Blog Posts & Articles

This article was originally published by the Princeton University Press. Download a PDF version of this article.

Public statues falling everywhere. Robert E. Lee, Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, and more—memorialized leaders yanked to the ground, no longer heroes to angry crowds demonstrating this summer for racial justice. So which bronze effigies dese…

Once upon a time, many thought the internet would spawn a digital democratic utopia: harmonious, boundary-spanning decision-making, reflecting liberty and equality in a global community of “netizens.” Today, sadly, we witness identity theft, cyber-bu…

Who are your bosses from Hell? Maybe the supervisors so full of themselves you just want to scream—leaders who live large in their own egos, who demand credit for everything, proud and arrogant because, as long as they’re winning, leadership is all a…

“Here in the U.S. we’re so used to a stable democracy that we misinterpret any crisis as imminent collapse. We’re going through a rough patch now, yes—but that’s simply a signal that it’s time to reboot.” The reassuring words I was hearing on my phon…

Put aside the conspiracy theories, latest Trump tweets and wonky wars of healthcare: let’s think bigger picture and longer term—on the future of democracy itself. Is rising populism, anti-government rage, and scorched earth partisanship destroying se…

The January 2017 stock market is showing plenty of optimism, but the political sphere swirls with anxiety. People—of all partisan stripes—worry about our democracy’s decay. Will the political system of freedom and equality as we know it survive? Will…

The question might give you pause, but political pundits are confident and clear: “No, no, no!” Our chattering class scolds the fibs of every Oval Office candidate, usually with ideological fervor. On the right: “Who can trust Hillary Clinton to be P…

3 a.m., somewhere in Iraq, 2005. Two soldiers knock at Stanley McChrystal’s door, seeking permission to launch a risky attack, hundreds of miles away. The four-star commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) sits up, and gives his OK. T…