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What We’re Reading

Justin Anderson

March 7, 2013

At the Democracy Fund, we’re constantly reading the latest research, reports, and analyses to learn about the challenges facing our democracy and what we can do about them. Over the coming months, I’ll use this space to share links to some of these publications. (If you are interested in news and updates from our grantees, please visit the News Page.)

Participatory Budgeting in Year Two: Reinvigorating Local Democracy in NYC (Huffington Post) Melissa Mark-Viverito, NYC Council Member, 8th District, discusses the second year of Participatory Budgeting in New York City while highlighting the process and successes from Year One. Related stories: Vallejo Participatory Budgeting Video (Pepperdine University School of Public Policy, Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership) – CA Forward has produced a short video on the participatory budgeting process currently underway in Vallejo, CA. The City of Vallejo is the first US city to undertake a city-wide participatory budgeting process. The Spread of Participatory Budgeting Across the Globe: Adoption, Adaptation, and Impacts (Journal of Public Deliberation, Vol. 8, Issue 2) This special issue of the Journal of Public Deliberation brings together leading scholars and practitioners of PB in order to expand our understanding about why PB programs are being adopted, how governments are adapting the rules and principles to meet different policy and political goals, and the impact of PB on civil society, state reform, and social well-being.
2012 American Values Survey (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press) The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has released a new report examining partisan polarization surges from 1987-2012. Overall, there has been much more stability than change across the 48 political values measures that the Pew Research Center has tracked since 1987. But the average partisan gap has nearly doubled over this 25-year period – from 10 percentage points in 1987 to 18 percentage points in the new study.
Most Believe at Least One Political Conspiracy Theory (Political Wire) A new study from Fairleigh Dickinson University finds that 63% of registered voters buy into at least one political conspiracy theory, with 36% who think that President Obama is hiding information about his background and early life, 25% who think that the government knew about 9/11 in advance, and 19% who think the 2012 Presidential election was stolen.
Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans (PLoS ONE) A recent study of young adults suggests that liberals and conservatives have significantly different brain structure. As shown in the study, although the risk-taking behavior of Democrats (liberals) and Republicans (conservatives) did not differ, their brain activity did. Democrats showed significantly greater activity in the left insula, while Republicans showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala. In fact, a two parameter model of partisanship based on amygdala and insula activations yields a better fitting model of partisanship than a well-established model based on parental socialization of party identification long thought to be one of the core findings of political science.
The Exaggeration of Political Polarization in America (The Monkey Cage) Andrew Gelman of the Monkey Cage responds to a new paper from Jacob Westfall, et. al. addressing the Americans’ perceptions of polarization between Democrats and Republicans. The study uses data collected in the American National Election Studies between 1970 and 2004 to examine Americans’ perceptions of polarization between Democrats and Republicans. Respondents reported their own attitudes on partisan issues, such as whether the government should increase spending and provide more services, and they estimated the attitudes of Democrats and Republicans.
This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For (WhiteHouse.gov) Citing cost (an estimated $850,000,000,000,000,000), lack of interest blowing up planets, and a largely ignored security flaw in design, the White House has chosen not to pursue a proposal to construct a Death Star for the United States. Instead, we should focus on increasing careers in math and science, and support of exploratory programs for NASA.
Is civics in crisis? Or just changing its shape? (Ethan Zuckerman – My Heart’s in Accra) Ethan Zuckerman responds to criticism of a spoof of “Jaywalking,” where students at Olympia High School in Olympia, Washington made a video called “Lunch Scholars,” in Jan, 2012. The video has been largely citied as an example how unprepared American youth are to compete in the global economy as well as underscoring the lack of civic knowledge in US schools.
Journalism for Democracy (Nieman Journalism Lab) Herb Gans, on journalism, 86 years old and losing none of his insight “Because the popular news media limit themselves to covering top-down politics, they often pay little if any attention to the political processes that swirl under and around the bulwark. Only rarely do they report directly on the problems of and dangers to American democracy.”

