The new calendar year has begun with intensity across the United States and globe, and the Edley Center has responded with equal intensity. Edley Center senior fellows have published two new white papers on key issues, linked here. And we are producing additional democracy sustaining convenings, starting today, at which we look forward to your company.

How does the authoritarian threat in the U.S. compare with countries that have suffered democratic backsliding, and how do we determine the answer? Senior Fellow Melissa Hooper explains, in her white paper, Degrees of Freedom: Measuring Democracy in the World and the United States, the various indices used to assess the health of democracies globally as well as domestically, highlighting broad consensus regarding relevant measures for evaluating democracy health as well as the significant danger to American democracy today. This white paper shows that American democracy is declining more rapidly than other backsliding democracies– and the white paper notes that the United States has the resources and capability to stop this slide and produce a democratic “U-turn.”

Federal information collection is essential to governance but can also impose burdens on the public, invade privacy, or enable government overreach. Senior Fellow Seth Galanter’s white paper, Following the Paper Trail: Meaningful Public Participation under the Paperwork Reduction Act, (1) describes the public participation requirements in the Paperwork Reduction Act, (2) details the Trump Administration’s systematic violation of these requirements in circumstances involving contested substantive policies, and (3) explains the democracy harm that follows from failure to ensure statutorily mandated public participation in federal government decision making. The white paper concludes that when agencies treat public participation as a procedural nuisance rather than a democratic necessity, they undermine both the legitimacy and effectiveness of federal information collections – and corrode the foundational principle that ours is a government of laws.

In addition, the Edley Center continues important programming, to which we invite your participation. Today, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Edley Center Faculty Co-Director Dan Farber will discuss Dean Chemerinsky’s new book Campus Speech and Academic Freedom: A Guide for Difficult Times, putting its ideas in context for this time. Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary and Garden Arts bookstore will have the book available for purchase at the event, for anyone interested. And on Wednesday, March 4, we will host a panel titled Combating Public Corruption to Protect & Sustain Democracy: From Watergate to Now & Beyond. This panel will feature Edley Center senior fellows J.P. Cooney and Molly Gaston, former Watergate prosecutor and Berkeley Law Lecturer Emeritus Henry Hecht, and President of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Donald Sherman. We welcome your registration, available at the links above, for and participation in these events – and we look forward to hosting you at future events still to come, as well.

We are grateful to operate alongside you as we, together, protect American democracy.

Onward!

Catherine E. Lhamon

Executive Director