"What if we had a better way to select presidential nominees, one that didn’t reward appeals to the most ideologically committed voters and donors in each party? What if we weren’t trying to excite the already convinced — to vote, to contribute and to volunteer on campaigns? This pulls each party toward more militant postures and deepens polarization. What if we prized substantive dialogue across the partisan divides over intense mobilization within them? Would it make a difference?" Read HERE to learn more about Larry Diamond's and James Fishkin's experiment within the project "America in One Room".

“What saves citizens from the knock on the door in the dead of night, from the risk of being silenced or removed, is a constitution, a robust body of laws, an independent judiciary to enforce them, and a culture that insists on free elections, human rights, and human dignity,” says Larry Diamond for Stanford Magazine. Read here.

"There’s a better way for the American people to grapple in depth with the issues we face at the start of the primary season. Furthermore, we think that, despite their sharp differences of party and ideology, Americans can have serious and respectful conversations across our deep divides. A surprisingly simple innovation can help cut through the poisonous fog of our political polarization. It is an experiment in democracy to show what the whole electorate would think, if it could be similarly engaged," write Larry Diamond, FSI (CDDRL) and Hoover Senior Fellow and James Fishkin, Director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University. Read here.

"Responsible Parties convincingly shows that across many countries narrow interests can subvert or coopt the policy-making process. This perversion of majoritarianism is epitomized by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, whose creation and implementation were heavily influenced by the insurance lobby, the pharmaceutical lobby, and the states. Rosenbluth and Shapiro try to argue that the polarized politics and rigid parties of today’s United States are not characteristic of Westminster parties, but rather a “chimera”; they decry weak congressional leadership, the risk of partisan outflanking through primaries, and the complex presidential-primary process," writes Didi Kuo in her review of the "Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy from Itself " by Frances McCall Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro in the Journal of Democracy. Read here.

"If one foreign power continues to shred, on an ever-more daring basis, the integrity and inviolability of our electoral process, other foreign powers will draw lessons and follow. And they won’t all be pitching in on the Republican side," writes Larry Diamond in The American Interest. Read here.  

We are proud to announce our next year's cohort of CDDRL Honors Program students! We selected a diverse group of undergraduate majors for the program who will be writing their senior theses on a subject touching upon DDRL with a global impact. Students will work to complete their thesis under the guidance and consultation of CDDRL faculty, but may have a primary thesis advisor from their own department. Upon fulfilling individual department course requirements and completing the honors program, the student will graduate in his/her major with a certificate of honors in Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law. 

Read their bios here.