Democracy Today in the United States: Our Choice, Our Challenges

- Good day everyone. I'm Karen Bonadio, Director of Alumni Relations. I'm delighted to welcome you to today's Alumni Talk Policy webinar, Democracy Today in the United States, Our Choice, Our Challenges. The Alumni Talk Policy webinar series features HKS alumni and panel discussions about pressing public issues. While we cannot meet in person, technology allows us to convene virtually, and we appreciate your patience as we navigate this event remotely. This webinar is being recorded and closed captioning is available. I'm happy to introduce the moderator Kahlil Byrd, MC MPA 2003, founder and CEO of Invest America. We'll kick off today's important and timely discussion. KB.

- Thank you very much. And I really appreciate Karen, you and your team, giving us the opportunity to talk about this subject. So what I'm gonna want us to do is try to do it in a way that isn't the norm. We're not gonna be depressed. This panel has been put together because each of the people have been an action in the preservation restoration and building of the health of democracy. Mostly in the United States, but we're bringing in the international perspective also and I'm excited about that. So let me start out with a quick introduction of our panelists. We have Daniella Ballou-Aares, who is the founder and CEO, she wouldn't want me to stay that, co-founder and CEO of Leadership Now Project. Daniella is not only a graduate of Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard Business School. We also have Rye Barcott who has took his business career and made the decision to co-found with David Gergen, With Honor, which is an organization that is helping to elect next generation veterans to Congress and beyond. And then we also have our good friend, Cathryn Cluver Ashbrook, who graduated from the MBA program in 2010, I think I have that right. And is the CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations. She's also had roles at the Kennedy School in policy and she'll share a little bit about her work here and there. Few statistics and this is the worrying part, Edelman just released its Trust Barometer for 2022. And one of the things they said is that in countries where you have stated democracy, trust levels and institutions in that democracy are low. Trust levels in authoritarian democracies of their particular countries are higher. That should disturb all of us, especially at the time when younger people are not as attached to the democratic values that we have been trained in for a long time. We'll talk about that. What we know is that, that in the United States context, only 37% of the people based on the new Axios poll, have faith in American democracy. And our good friend, John Della Volpe, who is the polling director at the Kennedy School and the IOP, and also is one of the world's experts in how younger people are thinking about this. What we know is that there was a much higher turnout of young people with regards to the last election. And, but the challenge is their lack of trust in institutions leadership, is creating a different kind of politics in the United States that is challenging us. So this is a vital conversation. Personal note, I came from the Kennedy School graduation, my start in politics was being the communications for Deval Patrick's winning campaign for governor in 2005. It's nice to win on your first election. 10 years ago, I ran a $50 million organization with the goal of creating an alternative to the nominating processes of the Republican and Democrats in putting a bi-partisan ticket on the ballot, presidential ballot in 2012. I wouldn't have called myself a democracy reformer, but that was the beginning of what has been a long path in this particular field. Tow disclosures, I'm a member of the New York committee for leadership now, and I worked really hard there and I'm also on the board of With Honor. Hopefully Cathryn and I, and we have our conflicts, but hopefully we will be friends going forward. So we're gonna start out this way, on both grounding us and where we are, but also on a hopeful note. So Daniella Ballou-Aares of Leadership Now, is going to talk about her organization of business leaders, focused on democracy. And also give us the state of replay based on the research and insights that they're creating Leadership Now.

