Democracy Works

In 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting, E.J. Dionne and Miles Rapoport argue that all members of a democracy must participate in elections. Universal voting would be the surest way to protect against voter suppression and the active disenfranchisement of a large share of our citizens. And it would create a system true to the Declaration of Independence's aspirations by calling for a government based on the consent of all of the governed.The system works in Australia, but can it work in the United States? Would it become just another tool in partisan warfare? Can American democracy even handle something like universal voting? We explore those questions this week.Dionne is is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, university professor at Georgetown University, and visiting professor at Harvard University.  He is the author of Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country.Rapoport is the Senior Practice Fellow in American Democracy at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. He formerly served in the Connecticut state legislature and as secretary of the state. He also served as president of Demos and of Common Cause.Additional Information100% Democracy: The Case for Universal VotingRelated EpisodesDanielle Allen on achieving democracy's idealsHow national parties are breaking state politicsE.J. Dionne on empathy and democracy - E.J.'s first appearance on the show in April 2019  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Baby Boomers are the most powerful generation in American history — and they're not going away anytime soon.  Their influence in politics, media, business, and other areas of life is likely to continue for at least the next decade. What does that mean for younger generations? Generational conflict, with Millennials and Generation Z pitted against the aging Boomer cohort, has become a media staple. Older and younger voters are increasingly at odds: Republicans as a whole skew gray-haired, and within the Democratic Party, the left-leaning youth vote propels primary challengers. The generation gap is widening into a political fault line. Kevin Munger leverages data and survey evidence to argue that generational conflict will define the politics of the next decade.Munger is an assistant professor of political science and social data analytics at Penn State and the author of the new book Generation Gap: Why Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture.Additional InformationGeneration Gap: Why Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and CultureKevin Munger on SubstackKevin Munger on TwitterRelated EpisodesMillennials' slow climb to political power Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Millennials are often seen as a progressive-minded generation – as 80’s and 90’s kids, they grew up in a digital landscape that exposed them to a diversity of perspectives. But while expectations were high that this generation would be on the frontlines in the fight for racial equality, recent research by Democracy Works host Candis Watts Smith paints a different picture. During this conversation with Lisa Hernandez and Lizzy Ghedi-Ehrlich, host of the Scholars Strategy Network's No Jargon podcast, Candis discussed how white millennials’ really think about race and the ways in which their views and beliefs have largely halted progress for Black Americans and other racial minorities in the United States. Additional InformationRacial Stasis: The Millennial Generation and the Stagnation of Racial Attitudes in American Politics Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives MatterRelated EpisodesThe clumsy journal to antiracism Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Book bans are nothing new in the United States, but  our guest this week says the current movement to restrict access to books about race and gender has a different flavor than bans in previous eras. Rather than coming from individual parents or from the ground up in a community, demands to ban dozens or even hundreds of books at a time are coming from state legislators or national parent groups who circulate lists of books online. This trend is troubling for free speech and for the democratic processes that govern how students access information in schools.  Joining us to unpack what's happening and what we can do about is Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education at PEN America. He oversees advocacy, analysis, and outreach concerning educational communities and academic institution and drives PEN America’s efforts to catalyze a more informed, civic culture through education and advocacy for the rising generation and the general public.Additional InformationPEN America's report on book bansRelated EpisodesHow national parties are breaking state politicsPublic schools, not government schools  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We love a good debate — and have certainly had plenty of them on this show. But how effective are they in today's media and political landscape? We take up that question this week, prompted by the Republican National Committee's recent decision to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates.John Hudak, deputy director of the Center for Effective Public Management and a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, wrote a piece on the GOP's decision that caught our attention. He joins us to discuss the commission's history and where things might go between now and 2024. Additional InformationHudak's piece for BrookingsHudak on Twitter Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Americans owe more than $1.5 trillion in student debt and some members of the Millennial and Gen Z wonder whether they'll ever pay off their loans. Student loans began as a