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BPC Launches Commission on Political Reform

Joe Goldman

March 5, 2013

The Bipartisan Policy Center, a Democracy Fund grantee, will launch its Commission on Political Reform on Wednesday, which will seek to understand the causes and consequences of America’s partisan political divide and recommend reforms to help Americans achieve shared national goals. Watch the webcast of the launch here (March 6 at 1 pm eastern). The commission will be co-chaired by former Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Trent Lott (R-MS), former Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME), former Senator, Governor and Secretary Dirk Kempthorne (R-ID), and former Representative and Secretary Dan Glickman (D-KS). The co-chairs will be joined by 25 other Americans, including volunteer and religious leaders, veterans, business executives, academics, state and local elected officials and journalists. “Democrats and Republicans are not just more divided ideologically, but less collaborative in practice than at any time in our careers. Even more troublingly, we suspect that the divide is not limited to Washington; that much of America is now riven along party lines, goaded to partisanship by increasingly shrill voices in politics, the media, and well-funded interests on both sides,” wrote Snowe and Glickman in an op-ed for USA TODAY. The commission will hold a series of “National Conversations on American Unity” starting on March 6, 2013 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library in California. Throughout the next year the commission will also host forums in other cities across the country, including: Philadelphia; Columbus, Ohio; and Boston. In 2014, the commission will present recommendations to the American people in three areas: electoral system reform, congressional procedural improvements, and promoting public service. The public can join the conversation by visiting www.bipartisanpolicy.org/CPR or following the commission on Twitter: @BPC_Bipartisan #EngageUSA. Check the website daily for new blogs and videos featuring the commissioners, information about upcoming Twitter Q&A sessions, and facts about bipartisanship. Questions and comments from the public will be incorporated into the “National Conversations on American Unity” in real time starting on March 6. Commission on Political Reform Co-Chairs: Tom Daschle, Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader (D-SD); Co-founder, BPC  Dan Glickman, Former U.S. Representative (D-KS) and Secretary of Agriculture; Senior Fellow, BPC

Dirk Kempthorne, Former U.S. Senator (R-ID), Governor and Secretary of the Interior; President and CEO, American Council of Life Insurers

Trent Lott, Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader (R-MS); Senior Fellow, BPC 

Olympia Snowe, Former U.S. Senator (R-ME); Senior Fellow, BPC Commission on Political Reform Members:

Hope Andrade, Former Texas Secretary of State (R) 

Molly Barker, Founder, Girls on the Run

Henry Bonilla, Former U.S. Representative (R-TX); Partner, the Normandy Group

John Bridgeland, Former Director, White House Domestic Policy Council; Former Director, USA Freedom Corps; President and CEO, Civic Enterprises

John Donahoe, President and CEO, eBay Inc. Susan Eisenhower, Chairman of Leadership and Public Policy Programs, Eisenhower Institute; President, Eisenhower Group, Inc. Floyd H. Flake, Former U.S. Representative (D-NY); Pastor, Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral Mark D. Gearan, Former Director, Peace Corps; President, Hobart and William Smith Colleges Heather Gerken, J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law, Yale Law School  Michael Gerson, Former Speechwriter for President George W. Bush; Columnist, The Washington Post

Charles Gonzalez, Former U.S. Representative (D-TX)

Jennifer M. Granholm, Former Governor of Michigan (D)  Antonia Hernandez, President and CEO, California Community Foundation  Karen Hughes, Former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs; Worldwide Vice Chair, Burson-Marsteller

Victoria Kennedy, Co-founder, Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate

Chris Marvin, Managing Director, “Got Your 6” David McIntosh, Former U.S. Representative (R-IN); Partner, Mayer Brown LLP Eric L. Motley, Ph.D.Former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush; Vice President, the Aspen Institute Deborah Pryce, Former U.S. Representative (R-OH); Principal, Ice Miller Whiteboard

Reihan Salam, Lead Writer, National Review Online’s “The Agenda”

Kurt L. Schmoke, Former Mayor of Baltimore (D); Vice President and General Counsel, Howard University Margaret Spellings, Former U.S. Secretary of Education (R); President and CEO, Margaret Spellings and Company

Diane Tomb, President and CEO, National Association of Women Business Owners

Ronald A. Williams, Former Chairman and CEO, Aetna Inc; Founder, RW-2 Enterprises, LLC

