Archive
Primary tabs
-
Vol. 26 No. 4Fall 2015
Columns
-
The European Prospect
With all the pathologies of the 1930s resurgent, Europe's experiment in economic and social union has never been more at risk. -
The Politics of Frustration
Voters on both sides of the partisan divide are being driven toward radical make-believe
Notebook
-
Employer Political Coercion: A Growing Threat
Since Citizens United, companies can legally require workers to participate in politics—and fire them if they refuse. -
55-45 Politics in a 50-50 Country
Republicans start every election cycle with structural advantages regardless of the issues and all the other factors that usually determine who wins elections.
Culture
-
A Caricature of Black Reality
Ta-Nehisi Coates has written the race book of the year. Too bad it’s disempowering. -
It's Still a Struggle
The fight for voting rights hasn’t been the straightforward battle we once might have expected to win and be done with. -
Security for a Precarious Workforce
What will it take, economically and politically, to broadly regularize employment? -
A Government Both More Secretive and More Open
The same decades that saw the growth of national-security secrecy saw the rise of the public’s “right to know.” -
The Shame of Tax Havens
Taxes evaded in offshore havens could fund a lot of public services.
Features
-
Our Incoherent China Policy
The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership is bad economics, and even worse as containment of China. -
Bronx Cheer
The New York borough that once symbolized urban decline is safer and more stable—but most Bronxites' lives are still precarious. -
Eight Principles for Reforming Solitary Confinement
How we can reduce, make more humane, and ultimately eliminate a practice that, in Justice Kennedy's words, drives prisoners "to the edge of madness" -
Hedge Funds: The Ultimate Absentee Landlords
How Wall Street capitalized on the foreclosure crisis to become the nation's largest owner of single-family homes. -
The New Public Option
Despite hostile courts, can our campaign-finance system be reformed from the bottom up? -
Pushing Civic Tech Beyond Its Comfort Zone
By all means, let's use technology to improve government services. But the real promise is greater political accountability. -
The Unsavory Side of Airbnb
How the popular matching company facilitates landlord conversion of entire rental buildings to de facto hotels. -
Still We Rise
The continuing case for America's historically black colleges and universities. -
Unfriendly Fire
Despite ideological attacks and under-funding, the Veterans Health Administration is a model public system. -
Bring Back Antitrust
Despite low inflation and some bargain prices, economic concentration and novel abuses of market power are pervasive in today's economy—harming consumers, workers, and innovators. We need a new antitrust for a new predatory era.
-
-
Vol. 26 No. 2Summer 2015
Columns
-
Cultures of Impunity
Whether it's corporate crime, police homicide, or sexual assault, the issue is the same: Does the law apply to everyone? (PDF version) -
An Embarrassment of Riches
The Republican primary is drenched in money from super PACs and billionaire political investors. Could there be a silver lining?
Notebook
-
World Cup Corruption: The Bigger Scandal
In the shadow of Qatar's new soccer stadium, Nepali migrant workers face exploitation, injury, and death. -
We Don't Need 'Modern Asylums'
We need to make deinstitutionalization work for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. -
Betrayers of the Dream
How sleazy for-profit colleges disproportionately targeted black students.
Culture
-
Why Mothers and Daughters Tangle Over Hair
While men's hair can often be neutral, women's hair is fraught with questions of sexuality, professionalism, and identity. -
The French Disconnection
Can the ideal of a secular Republic accommodate the new cultural pluralism? -
Get Out of Jail Free
How prosecutors and courts collude to keep corrupt executives from doing prison time. -
The Sometime Liberal
An intellectual in public service, Pat Moynihan defied categorization. -
Should Liberals Back Public Employee Unions?
The stakes in the new battle over unions have far-reaching implications.