- Great, thank you. Thanks so much KB and thanks to everyone for being here today. I couldn't be more timely, for good or for bad to be having this conversation. The quick snapshot on Leadership Now. We're an organization founded in 2017 of business and thought leaders committed to renewing American democracy, protecting it. Unfortunately, the protecting part has been a big part of our work over the last several years and our members do three, and we're really focused on empowering our members to be leaders as citizens in their companies and beyond in their networks on these issues. We do two things, we work with academics, we started with Harvard academics, Michael Porter, or David Gergen or others, and now academics across the country, to get our members smart on the issues and really understand what's at stake. We organize our members around issues and advocacy on the political side, whether that's pushing back on state level legislation in Texas against voting rights, or pursuing federal legislation on these issues, and we help our members make better investments of their time and money for democracy. I won't go into too much stuff. I will say, you know, as KB, member, our founding member group was our business school and Kennedy School alums and now, so there's a strong grounding in building on the Harvard networks and the academic work, but now we've grown much more. So we have relationships with 10 universities across the country, from University of Texas, to Stanford and others, to give that grounding to our members in the alumni. And we've really seen significant action, starting in 2020 of our members as public voices in the business press and beyond around the importance of democracy and how we need to respond. So I'm gonna share a few stats around where we are right now and what we're seeing and all of our panelists have lots of depth to bring to this discussion about the state of play. So, I always like to start with some data, right? So look, the reality is our democracy is in trouble. I do think there's hopeful paths, which we'll talk about, but I think grounding in the data as Katie started to speak to, we do have 17% of Americans who, only 17% really have a deep trust in government. A third of Americans believe there was voter fraud and the election in 2020. And number that has remained sticky since January 6th, effectively, we had the most money ever spent in political races in the 2020 cycle, 14 billion and America's standing as a democracy globally continues to slip by multiple rankings. And there's many factors you can look at on this, none of which show the whole picture alone. I'll do a few. so the left hand side, there is the trust data from Pew, you'll see if you go back even further back to the sixties, we were up at 60 or 70%, but we continue to see decline today and a little bit of an uptick, in a week, and then secondarily, the second chart, looks at the relationship between adoption of policies and what the general public like. So the blue line shows the correlation between what would effectively be kind of a lead preferences and public policy. And the potential that it's adopted, the yellow line is kind of general public preferences. And essentially what it says is there's no correlation between public preferences and the adoption of policy. And that's been the case for the last, this is from 2015 data. So people are frustrated, they don't trust the system to deliver for them. And we're seeing this kind of growing polarization in Congress, right? So this chart kind of dynamically looks at the kind of median Democrat versus median Republican in Congress and their positions. And going back, you would have had a lot more overlap, but now we see that there's this kind of growing divide and it would be even further with most recent data. And we're seeing kind of this growing, I think, significant trend of disinformation that's undermining the system. One of those examples was around the 2020 election. There was just kind of, sorry, this might be animated. There was really deliberate efforts to discredit the election. We saw that, we worked a lot with the business community to try to kind of tamp down the kind of questions about the legitimacy of the election. And we saw a lot of convergence around, okay, this is legitimate election, business will stand for it. Unfortunately, we're seeing a lot of fraying of that agreement as we come now. And so one of the things we do, is try to really empower our members and our partners around what are really, if we go down another level, what is actually going on in democracy? How did state rank? We ranked, so I'm flipping up here Texas, which is a D from the rankings we've done. We look at voting electoral systems campaign finance, but you know, I will know New York is a C, right? So this isn't, you know, when you dig into the data, it's not an underlying factors. They're not purely red or blue state, but there are many factors that are making democracy not function in terms of some of the core underlying voting electoral system design. And the last I'll just leave with, we overall see an opportunity for business to engage. Not only because business is always doing the right thing, sometimes it's doing the wrong thing, like funding of election of directors in Congress, but also because the business and business people are a trusted group in this society and are concerned and have a particular obligation to be part of fixing it. So hand it back to you, KB, but look forward to this conversation.

- Thank you. And remember, we'll have Q and A at the bottom of the hour, maybe 35 after. So we have some questions, but want to encourage you to join the conversation. So here's the bio part that I held for this point for Rye Barcott. Well Rye is a next generation veteran, having been served in Iraq himself, he is a Marine, not a retired Marine. Retired never comes into it with that branch of the service. He did create an energy fund and has a very strong background as a social entrepreneur. But Rye and I got to know each other when I read his book and we were introduced and he began to build With Honor, which was an idea that had not been pulled off at the scale which he is making it work. So Rye, please take it away.

- Hey, thanks so much KB and great to be here with you with Daniella. Who's a trusted colleague and the Kennedy School, who I really, the school was such an enabler for me throughout my life as a social entrepreneur post Marine Corps. I'll just take a moment and talk a little bit about With Honor and how we think about this kind of moment in time. And then look forward to hear from Cathryn and open it up for the discussion. With Honor, is a cross partisan organization. I co-founded it with David Gergen and another veteran that I'd served with in the Marine Corps about five years ago. Our mission is really focused on polarization in Congress, a very difficult program problem and as Daniella's slides illustrate one that is, I believe over the last five years, gotten worse, not better. Despite our efforts though, I do believe our efforts are a part of a important constructive piece to doing better as a country, because if our Congress continues in the way that it is, all of our lives are really at stake. So what we do, is we focus on finding the common ground, and we do that by using the one affiliation that still is a public affiliation and has rising trust across political tribal lines and that is a service in uniform. And so we work with veterans from both parties, we are strictly bi-partisan. We invest capital 50, 50 across party lines and over the last five years, we've helped build a caucus in Congress that is in the house and meets every two weeks, called the four country caucus. Those are members who are veterans who have trust across party lines and we take a pledge the With Honor pledge, to serve with integrity, civility and courage. And as an organization, we have accountability and so far as we look at bi-partisan scores, we look at participation in the caucus, and then about 60% of our organization is really policy focused and working with those members in that caucus to actually pass laws. And I've been really pleased with the progress, a lot of actions that you what might not necessarily read about in Congress but are really constructive in areas that are critically important. Over 21 laws passed this last year, about a half a dozen of which focused in AI, a major initiative was advancing an expansion of AmeriCorps, which we saw at the beginning of the year, worked really closely with veteran service organizations and another organization led by another HKS alum, voices for national service, and it actually got done. And so I think that's the sort of silver lining, is that there are still relationships that are holding together that are cemented in trust and that we need as we carry forward, both in the short term and the longterm in Congress. So I appreciate being here with you all today. This organization certainly would not exist without the Kennedy School. We've also benefited from some of the business school's involvement, Jan Rivkin and Michael Porter and others that have taken an active interest in getting more involved. And we need more people involved, just being involved, whether they're business leaders or normal citizens, et cetera. It's easy to be apathetic. KB, over to you.

