With guest speaker Jake Grumbach from the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley
In recent years, American democracy has bent but not broken. What are the threats facing American democracy, and what are its sources of resilience? In this talk, I investigate trends in three areas of American democracy: the rule of law, majority rule, and political equality. Each of these areas is a crucial component for a political system of the people, by the people, and for the people, and each area shows signs of strain. While much of the concern about democracy has been focused on the White House, the U.S. constitutional system gives much of the authority over democracy to the Supreme Court and state governments—and it is in these institutions that I uncover new and underemphasized evidence on the health of American democracy.
Jake Grumbach is an associate professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. He was previously associate professor of political science at the University of Washington and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton.
Grumbach studies the political economy of the United States, with interests in democratic institutions, labor, federalism, racial and economic inequality, and statistical methods. His book, Laboratories Against Democracy, investigates the causes and consequences of the nationalization of state politics.
Before graduate school, Grumbach earned a B.A. from Columbia University and worked as a public health researcher. Outside of academia, he's a nerd for 70s funk/soul and 90s hip hop, as well as a Warriors fan.
