Public trust is critical in the functioning of democracies. Citizens do not need to agree with every government policy or trust each individual officeholder — but they do need to have confidence that democratic institutions and practices protect their interest, act responsibly, and uphold the rule of law. In recent years, in the United States and Europe public trust in government has declined. COVID-19 has led to an unprecedented series of crises. Is the pandemic leading to greater confidence in democratic institutions by rallying people around the common cause of fighting the health crisis and economic disruption? Or are we witnessing a further deterioration of trust and deeper political polarization?
Join 1014 and the American Council on Germany on Election Day for a discussion with Thomas Carothers, Senior Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Laura Krause, Director of More in Common, Germany.
Thomas Carothers is Senior Vice President for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In that capacity, he oversees all of the research programs at Carnegie. He also directs the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program and carries out research and writing on democracy-related issues. He is a leading authority on international support for democracy, human rights, governance, the rule of law, and civil society. He has worked on democracy assistance projects for many organizations and carried out extensive field research on aid efforts around the world.
He is the author or editor of ten critically acclaimed books and many articles in prominent journals and newspapers, including most recently, Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization (Brookings Press, 2019, co-edited with Andrew O’Donohue). He has been a visiting faculty member at the Central European University in Budapest, Nuffield College, Oxford University, and Johns Hopkins SAIS.
Prior to joining the Endowment, Mr. Carothers practiced international and financial law at Arnold & Porter and served as an attorney adviser in the office of the legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State.
Laura Krause is the Director of More in Common, Germany, an organization that strives to build more united, inclusive and resilient societies in which people believe that what they have in common is stronger than what divides them. She joined More in Common from the Berlin-based think tank Das Progressive Zentrum where she headed the Future of Democracy program and built up the Democracy Lab for democratic innovations. She holds a Master’s Degree from the Free University of Berlin and was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Washington. She published on institutional reform, digital democracy, and women in politics. She has twice been named one of “40 under 40” in Germany and took part in the 2018 negotiations to form the German coalition government.