- Thank you. So these are two examples in the U.S. context of organizations where we're actually recruiting people to serve in the, you need to learn that takes courage, especially to operate in a bi-partisan context and especially at this moment. And to be one of the bulwarks of democracy is a difficult thing. You started having very interesting conversations with Cathryn and as you read her work, to talk about how Europeans are viewing the United States. And I know that's a very selfish, self-centered American approach. How do you, what do you think about me enough about me? And also about me, what do you think about me? But we're at a moment right now with having stepped off the stage and being in trouble, where Europe knows that it has a significant position with regards to this conversation and action around democracy. And we could name all the examples, we've got a lot of smart folks, or some of us who were part of the us council on foreign relations, and that that's been a very important part of our lives. We'd love to know more about the German Council of Foreign Relations and your particular view of democracy from your seat.

- Well, KB, thank you. You think that a foreign policy organization need not necessarily think about the roots, the fundaments, the tenacity, the structure of democracies around the world, but rather how these democracies relate to one another. But we find ourselves obviously at a very precarious moment. If we look at the events, at the Russian-Ukrainian border, the fact that we might have some variant of a land war or land conflict at the heart of Europe and this is particularly salient, I think to people in my generation. And as you mentioned, I ran for 11 years with Nicholas Burns, at the Kennedy School of the future of diplomacy project, it's salient because I grew up in a divided continent. I was born in Germany and in American Military Hospital in 1976. And through out my lifetime, I became part of a unified country when I was 13. And you thought that, German-Americans of my generation all Americans and Germans thought that, as Francis Fukuyama basically formulated, we would be heading toward the end of history or as our colleagues at Harvard, Sam Huntington and others formulated, there would be the third wave of democracy and all would be well. And we would be looking down a long sunshiny road of a clearer system hegemony that is democracy because it provides, economic security and stability and innovative capacities and so forth. And now, as you've noted, that's no longer the case and it starts with the belief that people have in what makes an effective and efficient system. And so as the crisis of democracy is played out on January 6th, across German television screens and across European television screens, was particularly rife, because of course the strong historic connection, Europe-Poland free would have never been possible without the U.S. commitment to the continent. The kind of economic and political success that particularly my home country Germany has, had for the past 70 years, the export champion of the world would not have been possible, without the American security umbrella. And yet now we're looking down the road and I think Daniella's presentation made it clear that potentially in two years or two and a half years, with this next election, with the shifts at the state and federal level in the electoral system, if there's a big question mark, behind the integrity and functionality of the United States as a democratic system. And then if you look at what are the foundational acts of the multilateral system that we have thrived under and within, if you've read the preamble to the Washington Treaty of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, that's absolutely vital right now in preventing, again, this conflict, possible conflict, right at the heart of Europe. It is that each member country be a democracy. And that's also enshrined in Article 2, of the NATO Treaty. And of course, we've also, the Europeans have been violators to a certain degree over these last few years. Poland, Hungary, if you look at the freedom house index, they have been slipping down very quickly. Also other countries, the Czech Republic has been in play, because the freedom house cause Hungary a transitional hybrid regime. And when it thinks about hybrid, that means it's moving into the authoritarians space. But the division lines, are once again, the way that we encountered them in the Cold War and the way that I grew up looking at the world, between autocracy, autocracies now and democracies. And the bigger component of course, is that now we're facing an even more dangerous precarious worlds, because we have the big power competitions between the three large players United States, China and then of course now, Russia, muscling in in the way that it is, to remind us of what it is still capable of, China, the strategic power, Russia, the tactical power at the heart of Europe, but nonetheless dangerous. But of course, China now for the first time in a position in the way that the Soviet Union wasn't because it has the economic strengths behind it. And that's, what's oddly winning over to your point, exactly the minds of young people, for instance, in certain parts of Europe, because China is in these countries, is investing in these countries, through the belt and road initiative, is bringing economic prosperity at a speed that democracies can not seemingly deliver sufficiently. And so there's a moment of danger here that we haven't seen in over the recent sort of historic developments, where the fusion of democracy and liberal capitalism has been starkly applied, or it has been met with the ability of authoritarianism to also, or autocratic structures, to also deploy the economic weaponry. The Soviet Union certainly, wasn't able to do that. And that's where the real danger moment comes. And that's why you've seen weakened democracies in Europe be effected by that. So what do we do at the German Council on Foreign Relations? A, we look at these developments, we link them to foreign policy and foreign policy action. We work on the kind of tools that might be proffered to counter that. And so we've seen at the heart of the European Union, some firmer action taken against the backsliding. In fact, Hungary and Poland and other countries are paying fines. Poland is paying a fine or supposedly paying fines for dismantling its rule of law on the inside so that the European Union has come to the point, arguably too slow, at defending its own democratic infrastructure internally by forcing quote-unquote countries to pay up or change and slash change back. So that's what we do with the German Council on Foreign Relations, but it's really very much an extension of the work that I did at the Kennedy School. And I'm delighted to see colleagues and classmates on this call and to go deeper into the sematic conversation this evening. Thank you, KB.

