Brown Democracy Medal

The Laurence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal recognizes outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations that produce exceptional innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world. The inaugural medal winner, the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), is an innovative not-for-profit organization that promotes "participatory budgeting," an inclusive process that empowers community members to make informed decisions about public spending. More than 46,000 people in communities across the United States have decided how to spend $45 million through programs that PBP helped spark over the last five years. In Everyone Counts, PBP co-founder and executive director Josh Lerner provides a concise history of the organization's origins and its vision, highlighting its real-world successes in fostering grassroots budgeting campaigns in such cities as New York, Boston, and Chicago. As more and more communities turn to participatory budgeting as a means of engaging citizens, prioritizing civic projects, and allocating local, state, and federal funding, this cogent volume will offer guidance and inspiration to others who want to transform democracy in the United States and elsewhere.

The Laurence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal is an initiative of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Pennsylvania State University. It annually recognizes outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations that produce exceptional innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world. In this book, Albert W. Dzur argues that some of the most innovative and important work in democracy is taking place face-to-face and is being led by professionals who bring those involved into the decision making process. These "democratic professionals" create a culture that leads to better decisions and overcomes what he calls "civic lethargy." He focuses on how this democratic professionalism manifests itself in the operation of a wide range of public institutions, including schools and local government, as well as in the reform of our criminal justice system, from juries to prisons.

The flaws in the American electoral process have become more apparent over many years. The contemporary tipping point in public awareness occurred during the 2000 election count, but several major structural weaknesses exacerbated doubts in the 2016 campaign, worsening party divisions and further corroding public trust in the electoral process. It is impossible to fix a problem without understanding its nature. To gather independent evidence about the quality of elections around the world, the Electoral Integrity Project (EIP), an independent project with a research team based at Harvard and Sydney universities, was established in 2012. According to expert estimates developed by EIP, the 2012 and 2014 elections in the United States were the worst among all Western democracies. Without reform, these problems risk damaging the legitimacy of American elections-further weakening public confidence in the major political parties, Congress, and the US government, depressing voter turnout, and exacerbating the risks of contentious outcomes fought through court appeals and public protests. Why American Elections Are Flawed (and How to Fix Them) describes several major challenges observed during the 2016 US elections, including deepening party polarization over basic electoral procedures, the serious risks of hacking and altering official records, the consequences of deregulating campaign spending, and the lack of federal standards and professional practices in electoral management. Pippa Norris outlines the core concept and measure of electoral integrity, the key yardstick used by the EIP to evaluate free and fair elections. She compares cross-national and state-level evidence from expert and mass surveys to diagnose problems in American elections. She shows how these challenges could be addressed through several practical steps designed to improve American electoral procedures and practices. If implemented, the reforms recommended by the EIP will advance free and fair elections at home and abroad.

The Laurence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal recognizes outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations that produce exceptional innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world. The 2015 winner of the Brown Democracy Medal, Joan C. Tronto, argues in Who Cares? that we need to rethink American democracy, as well as our own fundamental values and commitments, from a caring perspective. Asserting that Americans are facing a "caring deficit"-that there are simply too many demands on our time to care adequately for children, elderly people, and ourselves-she asks us to reconsider how we allocate care responsibilities. At the same time, while democratic politics should help citizens to care better, most people see caring as unsupported by public life and deem the concerns of politics as too remote from their lives to make a difference in this sphere. Tronto traces the reasons for this disconnect and argues for the need to make care, not economics, the central concern of democratic political life.