Democracy and “We the People” — How Responsible Citizens and Bold Ideas Can Bring about a Brighter Democratic Future
Q&A with Archon Fung
Archon Fung is the Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He serves as the co-chair of the Advanced Leadership Initiative Deep Dive on Democracy, which took place on September 15, 2023. Fung's research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance, with a particular focus on public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He co-directs the Transparency Policy Project and leads democratic governance programs of the Ash Center. His books include Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency (Cambridge University Press, with Mary Graham and David Weil) and Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy (Princeton University Press). He has authored five books, four edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in professional journals. He received two S.B.s — in philosophy and physics — and his Ph.D. in political science from MIT.
As we enter the 2024 election season, there is growing focus on the state of democracy in the United States and the potential threats it faces going forward. In an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll at the end of 2022, more than eight in ten Americans indicated that they believe there is a serious threat to democracy in the U.S.
Political polarization remains a potent force, acting as an obstacle to solving society’s most critical problems. Disinformation continues to drive sharp partisan division and, increasingly, the potential for violence. A significant portion of Americans believe the 2020 election was stolen, undermining faith in the electoral process. Voter suppression efforts continue across the country, which, in combination with increasing gerrymandering and minority rule, reduce the potential for voters to make their voices heard on policy preferences and the direction America should take going forward.
Democracy outside the U.S. seems imperiled as well. The title of Freedom House’s 2022 report on the state of democracy around the world is “The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule”, and their summary overview states, “Global freedom faces a dire threat. Around the world, the enemies of liberal democracy…are accelerating their attacks.”
Archon Fung is on the front line of researching the area of democratic governance. The Social Impact Review had the opportunity recently to pose a series of questions to him about the state of democracy around the world, actions citizens can take to have positive impact on the democratic process, and the role of academic institutions in protecting democracy. His responses paint an optimistic picture of the potential for citizen action and academic engagement to have impact on the health of democracy.
Sandra Kresch: How would you describe the state of global democracy today?
Archon Fung: I think that in many places around the world, the liberal democratic institutions and practices to which many people have grown accustomed are undergoing a great deal of stress. We see this in many countries in Europe, in the United States, in India, and countries in Latin America as well.
I feel some confidence that part of what we’re seeing in many democracies is the result of the emergence of a much broader spectrum of political positions, discussions, fights, and arguments than was on the table in, say, the 1980s to the 2000s. I think of this transformation as moving from an older “narrow aperture” world to our current “wide aperture” world.
In the period from the 1980s to the 2000s, much of the right and the left in American politics and elsewhere agreed on many big questions: both favored globalization; a less generous welfare state; a greater role for the market; a strong U.S. role in enforcing or protecting (depending on your perspective) the world order; immigration reform and a path to citizenship; strong criticism of traditional public schools in favor of, for example, charters on the left and privatization on the right; and the need for more effective policing to protect communities.
Today we see positions on the right that simply weren’t on the table or allowed in the debate then, such as a high wall against immigration, Donald Trump’s “America First” — somewhat anti-interventionist — position, and condemnation of educational elites (although anti-elitism has been a strong strain during many periods of American politics). On the left, many people are taking seriously proposals such as the Universal Basic Income that would have been (indeed were) universally scorned from Clinton circles to Obama circles. The criticism of the carceral state and policing in the wake of so many high-profile injustices such as the murder of George Floyd have also captured the imagination of many on the left.
To capture the spirit of that older, “narrow aperture” world of left-right agreement, I think of a story about Lady Margaret Thatcher. Lady Thatcher was the honored speaker at a dinner party in Hampshire in 2002, 12 years after she had left office. A guest asked her what she regarded as her greatest achievement. “Tony Blair and New Labour. We forced our opponents to change their minds,” she replied. She elegantly stated the broad change that her politics caused — and Reagan’s in the United States — in the 1980s. It pulled left, and right, into what some have called a “neo-liberal” consensus.
As a small-d democrat, I think democracies should have a very wide range of political debate in principle. However, our political practices and institutions and habits of thinking are accustomed to that narrow aperture world. With this wide range of debate, the prospect of “the other side” taking power can feel like an existential, intolerable threat to many people. In the face of existential threats, it becomes hard to say, well, let’s let the other side have a turn at governing because they got a few more votes. When people are unwilling to say that, democracy is in trouble.
By the way, I do think that we should be a little careful about saying that democracy has definitely weakened around the world. According to prominent studies like the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) report, we are indeed in a period of global democratic backsliding. But other studies that try to measure whether leaders have become less likely to give up power or whether the transfer of power from one party to another has decreased find little evidence of such democratic decline.
Kresch: What are threats to democracy that need more attention? And where do you see opportunities?
Fung: I think one of the main threats to democracy is us — we the people, broadly speaking. It is unclear that citizens really are comfortable with the way democracy actually works.
