Democracy Works

Michael, Jenna, and Chris in the studio in summer 2019. Before we take a short summer break, Michael and Chris answer your questions about democracy in our current moment. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions; they were excellent! Some of the things we talk about in this episode include: The difference between federalism and the federal government The definition of an institution How media coverage of the 2020 election will compare to 2016 What mask wearing says about the health of American democracy What the U.S. can learn from other democracies Why the “hard work of democracy” is that way For the next few weeks, we’ll be revisiting some of the episodes in our back catalog (with a twist) and bringing you episodes from other podcasts that we think you’ll enjoy. We’ll be back with new episodes before the end of August. If you have suggestions for episodes topics or guests for us to tackle in the fall, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We would love to hear from you. Contact us Related Episodes Last summer’s listener mailbag A democracy summer reading list Federalism in uncertain times Free and fair elections during a pandemic Episode Credits This episode was recorded on June 18, 2020. It was engineered by Jenna Spinelle, edited by Jen Bortz, and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As we bring this season of Democracy Works to a close, we’re going to end in a place similar to where we began — discussing the role of political parties in American democracy. We started the season discussing the Tea Party and the Resistance with Theda Skocpol and Dana Fisher, then discussed presidential primaries with David Karol and the role of parties in Congress with Frances Lee. All of those episodes looked at the party system as it currently stands. This week’s conversation invites all of us to imagine how we can break out of the status quo and create something very different. Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America. He is the author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America and The Business of America is Lobbying, and winner of the 2016 American Political Science Association’s Robert A. Dahl Award, given for “scholarship of the highest quality on the subject of democracy.” He has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. Drutman is also the co-host of the podcast Politics in Question, and writes for the New York Times, Vox, and FiveThirtyEight, among other outlets. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California. We have one more new episode next week before we take a summer break. We’ll close the season with the second annual Democracy Works listener mailbag. Additional Information Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop audiobook Politics in Question podcast Political Reform at New America Uniting for Action America – registration deadline July 31 Related Episodes Does Congress promote partisan gridlock? Primaries, parties and the public How the Tea Party and the Resistance are upending politics Your guide to ranked-choice voting Congressional oversight and making America pragmatic again Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This week, we are bringing you another interview that we hope will give some context to the discussions about racism and inequality that are happening in the U.S. right now.We’re joined by Tehama Lopez Bunyasi, assistant professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University and Candis Watts Smith, associate professor African American Studies and political science at Penn State. She was recently named the Brown-McCourtney Early Career Professor in the McCourtney Institute for Democracy.Bunyasi and Smith are coauthors of a book called Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making all Black Lives Matter, which looks at the history of structural racism in the U.S. and gives people information and tools to become antiracists.We talk about the clumsiness associated with changing patterns of thinking and behavior and how that’s playing out across our online and offline lives and among both individuals and companies. We also discuss the inherent messiness of the Black Lives Matter movement and why that’s not necessarily a bad thing.Additional InformationStay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making all Black Lives MatterThree Myths about Racism – Candis’s TEDxPSU talk from February 202024 podcasts that confront racism in America – list from the Bello CollectiveRelated EpisodesBreaking down black politicsCivil rights, civil unrestA roadmap to a more equitable democracyThe ongoing struggle for civil rightsEpisode CreditsThis episode was recorded on June 9, 2020. It was engineered by Jenna Spinelle, edited by Jen Bortz, and reviewed by WPSU News Director Emily Reddy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As protests continue throughout the U.S. in the wake of George Floyd’s death, we’ve been thinking a lot about comparisons to the Civil Rights era and whether the models for demonstrations created during that era are still relevant today. As we’ve discussed on the show before, public memory is a fuzzy thing and we’re seeing that play out here amid discussions of how peaceful protests should be. Our guest this week is uniquely suited to speak to questions of civil rights and civil unrest. Clarence Lang is the Susan Welch Dean of Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts and professor of African American Studies. He is a scholar in African American urban history and social movements in the Midwest and Border South. He is the author of Grassroots at the Gateway: Class Politics and Black Freedom Struggle in St. Louis, 1936-75, and Black America in the Shadow of the Sixties: Notes on the Civil Rights Movement, Neoliberalism, and Politics. In addition to his scholarly work, Lang also has a personal connection to what’s happening right now. He grew up on Chicago’s South Side and a family member who was a police officer. He’s a humanist at heart who believes that our country can pull together and overcome these trying times. Additional Information Lang’s website Grassroots at the Gateway Black America in the Shadow of the Sixties Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates A list of podcasts about racism and inequality from the Bello Collective Uniting for Action: America Related Episodes The ongoing struggle for Civil Rights School segregation then and now What neoliberalism left behind Episode Credits This episode was recorded on June 2, 2020. It was engineered by Jenna Spinelle, edited by Jen Bortz, and reviewed by WPSU News Director Emily Reddy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We are working on an episode about the social and democratic context for the protests taking place around the U.S. after George Floyd’s death; we’ll have it for you on Monday. In the meantime, we are going to share a few episodes from our archives that we hope can provide context for our current moment. One voice we want to lift up during this time is Aaron Maybin, a former Penn State and NFL football player who is now an artist, educator, activist, and organizer in Baltimore, which is where we interviewed him in August 2019. Maybin has been a tireless advocate for Baltimore’s black community long before protests over the death of George Floyd hit the city. His work will continue long after the protests end — whenever that might be. He believes that the hard work of democracy happens when the cameras and outsiders go away and community members can be empowered to fight for the change they want to see. He also seeks to move people through his art and his work as an art teacher in some of the city’s most underfunded schools. His perspective is worth listening to, or perhaps even revisiting if you’ve already heard it, as we all make sense of what’s going on and how we can do our part to confront structural inequalities and racism in the U.S Learn more about Aaron’s work on his website or by following him on social media: Twitter Instagram Facebook Finally, our colleagues at the Bello Collective also put together a list of 20 podcasts that confront racism in America. You can find it here. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is another episode that we recorded in our final days together in the office before COVID-19. However, the topic is just as relevant — if not more so — in our new reality.The topic is free speech and our guest is Stephen D. Solomon, Marjorie Deane Professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University and founding editor of First Amendment Watch. He is the author of Revolutionary Dissent: How the Founding Generation Created the Freedom of Speech.Stephen lays out how the Founding Fathers, particularly James Madison, thought about free speech, free press, and the freedom to assemble. The ways we communicate have changed drastically in the past 250 years, but the concerns about protecting the free expression of ideas remains the same.We also discuss free speech on college campuses and how social norms around speech can be just as powerful as laws in place to protect it. It’s too soon to tell how the virtual environment will impact this dynamic, but it will be interesting to watch as colleges prepare for whatever the coming academic year has in store.Additional InformationStephen’s websiteRevolutionary DissentUniting for Action: AmericaRelated EpisodesDefending the First Amendment and the Fourth EstateFacebook is not a democracyJonathan Haidt on the psychology of democracy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today we’re bringing you a special episode produced by Nicole Gresen, our intern on Democracy Works during the spring 2020 semester. Nicole spoke with Bob Buckhorn, who was mayor of Tampa, Florida from 2011-2019, about the role that mayors have played during COVID-19 and how they have to put partisans allegiances aside during times of crisis. As Bob says, people look to mayors for empathy and solidarity in the face of uncertainty — whether it’s a natural disaster or a pandemic. Bob also talks about his history in politics, which began not long after he graduated from Penn State. Under his leadership, Tampa became known as a city on the rise for startups and economic development. Though he’s no longer mayor, he continues an active role in the city’s government. Nicole graduated from Penn State in May and is currently pursuing career opportunities in digital media. We really appreciate all of her help behind the scenes on the show over the past few months and wish her success in her career. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

These days, it can feel like some politicians are working against experts in public health and other fields when it comes to actions surrounding COVID-19. There’s always been a tension between populism and expertise, but our media landscape and strong partisan polarization are pushing that tension to its breaking point — or so it seems, anyway. As with many issues we’ve covered on this show, there’s more to it than meets the eye, and we are digging into the relationship between expertise and democracy this week in a collaborative episode with our colleagues at Penn State’s Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. The Huck Institutes produce The Symbiotic Podcast, a show that explores how scientists are collaborating in new ways to solve complex global problems. In this episode, you’ll hear Symbiotic Podcast host Cole Hons and Democracy Works host Jenna Spinelle in conversation with Taylor Scott, associate director of the Research-to-Policy Collaboration, and Democracy Works host Michael Berkman. We discuss how organizations like the Research-to-Policy Collaboration seek to promote engagement between researchers and legislators and what both groups can do to make the relationship stronger. We also talk about why expertise is important in a democracy and what happens when it is undermined. Don’t forget, we are still taking questions for the second annual Democracy Works listener mailbag episode. We’ll read your questions on the show and choose three submissions to win Democracy Works mugs. Submit your question here. Additional Information The Symbiotic Podcast Research-to-Policy Collaboration Listener mailbag questions Related Episodes Does Congress promote partisan gridlock? How conspiracies are damaging democracy Michael Mann’s journey through the climate wars Episode Credits This episode was recorded on May 6, 2020. Thank you to Cole Hons of The Symbiotic Podcast for engineering the recording session. The episode was edited by WPSU’s Mark Stitzer and reviewed by WPSU News Director Emily Reddy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As if the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t enough to deal with, the World Health Organization says we’re now in an infodemic alongside it. We’ve seen this play out as misinformation and conspiracy theories move from digital to mainstream media and cast a shadow of doubt about information coming from the government and public health experts. Our guests this week have been tracking China’s role in this infodemic and argue that Beijing is taking a few pages out of Russia’s playbook for interfering in the 2016 U.S. election and its broader efforts to undermine democracy around the world. Jessica Brandt and Bret Schafer are part of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which tracks online information manipulation through its Hamilton 2.0 dashboard. Early on in the pandemic, they saw an uptick in tweets from Chinese diplomats and embassies that were amplifying conspiracy theories about the virus’s origin and casting doubt on information from the World Health Organization and other official sources. The goal is not necessarily to have people believe these claims, but to stir up enough doubt to discredit democratic norms and institutions. If you enjoy this episode, we recommend checking out the Out of Order podcast, produced by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and part of The Democracy Group podcast network. Finally, it’s time for the second annual Democracy Works listener mailbag episode! In a few weeks, we will record an episode answering your questions before we take a summer break. Send us your question about democracy and we’ll answer it on the show, plus you’ll have the chance to win a Democracy Works mug. Additional Information Jessica and Bret’s article on China’s COVID-19 disinformation efforts Hamilton 2.0 Out of Order podcast The Democracy Group podcast network Listener mailbag question submission Related Episodes Protecting democracy from foreign interference How conspiracies are damaging democracy Episode Credits This episode was recorded on April 28, 2020. It was engineered by Jenna Spinelle, edited by Jen Bortz, and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