- That's terrific. I think I've got time to just do some quick hit questions for each of our panelists, and we want folks to be ready to spit a come back out with their own questions in the Q and A session, talking about 35 after, if not sooner. So let me start with Daniella. One of the questions that came in early is, what can people actually do on the ground to be helpful? What are the fights that, and what we know about leadership now is that it's organized around regions, in some cases, strong cities, but you use some of your strongest chapters, are Wisconsin, Texas, and other places. How are you thinking about your members doing work on the ground and give us a couple of examples of where business leaders have really stepped up over the last couple of years under democracy firm.

- Absolutely look, there is a lot happening at the local level right now. And it's something that I think there's so much opportunity for engagement. So let me just talk about kind of, you know, the different ways that we think about political engagement, right? So there's money, right? Whether small contributions or large contributions, it's actually mostly of what the political system asks you to do, it asks you to put money. There's a need for money to work on issues of whether it's turning out voters, helping support strong members of Congress, et cetera. I'm not saying there's no need for money. However, there's money alone is not gonna go out and get us out of this mess. And so overall, when we think about what does it mean to be engaged as a citizen? You know, the very basics of engagement are engaging at your local level, right? So that means whether you decide to show up at a school board meeting, or to start to understand what the local structures are for a town council. We have members who are on their town councils, who had never been engaged in their kind of local politics before. And we're seeing a lot of fights right now happening at the local level around, everything from who runs for election administrators in their state or community, to who kind of oversees the overall election process, which is Secretaries of State. So I'm really encouraging people to really start to dig in and understand what their local political structures, who represents you in your state legislature, who represents you locally, et cetera. You can meet with your legislature. You can meet with the person who represents you. So whether that means someone running for office or just participating locally. I think second is really knowing, we really work with our members to know what their agenda is. And so our agenda has really been on the core of democracy, you know, and I'll give an example, in Texas one of our members is a senior executive at a company there she's also on the greater Houston Partnership, which is like the chamber at Houston. And she's really been a leader in getting the business community to both engage on voting legislation that was occurring at a state level and making their position known that access to vote was really important, as well as doing things like giving time off for voting for employees. But, there are things you can do if you have a broader platform, I like that. But even as an individual, you playing a role in your local community, can be really important. And I think many issues are important, whether it's climate change, racial equity, et cetera. But I do think if we lose whatever issue you care about, if you can also make part of your focus, we work with climate groups, for instance, part of the focus as a functioning democracy, we can't get good legislation unless we have a functioning democracy, start bringing that issue to the table locally, or with others, your groups you're involved in.

- Thank you. Rye, I'm gonna come to you. Look, nobody believes that bipartisan is possible. And then every once in awhile an infrastructure bill will pass and people will be puzzled at how that could happen. But the four country caucus supported by With Honor, has to work in that way, which is tough. So talk about getting policy done, talk about the strains that there are a members trying to hold the line as they're meeting every two weeks. And what kinds of things that you're trying to move over the line over the next year? Sorry, you're on mute.

- Thanks KB. Daniella started by showing us some data. There's an Axios article that came out today that that looks at the intensity of impressions around members of Congress. And it also illustrates just the challenges of this problem. The top 10 are the biggest bomb throwers. They're the ones that attract the attention, you know, in journalism, there's the saying, if it bleeds, it leads. So it's attracting not only attention, but then this small dollar mechanism, which is reinforcing bad behavior. And we're trying to be a ballast in this space, like with most productivity in life that happens around teams and diverse teams. It does come down to trust and trust is hard. It can be undermined very quickly, it often takes a lot of time to build, it takes in person, which COVID further complicated and the structures are really flawed from the very beginning. So in the first hundred days of a new member to Congress, there are about six of those hundred days where they're actually together with members from the other political party. A couple of those happened to be a Harvard tie through the Harvard Kennedy School Program. If the members show up, and we've had more challenges in recent years, getting GOP members, they're in the same level of volume as.

- Run by our friend David King, Rye, I can't have a client talking about it.

- Yeah, like really helpful. I mean, I remember two years ago, COVID derailed one last year, I believe. But two years ago, I remember sitting in this meeting and two of the members that were talking to each other across party lines, and there was another member that wasn't there. And I just thought to myself, if they were actually there, the Twitter world would not have happened before they at least talk to each other in face-to-face. Because once you shoot at each other in Twitter, it's good luck getting anything done. So going back to your question of really, how do we do it? It's takes a lot of effort, it takes some accountability, it's not just, you sign the pledge, you forget about it. You sign the pledge every two years, you look at what your bi-partisan score is. Do you show up to 80% of the meetings? We watch what's being posted on Twitter, if you're starting to cross that subjective line of civility, we pick up the phone and make a phone call. We let people leave the group. If they're not conforming to the norm, because that's a really important piece to it. And what we found is that you still have, it goes back to that old Margaret Mead quote, that now like McKinsey and all these other companies are borrowing of the power of a small group. When you do have cohesion, can get a lot done, especially in a polarized environment. I'm not saying it's the silver bullet, but I am saying that there's some hope for optimism and the members themselves matter. Leadership still matters, the sort of individuals matter. You have to address structural problems, but we also need leadership. And so that's our approach and our sort of slice of the pie where we're only in the house right now, we're only with military vets, but with time potentially, we're able to branch into other forms of service. And we do a lot of work on with specific Senate offices to actually pass legislation for the country.

