Category: American Politics

  • American Democracy and the Crisis of Majority Rule

    What happens when a government begins to restrict voting, violent threats are made against election workers, and an incumbent tries to overturn an election result? According to the international organization Freedom House, such efforts lower your country’s score on the global freedom index, which measures the strength of your democracy. A decade ago, the U.S. […]

  • For the People? Representative Government in America

    It has become commonplace that democracy in the United States faces an existential threat. This belief has gained popular currency in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency, nourished by his conduct in office, the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and continuing efforts to subvert the electoral process. Whether this is true only time will […]

  • How a Cross-border Existence Influenced Journalist and Writer Jean Guerrero

    Journalist Jean Guerrero grew up on the U.S.-Mexico border. Her Puerto Rican mother put herself through medical school and met Guerrero’s Mexican father on her first day in San Diego. Guerrero says she’s always been drawn to cross-border issues having traveled back and forth across the border to Tijuana with her dad. However, Guerrero was […]

  • What’s Behind Racial Resentment?

    “I’m not a racist, but…” This instinct to make judgments about “deservingness” in politics often animates those who believe they are “not racist,” but tend to oppose policies and ideas that advance racial justice, and blame racial-ethnic minorities for their social, political, and economic positions. That is one of the many arguments UC Berkeley Goldman […]

  • Is the Possibility of a Unified Korea Lost?

    Two decades ago, Harold Koh thought he would soon see North and South Korea reunited. Today, the Yale professor who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations says he no longer expects it will happen in his lifetime, if ever. Koh explained why he believes a series of missteps by Presidents George W. Bush […]

  • Robert Reich: Bringing Civility Back to Political Discourse

    Have Americans lost the ability to talk politics? Recent studies show the country is more divided than ever before, and it’s only getting worse. In a lively talk at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, professor Robert Reich outlines what he sees as the main causes of the problem, and how we might be […]