Political Resources
Democracy
Overview
History reflects an ongoing battle between autocracy and democracy. Oppressive, top-down hierarchies enable the rich and powerful to monopolize wealth and power, often with oligarchies and empires, shape their country’s culture, and socialize its people to conform, often promising them security in return. Autocrats typically consolidate power by manufacturing “enemies” with “us vs. them” polarization, both within their country and against foreign adversaries. They build solidarity with their subjects by inflaming resentments about past events, which are often imaginary or greatly exaggerated. They claim that impersonal forces, like capitalism, automatically generate democracy, while actually inculcating undemocratic passivity.
By insisting that democracy requires active citizens who fight for justice and push for the ability of their people to choose their leaders with free and fair elections, popular forces have chipped away at this centralization of wealth and power and its glorification of “status.”
The peaceful transfer of power and respect for the “rule of law” which constrains governmental officials are central to democracy. Another key ingredient is the involvement of ordinary people in shaping public policy through lobbying, demonstrations, and other methods. These efforts are focused on the future rather than resentments about the past. Free speech and a plurality of opinions are tolerated.
Modern-day liberal democracies are imperfect. They’re oligarchic to a considerable degree. Corrupt hierarchies are powerful. The people at large must constantly resist efforts to reinforce autocratic features, push for more justice and democracy in their own country, and support the expansion of universal human rights abroad. Merely deposing autocrats is not sufficient. Broad agreement on a vision for a better future is also needed.
With this website, Americans for Humanity presents information and analysis concerning how the U. S. government functions as well as efforts by pro-democracy activists and advocates to advance and strengthen democracy. We also suggest additional proposals for action, including Adaptive Actions.
We would welcome partner projects in other countries, such as “Austrians for Humanity” or “Mexicans for Humanity,” with whom we could collaborate to pursue our global mission to support the development of compassionate communities whose members serve humanity, the environment, and life itself.
Activists
“A non-partisan voting rights organization led by people of color. Center for Common Ground was founded to educate and empower under-represented voters in voter suppression states to engage in elections and advocate for their right to vote. Together, we can build a democracy that prioritizes the voices of ALL people.”
Advocates/Services
The Albert Einstein Institution is a nonprofit organization founded by Dr. Gene Sharp in 1983 to advance the study and use of strategic nonviolent action in conflict. We are committed to the defense of freedom, democracy, and the reduction of political violence through the use of nonviolent action. Our goals are to understand the dynamics of nonviolent action in conflicts, to explore its policy potential, and to communicate this through print and other media, translations, conferences, consultations, and workshops.
Choose Democracy prepared a movement to prevent an undemocratic power grab or coup. We offer our lessons to people everywhere.
"To advance nonpartisan reforms addressing significant problems in U.S. democracy, in coordination with other reform organizations; To strengthen the reform movement in the United States through the interjection of information on global best practices in democratic institution-building.”
Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA).
“a membership-led, grassroots organization that builds power with Arizona’s working families to advance social, racial and economic justice for all. Through grassroots campaigns, leadership development, advocacy and civic engagement, we work to create an Arizona in which every person enjoys equal rights, opportunities and protections.”
A global network and crowdsourcing platform for researchers, educators, practitioners, policymakers, activists, and anyone interested in public participation and democratic innovations
integrates research, teaching, and practice to strengthen global democracy by improving and expanding civic engagement and inclusive dialogue, and by supporting inquiry that leads to real-world change.
WE WON’T STOP until all the systems are working toward the success of every child and person of every race in Cincinnati.
Articles/Essays/Op-eds
Holistic Democracy (2016), Martin Vlcek (Author)
“The presented work studies the state as a holistic object. It takes as determining for its behavior neither properties of elements, nor sums of them, but a new quality of properties existing only in a holistic object. These properties describe status of an object and its heading. This is an analogy with a living organism. Connected with holistic properties are holistic functions, existing not on a level of elements and realizing intended goals of an object. A division of functions happens in the object, where one part solves interest of elements and the second one the interest of the object as whole – of the new quality. Structure of the state is discussed on basis of knowledge of analogical structures. At the same time an instrument for its objective monitoring and control is submitted – a structural model of events.”