Elaine Wynn, Director, Wynn Resorts

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Guest Post: The Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review

John Gastil

February 26, 2013

Local and statewide initiatives and referenda give citizens the opportunity to vote directly on legislation, but voters often lack the information they need to make informed choices. The State of Oregon has created a potential remedy for this situation, called the Citizens Initiative Review (CIR), which convenes a group of average citizens together to evaluate ballot measures and share their recommendations with the voting public. Healthy Democracy, the innovative organization behind the CIR, is a grantee of the Democracy Fund. My colleagues and I recently completed an evaluation of the 2012 CIR process in order to understand its quality and impact. Last fall, the CIR Commission, which was established by the Governor in 2011, convened panels of 24 randomly-selected, demographically representative Oregon citizens to spend a full week examining two different ballot measures. One initiative proposed reforming the corporate tax system and the other would have authorized the construction of private casinos in Oregon. At the end of their deliberations, each panel produced a one page CIR Citizens’ Statement that went into the official Voter’s Pamphlet that the state mailed to every registered Oregon voter. The panels’ judgments ultimately matched the election outcomes, with voters ending a corporate tax refund and declining to authorize private casinos. Among other things, our research team found that:

A majority of Oregon voters were aware of the CIR.
Roughly two-thirds of those who read the CIR Statements found them helpful when deciding how to vote.
Those who read a CIR Statement learned more about the ballot measures than those who read other portions of the official Voter’s Guide.

For me, the most interesting finding is the impact of the CIR on voter knowledge. As the CIR Commission’s webpage explains, the Oregon process “is an innovative way of publicly evaluating ballot measures so voters have clear, useful, and trustworthy information at election time.” So, we wanted to find out whether the CIR actually does increase voter knowledge and voters’ confidence in the facts that they learn.

To answer that question, we chose to conduct an online survey. When contacted in the final weeks before the election, some survey respondents were shown a CIR Statement and others were shown nothing. We then asked respondents to assess whether 10 factual statements pertinent to the ballot measure were true or false. Respondents frequently expressed uncertainty and chose the “don’t know” response, but many did claim to know whether each statement “definitely” or “probably” was true or false. Those who read the CIR Statement outperformed the control group on nine of the ten knowledge items. Those who had read the CIR recommendations answered, on average, twice as many knowledge items correctly—again, with “don’t know” responses being more common that inaccurate ones. Real Oregon voters who had not yet read the Voters’ Pamphlet gained more knowledge from reading the CIR Statement than from either equivalent doses of paid pro/con arguments or the official Explanatory and Fiscal statements.

Figure 1. Average number of correct answers on a ten-item knowledge battery regarding Measure 85 for each of four experimental conditions in the online survey

You can download the full report to learn more about our evaluation findings. Though the Oregon CIR is not a panacea for all of the weaknesses of the initiative and referendum system, our findings—along with those from our 2010 evaluation report—do support the view that everyday citizens can produce high-quality deliberation on complex policies and give their peers accurate and useful information to consider before voting. Moreover, it’s clear that by distributing those results through the official Voter’s Guide, the Oregon CIR reaches and influences large numbers of voters in Oregon. Yale democratic theorist Robert Dahl wrote in On Democracy (1998),

One of the imperative needs of democratic countries is to improve citizens’ capacities to engage intelligently in political life . . . In the years to come . . . older institutions will need to be enhanced by new means for civic education, political participation, information, and deliberation that draw creatively on the array of techniques and technologies available in the twenty-first century.

The Oregon CIR appears to be one such institution, ingeniously using citizens themselves to inform the judgments of their peers. The one hitch is that the CIR does not receive any state funds, so it remains unclear whether it will continue to thrive—or spread to other states—in future years. John Gastil (jgastil@psu.edu) is Professor and Head of the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at Pennsylvania State University and the Director of the Penn State Democracy Institute. His most recent books include the co-edited volume Democracy in Motion: Evaluating the Practice and Impact of Deliberative Civic Engagement and The Jury and Democracy, both by Oxford University Press.