COVID-19 has exposed longstanding racial and economic inequalities in American life, which is evident in the fact that communities of color are being hit the hardest by both the medical and the economic impacts of the virus. Our guest this week argues that now is the time to empower those communities to have a stake in building a better future for themselves and making our democracy stronger in the process. Our guest this week is K. Sabeel Rahman, president of Demos and co-author of the new book Civic Power: Rebuilding American Democracy in an Era of Crisis. He is also an associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, where he teaches constitutional law, administrative law, and courses on law and inequality. His last book, Democracy Against Domination, won the Dahl Prize for scholarship on the subject of democracy. Rahman argues that the old ways of thinking about and participating aren’t working for under-represented groups. His book lays out a framework for how to make democracy reform more inclusive and how to balance liberalism and democracy by making institutions more representative of the communities they serve. The book was written before the pandemic hit, but feels even more relevant today. After the interview, you’ll hear an ad for Future Hindsight, one of our fellow podcasts in The Democracy Group podcast network. The show’s new season on misinformation and democracy launches Friday, May 15. Additional Information Civic Power: Rebuilding American Democracy in an Era of Crisis Demos Future Hindsight The Democracy Group It’s time for the second annual Democracy Works listener mailbag episode! Send us your question about democracy and we’ll answer it on the show. Related Episodes Civic engagement, social distancing, and democracy reform Doing the hard work of democracy in Baltimore The ongoing struggle for civil rights Episode Credits This episode was recorded on April 16 and May 5, 2020. It was engineered by Jenna Spinelle, edited by Jen Bortz, and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode was recorded before COVID-19 changed everything, but many of the themes we discuss about public opinion polling and the importance of trust and facts to a democracy are perhaps more relevant now than ever before. We talked with Michael Dimock, president of the Pew Research Center, about how the organization approaches polling in a world that increasingly presents competing partisan visions of reality. Trust in the media and government has been declining for years, if not longer, and may be exacerbated by COVID-19. What’s more concerning for democracy, Pew’s Trust Facts, and Democracy project found, is that our trust in each other is also declining. People don’t trust their peers to use good judgement when comes to evaluating information or making political decisions — especially when it comes to people from the opposing political party. Polling done as part of Trust, Facts, and Democracy found that about 60% of adults said they have little or no confidence in the wisdom of the American people when it comes to making political decisions. What does that mean for democracy? Dimock doesn’t shy away from talking about the grim realities of our current political climate, but does offer a few glimmers of hope from the Trust, Facts, and Democracy work. Additional Information Pew’s Trust Facts and Democracy project Pew polling on COVID-19 After the Fact podcast from the Pew Charitable Trusts The McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s Mood of the Nation Poll The McCourtney Institute for Democracy is starting a virtual book club! Our first selection will be How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Join us for online meetings May 20 and 21. Visit democracy.psu.edu/book to learn more and RSVP. Episode Credits This episode was recorded on March 10, 2020. It was engineered by Jenna Spinelle, edited by Jen Bortz, and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Democracy is very much a group activity. Inside, we come together to debate, discuss, do the work of government, and make laws. Outside, we protest and hold rallies. But much of this is not possible. Social distancing presents a tremendous challenge. In this episode from The Democracy Group podcast network, we look at the barriers and the opportunities as we all deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. “COVID, the pandemic … has really brought to bear not just the inequities and the inequalities, but also the necessity to have a much more active sense of democracy as a verb — democracy as an action that we can all be part of.” -Juleyka Lantigua-Williams, 70 Million Host Richard Davies Co-host, How Do We Fix It? @DaviesNow Guests Mila Atmos Host, Future Hindsight @milaatmos Juleyka Lantigua-Williams, Founder and CEO of Lantigua-Williams and Co. Creator and Executive Producer, 70 Million @JuleykaLantigua Carah Ong-Whaley, Associate Director at James Madison Center for Civic Engagement at James Madison University Co-host, Democracy Matters @CarahOng Lee Drutman, Senior Fellow at New America Co-host, Politics in Question @leedrutman Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From Maine to California, people across the country have gathered at their state capitols over the past few weeks to protest stay at home orders issued by their governors in response to COVID-19. Protest is a hallmark of any democracy, but what happens when doing so comes with health risks? What is motivating people to take to the streets? How should media organizations cover the protests, and how do the people protesting feel about the media? Joining us this week to explore some of those questions is Chris Fitzsimon, director and publisher of States Newsroom, a collective of nonprofit news sites that cover state politics in many of the places where the “reopen” protests have occurred. Fitzsimon talks about what his organization’s reporters have observed on the ground and the challenges that states face in deciding when to lift stay at home orders and restart economic activity. We also discuss how this movement came together and whether it might have staying power beyond the immediate concerns related to COVID-19. Additional Information States Newsroom Visit ratethispodcast.com/democracy to leave a rating or review for Democracy Works. The McCourtney Institute for Democracy is starting a virtual book club! Our first selection will be How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Join us for online meetings May 20 and 21. Visit democracy.psu.edu/book to learn more and RSVP. Related Episodes Federalism in uncertain times COVID-19 exposes democracy’s tensions Tracing the past, present, and future of protests How the Tea Party and the Resistance are upending American politics Episode Credits This episode was recorded on April 22, 2020. It was engineered by Jenna Spinelle, edited by Chris Kugler, and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We are excited to collaborate with our partners in The Democracy Group podcast network to bring you a bonus episode on how COVID-19 is impacting democracy in the United States and around the world. COVID-19 brings together several issues that have long been talked about separately — political polarization, misinformation, international cooperation, democratic norms and institutions, and many others. We dive into some of those issues in this episode and discuss how we can all work together to protect, and even strengthen, democracy as we emerge from the first wave of the pandemic. For more information about The Democracy Group podcast network, visit democracygroup.org. Thank you to Democracy Group Network Manager Katie DeFiore for producing this episode! Host: Jenna Spinelle, Communications Specialist at the McCourtney Institute for Democracy Host, Democracy Works @JennaSpinelle Guests: Luke Knittig, Senior Director of Communications at the McCain Institute Host, In The Arena @LukeKnittig Jeremi Suri, Mack Brown Distinguished Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas Austin Host, This is Democracy @JeremiSuri Rachel Tausenfreund, Editorial Director at the German Marshall Fund of the United States Host, Out of Order @thousandfriend Weston Wamp, Senior Political Strategist and Consultant at Issue One Host, Swamp Stories @westonwamp Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

With each passing day, the relationship between states and the federal government seems to grow more complicated. States are forming coalitions and working together to chart a path out of COVID-19, while sometimes competing with one another for resources. A lack of clear guidance from the federal government will likely lead to a fragmented return to business and social life state by state in the coming weeks and months. This situation is unique in many ways, but brings to light the complexities of American federalism — our topic of discussion this week. Charles Barrilleaux, Leroy Collins Professor and Political Science Department Chair at Florida State University, is an expert on American federalism and joins us to discuss the relationship between states and the federal government, and how that manifests itself during the response to COVID-19. The episode begins with Michael and Chris explaining the history of federalism and what powers the Constitution gives states and the federal government. Related Episodes COVID-19 exposes democracy’s tensions When states sue the federal government Episode Credits This episode was recorded on April 13, 2020. It was engineered by Jenna Spinelle, edited by Chris Kugler, and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The general election is going to happen in November, and candidates still need to figure out ways to get their messages out to voters. COVID-19 has changed everything about the way candidates communicate with potential voters and how they position themselves in relationship to the virus. This episode addresses the nuts and bolts of campaigning during a pandemic, but we also discuss a broader question — should we even be talking about politics at a time like this? Our guest this week makes an interesting case about why the answer is always “yes.” John Sides is a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and publisher of the Monkey Cage, a political science blog published by the Washington Post. Sides talks about the novel coronavirus has impacted campaigns up and down the ballot, and why it’s valuable to consider it as a political problem apart from a public health issue. Note: You’ll hear a reference to Bernie Sanders during the interview. We recorded on April 6, before Sanders announced he was dropping out of the race. Additional Information John’s website The Monkey Cage A look at ethics of campaigning during COVID-19 Related Episodes Free and fair elections during a pandemic COVID-19 exposes democracy’s tensions Primaries, parties, and the public Episode Credits This episode was recorded on April 6 and 7, 2020. It was engineered by Jenna Spinelle, edited by Mark Stitzer, and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. intensified just as the 2020 Census was getting underway in earnest. As Americans fill their days with news about the new coronavirus, the Census Bureau is doing everything it can to spread the word about completing the Census online while grappling with how to do critical in-person follow up during a time of social distancing. As our guest this week explains, the consequences of an undercount directly impact public health in significant ways.Jenny Van Hook is the Roy C. Buck Professor of Sociology and Demography at Penn State and a former member of the Census Advisory Board. She was an expert witness in the legal fight over the efforts to add a citizenship question to this year’s Census and has written about the Census in The Conversation and other outlets.Census Day was April 1, but there’s still time to complete your Census online at 2020census.gov.This episode begins with an ad for Lyceum, a new app that’s specifically for educational podcasts. Learn more and join the conversation with other listeners at lyceum.fm.Related EpisodesIt’s good to be counted – our interview with Jenny from May 2018Episode CreditsThis episode was recorded on March 31, 2020. It was engineered by Jenna Spinelle, edited by Chris Kugler, and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As COVID-19 intensifies throughout the U.S., questions about the future of the remaining primary elections and the general election in November are beginning to surface. The last thing you want are large groups of people standing in line near each other for long periods of time. At a time when seemingly everything in life has gone remote, states are starting to think about what a remote election would look like, too.Our guest this week is one of the people helping them figure it all out. Charles Stewart III, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at MIT and a contributor to the Election Updates blog, a partnership between MIT and the California University of Technology. He’s spoken with election officials across the country and about how to implement voting by mail and change processes to make in-person voting safe. Voting by mail does not come without its problems in terms of election security and electoral integrity. We explore those with Charles and discuss how planning now can help mitigate those risks in the fall. Democracy Works is proud to be part of Lyceum, a new platform dedicated to educational audio. The app includes curated lists of shows around topics like climate change, linguistics, and ancient history, as well as opportunities for listeners to connect with podcast creators and with each other. Visit lyceum.fm to learn more. Additional Information Election Updates blog Ted Recommendations to Ensure a Healthy and Trustworthy 2020 Election – a piece Charles c0-wrote for Lawfare Related Episodes The promise and peril of early voting How states are working to keep you vote safe Episode Credits This episode was recorded on Wednesday, March 25, 2020. It was engineered by Jenna Spinelle and edited by WPSU’s Chris Kugler, and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As we’ve seen over the past weeks and months, democracies and authoritarian countries respond to pandemics very differently. There are balances to be struck — liberty and community, human rights and disease mitigation — that every country’s government and culture handle a little differently. We dive into that this week with our first ever all-remote episode as we adjust to the new normal of life during COVID-19. Our guest is Nita Bharti, assistant professor of biology at Penn State and faculty member in the university’s Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics. Nita’s research focuses on the interactions between social and biological processes as underlying determinants of human health — making her the perfect person for us to talk to about the response to COVID-19. There are no silver bullets when it comes to outbreak mitigation, but there are lessons we can take from other outbreaks about how information affects behavior and how the government can help or hinder that process. As Nita says, we’re likely only beginning to see what the new normal looks like in the U.S. Additional Information Nita’s article on COVID-19 in The Conversation The Bharti Lab of Human Infectious Diseases The Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State is taking questions about the Coronavirus pandemic at [email protected]. Each week, experts will answer your most commonly asked questions, anonymously. They will attempt to provide the most current accurate information, informed by scientific evidence. Episode Credits This episode was recorded on Thursday, March 19, 2020. It was engineered by Jenna Spinelle and edited by WPSU’s Jen Bortz, and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We know that there are a lot of episodes about COVID-19 out there right now. We’re working on one of our own that we hope to bring to you soon, but in the meantime, consider something different to focus on while you practice social distancing this week. We’ve talked a lot on this show about the rise of authoritarian leaders around the world — from Viktor Orban in Hungary to Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. We sometimes tend to paint these countries with same brush, often referring to the book How Democracies Die. While the book remains of our favorites, this week’s episode is a reminder that populism does not look the same everywhere. We welcome back Penn State’s Vineeta Yadav to look at some of the forces that are pushing back against populism around the world, and how those efforts look different in each place. She joined us last fall to discuss the rise of Narendra Modi in India. We reusume that conversation in this episode, but also touch on what’s happening in Turkey and Brazil. Michael and Chris also give an important overview of the difference between liberalism and democracy — and how the two work together to form the system of government practiced in many countries around the world today. Stay tuned to the end of the episode for more information about Ways&Means, a podcast produced by the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke. The show’s current season is taking a deep dive into the relationship between politics and policy, covering topics like reparations and the decline of local news. Related Episodes Inside the world’s largest democracy – Vineeta Yadav’s first appearance on Democracy Works Brazil’s tenuous relationship with democracy How Democracies Die author Daniel Ziblatt on the “grinding work” of democracy Episode Credits This episode was recorded at WPSU’s studios and engineered by Cole Cullen. It was edited by Chris Kubler and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Additional support from Democracy Works interns Nicole Gresen and Stephanie Krane. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s spring break at Penn State this week and we’re going to take a brief hiatus to bring you an episode from a new podcast that’s part of The Democracy Group, our new podcast network. Swamp Stories is produced by Issue One, a group that takes a cross partisan approach to democracy reform. The podcast follows the host — millennial Republican and former candidate for office, Weston Wamp — as he shines a light on the swampiest practices in Washington that repulse Republicans and Democrats alike: Slush funds in Congress, dark money in elections, gerrymandered districts, foreign interference in our elections, dialing for dollars on Capitol Hill, and more. The show debuted at the end of January and we are sharing its first episode with you. There are five others available if you want to binge them while we’re away. We’ll be back with a new episode of Democracy Works next week. Additional Information Swamp Stories website You can find Swamp Stories and all of our other network shows at democracygroup.org Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Super Tuesday is this week, but voters in many states have already cast their ballots for races happening this week and throughout the rest of the primary season. From Florida to Pennsylvania, states are expanding access to early and absentee voting to give people more options to make their voices heard in our democracy.Sounds great, right? However, early voting is not without its problems for candidates, election officials, and even voters. Daniel Smith, one of the country’s leading elections experts, joins us this week for a look at the pros and cons of early voting, and how it might improve voter turnout among young people specifically.Smith is Professor and Chair of Political Science at the University of Florida and President of ElectionSmith, Inc. He is a nationally-recognized expert on direct democracy, campaign finance, and voting rights in the American states. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and his B.A. in History from Penn State.Stay tuned to the end of the episode for more information about another great higher ed podcast, Ways & Means from the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. The show’s fifth season launched Feb. 19 and covers issues in politics and policy ahead of the 2020 election.Additional InformationDan’s website: ElectionSmithWays & Means podcastRelated EpisodesWhat should voting look like in the 21st century?Primaries, parties, and the publicEpisode CreditsThis episode was recorded at WPSU’s studios and engineered by Andy Grant. It was edited by Mark Stitzer and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Additional support from Democracy Works interns Nicole Gresen and Stephanie Krane.Interview Highlights[5:40] What is early voting?There are a lot of different definitions of early voting. The one that Pennsylvania still does not have, and about a dozen states don’t have any form of this, is allowing voters to come in before election day to some type of polling location. It can be at the county level, multiple locations, it might just be the county seat. It allows you to come in, you don’t have to request an absentee ballot, and you prove your identity one way or the other, and are able to vote a regular ballot. The ballot looks just like a ballot you would do on election day in your own local precinct. Those windows might be as much as a month before Election Day.[7:55] How do states decide to adopt early voting?It could be just the culture that you have the idea that let’s make voting easier, and we’re going to see about making it more convenient for voters so they don’t have to come on that first Tuesday after the first Monday in November and extend the absentee ballot or make it an all-mail ballot election. Others there’s certainly a political game going on, and it’s often on partisan lines, where Democrats generally want to expand the electorate, and make it more easy to vote. One way to do that is to give people more opportunities to turn out to vote, either in person or by getting ’em an absentee ballot and mailing it in.[9:38] What do we know about people who vote early?Early in-person voting is certainly geared to people who can’t necessarily come out to vote easily on a Tuesday. And so what we have seen is a demographic on those early voting days that isn’t necessarily representative of the overall electorate. It happens to be more people of color, more women, younger voters are often using early in-person voting.Early in-person voting is different from absentee voting, which is typically seen most among older people, whiter people, more partisans, people who have already made up their decision on how to vote. They don’t need to wait for an eleventh hour surprise, they’re gonna vote a Republican or Democratic ticket.[18:16] What happened in the early voting program the was piloted at several colleges in Florida?It was fascinating to see the excitement where these students were first kind of curious about the opportunity. And then you started to see the drives of get out the vote efforts by different coalitions. The University of Florida has a lot of Democrats as well as Republicans. And so, it was utilized by both of the political parties at the local level. The students are very energized and organized relative to a lot of other universities so I’m not surprised that we had the high turnout. And I can tell you that if the supervisor of election wanted to eliminate this or the administration wanted to eliminate it, there would be a huge backlash.[19:22] What will voter turnout look like in November’s election?I think it’s really going to hinge a lot on who the Democratic nominee is. The Democrats certainly have the never-Trumpers who are going to vote for a box of rocks over the incumbent. They’re going to come out regardless. But there are a lot of other folks who are not terribly excited about a potential Democratic candidate. And if you don’t have that excitement and that enthusiasm, we know that it is going to play with r

