Tag democracy

Whistleblowers

Allison Stanger— Whistleblowing has been present since the United States’ founding, but the concept means different things to different people. To have a meaningful national conversation on whistleblowing, we have to start with a common definition, stripped of partisan leanings. That is the only way to see what has changed

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The Year of Peril

Tracy Campbell— As 1943 dawned, the relentless fear that had gripped the nation since Pearl Harbor had somewhat lessened, and although most understood that the most difficult days of the war still lay ahead, many worst-case scenarios had been avoided. There were no additional Pearl Harbors, economic chaos was averted,

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Why the Past Four Years Might End Up Doing Us More Good than We Think

Zizi Papacharissi— The list is staggering: a president who tweeted incessantly and in polarizing ways; a pandemic the might of which we had not seen for 100 years; civil rights violations unacceptable in a country purporting to be a global democratic leader exposed from a veneer of political correctness by

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Is Equality Self-Evident?

Robert A. Dahl— In words that were to become famous throughout the world, in 1776 the authors of the American Declaration of Independence an­nounced: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among

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The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Internationalism

G. John Ikenberry— Liberal internationalism was born in the nineteenth century, and by the century’s end it had begun to crystallize into a recognizable school of thought—a distinctive cluster of ideas and agendas for organizing international relations. The intellectual roots of this tradition trace back to the Enlightenment and the

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Standing for Reason at the Universities

John Sexton— Over twenty-five years ago, in a speech at Saint Louis University, I focused on a too-little-noticed day in 1957, a turning point in American history: October 8, 1957. The day’s edition of New York’s major tabloid the Daily News bore two screaming headlines. The first announced the demise of

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The Paradox of Democratic Reforms

Frances McCall Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro— Since the 1960s, powerful movements across the democratic world have pursued reforms meant to bring politics closer to the people. Many political parties have adopted primaries, local caucuses, and other decentralized ways of choosing candidates. Districts have been redrawn to ensure selection of racial

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The New Populism

William A. Galston— Because populism embraces the republican principle of popular sovereignty, it faces the question inherent in this principle: Who are the people? Historically, right-leaning populists have emphasized shared ethnicity and common descent, while left-leaning populists have often defined the people in class terms, excluding those with wealth and

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The State of Democracy

Thomas N. Mitchell— Democracy is at a particularly critical and fascinating point in its history. The collapse of communism in 1989 brought a wave of euphoria among proponents of democracy, and extravagant references to the end of history and of mankind’s journey towards a universally acceptable political order. To many,

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Is Congress Broken?

Benjamin Ginsberg and Kathryn Wagner Hill— America’s congress is often castigated for being slow and unproductive, a victim of cumbersome procedures and partisan intransigence. One frequently cited book called Congress the “broken branch” of government. Another well-known volume, sharply critical of the Congress, called for “a new political order in

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