Democracy Works

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A path forward for social media and democracy Feb 15, 2021

Show notes

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 Digital Economy; and head of MIT’s Social Analytics Lab. He is the author of The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health — And How We Must Adapt .

In his book and in this conversation, Aral goes under the hood of the biggest, most powerful social networks to tackle the critical question of just how much social media actually shapes our choices, for better or worse.

Additional Information

The Hype Machine

Sinan Aral on Twitter

Related Episodes

Facebook is not a democracy

Free speech from the Founding Fathers to Twitter

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Will Alexei Navalny make Russia more democratic? Feb 08, 2021

Show notes

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 German Marshall Fund of the United States. From 2014 to 2016, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He is the author of two books on American history and culture, and he has published articles and essays on the transatlantic relationship, on U.S.–Russian relations, and on international affairs in The New Republic, The New York Times, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Additional Information

Kimmage's New Republic article on Russian democracy

Kimmage at the German Marshall Fund

Out of Order podcast

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Hong Kong's fight is everyone's fight

Brazil's tenuous relationship with democracy

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Direct democracy's dark side Feb 01, 2021

Show notes

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 theory that can explain the evidence that the ballot initiative process fails to provide the civic benefits commonly claimed for it, and the evidence that it increases political participation. Ultimately, they argue that the basic function of direct democracy is to create more conflict in society — something that runs counter to the way initiatives are often framed by scholars and democracy reformers.

Lascher is Professor of Public Policy and Administration at California State University, Sacramento. Dyck is Associate Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Additional Information

Initiatives Without Engagement: A Realistic Appraisal of Direct Democracy's Secondary Effects

Joshua Dyck on Twitter

Related Episodes

The democracy rebellion happening in states across the U.S.

Winning the "democracy lottery"

Extreme maps, extreme politics

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Check out our partners in The Democracy Group Jan 25, 2021

Show notes

We'll be back with a new episode of Democracy Works next week. In the meantime, we invite you to check out our partner podcasts in The Democracy Group podcast network. Here's a small sampling of what the network's shows have covered recently:

Politics in Question examines the future of the Republican Party with the author of a new book on the Tea Party and insurgent factions in American policies.
How Do We Fix It? explores free speech and big tech with former ACLU president Nadine Strossen.
Future Hindsight discusses the link between Christianity and white supremacy in United States history.
Another Way by Lawrence Lessig shines a light on what political reform lessons the United States can draw from Alaska.
Democracy Matters from James Madison University explores the history of insurrection and section in the United States with a panel of faculty experts.
70 Million explores the push for criminal justice reform in jails throughout the United States
The Science of Politics from the Niskanen Center explores the politics of homeschooling
Out of Order from the German Marshall Fund of the United States takes stock of Germany’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which recently ended.

Learn more about the network and subscribe to its newsletter for updates at democracygroup.org.

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Extreme maps, extreme politics Jan 18, 2021

Show notes

Despite ongoing threats of violence, the wheels of democracy continue to turn, and in 2021, that means redistricting. States will draw new electoral maps this year using data from the 2020 Census.

Our guest this week has spent the past decade covering attempts by politicians to draw those maps to their advantage in a practice known as gerrymandering. He's also covered the groups of citizens across the country who pushed back against them to win some major reforms that will make the process look different now than it did in 2010.

David Daley is a journalist and author of Unrigged: How Citizens are Battling Back to Save Democracy. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, and New York magazine. He is a senior fellow at FairVote, the former editor of Salon, and lives in Massachusetts.

Additional Information

Unrigged: How Americans are Battling Back to Save Democracy

David Daley on Twitter

Fair Districts PA on judicial gerrymandering

Related Episodes

One state's fight for fair maps

Next-generation democracy: An interview with high school student Kyle Hynes, who won Pennsylvania's citizen mapmaking contest.

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American democracy's violent disruption Jan 11, 2021

Show notes

Democracy Works hosts Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, and Candis Watts Smith reflect on the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and what it says about the condition of American democracy. They also discuss whether it's possible to learn from this moment and what guideposts they'll be looking for to determine whether all the talk about protecting and restoring democracy we've heard since the attack will translate into action.