As the South Carolina primary approaches, all eyes are on the African American vote. This week, Michael Berkman is taking over the interviewer’s chair for a roundtable discussion on black politics with Ray Block and Candis Watts Smith, who are associate professors of African American studies and political science at Penn State. Ray is the author of Losing Power: Americans and Racial Polarization in Tennessee Politics. Candis is the author of Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter and Racial Stasis: The Millennial Generation and the Stagnation of Racial Attitudes in American Politics. They discuss the history of black politics and how it’s evolved in the years since the Civil Rights movement, how President Trump and the Democratic presidential candidates are received by African Americans, and how the Civil Rights movement and Black Lives Matter are informed by broader social and generational trends. With so much punditry going on around appealing to black voters, we hope you’ll enjoy the opportunity to take a step back from the punditry and look at the broader issues in black politics and how they relate to things like representation and inequality. Additional Information Ray’s book, Losing Power: Americans and Racial Polarization in Tennessee Politics Candis’s books Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter and Racial Stasis: The Millennial Generation and the Stagnation of Racial Attitudes in American Politics Candis’s website Ray’s website Related Episodes School segregation then and now The ongoing struggle for civil rights Episode Credits This episode was engineered by Craig Johnson at the WPSU studios, edited by Chris Kugler, and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Additional support comes from Democracy Works interns Nicole Gresen and Stephanie Krane. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Some of the most talked-about issues in Congress these days are not about the substance of policies or bills being debated on the floor. Instead, the focus is on the partisan conflict between the parties and the endless debate about whether individual members of Congress will break with party ranks on any particular vote. This behavior allows the parties to emphasize the differences between them, which makes it easier to court donors and hold voter attention. Some amount of competition between the parties is necessary in a healthy democracy, but have things gone too far? Frances E. Lee joins us this week to explain. Lee is jointly appointed in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where she is Professor of Politics and Public Affairs. She is the author of Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign and the forthcoming The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era with James M. Curry. As you’ll hear at the beginning of the episode, we are excited to announce that we are starting a podcast network! We are thrilled to bring together some of our favorite podcasts in democracy, civic engagement, and civil discourse in The Democracy Group. Visit democracygroup.org to learn more about our member shows and sign up for our mailing list to receive updates with new episodes, deep-dive playlists, and more. Additional Information Frances’s book, Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign Her lecture at Penn State on lawmaking in a polarized era Frances’s website Related Episodes Congressional oversight and making America pragmatic again Unpacking political polarization Episode Credits This episode was recorded at WPSU’s studios and engineered by Andy Grant. It was edited by Chris Kugler and reviewed by Emily Reddy. Additional support from Democracy Works interns Nicole Gresen and Stephanie Krane. Interview Highlights [8:28] How did we get to the current situation Congress? So we are in a remarkably competitive period in terms of our two-party politics. Now, we’ve been in this era for a long time so that people have sort of come to take it for granted that this is how Congressional elections work that the majority’s in play every two years in the House, and potentially in the Senate. If you reflect back on congressional history, you’ll see that that this is not normal. The Democrats were the majority party in Congress for roughly 50 years in the 20th century between the Great Depression and 1994 in the House of Representatives and 1980 in the Senate. There was not speculation in the lead up to the 1980 elections that Republicans might take the Senate majority. But when the votes were counted, they did. The same was true in 1994. It was not expected for that Republicans would win in 1994. There was a great deal of complacency about Democrats retaining control, as you might expect considering that it had been more than a generation of the Democrats being in power. [11:30] What roles to the majority and minority parties occupy in Congress? The American system fragments power to such an extent that there is always ambiguity about who really is in power. Having a presidential election occur separately from Congressional elections means that we regularly have an outcome where you have one party in control of the Executive Branch and the other party in control of Congress. A party may not have full control of Congress, they may have a majority in one chamber but not a majority in the other. And then, of course, there’s always the question of the Senate where a simple majority is not enough to govern in the Senate. One might even ask, does any party ever really have control of American government? It’s a fair question and the answer is not very often. [14:13] How do the parties talk about compromise and conflict? Party messaging does go out in public and say, “Look at all these great deals that we’ve cut with the opposing party. That, you know, we sat down and worked out things in a reasonable basis, and here’s what we produced working cooperatively together.” That is not how party messaging plays out. The party not in power wants to say that the party in power is doing a bad job. How can it say that if it’s taking credit for accomplishments that were bipartisan? So, it has to say what the majority wants to do is bad, and their agenda is misguided or wrong. They’re continually criticizing one another and party messaging is disproportionately negative. [20:05] Does the increase in party conflict affect the number of bills Congress passes? The number of bills has come down, so the number of individual laws is less than it was before this highly partisan, closely contested era got underway. But the bills that passed these days are much longer, so they are more omnibus in character so that if we look at the total number of legislative pages enacted in a Congress, it’s not less than it was in the 1980s. So what you tend to see is relat

Elections are the bedrock of any democracy. Without confidence in the process or the results, confidence in democracy itself is vulnerable. With the primary season underway and the general election just a few months away, conversations about election security are starting to enter the public conscience. We saw this firsthand in Iowa last week as conspiracy theories about results hacking swirled despite no evidence of malicious interference in caucus results. Since 2016, states have taken measures to add paper trails, intrusion detection, audit systems, and other measures to safeguard the voting records from voting interference. However, elections are conducted county by county, which means resources are spread thin, and large-scale efforts can be difficult to coordinate. Adding this additional layer of security might also mean longer wait times at the polls on Election Day at a time when turnout is already expected to be high. Our guest this week is Bill Theobald, a senior writer at The Fulcrum, a news site devoted to covering democracy-related issues. He covers election security and frequently talks with both election officials and security experts about how they are working together to safeguard the voting process and ensure a process the public can trust. If you enjoy Democracy Works, please take a minute to visit ratethispodcast.com/democracy and leave us a rating in your podcast app. Additional Information The Fulcrum’s story on election security in swing states Related Episodes Protecting democracy from foreign interferance What should voting look like in the 21st century? Episode Credits This episode was engineered by Democracy Works host Jenna Spinelle, edited by WPSU’s Chris Kugler, and reviewed by WPSU News Director Emily Reddy. Additional support from Democracy Works interns Nicole Gresen and Stephanie Krane. Interview Highlights [8:20] What do we know about the extent of hacking of voting in the 2016 election? I believe the public thinks that a lot more happen than really did happen. I think it was so shocking that somebody tried to do this, that the fact that they were unsuccessful sort of gets lost. There are really only two things that we know about in which they actually broke into some particular system. One is the Illinois voter registration rolls and apparently they downloaded some names of people who are registered to vote. Nothing was changed and also there was some attempts and maybe success to break into some election offices, computers in Florida, but there’s not entirely clear what they actually accomplished. And the bottom line is no votes were changed. No voter names were taken off or added to the voting rolls. Again, I think people were so outraged and concerned about it that they think that things were a lot worse than they were. [10:45] What are states doing to make this year’s elections more secure? They are implementing systems that create a paper record of some sort. When you cast your ballot, you have a piece of paper and they have a piece of paper that shows what you intended to do with your vote. And that way they can check it against what the actual results are and make sure that there wasn’t some problem in the way it was counted. They’re also adding audits, which allows them to go back and actually check the results versus the ballots themselves. [20:44] Are there specific states leading the charge for reform? The one that I hear the most about is Colorado and the reason for that is that they went to paper ballots or a ballot system or voting system that creates a paper record. And they were one of the first to mandate these risk limited audits after every election. And I think that they’re considered to have a pretty well run operation and a uniformity of belief and a bipartisan support for some of these things. I think the places where this happens where it’s going well are where there’s an agreement that no matter what your political outlook is or what candidate you’re going to vote for or who you support, that we have to come together and make sure that these systems are secure. [24:05] Has election security managed to stay above the partisan fray? I guess you could say that there’s probably politics and partisan politics these days in almost anything. But it’s among the least partisan of the issues and if anything it’s because of the great level of concern that’s out there. I think there is certainly different policy positions on how to address it, whether to have a consistent funding mechanism from the federal government or whether that should be something that’s left more to the states and the local governments. So one of the things that Republicans as part of their just general philosophy is that they have a concern about federal control of local elections in that they believe that the decision-making should be left at the local level. [25:55] What changes can voters expect on Election Day? I think one of the things that’s not getting a lot of attention now it’

The 2020 primary season officially begins today with the Iowa caucuses, followed by the New Hampshire primary on February 11 and Nevada and South Carolina later this month. It’s easy to forget that the primaries have not looked like they do now. In fact, it was not until 1968 that things really began to morph into the system of state-by-state contests that we know today. Before that, nominees were largely chosen by party leaders in preverbal smoke-filled back rooms. While the parties once ruled the primary process, they seem to have lost some of that control, particularly in recent years. Donald Trump, a candidate the Republican Party opposed for much of his candidacy, received the nomination in 2016. Bernie Sanders one of the top candidates in this year’s Democratic candidate field, even though he is officially an independent. What does this change mean for democracy? We explore that question this week. David Karol is an associate professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. He is an expert on primaries and the role that the political parties play in them and join us this week to help make sense of how we got here and where things might go moving forward. Additional Information David’s website David’s book, The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform Related Episodes The case for open primaries Your guide to ranked-choice voting How Democracies Die author Daniel Ziblatt on the “grinding work” of democracy Episode Credits This episode was engineered by Democracy Works host Jenna Spinelle, edited by WPSU’s Chris Kugler, and reviewed by WPSU News Director Emily Reddy. Additional support from Democracy Works interns Nicole Gresen and Stephanie Krane. Interview Highlights [7:30] What did the primary process used to look like? The first candidates were chosen by an informal congressional caucus, they had no legal authority, just more like a kind of a parliamentary arrangement. The members of Congress from a party selected the candidate and by the middle of the 19th century that conventions that we know today existed, but the delegates to those conventions were chosen at meetings that were not necessarily so well publicized and the participation while incorporating many more people than the congressional caucus did, it was a relatively small number of people who were involved. It wasn’t very transparent. By the early 20th century in the Progressive Era, primaries were established. Some candidates entered primaries selectively when they need to show strengths. A really strong candidate could hope to be drafted at a convention, which was kind of a fiction because in fact, they were running for the nomination, but the stronger they were the less visible they had to be in their efforts. That system existed more or less until the end of the 1960s. [13:17] What happened in 1968? People had for several years seen primaries as part of the process, if not dominant. But in 1968, what happened is President Johnson was being challenged by Eugene McCarthy, the general candidate. Johnson withdraws and Hubert Humphrey, the Vice President, then enters the race and doesn’t run in any primaries because the filing deadlines have passed. At the Democratic Convention, Humphrey had the majority of the delegates. But there were these anti-Vietnam War protestors who as many people know were violently suppressed by the Chicago police. There were big protests at the convention and it was very messy on live television. And to reunify the party, hopefully, Humphrey agreed to establish a commission that after the election would try to reform the process and make it more open and participatory. [19:05] How did the Republican Party come on board with the changes to the process? There wasn’t a negotiation or a formal agreement at the national level between the parties, but the same trends to decline the favorite sons. The favorite son tradition was already in decline, and that was true in both parties. As I said, Barry Goldwater had run in primaries in ’64, but what happened is, as I said, many states in 1972 and more in 1976 created primaries and that just carried both parties along and it had important implications for the Republicans as well. [24:00] What role do parties play in primaries today? What’s happened is I think, because to a large extent because of the internet and social media, cable news, other changes in media, obscure candidates can become well known more easily than in the past and can raise significant funds from small donors much more easily than in the past. This open process that party elites had seemingly been able to steer somewhat effectively in the ’80s and the ’90s and the early aughts has become messier. Some of the recent nominees have still been of the story that they don’t hide support from traditional party elites. Hillary Clinton, of course, the most prominent example. I’d also say Mitt Romney, in 2012. I would say parties have an important role i

