How to Save Democracy: The Importance of the Civic Bargain

Is Democracy dying? Polls show that Americans on both sides of the political spectrum feel it’s under attack... but does the situation have to be so dire?

Professors Brook Manville and Josiah Ober offer a guide to democratic renewal in order to guarantee civic rights of freedom, equality, and dignity.

Tracing the long progression toward self-government through four key moments in democracy’s history: Classical Athens, Republican Rome, Great Britain’s constitutional monarchy, and America’s founding, they compare what worked and what failed in each case... to draw out lessons for how modern democracies can survive and thrive.

You can their book, The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives, here.

About the Speakers:

Brook Manville is an independent consultant who writes about politics, democracy, technology, and business. Previously a partner with McKinsey & Co. and an award-winning professor at Northwestern University, he is the author of The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens (Princeton) and A Company of Citizens: What the World’s First Democracy Teaches Leaders About Creating Great Organizations (with Josiah Ober).

Josiah Ober is the Constantine Mitsotakis Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece, Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens (both Princeton), The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason, and other books.

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