Democracy Works

Heather McGhee made her career in pushing for economic policy changes at the think tank Demos. But she couldn't help but feel that something was missing from her work. So she embarked on a cross-country road trip to understand what's at the heart of what ails America's economy and our democracy. The result is her book The Sum of Us, which she joins us to talk about in this episode. In the book, McGhee explores what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. She details how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare. Finally, she offers examples of how this paradigm is changing in communities across the country when people work across differences to achieve a shared goal. At the beginning of the episode, we reference our conversation with Rhiana Gunn-Wright, one of the architects of the Green New Deal.

Cassidy Hutchinson, and aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows whose testimony captured the nation's attention in the January 6 Congressional hearings, joins us this week to discuss her time in the Trump administration and her new role safeguarding American democracy. Hutchinson was faced with a choice between loyalty to the Trump administration or loyalty to the country by revealing what she saw and heard in the attempt to overthrow a democratic election. She bravely came forward to become the pivotal witness in the House January 6 investigations, as her testimony transfixed and stunned the nation. In her memoir, Hutchinson reveals the struggle between the pressures she confronted to toe the party line and the demands of the oath she swore to defend American democracy.Hutchinson's memoir, Enough, was published in September 2023 and is a New York Times bestseller.

If there's one thing that people across the political spectrum can agree on, it's a sense of discontent with the current state of American politics. This week, we explore the origins of that discontent and why it's damaging to democracy. Our guest is Matthew Rhodes-Purdy, an assistant professor of political science at Clemson University and one of the authors of The Age of Discontent: Populism, Extremism, and Conspiracy Theories in Contemporary Democracies.Rhodes-Purdy and his co-authors argue that the most successful populist and extremist movements of the past 20 years have focused largely on cultural grievances, rather than on economic discontent. The book outlines what they describe as  the troubling implications of discontent on the long-term compatibility of liberal democracy and free-market neoliberalism. Looking at case studies from around the world, the authors imply that democratic states must renew their commitment to social regulation of markets and to serve as conduits for citizen voice for  democracy and market economies are to survive. 

We've talked about social media a lot on this show over the years — usually focusing on algorithms, echo chambers, polarization, and the other ways it's damaging to democracy. This week, however, we hear a different take from V Spehar, who has more than 3 million followers on the TikTok account Under the Desk News. V built a reputation providing recaps of the daily news for an audience who might not consume news anywhere else. The Under the Desk News audience is politically diverse and V talks about some of the conversations that happen in the comments section. V's also seen how social media can bring people together in real life and encourage people to become civically informed and engaged.Check out V’s new podcast, American Fever Dream. 

Cynthia Miller-Idriss, one of America's leading experts on the far right, joins us this week to discuss what draws people to political extremism online and offline — and what we can do to combat it. Miller-Idriss is the director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University and author of the book Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right. As you'll hear, PERIL takes a public health approach to preventing violent extremism and provides tools and resources to help communities create resilient democracies. In the interview, Miller-Idriss discusses how extremism and political violence are linked to our desire for community. This dynamic means that extremist ideas can pop up in seemingly innocuous places from martial arts groups to online wellness communities. She says understanding this dynamic is key to moving people away from extremist spaces and into constructive communities.Miller-Idriss visited Penn State as part of the Mellon-funded Sawyer Seminar exploring the theme, "Birthing the Nation: Gender, Sex and Reproduction in Ethnonationalist Imaginaries."

As a Democracy Works listener, you probably follow politics pretty closely. And we're going to go out on a limb and say that many of the people in your life do, too. But what about everyone else? People who casually keep up with political news or maybe tune iit out entirely. Scholars Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan argue that America might not be as polarized as we think because the media and political observers over-index on people who are deeply invested in politics at the expense of those who are not as engaged. They call this phenomenon "the other divide" and it's the subject of their most recent book. Krupnikov and Barry Ryan join us on the show this week to share their research on levels of political involvement and how it translates to media coverage.As Candis Watts Smith says at the end of the episode, we hope that this conversation will inspire some epistemic humility. Krupkniov is a professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan. Barry Ryan is associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan. They are the authors of The Other Divide: Polarization and Disengagement in American Politics.

Chris Beem talks with journalist Tim Alberta about the role that Evangelical Christians play in the Republican Party — and what that means for the future of American democracy.Alberta is a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the books The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age  of Extremism and American Carnage: On the Front  Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump. He's also the son of an evangelical pastor. This conversation covers both books and how the evangelical movement and the Republican party have been corrupted. They also discuss the role that religion should play in politics, and Alberta's answer might surprise you.

