Anxieties of Democracy

2018 Negotiating Agreement in Congress Grantees’ Workshop

On Thursday, October 25 and Friday, October 26, 2018 the second cohort of grantees in the Negotiating Agreement in Congress grants program gathered for a closed workshop at the SSRC headquarters in Brooklyn, NY. The Negotiating Agreement in Congress Research Grants are designed to open a robust field of research that explores various dimensions of political negotiation in the United States Congress. The grants seek to inspire a young cohort of researchers, with diverse backgrounds and expertise, to jointly address the challenges of political negotiation. At this workshop, the second cohort of grantees assembled to present and discuss interim findings. …

Identity, Community, and Political Participation

Identity, Community, and Political Participation  was a two-day research design workshop that took place at Social Science Research Council headquarters in Brooklyn, New York on February 7 and 8, 2019. The workshop convened primarily younger scholars to develop in-progress or planned research projects on how political participation is fundamentally shaped by individual identity and/or community membership (and vice versa). The workshop was organized from an open call for proposals from the Anxieties of Democracy program’s Identity, Community, and Participation working group, whose members provided feedback and commentary on research design presentations. Working group member Adam Seth Levine also presented on how to build …

SSRC-DFG Workshop: “Political Equality in Unequal Societies”

This workshop, held in Villa Vigoni, Italy, continued the partnership between SSRC’s Anxieties of Democracy program and the Democratic Anxieties project supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Topics included problems of inequality in political involvement and representation; institutional performance, constitutional choice and democratic reforms; and the contexts of specific policy environments that make these challenges particularly visible.

“Democracy at a Crossroads” co-sponsored conference

The SSRC proudly co-sponsored the “Democracy at a Crossroads” conference, held in Mexico City, Mexico on October 30-31, 2018. The event was hosted by the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) with support from the SSRC’s Anxieties of Democracy program, Columbia University, and Universidad de Guadalaraja. The conference brought together scholars from Latin America, the United States, and Europe, to discuss popular legitimacy, drugs and security, inequality, populism, and neoliberalism, among other topics.

SSRC-IFS Workshop: “The Will of the People”

This workshop, held at Columbia University, is the fourth in a series of convenings organized as part of a collaboration between the SSRC’s Anxieties of Democracy program and our namesake European partner program, Anxieties of Democracy, at the Swedish Institute for Futures Studies. The workshop explores the idea of popular sovereignty and how to define “the will of the people.” Questions addressed include: What does it mean for the people to be sovereign? What is “the will of the people”?  By what criteria and by whom should this will be ascertained, judged, and acted upon? What is a valid method …

2018 Democratic Erosion Conference

To mark the conclusion of the first year of Democratic Erosion, a cross-institutional collaborative course, a student conference was held at the Watson Institute at Brown University on August 29, 2018. Students at institutions participating in the Democratic Erosion consortium at the time were invited to apply to attend. The conference featured faculty-led seminars on syllabus materials, research presentations from Bright Line Watch and Texas A&M/USAID, breakout sessions and presentations where students generated research designs for projects about democratic erosion, and a debate about contentious issues related to democracy. Meghan Kallman delivered a keynote address on civic engagement. Democratic Erosion is a cross-institutional collaborative course …

Distribution Conference

On February 9th, 2018, the Anxieties of Democracy program’s working group on distribution convened at Yale University. The conference brought our working group members together to explore how changes in the structure of the global economy affect the viability of long settled features of distribution. The conference was organized by the working group’s co-chairs: Frances Rosenbluth, Damon Wells Professor of Political Science at Yale University, and Margaret Weir, Wilson Professor of International and Public Affairs and Political Science at Brown University. The conference was generously supported by Yale’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, and Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies. Conference participants …

Politics of Distribution Conference

On November 30th, 2018, the Anxieties of Democracy program’s working group on the Politics of Distribution will convene at Yale University for the presentation of book chapters. The book chapters will explore many topics, including: the roots of urban-rural sectionalism, perceptions of wealth inequality, and the spatial geography of wealth and precarity in the United States.

Political Institutions and Challenges to Democracy: America in Comparative Perspective

The “Political Institutions and Challenges to Democracy: America in Comparative Perspective” conference, co-organized by the Social Science Research Council’s Anxieties of Democracy program and Stanford University’s Global Populisms project, brought together scholars of comparative and American politics to present research on the role of parties, the legislature, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, and other institutions in moments that challenge democracy. The conference was held in New York City January 31-February 1, 2019. Questions addressed at the conference included: • What role, if any, do democratic institutions play in enabling or exacerbating the growth of antisystem sentiment and/or populist appeals? How do the responses of mainstream parties and politicians affect …

Immigration: The Politics of Inclusion and the Politics of Threat

Immigration: The Politics of Inclusion and the Politics of Threat was a one-day research workshop that took place at Social Science Research Council headquarters in Brooklyn, New York on March 29, 2019. The workshop gathered scholars to address the politics of immigration, with a particular focus on how and why Latin American immigration is politicized (sometimes as virtue and increasingly as threat) in the United States in the contemporary period. Scholars were organized into panels on three themes: Parties, Voter Linkages, and Immigration Politics; Framing Immigrants; and Policies of the State.   Panels and Participants  Parties, Voter Linkages, and Immigration Politics What …

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