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A More Responsive Political System

Joe Goldman

February 20, 2013

In my last post, I introduced our grantees working to foster greater bipartisan problem solving in our political system. This time, I’d like to talk about some of the initial grants that we have made towards creating a more responsive political system – the newest program area of the Democracy Fund. At the Democracy Fund, we believe that our political system must be responsive to the priorities and needs of the American public. While organized interest groups are easily heard in the halls of Congress, the general public has fewer avenues to ensure that its priorities are reflected in the policy making process. We need to find ways to make government more accountable to the public and less accountable to political donors. In order to begin to develop our approach to this area, the Democracy Fund has supported research along with a small number of pilot projects. Examples of research that we are supporting include:

An initiative by the Campaign Finance Institute in partnership with the Bipartisan Policy Center to work with a diverse group of scholars in order to better understand what we do and don’t know about how our campaign finance system works and the relationship between money and our democracy. This initiative will produce a research agenda that can inform the broader policy conversation on the issue.

Another research program by the Meridian Institute is examining how a diverse group of stakeholders from across the political system think about the role of money in out political system in order to find new ways to support bipartisan dialogue and problem solving on the issue.

Research by the Committee for Economic Development seeks to understand the attitudes and views of business about campaign financing and the US political system. This research will help us to understand whether and how business leaders might bring fresh, new perspectives to the polarized discussion about this issue.

Additionally, the Democracy Fund has supported pilot projects aimed at creating a more responsive political system. In particular, the Center for Public Integrity’s Consider the Source program is using investigative journalism to help the public understand how donors are influencing our political system. The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Flackcheck.org has encouraged television stations to reject deceptive SuperPac ads (a program that also addresses our goal of informed participation.) In the coming months, the Democracy Fund will announce additional research that we will be supporting. We’ll also start sharing news of grants to support the strengthening of our electoral system to encourage participation. As we learn from these initial grants and develop our broader, long-term strategy in this areas, we’ll share more here on the blog.

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Guest Post: The Engaging News Project

Talia Stroud

February 11, 2013

It is relatively easy to paint a depressing portrait of citizens’ news media use. Fed up with politics and tempted by the lure of more entertaining media, some tune out of politics and public affairs altogether. Others, driven by partisan proclivities, look to news sources that present agreeable views of the world. And facing more intense competition, news organizations struggle to advance both their journalistic and business missions. With these challenges, however, come opportunities. Are there more compelling ways to present news that might attract unengaged citizens? Are there ways to bridge partisan divides when presenting the news? Even more, can the news help people to approach other views with the same charity that they display when approaching views with which they agree? And can all this be done while advancing the bottom line? Answering these questions is the aim of my current research, the Engaging News Project. The goal of the Engaging News Project is to provide practical, research-based techniques for engaging online audiences in commercially-viable and democratically-beneficial ways. To this end, the project tests web-based strategies for informing audiences, promoting civil discourse, and helping citizens to understand diverse views. Systematic testing provides valuable information about what works, as well as what doesn’t. And by advancing both journalistic and business goals, the techniques are designed with contemporary newsrooms in mind. The Engaging News Project exists thanks to a grant from the Democracy Fund through our partners at the New America Foundation. The approach is not a complete overhaul of the news. Many contemporary practices have great merit. Today’s online newsrooms already engage in practices that assist citizens with finding relevant news content, such as providing hyperlinks to accompany news articles. Furthermore, there are numerous opportunities for citizens to interact on news sites, such as by participating in online polls or sharing news content via social media. Site visitors also are offered a forum to visit with others in comment sections. By building on these existing practices, the Engaging News Project represents a practical, research-based way to re-envision how news is presented. Here are four ways in which our project is working to advance these goals.

Links. Hyperlinks are standard fare on news websites. By connecting people to more information, hyperlinks can help news site visitors to find more information and to learn more about important issues facing their communities. And from a business perspective, hyperlinks can improve site stickiness. What affects whether a person clicks on a link? Certainly the topic matters, as does the placement of a link on a page. But the prompts and headers that introduce people to hyperlinks also can have an effect. Labeling a set of links as “Most Popular,” for instance, can encourage people to click on the links to see what others are viewing. In our project, we analyze the effects of different prompts appearing before a set of hyperlinks. Drawing from popular theories about news seeking, we are testing whether a host of different prompts such as “Thanks for keeping up with the news. Be proud of protecting your democracy” affect citizens’ appetite for hard news content and news about different viewpoints.

