Democracy comes in many different forms, because communities and nations can devise various rules to shape elections and the processes of government decision-making. The specific rules chosen matter a great deal – especially the rules adopted for voting and elections. After all, who gets to vote, how, and when determine citizen access in a democracy – and decisions about such matters influence the balance of power in government and what public officials are likely to decide about war and peace, taxes and the economy, education, and social benefits. The outcomes of fights over the rules for elections can determine who has a seat at the table of government at all, and whose interests will matter or be ignored. more...

Empathy refers to a person’s ability to understand the emotions of others and share in their feelings. Researchers in many fields have shown that empathy – or its absence – matters greatly in many aspects of social life. For example, empathetic people are more likely to have strong ties to family members and others with whom they regularly work or interact. And individuals capable of empathy have higher self-esteem and enjoy life more fully. The flip side is also true: people who have trouble empathizing with others tend to suffer from poorer mental health and have less fulfilling social relationships.

Researchers are showing that empathy also matters in crime and punishment, and recent findings suggest important steps that can be taken to reduce juvenile delinquency and improve relationships between communities and police. more...

In its landmark 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, the United States Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. But the Court also explained that, like all other constitutional rights, this “right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” Courts have subsequently worked to specify which kinds of firearms are protected for which groups of people – and to determine under what circumstances guns can be regulated. As issues are parsed, one has been too little explored: the question of whether some kinds of places, such as cities, can do more than others to regulate guns.

This omission is unnecessary and unfortunate. The Second Amendment can and should incorporate the longstanding and sensible practice of regulating guns differently in rural and urban areas. Firearm localism would help us move forward from the current stalled debate. more...

In many ways, America’s 2012 elections brought government as usual. As an incumbent president was reelected, his party gained nine House seats and two Senate seats – and women continued to be greatly under-represented in Congress.

Only twenty women are found among the 100 U.S. Senators, and 13 of these are the first women to represent their state. Women hold only 77 seats in the House, fewer than 18%. Four U.S. states have never sent a woman to Congress: Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi and Vermont. The U.S. ranks 77^th among the world’s nations in women’s representation in the lower legislative chamber – right behind Sao Tome and Principe and just ahead of Madagascar. Not counting ties, the U.S. actually ranks 92^nd.

Before the 2012 elections, USA Today had predicted another “Year of the Woman” given an “upward trend of female candidates for Congress.” What actually happened is better characterized as a relatively good year for Democratic women amidst continuing female under-representation. Although neither major U.S. party has nominated sufficient numbers of women for Congress, Republicans nominate fewer and when GOP women are nominated, they very often lose. The difference between the percentage of women in Democratic Congressional delegations and the percentage of women in GOP Congressional delegations hovered between 7% and 11% from 1993 to 2002, but now it has grown to a remarkable 19.5 %. more...

In his 2008 book The Street Stops Here, journalist Patrick McCloskey documented the successes of at-risk black young men at Rice High School in Harlem. For many years, this Catholic school run by the Christian Brothers overcame traditional gaps in educational achievement to get one hundred percent of its graduates accepted for college. Yet just three years after the book was published, the school closed due to financial shortfalls.

Overall, America’s Catholic schools are closing at a rapid rate. At their peak in the mid-1960s, more than 13,000 Catholic elementary and secondary schools enrolled twelve percent of U.S. school children. But by 2012, fewer than 7,000 Catholic schools enrolled about two million, or five percent, of U.S. school-aged children – and the future is likely to bring further contraction. Because Catholic schools have a long history of serving under-served minority and poor people, their decline reduces the U.S. Catholic Church’s ability to further social justice – and will likely reduce equality of educational opportunity. more...

“Green Revolution” is the label for concerted initiatives to increase agricultural production and prevent hunger and starvation in major regions of the world. Earlier efforts transformed agriculture in Mexico, India, and the Philippines – by facilitating the use of new technologies and commercial seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides to produce high-yield cereal grains. In 2006 two of the world’s largest foundations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, joined forces to launch the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

With the Gates Foundation alone contributing around one billion dollars by 2012, the stated goal is to reduce poverty by helping smallholder farmers, including women, gain greater access to markets, credit, and productivity-enhancing technologies to generate higher yields of staple food crops. In collaboration with African governments, multinational corporations, research institutes, and farmers’ organizations, the Gates Foundation is pushing market integration and the use of chemical fertilizers and commercial seeds (including hybrid and genetically modified seeds). more...

In 2002, California became the first U.S. state to pass legislation establishing paid family leaves for workers who need to take time off from their jobs to bond with new children or care for a seriously ill family member. Other states are moving in the same direction, including New Jersey, which began operating a similar program in 2009. Yet only California has amassed years of experience with this important new social benefit.

Six years after the law went into effect, we conducted detailed surveys of California employers and employees in 2009 and 2010. The employer survey reached 253 for-profit and nonprofit worksites of a range of sizes sampled from Dun & Bradstreet; public worksites were excluded. The employee survey reached 500 individuals who had a family event (a new child, a seriously ill family member) covered by the paid leave law.

Our findings offer a rich picture of how effectively paid leave has operated for California employers and employees. We were especially interested in learning whether paid family leave helps to reduce inequalities at work. Before California passed paid leave, many low-wage workers had no access to income support when they took time off to attend to family needs – not even paid sick or vacation days. Most employers who offered paid leaves for care-giving restricted them to professionals and managers. Has the new leave law narrowed the gap? more...

Providing financial support is one of the many important things that fathers do for children. Even with more mothers working in the United States today, fathers’ earnings remain the primary source of income for most couples with children. The chances of children growing up in poverty are much greater when fathers earn too little, or do not contribute adequate child support to children not living with them.

Low wages make it hard for fathers to support their families, but so do the problems of unemployment, insufficient hours of work, and inability to get year-round work or hold a steady job. Our research on the impact of these factors helps policymakers and citizens better understand how patterns of employment differ across fathers in various family situations – and what the various patterns of work can mean for children’s wellbeing. more...

Why are so many Washington officials obsessed with budget deficits? And why are they so willing to entertain big cuts to social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and education, while being reluctant or outright unwilling to increase taxes on the highest income earners? The answer cannot be that most Americans want these choices. Survey after survey shows that large majorities support asking the wealthiest to pay more in taxes and want to maintain or increase spending on Social Security and federal health and education programs.

A possible answer to where budget hawks get energy and inspiration comes from the first systematic survey social scientists have managed to do of the political attitudes of the wealthiest one percent of Americans. Working with a team of scholars from several disciplines, I am conducting a study called the “Survey of Economically Successful Americans and the Common Good.” Most national surveys include only a tiny number of very wealthy citizens, but we used additional data sources to identify a larger sample of wealthy individuals living in the greater Chicago metropolitan area. Further research would be needed to explore attitudes among the very wealthy living everywhere in the United States. But our findings are highly suggestive of what would be found in a nationwide study. For the first time, we are able to pinpoint issues on which the very wealthiest agree or disagree with other Americans. more...

Now in his second term, President Obama intends to visit Israel, where he hopes to restart stalled peace talks with the Palestinians. To prepare, I hope he will go beyond perusing the usual briefing books supplied to traveling U.S. presidents. He should immerse himself in history, too – and not only in books about the 62 years of sporadic violence between Arabs and Israelis with which most of us are familiar. That would be a good start, but for a deeper appreciation of what moves the principal actors in the Middle East, Obama – like the rest of us – must go back well before the birth of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Much earlier, Jews and Muslims had indelible experiences with Western powers maneuvering in their pivotal region. more...