Democracy Past, Present, and Future

Approximately 2,500 years ago, the Greeks invented democracy, a form of government predicated on the principle that power should be vested in the people. “Then, just as now, it faced challenges,” said Peter Struck, Stephen A. Levin Family Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and Vartan Gregorian Professor of the Humanities, at the 2025 Ben Talks in New York City.

Plato, he went on to say, was skeptical of that form of government, thinking it would lead to autocracy; instead, the philosopher insisted on core values like debate and reason. “These are both the hallmarks of a great education and the necessary prerequisites of democracy,” Struck told an auditorium of more than 270 alums at the Times Center. “I learn nothing when I’m in a room full of people who think exactly like I do. Differences of opinion are the engine that make our world advance in knowledge.”

It is a “unique moment in the modern history of the United States,” he added, before turning over the conversation to four faculty experts who had come to share their thoughts on what constitutes a democracy, as well as how wealth, modern information environments, social identities, and shared norms each affect democracies.

What follows are their insights about democracy—past, present, and future.

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The Belief Identity Paradox

Michele Margolis

In a representative democracy, citizens have preferences they attempt to advance by participating in the public sphere. They do this through actions, like who they elect, or by attending a protest or writing to a policymaker. “This is the idealized form of how democracy works,” said Michele Margolis, an associate professor of political science and election analyst on the NBC Decision Desk. “But like all things, the reality differs tremendously from this imagined ideal.”

Margolis, whose work focuses on American politics, particularly public opinion, political psychology, and the interplay between religion and politics, is conducting new research about how social identities may supersede personal beliefs, influencing the ways in which individuals behave politically.

In her talk, she spoke about that new research, arguing that in reality, Americans are not acting politically based on what they believe, but rather based on their social identities. She called this the belief identity paradox. “There’s a disconnect between the beliefs that Americans hold and the identities that they attach to themselves,” she said.

Margolis provided examples from recent surveys she conducted: Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that gender discrimination against women is a large problem, yet the majority of those people don’t identify as feminists. Regarding climate change, her research found that 25 percent of Americans believe it’s a dire threat to the world, yet also see environmentalists as people with whom they have little in common. And about half of people who strongly identify as gun rights supporters “simultaneously want to see a fair number of guns off the market,” she said.

“The first takeaway from my research is that people’s beliefs and these identities are not nearly as closely connected as we might assume,” she said. “The second finds that it is identities that matter when it comes to politics.”

There’s a disconnect between the beliefs that Americans hold and the identities that they attach to themselves.

Margolis noted that those who identify with a group are more likely to act on behalf of it by donating money, attending a protest, or writing to a member of Congress. “They’re also more likely to respond more emotionally to their group’s successes and losses, and to interpret objective events through that group lens. They’re doing that regardless of their beliefs. In other words, it doesn’t matter what your beliefs are on abortion; it matters whether you call yourself ‘pro-choice’ or ‘pro-life.’”

The “striking result” of the work so far, she said, means that “we have folks who are adopting a label while not holding the beliefs, but nonetheless are acting politically like they’re a member of that team.”

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Democracy and Wealth

Jeffrey Green

What’s behind the growing distrust of and frustration with democracy in the United States? How does wealth affect who has greater democratic power? And what do citizens now believe about how much influence wealth should reap in civic life?

Jeffrey Green, Professor of Political Science and Andrea Mitchell Endowed Director of the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy, touched on these and other key questions during his talk.

As Green observed, mounting distrust and frustration may stem, in a way, from something good—that we the people expect more from our democratic regimes than did citizens past. Specifically, modern notions of democracies mean they are more responsive to everyone, regardless of a person’s socioeconomic status. Until the 20th century, this wasn’t the case, with the wealthy unquestionably dominating politics and civic life, said Green, who elucidated the point by showing a slide of James Madison, fourth President of the United States, and a quote asserting “the ordinary influence possessed by property.”

In 1800, only three states had universal white male suffrage, meaning men didn’t need to own property to vote. By the 1820s, the country was moving more wholeheartedly in that direction, contemplating removing the requirement altogether. Nevertheless, Madison and many others continued to assume that the rich would retain disproportionate sway in public life.

“One thing that separates our time from his,” Green said, “is that we don’t accept this so easily.”

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Green—whose research encompasses democracy, political philosophy, and contemporary social theory—argued that the past two centuries have pushed back on the idea that the wealthy should naturally have disproportionate influence in politics, and the past 50 years have “affirmed, or at least not rejected” the principle of fair equality of opportunity. This idea, from American political philosopher John Rawls, asserts that children should grow up with equal prospects of educational and career attainment, and “similarly talented and motivated citizens” should have equal prospects of influence, independent of their wealth.