“Holistic Democracy” and Citizen Motivation To Use a More Holistic Approach to Public Decision Making, Jan Inglis (2011).
“The broad focus of this paper and the study about which it reports centre on the implications of applying holistic approaches to democracy, or more specifically to public decision making practices. This paper advocates that more complex and holistic methods be used to respond to the complexities of global issues. It describes how these processes take more time, commitment, and structure to use and it raises a question regarding citizen motivation to use such processes. It addresses this question in three ways: It presents a term 3D Democracy that highlights this complexity; it discusses why public processes need to address the task of decision making, and it reports on a small case study. Results of that study indicate that using critical reflection and deliberation on the adequacy of current methods of public involvement in decision making can stimulate citizens to be interested in and motivated to use such a holistic method. The paper ends with reflections and further questions.”
John Lewis Speech Transcript at the March on Washington, John Lewis.
“[. . .] We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here. For they are receiving starvation wages or no wages at all. While we stand here, there are sharecroppers in the Delta of Mississippi who are out in the fields working for less than three dollars a day, 12 hours a day. While we stand here, there are students in jail on trumped-up charges. Our brother James Farmer, along with many others, is also in jail. We come here today with a great sense of misgiving. It is true that we support the administration’s Civil Rights Bill. We support it with reservation, however.” [read more]
The Worst People Run for Office. It’s Time for a Better Way, Adam Grant.
“[. . .] in multiple experiments led by the psychologist Alexander Haslam, the opposite held true. Groups actually made smarter decisions when leaders were chosen at random than when they were elected by a group or chosen based on leadership skill.
Why were randomly chosen leaders more effective? They led more democratically. “Systematically selected leaders can undermine group goals,” Dr. Haslam and his colleagues suggest, because they have a tendency to “assert their personal superiority.” When you’re anointed by the group, it can quickly go to your head: I’m the chosen one.
When you know you’re picked at random, you don’t experience enough power to be corrupted by it. Instead, you feel a heightened sense of responsibility: I did nothing to earn this, so I need to make sure I represent the group well.” [read more]
Danielle Allen and Ezra Klein on A.I. and Deliberative Democracy, Wade Lee Hudson.
In her April 14, 2023 interview on the Ezra Klein Show, Danielle Allen (whose new book is Justice by Means of Democracy) addresses how society might use modern technology to develop and strengthen “deliberative democracy structures that we have not yet set up.” Klein calls voting “a pretty thin level of participation” and envisions methods to enable people to “really be part of steering the ship of state.”
Klein argues, “You could have things like citizens assemblies and meetings, and in other ways, you could have a thicker kind of participation and advisory role for the public than you currently do.” Modern deliberative digital tools can enhance democracy, which Allen defines as “equal empowerment across a body of free and equal citizens.” She believes, “One of the greatest values of democracy is that together we can be much smarter than we can be as individuals.” [read more]
Latin American Democratic Failures Offer Warning Signs to the U.S., Katherine Alperin.
Most Americans fear that U.S. democracy is at risk of extinction. Unfortunately, these fears may not be unfounded. As January 6 rioters go on trial for their attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of Presidential power, President Donald Trump continues to claim fraudulent election results, and populist leaders have gained traction on both sides of the American political spectrum. In recent decades, populist leadership has contributed to great instability in Latin America. Important lessons on democratic preservation, or the lack thereof, can be gleaned from analyzing the tumultuous history of our southern neighbors. [read more]
The War in Ukraine and the Future of Democracy (audio), Timothy Snyder.
“Democracy might or might not have a future. The signs, in general, are not good… The future is democracy, or it is not at all.
We are used to people telling us that we have to choose between freedom and security. In fact, we have to choose both to get either…
The war in Ukraine is a specific (and terrible) instance of a general problem [. . .] The Ukrainian president’s choice to remain in the country, I argue, is an important reminder that democracy exists as a commitment, or not at all [. . .]
