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PODCAST

Democracy Works

Penn State McCourtney Institute for Democracy

The Democracy Works podcast seeks to answer that question by examining a different aspect of democratic life each week — from voting to criminal justice to the free press and everything in between. We interview experts who study democracy, as well as people who are out there doing the hard work of democracy day in and day out. The show’s name comes from Pennsylvania’s long tradition of iron and steel works — people coming together to build things greater than the sum of their parts. We believe that

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All Episodes

00:41:58

Is it possible to overdo democracy? [rebroadcast]

Democracy Works ·

2021/06/14

As we enter summer vacation season and emerge from pandemic isolation, Robert Talisse thinks it’s a good idea to take a break from politics. In fact, he might go so far as to say democracy is better off if you do.Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and author of a new book called Overdoing Democracy: Why We Must Put Politics in Its Place. The book combines philosophical analysis with real-world examples to examine the infiltration of politics into all

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00:28:10

Looking back to move forward

Democracy Works ·

2021/06/07

We end this season the way it began, with a roundtable discussion on the state of American democracy. Michael, Chris, and Candis reflect on the January 6 insurrection, the one-year anniversary of George Floyd's death, and the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre.On the one hand, it's easy to be pessimistic about where things are as state legislatures continue to pass restrictive voting measures and Congress seems more polarized than ever. Yet, it's our duty as democrats to persevere despite these

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00:39:13

The people vs. the bureaucrats in Flint

Democracy Works ·

2021/05/31

This week, we explore the questions of who governs in a democracy and what happens when the power is taken away from the people. Ashley Nickels, associate professor of political science at Kent Sate University, examines these questions through the lens of a municipal takeover in Flint, Michigan in 2011 that replaced elected city officials with an emergency manager appointed by the state. Nickels also challenges the notion that policy can be removed from politics and treating it as such has

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00:40:32

There is no "I" in democracy

Democracy Works ·

2021/05/24

Shaylyn Romney Garrett is a writer, speaker and changemaker pursuing connection, community, and healing in a fragmented world. She is the co-author with Robert Putnam of The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again, which charts what the authors describe as the "I-We-I" curve in American democratic engagement and civic life. In the book and in this interview, Romney Garrett takes us back to the Gilded Age, another time when America was highly unequal and divided

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00:39:42

How democracies can win the war on reality

Democracy Works ·

2021/05/17

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. These issues came to a head in the United States last

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00:29:58

Conspiracism finds a home on the intellectual right

Democracy Works ·

2021/05/10

Chris Beem takes the interviewer's chair this week for a conversation with political theorist Laura K. Field about her recent work that examines how the conspiracism described by Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead in their book A Lot of People Are Saying has made its way to prominent conservative intellectuals and the institutions that support them. The conversation ends with ways that listeners can take conspiracy-minded arguments with the appropriate grain of salt and perhaps disconnect from

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00:44:31

The Federalist Society's ideas have consequences for...

Democracy Works ·

2021/05/03

Is the Federalist Society bad for democracy? There's nothing inherently wrong with groups of like-minded people organizing to share and disseminate their ideas — everyone from James Madison to Alexis de Tocqueville would agree on that. However, our guest this week argues that the group's outsized role in the courts has undermined the notion of judicial independence, one of the hallmarks of our democratic experiment.Amanda Hollis-Brusky is an associate professor of politics at Pomona College. She is

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00:41:38

Colored Conventions show us where democracy really...

Democracy Works ·

2021/04/26

For nearly 100 years, African Americans gathered in cities across the United States to participate in state and national-level political meetings that went far beyond slavery and conventional racial narratives to discuss education, labor, and what true equal citizenship would look like. This rich history went largely unnoticed for decades until P. Gabrielle Foreman and her colleagues formed the Colored Conventions Project to collect and categorize convention records and associated documents.Foreman

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00:30:43

Can pranksters save democracy?

Democracy Works ·

2021/04/19

Srjda Popovic and Sophia A. McClennen have appeared on our show separately and are now joining forces to apply a research framework to dilemma actions, a nonviolent organizing tactic that works by capitalizing on a belief that's commonly held by the public but not supported by those in power. Rather than simply getting people together to protest in the streets, you organize them to do something that causes a scene, like kissing on a crowded subway platform or planting flowers in potholes that line a

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00:43:51

Public schools, not government schools

Democracy Works ·

2021/04/12

The Trump administration infamously referred to public schools as "failing government schools," illustrating how education has been caught up in the broader attack on the roots of American democracy. While the language is new, Derek W. Black argues the sentiment very much is not.Black is a professor of law at the University of South Carolina and one of the nation’s foremost experts in education law and policy, focusing on school funding and equality for disadvantaged students He is the author of

