Democracy Papers

Can representative democracies be strengthened to govern more effectively? The SSRC’s Anxieties of Democracy program is motivated by a concern about whether the core institutions of established democracies can capably address large problems in the public interest. The Democracy Papers highlight and summarize new research presented at conferences and workshops related to the Anxieties of Democracy program.

If you enjoy the Democracy Papers, you may also like our collection of reflection essays on the anxieties of democracy, The Inaugural Democracy Papers. These pieces were collected for the launch of the Anxieties of Democracy program in 2014-15.

Democracy Papers

Scandals and Incivility in Congress: Do Legislators Face Consequences?

by Tracy Sulkin

In a new submission to Democracy Papers, Tracy Sulkin looks at the professional consequences of legislators’ bad behavior. Using a unique dataset on professional scandals and instances of incivility committed by members of the US House of Representatives, she shows that scandals and incivility are linked to stalling professional career trajectories of members of Congress. In an era of polarization and gridlock, these results indicate that Congress does retain ability to police and sanction bad behavior among its members.

March 19, 2019

Democracy Papers

Representational Inequality and Welfare State Change

by Lea Elsässer

In an essay that continues the Democracy Papers’ current focus on welfare states, Lea Elsässer explores unequal representation in the context of welfare state reforms. Focusing on Germany since the 1980s, she shows that welfare state reforms are more responsive to the preferences of citizens in the upper socioeconomic classes, compared to those in lower socioeconomic classes. These findings contribute to the recent literature on problems of representation in modern democracies.

December 18, 2018

Democracy Papers

More Education for the Educated? Public Opinion on Social Policy Reforms in Western Europe

by Marius R. Busemeyer

In the latest contribution to the Democracy Papers, Marius R. Busemeyer explores which coalitions of citizens support various welfare state reforms in European countries. Recent years have seen the social safety net in these countries increasingly move toward a social investment model, whereby states help individuals invest in education and training. Busemeyer shows that, compared to other models of the welfare state, social investment policies enjoy broad-based support among many European publics, concerns about the potentially regressive effects of these policies notwithstanding.

November 6, 2018

Democracy Papers

Charting a Course for Research of Social Media Polarization

by Jaime Settle

Jaime Settle, a member of the SSRC Media & Democracy program’s advisory board, discusses her new book in the latest contribution to Democracy Papers. In Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America, she takes a deep look at how political information spreads on social media, emphasizing the importance of seemingly unpolitical posts and of exposure to the political opinions of people with whom we share only weak social ties.

September 4, 2018

Democracy Papers

Democratic Accountability in the Context of Appointed Commissions

by Victoria Potts

Concluding our “Democratic Erosion” miniseries, Victoria Potts uses a prolonged political dispute over the fate of Confederate monuments in Memphis city parks to examine political accountability in democratic institutions. She examines the conflict between Memphis City Council, the Tennessee state legislature, and an appointed historical commission to ask whom appointed commissions should be accountable to, and when indirect or unelected power is justified in a democratic system.

August 21, 2018

Democracy Papers

Entertainer Politicians: Popular Icons and “Incumbency Advantage”

by Rachel Risoleo

Continuing our “Democratic Erosion” miniseries of essays, Rachel Risoleo takes a look at the concept of incumbency advantage, arguing that this concept can help us explain the successful political candidacies of nonincumbent popular icons like Donald Trump in the United States and Jimmy Morales in Guatemala. She argues that celebrities who run for office are able to draw on advantages that are similar to those enjoyed by incumbent politicians, including name recognition, high levels of media exposure, and voters’ preference to identify with individual politicians.

August 21, 2018

Democracy Papers

Introducing “Democratic Erosion”

Rodrigo Ugarte·August 7, 2018

Robert Blair introduces the “Democratic Erosion” miniseries, which Democracy Papers is publishing in conjunction with the project Blair leads. He explains how this project came about and the institutions involved in it…

August 7, 2018

Democracy Papers

Felon Disenfranchisement and Expert Assessments of Electoral Integrity

by Danielle Trujillo

Continuing our “Democratic Erosion” miniseries, Danielle Trujillo examines democratic erosion through the lens of felon disenfranchisement in the United States and finds this issue is insufficiently incorporated into measures of electoral integrity. Comparing Louisiana and Mississippi, she notes what she argues is an incongruity: both share strict policies regarding incarceration and voting rights for former felons, but they differ dramatically in expert assessments of the integrity of the electoral process.

August 7, 2018

Democracy Papers

Voter Roll Purging in Ohio Is a Danger to Free and Fair Elections

by Sarah Stradling

A June 2018 US Supreme Court decision upheld Ohio’s process for purging eligible voters from the voting rolls under certain conditions. Kicking off our “Democratic Erosion” miniseries, Sarah Stradling analyzes the background and potential implications of Ohio’s planned implementation of the National Voter Registration Act, and what it signals about the health of democracy when voting rights are restricted.

August 7, 2018

Democracy Papers

Unequal Political Voice in the New American Gilded Age

by Kay Lehman Schlozman, Henry Brady and Sidney Verba

In the latest contribution to the Democracy Papers, Kay Schlozman, Henry Brady, and Sidney Verba give an authoritative overview of inequalities of political voice in the United States. Drawing on their recently published book, Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the People’s Voice in the New Gilded Age, they show that not only has American political life long been dominated by inequalities of political voice, but also that these inequalities have been further accentuated by the increasing importance of money in politics.

July 17, 2018

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“Sociolinguistic Frontiers” was inspired by a September 2018 Items essay by Monica Heller that reflected on the history, influence, and limits of the SSRC’s Committee on Sociolinguistics in the 1960s and 1970s, based in part on her research in the SSRC archives. The essay argued that the Committee, a product of its time and place during the Cold War and the growth of US global power, privileged some key topics, questions, and approaches to the relationship between language and culture while downplaying others. Notably, less attention was paid to questions of power and conflict than might have been the case for a discipline focused on social variation in communicative form and practice.

With Prof. Heller on board to help curate this new series with the Items editorial team, we are publishing a series of essays in “Sociolinguistic Frontiers” by a variety of scholars of different generations and areas of interest. In this series, they reflect on the trajectory of the field of sociolinguistics from the end of Committee’s work to today, drawing on new research approaches and questions not addressed by the Committee or not even conceived at the time, as well as ongoing debates within the field. These essays reflect on the present state and possible futures of sociolinguistics both in the United States and beyond.

How does contemporary capitalism, and the inequalities it produces, intersect with race? How does race, and the process of racialization, itself shape economic processes and the nature of work? And, how does the entanglement of racialization and capitalism affect politics and power dynamics—in the United States, but also globally? This Items series, a second collaboration with the multi-institutional Race and Capitalism project, includes contributions from an interdisciplinary group of scholars to address the relationship between racial and economic inequality, the potentials and limits of resistance and reform efforts to redress inequalities, historical and contemporary transformations in the relationship between race and capitalism, and theoretical perspectives that best make sense of the current moment.

Michael Dawson of the University of Chicago, codirector of the Race and Capitalism project, joins the Items editors in curating this discussion.