We…have tended to forget that democracy is about the future, and as such can only exist when individuals seek to generate futures on the basis of values with the help of institutions that allow them to do so… We have tended to believe the democracy was inevitable, because there were no alternatives, because capitalism would guarantee it, and so on. In fact, placing faith in structural factors and abstractions makes democracy impossible. Democracy will always be a struggle.”
How to Strangle Democracy While Pretending to Engage in It, Carlos Lozada.
[. . .] But the German-born Hirschman — who in addition to being an academic economist was a U.S. Army veteran, an antifascist resister, an adviser on the Marshall Plan and a consultant to the Colombian government — was too intellectually honest, or simply had seen too much of the world, to stop with the right. The left displays its own unity of certitude, he suggested in the penultimate chapter of “The Rhetoric of Reaction,” and its habit of rationalization is “richer in maneuvers, largely of exaggeration and obfuscation, than it is ordinarily given credit for.” [read more]
Elizabeth Anderson: Democratic Equality, (review of “What is the Point of Equality?” by Elizabeth S. Anderson).
The U.S. Thinks ‘It Can’t Happen Here.’ It Already Has, By Jamelle Bouie.
The move from democracy to autocracy isn’t a sudden shift. It is not a switch that flips from light to dark with nothing in between. But it’s also not quite right to call the path to authoritarianism a journey. To use a metaphor of travel or distance is to suggest something external, removed, foreign.
It is better, in the U.S. context at least, to think of authoritarianism as something like a contradiction nestled within the American democratic tradition. It is part of the whole, a reflection of the fact that American notions of freedom and liberty are deeply informed by both the experience of slaveholding and the drive to seize land and expel its previous inhabitants. [read more]
The Uncomfortable Truths That Could Yet Defeat Fascism, Anand Giridharadas
Polls swing this way and that way, but the larger story they tell is unmistakable. With the midterm elections, Americans are being offered a clear choice between continued and expanded liberal democracy, on the one hand, and fascism, on the other. And it’s more or less a dead heat.
It is time to speak an uncomfortable truth: The pro-democracy side is at risk not just because of potential electoral rigging, voter suppression and other forms of unfair play by the right, as real as those things are. In America (as in various other countries), the pro-democracy cause — a coalition of progressives, liberals, moderates, even decent Republicans who still believe in free elections and facts — is struggling to win the battle for hearts and minds.
Fareed Zakaria on Grassroots Democracy, From his 10/16/22 CNN GPS program.
And now for the last look. The protests raging in Iran have been deeply inspiring, sparked by women demonstrating against the repression of a brutal regime, that has made control over women and their bodies a central tenant of its rule. And as the "New York Times" notes, the protests have now spread to include oil workers who have taken to the streets shouting slogans like "death to the dictator."
This is powerful stuff. But are the regime's days numbered? In a fascinating piece in "The New York Times," Max Fisher notes two puzzling trends. All over the world we are seeing an astonishing rise in protests. But this rise in frequency does not appear to correlate to a rise in efficacy. In fact, quite the opposite. (read more)
Review of James Lindley Wilson: Democratic Equality, John Thrasher.
“It is especially important insofar as it defends a conception of political equality based on the relational egalitarian notion of equality of status that does not cash this idea out in terms of equality of power. Taken as a whole, Wilson presents a thoroughly worked out conception of political equality as well as its relation to democracy and democratic institutions.”
Review of Democratic Equality (James Lindley Wilson) for Political Theory, Samuel Bagg.
“Despite these lingering worries – which no theory can entirely escape – Wilson’s book is clearly a significant contribution to ongoing debates in analytic political philosophy. On its own terms, then, it is undoubtedly an impressive achievement. He outlines a distinctive account of the justification and demands of democracy, carefully contrasts his view with others, and systematically draws out its institutional implications. He endorses recent arguments that equal authority over common affairs is an essential component of relations of social equality. Yet he doubts that this can be achieved through equal power or influence. Just as we give appropriate consideration to the judgments of our friends, rather, representatives must grant the same respect to their constituents, and equal citizens to one another. To aid them in this task, Wilson concludes, political institutions must be designed to minimize deliberative neglect.”
