Democracy, peace, & deliberation

If democracy is this challenge of people coming together to figure out the kind of shared lives they want to forge, then the behaviors that they use to negotiate difference are going to flow from the commitments they have to each other. So when my husband and I fight, we fight like we want to stay married. We may deeply disagree about things, but... See more

The transformative potential of civil society institutions is core to that Skocpolian transition that you're talking about from membership to management. These historical membership-based institutions that Theda Skocpol studies were built on the idea that they matter because they equip us with the habits and skills that we need in order to forge a... See more

On day one, they define a political institution as “a socially created constraint on human action.” That definition has always stuck with me. This means that we can make them and remake them. But it also means that whatever institution we create, people are going to use those institutions strategically to try to achieve whatever ends they're trying... See more

To me, the real promise of democracy and the promise of politics is this question of, “How do we build a world in which people don't feel like they're pawns in a game that other people are controlling?” Ultimately, that’s what organizing is about.

The core conceptual questions at the heart of my work are: “How do we equip people to become architects of their own future? How do people do that individually? And then how do people come together to forge a common life in which we can all realize a shared vision of the world that we want?” That's what drew me into studying politics: it’s the... See more

There is evidence that participatory exercises tied to formal decision making processes - from participatory budgeting (C. Johnson, Carlson, and Reynolds 2021) to deliberative polling (Fishkin et al. 2024; “Collective Intelligence Case Studies,” n.d.) - lead to increased democratic engagement and satisfaction. This has the effect of bolstering... See more

Democracy draws immeasurable strength from print — the old dying world of books, newspapers and magazines — with its tendency to foster deep knowledge, logical argument, critical thought, objectivity and dispassionate engagement. In this environment, ordinary people have the tools to understand their rulers, to criticise them and, perhaps, to... See more