First Chapter: How Organizations Develop Activists by Hahrie Han

Below is an excerpt from the first chapter of Hahrie Han’s 2014 book, How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations and Leadership in the 21st Century. An Associate Professor of Political Science at Wellesley…

Frontiers of Democracy Research: The Gettysburg Project

This post highlights a new initiative exploring the decline of public engagement and ways that we might improve the scope, diversity and impact of organizing and mobilization of the public. Lead faculty Marshall Ganz and Archon Fung…

Who Calls the Shots? Who Really Rules? New Research on Influence in American Policy

By Richa Mishra

Justice Louis Brandeis once stated, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but…

Boston Launches First Youth-Driven Participatory Budgeting in the US

By Hollie Russon Gilman, PhD

There is a general sense that young people don’t want to engage in politics. And yet, we are seeing young people increasingly using new technologies to…

My Challenges: Gar Alperovitz, Author of ‘What Then Must We Do,’ Wants Us to Get Serious about System Change

Asked to diagnose the health of American democracy, Gar Alperovitz calls for more debate about our economic and political systems — one that…

Frontiers of Democracy Research: How Public Deliberation Helps Democracies Adapt Over Time

In this post, recent Ash Center Democracy Fellow Didier Caluwaerts reflects on the dynamic nature of public problems and political power and the challenges this “migration”…

A Revolution in Politics? Social Media in China, Egypt, and the U.S.