Can’t We Come Up with Something Better Than Liberal Democracy? Adam Gopnik.
The West’s favored form of self-government is looking creaky. A legal scholar and a philosopher propose some alternatives.
…Getting the part to act as the whole presupposes an agreement among the whole. There is no such agreement. Trumpism and Obamaism are not two expressions of one will for collective action; they are radically incommensurable views about what’s needed...
The perennial temptation of leftist politics is to suppose that opposition to its policies among the rank and file must be rooted in plutocratic manipulation, and therefore curable by the reassertion of the popular will. The evidence suggests, alas, that very often what looks like plutocratic manipulation really is the popular will...
Kōjin Karatani... s a staunch egalitarian, who believes that democracy actually exemplifies the basic oppressive rhythm of “ruler and ruled.” His ideal is, instead, “isonomia,” the condition of a society in which equal speaks to equal as equal, with none ruled or ruling, and he believes that such an order existed around the Ionian Islands of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E., before the rise of Athens...
...Yet the basic inquiry into the possibility of human relationships that Karatani undertakes is moving, even inspiring. Though he doesn’t cite them, his Ionians most resemble the classic anarchists, of the Mikhail Bakunin or Emma Goldman kind: repudiating all power relations, ruler to ruled, in a way that shames more timid liberal imaginations.
The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare, Thomas Homer-Dixon.
...By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.
We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine. In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace... [read more]
10 things you need to know to stop a coup, Daniel Hunter.
While keeping people focused on a strong, robust election process is a must, we also need to prepare for a coup.
How to face right-wing violence while defending the election, Bryan Farrell.
As Americans prepare to stop a coup, concerns for safety are rising. Longtime trainer George Lakey offers lessons on overcoming fear and minimizing violence.
The Enemies of Liberalism Are Showing Us What It Really Means, Ezra Klein
“After three decades of dominance, liberalism is losing its hold on Western minds,” Matthew Rose writes in his powerful new book, “A World After Liberalism.”
Rose does not mean liberalism in the way we typically use the word. This is not about supporting universal health care or disagreeing with Justice Samuel Alito. Rose means liberalism as in the shared assumptions of the West: a belief in human dignity, universal rights, individual flourishing and the consent of the governed.
That liberalism has been battered by financial crises, the climate crisis, checkered pandemic responses, right-wing populists and a rising China. It seems exhausted, ground down, defined by the contradictions and broken promises that follow victory rather than the creativity and aspiration that attend struggle.
At least, it did.
READ MORE
Where Does American Democracy Go From Here? New York Times (behind paywall), March 17, 2022
Freedom House: The United States had slid down its ranking of countries by political rights and civil liberties — it is now 59th on Freedom House’s list, slightly below Argentina and Mongolia.
Mason: The word “identity” keeps coming up, and this is a really crucial part of it. And remember that we have research about intergroup conflict, right? Don’t look at this as, like, a logical disagreement situation. We’re not disagreeing on what kind of tax structure we should have. We’re not just disagreeing about the role of the federal government in American society. What we’re disagreeing about is increasingly the basic status differences between groups of people that have existed in America for a very long time. One of the things that Nathan Kalmoe and I found in our forthcoming book is that if you look at Democrats and Republicans who really, really hate each other and call each other evil and say the other party is a threat to the United States, the best predictor of that is how they think about the traditional social hierarchy. (read more) (behind paywall)
White Democrats and Republicans had basically identical levels of racial resentment in 1986; today they’re 40 points apart. So one of the most passionate divides that we’re seeing between the parties right now, more than it has been in decades, is, does systemic racism exist? Does systemic sexism exist? Have we done enough to overcome it? Have we gone too far? When Trump made that an explicit conversation instead of a dog whistle, we actually had to start talking about it. And now we’re having this extremely difficult conversation as a country, and it’s never going to go well. It’s just not. There’s no possible way for us to have this conversation and stay calm and rational and reasonable about it. We’ve never done it before. It’s just very messy, and it’s going to be messy, and it’s going to get even uglier than it currently is.
