The December 2024 edition of Inside RAI highlights activities of the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions focused on reviewing the performance of America’s electoral system in wake of the 2024 presidential election, and exploring the interactions between institutions as president-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office. Director Brandice Canes-Wrone and others at RAI continue to advance their work toward improving the quality and availability of civics education in America, as well as restoring trust in the electoral system beyond the 2024 election cycle.
GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS
Defining Ideas: Q&A with Sharece Thrower on Interbranch Relations
Sharece Thrower is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. She is an associate professor of political science and Chancellor’s Faculty Fellow at Vanderbilt University. She studies the role of executive power, American political institutions, and how branches of government interact to generate policy. As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, she spoke with Hoover’s Chris Herhalt about presidential power, the judiciary, and what legislatures do to boost and constrain a president’s agenda.
Chris Herhalt: Thanks so much for joining me. I wanted to start with what it will look like for the Republicans come January, controlling or having influence over every branch of government. What do you think this will mean for the incoming president and his interaction with the other branches?
Sharece Thrower: I think that it certainly makes the path for him getting his agenda passed a lot easier, right? Because you have a Congress that doesn't have much incentive to constrain his actions, whether that be through the legislative process or through the unilateral process. And you have not only a Supreme Court but many of the circuit courts and federal judges that align with this ideology. So that certainly makes the path through the court system, if his actions are challenged, a lot easier as well.
Now, the courts might have incentives to try to avoid some of these cases altogether if things are tricky. But that's another matter entirely. So, the path of being challenged is a lot easier for Trump, with a sort of alignment across the branches of government.
I think the big question is how defined his agenda is going to be. So, I think some people from both [major political] parties were surprised and disappointed, depending on what party you're from, during his first administration, that there wasn't much of an agenda to begin with, particularly in the legislative process.
So that has yet to be seen, sort of the tangible things that he pushed through. But he certainly has support across the branches of government.
Read the rest of the interview here.
ORGANIZATIONS AND DEMOCRATIC PRACTICE
Now What Do We Do?
In the last of four installments of Saints, Sinners, and Salvageables covering election integrity in the 2024 campaign cycle, Distinguished Policy Fellow Bill Whalen speaks to Distinguished Visiting Fellow Ben Ginsberg about where America’s electoral system, having delivered a quick and indisputable result last month, goes from here. The pair debates whether America’s electoral system just got lucky this time around or if the combined efforts of election officials across the union made a marked difference. They also speak about what election laws Republicans might pursue in the future and how Hoover is working with local jurisdictions to improve the American electoral system.
Listen to the episode here.
What Happens When Anyone Can Be Your Representative?
Hoover Senior Fellow Andy Hall and Sho Miyazaki recently released the results of a study of the use of liquid democracy for high-stakes decisions in online platforms. They found that the use of online hubs to coordinate delegation significantly increases delegation and overall voting rates and that liquid democracy can foster bottom-up participation, particularly when paired with tools for coordination. Conversely, real-world participation remains relatively low among both voters and delegates, posing an important challenge to liquid democracy not yet contemplated in existing theoretical literature.
Read more here.
DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP
Examining Civics Requirements Across All US States
For RAI’s Good American Citizenship Working Group, Jed Ngalande and Sophia Craiutu documented the standing civics requirements across all US states and Washington, DC. While many states require students to complete a civics course or pass a civics test, eight states, including Alaska, Kansas, Delaware, and New Jersey, have no requirement for either a civics course or test to graduate from high school. But even among the states that do administer civics courses and tests, there are wide disparities in passing requirements between them.
Read more here.
Notable Developments in the Citizenship Sphere
Also from the Good American Citizenship Working Group this month is a list of books, events, research papers and educational materials released across the nation concerning civics and civics education. Featured in the books section of the list is A Republic If We Can Teach It, coauthored by Research Fellow Emeritus David Davenport.
Read the full list here.
Civic Learning Week National Forum
Building on RAI’s ongoing efforts to promote and reinvigorate civics education across the nation, students, educators, policymakers, and leaders from across the country will gather at Hoover on March 13, 2025, to discuss making civic learning a national priority. Discussions will tackle challenges such as how to promote pluralistic civic learning across America, how to adequately fund civic education efforts, and what youth gain from exposure to civics and how it impacts them as adults.
An agenda for the day can be found here.
Next Up on RAI’s Public Offerings:
Restoring Trust in American Elections: Challenges and Opportunities
For the fourth session in RAI’s ongoing Reimagining American Institutions webinar series, Director Brandice Canes-Wrone will join Distinguished Visiting Fellow Ben Ginsberg and Senior Fellow Justin Grimmer on January 14, 2025, at 10 am PST to discuss the declining level of public trust in American elections. Since 2016, and particularly following the 2020 election, polls have shown a precipitous drop in this trust, which raises critical questions: Are election results reliable? Is distrust in elections now an enduring feature of American political campaigns? Does that impact the democracy? Are we destined to cycle through accusations of fraud and suppression with every contested result? What have we learned from the 2024 election process?
The trio will explore how the November 2024 vote concluded without incident, delivering a clear, irrefutable result. They will also provide examples of how America’s election officials worked to strengthen safeguards and increase reliability of the electoral system this year.
Watch the webinar here.
