The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California was an important think tank from 1959 to 1977, declining in influence thereafter. The Center held discussions in a variety of areas that it hoped would influence public deliberation. It attained some controversy with its conference of student radical leaders in 1967, and with a suggested new United States Constitution proposed by Fellow Rexford G. Tugwell.
The Center was an offshoot of the Fund for the Republic, which had been established with a $15 million grant from the Ford Foundation. In its later years, its greatest source of support was Chester Carlson, the inventor of the Xerox process. For a time, Associate Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was Chairman of the Center's Board of Directors.
It was founded in 1959 by Robert M. Hutchins.
Fellows of the Center included: Stringfellow Barr, from 1959 to 1969; education philosopher Frederick Mayer ("A History of Educational Thought"); Linus Pauling, from 1963 to 1967; Bishop James A. Pike, from 1966 to 1969; Robert Kurt Woetzel; and Harvey Wheeler.
In 1969 Hutchins reorganized the Center. Many associates departed. New appointees included, among others, Alexander Comfort, later to attain fame as the author of The Joy of Sex; Bertrand de Jouvenel; and Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb.
Harry Ashmore was its president from 1969 to 1974.
After Hutchins' death in 1977, the Center found it difficult to raise funds. It became affiliated with the University of California at Santa Barbara, which sold its real estate. The Center absorbed the Fund for the Republic, a civil rights and civil liberties foundation, in 1979.
The Center closed in 1987.