Anderson: What is so scary is that, you know, what generally happens is that if you have a common enemy, it causes a coalescence among these disparate groups. Covid-19 was that common enemy, and instead, you saw greater fissioning between folks, greater division with this common enemy that has killed almost one million Americans. We couldn’t pull it together. We couldn’t rally around. We couldn’t agree on basic facts. That fissioning tells me how in trouble we are. I worry greatly about our democracy because where we should be able to see us coming together, instead of a “we” moment it is an “I” moment. And we’ve got to get to the “we.” We have got to get to the “we.”
Homans: I wonder, though — is there a “we”? I’ve been thinking about this, watching the war in Ukraine, which, besides bringing the matter of democracy’s global health to the fore, has so clearly centered on the question of how nations define things like cultural identity, sovereignty and an agreed-upon history — and what they define them against. Are Americans anywhere close to having a shared answer to that question themselves? Have these events changed your thinking at all about the fragility — or resilience — of democracy, or suggested any lessons we should apply to the United States?
Levitsky: The crossroads that American democracy is at right now are pretty damn close to unique. I mean, we are on the brink of something very new and very challenging. So it is not easy to find solutions, best practices elsewhere; the creation of a truly multiracial democracy is uncharted territory.
What America Would Look Like in 2025 Under Trump (behind paywall), The New York Times, Feb. 2, 2022, Thomas B. Edsall.
What will happen if the political tables are turned and the Republican Party wins the White House in 2024 and the House and Senate along the way?
One clue is that Donald Trump is an Orban worshiper — that’s Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, a case study in the aggressive pursuit of a right-wing populist agenda...
Kitschelt’s last point touches on what is sure to be a major motivating force for a Republican Party given an extended lease on life under Trump: the need to make use of every available tool — from manipulation of election results to enactment of favorable voting laws to appeals to minority voters in the working class to instilling fear of a liberal state run amok — to maintain the viability of a fragile coalition in which the core constituency of white noncollege voters is steadily declining as a share of the electorate. It is an uphill fight requiring leaders, at least in their minds, to consider every alternative in order to retain power, whether it’s democratic or authoritarian, ethical or unethical, legal or illegal. (read more)
So, You Think the Republican Party No Longer Represents the People (behind paywall), The New York Times, February 2, 2022, Russ Douhat.
...But when it comes to the work of government, the actual decisions that determine law and policy, liberalism is the heir to its own not exactly democratic tradition — the progressive vision of disinterested experts claiming large swaths of policymaking for their own and walling them off from the vagaries of public opinion, the whims of mere majorities... So just as a conservative alternative to Trump would need to somehow out-populist him, to overcome the dark side of right-wing populism, American liberalism would need to first democratize itself.
(read more)
Self-Reform is Missing, Wade Lee Hudson
Being in the flow with a partner is a great experience, but society undermines partnership by inflaming its dominate-or-submit culture. The Democratic and Republican parties reinforce these divisive tendencies. Undoing deeply embedded social conditioning and nurturing compassionate cooperation throughout society will require sustained effort and mutual support.
With true partners, you care for the other as much as you care for yourself. The more they benefit, the more you benefit. You listen, learn, understand, and respect each other. You make decisions together, as equals, perhaps switching roles and delegating responsibilities. You’re a team. No one dominates or considers themselves to be a superior human being… Unfortunately, however, Americans (as is the case with humans in general) have an arrogance problem. (read more)
David Shor Is Telling Democrats What They Don’t Want to Hear, Ezra Klein.
"...Shor believes the party has become too unrepresentative at its elite levels to continue being representative at the mass level. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the people we’ve lost are likely to be low-socioeconomic-status people,” he said. “If you look inside the Democratic Party, there are three times more moderate or conservative nonwhite people than very liberal white people, but very liberal white people are infinitely more represented. That’s morally bad, but it also means eventually they’ll leave.” The only way out of this, he said, is to “care more and cater to the preference of our low-socioeconomic-status supporters..." (read more)
Related:
—Bill Clinton, Race and the Politics of the 1990s, Jamelle Bouie.