The past few years haven't been easy for election officials and their teams. They had to pivot during the pandemic and face ongoing threats that have resulted in unprecedented staff turnover. This turmoil brings more scrutiny of errors that occur when people make honest mistakes. Despite these challenges, Tammy Patrick, CEO for programs at the National Association of Election Officials, is confident that the tens of thousands of people charged with election administrators across the country this year will deliver free, fair, and secure  elections. She's also optimistic about their ability to rise above threats and uphold their commitment to democracy.Patrick has been working in the election administration space since 2003, most recently as the Senior Advisor to the Elections Program at Democracy Fund. Focusing on modern elections, she works to foster a voter-centric elections system and support election officials across the country.In this conversation, we dive deeper into what's in store for election workers this year and how Patrick and her team are helping them prepare to stand up against everything from misinformation campaigns to threats of physical violence.

Happy New Year! We're starting off 2024 with a conversation about finding hope in politics. We often hear from listeners that our show brings feelings of hope, and this episode is no exception.Rep. Derek Kilmer of Washington state joins us for a discussion on the Building Civic Bridges Act, a bipartisan bill that would provide funding for service projects aimed at bridging divides and reducing political polarization. We also discuss his work on the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which invited experts like Danielle Allen and Lee Drutman to discuss reforms including multi-member districts and increasing the size of the House of Representatives.It's hard to listen to Kilmer without feeling at least a little hopeful about where politics might go in the coming year. We hope this episode will help you start 2024 on a good note.

For our final episode of 2023, we revisit some of our episodes from throughout the year and reflect on what's in store for democracy in 2024. We talk about:Mental health and media consumptionBureaucracy and the prospect of Project 2025The Republican party and threats to democracyPlus, we share some recommendations of the books and TV shows we loved in 2023. Recommendations include:TV: For All Mankind, Fargo, The Gilded Age, and Slow HorsesBooks: The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet; Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody, Why We Did It by Tim MillerThank you to all of our listeners for another great year. We'll see you in 2024!

This week, we're bringing you an episode from Making Peace Visible, a podcast that helps us understand the human side of conflicts and peace efforts around the world.The episode explores the how democracy is faring in India after years of democratic erosion by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP.  We've covered democracy in India several times on the show, but it's been while and thought this episode was well-timed for a check in.Guest  Suchitra Vijayan questioned whether India can still be called a democracy in a recent Time Magazine article.  She talks with Making Peace Visible  host Jamil Simon about how journalists who have criticized the government have been harassed, detained, imprisoned, and even murdered. As you’ll hear in this episode, today’s Indian government uses complicit media outlets as a weapon against non-violent dissent. 

Two of our Penn State colleagues join us this week to discuss their recent findings on the connection between state-mandated civics tests and voter turnout. Jilli Jung, a doctoral student in education policy and Maithreyi Gopalan, assistant professor of education and public policy, recently published the paper "The Stubborn Unresponsiveness of Youth Voter Turnout to Civic Education: Quasi-Experimental Evidence From State-Mandated Civics Tests" in the journal Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis. In the paper, Jung and Gopalan study the Civic Education Initiative, a framework adopted by 18 states since 2015 that requires high school students to take a test very similar to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Civics test. They found that voter turnout among 18-24 year olds largely did not increase in states that adopted the Civic Education Initiative compared to states that did adopt it. The reason for this, they argue, is that the knowledge of civic facts alone is not enough to motivate someone to vote for the first time. In this episode, we discuss how to structure civic education that could increase voter turnout and lead to more engaged democratic citizens. For more information on this work, check out the CivXNow coalition, which is made up of hundreds of organizations across the country that are working to strengthen civic education. Jung and Gopalan also recommend the following books and papers to anyone who wants to take a deeper dive into the role of civic education in a democracy:Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic ActionRefocusing Civic Education: Developing the Skills Young People Need to Engage in DemocracyI  Will Register and Vote if you Teach Me How: A Field Experiment Testing Voter Registration in College ClassroomsThe Impact of Democracy Prep Public Schools on Civic Participation 

Democracy is sometimes described as "a system where political parties lose elections." That's true but doesn't capture the deeper feelings of grief and grievance associated with political loss. We dive into those emotions this week with Juliet Hooker, the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in Political Science at Brown University and author of Black Grief, White Grievance: The Politics of Loss.Hooker argues that whites as a group are accustomed to winning and feel a sense of grievance when they need to give up political power. Conversely, Black people are expected to be political heroes in the face of grief that comes from setbacks on the road to racial justice.  These two forces, black grief and white grievance, have been at the heart of American politics for centuries and remain so today.Black grief, Hooker says, is exemplified by current protests against police violence—the latest in a tradition of violent death and subsequent public mourning spurring Black political mobilization. The potent politics of white grievance, meanwhile, which is also not new, imagines the United States as a white country under siege.This is a very thought-provoking book and conversation about some of the most important issues in American democracy. Black Grief, White Grievance: The Politics of Loss

Cas Mudde, one of the world's leading experts in the study of populism and far-right politics, joins us this week to discuss the tensions between populism and democracy, and why populism has increased around world in recent years.Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia and a Professor II in the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo. His research agenda aims to address the question: how can liberal democracies defend themselves against political challenges without undermining their core values?  Mudde visited Penn State in October 2023 to give the keynote lecture at the Populism, Piety, and Patriotism conference organized by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy.

