Archon Fung

Archon Fung is Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and coauthor of Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency.

Articles

“Progress for People of Color Doesn’t Come at White Folks’ Expense”

A conversation with Heather C. McGhee about the zero-sum thinking that has long dominated American attitudes to race and wealth—and how to organize to secure public goods for everyone.

Heather C. McGhee, Archon Fung

Biden Must Put Democracy First

Unless we bolster its foundations, our enfeebled democracy won’t be able to solve any of the daunting problems Biden has singled out as priorities.

Archon Fung

COVID-19 Requires More Democracy, Not Less

We must take very seriously the responsibility to judge our leaders' policies. When they fail us, we must act as leaders ourselves.

Archon Fung

Strangers in Their Own Land

A conversation between Arlie Hochschild and Archon Fung.

Arlie Hochschild, Archon Fung

It’s The Gap, Stupid

Three books draw a disturbing picture of America as a system of compounding inequality driven by a hereditary meritocracy of professional elites.

Archon Fung

Too Much Information

Making Transparency Good for You

Elena Fagotto, Archon Fung

Walking on Ice to Clean Up Congress

Lessig’s New Hampshire rebellion.

Archon Fung

The Constructive Responsibility of Intellectuals

Using Privilege to Advance Democracy and Justice.

Archon Fung

Winning the Future

Should political scientists care more about politics?

Archon Fung

Six Ways to Reform Democracy

Creating a more productive politics for the future.

Luis Ricardo Fraga, Archon Fung, Heather Gerken, Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela S. Karlan, Alex Keyssar

Can Social Movements Save Democracy?

Lessons from grassroots organizing.

Archon Fung

Forums

Stepping Up Labor Standards

Even as globalization makes us complicit in terrible abuses of workers, it opens up new possibilities for public action.

Charles Sabel, Dara O’Rourke, Archon Fung

Beyond Backyard Environmentalism

The United States is in the midst of a fundamental reorientation of its environmental regulation, one that is as improbable as it is unremarked.

Bradley Karkkainen, Archon Fung, Charles Sabel

Forum Responses

Response: Response to Saving Privacy

Corporate data collection is more harmful than government misuse.

Archon Fung

Response: Fighting Concentrated Money

Fighting Concentrated Money Martin Gilens offers a damning criticism of our system of government: except under quite particular circumstances, policymakers act on the preferences of the very affluent and not on those...

Archon Fung

Response: Affirmative-Action Engineering

Kentaro Toyama’s critique is a welcome turn in the public discourse on the potential for technology to address major challenges of our time, such as economic development and democratic governance. In contrast...

Archon Fung

Response: Fung, O’Rourke, and Sabel Reply

Ratcheting Labor Standards (RLS) is a proposal about how to achieve worker rights. It relies on methods of monitoring and enforcement that seem dubious from the standpoint of centralized rule-making. So it...

Charles Sabel, Dara O’Rourke, Archon Fung

Response: Beyond Backyard Environmentalism — Final Response

In “Beyond Backyard Environmentalism,” we argue that a new form of decentralized but coordinated environmental regulation is successfully addressing a surprisingly broad range of apparently intractable problems. Even more improbably, its success...

Bradley Karkkainen, Archon Fung, Charles Sabel