Year in Review, 2023

It’s been a full decade since we launched New America’s program on U.S. democracy. Ten years later, we’ve encountered the inherent limits, not necessarily of democracy itself, but certainly of the distinctive U.S. model, with its winner-take-all elections, calcified two parties, and now a political movement willing to test and challenge every democratic and constitutional norm in order to claim and entrench power. These cascading crises, intersecting with the climate and migration crises, have pushed ever-new issues onto the agenda of democracy, such as procedures for choosing county election officials.


For our team, it has led us to think more fundamentally about institutional alternatives, and we’re growing optimistic about the path to such reforms. We’re at the beginning of a transformation in the relationship between people and government, represented by innovations such as citizens’ assemblies and other models of collaborative governance at the local level, as well as the federal government’s work to change the way the regulatory process engages the public. And as senior fellow Lee Drutman has argued, the current moment may be like the Progressive Era, in which decades of democratic dysfunction and oligarchy converge in a moment of sweeping reform, potentially including changes that would lead to a richer, more inclusive, multiparty democracy.

Many things make this a terrifying moment for the future of democracy, but we’re genuinely more hopeful than at any point in the previous ten years.

Our 2023 annual report summarizes the work we’ve done across our two main pillars of work—reimagining institutions and designing governance for civic trust—and what to expect from the Political Reform program in the coming year.