Buttons. “Like.” Not only is it an indelible component of casual sentence structure, the term also governs how we respond to everything from news articles to comments from our closest friends on Facebook. The term structures responses to online content. A heartwarming story about a local hero? “Like!” But “Like” doesn’t always seem appropriate. An article on a tragic event? It’s hard to hit “Like” in response. A fair-minded, but counter-attitudinal, post in a comment section? It’s challenging to press “Like.” What if news stations used other buttons? What if, instead of “Like,” one could click “Respect”? We are analyzing how different buttons affect citizens’ responses to comments from an online comment section. We want to know whether some buttons – and the concepts they convey – allow commenters to express their appreciation for counter-attitudinal postings more than others.

Polls and Quizzes. Check out the local news websites in your area. Chances are that at least one of them will have a poll on their site. Chances also are good that the poll will not enrich your understanding of the world. It may ask you about entertainment (who wore the best dress at the Golden Globes?). Even if the poll is about an important issue (e.g. do you favor or oppose increased gun control?), the results offer no more insight than surveying a few friends about their thoughts on the issue. Online polls are interesting, and possibly entertaining, but rarely are they helpful for learning about your community. We test whether polls can be presented as quizzes that both engage and inform citizens. How many people do you think believe that gun control should be strengthened in the country? What percentage of the federal budget is dedicated to social security? These questions have answers. The first is based on public opinion data gathered using rigorous methodologies and the second comes from the Congressional Budget Office. We analyze whether different poll formats containing substantive news content can promote poll participation and learning.

Online Discourse. I asked my undergraduate students in “Communication and Public Opinion” what they expected to find in the comment sections below news articles. Their answers? Some were optimistic: diverse views, responses to the news content, and deeper thinking about the topic. But others had quite pessimistic reactions: argument, incivility, discussion dominated by a few voices. Who is right? Our project analyzes the content of online comment sections. Are there some topics that inspire more engagement? What about more civility? As part of the Engaging News Project, we ask whether we can improve the quality of comment sections. If citizens are given a question to answer in the comment section, are they more likely to get involved? And if a reporter engages in the comment section, does this change the substance of the conversation? The analysis will allow us to provide insights about how citizens engage in news comment sections.

These four research projects are designed to advance our understanding of how to create news environments that support substantive engagement with political information and with other citizens. They aim to help news outlets excel at both their journalistic goals and their business endeavors. As we finalize the results in the coming months, we look forward to sharing our findings. We hope that they will provide valuable information to newsrooms and that they will spark more research and innovation in how news can be presented in new, and engaging, formats.

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Our Approach to Polarization and Gridlock

Joe Goldman

February 1, 2013

I thought it would be useful to dedicate a few early posts on our new blog to explaining a bit more about our priorities and the organizations in which we have invested. With this post, I’ll start by talking about our grantees working to encourage greater bipartisan problem solving. Future posts will discuss informed participation and creating a more responsive political system. There is no shortage of data supporting the observation that our system has become more polarized and less productive in recent years. While it used to be the case that there were dozens of Congressmen who ideologically fell between the most liberal Republican and the most conservative Democrat, that number has essentially fallen to zero. Certainly, it is no coincidence that our most recent Congress produced the fewest laws in modern history.

While polarization is not necessarily a bad thing (it clarifies choices and motivates participation), the checks and balances of the American political system require our two parties to work together in order for our system to function. Standard and Poors’ explanation for why it downgraded our nation’s credit rating provides a good example for what happens when the ability of Members of Congress to reach principled agreements breaks down. The polarized state of our political system is the result of major political trends that have emerged over several decades, like the regional realignment of southern conservatives to the Republican party and the increased competitiveness for control of Congress since 1994 that has resulted in a permanent campaign environment. At the Democracy Fund, we our under no illusion that there is an easy fix to the situation, but we believe that the current status quo is untenable. To that end, we have been inspired by the work of many organizations trying to make the system work better. Five organizations in particular have received initial grants from the Democracy Fund in order to work on this issue.

