Democracy

Wendy Li writes that business leaders must rediscover past unity and put pressure on politicians to defend against President Donald Trump’s attacks on businesses and civil society and prevent democratic backsliding.

Aaron Edlin and Carl Shapiro respond to Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson’s keynote speech at the 2025 Stigler Center antitrust and competition conference, in which he lays out his approach to regulating the content moderation policies of the major social media platforms. They explain why Ferguson’s approach threatens the exercise of free speech, is inconsistent with antitrust law, and politicizes the agency.

The new Trump administration has thrust antitrust’s role in protecting free speech into the spotlight. Jan Polański discusses how this development should inform the European Union’s own debates about antitrust and free speech.

Luigi Zingales invites guest contributors to the Washington Post’s op-ed pages to boycott the opinion section in response to the recent decision by the...

Sarah Haan writes that to understand American authoritarianism, it’s less useful to analyze the strategies of elected dictators around the globe than to look at how corporate leaders in the United States have rigged corporate democracy.

Media pluralism is a core democratic value in Europe. Upholding it requires that media concentration is scrutinized beyond its impact on competition in the traditional economic formulation. By addressing the challenges posed by dominant media players and fostering a diverse information ecosystem, Europe aims to uphold media plurality as a democratic value and ensure that citizens can engage in informed decision-making. From this angle, the European approach to protecting media pluralism might offer an interesting comparative  perspective for the United States debate, write Maciej Bernatt and Marta Sznajder.

Polarization has sundered American politics and the crucial exchange of ideas and opinions underpinning its democracy. Karthik Ramanna writes that on this inauguration day,...

In new research, Marc Jacob, Barton E. Lee and Gabriele Gratton argue that legislative gridlock is not only a consequence of Congress’ polarization but also a cause of it. In sum, both polarization and gridlock fuel one another generating a vicious spiral toward political mire.

The following is an excerpt from the book, Balance of Power: Central Banks and the Fate of Democracies, by Éric Monnet.

In new research, Francesco Barilari and Diego Zambiasi study how President Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush’s rhetoric on the War on Drugs while on the campaign trail, particularly targeting crack cocaine abuse, was enough to alter policing policy. Specifically, the authors find that increased rhetoric led to an increase in arrests of Black Americans. Their study contributes to a literature on the material impact that political rhetoric can have on policing and public policy.