—The Race-Class Narrative Project.
—How Democrats Can Save Themselves, Russ Douhat.
—Democrats Can’t Just Give the People What They Want, Thomas B. EdsallHow My Father’s Ideas Helped the Kurds Create a New Democracy, Debbie Bookchin.
“Had my father lived to see his ideas about “social ecology” enacted in Rojava and southeastern Turkey, he would have been profoundly moved to know that his revolutionary spirit and vision for human liberation had been reborn among a generation of the Kurdish people.” [Also see: How a small but powerful band of women led the fight against ISIS, PBS Newshour. “In all the towns they took from ISIS, except for two that are now occupied by Turkish-backed forces, they have women co-heading every council. They have women's councils in every town there. So, they continue to have women right at the center of their experiment in grassroots participatory democracy that's aimed at self-rule.”]
The Making of the New Left, Louis Menand.
“The movement inspired young people to believe that they could transform themselves—and America… These reminiscences may seem romantic. They are romantic. But they express the core premise of left-wing thought, the core premise of Marx: Things do not have to be the way they are. The nation was at a crossroads in the nineteen-sixties. The system did not break, but it did bend. We are at another crossroads today. It can be made to bend again.”
Dynamic Facilitation, Rosa Zubizarreta.
“A specific method for hosting deliberative dialogue in a way that creates psychological safety and thus encourages participants to engage creatively with differing perspectives.”
The Vorarlberg Bürgerrat model, aka Citizens' Councils, Rosa Zubizarreta.
“Based on Jim Rough's Wisdom Council model, it aims to address community issues in a quick and inexpensive manner through facilitated deliberation.”
Developing Community Voice, John Sanger.
“Most good conversations occur between individuals that have some level of equality between them. They are generally one-to-one or one-to-few. As more people enter the conversation, you reach a place where there is a power imbalance i.e., there is a leader or a group at the podium that controls the conversation flow, the quality drops rapidly.”
How to Turn Your Red State Blue, Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo.
“It may take 10 years. Do it anyway.”
Donald Trump: The Triumph of Frustration, The Failure Of Vision, Shariff M. Abdullah.
“…For the longest time, all during the presidential campaign, I kept telling people to STOP paying attention to the Twitter shenanigans of Donald Trump. We should pay attention to the tens of millions of ordinary, average people who are frustrated with a political system that does not work for them…”
A Gen-Z and elders alliance for an American renaissance, Hector E. Garcia.
“But, at their margins, are two groups who might lead society out of the tangled web woven over the past few decades. The members of Generation Z (Gen Z) and retired Elders are less subject to the bias of vested interests than the rest of American voting citizens.”
Our Democracy’s Near-Death Experience, Susan E. Rice.
“Now is no time for complacency. The next Congress must shore up our institutions. …enact the For the People Act to combat corruption, strengthen ethics rules and improve voter access as well as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the protections of the 1965 legislation. Congress would pass the Protecting Our Democracy Act to constrain the power of future presidents who deem themselves above the law and finally adopt long-stalled legislation to shore up our election infrastructure against adversaries, foreign or domestic.”
Leftists and Moderates, Stop Fighting. You Need One Another, Michelle Goldberg.
“In the Democratic civil war, both sides are partly right.”
Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States, Matthew H. Graham and Milan W. Svolik.
“Only a small fraction of Americans prioritize democratic principles in their electoral choices, and their tendency to do so is decreasing in several measures of polarization…”
On the Precipice of a ‘Majority-Minority’ America: Perceived Status Threat From the Racial Demographic Shift Affects White Americans’ Political Ideology, Maureen A. Craig and Jennifer A. Richeson.
‘The Whole of Liberal Democracy Is in Grave Danger at This Moment’, Thomas B. Edsall.
"Trump’s America has accelerated 'the authoritarian dynamic.'...Some scholars argue that a focus on ideological conflict masks the most salient divisions in the era of Donald Trump: authoritarians versus non-authoritarians."
