Posts in Democracy Reform
Democracy and Civic Life: What is the Long Game for Philanthropy?

This essay series from the Knight Foundation and Kettering Foundation explores the challenges and opportunities for American democracy and what role philanthropy can play in addressing those challenges. It includes 18 pieces by leading thinkers on the future of our democracy including Francis Fukuyama, Antonia Hernández, Brian Hooks, and Yascha Mounk. READ MORE>

Unmaking the Presidency

Ben Wittes and Susan Hennessey describe how to interpret Donald Trump’s behavior as a president in the context of how we understand the presidency as an institution, detailing which aspects of Trump are radically different from past presidents and what aspects have historical antecedents.

The Fifth Risk

Michael Lewis describes the damage done to the machinery of government by Donald Trump’s botched transition and political appointments, many of whom did not show up, and those who did were critically uninformed about their roles.

Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America

Lee Drutman tells the story of how American politics became so toxic, why the country is trapped in a doom loop of escalating two-party warfare, and why it is destroying the shared sense of fairness and legitimacy on which democracy depends. He argues that the only way out is to have more partisanship-more parties, to short-circuit the zero-sum nature of binary partisan conflict.