What We're Reading, part three
David Jacobstein
Hi all,
Democracy remains the topic with the most writing this quarter, for the obvious reason that American democracy continues to teeter and it drives a lot of other areas. So there is a lot to share. I’ve broken this one into sub-categories because there’s so much, but there are some really important ones too, so please have a look (and also, take a moment to be done reading/posting and actually go talk to your neighbors).
Starters
To start with, I have an article and a chart that are both fascinating. The article is by one of my favorite whimsical essayists (who I first started to read on his soccer website) and is published in one of the leading sports websites in the US, but is about misinformation and how it manifests. While it’s not novel content, it’s great writing and also a sign that this topic is relevant to a mainstream audience, not just folks who work in or on democracy. The visual (actually a series of charts from survey data) is a fascinating display of what Americans think they owe one another. If you’re not on the TWP list, you should join immediately - a great array of resources regularly published, including today, with some good news (see here) and several excellent articles, including a number around the political economy of security sector reform - a space of growing importance - and an absolutely phenomenal article on the experience of Movizilatorio in Colombia, from its leadership, that is insightful and clear. One of their quotes I think can stand in for a lot of democracy work, especially if you substitute “good governance” for “broad coalitions”: “A critical realisation that has emerged through Movilizatorio’s work is that broad coalitions are not spaces of total and permanent equity. Asymmetries of capacity, time, resources, and influence are inevitable. The challenge is not to deny them but to manage them realistically and transparently.”
Minneapolis section
Domestically, probably the most significant thing to happen in the United States this quarter was the effort by ICE to terrorize Minneapolis while indiscriminately grabbing potential immigrants off the street, during which they killed two observers. As horrific as the stories are, it is also in Minneapolis that the groundswell of public opinion fully shifted, aligned with tons of people taking small steps in their daily lives to try to mitigate the harms of this paramilitary action.
I’ve got a review for those of you further afield of Minnesota, from Kristi Evenson, and there’s also a fantastic Atlantic article behind a paywall with many interviews and conversations.
For me, what comes to the fore in this is how much the democratic upswell derives from the idea of being neighborly. While there are long organizational roots there (from both BLM protests and faith communities), to me what stands out is people who just want to look after others in their community as a core driver of change. Many of those taking food and sending warnings to neighbors, giving children rides to and from school, and offering services for free to people who are scared to leave their houses view themselves as apolitical, and are in their own words just being decent neighbors and providing care, even when it risks their lives to do so. Knowing and caring for your neighbors builds democracy and resists autocracy - so maybe take a moment to see what you can do for those around you.
Thought provoking
A number of articles or posts this quarter were particularly thought provoking, so I thought I’d group them, and see what you think of them:
Indy Johar’s reflections can be challenging to fully grasp, but are worth grappling with, as they point to some really interesting spaces of change. I took away from these, especially 6 and 9, that attention to how systems shape decision spaces is both urgent and vital. While lots of democracy work attempts to address structural questions, understanding legitimacy as “permission to act under disagreement” helps get at the norms and values idea in a new way - the structures aren’t to improve decisions (it’s a nice byproduct) but to enable legitimate action. This is a really important insight for anyone working on deliberative democracy, as is the concern that politics are migrating up into this space.
Flor Guerzovich always has several thought provoking pieces, but I wanted to highlight her post on governance work and highlighting what we need to see. She describes the concrete principles and functions that allow broad language on soft infrastructure to go beyond funding with fewer strings and actually observe, value and support key functions that both organizational staff and community stakeholders can play over time to foster resilience and adaptiveness. It is so practical and realizable! If you work for or have any influence at a philanthropy, you need to bring this to decision-makers!
This review of Democracy on a Tightrope (which I have downloaded but not yet read) is very intriguing. I think it reinforces the work of Hahrie Han and others to emphasize that the core question for democratic renewal is around building relationships, not solving problems per se. It offers an interesting spin by emphasizing reframing the role of citizens from a source of demand for good governance and service delivery to a critical support for the democratic tightrope, whose knowledge is applied to create decisional space/allow expert judgment. Lots of democracy work still is paternalistic, either about citizens or about the state, even when it calls for relationships to be centered in understandings of state capacity and democratic effectiveness; viewing citizens as key actors not purely for restraining officials but for empowering them is a helpful corrective.
I also am sharing Flor’s lovely shorthand slides synthesizing what evaluation of governance work sees and misses (the embedded link is to already-shared material). If you click on the image and scroll through the four slides, it very clearly explains how viewing sustainability as reliability (rather than continuity/permanence) misses critical functions, and what those are.
A review of case studies looking at corruption in health systems from Alan Hudson synthesizes a large array of cases, and offers the useful metaphor of a landscaping for the connection between structure and specifics in regulatory spaces and connected behaviors.
Finally, a slightly polemical take on the lack of political diversity within progressive spaces being a contributing cause to democratic decline. Written by an insider, I think this is powerful, accurate, and a call to intentional diversification in a new way (see the quote below on seeking to be uncomfortable in your coalition). Perhaps an important signal that a reckoning within the progressive movement for inclusive democracy can coexist with an urgent need to refute autocratization.
Digital
A number of articles this quarter centered on digital democracy, with fairly distinct perspectives that reveal lots of continued debate:
The most striking one to me is this DiResta and Kleinfeld article on social media as the new commons, because I think it covers both good and problematic aspects of this topic. The good is that it succinctly covers how social media is the key space from which people get information and make decisions, and so is vital to philanthropic (and other) actors because it is where people spend significant time. It also is spot on in critiquing a “pay to play” approach to getting messages out through influencers. Which is why it is a bit disappointing to see its suggestions for funders still largely framed as communications, with broad gestures towards experimentation and even a suggestion to directly fund influencers instead of having grantees do it. Of course, if social media is the new commons, the thing to do would be to invest in relationships - not transactional ones, but two way ones - both by grantees and foundations. In other words, invite prominent members of diverse communities that exist online to learn about your issues and share their own experience, cultivate friendships or allyships with them and see whether their perspective suggests and should inform your own direction. I think above all this shows how strong a mental model is baked into the idea of strategic communications, and how hard it is to really shift from “getting your message out” to “building stakeholder relationships” as something done digitally.
I will start with this disturbing article on AI and institutions, which is an alarming essay framing how the functionality of AI undermines democratic institutions. While not inevitable, understanding why and how AI degrades institutions (strongly due to its effects on relationships and on people meeting and discussing) is essential to build good safeguards around it and scaffold its deployment to gain value while minimizing harm.
It reminded me of this philosophical discussion around AI and civilization, which I think brings a useful lens around how we define and understand our civilization in order to inform our perspective on new technologies.
Grab-bag
Finally, a handful of other good reads on democracy that didn’t neatly fit elsewhere:
A paper on various roles in scaling democratic innovations. I think it is great to have this sort of crisp description of how innovations grow and scale, fits with what Flor describes above. I also wonder if there are parallels to the overproduction of analysts in political sphere and underproduction of long-term supporters - lots of people have a sense of what should be done, but fewer are connected to those who are doing it.
Dean Jackson on the gap of cross-border/boundary networks of democracy activists;
Melissa Hooper on lessons in fighting authoritarianism from abroad, with the great quote “if you’re comfortable in your coalition it isn’t broad enough;”
A very cool note on fighting apathy in Virginia and Maine, with practical details of how to do so, drawing attention to generational change and information flows
A number of excellent videos for stories for change, highlighting how many communities are driving change themselves without either guidance or funding from outsiders.
Let me know what you’re reading, or which of these caught your eye, or what you disagree with or endorse!