The Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation aims to reinforce democracy through strengthening institutions, building interpersonal and informational trust, and reducing hyper-partisan affective polarization with research and field-building.

The lab currently supports four key research workstreams:

New Political Economy: Develop exemplary policies in support of a new paradigm in political economy that prioritizes equal dignity, voice, community, sustainability, and social relations free from domination. We call this paradigm power-sharing liberalism. The policies that embody this paradigm draw on the benefits of markets, civil society organizations, and the public sector, deploying diverse combinations of these forms of human coordination to solve public goods problems. Technology and Democracy: Research and develop policies such that public and private sector AI governance policy is democracy sustaining, industry is defined by professional norms that lead to technology development supportive of human pluralism, and the pool of people able to bring merged ethical and technical expertise into policy spaces and industry meets the need. Learn more about our work here. Civic Education Policy: Advance policy to ensure high quality universal civic learning, where excellent civic learning opportunities are available in the K-12, higher education, and life-long learning sectors and shared across political divides. Governance Mechanisms: Develop innovative solutions to tough policy problems that are stuck due to systemic democratic failures. These select projects cross the three sectors vital to healthy democracy—political institutions, civil society, and civic culture. Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century, a report of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, provides the basis for this workstream.