Recently, I’ve been asking my students and friends this question: Think of four or five issues that are really important to you. It might be stopping climate change, addressing racial injustice, securing a woman’s right to choose, stopping gun violence; or, on the other side of the political spectrum, your belief that that we’ll innovate our way out of the climate crisis, that efforts like race-based affirmative action decrease equality of opportunity, that we should value fetal life, or that owning firearms is an essential part of being free. Now, suppose you lose on these questions in a fair democratic process. For which ones would you be willing to say, “Well, OK, I didn’t get enough votes. I lost. The other side should get its way because that’s how democracy works. I’ll try to persuade more people the next time around.”
If the number of issues for which you’d be willing to say this is small — one or two or zero — then I submit that you’re not really a democrat. You’re more of a justice authoritarian. And if America has too many justice authoritarians (of any political stripe) and not enough democrats, then democracy is obviously in trouble.
Another main threat to democracy is political and public leaders who care more about gaining and preserving their own power than defending democracy and, as a result, beat up our democratic institutions. Democracy requires our political leaders to restrain the pursuit of their own political and partisan interests for the sake of our democratic health. They and their teams need to be willing to “take one for democracy,” so to speak.
Obviously, the events after the 2020 election, culminating on January 6th, were an egregious violation of this democratic norm. But so were the Democrats who channeled money to “stop the steal” Republican primary candidates, as some did in the 2022 midterms, hoping that these candidates would be weaker opponents in the general election. This might be a smart move for Democrats, but it's terrible for democracy. Because by strategically supporting such people, you are acknowledging to the public and to the American voter that you think that it’s OK for election denial to be part of the game that you’re playing. Because you gave them your money. Such people no longer have any moral ground to complain about election denial. Republican and Democratic leaders who engage in gerrymandering — as in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Maryland, and New York — also commit the sin of advancing their partisan interests at the expense of our democracy.
Kresch: Why is driving innovation and supporting big ideas so important for democracy’s future right now? How do they relate to the challenges here and now?
Fung: There are so many innovations and big ideas that are important and could help our democracy right now.
I personally think that we should orient our innovation efforts to a particular idea of democracy: which innovations in policy, institutions, and political practices can bring us closer to the ideal of an equal and inclusive, multi-racial and multi-ethnic system of democracy and self-government?
One set of ideas would inject more proportional representation into American politics. Ranked choice voting, “fusion voting,” proportional representation, and multi-member districts all fall into this category.
I think that the addition of third and fourth parties would help to improve the health of our democracy. Imagine if there were four parties: a MAGA party, traditional Republican, Clinton-Obama Democratic, and an AOC-Bernie party in American politics right now. I think our democracy would be healthier because voters would be able to find better matches between their own views and political leaders; because some of the toxic polarization that we see would be replaced by shifting and surprising alliances (for example, the AOC-Bernie people might join the MAGA folks in supporting big infrastructure spends, while the Clinton-Obama people might join the traditional Republicans for fiscal responsibility); and because sore losers who want to overturn election results would likely be opposed by three other parties who want fair political competition to continue.
Another set of innovations would supplement our representative electoral institutions with different kinds of direct citizen participation. Independent redistricting commissions — our best antidote to gerrymandering so far — have usually come through directly democratic ballot measures in the states. In California and Michigan, “citizen commissions” composed of pretty much regular citizens (not retired judges and political leaders) draw the legislative district maps. More and more cities around the world are adopting forms of participatory budgeting, in which citizens have a direct voice in how public funds are spent. There are many other such participatory innovations. At a time when trust in the parties, politicians, and the representative electoral process is low in many places around the world, I think that other innovative forms of democracy can help.
Kresch: How can concerned citizens engage to have an impact?
Fung: Concerned citizens can help first and foremost by trying to be more responsible citizens, which often means being less partisan. Ask yourself how your partisan lens has made you more obtuse and produced blind spots. During COVID, for example, I think many progressives far too easily dismissed the lab-leak hypothesis as fake news and dismissed those who called for much earlier school re-openings as anti-science or indifferent to life. I think both were big mistakes and partisan blind spots. Many Republicans, on the other hand, leaned into a vaccine hesitancy that has been highly destructive.
We’re all tempted to believe and endorse ideas that conform to our political orientations. But being a responsible citizen requires listening to those who have different views, and perhaps more importantly, asking whether we think those conforming ideas are true or whether they simply make us feel good. Embracing this diversity of views, and processing it rationally and reasonably, is the best way for democratic society to solve the enormous social problems that we face.
Second, I think part of responsible citizenship requires fostering and publicly enforcing democratic norms. Why can’t 90% of us loudly and publicly condemn political violence and intimation — such as the threats that so many election workers have suffered or the more public attack on Paul Pelosi?
Third, citizens should look for ways to invest their time and money into both short-term efforts (like countering election disinformation and voter suppression) and especially longer term, more fundamental innovations to improve the strength of democracy. I’ve mentioned multi-party and participatory democracy. I also think there is a lot of work to be done in depolarization and trans-partisan bridge building. And I think there is very important work to be done in fixing minority-rule political institutions. The Electoral College has become that, and states that are severely gerrymandered also facilitate minority rule. Perhaps the most pernicious route to minority rule, though, is the obscene flow of private money into American politics, which has been a problem for many decades.
