Democracy Notes is a weekly Substack curating Gabe Lerner's favorite finds from across the U.S. democracy ecosystem, including standout articles, job postings and transitions, events and podcasts, and philanthropy news. In collaboration with Gabe, the National Civic Review will now be sharing a quarterly roundup of Democracy Notes' most evergreen and relevant content for our audience.
Peer-led parenting education programs suggest that parenting education deserves a place at the top of civic policy agendas—not as a remedial fix for troubled families, but as preventive infrastructure for healthy communities. From the workplace to health care to criminal justice, how we raise our children shapes the citizens, and the democracy, that we become.
In the 1980s, Dubuque, Iowa, faced a mounting crisis: unemployment spiked above 20% and the city lost nearly a tenth of its population. Four decades later, sustained investment in citizen participation, cross-sector partnerships, and inclusive planning has transformed it into a five-time All-America City and a national model for community-driven revitalization.
Most efforts to build civil discourse focus on teaching skills, but skills alone don't address the deeper anxieties keeping Americans from talking across political lines. A framework backed by behavioral science—more motivation, minimized misperceptions, and messaging from the micro to the macro—is reshaping campus culture at Michigan State and beyond.
Bridge-building, community organizing, and participatory democracy each fall short on their own, but what happens when all three work in sync? A yearlong pilot in Parkersburg, West Virginia, tested that question by uniting nine community leaders across the political spectrum to tackle substance use, drawing on hundreds of residents' ideas to build a concrete action plan. The result offers a candid look at what inter-field collaboration can unlock, and where it still falls short.
Recent mid-cycle redistricting battles in Texas and California, paired with the Supreme Court's ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, are reshaping the rules of American elections in real time. As political leaders race to redraw congressional maps for partisan advantage, millions of voters are left navigating primary elections that place party conformity over constituent preferences, reducing public confidence in the integrity and fairness of the democratic process.
Hundreds of thousands of legally eligible voters sit in local jails on any given day, yet logistical hurdles and bureaucratic confusion routinely deny them their right to vote in practice. Innovations and community-led efforts across the country are demonstrating that the lack of ballot access in jails is not an inevitability, but a solvable problem.
Twenty years of research into Peru’s participatory institutions shows that despite deep political instability and corruption at the national level, participatory budgeting has strengthened accountability, boosted civic engagement, and improved residents' well-being at the local level, offering hard-won lessons for today's civic reformers.
Amid rising radical populism, attacks on electoral integrity, and the erosion of institutional checks and balances at the national level, a quieter story is unfolding in local governments and civic networks across the country. Years of research and interviews demonstrates that democratic resilience depends as much on the periphery—the everyday civic infrastructure of communities—as it does on the fate of central institutions.
