Voting is both thin and instrumental,

“the thick mesh of social interactions and public goods has been reduced to a minimum, with nothing except authority and obedience binding the citizens to the state.”

Actions like the Montgomery Bus Boycott required complex organization and coordination. Protest leaders essentially had to create a parallel public transportation system to ensure that participants in the year-long boycott could get to work and didn’t lose their jobs.

Institutionalists and insurrectionists have a common enemy: disengagement. As mistrust in institutions rises, most people don’t abandon institutions and become insurrectionists—they exit civic life.

Citizens who weren’t interested in reading about how EU funds were spent were excited by the possibility of discovering corruption and malfeasance. Their “social attentiveness” was activated not by the chance to learn passively but by the chance to evaluate using a method that’s closer to confrontation. Monithons offer citizens the possibility of

As long as less populated states lean the same way politically, those states can sway elections if the size of the House of Representatives is small. Increase the House size, and the effect goes away. This idea, called the House Size Effect, suggests that American elections are a function not only of popular will but also of the size of the House

Counter-democracy and monitorial citizenship can give us stronger, more accountable institutions. But what can it do with institutions that may have outlived their usefulness?

when we lose faith in institutions, the market often intervenes to provide services that those institutions are responsible for. Mistrust means we cede public functions to private actors.

When another company, Power Ventures, sought to integrate different social networks in a single client, Facebook sued and prevailed in a California courtroom.