- And David Gergen is highly highly involved with both organizations here. So Cathryn, this is what your task is, as we wanna get to the questions that the audience, we've got some building up here. We're gonna ask you to sum up world history in just a couple of minutes. And the question, one of the questions that came through is, are there examples that you can point to, of countries that were entrenched in authoritarianism or worse, that have been able to make the steps toward, or their countries you're staying now where you're hopeful, especially within the context of the EU and NATO?

- Well, I mean the obvious examples, and we're seeing this literally play out every day with new promises made to increase the commitment to strengthening, particularly the NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are the Baltic countries, right? Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, our hosts to Forward Presence troops, that are not of their own nationalities, which is to say Enhanced Forward Presence is a mission that's been in C2, on a rotating basis with American and Canadian participation for a number of years, sort of holding the line. And I think you will be hard pressed to find more westernized former Eastern block countries than the Baltics. And that is a very stable and steady democratic transformation. However, Poland, as much as of course they are transatlanticists, they are, in fact, if you will, more transatlanticists than they are pro European, because you've really seen, and I remember a trip to Poland about six years ago when they had just decided to remove the EU flag from every official building. That was sort of the death by a thousand cuts and then the rapid dismantling of Polish democracy to where we are now, I think is in a really precarious position. But because I need to leave you on a hopeful note as we go into a Q and A, and because Daniella noted and Rye also, the power of the local and the power of surfacing what works and connections that work. We have a Hungarian election coming up in early April, 2022. And despite the fact that Viktor Orbán dances large across that country, such that, the conservative action committee wants to hold a summit there because he is now a revered leader. I mean, the perversity of that I'll let that go, but Viktor Orbán has become a figurehead for American conservatives, extremely tricky in my mind. But that being said, he's facing an opposition by the mayor of Budapest who has had well, had over the pandemic, but that really, it became something that was very much stepped up, part of the vision grad for mayors, which is to say, mayors from Eastern European countries that bound together in particularly this resource crunch around the pandemic where national governments were denying them, the big liberal cities at the pulsating hearts of these transforming backsliding countries had organized together on what's up on American technology, to really deliver services for their citizens. And that made the mayor Budapest, a household name across the country, such that he is now in a position to be running against Viktor Orbán and his numbers don't look too, too bad, not at this moment in time. So looking back at Daniella's slides, if 17% of Americans only two trust in their government and Congress, trust in Congress has been consistently backsliding where we always see hope, is in the local level and interest in our mayors and our local authorities and that is true across the Western World. So if we need a narrative that strings people's lives together, that makes clear what community means. That is something that I think in the west unites us in our common humanity. So if we're having a bad day, that's where we need to look, but then that's also, again, the call to action. I think that you've so usefully underlined, we need to start always in front of our doorstep, our front door.

- It's a great, great summary. Karen, I think that you're gonna help with the calling out of questions for individuals. Let me know, I've been sort of monitoring some of the questions and ready to sum up, but do we have anybody who's ready to step to the mic.

- We would like to promote Wei, to ask the first question he asked it in the, or excuse me, Wei to ask the first question, who asked it in the chat? I see them, if you'd like to turn on your video and turn on your mic.

- Hi. Hello everyone. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I want to thank you for just this talk it seems really in time. I have had discussion with many friends locally here, I'm in Houston, I belong to a local club, a Harvard club here. I was with the JFK and 2011 and then business school, 2018. I guess, I want to first I made a comment about, thanks for Cathryn and mentioning about China. Democracy is about United States, the light of the world and I'm originally from China as well I know, you know what happened to Soviet Union and become Russia now, and then with China is number two world economy and there's so many people talk about, what's the future of China, right? Then we look at Soviet Union, maybe it's today's China, but what about Russia today? Is it look better? Or United States democracy is any better. So the last election, I mean the whole world are not whole world, at least Chinese people have think, wow, that's definitely not the solution. And so the discussion about the future of emergence diplomacy, really a lot of Chinese or people like me in this country care about, not just America, but also future maybe for China and other people. And so the problem that recently I heard from Andrew Yang, you know, who are they? A presidential candidate, 2020. So he talked about the democracy problem, is a two party system and make the people are become extreme on both ends. And right now, so many people feel they could not trues any candidate, they can only choose a so-called the second worst, right? And so Andrew Yang asked about maybe third party, independent party. So people who have reasonable mindset like you and me, who think reasonably and maybe to how or motivate or whatever, make the candidates do something reasonable. He used the example in Alaska, there's a Senator, she voted against the Trump. The reason she did that, according to Andrew Yang, that Alaska had made election reform, so that she would not risk her own election in terms of her decision. So what do you think about having another party in the United States? Because seems like two parties system, maybe into some dilemma and then according to constitution.

