PROGRAM
In the first of a series of events at Roosevelt House, the Social Science Research Council presents a discussion on the current anxieties of democracy. The SSRC has convened an initiative of experts on this subject to explore how representative democracy can be strengthened at a time when there is great concern about whether the country’s core institutions – elections, political parties, legislatures, interest groups, social movements, and mass media – are capable of addressing the great questions of our time.
The focus of this evening will be on political polarization and the divisions that separate citizens and politicians into sharply opposing camps. What are the sources and consequences of today’s distributions of values, opinions, and political behavior?
The conversation will be introduced and moderated by Ira Katznelson, President of the Social Science Research Council and Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University and will feature two leading experts on political polarization, Nolan McCarty, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University’s Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Nathaniel Persily, the Senior Research Director for President Obama’s bipartisan Commission on Election Administration and James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford University.
PRESENTED WITH
SPEAKERS
Nolan McCarty
Nolan McCarty, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University’s Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His latest book, with Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, is Political Bubbles: Financial Crises and the Failure of American Democracy, published by Princeton University Press in 2013.
Nathaniel Persily
Nathaniel Persily is the Senior Research Director for Presidential Commission on Election Administration, and James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford University. He is currently editing a volume on solutions to political polarization that will be published by Cambridge Press later this year.
Ira Katznelson
Ira Katznelson is President of the Social Science Research Council and Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University. His most recent book is Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time, published by Liveright in 2013.