Can Social Movements Save Democracy?

Archon Fung, assistant professor public policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, reviews four publications on democracy.

• Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize American Democracy, by Mark R. Warren
• Gathering Power: The Future of Progressive Politics in America, by Paul Osterman
• Freedom is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements, by Francesca Polletta
• Faith in Action: Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America, by Richard L. Wood

Fung has divided his review into the following four headings: Politics without People, Social Capital with Fangs, Not Your Father's Participatory Democracy, and Beyond the Beloved Community. Fung states that these books "argue forcefully" that "progressives need to embrace a people-centered style of politics." The collective perspective represented in these books is that "a fundamental truth endures: only two sources of power in politics are organized money and organized people." The authors call for "political mobilization" as a way to "reinvigorate not only the American left but democracy in general."

Archon Fung describes three common themes from these books:

1. organising strategies can work, even in unlikely places like the border region of south Texas with its diverse population and widespread poverty.
2. groups organise themselves in participatory ways because it works, not simply because of an abstract commitment to participation. They build power by organising people through individual and group meetings, studying public issues that affect their interests, and by direct action.
3. people participate in these organisations to advance deep interests and values often rooted in religious conviction and practice.

Fung concludes by stating: "social movements can thus advance two complementary transformations. They can press governments to reorganize their decision-making in ways that allow the direct and indirect participation of many more voices..." and they can reorganize community institutions... — not only to engage effectively in traditional political arenas but also to create and take part in new, more encompassing democratic politics."

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