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Democracy Program has marshaled its considerable research and convening capacity to analyze procedural and electoral reforms that have the potential to make a modest difference and reshape political incentives. For example, BPC is currently evaluating reforms that have been enacted by states to improve their redistricting processes and primary elections. They have also produced recommendations about how Congressional rules should change to make the institution work better.
The National Institute for Civil Discourse is a new institution created after Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 18 others were shot in Tucson in 2011. While no one believes that simply being polite will solve our problems (or that such a goal is even desirable), the basic ability to have conversations about important challenges is a prerequisite to governing in a system like ours. When each side sees the other as the enemy or control by the other side as illegitimate, then the ability to solve problems becomes impossible. NICD and its high profile national board have launched several initiatives to work with members of Congress, state legislatures, media leaders, and others to foster greater trust, civility, and collaboration in our political system.
The Democracy Fund has also supported the Faith & Politics Institute in convening an ideologically diverse group of high profile faith leaders in order to explore the role that they may play in improving the state of our political discourse. Faith leaders hold a unique moral authority in our society and represent millions of Americans. We have been impressed by the genuine and sincere concern that these leaders have brought to the conversation and their personal commitments to contribute to making things better. The group is currently developing a plan for how faith leaders can make an impact over the long-term.
All too often, Americans live in echo chambers in which their assumptions about the world are reaffirmed by the media that they consume. The New America Foundation is working with Professor Talia Stroud at the University of Texas to conduct a series of experiments that seek to understand how media can better expose their readers to other points of view. New America is also supporting research to understand how media can more effectively correct misperceptions and deceptions in ways that overcome cognitive barriers.
Finally, Bloggingheads.tv has launched a unique program, called The Good Fight, which exposes the readers of ideological media sites to civil discussions between pairs of leading thinkers from both sides of the aisle. We’re eager to learn from this program about the degree to which exposure to thoughtful, civil dialogue can impact viewers when they know and trust at least one of the people participating in the dialogue. For example, this dialogue between Brad Smith and Heather Gerken on campaign finance reform shows that advocates from the Left and Right can find some areas of common ground on a highly polarized topic.

The Democracy Fund is still very much in learning mode on this issue and look forward to exploring different strategies for addressing it. While we do not believe there is any silver bullet for reducing hyper-partisanship, we are committed to finding ways that we can make a positive contribution to shifting the political incentives that are driving today’s political behavior. We hope you’ll join us in this important endeavors.

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Why I created the Democracy Fund

Pierre Omidyar

January 15, 2013

If anyone was surprised this summer when Gallup announced that only one in ten Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, it was only because they expected the number to be lower. While many honorable, talented men and women represent us in Washington, it is hard to find anyone who feels proud about how our political system is working today.

With good reason, Americans fear that our voices are not being heard in the halls of Congress above the din of big donors and lobbyists. We watch with dismay as our governing institutions have ground to a halt, unable to agree to a budget for the federal government or to pass legislation necessary to meet our greatest challenges. And who can blame Americans for being turned off by a political discourse that is so dominated by the demonization of opponents and deceptive political rhetoric?

When I founded eBay many critics did not believe that “strangers” would buy and sell from other “strangers” over the web. I believed then (as I do now) that the critics were wrong – that people are basically good and would generally operate with trust and goodwill if given the chance. Seventeen years later, eBay still thrives as a community forged by trust and open, transparent communication.

I have seen firsthand technology’s incredible ability to break down barriers and empower individuals to improve the world around them. Technological innovations offer us a powerful tool to overcome many vexing problems. But technology is often not enough. I have also witnessed the vital role that a healthy political system can play in harnessing the energy of the public and building the political will necessary to achieve our greatest goals as a society. While technological innovation and private enterprise are essential ingredients to unleashing the ability of individuals to create change, I believe they must be complemented by good governance and ethical leadership to be truly effective.