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00:40:57

Reforming criminal justice from the inside out

Democracy Works ·

2021/04/05

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner joins us to discuss the promise and peril of institutional reform and how he built a coalition of voters who are traditionally overlooked in politics. He spent his career as a civil rights attorney, not a as a prosecutor like his predecessors. He's part of a growing movement of progressive district attorneys who focus on ending mass incarceration, not solely on enforcing law and order. Krasner won in 2017 and increased voter turnout in an off-year

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00:41:50

Laboratories of restricting democracy

Democracy Works ·

2021/03/29

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, legislators in 43 states have introduced more than 250 bills aimed at restricting access to voting in person, by mail, or both. Chris Fizsimon, director and publisher of States Newsroom, returns to the show to give us a birds-eye view of what's happening on the ground in state legislatures. We discuss how Republican legislators are pushing things like shortened mail-in voting windows, expanded voter ID requirements, and other cumbersome administrative

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00:34:48

Danielle Allen on achieving democracy's ideals

Democracy Works ·

2021/03/22

Danielle Allen is a leader of two large-scale efforts to make democracy truly inclusive and reimagine the way we teach new generations of democratic citizens. She joins us this week to discuss both initiatives and how to build coalitions for effective changeAllen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and Director of Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. She is a leader and spokesperson for Our Common Purpose from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and

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00:37:10

Reimagining citizenship in a consumer world

Democracy Works ·

2021/03/15

If you're listening to this podcast, you probably don't fit Ethan Porter's definition of a consumer citizen, but you probably know someone who does — someone who tunes out of politics and would rather focus on just about anything else. Porter argues that appealing to consumer behavior might be on way to spark civic engagement among this group. In The Consumer Citizen, Porter also makes the case that Americans would trust the government more if it did a better job of communicating about its services

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00:35:30

Understanding — and addressing — domestic terrorism

Democracy Works ·

2021/03/08

When the social fabric and institutions the hold a democracy together are weakened, it can create a breeding ground for extremism that radicalization that might eventually lead to acts of domestic terrorism like the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. It's a vicious cycle — weaker democracy breeds more distrust which leads to more extreme actions. As Anne Applebaum reminded us last week, democracy is not inevitable and takes hard work to sustain. This week, we break down what domestic terrorism is

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00:44:03

Anne Applebaum on why democracy is not inevitable

Democracy Works ·

2021/03/01

Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, and a senior fellow at The Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She joined the McCourtney Institute for Democracy for a virtual event on February 17, 2021 to discuss her most recent book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. This episode includes the closing remarks from Applebaum's lecture, followed by a Q&A with Democracy Works host Jenna

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00:28:24

The long road to a multiracial democracy

Democracy Works ·

2021/02/22

Seizing Freedom is a new podcast from Virginia Public Media that tells the stories of Black Americans during Reconstruction who fought for the everyday freedoms that many of us take for granted, like the right to decide how to make a living or which causes to support. Drawing from host Kidada Williams's research on historical records of formerly enslaved people, the show brings to light voices that have been muted throughout American history.Williams is associate professor of history at Wayne State

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00:39:07

A path forward for social media and democracy

Democracy Works ·

2021/02/15

Sinan Aral has spent two decades studying how social media impacts our lives, from how we think about politics to how we find a romantic partner. He argues that we're now at the crossroads of a decade of techno-utopianism followed by a decade of techno-dystopianism. How to reconcile the promise and peril of social media is one of the biggest questions facing democracy today.Aral is the David Austin Professor of Management, Marketing, IT, and Data Science at MIT; director of the MIT Initiative on the

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00:36:49

Will Alexei Navalny make Russia more democratic?

Democracy Works ·

2021/02/08

Alexei Navalny has been a figure in Russian opposition for years, but garnered international attention recently though social media and what's widely believed to be an assassination attempt by the Russian government in the fall. This week, we unpack the complicated nature of Russian democracy and how the U.S. and other countries should respond — or not — to what's happening there now.Michael Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America and a non-resident allow at the

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00:37:07

Direct democracy's dark side

Democracy Works ·

2021/02/01

From gerrymandering to ranked-choice voting to expanding voting rights, the ballot initiative has been essential to expanding and reforming democracy in recent years. However, the initiative has also been used to constrain minority rights and push the public to act on polarizing issues like the death penalty and immigration.Ted Lascher and Joshua Dyck are the authors of Initiatives Without Engagement: A Realistic Appraisal of Direct Democracy's Secondary Effects. In the book, they develop and test a

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243 results

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