Begun to shift momentum towards proportional multi-member districts through original research, organizing hundreds of top political scientists to publicly speak out, and generating new media coverage.
Shaping the Democracy of Tomorrow
Our Work
Sustainable democracy requires governing institutions that are representative of and responsive to the needs of all — not just the few or the loudest.
Today, the authoritarian threat doesn’t just come from specific politicians or political factions. Authoritarian-enabling features of our system — such as the non-representative composition of Congress or the inability of political parties to preserve democratic norms — are feeding cycles of polarization and rewarding authoritarian politics.
Stopping this threat requires bold and ambitious long-term strategies to ensure that the Democracy of Tomorrow better reflects the will of all Americans and is oriented towards collaboratively addressing our country’s most pressing challenges.
- Make our political parties more responsible promoters of democracy.
- Replace winner-take-all elections with more proportional systems of representation.
- Legalize fusion voting to help break the two-party doom loop.
Several provisions of the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a package of democratic guardrails reforms we helped Congressional leaders assemble, were signed into law by President Biden.
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Political Violence & US Democracy Political Violence & US Democracy
Proportional representation, explained
Proportional representation is an electoral system that elects multiple representatives in each district in proportion to the number of people who vote for them.
September 12, 2023
Lessons for Practitioners: From Understanding to Action
The goal of this afterword is to draw out the essential lessons for those pursuing solutions to American political parties’ current challenges.
October 17, 2023
More Than Red and Blue: Conclusion
This report exists because political scientists are alarmed by the real possibility of serious democratic backsliding in the United States.
October 17, 2023
Sources of Change: Prioritizing Parties
We outline two seemingly contradictory observations about political parties in the United States: Parties are essential to democracy, but U.S. institutions are often hostile to them.
October 17, 2023
Sources of Change: Toward a Different Kind of Party Government — Proportional Representation for Federal Elections
In this chapter, we give some ‘pros and cons’ of three PR forms: mixed-member proportional, single transferable vote, and open-list proportional.
October 16, 2023
Sources of Change: Encouraging Cooperation and Responsibility
The American party system has developed in a context which traditionally includes partisan primaries, categorical ballots and plurality winners chosen in single-round elections.
October 16, 2023
Sources of Change: Factions, Moderation, and Democratic Responsibility
In addressing how factions and organizational issues within and across the parties influence whether parties and leaders behave responsibly, this chapter assesses party and actor incentives.
October 15, 2023
Sources of Change: Social Movements and U.S. Political Parties — Evolutionary and Revolutionary Change
Change is less about new ideas and more about new considerations of communities with longstanding investments in the work of liberation.
October 13, 2023
Sources of Change: Mass Political Behavior and Party Incentives
This chapter lays out a description of the current political motivations driving voters, the biases they bring with them, and how the two parties are playing to different audiences.
October 13, 2023
How Did We Get Here: Protecting Democracy from State Level Threats in the Age of National Parties
The collision of nationalized parties and state governance calls for new national policy to protect and expand democratic institutions across all states.
October 13, 2023
How Did We Get Here: Primaries, Polarization, and Party Control
We examine the existing evidence on party primaries and political polarization and find that primary elections are not strongly related to polarization.
October 12, 2023
