Vibrant human connection is central to our health as individuals, our efficacy as organizations, and our collective wellbeing as a society. Across disciplines, studies show that we are wired with an instinctive drive to mirror and coordinate, build relationships, and help and support one another. These findings are echoed and enriched by wisdom teachings and cultural practices going back thousands of years. Relationships are at the heart of what makes life worth living.

Though we long for connection, too often our relationships take a backseat to other demands and priorities. Elsewhere, our differences are exploited and connections severed, fueling toxic polarization. In the midst of a mental health crisis, social conflict, and a global pandemic, how do we cultivate a culture of connection?

Relationships are not just a means to an end. They are ends in themselves, and they are vital to enhancing most every aspect of our lives and society. This is the relational truth at the heart of everything we do.

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The Freedom in the World report is composed of numerical ratings and supporting descriptive texts for 195 countries and 15 territories. External analysts assess 210 countries and territories, using a combination of on-the-ground research, consultations with local contacts, and information from news articles, nongovernmental organizations, governments, and a variety of other sources. Expert advisers and regional specialists then vet the analysts’ conclusions. The final product represents the consensus of the analysts, advisers, and Freedom House staff.

For each country and territory, Freedom in the World analyzes the electoral process, political pluralism and participation, the functioning of the government, freedom of expression and of belief, associational and organizational rights, the rule of law, and personal autonomy and individual rights.

Are internet technologies doing more harm than good to our democracy? And what – if anything – should lawmakers do about it?

Because these questions are critical to U.S. elections, democracy and public health, Gallup and Knight Foundation sought American views on the way forward. 

Surprisingly, Americans’ opinions did not always follow party lines when it comes to Internet regulation. In fact, half of Americans occupy a diverse middle ground, a new Gallup/Knight survey of 10,000 adults found, offering a new lens on the national conversation on free expression online.

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The Repub­lican Party’s trans­form­a­tion under Donald Trump may have seemed sudden, but it was decades in the making. From acclaimed New York Times polit­ical reporter Jeremy Peters, Insur­gency: How Repub­lic­ans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted, is a compel­ling look at the frac­tur­ing of the GOP and how party lead­ers misun­der­stood their own voters. Peters argues that by abandon­ing long-held pillars like small-govern­ment and fiscal respons­ib­il­ity, the party’s embrace of Trump­ism, along with its imper­vi­ous­ness to moder­at­ing forces, has exten­ded the life of the Amer­ican Far Right well into the next century.

Join us for a live conver­sa­tion between MSNBC polit­ical contrib­utor Yamiche Alcindor and Peters, as they discuss how ideo­logy and aggres­sion came to take hold of the Repub­lican party, and changed the course of Amer­ican polit­ics.

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The rise of an “us versus them” mindset and political identity in American sociopolitical life is evident in everything from the rise of highly partisan media to the decline in Americans’ willingness to marry someone from the opposing political party. Even more concerningly, these dynamics are contributing directly to a steep rise in political violence. Polarization has already brought on serious problems—what more lies ahead? Are insights on this critical question available from the experience of other polarized democracies?

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America’s authoritarian faction is both more extreme and more successful than similar movements in other advanced democracies. Yet despite its ascendency, this faction does not enjoy broad-based support. So what explains its outsized success?

In Advantaging Authoritarianism: The U.S. Electoral System & Antidemocratic Extremism, Protect Democracy examines the links between escalating antidemocratic extremism and the U.S. electoral system: “one uniquely translating limited factional support into outsized political influence.” In particular, it interrogates how specific features of the U.S. electoral system may be structurally favoring political extremism, such as by exaggerating one party’s electoral wins over the other, diluting minority voting power, weakening competition between the major parties, preventing an electorally viable new center-right party, and rewarding extreme factions at the ballot box, among other effects.

As political scientist Robert Dahl once observed, the U.S. system, “natural as it may seem to us, is of a species rare to the vanishing point among the advanced democracies.” Advantaging Authoritarianism examines its anomalous features; the ways in which those features are aggravating extremism; and how various reforms could help to turn the tide. While the authoritarian threat confronting the U.S. is a near-term crisis, successfully confronting it will also require long-term, structural solutions.

