First, the period of bipartisan compromise from the 1950s to the 1970s was an artificial period of Democratic Party hegemony in the US Congress, leading to a Republican Party that was more oriented toward compromise than the contestation for power. Reorienting democracy reform to address these power disparities represents a distinct and important shift for the social change ecosystem because it is a departure from more conventional accounts of why our democracy is failing.įurthermore, the focus on norms and polarization is misleading insofar as it implies a desire to return to the idyll of depolarized midcentury politics-a period that papered over other forms of undemocratic and inegalitarian problems. The crisis of democracy is one of concentrated political and economic power where a small elite-from corporations to politically influential interest groups-have outsize influence on public policy and social and economic life. We will explore why our democracy is in crisis today, what the emergent experiments are, how new approaches show promise in tackling the roots of those problems, and how social change practitioners can advance a more transformative, radically inclusive vision of democracy that addresses structural problems and raises new possibilities. This means democracy-reform policies must be connected to parallel fights around rebuilding civil society, building an inclusive economy, and reinventing the practice of governance itself. The essays in this supplement to Stanford Social Innovation Review speak to an increasingly shared understanding among policymakers, civil society leaders, and scholars that democracy reform today must address these underlying systemic roots of exclusion and inequality.
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