- Wait, I'm gonna go ahead and summarize it into two questions because I want our panelists to get in here. I really appreciate it. So Daniella talk about the seduction of a potential two party system. And I think one of the questions I'll pass it, from Daniella to Cathryn is, is there a post democracy, democratic system that we can imagine that we should be envisioning? So Daniella, why don't you start out with third parties in the U.S.

- Look, it's a good question. I'm gonna give an answer that's maybe like not totally satisfying on this, which is we have seen, what we facing right now is both a systems challenge and a talent problem, right? Like we definitely need fixes to the system, right? So some of what Andrew's talking about, is like introducing ranked choice voting, into the system that allows for more flexibility for third-party candidates or dependence. And I think there's, and then things like gerrymandering is another area that's creating all kinds of polarization. There are very significant systemic reforms that we need to kind of address this challenge and like counter the extremes. But I also think like the reality is, is we don't have time to fix all of that, before we kind of make sure we have the right, like people and talent in the system making decisions. And that's gonna happen through a mix of getting good people into the democratic and Republican party who are like courageous and committed. And the type of work Rye is doing, that are willing to kind of represent a broader base for either party. Cause right now the primaries, primaries are a huge issue. You get the extreme showing up and you get extremes kind of representing. So I'm not opposed to the idea of a third party emerging, but at the end of the day parties or factions of parties, which we have right now, we have, a Trumpist faction, the Republican party, we have a progressive faction, the democratic party, building factions of parties or building a new party is really about organizing people against a goal. And so it's not a theoretical thing, like I think efforts to kind of build, potentially third parties, et cetera, should be tested, right? And people should go and start building that, but there's also the path of building stronger, elements of the Democratic and Republican party who are more courageous, more committed to representing a broader base of the public that I think has to be pursued at the same time.

- So Cathryn, one of the things that our question came through, I'll combine ways inquiry to someone else is we don't actually live in democracies, United States is a Republic, it's a representative democracy and people don't trust their representatives right now, or we don't trust them as much as we did before. And the question is, as younger people are putting pressure on leadership and thinking about things in different ways and perhaps sometimes going in directions that make us uncomfortable. Should we be thinking about experiments around democracy, will it look different than 50 years than it does now?

- This is where I would love to have the MBA class of 2010 lining up behind me as we might do in a forum event, because this is where I would get out of the way and let my Austrian classmates, it was a flinch who works on innovation and democracies come into the conversation, because he looked very clearly at, or his organization has looked at exactly what is happening in the party political space, particularly in multi-party democracies. You starting with his native Austria, where you did have a sort of midway party spring up, neo's out of nothing, a sort of liberal economic party that platformed on this idea of how you recapitalize on the idea of combining participatory democracy. So similar to what you, remind me and my colleague in France to launch his party, which is to do effectively in some regard, what Daniella and Rye's organizations, which is to go take the problems, the big questions to the people, feed that back, build your platform around that and then with having done that active listening and connecting go forth and make plans. That same structure has worked in a number of countries in Europe, the fact of the matter, and that's why the French election in April will be so interesting, is that's worked for a time. And so I think to get to your question is, are there experiments happening in democracy in places of established and resilient democracies? Absolutely they are. Are they sufficient to kind of push democracy or the development of democracy forward such that that takes root, that works towards cementing democracy. Is another question. My great concern is if that's true, what you're postulating KB ,is that, we have a whole new generation of Democrats, and in terms of democracy, not Democrats, in terms of the party coming up and bringing up the rear that will be feeders for your organizations that we're discussing today, then that's wonderful. In the context of the United States, because of the system, you never saw on the chair that builds your own power, that supports your own power. And that's why, when Europeans or Germans asked me, my God gerrymandering and election officials, you just have to have the federal government takeover and get rid of all that. Well, that takes, you know, the change we know it takes. And so that there's a bizarre greed for power that's playing out. I think in the most perverse sense in American democracy right now, is tricky and really difficult. And I think then again, in the European context, what worries me, is that there you have a whole generation of young people it's in the work of my good Harvard colleague who was at Harvard for a long time, is now at Johns Hopkins. Now, of course I'm having, oh yes, a monk. You know, who has said, look, there are generations of men, 30 and under who think why not embrace an authoritarian or more often tarian system, seems to work real well and "create the efficiencies we need to move forward." And it's not ideological and Oxford has done research on this as well. Some of them others, it's not ideological, it's based around business efficiencies, effectiveness, and efficiencies in systems delivery. And so I do think in that sense, president Biden, is truly onto something when he leans into that and connects that into the foreign policy for the middle class bit, because that is the narrative, that practical narrative that we're gonna have to take forward, both here and there, but in Western style democracies to make that sticky again, for the generations that come after us.

- Thank you so much, Karen. I think we have another question.

- [Karen] Yes and please remember that all questions end in a question, mark. Next question comes from Lucy.

- Unmute. Hi, KB.

- Hi, Lucy.