Over the last decade, a significant portion of my philanthropy has focused on leveraging technology in ways that can increase the transparency and effectiveness of our government. Omidyar Network grantees like the Sunlight Foundation and Code for America have transformed how we think about the openness of government and the ability of citizens to both hold government accountable and contribute to its ability to solve problems. More recently, I have experimented with new models for how the media can more effectively inform and involve the public through the creation of Honolulu Civil Beat in my home state of Hawaii.

The Democracy Fund will build upon this ongoing work as a new and distinct initiative. The fund will support social entrepreneurs and others working to directly address the conditions that threaten the ability of our government to represent the public’s highest interests, to retain the public’s trust, and to meet the many great challenges that we face. While technology and innovation will remain important to its approach, the initiative will also apply other strategies, like advocacy and policy reform, as well as facilitating communication and collaboration across differences to solve problems.

Specifically, the Democracy Fund is driven by three core beliefs:

First, we believe that our democracy must put the public first in the governance process. We will support efforts to strengthen the public’s voice so that leaders respond to their constituents over large donors and special interests.

Second, we believe that a healthy political system requires a better informed and more active electorate. We will support efforts to equip Americans with tools that allow their voices to be heard and gain easier and better access to the information they need to become engaged and hold our legislators accountable.

Finally, we believe that our government must have the capacity to solve problems constructively if it is to retain the trust of the public. We will support those working to increase dialogue across partisan divides and increase the ability of our system to function through procedural and electoral reforms.

The Democracy Fund will prioritize bipartisan approaches that reflect these principles because we believe sustainable solutions to our problems are only possible with the support of people from all sides.

I am under no illusion that there was a “golden age” in which our politics were pure and unfolded as they have been described in classroom textbooks. Indeed, American democracy is – and always has been – imperfect. We have vigorously (and sometimes violently) disagreed with each other. We have seen egregious corruption and incivility in our campaigns and our governance. And all too frequently, prejudice and fear mongering have produced leaders and policies of which we are now ashamed.

But despite our many limitations, the American republic has often worked quite well. Over time, we have become increasingly more representative, tolerant, and inclusive. Our leaders have risen above their differences to overcome historic challenges. And millions of Americans have rolled up their sleeves to contribute to a robust and dynamic civic experiment that has been the envy of the world.

As a first generation American who came to this country when I was still young, I continue to be inspired by the founding vision of the American republic and believe that through innovation, dialogue, and bipartisan reform we can take steps that will help us realize that vision.

Together, I believe that we can bring our country closer to Abraham Lincoln’s ideal of a government that is truly of, by, and for the people. It is my hope that the Democracy Fund can make significant contributions to reaching this goal.

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Welcome to the Democracy Fund

Joe Goldman

December 17, 2012

Thanks for visiting the new web site of the Democracy Fund. We’re excited to have this space to share the work of our new initiative.

The Democracy Fund was created just over a year ago to support innovators and leaders as they strive to foster a stronger, healthier political system. In its first year, the Democracy Fund committed more than $5 million in grants to more than a dozen organizations. Some, like the Bipartisan Policy Center and the National Institute for Civil Discourse, are working to encourage more bipartisan problem solving so that our government can rise to the challenges that face us. Others, like the Annenberg Public Policy Center and the Healthy Democracy Fund, are arming the public with better information and skills, so that voters can make more informed decisions.

We have also supported research and experimentation to increase the effectiveness of political reform efforts. The New America Foundation, for example, is working with researchers from Dartmouth and the University of Texas to conduct lab and field experiments that will teach us about how media organizations can do a better job exposing readers to alternative points of view and holding leaders accountable for what they say. The Campaign Finance Institute is convening leading scholars in order to identify the most important research questions that must be addressed in order to inform how policy makers approach the issue of money in politics.

democracyfund.org will highlight the work of the social and political entrepreneurs behind these initiatives – telling the story of the progress they make, their accomplishments, and ways that you can get involved to support their work. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll use this blog and the feature sections of this website to report on what is being learned from our grants and to encourage new ways to think about our democracy and where it is headed. On the site, you can also learn more about our priorities, our team, and the criteria we use for making investments. Like any newly launched site this is very much a version 1.0 and we look forward to extending it as we grow and develop.

I hope that you’ll join us on this important journey as we seek to be a resource for the community of reformers committed to strengthening our democracy.