And we should also examine neglect not just on the headline number of dollars going into the space but on specific facets, like how much money in that space actually goes to top tier impact opportunities or how much investment is there in innovating the space/interventions.

I have argued previously that A) liberal democracy and stability of the American system is under threat and B) the trajectory of American political dysfunction and polarization is unsustainable and we’ve passed theoretical red lines where a course correction would have happened if there was going to be one.

I don’t have an updated version of this piece for the 2025, but I’ll link to this briefing that thoroughly catalogs authoritarian probing and state cannibalization.

Here is the high-level case for tractability: The EA+EA-adjacent sphere has improved and arguably disrupted the (philanthropic) global health/development and animal welfare spaces yielding major impact. When looking at democracy/“resistance” space as a whole, I think there is a clear case that EA could fill a similar role by A) pushing the effectiveness mindset/consequentialist thinking, B) building and promoting GiveWell-like orgs in the space (see Power for Democracies and Focus for Democracy), C) incubating envelope-pushing interventions similar to Charity Entrepreneurship (Movement Labs might be the closest reference in the democracy space), D) bringing in more funding and funding that is also more comfortable in hits-based giving (Democracy Fund’s report reflects the ability to absorb more funding and innovation). I think an evolution in the democracy space similar to the ongoing evolution in GHD and AW would significantly improve the space’s position to avert authoritarian consolidation and other antidemocratic outcomes.

I will note that GHD and AW are not 1:1 correlations with democracy fragility as cause areas. Unlike GHD and AW, you are staring down a game-over scenario where democracy fails in an irreversible way which makes democracy fragility a more time-sensitive field.

Democracy work is also heavy on the complex systems interactions that are hard to quantify, making it unwise to rely only on a small set of cost-effectiveness recommendations like GiveWell does. In that regard, an org like Democracy Funders Network can be a complement to a GiveWell-style Focus for Democracy.

I am currently helping to develop the posture towards the democracy space of an EA-aligned philanthropic advisory group. When appropriate in the future, I will provide some comments/recommendations regarding the brainstorm you are working on. But I’ll leave readers with my framework and analogy that I use to conceptualize the problem (this is my original analogy, so I’d appreciate attribution if anyone reuses it):

Spectrum of causation:

• Upstream e.g. money in politics, first-past-the-post X partisan primaries X single-member districts
• Midstream e.g. capture of a major party by an aspiring authoritarian demagogue
• Downstream e.g. authoritarian candidates win elections, limited repercussions for insurrection
• Immediate threats of authoritarian consolidation e.g. WH administration creating a constitutional crisis by ignoring court orders and testing resolve of judicial branch

Analogy (still a work in progress)

Gas = upstream causes

Flammable material sitting around/fire breaks = midstream

Inaccessible portals/access points = downstream

Flames on load-bearing walls = Immediate threats of authoritarian consolidation

The house, America, is on fire! A gas leak ignited into a raging blaze. The leak went undetected for a long time, though more and more occupants were noticing the strange smell just before the fire erupted, with some even trying to address the apparent leak. Now, the fire threatens to consume the entire house.

The fire hasn’t spread to the entire house but it appears like it could quickly. At the moment it’s threatening some critical load-bearing walls and some portals necessary for firefighters to access certain rooms. Amidst all this, the gas is still leaking and continuing to fuel the fire.

Right now people are frantically trying to douse water on the fire; some are indiscriminately throwing water on the flames closest to them, others are using their water to regain strategic entry points, and the water of some is being used preserve the load-bearing walls to prevent the structure from collapsing, which would render all efforts null. It’s unclear if the load-bearing walls will collapse in, how quickly they could,  and which ones are most liable to do so.

Some people are in the house trying to cut firebreaks—removing flammable materials and closing doors—to slow the spread before it reaches untouched rooms; yet there is a lack of clarity on how effective the efforts have been and what rooms to prioritize.

Nobody has turned off the gas in the basement yet, and the fire won’t be truly extinguished until the gas leak is stopped. Efforts to reach the basement in the burning house have had incremental success thus far, and some people are trying to problem solve how to make the treacherous journey to the basement in a house that is on fire. However, this has the least attention at the moment, just as the gas leak did before the fire began.

There is a clear need to triage and be strategic that must be balanced with urgency and the inability to have full confidence in the crisis such as this.

***

My prior is that EA could generally focus more on the bookends of that spectrum.

Tackling immediate threats is pressing because the aggressive onslaught of authoritarian probing appears to be creating a lot of hinge points where either checks and balances work or authoritarian consolidation happens (which this early on in the term is quite bad for free/fair elections and peaceful transfer of power in 2028/2029).

EA would play to its strengths by working to on the upstream causes which are relatively neglected. We got into this situation because society neglected the upstream causes, these causes will continue to be neglected whilst a crisis is perceived, innovation is needed to effectively tackle these upstream causes.

I was gonna write something similar, but I think this comment nailed it (kudos KarenS). So I'll highlight two key arguments I endorse:

• Framing mitigating the worst immediate effects and addressing upstream drivers as mutually exclusive is unhelpfully reductionist and, as other have pointed out, distracts from good arguments to invest in reacting to immediate effects over root causes.
• Addressing upstream causes/systems change can have higher ROI than just addressing immediate effects in the long term and especially with issues that continue on in perpetuity without intervening on the root level. Case and point, Titotal's example of slavery abolition. (Abolition of slavery has come up before as an interesting thought experiment to EA's relation with root causes/systems change.

I've seen the term militant democracy used to describe how democracies will have laws that curtail political expression and representation when it threatens the survival of liberal democracy. Another articulation is that the marketplace of ideas is not enough to keep anti-democratic players out of a critical mass of power (not necessarily a representative majority, just enough to erode democratic norms/guardrails), thus the society has made the tradeoff of empowering some subjective but hopefully impartial institutions of government to gatekeep the political arena from the most dangerous actors to democracy.

Reminds me of something similar Kelsey Piper wrote:

"Would an effective altruist movement in the 1840s U.S. have been abolitionist?"

"Next, imagine someone walked into that 1840s EA group and said, ‘I think black people are exactly as valuable as white people and it should be illegal to discriminate against them at all,” or someone walked into the 1920s EA group and said, “I think gay rights are really important.” I want us to be a community that wouldn’t have kicked them out."

I think EA would have been a place in the 19th century that would have tolerated if not agreed with abolitionist views. My fear is that EAs' position to someone like Benjamin Lay would be his work as futile effort on an intractable problem and instead focus on improving welfare of slaves on plantations through some type of scheme. And this is my concern of EAs today, that the community leaves impact on the table by not pursuing systems change (e.g. political system reform) because it seems to have low tractability.

Thanks for your openness. Not an easy thing to do but gives a lot value to the reader.

Also great advice

Thanks for the info. I had been anticipating it would be in December like last year. This is helpful to know.

When will ACX 2025 grant applications open?