Kresch: What are institutions like the Ash Center doing to advance democracy? What unique role are academic institutions playing?
Fung: Our mission at the Ash Center is to foster ideas and develop practices that strengthen equal and inclusive, multi-racial and multi-ethnic democracy and self-determination. Let me mention a couple of guiding principles and then projects in our work on American democracy.
By my lights, the distinctive contribution of an academic democracy center now is to engage in longer-term, structural inquiries about how to strengthen democracy. There are many immediate and important challenges. We host programming and support research on those, but there are many other civic and political organizations that operate in those lanes. When asked about his preferred time period for holding stocks, Warren Buffett said “forever.” Our time horizon for thinking about democracy is, well, forever.
One reason for this long-term focus is that scholars have the luxury of asking about what kinds of structures, institutions, and constitutional measures are good and bad for democracy, whereas politicians and advocates often must work within the structures they are given. More specifically, we at the Ash Center are supporting research and fostering conversations between scholars and practitioners to study large changes that might improve the health of our democracy. Over the last year, for example, we have been hosting conversations to explore the desirability of moving beyond our winner-take-all political rules to more proportional representation and multiple parties.
We are also very interested in creating spaces for those on the front lines of making our democracy work — election workers from the county level up to secretaries of state, folks in Attorney Generals’ offices, and maybe some state legislators for whom democracy is a priority — to step back from their pressing daily demands to think about how to make our electoral system much better and much more modern. When international students at the Kennedy School watch our elections, many are dismayed that it takes so long to register results in so many states. It is substantially harder to vote in the United States than in many other democracies. Our voter participation rates are about two-thirds, down toward the bottom of the list of OECD countries.
Especially since 2020, public distrust in the integrity of elections has grown into a major problem — 3 or 4 out of every 10 voters report that they do not believe that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election (Axios-Momentive Poll, University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll, The Texas Politics Project Poll). And, relatedly, there are unacceptable levels of political intimation and threat to many people who run our elections. These problems will not be solved by incremental improvements to our election apparatus. The Ash Center is very interested in facilitating searching long-term conversations about how to make American elections as great as they can be.
Kresch: You’ve always come across as an optimist. What gives you hope about the future of democracy, and are there words of encouragement you want to share with our readers?
Fung: I am optimistic about the future of democracy. American democracy is less stable now than it has been in recent decades. We saw this on January 6th, but it is also manifest in the success of insurgent politicians like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in 2016. When people say they want less democratic fragility, I suspect what they often have in mind is a project of recovery — a return to the more stable 1980s or 1990s or 2000s. But I think that is neither possible nor desirable.
American democracy was more stable then, but that doesn’t mean we had a good democracy. Remember, that democracy presided over decades-long increases in inequality, now reaching levels not seen since the Gilded Age. It was the democracy that presided over an enormous rise in mass incarceration. It was a democracy that had become remarkably unresponsive to the wants and needs of perhaps most Americans. It was the democracy that presided over a bipartisan consensus favoring globalization that left many Americans behind. And ours was the democracy that started the “Forever Wars” based on the “Big Lie” that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The instability of the democracy that we’re living through now has a lot to do with these shortcomings of the more stable democracy that preceded it.
I’ve been working on ways to deepen democracy for my entire professional career. For most of that time, democracy was a back-burner issue for students, policymakers, political leaders, and for many citizens as well. But democracy is a front-burner issue for almost everyone now.
More than at any other moment in my career, lots of people are working hard to figure out how to strengthen democracy. We see this in the offices of those who run elections. We see it with the political leaders who are open, even eager, to try out democratic innovations like participatory budgeting and citizen assemblies rather than dismissing them as bullhorns for pesky loudmouth citizens. We see it with the advocates and communities who are trying to improve their democracy with measures like ranked-choice voting, fusion voting, and in Portland, Oregon, even proportional representation in multi-member districts.
This newly widespread recognition of the deep problems of our democracy, this commitment from many quarters to do something about it, and this creative, novel energy and experimentation that I see all around the country gives me hope.
About the Author:
Sandra Kresch has had a 40-year career focused on managing growth and change in consumer-driven businesses. She has worked extensively in the media and entertainment industries, building a range of nationally and internationally known businesses. A 2021 Harvard Advanced Leadership Fellow, Sandra has focused on the underlying causes of political polarization and the impact of identity and media in creating the environment in which polarization thrives. She is actively engaged in the political process, working on ideas for mitigating the impact of misinformation in creating polarization, facilitating conversation across the political divide and implementing structural change in the electoral process to create greater equality. She is a Senior Editor for the Social Impact Review.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
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Acknowledgements:
With deep gratitude to Nick Chedli Carter, Director of Democracy Initiatives at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, for his support in facilitating this interview.