well-intended government program to help increase America's brainpower in the Cold War era, but as our guest this week describes, grew into a political and financial morass that's swept up millions of people over the past 50 years. The Department of Education announced on April 19 that at least 40,000 borrowers will be eligible for debt forgiveness through a loan forgiveness program for public servants, but as we discuss in this episode, the program is complicated and places an administrative burden on borrowers to comply with its rules.Our guest this week is Josh Mitchell, a reporter who covers the economy and higher education for The Wall Street Journal, and author ofThe Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe. In the book, Mitchell  draws alarming parallels to the housing crisis in the late 2000s, showing the catastrophic consequences student debt has had on families and the nation’s future. Additional InformationThe Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National CatastropheApril 2022 loan forgiveness announcement from the Department of Education Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Peter Pomerantsev visited Penn State at the end of March, when he was just back from a trip to Ukraine. We discuss what he saw there, as well as how American media is covering the war. We also talk about the similarities between Ukraine and the United States when it comes to being vulnerable to Russian disinformation — and how both countries can strengthen democratic media. Pomerantsev is a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and author of the books This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality and Everything Is True and Nothing Is Possible : The Surreal Heart of the New Russia. Additional InformationPeter's lecture on Ukraine at Penn StatePeter's article on Ukraine in TimePeter's article on Ukraine in The Economist Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jon Meacham is one of America's leading thinkers on how the country's political history can inform the present. He recently visited Penn State to present a lecture on his 2018 book The Soul of America and joined us for a wide-ranging conversation on the war in Ukraine (and whether Zelensky really is like Churchill), American polarization polarization, the changing media landscape, and more. Meacham is author of multiple New York Times  bestsellers, a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University and co-chair of Vanderbilt's Project on Unity and American Democracy, a contributing writer for The New York Times Book Review, and a fellow of the Society of American Historians.Thank you to the Center for Character, Conscience, and Public Purpose at Penn State for bringing Jon to campus and making this interview possible. Additional InformationVanderbilt Project on Unity and American DemocracyHope Through HistoryFate of Fact The Soul of AmericaHis Truth is Marching On    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Political violence is rising in the United States, with Republicans and Democrats divided along racial and ethnic lines that spurred massive bloodshed and democratic collapse earlier in the nation’s history. The January 6, 2021 insurrection and the partisan responses that ensued are a vivid illustration of how deep these currents run. How did American politics become so divided that we cannot agree on how to categorize an attack on our own Capitol?In the new book Radical American Partisanship, Lilliana Mason and Nathan Kalmoe bring together four years of studying radicalism among ordinary American partisans. They draw on new evidence—as well as insights from history, psychology, and political science—to put our present partisan fractiousness in context and to explain broad patterns of political and social change. Mason joins us this week to discuss the findings and the rocky path toward making the United States a fully-realized multiracial democracy She is an associate professor of political science at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.Additional InformationRadical  American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for DemocracyLilliana Mason on TwitterSNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins UniversityRelated EpisodesSore losers are bad for democracy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Peter Pomerantsev will visit Penn State March 31 and April 1 to discus Ukraine, Russian misinformation, and more. To get ready for his visit, we're rebroadcasting our conversation with him from May 2021.  Click the link below to register to watch his lectures via livestream.Misinformation, disinformation, propaganda — the terms are thrown around a lot but often used to describe the same general trend toward conspiratorial thinking that spread from the post-Soviet world to the West over the past two decades. Peter Pomerantsev had a front seat to this shift and is one of the people trying to figure out how to make the Internet more democratic and combat disinformation from both the supply side and the demand side. Pomerantsev is a senior fellow at the London School of Economics and the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality and Nothing is True and Everything Is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia. He has a forthcoming project with Anne Applebaum that will examine why people believe in conspiracies and how to create content that fosters collaboration, rather than sows division. Additional InformationRegister to watch Pomerantsev's lecturesPomerantsev on TwitterThis is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against RealityRelated EpisodesA path forward for social media and democracyCan pranksters save democracy?How conspiracies are damaging democracy  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.