Here at IP, we’ve been thinking a lot about democracy funding lately. We marked the one-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection last week, and it’s the start of another election year (hooray!). But that’s only part of it. Over the longer term, the heated debate around our imperiled democracy is unraveling closely held preconceptions about nonprofit funding, sending civil society into terra incognita.

As the one-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection arrives, voices including academics, retired generals and community leaders are warning of a heightened risk of civil conflict. It’s time for philanthropy to understand political violence as a central trend in American public life, and join the diverse Americans mobilizing to address it.

A reader’s guide to The Atlantic’s coverage of a worsening democratic crisis. READ MORE>

This working paper for philanthropy, written by New America, Over Zero, and Thought Partnerships, briefly summarizes current trends that, in light of global experience, suggest heightened risks of violence. Against this worrisome backdrop, they propose six funding strategies and specific recommendations to integrate violence prevention and mitigation into existing strands of work on polarization, institutions, or justice issues READ MORE>

Earlier this year, Citizen began comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of the modern American Right, examining attitudes towards Authoritarianism, QAnon, Voting & Elections, COVID-19, and Climate Change. 

This report summarizes our findings and affirms our initial hypothesis that while political polarization puts our democracy at increasing risk, opportunities exist for Citizen partners to reach pragmatic voters on the Right and engage them in efforts to strengthen democracy and address other pressing national issues. READ MORE>

Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels on why universities have a key role to play in civic education. READ MORE>

The federal workforce includes about 4,000 political appointees who are selected by the president, 1,200 of whom require Senate approval. Despite presidential interest in filling positions across government to advance political and policy objectives, the number of Senate-confirmed positions, along with the complexity of the appointment process, has resulted in a slowdown of confirmations and an increase in vacancies. This situation limits agency operations and reduces the president’s capacity to govern and the Senate’s power to hold officials accountable. This new report from the Partnership for Public Service offers seven potential approaches to streamline the political appointment process for positions requiring Senate confirmation. READ MORE>

National service is having a civic moment. People across the political spectrum are calling for expanded national service as a means to unify a polarized nation and tackle problems such as climate change. This piece by Laura Lauder and Stanley McChrystal explores how we can to harness the current moment of support for national service from a diverse cross-section of advocates. READ MORE>

The Endless Sea aims to find a new narrative for a positive future. Imagining a Story of Tomorrow, from More in Common’s Senior fellow Giuliano da Empoli, is the initial investigation into the groups, individuals, and movements who have managed the ‘big switch’ from negative to positive, from small scale to wider recognition, without losing energy. Harnessing this energy is vital to our narrative shift towards an optimistic vision of the future. READ MORE>

Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder aims to identify and prioritize the most critical sources and causes of information disorder and deliver a set of short-term actions and longer-term goals to help government, the private sector, and civil society respond to this modern-day crisis of faith in key institutions. The Commission has identified three priorities for which it will develop recommendations in the second stage of its work: (1) reducing harms, (2) increasing transparency and understanding, and (3) building trust. This document is The Commission’s Interim Report for 2021. READ MORE>

The mission of the National Task Force on Election Crises is to prevent election crises whenever possible, and to prepare to respond to and mitigate crises when they do occur. That mission remains as critical today as it was during the 2020 presidential election. In fact, the Task Force considers the risk of crises threatening future elections in this country to be dangerously high. This July 2021 report highlights some of the most concerning trends that have developed in recent months and the critical reforms that are needed to protect our elections in 2022 and after. 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.

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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.

Read the full report here>

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.

Read the full report here>

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.

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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.

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In this moment of crisis, donors must use all the tools available to protect American democracy. Tax-deductible philanthropy alone is insufficient.

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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?

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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 :

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

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As cases of political violence rise in America, PACE reviews five strategies for funders interested in preventing political violence to implement.

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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.

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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.

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