- So a couple of quick comments and then a question and thank you all for putting in the time to do this.

- Hopefully, is quick as possible. We've got about four people we wanna get them.

- Get, got it, got it. And time, is ticktocking. in terms of bad news, of what's knocking down democracy, both in the United States and internationally, just a couple of other things, one is the polarization of wealth, we know that any time that there's an expector class that is sucking up all the resources and the more that income inequality grows, the less democracy thrives, that's one. The second is the presence of a political party without a platform, but instead is organized around identity, which is what, unfortunately, too much of the other Republican parties now morphing into right now. They don't have a platform, they won't say what they're for, but all they are about is some amorphous sense of frankly, white supremacy, identity politics. The third thing I would say, however, as a counterbalance to that, I think that while everybody's having fun beating up on the U.S. We are probably the first place on earth that is really trying to make a play at becoming a multiracial-multicultural democracy, really for the first time. And our history here, it has been every time that we've tried to expand the franchise really, and to expand participation in democracy, really, it is always been met with violent backlash against abolitionism.

- So Lucy, I just wanna, we got the point, so lets get the question.

- So the question that I have is, what do I do living in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where every elected official that I have access to is solidly in the camp of doing pro democracy development, so working at the community level is just redundant. What does a politically engaged activists in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts do to try to help in Texas or North Dakota or the Carolinas?

- Rye Barcott, help us coastal elites out a little bit. Yeah, you know, what do we need to do to, and what is being done to have real conversations in the real world?

- Yeah, definitely. Thanks for the question. I mean, listen, it's hard, but you gotta take active steps to bust out of the bubble in your own bubble, we're all prisoners of our own respective and just try and form those relationships. I think one of the most helpful ways just on a practical level is to think about, family members, if you have family members that have thought differently from you and maybe go down that turf in a way that's personal and you can do it in person and take a walk and just try and understand each other. It takes time, it takes effort to invest in that. That's why I think starting with somebody that you already have some trusts with, is probably helpful, but there's no silver bullet. I do think that there's, we are on this trajectory where, if we just keep shutting down the conversations, which is easier to do in society given the technologies that we now use to communicate, we can be going down a really, we're going down a pretty perilous path if we don't figure out some conversations that's gonna start locally. So I don't have a great answer for you other than to work on it, both in a personal way and then get me to get involved with organizations, whether they're, non-partisan, bi-partisan organizations that are just to try and find some of that common ground, and then start with the common ground, use that to build some trust and see where you can go from there.

- Let's talk about that because they should, now Daniella has a program of identifying candidates and issues. How do you do that, for your membership is all over the country?

- And look, one thing I just wanna suggest is, I think one of the things politics has lost in a big way, is that like really organized constituencies are kind of have been the heart of politics, right? So whether that's environmental groups, whether it's a local, whether those are organized by geography, by issue, by profession, by affiliation, right? So, I would think about, you don't have, you know, geography isn't the only access that you can be organized around, right? So really thinking about, we're really, we're seeing emergence of more, and historically you have like the NAACP and Labor Unions and others common cause, I mean, I think it's a great organization, is present across the country. You could join and participate, I think. The other thing is we're seeing alumni, part of what we've looked at and part of what we're doing is organizing alumni networks. There's a group called, Crimson Goes Blue, which is Harvard alums, who are Democrats and organizing together and supporting across the country different candidates and causes, et cetera. I think using your various affiliations both to organize, and there's great women's groups also that are working on these issues. So I feel like that's the heart of what we need, is a lot more organizing and a lot more engagement and getting smart together with like minded people and that doesn't have to be only by geography.

- Thank you. Next question, Karen.

- [Karen] Next question from Jovan.

- And Joe we're running out of time. So if you could, let's get in there in and out, pretty quickly if you don't mind.

- Yeah, sure. I will be really brief and, can you hear me, yes?

- Yup.

- Yeah, so when regards from Belgrade Serbia and I have questions to my classmates, Cathryn, we graduated in 2010 MPA program. And in the meantime I was to be an ambassador to Indonesia and also a member of Serbian parliament. And since she knows very well, well the U.S. foreign policy and EU foreign policy, can you visit a concerted U.S.A approach towards the authoritarian regimes, especially in Europe, you can get countries having in mind the changes in the German government and having novel traffic lights coalition. So do we expect any changes in German Foreign Policy, particularly in this authoritarian Balkan countries like Serbia with significant, Chinese and Russian foot hold or geopolitical issues would still prevail, because such a the bureaucracy approach, not based on fundamentally European values has been contributing to raising euro skepticism in this candidate countries and have opened additional room for these other geopolitical actors.

