headlines about the grim state of our democracy. Many forces are to blame: leaders who flout democratic norms and spout “us vs. them” rhetoric, a political system that fuels polarization, growing threats of political violence and election interference, and the divisive and distorting effects of social media. The list goes on. Another factor, frequently left out of the picture, is loneliness – often defined as the discrepancy between one’s desired and actual levels of social connection.
We see every day how local news strengthens democracy. People rely on local news to figure out who to vote for, how to speak up at school board meetings, how to run for local office, where to find vaccines, when to organize for change, and more. From daily reporting that equips people to act, to huge investigations that reveal corruption, the health of local news is bound up with the health of our democracy.