democracy

• 
• SOURCE: Governing
  10/13/2021
  

  How Did the Senate Get Supermajority Gridlock?

  by Lindsay M. Chervinsky

  The framers clearly intended for majority rule in the passage of legislation in the Senate. So how did we get to the point where a majority can't do anything? 

• 
• SOURCE: Liberties
  10/3/2021
  

  The Tyranny of the Minority, from Calhoun to Trump

  by Sean Wilentz

  "The Trump Republican sedition has far from ended, and the worst may be yet to come."

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/14/2021
  

  Why Can't our Political System Address our Biggest Problems? Blame the Founders

  by Max Boot

  From COVID to guns to infant mortality to health care, the United States does worse than other industrial democracies at managing basic problems. It's time to recognize that design flaws of the system are a big part of the problem. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  9/7/2021
  

  Too Often, Politicians Pick Their Voters

  by Warren E. Milteer Jr.

  Political factions and then organized parties have fought over the size, composition and geographical ordering of the electorate since the founding. This legacy today undermines the legitimacy of government and the political will to protect the right to vote. 

• 
• 9/19/2021
  

  Teaching "All Men are Created Equal" (Part II)

  by Jeff Schneider

  In the second part of this essay, a longtime teacher of American history maintains that a close reading of the Declaration of Independence makes it possible to discuss revolution and racism in a thoughtful way without intimidating either white students or students of color.

• 
• 9/12/2021
  

  Scammed From the Beginning: Rejecting Expertise as an American Value

  by Guy Lancaster

  When Americans demand and take unauthorized medications to treat COVID-19, they aren't indulging a new conspiratorialism but are tapping into currents of American cultural and religious history that have always rejected established authority. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  9/1/2021
  

  Can “Lottocracy” Save Democracy From Itself?: Hélène Landemore on Inclusive Governance

  "One interpretation of our current predicament is thus that people are not rejecting democracy as an ideal but simply rejecting a system that claims to be a democracy but really isn’t. And if that’s the case, that’s healthy and a sign of democratic vitality, in my view."

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  8/20/2021
  

  Review Essay: Freedom for Whom?

  by Michael Mirer

  Two recent books, by Tyler Stovall and Annelien De Dijn, interrogate the history of the idea of freedom and the question of whether western liberal democracy can be freed from its historical roots in exclusion and domination of others. 

• 
• SOURCE: Public Seminar
  8/18/2021
  

  Race, Redistricting, and the 2020 Census: Will the Majority Tolerate Minority Rule Much Longer?

  by Heather Cox Richardson

  "For a century now, the machinery of redistricting has favored rural whites. With the 2020 census information reinforcing the idea that white, rural Americans are under siege, it seems unlikely that lawmakers in Republican states will want to rebalance the system."

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/16/2021
  

  Why Let the Supreme Court Dominate Democracy?

  by Nikolas Bowie

  Liberals have been conditioned to look to the Supreme Court of Brown v. Board of Education as a protector of democracy. What if the court's dominant historical legacy is the body of decisions that enabled the rise of Jim Crow in the first place? 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/21/2021
  

  Richard Pildes: Our Elections are Too Frequent for Democracy to Work

  by Richard Pildes

  The legal scholar argues that the Framers' belief in frequent Congressional elections has resulted in time for governing being squeezed out by campaigning. 

• 
• SOURCE: Salon
  7/12/2021
  

  Annette Gordon-Reed: January 6 a Turning Point

  "The notion of multiracial American democracy is very new and very fragile, and people are still fighting about it."

• 
• SOURCE: Jacobin
  6/5/2021
  

  There’s Less Than Two Years to Save American Democracy

  Voting Rights scholar Ari Berman discusses the past, present, and future of the ballot, and the parallels between the overthrow of Reconstruction-era voting rights and today's proposals to empower state legislatures and suppress the vote. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  6/7/2021
  

  Save Democracy: Abolish the Senate

  by Michael Tomasky

  Great Britain made the wise choice of diminishing the political power of the House of Lords. The New Republic's editor says that the history of Parliament and Congress shows it's time to do the same to the Senate. 

• 
• SOURCE: Know Your Enemy Podcast
  5/17/2021
  

  The Long Farewell to Majority Rule? (w/ Joshua Tait)

  Matt and Sam talk to historian Joshua Tait about the intellectual origins of conservatives'—and the modern GOP's—hostility to majoritarian democracy.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/20/2021
  

  Opinion: American Democracy is in Even Worse Shape than You Think

  by Perry Bacon Jr.

  Historian Thomas Zimmer cautions that the Republican Party is prepared to use gerrymandered state legislatures and the antidemocratic instituitons of the Senate and the courts to defy majority rule. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  5/17/2021
  

  Our 250-Year Fight for Multiracial Democracy

  The 1829 Virginia Constitutional Convention offers a lens onto the profoundly anti-democratic views held by many of the founding generation. We deal with the same hostility toward majority rule today. 

• 
• SOURCE: Data & Society
  4/14/2021
  

  House Arrest: How An Automated Algorithm Constrained Congress for a Century

  In 1929, Congress adopted a formula for apportionment based on the Census. While made political disputes a matter of law, it also capped the size of the House, which has not kept up with population growth and contributed to the disproportionate influence of small states in the House and the Electoral College.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/8/2021
  

  The Man Who Waited 50 Years for This Moment

  Fred Wertheimer has been battling the influence of money in politics since the 1970s. Writer George Packer asks if, at age 82, he will finally match his ideas to the political moment. 

• 
• SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review
  3/8/2021
  

  Will Hong Kong’s Free Press Survive?

  Security laws imposed by Beijing suggest that the Chinese government has lost patience for Hong Kong's traditionally active and frequently antagonistic press.