The Women’s March 2020 was held in cities across the country on January 18. What began as a conversation on social media has evolved into a network of groups and organizations that are united in opposition to the Trump administration. From 2017-2019, Dana Fisher and her research team interviewed participants at Washington, D.C. protests, including the Women’s March, March for Our Lives, and the People’s Climate March. They asked protesters about their motivations and how marching in the streets translates into longer-term political action. Fisher argues that the groups in the Resistance are the “connective tissue of democracy,” bringing together people who are working to make their voices heard and advocate for the environment, reproductive rights, and other causes. But will the connective tissue hold through the election in November? What about beyond that? Fisher shares her thoughts based on her research on the Resistance and collective organizing more broadly. Fisher is Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland and author of American Resistance: From the Women’s March to the Blue Wave, which chronicles the birth and growth of the anti-Trump resistance following the 2016 election. This episode is a nice follow up to our conversation with Theda Skocpol last week about how the Tea Party transformed Republican politics. Additional Information Dana’s book, American Resistance: From the Women’s March to the Blue Wave Dana’s website Related Episodes How the Tea Party and the Resistance are upending American politics Grassroots organizing to reboot democracy Tracing the past, present, and future of protests Episode Credits This episode was engineered by Democracy Works host Jenna Spinelle, edited by WPSU’s Chris Kugler, and reviewed by WPSU News Director Emily Reddy. Additional support from Democracy Works interns Nicole Gresen and Stephanie Krane. Thank you to Meredith Howard at Columbia University Press for sending us a copy of American Resistance and helping arrange an interview with Dana. Interview Highlights [8:25] How do you define the Resistance? I think of the resistance as a counter-movement to the Trump regime. So, it involves people working individually and through organizations to challenge the Trump administration and its policies. And because it’s specifically about targeting and the Trump administration and its policies, people in the administration who are writing anonymously in the New York Times or publishing books anonymously calling themselves the resistance don’t fit into my definition of resistance. [10:05] Is there anything that unites the Resistance beyond opposition to the Trump administration? Well, I think that we could say that this movement is unified also in its progressive ideals. One of the things that unifies all the people who participated is their concern about a number of different progressive issues. And depending on the event where I’m collecting data, different issues take precedence. So obviously, women’s rights, reproductive rights are very prominent in the Women’s Marches. But at the People’s Climate March, climate change is obviously a prominent feature. At the March for Racial Justice, racial justice and Black Lives Matter tends to be a prominent issue. [12:50] Does the initial outrage that takes people into the streets translate into long-term political engagement? At the early marches, like the Women’s March 2017, a third of the crowd reported never having participated in a protest before. And in fact, I got lots of people telling me, “I’ve never done this before, but I had to come out after this election.” And what we saw in the crowd was very much this sense of group therapy taking place at these events. Organizations, be they civil society organizations, social movement organizations, whatever you want to call them, these groups are the connective tissue of democracy in a lot of ways in America because they do a lot of the work of coordinating among individuals. And so in a lot of cases, the people who at first just felt like they had to get out in the streets, and in many cases, they weren’t particularly connected to organizations, then channeled their outrage into real activism through organizations, and in many cases, targeting the election, particularly the midterm election in 2018. [16:10] Where does the Democratic Party fit in here? In a lot of ways, the Obama administration, the Obama campaign in 2008, masked over a lot of the problems that we saw with regard to real grassroots infrastructure being built at the local level among the Democratic Party or Democratic Party operatives. And so when we get to 2016, resistance groups in a lot of ways formed to fill the void because there are not a lot of opportunities for local people to get involved in progressive left-leaning activities in their communities. [19:04] What is distributed organizing? Distributed organizing is this new way of coordinating and organizing activism and electoral political act

Since 2008, the Tea Party and the Resistance have caused some major shake-ups for the Republican and Democratic parties. The changes fall outside the scope of traditional party politics, and outside the realm of traditional social science research. To better understand what’s going on Theda Skocpol, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Strategy at Harvard and Director of the Scholars Strategy Network, convened a group of researchers to study the people and organizations and at the heart of these grassroots movements. Skocpol joins us this week to discuss their findings and the new book Upending American Politics: Polarizing Parties, Ideological Elites, and Citizen Activists from the Tea Party to the Anti-Trump Resistance. Her work in particular focuses on the Tea Party and includes interviews with Tea Party members across the country. We also discuss the Resistance and whether these oppositional forces to the party in power are likely to continue after November’s election. Additional Information Upending American Politics from Oxford University Press Skocpol on the Scholars Strategy Network Related Episodes Grassroots organizing to “reboot” democracy Salena Zito’s deep dive into Trump’s America When states sue the federal government The democracy rebellion happening in states across the U.S. Episode Credits This episode was engineered by Democracy Works host Jenna Spinelle, edited by WPSU’s Chris Kugler, and reviewed by WPSU News Director Emily Reddy. A huge thank you to Abby Peck in Theda Skocpol’s office for arranging the interview and providing technical support. Interview Highlights [6:45] How did we arrive at our current moment in American politics? Well, I was surprised in the early Obama presidency by the sudden emergence of the Tea Party and perhaps I wasn’t surprised for exactly the same reason that a lot of other people were. First there were some demonstrations, but then there were hundreds of regularly meeting local groups of tea partiers and that attracted our attention because we realized that since the 1960s a lot of the organizing on the civic side in the United States had taken the form of national advocacy groups and maybe some local things, but usually not very connected into anything national. Then if you fast forward eight to 10 years later, the same thing happened when Trump was elected and in both cases these were presidents that shocked the other side, elected at the same time as Congress was controlled by their own party. And the grassroots resistance emerged even more quickly after the Trump election, which was an even bigger shock to the people on the other side. [10:01] What was it about Barack Obama’s election that changed the paradigm? It’s in Americans’ DNA to organize when something strikes citizens as needing action and both grassroots tea partiers and the grassroots resisters, now they faced a shocking event and that event is probably very important. I think social movement scholars often don’t pay attention to events. But it’s a pretty shocking thing in American democracy when a president who looks like they’re going to carry through radical changes is elected at the same time as a Congress of their own party. And in the case of Barack Obama, of course it was an African American. He looked like he was coming to power at a moment of economic crisis that was going to lead to sweeping changes led by Democrats, and at that moment, a lot of grassroots conservatives just said to themselves, we can’t depend on the Republican Party to do anything. We don’t trust the Republican Party. Who’s going to do it? We’re going to do it. And so they started organizing face to face. [12:15] How does today’s organizing relate to older styles of civic engagement and civil society? In the Tea Party it was more men and women often married couples together, but women were more present than you might think and more present than you would think for conservatives because women tend to do things and these are almost always in both sides people who’ve had experience organizing in their workplaces, their churches, maybe they’ve been part of the local political party or a local civic movement on the left or the right. And so in a way they do remember older fashioned ways of organizing and then they will usually pick up some of the new internet techniques and kind of meld them together with what they know. [16:46] Tell us about the “uneasy marriage” in the Republican party I personally write about the dual roots of Republican party extremism and they really are quite different. I mean the Koch Network and other multimillionaires and billionaires have organized since 2004 really with roots going back even further than that to try to persuade Republican Party politicians in office or running for office that they should ruthlessly pursue more and more tax cuts that benefit the very, very rich, i.e. the people who are doing the organizing and block any kind of environmental or global warming respo

This week, we begin a new year and a new season with a look ahead what 2020 will mean for democracy in the United States and around the world. We know that there will be a Census and an election, but will they be carried out in a democratic way? The escalating conflict with Iran is another unknown, but one that will no doubt have ramifications for democracy in the U.S. and abroad. We also look at how political polarization has changed since 2016 and the implications of that change on just about every aspect of our lives. From impeachment to Iran, we see that Americans are more divided than ever. It’s unclear what that will mean as tensions with Iran escalate. Underlying some of this polarization is our media environment. Little about the way Americans consume news on social platforms has changed since 2016. Disinformation and fake news are already starting to spread in advance of the 2020 election. Note: You’ll hear some discussion in this episode about Facebook and deepfake videos. After we recorded, Facebook announced that it would begin taking steps to remove videos that have been manipulated using artificial intelligence, making exceptions for satire, parody, and videos that have been edited solely to omit or change the order of words. Related Episodes A few of the episodes we reference in this one: Protecing democracy from foreign interference It’s good to be counted Facebook is not a democracy The complicated relationship between campaign finance and democracy Will Millennials disrupt democracy? How conspiracies are damaging democracy Episode Credits This episode was recorded at the WPSU studios and engineered by Craig Johnson. The episode was edited by Mark Stitzer and reviewed by WPSU News Director Emily Reddy. Finally, don’t forget to leave a rating for Democracy Works if you enjoy what you hear on the show. Visit ratethispodcast.com/democracy to give us some stars in your favorite podcast app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Happy New Year! Our winter break continues with a rebroadcast from fall 2018 with Lara Putnam on grassroots organizing in suburban America. This episode was recorded before the 2018 midterms, but many of the trends we discuss bore out in the election. Putnam is a Professor and Chair of the History Department at the University of Pittsburgh and co-author with Theda Skockpol of the article “Middle America Reboots Democracy.” in Democracy, a Journal of Ideas and a new book called Upending American Politics. She argues that grassroots work is happening behind the scenes in “purple” suburbs, areas that are ignored in the red state/blue state and urban/rural media narratives. Grassroots groups like those Putnam observed in western Pennsylvania are mixing traditional organizing tactics with social media to raise awareness and push for change at the local and state levels, far away from the divisions that bog down national politics. To borrow a line from the article, “If your question is how the panorama of political possibility has shifted since November 2016, your story needs to begin here.” Finally, you’ll hear Michael and Chris talk at the end about”giving us some stars.” Over the holidays, we came across a new site that makes giving us a rating very simple. Visit ratethispodcast.com/democracy to get started. Additional Information Middle America Reboots Democracy in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas Upending American Politics – a new book with two chapters by Putnam Related Episodes The “democracy rebellion” happening in states across the U.S. Salena Zito on understanding Trump’s America Interview Highlights [5:28] As a history professor, how did you come to write about a political movement? Lara: After the 2016 election, I looked around at local politics to see where I could make a change. Based on the national political coverage, I expected to see high levels of energy and organization for progressive politics in the city and little in the suburbs. However, what I found was actually that I was missing the real story. What I saw in these smaller towns was people engaging again in the political process through organization. This wasn’t getting covered nationally. This is where I kicked into historical gear. We know that large scale changes nationally have their roots in local developments. Therefore, it leads us to believe that these changes at the local level should be looked at as the possible motivation behind future national changes. So face to face groups which appear insignificant, can actually lead to large political changes. [8:35] What does middle America mean to you after your research? Lara: These movements are being started by women. Particularly, women who had already been involved in the political movement prior to the 2016 election. What we mean by “middle America” here is that these democrat movements are taking place not in the stereotypical coastal democrat strongholds, but rather in small rural towns in the middle of the country. [11:30] Why do you think the national media is missing this trend? Lara: The national media is really obsessed with candidates. While this does impact the spread of movements like the ones we’re seeing, it doesn’t completely stop them. Remember that politics is local. Most political conversations and political knowledge is shared in local conversations such as when people are running errands in town. This is how information is usually shared. The media tends to underreport this type of grass roots kitchen table politics. [13:30] Do these groups still see support from the Democratic Party? Lara: Part of the story here is that the Democratic Party changed. This is why we’re seeing many of these groups being created recently. The party used to be structured in such as way that you could join it and know your fellow democrats. You had a sense that you belonged to an actual place with real people rather than simply an email list. How the party today has embraced these new organizations has varied around the country. In some places, the local party structure has embraced these new groups while in other places you’re seeing more resistance to bringing them into the fold. Whether or not this osmosis process happens depends a lot on the level of maturity of these groups. What I mean by that is how organized and structured they are. When a group is very structured, it tends to more naturally fold into a larger equally as organized group. [19:25] Do you think there is room in these left leaning groups for someone who voted for Trump in 2016 but have since changed their minds? Lara: I think there are many different “middle Americas” out there. People are complicated and terms such as progressive means different things in different places. [23:31] How are these groups communicating and utilizing technology to advance their causes? Lara: Some groups have become hybrids of older and newer models in that they’re utilizing both face to face as well as technological forms of communicatio

