Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them

Compliance in democracies depends primarily on two factors: the consistency of the message, and public confidence in the messenger.

Youth and Participatory Politics Research Network,

From Voice to Influence—

But “people don’t experience life in an issue-specific way,”

The point of Do Something is not that any of these campaigns will accomplish major change around the issues they address, but that taking action on a social issue is a precursor to deeper forms of engagement. Do Something believes it is training a generation of young people, many as young as high school students, to see that it’s possible to organi

the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship and the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy.

My biggest fear is not that mistrust makes us disengage, but that we fail to imagine change at the scale we truly need.

It’s possible that we’ll start seeing a broader movement for workplace justice on axes other than sexual discrimination as people try to make change in an environment that they feel more empowered to influence.

Efficacy is always a problem of perception. People will undertake actions, even deeply demanding actions, if they are persuaded their participation can make a difference. The challenge for organizers of social movements is to create a range of actions, from thin to thick, that let participants feel they’re making effective change.