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Democracy Endgame Series
Untangling Polarization and Rebuilding Democratic Norms
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Wednesday, August 18, 2021, 12:00PM ET / 9:00AM PT
Register to Join Zoom Webinar
Polarization is a central challenge for American democracy, but its dangers are even more pronounced than is often appreciated. Increasingly hostile ideological conflict heightens the stakes of every election, raising the risk of anti-democratic behavior as the traditional norms and guardrails of politics gradually crumble. Meanwhile, the gridlock and conflict caused by polarization makes implementing democracy reforms more challenging. Taken together, this is increasing the risk that politicians and citizens alike will cease to value democracy itself, opening the door wider to future authoritarians.
What can be done to avoid this outcome? How can pro-democracy reformers de-escalate brinkmanship and disincentivize polarization? What reforms are most likely to succeed in a challenging landscape? How can we build a pro-democracy political coalition to support change? In his forthcoming essay for Protect Democracy’s Democracy Endgame series, co-published with American Purpose, Larry Diamond weighs the multiple challenges facing the United States and proposes a framework for practical, sustainable reform.
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Join Protect Democracy and American Purpose on August 18th at 12:00PM ET / 9:00AM PT for a conversation with Larry Diamond, senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an editorial board member of American Purpose, and Linda Chavez, Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity and Former White House Director of Public Liaison to President Ronald Reagan, to discuss a practical path to overcome polarization and rebuild norms.
This event is open to the public and on-the-record. We invite participants to raise questions during the event, or to submit them beforehand through the Zoom registration.
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Larry Diamond
Senior fellow
Hoover Institution & Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI)
Stanford University
@LarryDiamond
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Linda Chavez
Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity
Former White House Director of Public Liaison to President Ronald Reagan
@chavezlinda
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Moderator
Jennifer Dresden, Policy Advocate, Protect Democracy
Jennifer Dresden is a policy advocate at Protect Democracy. She was previously a member of the faculty and the Associate Director of the Democracy and Governance Program at Georgetown University. Jen has published and lectured on democratic and authoritarian politics for both academic and policy audiences and has conducted research in the United States and overseas. 
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This event and forthcoming essay is the latest in Protect Democracy’s series The Democracy Endgame: The Grand Strategy Against Authoritarianism in the U.S., which invites the country’s leading scholars to reflect on the strategic questions central to the struggle to protect and perfect American democracy.
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