While we enjoy a holiday break, we are rebroadcasting an episode with E.J. Dionne that was recorded in March 2019. The McCourtney Institute for Democracy brought Dionne to Penn State for a talk on “protecting free expression and making America empathetic again.” After spending some with him, it’s clear that he walks the walk when it comes to empathy. Dionne has the unique perspective of studying the horse race and the big picture of American politics. He writes a twice-weekly column for the Washington Post and appears regularly on NPR, but he’s also a senior fellow at Brookings and professor in Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown University. We talked with him about the relationship between partisan politics and democracy, the need for empathy across the political spectrum, and a few policy ideas to help make America more democratic. We could have talked all day and hope to return to some of these topics in future episodes. Additional Information Dionne’s Washington Post columns Dionne’s lecture at Penn State Dionne’s paper on universal voting for Brookings Chris Beem’s TED talk on how young people can improve democracy Interview Highlights [3:52] In One Nation After Trump, you wrote that a partisan response was required to protect democratic values. What did you mean by that? Trump had done something to our politics that was very dangerous and needed to be reversed, and given that the Republican Party had chosen almost to a person (with a couple of exceptions in Congress) to support Trump, the only way to hit back, to create any sense of accountability, was to give at least one house of Congress to Democrats. There a lot of people out there who aren’t necessarily partisan Democrats, who aren’t necessarily liberals or lefties, who believe that there are abuses here that need to be checked, and that there is a threat to democracy that needs to be reversed, and that’s exactly what happened after the 2018 midterms. [5:19] Should that approach continue heading into 2020? My view is that the Republican party has moved to a point where it needs a real rebuke in order to look inside itself and analyze where they want to continue to be. [6:54] ]What happens to the people who are conservative but don’t may be aligned with where the Republican party is currently? I think there are still a lot of conservatives who made a deal that they think is still worth making on behalf of low taxes deregulation and Supreme Court appointments. There is a pattern in which some districts that 30 or 40 years ago would happily have sent a moderate Republican to the house are now sending Democrats. [11:00] You’ve also called for making America empathetic again. Have you seen any indication that it’s happening? Yes, I have seen it in the reactions of the people when the Muslin ban. The number of people who rush to the airports over the Muslim ban and people who may not have met a Muslim in their life and said “wait a minute, this isn’t who we are.” There is also the reaction of the people to the kids being taken away from their parents at the border. I think we’ve taken some steps forward, but we still have a lot of work to do. [12:51] What can people do to develop a sense of empathy? Chris Beem gave a TED talk in which he said we need people to do three things. First, people need to tell the truth. Second, they need to engage in democratic humility, and third, people need to join an organization. I think one of the terrible things about the Trump age is that the division is so deep that friends who disagree about politics don’t even talk about politics anymore because they’re afraid of busting the friendship, and that’s a problem. [14:54] Why do you think it’s so hard for people to have constructive arguments? I think some of it is that our allegiances are all aligned together in a package. So people’s political commitment and people’s party commitments are aligned with their ideological commitments or often aligned with their religious commitments that includes people who are religious or secular combined with where they live. The “big sort” argument and many things combined in one party has come to stand for it. [16:00] How we can make civil society work given the world we live in today? I think we people need ways in which they can get together face-to-face and do things together. Sports teams are part of that, by the way. There is enormous life in civil society when where kids sports are concerned about it. What I want to tell to my conservative friends is: I’m with you, I want a stronger cvil society, but you have to acknowledge the cost of inequality and the cost of economic collapse. [19:08] Can you give us an overview of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact? We have a problem in our country that’s going to keep growing with the Electoral College. Since 2000, we’ve had just two elections where the Electoral College went against the popular vote. The way in which population is getting concentrated in big sta

As we enter the holiday season, 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 social spaces, and the phenomenon of political polarization. In the middle of an impeachment inquiry and with a presidential election looming on the horizon, this might seem like precisely the wrong time to try to balance your political engagement with other things. But Talisse argues developing that sense of “civic friendship” through a sports league, book club, cooking class, or just about any other type of activity that’s not political, can help you see past the partisan identity that’s so prevalent these days. If you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution, this episode might be a good place to start. We also discuss deliberative democracy and efforts to bring people from across the political spectrum together to find that sense of common ground. This is our last new episode for 2019. We are going to do a few weeks of rebroadcasts and return in mid-January with a look ahead at what 2020 will have in store for democracy — we have a feeling there will be no shortage of things to discuss. Listener Survey As we head toward the end of the year, we are conducting a listener survey to find out how we can make the show even better in 2020. Complete the survey for a chance to win a Democracy Works mug. We’ve already sent one batch of mugs to our listeners around the country and will do another one after the holidays. Additional Information Overdoing Democracy: Why We Must Put Politics in Its Place Talisse’s TED talk on putting politics in its place Talisse’s website Related Episodes Unpacking political polarization The closing gap between business and politics Is it time to revive civility? Interview Highlights [7:17] In the book, you seem to use politics and democracy interchangeably. How do you define each term? I think of democracy as a series of institutional, procedural, constitutional norms that are all underwritten by a more fundamental moral principal. That is, I think that democracy is, at its core, the moral proposition that a relatively stable and relatively just social order is possible in the absence of rulers, and bosses, and kings, and the like. Democracy is also a broader social ideal. It’s the ideal of living together as equals in a political and social context, and what I think that means is that democracy is a moral solution, or proposes a moral solution, to a problem. The problem that democracy proposes a solution to is the problem of severe, sometimes heated, disagreement about politics. [9:55] How did you arrive at the notion of “overdoing” democracy? I think democracy is a capital social good. However and because it’s a capital social good, we in our roles as democratic citizens have to do some hard work. Democracy requires a lot of us. It’s a demanding social ideal. Don’t want to deny any of that. What I want to push back on the idea that the best strategy that we have for pursuing those lofty social ideals by means of democracy is to perpetually be enacting democracy, perpetually be acting in the role of democratic citizen. I think that if we want to perform well as democratic citizens, and do well by or do right by our goals, our moral goals for a better society, we have to find or as the case may be try to construct venues where we can interact with one another in contexts where our politics is simply beside the point. [17:46 ] How has politics become a bigger part of our identities? As the country at the macro level has become more diverse, the local spaces we inhabit in our walkabout daily activities have become increasingly homogenous, so in the aggregate it’s a more diverse country, but in our day to day social environment, the atmosphere within which casual, non-planned social interactions occur, this has all become increasingly homogenous and politically homogenous, such that the person sitting next to you on the bus, the person standing behind you on line in the grocery store or in the coffee shop, is increasingly likely to have a political profile that’s just like your own. 25 years ago, workplaces, schools, local parks, beaches, these sort of public venues, these places where people would get together were far more politically heterogeneous than they are today. [25:49 ] What do you make of efforts to bring people from opposing political perspectives together for dialogue and deliberation? I count myself as a democratic theorist, as a deliberate democrat, so I’m on board with deliberative democracy as a theoretical approach to thinking about democratic legitimacy and political authority, and also to thinking about good democra

Earlier this fall, our own Chris Beem traveled to Notre Dame to appear on With a Side of Knowledge, a podcast produced by the university’s Office of the Provost. The show is recorded over brunch, and this happened to the last meal served at campus institution Sorin’s. Bacon and eggs aside, Chris talks with host Ted Fox about his most recent book, Democratic Humility: Reinhold Niebuhr, Neuroscience, and America’s Political Crisis, and his current work on democratic virtues. They discuss why democracy runs counter to the way we’re wired, and why it’s so difficult to sustain. This episode is a cool collaboration for a few reasons: Chris is a Notre Dame alumnus — we won’t tell you what year he graduated Ted Fox, the host of With a Side of Knowledge, and our own Jenna Spinelle have become podcast kindred spirits since they met earlier this year. Tracy and Ted McCourtney are generous supporters of both Penn State and Notre Dame. In many ways, this collaboration would not have been possible without them. We’ll return to our normal format next week for one final episode in 2019 before taking a holiday break. Listener Survey We we head toward the end of the year, we are conducting a listener survey to find out how we can make the show even better in 2020. Complete the survey for a chance to win a Democracy Works mug — the perfect holiday gift for the democracy enthusiast in your life. Additional Information With a Side of Knowledge Democratic Humility: Reinhold Niebuhr, Neuroscience, and America’s Political Crisis Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Credit: Rachel Franklin Photography/Draw the Lines PA One of the things we heard in our listener survey (which there’s still time to take, by the way) is that we should have more young people on the show as guests. It was a great suggestion and, after having this conversation, we’re so glad to have received it. Joining us this week is Kyle Hynes, a junior at State College Area High School and a true advocate for democracy. He is the statewide champion in the youth division of the Draw the Lines PA mapping competition and winner of the Future Leader in Social Studies from the Pennsylvania Council for the Social Studies. Kyle is an expert on the ins and outs of gerrymandering, but he also has interesting perspectives impeachment, political engagement among his peers, and the generational divide in American politics. We’ve had a lot of guests tell us that they put hope in Generation Z to solve some of the challenges we face. If Kyle is any indication, that hope is in the right place. Listener Survey We we head toward the end of the year, we are conducting a listener survey to find out how we can make the show even better in 2020. Complete the survey for a chance to win a Democracy Works mug — the perfect holiday gift for the democracy enthusiast in your life. Additional Information Draw the Lines PA Pennsylvania Council for the Social Studies Related Episodes One state’s fight for fair maps What can Pennsylvania voters do about gerrymandering? Generation Z and the future of democracy Citizenship, patriotism, and democracy in the classroom Interview Highlights [3:05] How did you become interested in redistricting? I’ve always been really interested in math. I’ve also been interested in politics for quite a while, and so I’m really interested in the areas where they intersect, where math and politics come together. I feel like gerrymandering is one of those places. Redistricting is a logistical puzzle and you try to put it together. So I’ve always thought this is really interesting, and then when I saw that there was a competition, you can draw your own map, see if you can do it better. I was like, “I want to try that.” [3:40] Where does your interest in politics come from? Our family’s really politically engaged, and my political interest kind of sparked during the 2016 primaries, where it seemed almost, especially on the Republican side, just because there were more candidates, it seemed almost like a giant game. It’s like the Hunger Games, who can get to the cornucopia first? And it was like, “Is this really how we choose our politicians? Really?” And so that kind of sparked an interest for me, and then it’s kind of carried through ever since. [6:00] What do your friends think about your involvement in politics? Some of my friends are interested in politics, all have a lower tolerance for politics than I do. But yeah, so sometimes there’s the reaction of, “Oh Kyle, just shut up about the damn politics.” But often sometimes they are interested in politics and stuff like that. On the one hand, there’s some ambivalence. People think Republicans and Democrats are the same and everyone is corrupt and in it for their own ends. But there’s also a bunch of people, I would say a majority even, among kids my own age who actually do care, and who are actually interested in finding solutions to problems. And I feel like to a certain extent it’s less tribal, especially among high schoolers and young adults. The tribal mentality really isn’t there. [8:36] What’s been your experience with civics education? I took a civics class in eighth grade, which was pretty good. And then the only thing after that is the AP government class in 12th grade, so both those classes have certainly played a role. I feel like another big contributor to my civics education, my parents are both really politically minded, civically minded, and they both raised me from an early age to care about this stuff. [10:42] What was your process for creating the district map for Draw the Lines PA? I had certainly seen a lot of alternate Pennsylvania congressional maps that people had drawn saying, “Hey, I can do this better than the politicians in Harrisburg.” And so I feel like I drew some from a lot of those different maps, and different attitudes towards districting. And I feel like I also kind of pulled on my math background, because I wanted to create as many districts that were competitive, for both sides, as possible, and I feel like at some point that was just a pure puzzle. It was just, how do I cobble the precincts together in such a way that you get as many 50/50 districts as you can? I wanted to use competitive districts, because in my perfect world, if we had an electoral system of my choice, it would be a proportional representation system, so that everyone could actually have a say in choosing the government. But obviously this competition didn’t allow for that, you drew the districts. And so I felt like I wanted to draw a map that gave every

Hedrick Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of bestselling books The Russians, Who Stole the American Dream? and many others. Over the course of his nearly 60 years in journalism, he’s interviewed some of the biggest politicians and power brokers on the national and international stage. Now, his reporter’s curiosity has led him to places like Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Hartford, Connecticut to report on efforts to end gerrymandering, remove money from politics, and fight corruption through grassroots organizing. Smith joins us this week to talk about what he learned from these organizers while filming his latest project, a documentary called The Democracy Rebellion: A Reporter’s Notebook with Hedrick Smith that will air on PBS this January. He says that the grassroots are not nearly as polarized as politicians and political insiders, as evidenced by the fact that many of these pro-democracy ballot initiatives passed with large bipartisan majorities. Smith also reflects on the state of the media today and why grassroots movements can’t seem to capture the attention that horse race politics do. It’s part of the reason why he’s still out there pounding the pavement as a reporter and getting out of his home in Washington, D.C. to meet people doing the hard work of democracy every day. Listener Survey We we head toward the end of the year, we are conducting a listener survey to find out how we can make the show even better in 2020. Complete the survey for a chance to win a Democracy Works mug — the perfect holiday gift for the democracy enthusiast in your life. Additional Information Hedrick’s website, Reclaim the American Dream Related Episodes One state’s fight for fair maps Winning the “democracy lottery” The complicated relationship between campaign finance and democracy Interview Highlights [8:26] How did the story of democracy reform come onto your radar? It’s a great story nobody else is covering and that’s always interesting to me. I wrote a book some years ago called, Who Stole the American Dream? that was really about how we got to the terrible economic inequalities we have today, and to the dysfunctional political system we have today. And as I went around the country giving talks about that, people said, “What are we going to do about that?” or “Do you know about this?”And I began to discover there was a lot more going on around the country, at the grassroots, at the state level, and it was totally being ignored by Washington. [10:20] What motivates the grassroots organizers you met? They’re, they’re angry that democracy doesn’t work right. They don’t feel as though their votes count, they don’t feel as though Washington listens to them. You look at poll after poll and it says lobbyists have too much power, corporations have taken over, Washington, they’ve captured the congress, and our system is broken. [18:14] How should organizations strike a balance between making changes through ballot initiatives and longer-term political reforms? There is a sense that reform as an issue is something people are looking for candidates to advocate is certainly front and center now. It’s coming, though it’s not yet high enough on the priority list for people to really be concerned about. I mean, you still have people worried, understandably, about jobs, about immigration, about climate change and so forth. So it’s among the top tier issues but it’s not at the top. [20:09] Is it possible that there could be too many groups competing for money, attention, and other resources? The answer is yes. I did a documentary for PBS Frontline some years ago called Poisoned Waters, which is an effort to look at what happened to the Clean Water Act 35 years later. And when I went into the field, I was just amazed at how many, environmental groups were competing for time, money, and resources. There’s no question that the political reform movement suffers from the same kind of thing. It is sprawling. [26:11] What happens to the organizers after whatever they’re working toward is successful? Do they move on to other causes or organizations? In a number of states, they fight off the effort of the other side to reverse the reform. So they’re often very engaged in that. Then once they’ve survived that cycle, then they start to look around and see what else they need to do. In Florida, they moved from the gerrymander reform into restoring the, the voting rights of former felons and that kind of stuff. So I think what happens is, not everybody does it, but usually the leaders and some of the people that are important say, “Well this other issue is important to us. Let’s, let’s move ahead on it.” I think there’s a sense that people power can work and does work and we got a victory here and our system is going to be better for it. [30:50] Why don’t these issues receive more media attention? I think there’s a sense that nothing can be done and it’s all a result of hyper-partisanship. That’s the easy story to tell. T

This week’s episode is a conversation between Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, and Michael Baranowski of The Politics Guys, a podcast that looks at political issues in the news through a bipartisan, academic lens. Baranowski is an associate professor of political science at Northern Kentucky University. His focus is American political institutions, public policy, and media — which makes him a great match for our own Michael and Chris. They discuss impeachment from the standpoint of political institutions and the legitimacy of our democracy. Regardless of what happens with the current impeachment inquiry, some of our government’s norms and institutions may be irreversibly damaged, while others may develop in response to the Trump administration. They also touch on the growing epistemic divide we discussed with Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead in our episode on conspiracies. The Politics Guys is a bipartisan show, but Baranowski increasingly feels like he and his colleagues are talking past each other rather than having meaningful discussions. Listener Survey As we head toward the end of the year, we are conducting a listener survey to find out how we can make the show even better in 2020. Complete the survey for a chance to win a Democracy Works mug — the perfect holiday gift for the democracy enthusiast in your life. Additional Information The Politics Guys Related Episodes Understanding impeachment — from the Federalist Papers to the whistleblower Checking the President’s power 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.

