
Strengthening Democracy Challenge

Strengthening Democracy
Challenge
News

11/1/22
Mernyk, Pink, and Willer's Op-ed on Partisan Violence in Washington Post

10/21/22
Strengthening Democracy Challenge Covered in The Atlantic

10/18/22
Intervention Application Ideas from Conference Posted

10/6/22
Recordings From the Bridging Divides & Strengthening Democracy Conference Posted

10/5/22
James Chu Discusses Strengthening Democracy Challenge With Utah Governor Spencer Cox

9/23/22
Fast Company Discusses a Top Intervention From the Strengthening Democracy Challenge

9/13/22
Willer and Voelkel's Op-ed on SDC in the Washington Post

9/6/22
NPR Interviews Willer on Strengthening Democracy Challenge

9/4/22
Fox News Interviews Willer on Strengthening Democracy Challenge

8/29/22
The Strengthening Democracy Challenge Covered by the Stanford Report

8/25/22
Robb Willer Speaks About Results on C-SPAN

8/23/22
Strengthening Democracy Challenge Covered by Fast Company

8/18/22
Robb Willer Discusses Strengthening Democracy Challenge on MSNBC

8/18/22
Thread Summarizing Results Posted

8/17/22
Working Paper Posted

8/17/22
Winners Announced

8/16/22
Press Release

8/15/22
Summaries and Links to Preview 25 Selected Interventions Posted

8/14/22
The 25 Interventions Selected for Testing Are Announced

6/24/22
Data Collection Complete
Strengthening American democracy through collaboration, cooperation, and crowdsourcing.
American democracy is under threat. Many Americans are willing to compromise on democratic principles for partisan goals. Some are even willing to resort to violence to help their side win. Extreme dislike for the other side has grown significantly in recent decades, and may also erode commitments to democratic principles.
Anti-democratic attitudes, support for partisan violence, and extreme levels of partisan animosity have troubling consequences for democracy. We crowdsourced interventions to reduce one, two, or all three of these outcomes. From 252 submissions, 25 interventions were selected and tested in a massive, online experiment.

What
is the Strengthening Democracy Challenge?
The challenge is a joint project between academics and practitioners to crowdsource and identify short, scalable interventions to reduce anti-democratic attitudes, support for partisan violence, and/or partisan animosity among Americans.

Why
did people submit an idea?
Submitters joined a collective effort to identify interventions that help address pressing problems in today’s political world. Contributors also had the opportunity to win prizes and be co-authors in published research.

How
did people participate?
We designed the submission process for this challenge to be accessible to all - whether people had designed interventions before, or just had an idea for one. Click here to learn more about how people submitted their ideas.

Who
organized the challenge?
