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Terms of Engagement – Episode One
From rank-choice voting to reconciliation, American democracy is headline news. Let’s talk about it.
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From Crisis to Action: Turning the Tide on Democratic Erosion Through Organizing
In response to the recent anti-democratic patterns in the United States, the Ash Center hosted a panel of Harvard scholars to discuss how civil society can resist democratic backsliding through social mobilization and organizing.
According to the Polity Project, an organization that ranks and categorizes governments worldwide, the U.S. government is classified as a “non-democracy” as of February 2025, a downgrade from its previous status as a democracy. In response to this decline, a panel of Harvard scholars convened last week for a webinar to discuss how civil society groups can protect and promote democracy in such times of crisis.
The Polity Project’s assessment hinges on what it calls an executive coup — an attempt to concentrate all decision-making power within the executive branch. Erica Chenoweth, academic dean for faculty development and Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), drew on this analysis to frame the discussion, highlighting the role of social mobilization and organizing in resisting democratic backsliding.
Recognizing the Urgency of this Moment
Building on the project’s classification of the United States as a non-democracy, Steven Levitsky, David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and professor of government at Harvard University, warned that aspects of the Trump administration reflect patterns of competitive authoritarianism, where freely elected officials consolidate power by stacking leadership positions with loyalists. “When competitive authoritarianism is executed in a systematic way, as we’ve begun to see in the last month, what it does is tilt the playing field against the opposition and in favor of the incumbent,” explained Levitsky.
Echoing concerns about the country’s trajectory, Cornell William Brooks, Hauser Professor of the Practice of Nonprofit Organizations and professor of the practice of public leadership and social justice at HKS, called this “an exceedingly dangerous moment in our republic.” He added that efforts to erase the country’s unique identity as a multiracial democracy signaled further erosion. Taken together, these dynamics create what Marshall Ganz, Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society at HKS, described as a “rock-bottom moment.”
He continued, “The thing about rock-bottom moments is that you realize that you cannot keep doing what you’ve been doing and expect an outcome that’s any different. Rock-bottom moments mean you must change; you must be open to change, and you must consider where we are.”
Strong Principles Power Effective Movements
To emerge from this rock-bottom moment, Ganz emphasized the necessity of coming together with a spirit of hope — without that, progress is impossible. He argued that before people power can be exercised, organizing must be grounded in a clearly defined cause and a set of shared values: “If you’re going to fight, you need to know what you’re fighting for…Those of us who share democratic values know that it’s challenging to bring people to the center of politics in a real way, but that’s what we have to do.”
Building on Ganz’s assessment, Brooks expanded on the path forward. While Ganz highlighted the immaterial elements necessary for building a foundation for social mobilization, Brooks focused on the practical aspects of organizing, underscoring the need for a broad, diverse coalition of advocates. “In this moment, I want to suggest that we are going to need, more than we certainly have in recent memory, a kind of multivalent, multilingual, multigenerational form of advocacy,” he said. “Which is to say, we have to have advocacy at the grassroots.”
Positive Coalitions as the Key to Democratic Renewal
Drawing on their expertise in nonviolent protest movements as a catalyst for democratic progress, Chenoweth situated the country’s fight against anti-democratic forces within the context of America’s deeply fragmented society. They explained that meaningful change will require uniting a diverse array of civic engagement groups under a common cause. Chenoweth described this as a “positive coalition” — one that not only rejects the status quo but also articulates a compelling vision of a future worth fighting for.
“A positive coalition could hold together and consolidate power after victory by asserting a more positive story about where the country was headed and an ability to cooperate with one another in order to achieve that,” they said.
Of course, this vision is not without its challenges. Levitsky cautioned that the inherent diversity within such a coalition could make it difficult for leaders to unite around a cohesive, future-oriented agenda. Ganz also pointed to a deeper structural challenge: the decline of civil society. He argued that a culture of individualism has eroded collective democratic engagement, leaving few spaces where people actively practice democracy in their daily lives. “The self-governing organizations are unions and maybe some churches; the vacuum has been filled by philanthropy and by the NGOs …” Ganz said. “When it comes to democracy, it’s not in people’s lived experience. When do they practice democracy?”
Yet despite these concerns, Chenoweth closed with an uplifting reminder: “There is always hope. People always have agency, knowledge is power, and perhaps most importantly, people can do together what they can’t do alone.”
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