Three Kennedy School experts looked at democracy today through various lenses

First, Archon Fung, academic dean and Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship, conducted an instant poll to create a word cloud on the current state of our democracy (see photo below). He identified four trends that are having an impact on how well our democracy functions: 1) increased inequality, 2) increased polarization, 3) lack of government's responsiveness, and 4) the interconnection of identity and socioeconomic status in the the 2016 election.

Next, Pippa Norris, McGuire Lecturer in Public Policy, noted that when people are divided about election rules, we have a bigger problem. For example, a decade ago, 50 percent of Americans had confidence in the honesty of American elections; today, the number hovers at 30 percent. She highlighted a global survey about the perceived quality of elections, with the United States finishing last among all of the liberal democracies.

Finally, Marshall Ganz, senior lecturer in public policy, mentioned that the business of politics is heavily oriented toward marketing, which does not have an explicit aim of bringing people together to find consensus. He said, "Unless we take seriously the need to put organizing back into politics, we’ve lost our capacity for democratic politics, as well as our capacity to use democracy itself to bring people together to achieve a common purpose."

October 3-4 | Cambridge, MA

18-19 January 2018, London, UK

A campus is transformed.