Ranked-choice voting has been in the news a lot lately. It was adopted in New York City’s November 2019 election, used for the first time in U.S. Congressional elections last year, and will be the method by which at least a few states choose a Democratic primary candidate in 2020.But, what is it? How does it work? And, is it more democratic than the single-vote method we’re used to? This week’s guest has answers to all of those questions.Burt L. Monroe is Liberal Arts Professor Political Science, Social Data Analytics, and Informatics at Penn State and Director of the university’s Center for Social Data Analytics. He says ranked-choice voting is generally a good thing for democracy, but not entirely without problems of its own. We also talk about bullet voting, donkey voting, and other types of voting that have been tried around the world.As Michael and Chris discuss, ranked-choice voting falls into a category of grassroots organizing around pro-democracy initiatives like gerrymandering and open primaries. These efforts signal a frustration with the status quo and a desire to make the rules of democracy more fair and equitable.If you enjoy our show, please take a minute to leave a rating or review in your podcast app. Thank you!Additional InformationFairvote, an advocacy group for ranked-choice voting and election reformBurt’s Google Scholar listingRelated EpisodesThe case for open primariesOne state’s fight for fair mapsInterview Highlights[6:52] What is ranked-choice voting?Ranked-choice voting is used to describe a lot of different systems, but mostly what people mean is something that’s usually referred to as instant run-off. In a traditional runoff election, you vote as you normally would and if no one gets a majority, everybody but the top two is eliminated and you come back in four weeks or six weeks or eight weeks and vote again and somebody has a majority.Ranked-choice voting does that all at one time. Voters rank the candidates in a pure system from first choice to last choice and the votes are tallied based on the first choices and if no one has a majority, then the last place candidate is eliminated and the voters who had voted for that candidate first, their vote is transferred to their second candidate. And it goes on and on until there’s a majority.[8:33] Does a voter have to rank all candidates on a ballot?The only place I know of that requires you to rank everybody is Australia, which uses it for their national elections. In most places you can rank as few as you want. If you rank only one, that’s called bullet voting. Most of the U.S. variations of this, you can only rank up to a certain number. The New York one that just passed is five, I believe San Francisco’s three. But you can vote for as many as you like, just as long as you don’t vote more than one for first or second and so on.[11:24] Does ranked-choice voting change the way a candidate campaigns?This is one of the key points of contention about how this system works. One of the main arguments for it is that it encourages candidates to try to broaden their appeal so they can get those second choice, third choice, fourth choice. And that seems to be largely what happens. Although, there are examples where it didn’t. Fiji uses ranked-choice voting and had a lot of antagonistic ethnic based voting. In that case, the electorate was so polarized that more extreme candidates were able to get more first choices and more moderate candidates were punished and didn’t get enough first choices to stay in the race.[14:26] How does ranked-choice voting account for third-party candidates?If voters can be more sincere about their true preference for Jill Stein or Ralph Nader or what have you, but those candidates don’t make the cut of on the first choices, their second choices are presumably the one- the more moderate that’s closer to them. It’s very handy for elections that have lots and lots of candidates. For example, New York is anticipating 17 candidates in one of their races coming up for advocate, And so you can imagine if you’re just picking your first choice, with 17 candidates somebody could win with 5% of the vote.[16:18] Does ranked-choice voting give an advantage to low-information voters?Yeah, that’s definitely a thing. Even in our current system, there’s spoiled ballots that people fill out wrong. But there two ways I’m familiar with that this happens. One is bullet voting that I mentioned earlier, which is just voting for one candidate. Those votes are more likely to be, I think the term they use is exhausted. That is, their candidate gets eliminated and they don’t have a second choice for it to pass to so their vote isn’t used in the final tally. The other one I’m familiar with is Australia where everyone has to fill out he full ranking and there you get a phenomenon called donkey voting where people rank rank just in the order they appear on the ballot paper. So if they’re alphabetical, they vote alphabetical.[17:58] Is there an

We’ve talked about immigration several times on this show with good reason. The role that people coming to the United States play in our democracy is an important question and something states, cities, and towns across the country will continue to grapple with as demographics shift. This week’s guest offers a historical perspective that sets the stage for the debate about immigrants we hear so often today. A.K. Sandoval-Strauss is director of the Latina/o Studies program at Penn State and author of the new book Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City. In the book, and in this conversation, he argues that immigrants moved into cities like Dallas and Chicago and revitalized downtowns that were beginning to hollow out because of white flight and discriminatory practices designed to keep African-Americans out. The same thing, he says, is happening again as Latino immigrants move into smaller cities and towns from Hazleton, Pennsylvania to Sioux City, Iowa — bringing economic and cultural vitality to places industry left behind. We also discuss the role that Latinos played in the Civil Rights movement, and how that ties into their complicated identity during the 1950s and 60s, as well as what the future looks like as the Latino population increases while other ethnic groups decrease. Additional Information Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City A.K.’s op-ed in The Washington Post Our sponsor: Penn State World Campus Related Episodes Immigration enforcement at the border Immigration, refugees, and the politics of displacement Interview Highlights [8:12] Latino immigration really started to grow in the 1950s and 60s? How did immigrants at that time view themselves? Did they see themselves as part of the Civil Rights movement? At that point, under American law, they were technically white. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, specified that they were full citizens. However, in actuality they rarely enjoyed full citizenship rights. At the grassroots, there were certainly some sense of commonality in the face of discrimination, but sadly the main Mexican-American civil rights organizations really clung to their status as technically white and often tried to avoid being associated with black people because they felt that that would lead to their being classified as minorities, and discriminated against further. So, there strategy was to really present themselves as like other immigrant stock Americans, and thereby to claim a sort of European ancestry that would entitle them to rights and privileges of whiteness. [12:40] You devote a whole chapter in your book to the year 1965. Why was that such a big year for this population? Most commonly recognized is the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965, which dramatically expanded the range of people who could come to the United States and become citizens, but which also simultaneously in effect, reduced those kinds of opportunities for Hispanics, and people from Latin America. The other reason was that time was the beginning of a series of agricultural crises in Mexico that drove a substantial number of people to migrate to the United States. [14:21] How did white flight impact Latino immigrant into American cities? I think we have to remember that urban America in terms of the total number of people living in cities and the total amount of economic activity happening in cities really peaks in 1950. It begins to decline thereafter, especially because of white flight. Part of that is the story of simple racism of white residents that will not have even one black family as their neighbor. Even if that black family is of a similar economic background just themselves. And the other part of the story is that the United States government subsidizes suburbanization through a number of enactments from highway construction to the mortgage interest deduction. The result of this is that there are overall fewer people living in cities. Remember also, that the African American great migration comes to an end in about the late 1960s. So, literally there is no American born population that is increasing its presence in cities and there are entire neighborhoods with falling populations. As a result, you have falling rents. And that is very attractive to newcomers who are looking for inexpensive places to live. [16:05] Does Latino representation in government follow the rate of immigration? As of the late 1960s, at the time of the establishment of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. There are three members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. If we want to jump ahead very briefly to the present. Now, where you have four U.S. Senators who are Latino and 39 members of the House of Representatives as a much more commensurate representation. Somewhat less than the 10-11% of votes that are cast by Latinos. And certainly much less than the roughly 17-18% of the population, who are of Hispanic origin. [19:41] What accounts for the discrepancy in eligib

More than 600 million people voted in India’s most recent election, but that does not mean all is well with democracy there. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP recently won re-election on a platform based on Hindu nationalism. As we’ve seen with other countries experiencing democratic erosion, the people and parties coming to power do not value the liberalism that’s essential to liberal democracy. But, as our guest this week argues, what’s happening in India is not exactly the same as what we see in places like Hungary and Brazil — or even the United States. Vineeta Yadav is an associate professor of political science and affiliate faculty in the School of International Affairs at Penn State. She studies politics and democracy in India. Vineeta visited India over the summer and talks about what she saw when Modi and the BJP eliminated Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which granted special status to the Muslim-majority state. She also discusses India’s strong civil society and how it’s pushing back against the BJP’s illiberal tendencies. Additional Information Vineeta’s website More on Kashmir and Article 370 Related Episodes Viktor Orban’s “velvet repression” in Hungary Brazil’s tenuous relationship with democracy Yellow Vests and the “grand debate” in France Brexit and the UK’s identity crisis Interview Highlights [6:40] How did India come to be a democracy and how do Indians view democracy? India didn’t really exist as a country before 1947. The British colonized that part of Asia for about 200 years. And when they left that territory was divided up into India and Pakistan. Their leaders gained experience with elections and a Parliamentary system under British colonial rule. And so that was adopted in India in 1950 and India has kept the same constitution and Parliamentary system through its entire post-independence period. One of the unique things about India is that voter turnout is actually higher in rural areas and not just in urban areas. And that tells you something about how deeply democratic values, norms, and practices have really sunk into ordinary citizenry. [8:50] What does India’s commitment to democracy look like today? I think it’s definitely part of this larger global trend where democratically elected regimes are undoing a lot of the liberal protections and liberal rights, and weakening institutions. In the last I would say five or six years, India has become part of that unfortunate trend. If you look back at history, it’s not the first time this has happened in India. We had a period like this in the 1970s, through the early 80s, but it’s definitely, I would say, declining as a democracy right now. [10:22] How does Narendra Modi view democracy? So I would say that Norendra Modi, the BJP, and the organizations and the movements associated with them, have a very different vision of what a democratic society should look like in India. They are committed to the processes and procedures of democracy, but not to the values of liberal democracy. Because they don’t think Indians want liberal democracy. They don’t think liberal democracy is appropriate given India’s values. And again, this is their concept of what Indian values are. The BJP’s envisions Indian society and Indian government as being based on Hindu values. [14:54] What is the BJP’s appeal? What is I think unique about the BJP is they were so effective in projecting this image of competence and being corruption-free and having this coherent agenda. Their support also crossed caste lines. They had people from lower class supporting them and they had people who were highly educated supporting them. They had people from different religious groups supporting them. They had urban and rural groups supporting them. So, they are one of the very few parties in maybe the last three decades, maybe one of two parties, that has been able to develop that kind of coalition that cuts across class and religion and cost in India. [19:02] Is anyone pushing back against the BJP? India has a very vibrant civil society that’s been its saving grace so far. You have groups organizing on every issue under the sun and from very different angles. These civil society groups really have been the key force of opposition. There are also political parties that exist at the regional level that have defeated the BJP. [31:33] Where do things go from here? The floor of my expectations would be that India will continue as an electoral democracy. Elections will be held, they’ll be reasonably fair, and people will continue to participate. But I think, unless there is either a single party or a set of parties that really emerges that has the same organizational capacity as the BJP has to mobilize people, we’ll see the what we will see is the BJP remain power and they’ll continue weakening rights and liberties. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Climate change is perhaps the most pressing issue of our time, but it’s so big that it can be difficult to imagine how you as an individual can make an impact — or even know how to talk about it with other people in a meaningful way. This episode offers a few creative suggestions for addressing both of those things. Our guest is Graham Bullock, associate professor of political science and environmental studies at Davidson College. His work covers everything from public policy to deliberative democracy, and the ways those things interact when it comes to climate and sustainability. He’s used some innovative methods to break out of traditional modes of argument and encourage his students to think differently about climate and citizenship. We hope this episode inspires you to do the same, whether you are a teacher or simply looking to broach difficult topics like climate change with friends, family, or colleagues. We also talk with Graham about what it means to be a responsible climate citizen and how that manifests itself in everything from buying sustainable products to attending climate rallies. Related Episodes Michael Mann on climate activism Peter Buckland on local government and climate change Forrest Briscoe on corporate action and corporate social responsibility Additional Information More on duty-based vs. engaged citizenship Graham’s book- Green Grades: Can Information Save the Earth? The Responsible Consumers Club Penn State’s Mark Kissling, who joined us last year to talk about civics education, has a new article out on how climate and citizenship are taught in K-12 social studies classrooms. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