- I'm gonna make it as fast as possible with KB. Thank you, Jovan. It's so good to see you and be in this conversation virtually. I think, very quickly, I think very concretely, the German traffic light coalition, has of course vowed to lean into this issue more actively, and one way to do that and I'm just gonna give you this one little nugget and you're very aware of this anyway, but it's might be worth sharing in the context of this conversation, is that the European union gave itself at the end of December, a beefed up way to push back against the Belt and Road Initiative, because we know that BRI funding comes with a narrative around how China is going to, or China will steer the kind of investments in critical infrastructure and then claw back value. And with global gateway with 300 billion euros on the table, there are ways in which there are a number of projects where you could connect American infrastructure ambitions and American development dollars with that kind of plan. So I have argued in another piece that I just wrote for "America's" a very short piece, that deals with China policy primarily, that that is one of the areas, which early in 2022, you need to put legs below it, below that initiative, because you're absolutely right. The perception of investment in Western Balkan countries of Chinese and Russian money, versus what the European union has actually pumped into the development of Western Balkan countries, is of course fully akimbo and that needs to be corrected. And one of the ways that it can do that more stringently, is by realigning priorities and bringing both sides of that transatlantic piece in line. I don't think it's going to be enough. I worry it's not gonna be fast enough given how distracted we are by the current crisis, but that would be a very concrete, initial way in which you do it, certainly in the first six months of the year ahead.

- So we're getting close to the top of the hour, the team, and I know Rick you're up with a question. The team has said that if any of the panelists want to stick around for a few minutes, that we can go over a bit, but we're gonna end on time. So this is what I'm gonna do. I wanna direct a quick question to Rye and a quick question to Daniella. To Rye, my classmates, Jim Craig, who is also a veteran said, he's disturbed by the idea that we are elevating military service above other types of service in the country. And, you know, With Honor has been involved with the mash and service piece. You mentioned this a little bit, but I want you to dig in on this just a little bit. And for Daniella, what I'm hoping is that, you can actually amplify it in a question and then the chat and talk a bit about what Lucy was talking about. We're a messy country, that's struggling with diversity. The question is, do we have a cultural challenge with regards to holding our democracy? And in the end, is that a challenge a good thing? So, Rye, why don't you go first?

- Yeah, thanks KB. Listen, I think the main point to emphasize is that, service is difficult and the most effective leaders in politics, which is a tiring and often unforgiving job, are service oriented. They have egos. Okay, they are willing to, they are not purely selfless, but they are there to serve. And when you've taken an oath and to give up to, and including your life, if called to do so, that is a bind that is extremely strong and unique in service. And that's where military veterans come from. We also really applaud and look for other avenues to advance a service in the country. It's one of the few issues that has widespread bipartisan support, to increase service among our young people in particular, give them something larger to work on and think about them themselves at an early age. It's much like voting. If you start voting early, you're more likely to be engaged throughout your entire life. If you start serving early, you're more likely to be engaged in service. And so this is sort of the continuum. And then in Congress, the percentage of veterans has declined from around 70% to where it is now around 20%. So it's not just about veterans, it's about the typo and the quality and caliber of those individuals, but that's a great starting point. That's the one that we've chosen to, to get up and off the ground and supporting these 26 members. So back over to you Daniella.

- One minute for you Daniella.

- Thanks. Look, I think one of the foundational cultural problems that we face, which relates to what Rye talking about, and which is why we all went to the Kennedy School, is that, the faith in public servants is so low. Political leaders are rated extremely low in faith by the American public and so few people want to enter public service and politics because of how ugly they feel it is. And fundamentally, I mean, I think all of us as alumni of the Kennedy School, believe in the value of service. I think there is... If we have to do some things to restore that sense of, you have an obligation to your country and your community. We have so many people who feel detached from that right now. And that holds whether you're a veteran, whether you're in business, whether you're a teacher, whether you're a doctor, whether you're someone who's been left out of this system, wholly, the irony is that I find even those who have privilege and education and power, also feel left out of the system. So if we can restore that in small ways and large ways and as quickly as possible in some quarters, I think that can get us in the right direction.

- Cathryn, last word we're over time. Next five years, are we challenged in regards to democracy and the trend line across the world, or are we gonna go into a Renaissance?

- We're absolutely challenged, but we need to accept the challenge. We need to see the challenge. We're really taking downtime, I'm talking about 24 months here. And I made that point in an op-ed that I wrote to the German public, about American democracy. Because again, the health of American democracy is what holds every other multilateral institution together. So the time is taking the time to flip the switch to your point about the Renaissance has to be now, but unless people understand the threat that we face, very clearly and very acutely and Russia is helping us understand that. Then I am fearful that we're not going to meet that challenge in the time that is facing away from us. So if there's any good in the precarious international situation we find ourselves in is perhaps to have that focus become more crystallized.

- Thank you, Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook. Thank you, Rye Barcott. Thank you, Daniella Ballou-Aares. Karen, any last words?

- Yes, I just wanna thank you all for joining us today and thank you for all the alumni who participated. We hope you enjoy today's discussion. I know there's was lot of questions in the chat that we didn't quite get to, so we understand that this is a to be continued conversation. We look forward to keeping all our alumni engaged in future months, and please save the date for our next Alumni Talk Policy on February 22nd, for discussion on housing and homelessness. And for the most up-to-date school news and events, please visit the HKS alumni website. Stay healthy and safe everyone. Thank you all so much.

- Thank you.

- [Kahlil] Thank you.