Features
-
Immigration and America's Urban Revival
The evidence favors a hypothesis many Americans reject: Immigration has helped reduce crime and revitalize city economies. -
The Politics of Virtual Reality
With inexpensive immersive media about to hit the market, we need to ask: How will they affect us? And can they be put to good use? -
Boosting Low PayCover Package
Boosting Low Pay
A look inside the Summer 2015 cover package on new fronts in the labor movement. -
Boosting Low Pay
How the American South Drives the Low-Wage Economy
Just as in the 1850s (with the Dred Scott decision and the Fugitive Slave Act), the Southern labor system (with low pay and no unions) is wending its way north. -
Boosting Low Pay
How to Live Happily with Robots
It takes extensive government intervention to assure that gains of automation are broadly shared. -
Boosting Low Pay
When Charters Go Union
Most charter school funders hate unions and unions generally hate charters. But more and more charter teachers want to unionize, and labor is helping them do it. -
Boosting Low Pay
When Adjuncts Go Union
On campuses across America, contingent faculty are fighting back against low wages and precarious employment. -
Boosting Low Pay
A Decent Living for Home Caregivers—And Their Clients
At-home caregivers are among the least protected and most undervalued workers in the U.S. Low federal reimbursement rates lay at the heart of the problem. -
Fast Track to the Corporate Wish List
The Trans-Pacific Partnership displays a deep rift in the Democratic Party. -
Urban Policing, Without Brutality
Cincinnati has emerged as a role model of policing reform—but even the best-in-show has a long way to go. -
Conscience and the Culture Wars
Conservatives say marriage equality and health-care laws threaten their religious freedom. Should they be exempt? -
Bringing Labor Rights Back to Bangladesh
After a horrific factory collapse in 2013, pressure from global unions, human rights groups, and reputational damage to big fashion brands led to a groundbreaking accord to improve labor conditions. What has it achieved?
-
-
Vol. 26 No. 2Spring 2015
Columns
-
What We Know Now
Twenty-five years later, the world has changed in crucial ways that factor into our thinking. -
The Opportunity Dodge
It's an empty promise—because the chance to thrive will never be good amid great inequalities.
Notebook
-
Anxiety Itself
As a party identified with women, Democrats face a distinctive challenge in 2016. -
The Marriage Cure
Policies to help the broad range of families are better for kids—and better for progressive politics. -
The Cyber Conundrum
Why the current policy for national cyber defense leaves us open to attack. -
Why Public Silence Greets Government Success
Hardly anyone notices when government works—so how to design policies that get credit?
Culture
-
Has Child Care Policy Finally Come of Age?
The Democrats may now be turning to a long-stalled agenda for working parents. -
The Evolutionary Roots of Altruism
Do altruistic groups always beat selfish groups? A new book claims they do. -
The Real Story of the American Family
Two new books explain how rising inequality shattered the working-class family of the mid-20th century. -
Piety and Politics in America
The tension between religiosity and secular government goes back to the nation’s founding. -
How the Bankers Destroyed the Dream
The mortgage collapse was an entirely avoidable crisis—a brew of elite financial lobbying and bad policy. -
It's All About the Money
How America became preoccupied with higher education’s bottom line.
Features
-
The Junior Justice
Elena Kagan is rewriting the role of a Supreme Court justice in American democracy. -
The High Road Wins
How and why Minnesota is outpacing Wisconsin -
The Political Roots of Widening Inequality
The key to understanding the rise in inequality isn’t technology or globalization. It’s the power of the moneyed interests to shape the underlying rules of the market. -
The Politics of Offense and Defense
Once reliably blue strongholds, Wisconsin's and Minnesota's political paths have diverged in recent years. -
No Cost for Extremism
Why the GOP hasn't (yet) paid for its march to the right. -
The Civil Rights Movement and the Politics of Memory
As opportunists try to hijack the movement's legacy, let's remember what actually occurred. -
How Gilded Ages End
Protecting democracy from oligarchic dominance is, once again, a central imperative of American politics. -
Poised for Prosperity?
Drawing the right lessons from the past quarter-century -
The Wealth Problem
Aspiring to own a home and pursue an education are quintessentially American ideals. It's time to make those dreams accessible again. -
Senior Class: America's Unequal Retirement
One of the cruelest manifestations of widening inequality happens in life's final quarter. -
How Progressive Policies Can Lead to a Democratic Majority
The new American electorate could offer a durable majority--if Democrats address economic needs with progressive policies, not centrist ones. -
Raising Wages From the Bottom Up
Three ways city and state governments can make the difference. -
A Radical Pope
Francis has challenged the Catholic Church. How much can he change it?
-
-
Vol. 26 No. 1Winter 2015
Columns
-
The Crash of The New Republic
The mass exodus from the storied magazine was not the result of disagreements about the value of new technology. -
Can Liberal Democracy Survive?
America is becoming more like the illiberal pseudo-democracies and kleptocracies.
Notebook
-
Atlantic Surging, Virginia Sinking
Rising sea level in Norfolk threatens the town, the Navy, and a state in denial. -
The Democrats in Opposition
They can become the party of working Americans and win. Or they can appease Wall Street and lose.