October 21, 2019 Last week, we heard from Andrew Sullivan about the challenges facing the future of democracy in the United States and around the world. This week’s episode offers a glimpse into what can happen when a country emerges from a political crisis with stronger democratic practices in place. About 10 years ago, Ireland found itself facing an economic recession, distrust in government, and polarization about how to move forward. Our guests this week, David Farrell of University College Dublin and Jane Suiter of Dublin City University, proposed using deliberative democracy to bring citizens and politicians closer together. The approach worked, and it’s garnered attention from other places around the world who want to do the same thing. Farrell and Suiter are the winners of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s 2019 Brown Democracy Medal, which recognizes new and innovative work in democracy. We are now seeking nominations for next year’s medal; please email [email protected] if you know someone who might be a good fit.Thank you to our sponsor, Penn State World Campus. Learn more about their Master of Professional Studies in the Psychology of Leadership at worldcampus.psu.edu/leadership. Additional Information Farrell and Suiter’s project, We the Citizens Democracy R&D – highlighting deliberative democracy efforts around the world Farrell and Suiter’s book, Reimagining Democracy: Lessons in Deliberative Democracy from the Irish Front Line Brown Democracy Medal lecture video Interview Highlights [7:12] What was the political climate like leading up to the Citizens Assembly Project? Farrell: It was bad. It’s hard to imagine almost a decade later just how bad things were, but it was a severe economic crisis. Almost overnight our unemployment doubled, our national debt just went through the roof, our banks, all our banks collapsed, all international banks just left. Buildings were being boarded up, public employees had their pay cut, private employees lost their jobs, emigration went through the roof, and then major protests against governments. Trust in government plummeted. So this was about as existential a crisis as you can get. [9:13] What was the reaction when you introduced the idea of a citizens assembly? Farrell: What we were saying at that time, it sounded quite bizarre. We were saying, “Imagine a scenario where you bring a bunch of regular citizens into a room and you give them a chance to talk about the future of Ireland. Why don’t we give that a go, and other’s have done it, why don’t we try it?” We had senior journalists from all the media organizations and many senior politicians saying, “You’re daft, you know. You academics really don’t have a clue. That’s how how politics is run here. We have a citizens’ assembly, it’s our Parliament. Citizens are not for that role, you know. You can’t trust citizens to take tough decisions, that’s the job of professional politicians, so just forget about it.” Suiter: At the same time, they knew they had to rebuild trust with the citizens It was a real, it was a real moment of crisis, and those crises can go either way. Politicians obviously preferred the shift that could do something positive, that would rebuild relationships, rather than keeping going down the same path increasing distress, marches, and protests. [12:35] What did citizens think about the idea? Farrell: There was a lot of cynicism and uncertainty, you know. Effectively what you are saying is, “You should trust a regular citizen who’s selected randomly, like jury duty.” We’ve all been through the process of jury duty, where you get picked randomly, and that same principle applies here. You’re saying “We’re going to get a hundred regular citizens into the room together, who’ve never met before, and the only reason they’re in the room is because they run the lottery, they got selected.” They’re not there to represent sectors, they’re not there to represent communities, they’re not there because they got a mandate because they ran for office. There are there as individual citizens just to represent themselves about the issues that they’ve been asked to consider. [15:45] How did the citizens assembly change the relationship between politicians and their constituents? Suiter: I think that’s really crucial. A lot of the time, politicians don’t hear from regular people about these kind of issues. Someone will contact a politician about their local school, or traffic with the road, but they don’t contact them about these kind of big issues like abortion or marriage equality. On those issues, they hear from interest groups and lobbyists who are quite polarizing. There would have been a very strong pro-life force that would have been campaigning in Ireland since the early 1980s, and unbalance on the media, it would always be somebody from that group who’d be heard against other people. So this gave the impression, I think, to a lot of politicians, that the country was as divided. [26:20] We

This is one of the most pessimistic episodes we’ve done, but it’s worth hearing. Andrew Sullivan, New York magazine contributing editor, Daily Dish founder, and former editor of The New Republic, is a longtime observer of American politics who does not shy away from controversial opinions. In this episode, we discuss the tension between liberalism and democracy, and how that tension manifests itself around the world. The way Sullivan sees it, the “us vs. them” rhetoric and attitudes in our culture have gone so far that the moderating values and virtues of liberalism will no longer be able to intervene. We also discuss the relationship between dignity and identity politics, and the parallels between the United States and the United Kingdom. Thank you to our sponsor, Penn State World Campus. Learn more about their Master of Professional Studies in the Psychology of Leadership at worldcampus.psu.edu/leadership. If you like what you hear on this show, please take a minute to share it on social media or text it to a friend, family member, or colleague who might enjoy it, too. More from Andrew Sullivan New York magazine column His lecture at Penn State on “American Democracy in the Age of Trump” Interview Highlights [6:18] How do you think about democracy in your work? There are two core types that I think about, liberal democracy and illiberal democracy. Democracy itself I think is a two-edged sword. Pure democracy, Plato would tell you and so would Aristotle, is extremely unstable and the founders certainly believed that as well. They were very cognizant of what happened to the Rome of Republic. Liberal democracy requires certain virtues. It requires the ability to have a deliberative conversation to use reason, as well as emotion, but reason is the core function of it, and openness to other ideas and toleration of radical different world views than you, within the same culture. And that’s hard. It’s really, really hard. It’s harder than we think. [7:56] Of those things, what concerns you most right now? I think that it is human nature in fast changing societies and fast changing economies and the world is changing extremely fast, to seek security. Democracy’s promise is not ultimately security, it’s freedom. And there are moments in history where freedom is more popular than non-freedom. And I think the massive migrations across the world and the globalizing of the economy has created the seeds for the need for not having every view represented and not being tolerant of everything. And actually stopping things that might otherwise be associated with liberal democracy. [10:20] What role does dignity play here? I think one of the eternal human demands is meaning and youthfulness. And I think large numbers of people in the West, especially those who are unskilled. Who’ve earned their livings in the past by rather honest labor, but aren’t educated or intelligent or in the new media. I think they’re confronting the fact, and it’s not that they’re inventing this or imagining this. The fact that they’re not really needed anymore for the economy, for the society. And that’s a terrible thing to feel. I think that simultaneously, we see a decline in religion and that also helps people keep it together. You see across the West, but especially in the U.S., a huge crisis in opioid addiction in these very communities that feel that meaning has disappeared. [13:40] Is democracy equipped to respond to our current political moment? One can certainly hope so. It’s certainly been rather resilient facing other crises, but the last time we had a major, huge global economic crisis, the 30s, it didn’t do too well. And liberal democracy has also been I think held up somewhat by the generations who still remember that and don’t want to return to it. But as generations emerge who don’t remember that at all, liberal democracy will seem like as if, maybe we should do away with this. That’s why I’m concerned that younger generations seem to have much less support for democracy than older generations. I don’t think they see very clearly, what the alternative actually is, and it tends not to good. I mean, democracies are actually better adapting than authoritarian societies to change. But authoritarian societies can arrest change more successfully. They can seal off a country, they can make it so that, they’re more resilient against it and that changes that are happening also don’t happen there. [17:54] Can small-scale efforts to reform democracy add up to a greater change? Yes, they do because liberalism is also about the maintenance of rules and norms and institutions that keep a society free and open. And what you saw for example in the decline of the Roman Republic was small, tiny little breaks in tradition. That suddenly created a new baseline for future actions politically. So the minute a consul, for example, overstays his term limit because of some emergency or some question, suddenly the whole idea of term limits is open and the ne

In about a dozen U.S. states, the only people who can vote in primary elections are those who are registered with a party. Republicans vote in the Republican primary and Democrats vote in the Democratic primary. This leaves out independents, who make up a growing share of the electorate. This week’s guest argues that’s problem for democracy. Jeremy Gruber is the Senior Vice President at Open Primaries. He is a lawyer, writer, and internationally recognized public policy advocate who has helped enact more than 60 state, federal and international laws and regulations. He joins us to make the case for why all primaries should be open, and how our democracy will be stronger because of it. But what happens to the parties in an open primary system? We’ve talked on the show before about the role they play as gatekeepers in our democracy and revisit some of that discussion in this episode. ICYMI, we are holding an event at the National Press Club on October 22. It would be great to meet some of our listeners in the area. More information at democracy.psu.edu/dc. Finally, thank you to our brand new sponsor, Penn State World Campus. Learn more about Penn State’s online The Master of Professional Studies (MPS) in Psychology of Leadership degree at worldcampus.psu.edu/leadership. Additional Information Open Primaries website Interview Highlights [6:10] How do open primaries work? Every state has different election laws, and in most states the primary election, which is the first round of elections that voters have an opportunity to participate in is often times in most cases run by the parties. Even though the tax payers pay for the elections and you, as a voter, experience those elections the same way you do as the general election, the parties are the gate keepers of the primary elections, and they can decide who can and can’t participate. In a closed primary state, only members of the parties may participate in the primary. In an open primary state, Independents, unaffiliated voters, can participate in the primaries. In some states, like California, Washington, Nebraska, they have a nonpartisan primary system where the parties don’t run the primaries. The state runs the primaries the same way it runs the general election. [8:35] How many states have open primaries? 38 states have some form of open primary, and that can vary state by state. Most of those states have a traditional open primary, where you as Independent choose a ballot line. Not every primary election in those states are necessarily open, but at least some of the elections are open to unaffiliated or Independent voters. 12 states have a completely closed primary, where only members of the parties may participate in the primary election. [12:15] How does a state moved from a closed to an open primary? There’s generally three ways that primaries have been opened in various states. The first is through ballot initiative. California, for example, adopted a top two nonpartisan open primary via ballot initiative. Second is is through legislation. Pennsylvania’s legislatures is currently considering an open primary. And finally there’s the parties themselves, because the Supreme Court has ruled in a very important case called that the parties have an absolute right to open their primaries to Independent voters if they choose, without any act of a state legislature or any other body, for that matter. [13:49] How does an open primary impact voter participation? Open primaries are about enfranchising voters. With 43% of the registered voters being independent, simply allowing them to vote is a critical and perhaps and most important outcome of open primaries is letting every voter vote in every election. Studies have looked at traditional open primary states versus traditional closed primary states have certainly seen an increase in voter participation. [17:40] What role should the parties have? Parties are going to, to exist, and they do play a role in helping put out the views of their members, and organizing voters and sharing information. There, there’s all kinds of value that, that parties have and they’re important to a functioning democracy. The question is not whether, should there be parties or not? The question is, what is the role of the parties? When parties play a gatekeeper role, they are changing the relationship between the voters and their democracy. And when parties start to play a gatekeeper role, voters start to lose their power. They start to lose their choice in a democracy, and they start to lose the ability to vote for who they want to in every election. Parties should compete in elections. They should participate in elections, and they should put forth candidates in elections, and all the valuable things that parties do. But parties shouldn’t decide in a functioning democracy, who can and can’t vote. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising

We bring you special episode of Democracy Works this week that’s all about impeachment. Michael Berkman takes the lead on this episode and talks with Michael Nelson, the Jeffrey L. Hyde and Sharon D. Hyde and Political Science Board of Visitors Early Career Professor in Political Science and affiliate faculty at Penn State Law. Michael and Michael discuss the constitutional framework for impeachment and what the Framers had in mind when they set it up. They also discuss how impeachment is a unique cooperation between the three branches of government, where the inquiry launched last week against President Trump is likely to go, and what it all means for our democracy. We recorded this episode on Friday, September 27, 2019. Everything we talk about is accurate as of that recording. Episode Highlights [1:20] Impeachment in the Constitution [2:35] “High crimes and misdemeanors” [6:21] Impeachment in the Federalist Papers [10:30] Impeachment vs. “beyond a reasonable doubt” in criminal law [11:25] The role each branch of government plays in impeachment [12:15] Separation of powers [15:30] The rules of the Senate, and how those rules change [19:03] John Roberts and Supreme Court [21:40] What could an impeachment proceeding look like? [23:30] Political motivations for launching an impeachment inquiry [24:53] Why the Ukraine phone call is important to democracy [28:10] Comparing Trump to Nixon Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Immigration is one of the most complex issues of our time in the United States and around the world. Enforcing immigration law in the U.S. involves a mix of courts and executive agencies with lots of opportunities for confusion, miscommunication, and changes in approach from administration to administration. While these things are nothing new, they take on a new dimension when the lives of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers are at stake. Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar and Founding Director of the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Penn State Law in University Park, is an expert in immigration law and joins us this week to discuss how discretion, checks and balances, and the rule of law figure into immigration enforcement — particularly in the Trump administration. Her new book, Banned: Immigration Enforcement in the Time of Trump, includes interviews with former immigration officials and people impacted by the Trump administration’s immigration policies. This episode is a nice compliment to our conversation earlier this year with Jan Egeland, chair of the Norwegian Refugee Council, about the politics of immigration. Additional Information Shoba’s book Banned: Immigration Enforcement in the Time of Trump Our interview with Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council Interview Highlights [6:15] How does the law define immigrants and asylum seekers? Immigrant refers to someone who is seeking admission to the United States permanently. Non immigrant is a label we use to apply to someone seeking admission to the U.S. temporarily. For somebody who is without an immigration status, that person might be labeled as undocumented. However, the status is constantly changing. It’s possible for someone to have entered the United States without papers or cross the border and too many years later be a U.S. citizen. In terms of where asylum seekers fall into the mix, that’s also a little complicated because you could be in a lawful status and apply for asylum. You could also be undocumented and apply for asylum. [8:50] How much discretion exists in immigration enforcement? There are a lot of different ways that the law can be enforced. It can be enforced to arrest somebody, interrogate, place somebody in detention, or place somebody in removal or deportation proceedings. So that might be how immigration enforcement happens on an individual level. And then there are these macro decisions that can be made about immigration enforcement. For example, if the enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security, one arm is known as Immigration Customs Enforcement, issues a policy that applies to a whole class of people. So one difference that I’ve seen with this administration is that there is expanded enforcement. Not so much in terms of the resources the government has to enforce the law, but in terms of who is being targeted for immigration enforcement, where, how, and why. [13:35] What agencies are responsible for enforcing immigration laws? DHS is a large cabinet level agency. It does not house only immigration, but it does house three main immigration functions. One is called Customs and Border Protection, or CBP. They’ve been in the news a lot this past summer, too. They are responsible for enforcement at the border. They also have responsibility for short-term detention. They are the first people that an asylum seeker might interact with if they arrive at the border and they are expressing a fear. ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is another enforcement arm and it is responsible for investigations, long-term detention of immigrants and families, as well as the actual or physical removal of non-citizens. USCIS, or US Citizenship and Immigration Services, for many years was dubbed as the customer service agency. Until recently, had nation of immigrants in their mission statement. And is responsible for processing applications for asylum, green cards, citizenship. So you can imagine if the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, there’s a lot of room for um, lack of coordination, or discord. [19:00] Where does the rule of law fit in here? Compassion has always been a- a key component in our immigration system, and discretion is very healthy and necessary because of the limited resources that I just described earlier. I think of compassion and discretion together as the rule of law.I think any discretionary choice made at the macro level, by an administration for example, or a federal agency, or at the micro level towards an individual or a family, should favor the non-citizen. Discretion is a powerful sword, and how it’s used really matters. That’s one reason we’ve seen a breakdown in the rule of law. [22:54] What’s the argument for moving immigration enforcement out of the Department of Justice? As it stands, the immigration court system is in the justice department. This is a- a bit unusual if we were to compare it to what we think about courts. In that way, im

