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Political Scholars to Examine, Criticize Democracy in America

Research at the Kennedy School of Government

Fostering Budding Democracies

As researchers struggle to fine-tune an established democracy, Kennedy School recruiters and program directors are reaching out to the fledgling democracies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, trying to help them along.

The Strengthening Democratic Institutions (SDI) program, chaired by former Kennedy School Dean Graham T. Allison Jr. '62, began this fall and is designed to give on the spot advice to public officials in the Soviet Union.

Other new Kennedy School programs work to bring together newly-elected political figures in Eastern Europe, to discuss the process of transition to democracy.

As part of this program, Putnam himself has been travelling to Moscow and throughout Eastern Europe to help ease the transition.

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"It's really exciting," says the dean, "for someone like me [who came] of age in the Cold War, to be able to wander around the Brandenburg Gate...I mean literally around it."

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