Purdue Researchers Receive Over $2 Million to Study Overlooked Safeguards of Liberal Democracy
Constitutions, individual rights and checks on government power are familiar safeguards of liberal democracy. But what about the institutions working behind the scenes to protect those freedoms?
Four Purdue University researchers have received a $1.99 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to examine the often-overlooked roles of political parties, universities, businesses, civic organizations and other institutions in maintaining political and economic freedom. With additional support from Purdue’s College of Liberal Arts, the Departments of Philosophy and Political Science, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Stephenson Institute for the Study of Classical Liberalism at Wabash College and the Jack Miller Center, total project funding reaches nearly $2.91 million.
The project, The Neglected Safeguards of Liberalism, focuses on liberalism in its historical sense: a political philosophy that emphasizes individual rights and limits on government power, including freedoms of speech, religion and association.
Led by J.P. Messina, associate professor of philosophy, the research team includes co-principal investigators Jesse Crosson, associate professor of political science; Brian Kogelmann, associate professor of philosophy and political science; and Logan Strother, associate professor of political science.
The researchers will study how institutions outside the traditional constitutional framework help protect individual freedoms and sustain liberal democracy. Their work will investigate how public and private organizations, administrative agencies and legal processes and social and professional norms interact with formal constitutional protections to preserve individual rights, the rule of law and democratic stability, as well as the circumstances under which these institutions may undermine them.
“These neglected safeguards of liberalism will remain neglected until they have a more privileged place in the minds of both young folks and the people who are teaching them,” said Crosson.
Bringing together expertise in philosophy and political science, the researchers will examine different institutions and their contributions to maintaining a functioning liberal democracy. The collaboration pairs philosophical questions about rights and the limits of government with political science research into how those protections work in practice.
Each researcher will examine a different aspect of the institutions that sustain liberal democracy. Messina will explore how universities foster respect for diverse perspectives, support critical reasoning, and enhance expertise, while Kogelmann will investigate how democracy can coexist with individual rights. Crosson will study how organized interests and congressional staff contribute to government effectiveness and accountability, and Strother will examine how practices beyond written law shape courts’ ability to uphold the rule of law.
By combining perspectives from philosophy and political science, the team hopes to develop a more comprehensive understanding of how these institutions work together to protect political and economic freedoms.
“We all have a fundamental belief that the big questions about how society should be organized, how governments should be structured, how our economy should be structured, no one discipline can answer them alone,” Kogelmann said.
Bringing Research Into the Classroom
Beyond advancing academic research, a major goal of the project is to translate its findings into educational opportunities for students, educators and the broader public. The researchers hope to broaden civics education beyond constitutions and Founding documents to include the institutions and associations that help free societies function.
The grant will support the development of a new civics textbook examining the neglected safeguards of liberalism, designed for use in advanced high school and introductory college courses. The textbook will bring together contributions from scholars across disciplines and provide educators with resources to incorporate these concepts into their teaching.
The researchers also plan to host summer conferences for Indiana high school civics teachers, introducing educators to the research and providing instructional materials they can bring back to their classrooms.
At Purdue, students across the university will have opportunities to engage with the research through roundtable discussions, symposia, public lectures and other educational programming. The researchers also anticipate engaging students through undergraduate research assistant opportunities. The project will support the development of publicly accessible research datasets, allowing scholars to further investigate the institutions that contribute to democratic stability.
"Universities have an important role to play in helping future officeholders learn the importance of liberalism-sustaining norms like toleration, respect for diverse perspectives and other tools like critical reasoning capacities that enhance citizen capacity.” said Messina.
By connecting original research with civic education, the team hopes to expand public understanding of the institutions that support individual freedoms and encourage further study of their role in sustaining liberal democracy. Purdue students and community members can watch for upcoming public lectures and undergraduate events.
“The Constitution is important and matters, but we think there are other things that sustain free and prosperous societies,” Kogelmann said. “We just think the civics education space should be broader in terms of what's covered.”
Much of the programming associated with the project will be administered with the help of the Program on American Institutional Renewal (PAIR), which Crosson and Strother co-direct and with which Messina and Kogelmann are faculty affiliates, and the Cornerstone Institute for Civic Thought (with which all four researchers are affiliated).