In the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace. Unions were embedded in tight-knit communities, touching nearly every aspect of the lives of members—mostly men—and their families and neighbors. They conveyed fundamental worldviews, making blue-collar unionists into loyal Democrats who saw the party as on the side of the working man. Today, unions play a much less significant role in American life. In industrial and formerly industrial Rust Belt towns, Republican-leaning groups and outlooks have burgeoned among the kinds of voters who once would have been part of union communities. This episode explores why that's happened and whether new unions coming online at places like Starbucks may change the picture moving forward.Our guest is Lainey Newman,  a J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School and co-author with Theda Skocpol of Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working Class Voters are Turning Away from the Democratic Party. Newman is a graduate of Harvard College and a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Why do we disagree about the causes of and solutions to social inequality? What explains our different viewpoints on Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, income inequality, and immigration? Penn State professors John Iceland and Eric Silver join us this week to discuss how the discrepancy between social order and social justice impedes political compromise and progress.Iceland and Silver, along with Ilana Redstone of the University of Illinois, are the authors of Why We Disagree about Inequality: Social Justice vs. Social Order. In the book, they show how these competing worldviews are preventing Americans from solving their most pressing social problems. Iceland is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Demography; Silver is Professor Sociology and Criminology and recently won the Open Inquiry Award for Teaching from Heterodox Academy.In the interview, we discuss how the conflict between social order and social justice played out at different points in history going back to the French Revolutions. Iceland and Silver also offer suggestions for how to move beyond these divisions to find consensus and common ground. After the interview, Chris Beem and Candis Watts Smith discuss whether social order and social justice should have equal footing and how looking to history might not be the best approach for how to break out of these silos. Why We Disagree about Inequality: Social Justice vs. Social Order

This week, we're handing the microphone to Penn State student Joey Picarillo for an interview about the rise and fall of early democracies and what lessons we can learn from them today. Joey is a studying political science at Penn State World Campus and has already read many of the most influential books on democracy by Robert Dahl and others. He brought this book to our attention and did a wonderful job with the interview. Historical accounts of democracy’s rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy by David Stasavage draws from global evidence to show that the story is much richer—democratic practices were present in many places, at many other times, from the Americas before European conquest, to ancient Mesopotamia, to precolonial Africa. Stasavage makes the case that understanding how and where these democracies flourished—and when and why they declined—can provide crucial information not just about the history of governance, but also about the ways modern democracies work and where they could manifest in the future. Stasavage is the Dean for the Social Sciences and the Julius Silver Professor in NYU’s Department of Politics and an Affiliated Professor in NYU’s School of Law. The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

Before we get to the show notes, we invite you to take our listener survey for a chance to win a Democracy Works coffee mug!COVID-19 brought the problems with government technology into sharp focus. The systems responsible for delivering unemployment benefits and healthcare were not prepared to mange the influx of requests they received, and the government employees who run those systems were often hobbled by a culture that focuses on regulation and oversight, not innovation and acting quickly.Beyond the day-to-day impacts of these systems not working, the long-term consequences include the erosion of trust in the institutions that comprise our democracy. So, what can we do? Jennifer Pahlka has a few ideas and she joins us this week to talk about them.Pahlka is the author of Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better. She is the former deputy chief technology officer of the United States and the founder of Code for America, a nonprofit that believes government can work for people in the digital age.Recoding America websiteMore information on Schedule F/Project 2025

Before we get to the show notes, we invite you to take our listener survey for a chance to win a Democracy Works coffee mug!Chris Beem talks with former Republican political operative Tim Miller about the party's loyalty to Donald Trump and where it might go in 2024 and beyond. Miller is a writer-at-large for The Bulwark and the author of the best-selling book Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell. He was previously political director for Republican Voters Against Trump and communications director for Jeb Bush 2016. He also appears on MSNBC and The Circus on Showtime.Miller's book is a reflection on both his own past work for the Republican Party and the contortions of his former peers in the GOP establishment. He draws a straight line between the actions of the 2000s GOP to the Republican political class's Trumpian takeover, including the horrors of January 6th. In this conversation, Miller and Beem also discuss alarming trends among young conservatives and how they may continue, or even exacerbate, some of what Miller observed after the 2016 election. 

Before we get to the show notes, we invite you to take our listener survey for a chance to win a Democracy Works coffee mug!We're back from summer break and diving into the 2024 election season, Donald Trump's indictments, the spread of election deniers, and more. We also welcome Michael Berkman back from sabbatical and discuss the significance of "Democracy '24" as the backdrop for the first Republican presidential debate on August 23.For our listeners who teach American politics, we've put together a list of episodes designed to be a companion to your courses. Check it out at democracyworkspodcast.com/syllabus.Referenced in this episode: Votebeat piece by Jessica Huseman on Trump indictments