Rebuilding democracy, one step at a time

Brandeis Stories

Rebuilding democracy, one step at a time

By David Levin
October 11, 2024

On Tuesday, the renowned political scholar, columnist, and public policy leader Danielle Allen addressed a packed crowd in the Rapaporte Treasure Hall on the major challenges and solutions facing American democracy.

The occasion was her acceptance of the 2024 Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize, which recognizes lasting scholarly contributions to racial, ethnic and/or religious relations.

Allen has studied ways to solve enormous social and political problems, ranging from public-health policy to violent protests incited by social media; civic education to political dysfunction. She writes a column on constitutional democracy for The Washington Post, and runs the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, which seeks to identify threats to American and global democracies and develop solutions with research and field-building. She has even stepped into politics herself, running unsuccessfully for governor of Massachusetts in 2022.

In a rousing lecture, Allen told the audience a healthy democracy rests on three main pillars: the right to vote, the right to run for elected office, and the right to see and shape one's community. These pillars are joined by a deep culture of commitment to constitutional democracy and nonviolence, which, Allen noted, is steadily eroding.

In a survey of Americans' views toward the government, for example, more than 70% of people born before World War II considered it "essential" to live in a democracy. For millennials, however, the number dropped to less than 30%, she said.

"That registers a failure to achieve generational succession of understanding, of commitment to [or] ability to use the institutions of democracy to do the important work of building healthy communities together," she said.

Although the data seem dire, they reveal an important detail that can help focus any efforts to revive democratic sentiment.

"In addition to the decline [of trust in democratic systems], it also shows us the high watermark," she noted, explaining that not all people must believe democracy is essential - a 70% supermajority is enough.

"The job is not to achieve a sort of 100% unanimous 'kumbaya' experience," she said. "The job is rather to achieve a supermajority, 70% who are committed to the basic project of healthy democracy."

But achieving a supermajority may involve making major changes in the way our elections work. Our "winner takes all" system leads to officials being elected with an exceedingly small percentage of votes in primaries, especially if the field is crowded, she said. To illustrate this point, Allen cited the elections of two well-known representatives: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the outspoken Democratic congresswoman from New York, and the far-right firebrand Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia. Each representative won their respective primary with votes from less than 8% of their total constituents.

Governmental reform and voter activism can help to reverse that lopsided trend, Allen said. Eradicating systems like gerrymandering - which lets political parties redraw districts in a way that favors their own voters - can aid in fairer elections, and help to rebuild public trust in elections themselves. Likewise, she noted, switching to a ranked-choice voting system for primaries would ensure that candidates represent the will of the entire electorate, rather than a narrow slice of outliers.

"This can sound radical when people first hear it, but in truth, there are four states that have already gotten rid of party primaries: Louisiana, California, Washington, and Alaska. And this change is actually on the ballot in eight more states this November," she explained. These sorts of redesigns, she added, "give us a responsive system where our participation matters and is meaningful."

The essential goal of this democratic "renovation" work, she said, is to shift control away from minority actors and empower civic engagement in a broad and diverse electorate.

"We don't have to just dwell with the institutions that we have. We can continue to adjust them to deliver healthy democracy."

The Gittler prize consists of a $25,000 award and a medal.