Statue of Solon representing “Law” in the Library of Congress Jefferson Building, Washington, DC. Other statues represent Religion, History, Art, Philosophy, and Science. Solon ruled Athens in the 6th Century BC and is often credited as the founder of Greek democracy.

Mission

To develop and advocate reforms where elected officials have an institutionalized conflict of interest with the American public.

Primary Project

As of 2013, iSolon.org’s primary project has been providing state-by-state information clearinghouses regarding upcoming periodic state constitutional convention referendums. iSolon also maintains a central information clearinghouse for the fourteen U.S. states with such periodic referendums.

Overview

Founded in 2007, iSolon seeks to bring paradigm-changing ideas on the policy implications of new information technologies to the fore of public discussion.  New information technologies are creating great opportunities for democratic reform that are not being exploited because elected officials have a conflict of interest in using those technologies to make themselves more democratically accountable.

iSolon explores how that conflict plays out in the design of democratic institutions and analyzes mechanisms, including the use of state constitutional conventions, to address conflict of interest problems.  In recent years, iSolon has shifted from a focus on legislative transparency and redistricting to state constitutional conventions.

iSolon sees as one of its distinctive advantages in comparison with other public policy institutions that it can take a long term perspective.  As Stanford University Professor Rob Reich has written about the potential advantages of such a perspective: “The institutional design of foundations allows them to operate on a different time horizon than the marketplace and the government…. They can use their resources to identify and address potential social problems decades away or innovations the success of which might be apparent only over a longer time horizon. In short, unlike the marketplace and the state, foundations can “go long.” iSolon pegs its reform agenda to current events, but its focus on fixing the constitutional mechanisms for reforming the constitutional foundations of our democracy is also “foundational” in the Reichian sense of the term.

iSolon is a non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

J.H. Snider, President

J. H. Snider is the author of Periodic State Constitutional Convention Referendums: Their Development Since America’s Founding (Routledge, 2026) and an expert on the intellectual history and politics of the periodic state constitutional convention referendum.  He has worked as a researcher at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics;  the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy; New America; the American Political Science Association; Northwestern University’s Department of Political Science; and the Harvard Business School. He has a Ph.D. in American Government from Northwestern University, an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School (with a focus on non-profit management), and an undergraduate degree in Social Studies from Harvard College.

Snider edits The State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse and state-specific clearinghouses for states with upcoming periodic referendums.  The state-specific clearinghouses contain the most detailed record of published pro & con arguments ever compiled in one place and published online.   For details, see the about page at The State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse.