Policy Briefs on Global Challenges to Democracy

In this interview, John Keane argues that the public beautification of war is among the oddest features of the terrible meta wars of our century. With the help of communications media, war becomes an elaborately staged, picturesque tableau designed to transfix audiences and wall them off from war’s horrors. Savagery and ghastliness are no more. War becomes bloodless. It undergoes a form of beautification more subtle and more insidious than ever happened in the era of radio, film, and television. However, a new type of rebel journalism does something that is powerfully different. It does more than problematize meta wars by chipping away at their beautification. The new rebel journalism keeps alive and nurtures political hopes for an end to war.

This policy brief examines the divisive, hyper-polarized, us-or-them way politics is viewed in the United States. One test of a democracy is whether or not the voters get to choose their leaders. While, at this most basic level, the 2024 US presidential election was a success, it's easy to understand why both sides view contemporary politics as a battle that they absolutely, positively, must win. The only way out of this highly destructive confrontation is some kind of compromise that, more than elections, is the cornerstone of the democratic ideal. This policy brief concludes with three principles upon which such a compromise could be built.

This report introduces “massively parallel problem solving and democracy building”, the notion that the “solution” to failing democracy comes in the form of hundreds of thousands of different people and organizations, each working on their own little “thing,” which together add up to a massive societal response to all the various challenges democracy faces. Scholars, conflict resolution practitioners, politicians, and grassroots citizens all seem to agree: democracy is in trouble in many places around the world including the U.S. which is the focus of this report. However, the forces of resilience and adaptive change are here in more abundance than is often recognized. Rather than being a hypothetical theoretical idea, massively parallel problem solving is already happening on the ground – on a surprisingly large scale.

This Policy Brief draws attention to thousands of civil society organizations which have died in the attack launched by India’s right-wing government that sees them as an internal threat to the state. The fate of many more, like India’s tottering democracy itself, hangs on the result of the ongoing election.

This Policy Brief addresses the question: How can right-wing populism be electorally reversed, and is democracy automatically restored when it is? A southern state in Modi’s India has important lessons as the world’s biggest election plays out.