Citing a recent book by political scientists Larry Jacobs and Ben Page, Green described a concept that Americans, across partisan lines, seem to agree on: conservative egalitarianism. “What’s conservative is that most Americans don’t like redistribution,” he explained. “But what’s egalitarian is they like equality of opportunity.” Green went on to lament, however, that nowhere in the world is democracy coming close to realizing fair equality of opportunity.

Because of that reality, Green said, he questions whether it’s time to reassess Madison’s assertion of the ordinary influence possessed by property—not because it’s morally right, but rather as a “recognition that wealth is so formidable,” and therefore, it may be “naive” to think fair equality of opportunity can ever be fully achieved. 

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Democracy and Information

Donovan Schaefer

It’s undeniable that the American political landscape is hyper-divided, and perhaps nowhere is that more apparent than online, said Donovan Schaefer, an associate professor of religious studies who researches affect and emotion in media, culture, politics, religion, and science.

“We live in a highly fragmented infor-mation environment,” Schaefer said. “It seems like different people know or believe very different things about the world and have a hard time connecting with each other.” There’s also a prevailing belief, he added, that “filter bubbles” create or exacerbate the political divide and that people are not exposed to counter-information because the digital ecosystem obstructs that movement.

Schaefer disagrees with that premise. “I don’t think it’s true that people are not presented with counterarguments,” he said. “In fact, I think one feature of our information ecosystem is that the other side’s viewpoints are often held up on display—and dismissed.” Instead, he argued, there is a “much deeper, more fundamental dimension” at play than digital gatekeeping: emotion.

Democracy doesn’t really work based on just laws and institutions that support them. It also needs habits of mind.

“Our beliefs have an emotional aspect to them that can’t be erased,” he said, “whether they’re true or false, whether it’s ideas that we’re familiar with, new information, new perspectives—there’s always a kind of emotional aspect to that flow of information. This is important because it shapes what we find convincing.”

Schaefer used the example of conspiracy theorists to emphasize the point. “There’s a popular sensibility that conspiracy theorists are uninformed. But that’s not true. Conspiracy theorists are hyper-informed,” he noted. They believe falsehoods because they feel them to be true, and they feel them to be true because of how the information was presented, Schaefer argued. “If we want to draw better maps of our information ecosystem,” he concluded, “we have to bear in mind that some styles of interpretation are more alluring, seductive, and politically powerful because of how they land.” 

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Democratic Norms in Crisis

Sophia Rosenfeld

Are democratic norms in crisis? That’s the central question Sophia Rosenfeld, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History, posed to the audience during her talk.

A liberal democracy is predicated not only on majoritarianism, Rosenfeld said. This means that the choices of the majority rule and that civil liberty protections exist for individuals, including those with less power. However, she added, “democracy doesn’t really work based on just laws and institutions that support them. It also needs habits of mind.”

Rosenfeld, who specializes in European and American intellectual cultural history since 1650, focuses on research topics that are “so ordinary and obvious that we never talk about them except, perhaps, when they’re in crisis.” During her talk, she argued that three key democratic norms or habits of mind—the notion of truth mattering, agreement on the rules of play, and a sense of solidarity with others—are in danger around the world and have been for the past decade.

“I wrote a book, Democracy and Truth: A Short History, about the problem of truth and democracies because it’s something we generally take for granted,” she said, adding that in the past, there was more underlying societal agreement about what the world looked like, a baseline that actually allowed for disagreement about how to make all kinds of decisions, from the everyday to those at the policy level. “That’s been challenged” by many factors, she added, including the rise of misinformation and disinformation.

What’s more, the shared agreement that rules matter is also tenuous, as is the notion of solidarity with others. “Solidarity doesn’t mean you have to love everybody or have them over for dinner, but you must believe that other people’s fates matter, that people’s suffering or death is your concern,” she said.

Rosenfeld also noted a growing and troubling indifference or antipathy, even, among Americans that, if not reversed, undermines the ability for democracy to fundamentally work. “All these norms are under stress at the moment, and all require thinking about solutions, legal challenges, and institutional reforms of various kinds,” she said. It’s part of what she covers in her new book The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom and Modern Life, which details how personal choice in the modern world became equated with freedom. (See more in Choice and Consequence)

“I’m interested in the dangers of over-reliance on choice, as if that’s the only democratic or capitalist value that we need now,” she concluded, “because I do think we also need conviction about the truth, a sense of solidarity or common purpose with others, and some sense that the rules matter.”