When Does Activism Become Powerful?, Hahrie Han
“It’s about much more than amassing money or people…. Leaders made space for members to develop the skills they needed to take risks, … build connections with one another…. A six-week racial reconciliation program...learn about and reflect on their own racial biases and build relationships across race.”
The Future of Democracy, a New Yorker series
Populism and John Dewey: Convergences and Contradictions, Harry C. Boyte
What is it about Random Selection? Tom Atlee
Democracy Isn’t Dead; We’ve Barely Tried It, Malka Older
Politicians, Movements, and Democracy, Wade Lee Hudson
Democracy Is for the Gods, Costica Bradatan
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages. The UDHR is widely recognized as having inspired, and paved the way for, the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties, applied today on a permanent basis at global and regional levels (all containing references to it in their preambles).
Why Are Millions of Citizens Not Registered to Vote?, The Pew Charitable Trusts (2017)
Stacked Deck: How the Racial Bias in Our Big Money Political System Undermines Our Democracy and Our Economy, Adam Lioz (2014)
What Was Revolutionary about the French Revolution?, Robert Darnton.
“The French revolutionaries were not Stalinists. They were an assortment of unexceptional persons in exceptional circumstances. When things fell apart, they responded to an overwhelming need to make sense of things by ordering society according to new principles. Those principles still stand as an indictment of tyranny and injustice. What was the French Revolution all about? Liberty, equality, fraternity.”
Books
Fight: How Gen Z is Channeling their Fear and Passion to Save America, John Della Volpe.
“Gen Z has not buckled under this tremendous weight. On the contrary, they have organized around issues from gun control to racial and environmental justice to economic equity, becoming more politically engaged than their elders, and showing a unique willingness to disrupt the status quo.”
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder.
The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.
On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.
The Anti-Coup, Gene Sharp.
“As coups are one of the primary ways through which dictatorships are installed, this piece details measures that civilians, civil society, and governments can take to prevent and block coups d'état and executive usurpations. It also contains specific legislative steps and other measures that governments and non-governmental institutions can follow to prepare for anti-coup resistance.”
How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America, Heather Cox Richardson.
“Southern elites, Western libertarians and the conservative coalition”
The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It (2018), Yascha Mounk
Civil Resistance Against Coups: A Comparative and Historical Perspective, Stephen Zunes.
“Nations are not helpless if the military decides to stage a coup. On dozens of occasions in recent decades, even in the face of intimidated political leaders and international indifference, civil society has risen up to challenge putschists through large-scale nonviolent direct action and noncooperation. How can an unarmed citizenry mobilize so quickly and defeat a powerful military committed to seizing control of the government? What accounts for the success or failure of nonviolent resistance movements to reverse coups and consolidate democratic gains?
This monograph presents in-depth case studies and analysis intended to improve our understanding of the strategic utility of civil resistance against military takeovers; the nature of civil resistance mobilization against coups; and the role of civil resistance against coups in countries’ subsequent democratization efforts (or failure thereof). It offers key lessons for pro-democracy activists and societies vulnerable to military usurpation of power; national civilian and military bureaucracies; external state and non-state agencies supportive of democracy; and future scholarship on this subject.”
Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism (2004), Cornel West
Equality Beyond Debate: John Dewey's Pragmatic Idea of Democracy, Jeff Jackson
The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government, Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer.
"Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer outline a simple but revolutionary argument for why our most basic assumptions about democracy need updating for the 21st century. They offer a roadmap for those looking for a way forward from an American life marked by divisive conversations... We must redefine how we view prosperity in order to move from a dog-eat-dog mentality that perpetuates the top 1% to a communal and inclusive movement that illustrates that we’re all better off when we’re all better off."
Podcasts
Astra Taylor will change how you think about democracy, Ezra Klein Show
Documentaries
What is Democracy?, Astra Taylor
Quotes
”How do you make democracy with an undemocratic people?”
From the documentary, What is Democracy?, Astra Taylor
Online Course
Revolutionary Ideas: An Introduction to Legal and Political Philosophy
A free, online, open-to-all Coursera course.