Culture
-
The Great Party Switch
From 1968 through 1992, Republicans tended to control the White House. Since then, they’ve more frequently controlled Congress, which has moved them even more to the right. -
Looking Forward to the Sequel
If we don’t alter the power distribution that led to the financial collapse, it will happen again. -
Sharing the Wealth
Why can’t we broadly distribute the wealth produced from America’s common resource pool? Conservative Alaska manages to do it. -
Truth in Politics Now
Demanding that we seek out the truth is a start—but it is only a start. -
When the Student Movement Was a CIA Front
The CIA's manipulation of the National Student Association foreshadowed other forms of Cold War blowback that compromised democracy at home.
Special Report
-
Why Economists Cling to Discredited Ideas
Free-market theory may be at odds with reality, but it fits the needs of the rich and the powerful. -
The Libertarian Delusion
The free-market fantasy stands discredited by events. The challenge now: redeeming effective and democratic government -
Why Markets Can't Price the Priceless
It takes government planning to promote the rational conservation and use of water. -
The Perils of Privatization
When a public function is privatized, the result is a muddled middle ground. -
Markets, States, and the Green Transition
To get renewable energy technologies into broad use, government needs to promote both supply and demand. Markets are too risk-averse.
Features
-
Can Moral Mondays Produce Victorious Tuesdays?
North Carolina’s protest movement has galvanized the state’s progressives, but couldn’t stop 2014’s Republican tide. Its leaders say they’re only just beginning. -
When Liberals Were Organized
Progressives seeking a model for an effective Congress could learn from the nearly forgotten history of the Democratic Study Group. -
Blind to the Future
Chris Christie and the Republican default on public investment. -
What to Do When 'I Do' Is Done
LGBT activists and funders are debating the movement’s post-marriage priorities. -
A Needless Default
The administration’s foreclosure relief program was designed to help bankers, not homeowners. That disgrace will haunt Democrats. -
How Democratic Progressives Survived a Landslide
They ran against Wall Street and carried the white working class. The Democrats who shunned populism got clobbered. -
Sex, Lies and Justice
Can we reconcile the belated attention to rape on campus with due process?
-
-
Vol. 25 No. 5Fall 2014
Columns
-
Democracy's New Moment
-
The American Situation
The country is stuck but it is not stationary. Some things are changing—just not at the federal level.
Notebook
-
Road Hazard: Millions of Autos On U.S. Highways Recalled But Not Repaired
Why we have millions of cars with unfixed safety recalls — and Germany has none. -
The Targeting of Young Blacks By Law Enforcement: Ben Jealous in Conversation With Jamelle Bouie
What will it take to reshape America’s police departments, and curtail the unprompted police killings that beset us still? -
In 22 States, a Wave of New Voting Restrictions Threatens to Shift Outcomes in Tight Races
The last large-scale push to curb voting access was more than a century ago, after Reconstruction. Until now.
Culture
-
Abortion Without Apology: A Prescription for Getting the Pro-Choice Groove Back
Only by reclaiming abortion as a fundamental right and normal part of health care can the pro-choice movement hope to win, writes Katha Pollitt in a lively new book. -
The End of the Lavender Ghetto
As gays and lesbians gain acceptance, they are moving away from the old neighborhoods that long epitomized gay culture. -
Music and Memory
The dangerous state of Zionism invites us to cherish the diaspora as Jewish cultural and religious homeland. -
A Talent for Storytelling
Rick Perlstein tells how Reagan imagined his way into the American psyche. -
What Women Need
Can women translate symbolic victories into durable progress on multiple fronts, from financial status to physical safety?
Features
-
The Making of Ferguson: How Decades of Hostile Policy Created a Powder Keg
Long before the shooting of Michael Brown, official racial-isolation policies primed Ferguson for this summer’s events. -
Rand Paul's Millennial Quest: A Little Libertarian, A Lot of Something Else
Win or lose, the neo-libertarian stands to change the DNA of the Grand Old Party. -
Labor at a Crossroads: The Seeds of a New Movement
SEIU’s David Rolf—virtuoso organizer and mastermind of Seattle’s $15 minimum wage campaign—says labor needs radically new ways to champion worker interests. -
Elizabeth Warren's Challenge to Hillary Clinton
A more insurgent campaign, like the one the former professor waged for the Senate, could make the Democratic frontrunner a stronger candidate. -
On Realism, Old and New
With new threats to the peace, it’s more important than ever to be clear about America’s core national interests. -
Black America's Promised Land: Why I Am Still a Racial Optimist
Hope and pessimism have defined two traditions of American thinking about race. Fully acknowledging recent setbacks, the author makes the case for the tradition of hope. -
Must Environmentalists and Labor Activists Find Themselves at Odds With Each Other?
The need for jobs, and the ecological limits to growth
-