Today we’re bringing you a bonus episode from Out of Order, a podcast produced by the German Marshal Fund of the United States. Out of Order is a podcast about how our world was, is, and will be ordered. How do we save democracy, rule of law and global cooperation? Why do some people not want to? Much-maligned experts try to come up with answers here. The Out of Order podcast brings together different international experts from the German Marshall Fund of the United States and beyond to talk about politics, economics, technology and everything else that might help us understand our disordered world. With election season ramping up and political divisions on display, two veterans of U.S. politics — Margaret Carlson, columnist at The Daily Beast, and Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans and founder of E Pluribus Unum — joined Out of Order for an insightful conversation on the state of U.S. political discourse, how society became so fractured and where some solutions might be found. Above all: Is there a way out of this mess? You can find Out of Order at gmfus.org or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Larry Diamond joins us this week to talk about the threat China’s model of authoritarian capitalism poses to liberal democracy in the United States and around the world. Economics drives politics, and it’s easy to admire China’s growth while looking past things like increasing surveillance and lack of respect for norms and the rule of law. We’ve wanted to do an episode on China for a long time, and we are very excited to have Larry Diamond with us to discuss it. China plays an integral role in his new book, Ill Winds and he’s studied the region and its politics for decades. Larry is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. For more than six years, he directed the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford, where he now leads its Program on Arab Reform and Democracy and its Global Digital Policy Incubator. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. Additional Information Larry Diamond’s book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency Interview Highlights [6:15] How does China pose a threat to liberal democracy? China is increasingly trying to become, I think, the dominant power in Asia, the dominant economic, power in the world, the technological leader of the world, and, the geopolitical shaper of the future direction of the world. China is becoming more authoritarian even neo-totalitarian with its social credit system, it’s intense repression of religious and cultural minorities, its tightening repression and concentration of power under Xi Jinping and it’s domineering claims to the South China Sea and other Asian countries buying up ports and, and infrastructure and frankly politicians as well. I think all of these trends have gone from being concerning to being alarming. [11:24] Why might other countries find China’s model appealing? I think what appeals to people around the world, our public opinion data show, is China’s rapid economic growth, not it’s suppression of religious freedom, freedom of expression, the internet and so on. There’s no way you can sell that to ordinary people as an appealing model, that they want to live under themselves. But the allure is that, somehow, if countries can achieve China’s rapid economic growth and if China can downplay, minimize or mask, which it is certainly trying to do, the intensely authoritarian and in the technological elements I’d say, Orwellian aspects of it’s increasingly authoritarian rule, then that model can be appealing to people around the world because people want to get rich fast, like China did. [14:10] How is China trying to control the narrative about how it’s perceived? One of the most alarming elements of China’s rising international profile is its accelerating efforts to project sharp power, not the soft power of open and transparent persuasion to it’s culture and it’s model and it’s institutions, but the sharp power of disinformation, deception, coercion, bribery, and penetration of the political and civil institutions of open societies to try and shape the narrative about China. To censor any mention of the dark side of what it’s doing and where journalists and professors are increasingly under rigid monitoring and ideological control. They don’t want people to know about any of this. [23:12] Are western democracies prepared to deal with these threats from China? I think it’s very hard for Americans to get their arms around this, and there are a lot of people who sincerely have a more benign and sympathetic view of China and think those of us who are ringing these alarm bells now are not new cold warriors. We don’t want a Cold War, we just want a fair, balanced, and transparent set of relations, trade relations, political relations, based some minimal degree of respect for the international rule of law and the human rights and privacy of our own citizens. [26:20] Will the protests in Hong Kong impact how the west perceives China? I think we’re really reaching a crunch point now on Hong Kong, as the world wakes up to the desperation and passion and commitment of the more than two million people in Hong Kong who’ve come out at one time or another to protest for democracy and against Beijing’s encroachments on the civil liberties and rule of law that, um, have made Hong Kong a distinctive part of the Chinese, firmament. I think the world is waking up to how serious the situation is. I think the real question now is to what extent ordinary Americans in a variety of institutions that have never found the need to worry that China might be a threat or that China might be seeking to compromise the integrity of our values and institutions. People in local government, state legislatures, universities, the mass media, think tanks, businesses, whether they are going to come to a su

Pennsylvania is one of several states trying to ensure fair congressional maps are drawn after the 2020 Census. As we say in the episode, redistricting is one of democracy’s thorniest problems. It’s easy to say you want a map that’s fair, but far more difficult to determine what that actually looks like. The Keystone State received a new congressional map in 2018 following a decision from the state Supreme Court. However, that was a temporary fix designed to counter partisan gerrymandering that occurred after the 2010 Census. Since then, several groups have been working to implement a more permanent change for the next map drawing in 2021. One of those groups is a bipartisan Redistricting Reform Commission chartered by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf. Penn State’s Lee Ann Banaszak, a professor of political science, was part of that commission and joins us this week to talk about how they tackled the question of fairness, and what they learned at public hearings throughout the state earlier this year. Following in the footsteps of states like Arizona and California, the commission recommended that Pennsylvania create an independent 11-member citizens’ commission to develop maps that would be submitted to the legislature for approval. The Pennsylvania House State Government Committee will hold a public hearing on the commission’s Sept. 18 at 9 a.m. in the Irvis Office Building in Harrisburg. One more thing: We are hosting an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, October 22 and we would love to meet our listeners in the Washington area! The featured speaker is Penn State’s Abe Khan, the guest on our very first episode. He will be discussing the “Renaissance of the Activist Athlete.” More information and registration at democracy.psu.edu/dc. Additional information Redistricting Reform Commission report Our interview with the Committee of Seventy’s Chris Satullo Draw the Lines PA Fair Districts PA Interview Highlights [7:09] Why is redistricting important to democracy? In our electoral system, we elect people via a process of voters in a district vote for one person in that district. In the course of setting up those districts you determine a lot of how that legislature looks. What you have now in some places are the people who are being elected selecting their voters instead of voters selecting who’s going to represent them. And so the issue is one of representation on the one hand and also of kind of the democratic process of who’s making the decision. [8:20] What are some of the factors that go into drawing a fair map? The one that people think about most often is equal population, which means that each district is approximately equal size based on the most recent Census. Another important measure is compactness, which means you don’t want to draw districts that have unusual boundaries. One of the most famous examples of this is Pennsylvania’s “Goofy kicking Donald Duck” district that existed prior to the state receiving a new map in 2018. The Voting Rights Act provides representation as another important factor to consider, which connects to communities of interest. Communities that share the same interest and they should as much as possible be represented by the same individual. [11:15] How did Pennsylvania’s redistricting commission gather public opinion? There was a website where individuals could both answer questions and provide written statements if they wanted to, upload documents. Wee also ran an online survey that people could provide feedback on. And we also reached, tried to reach out extensively to different populations to make sure that we were really hearing all voices. [12:20] What did you learn from the public hearings? Uniformly, people were concerned about the way the re-districting process affected the way democracy works in Pennsylvania. That is, they were concerned that the current re-districting process created difficulties for voters, created difficulties for candidates and really depressed both turnout but also increased the mistrust of the legislature over the long term. So we heard a lot of those sorts of statements from people who engaged us in the public hearings. There was a sense that incumbents were determining their re-election and that that was not democratic or a word we heard a lot was “fair.” I think all of that kind of led to an increased mistrust or distrust of the process. [18:12] Did you hear any differences in the concerns across partisan lines? There were a few differences but what amazed me was the degree to which there was uniformity. Among the ordinary citizens there was general agreement that the process was problematic although they might see different parts of the process as problematic but that the process currently going on is problematic. And secondly, there was uniform support for the idea of an independent Commission somewhere in that process. There are different parts of the process that people have concerns about so I do think t

Last week, we heard from Aaron Maybin about the ways visual art relates to his conception and practice of democracy. This week, we are going to look at the relationship between art and democracy through the lens of music. Music has always been political, but what that looks like changes based on the culture. Joining us to unpack it is Adam Gustafson, associate teaching professor of music at Penn State Harrisburg. As you’ll hear, Adam is a certified music nerd who thinks deeply about how artists and the music they create influences politics and culture. He’s written about Prince, Ella Fitzgerald, and Aretha Franklin — just to name a few. In this episode, we talk about everything from disco to bluegrass to EDM and how collaborations between artists and fans coming together at concerts counter some of the narratives we hear about polarization in our lives. We also look at how the ways we consume music has changed — or not — the statements that musicians make through their art. Additional Information Adam’s articles in The Conversation Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You might remember Aaron Maybin from his time on the football field at Penn State or in the NFL. These days, he’s doing something much different. He’s an artist, activist, and educator in his hometown of Baltimore and talked with us about the way that those things intersect. Celebrities and philanthropists often want to help places like Baltimore, but do so without understanding the needs of the local community. Aaron is in an interesting position because he can talk the talk and walk the walk. To him, organizing is about much more than weighing in on the latest Twitter outrage or showing up at a protest to take a photo for Instagram. The real work begins once the cameras go off and the attention fades away. Aaron has a really unique— and really inspiring — perspective that might change the way you think about places like Baltimore. A huge thank you to WYPR in Baltimore for letting us use their studio for the interview. Additional Information Aaron’s website Art-Activismbook Interview Highlights [6:25] How did you transition from athlete to activist? From the beginning, my work here in the city of Baltimore wasn’t always a big priority for me. I’m so appreciative of everything that the game has given me in my life, what it’s given my family. But I think that I’m prouder now of the work that I’m doing and the impact that I’m having in people’s lives and on my city in general. I’m proud of then that, that anything that I ever did as an athlete. [8:41] How does teaching fit into your art and activism? I was doing art workshops and programming at schools all across Baltimore starting in 2009. By 2010, 2011, I realized how naive I was as like a 20-year-old coming into the League thinking that like this contract I’ll get will be enough for me to fix all the problems in my city. It sounds crazy to say, but when you’re that young and ambitious you’re really ignorant enough to believe that you’re gonna be able to do that yourself. So I said, “All right, I’ve got to find a school, one school, that I can plant myself in and actually hammer out this curriculum and see over the course of a year, two years, you know, what we can accomplish with the same group of kids over an extended period of time.” [14:45] What’s the difference between organizing on social media and the deeper-level work you try to do? If there’s a topic that’s trending, everybody wants to weigh in on it. But at the end of the day, how much do you really think this tweet is getting you? Not much unless you are actually showing up to meetings and getting boots on the ground and staying informed about what’s going on. [20:33] Do you think that someone needs to be part of a community to affect the greatest change in one? I do think that a person that’s going to create the greatest change is probably going to be a person that comes from there. You know, and that’s not saying that great ideas can’t come from outsiders, bcause sometimes you can get too isolated in your bubble. But I think that too often the people that are in positions to make the decisions that really affect the lives of the people that live in these areas, the constituents that truly need to be represented. [36:40] What does democracy mean to you? To me democracy is a beautiful idea, but it’s an idea, and with any idea you have to work constantly, constantly to manifest it. And even once some of that work is done and you feel like progress has been made, the beauty of democracy is we have to go back and we have to continuously self evaluate and see if we’re on the right side of history. And I think that um the more that we have a true understanding of what democracy is um the better Americans we’ll all be. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.