Americans take for granted that if they dislike leaders, candidates, or government policies, there are ways to voice opposition. They can criticize a policy and oppose or support a leader or candidate. Even if Americans do not like outcomes all the time, most understand that they can have input and work for change through democratic means. Historically, many other countries across the world have lacked similar arrangements to enable citizen dissent and input. But in recent decades, fledgling democracies have started to take shape, giving new hope to people who have not enjoyed peaceful openings to influence authoritarian governments. more...

In recent years there has been a flurry of legislative activity to exclude immigrants from access to social-welfare assistance at the state and national level. These efforts are controversial, with opponents denouncing them as “unprecedented,” while supporters claim that today’s newcomers are less self-sufficient than earlier generations of immigrants. “Our ancestors,” declared one Republican official, did not come “with their hands out for welfare checks.” Most Americans agree that European immigrants “worked their way up without special favors,” and are inclined to think that everyone today should do the same.

What is the truth about access to U.S. public assistance by different groups? To sort out the myths and realities, I closely tracked the experiences of white European immigrants, blacks, and Mexicans in the first half of the 20th century. My findings will surprise many on all sides. more...

Members of Congress are typically identified by party affiliation, perhaps with modifiers such as “moderate” or “tea party.” Journalists describe legislators that way; so do political scientists, albeit with more precise measures of ideological positions. When citizens enter the voting booth to choose their representatives, they rely on party identification, biographical snippets, and perhaps positions on high-profile issues. But when the election is over, the main responsibility of members of Congress goes beyond being a partisan or an ideologue. First and foremost, members are lawmakers. Unless representatives write laws and push them forward in committees and on the floor of the legislature, national policies do not change. more...

On August 14, 2012 Wisconsin held a primary election and Governor Scott Walker brought his son to the polls to register to vote and cast his ballot. Months later, Walker announced his intention to eliminate the very same Election Day Registration system his son had used. But his proposal sparked an avalanche of opposition – from election administrators, the League of Women Voters and civil rights groups, and Wisconsinites of all party persuasions – prompting the normally resolute Walker to drop the idea. more...

To be effective, representative democracy requires that elected legislators understand what their constituents believe and want – and American politicians regularly declare that they are championing the priorities of voters in their districts. But are they? In late 2012, prior to the November elections, we surveyed nearly 2,000 candidates running for state legislative offices across the United States. more...

As the new Affordable Care marketplaces get under way in each state, how many Americans without health insurance will learn about their new options – including the generous subsidies available to help people with low or moderate incomes afford premiums for health insurance plans? Public confusion has been widespread, but outreach experiences suggest that providing accurate information – especially face-to-face – makes people more positive toward the health reform law and increases their willingness to sign up.

In the words of outreach specialist Libby Cummings of the Community Health Center in Portland, Maine, “When we have a chance to explain it to people, it’s been very positive. People are excited about it and want to have health insurance. People see it as an opportunity to get coverage that was never open to them before.” more...

Curbing violence in America’s inner cities has long been a difficult challenge. A wide variety of tactics have been tried – ranging from enforcement focused on gangs or repeat offenders to new preventive initiatives by social service providers. Affected neighborhoods have also been targeted for such measures as an increased police presence, the organization of neighborhood watch networks, and efforts to remove or clean up visible signs of disorder, such as abandoned cars, blighted buildings, junk-filled vacant lots, graffiti, and the presence of loiterers or beggars. more...

Most people feel a sense of identity with various different groups. A young black woman, for example, might feel a sense of involvement with African Americans, with women, with younger people – and, if she has a child, she could also identify as a parent. Scholars who study democratic politics are very interested in how group identities influence citizens’ political decisions. But to figure out how identities influence political choices, scholars have to do a lot more than drop people into one category or another, because people hold many different identities that can range from highly stable traits (such as race or gender) to relationships that can shift over the course of life (like marital status or active parenthood). These identities can spike or recede in importance depending on what people are doing and with whom. Different identities may come to the fore when parents watch a children’s soccer game, as opposed to when those same people are at work or attending a political rally. more...

President Obama has made a popular promise – to bring American troops home from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. But this exit strategy does not really apply to all U.S. forces, because the plan is to leave behind a large force of private contractors and military advisers. They are supposed to help professionalize Afghanistan’s internal security and police forces, promote stability, and aid in democratic development.

Historically, however, police training programs run by the United States have not achieved such lofty objectives. They have often ended up hindering democratic development and furthering the growth of draconian apparatuses of surveillance and repressive social control. U.S. contractors and advisors have too often propped up coercive client regimes, breeding popular backlash. The same story could well be unfolding once again in Afghanistan. To date, the United States has pumped in over $10 billion to the Afghan police, whose leaders are notorious for corruption and the commission of extralegal abuses. Spending an additional billion for police training, as the Obama administration plans, could end up increasing corruption and repression and intensifying sectarian divisions that make it difficult for Afghanistan to function as a stable democracy. more...

Most Americans depend on wages, salaries, and benefits from working-class jobs. But public offices are overwhelmingly occupied by people from very economically privileged backgrounds – officials who often set aside the concerns of working Americans when public policies are debated, enacted, and put into effect. Correcting this glaring imbalance in the backgrounds of officeholders requires many efforts – including programs to identify, recruit, and support political candidates from the working class.

Candidate outreach programs sponsored by labor unions already exist in many places – and they have demonstrated great promise. When candidates from blue-collar and middle-class backgrounds mount well-prepared election campaigns, they usually prove appealing to the general voting public. Once in office, working-class Americans are more likely than other elected leaders to fight for workers’ concerns about workplace protections, business regulation, tax policy, and educational and social safety net programs. Programs that recruit and support more of these working-class candidates represent an important opportunity to make government at all levels more democratically responsive. more...