This episode was recorded on Friday, January 8, 2021.

Additional Information

Statement from Michael Berkman and Chris Beem on January 6, 2021 attack

Related Episodes

Andrew Sullivan on democracy's double-edged sword

What really motivates Trump supporters

Daniel Ziblatt on "How Democracies Die"

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What neoliberalism left behind [rebroadcast] Jan 04, 2021

Show notes

Neoliberalism is one of those fuzzy words that can mean something different to everyone. Wendy Brown is one of the world’s leading scholars on neoliberalism and argue that a generation of neoliberal worldview among political, business, and intellectual leaders led to the populism we’re seeing throughout the world today. But is it mutually exclusive to democracy? Not necessarily.

Brown joins us this week to help make sense of what neoliberalism is, and where things stand today. We were lucky enough to get an advance copy of her book, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, which will be released in July. It’s a follow up to her 2015 book, Undoing the Demos, and you’ll hear her talk about how her thinking has changed since then.

Brown is the Class of 1936 First Chair at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches political theory.

Additional Information

Wendy’s books: In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, Undoing the Demos

Wendy’s website

Our episode with David Frum

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How conspiracies are damaging democracy [rebroadcast] Dec 28, 2020

Show notes

From Pizzagate to Jeffrey Epstein, conspiracies seem to be more prominent than ever in American political discourse. What was once confined to the pages of supermarket tabloids is now all over our media landscape. Unlike the 9/11 truthers or those who questioned the moon landing, these conspiracies are designed solely to delegitimize a political opponent — rather than in service of finding the truth. As you might imagine, this is problematic for democracy.

Democracy scholars Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum call it “conspiracy without the theory” and unpack the concept in their book A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy. Russell is the Robert Clements Professor of Democracy and Politics at Dartmouth. Nancy is the Senator Joseph Clark Research Professor of Ethics in Politics at Harvard.

As you’ll hear, the new conspiricism is a symptom of a larger epistemic polarization that’s happening throughout the U.S. When people no longer agree on a shared set of facts, conspiracies run wild and knowledge-producing institutions like the government, universities, and the media are trusted less than ever.

Additional Information

A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy

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Did democracy work in 2020? Dec 21, 2020

Show notes

This episode was recorded on December 15, 2020, the day after the Electoral College voted to confirm Joe Biden as the next United States President. However, some Republicans refuse to accept the result and vow to continue fighting the result until Inauguration Day. Michael, Chris, and Candis discuss what these challenges mean for the long-term health and legitimacy of American elections and American democracy.

They also discuss damage to the institutions that comprise America's liberal democracy and what it will take to repair them moving forward. Finally, they touch on increasing polarization and whether a generational shift will change the dynamics over time.

This our final new episode of the year. We'll be on a winter break for the next few weeks, during which time we'll be rebroadcasting some episodes from our back catalog that you might have missed. If there are any guests or topics you would like us to cover in 2021, please email democracyinst@psu.edu to share your ideas.

Thank you to our colleagues at WPSU for helping us produce the show every week — Andy Grant, Emily Reddy, Kristine Allen, Anne Danahy, Jen Bortz, Chris Kugler, and Mark Stitzer.

From our team to your and your family, best wishes for a happy holiday season!

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The people want pot Dec 14, 2020

Show notes

Lee Hannah and Dan Mallinson have been studying marijuana policy for several years and watching as initiatives pass in states across the country. We discuss how the process of organizing around a ballot initiative has changed as the marijuana industry grows, and whether the growing number of states legalizing marijuana will lead to changes at the federal level.

Hannah is associate professor of political science at Wright State University and Mallinson is assistant professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg. Both received their Ph.Ds from Penn State, where they worked with Democracy Works host Michael Berkman.

This episode hits many of the items on the Democracy Works bingo card — federalism, states as laboratories of democracy, ballot initiatives, social justice, and more.