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    Trump's First Year: How Resilient is Liberal Democracy?
    John Shattuck. 2/15/2018. Trump's First Year: How Resilient is Liberal Democracy?. Carr Center Discussion Paper Series. 2018001st ed. Cambridge, MA: Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. See full text. Abstract
    In his recent discussion paper, Shattuck examines the Trump administration’s attacks on liberal democratic institutions during its first year, and assesses their institutional resilience.

    In its 2016 “Democracy Index” report, the Economist Intelligence Unit downgraded the United States from a “full” to a “flawed democracy”. The report cited “an erosion of trust in political institutions” as the primary reason for the downgrade.1 In January 2018 Freedom House made a more dire assessment: “democratic institutions in the US have suffered erosion, as reflected in partisan manipulation of the electoral process, bias and dysfunction in the criminal justice system, and growing disparities in wealth, economic opportunity and political influence.”2

    Declining levels of political participation and public confidence in government in the US are not new, but the populist forces that propelled the election of Donald Trump in 2016 signaled a new level of public disillusionment with democratic politics as usual. There has been a sharp increase in democratic discontent over the last fifteen years. An October 2017 Washington Post/University of Maryland poll found that 71% of Americans believe that political polarization and democratic dysfunction have reached “a dangerous low point”. Three years earlier, in 2014, a Gallup Poll showed that 65% of Americans were “dissatisfied with their system of government and how it works,” a dramatic reversal from 68% satisfaction twelve years earlier in 2002.

    How resilient is liberal democracy, and how broad is its base of support? On a global level there is evidence of both erosion and resilience. A November 2017 report of the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an intergovernmental organization that assesses the state of democracy worldwide, put it this way: “The current situation is more positive than suggested by an increasingly gloomy view that democracy has been in decline for the last ten years or more. This period appears to be one of trendless fluctuations in which gains and downturns in individual countries

    tend to balance each other out at the global level.”3 From this vantage point, democracy in the US may be resilient when compared to some other democracies where neo-authoritarian leaders -- such as Orban in Hungary, Kaczyński in Poland, and Erdoğan in Turkey -- have recently undermined the independence and functioning of pluralist institutions.

    But the health of American democracy has been called into question. Experts are divided on whether the illness reflects an ongoing struggle in the US by the proponents of liberal democracy to fend off anti-democratic tendencies ,4 or a long-term trend toward democratic deconsolidation.5 This paper considers a sampling of evidence about attacks on key institutions and elements of democracy in the US during the first year of the Trump administration, and potential sources of democratic resilience in the media, the judiciary, law enforcement, democratic norms and principles, the electoral process, civil society, state and local government, the federal civil service, and the Congress. The stakes are high. A central question, posed by a provocative new book, How Democracies Die, by Harvard scholars Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Zieblatt, is whether these institutions will withstand anti-democratic pressure, or “become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not?”6

    Following is a summary of the Trump administration’s challenges to democratic institutions during its first year and an assessment of institutional resilience compiled in this report.

    Classroom technologies narrow education gap in developing countries

    Classroom technologies narrow education gap in developing countries

    September 16, 2016

    Carr Center's Steven Livingston argues that classroom technology can narrow the education gap in his latest blog via the Brookings Institute.

    "Well before the invention of laptops and the World Wide Web, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology mathematician, computer scientist, and education visionary Seymour Papert realized that connected electronic devices could improve the educational experience of students, even for those who face poverty and geographical...

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    Faculty Book Publications: 2017 in Review

    January 5, 2018

    Faculty members at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy published a series of groundbreaking books in 2017, addressing diverse policy issues from the role of women in Rwanda's post-conflict reconciliation; the prevalence of human trafficking and modern slavery; to making human rights work in the 21st century. 

     

    Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy Kathryn Sikkink, ...

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    2019 Sep 10

    Human Rights in Hard Places Speaker Series: The Dismantling of Democracy - Brazil, India, and Turkey

    5:00pm to 6:15pm

    Location: 

    Wexner 434 AB

    The Carr Center’s Human Rights in Hard Places talk series offers unparalleled insights and analysis from the frontlines by human rights practitioners, policy makers, and innovators. Moderated by Sushma Raman, the series highlights current day human rights and humanitarian concerns such as human rights in North Korea, migration on the US-Mexico border, and the dismantling of democracy.

    Justice Luís Roberto Barroso (Carr Center Senior Fellow & Justice of the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil), Ayşe Kadıoğlu ( Carr Center Fellow & Professor of...

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    Jia Xue

    Jia Xue

    Fellow

    Jia Xue is a fifth-year student in SP2’s Ph.D. program in Social Welfare, along with a dual Master’s degree in Statistics in Wharton. Her research is motivated by promoting social justice and improving the well-being of vulnerable individuals and families who are affected by intimate violence. Her career goal of promoting social justice began with her studies in Law School, and an internship in China’s Supreme Court. Her research has focused on intimate violence, dating violence in young adulthood, child abuse and gender-based violence in international and cross-cultural contexts. She has been committed to working collaboratively across multiple disciplines, including social policy, health, criminology and social work. She was a Carr Center Fellow from 2016 to 2017. 

    LinkedIn
    Harvard Profile
    Rubenstein 113
    jia_xue@hks.harvard.edu
    Fighting Terrorism - and the urge to ignore our basic American principles
    Alberto Mora. 8/5/2016. “Fighting Terrorism - and the urge to ignore our basic American principles.” The Washington Post. See full text.Abstract
    Op-Ed by Carr Center Senior Fellow Alberto Mora.
     
     

    In late 2002, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service uncovered evidence that detainees were being abused during interrogations at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Concerned about the lawlessness and the professional incompetence of the interrogators, they sought out a senior attorney in the Defense Department’s office of general counsel. Nothing could be done, the attorney blandly informed them. “The decision has been taken,” he said, “and, anyway, if the public were to find out, no one would care.”

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