American Democracy Initiative Cohosts Conference on Rebuilding the Federal Government

In May, the American Democracy Initiative at Columbia SIPA’s Institute of Global Politics partnered with the American Democracy Collaborative — a group of scholars of American political development and comparative politics — to convene nearly 60 scholars, practitioners, and former government officials at Cornell University. Over the course of three days, they discussed proposals for how future federal leaders might reform and rebuild government in the wake of the erosion of democratic norms and institutions.

Participants examined reforms across a range of areas: the separation of powers between the presidency, Congress, the courts, and the states; civil-military relations; immigration enforcement; civil rights protections; the federal civil service; and the relationship between the federal government and civil society. Scholars drew on American history as well as on countries that have experienced democratic backsliding — particularly Hungary and Brazil — to identify lessons relevant to the United States.

“I was surprised by how hard it was to identify any good parallel to the current moment in the US when looking only at the consolidated advanced industrial economies,” said Tom Pepinsky, the Walter F. LaFeber Professor of Government and Public Policy at Cornell. “To understand the challenges facing American democracy, the experiences of countries like Brazil and Hungary seemed far more relevant than those of a country like the UK, France, or Japan.”

The proposals were developed as a series of essays combining historical and comparative perspectives. “By taking a historical perspective, these essays make clear what is unique to our current backsliding moment and what has longer roots throughout our history, illuminating potential reforms that can address deeper causes,” said Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Herbert H. Lehman Professor of Government at SIPA and faculty lead of IGP’s American Democracy Initiative. 

One essay, for example, traced how tools for repressive immigration enforcement were created in the aftermath of September 11 reforms with bipartisan support, and laid out how Congress and a future president might overhaul the Department of Homeland Security. Another examined how unusually powerful and politicized the American judiciary is by international standards, arguing that the design of American courts has left them vulnerable to capture by corporate interests — and suggesting reforms to bring them more in line with peer democracies.

Practitioners, including former government officials, offered policy-relevant feedback, helping to sharpen scholars' proposals for real-world application.

“Typically as political scientists, we analyze what exists or how it evolved, but we don't make recommendations for reform,” said Suzanne Mettler, the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions at Cornell. “We challenged project contributors to offer concrete recommendations, and they came through. Some ideas aim to reverse recent developments, while others strive to correct for problems that have been decades in the making.”

The American Democracy Initiative and American Democracy Collaborative plan to publish the essays as a double special issue of the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. The American Democracy Initiative will host a launch event at SIPA in early 2027.