On the latest episode of This Old Democracy, Micah Sifry talks with Tom Asher, the director of research and global engagement at Columbia World Projects. Asher is leading a university-wide working group that seeks to turn academic insights into pathways for action on challenging civic and social problems. For the past two years, Tom and his colleagues at Columbia World Projects have been working in partnership with the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University, focusing on a simple but hard question: How do we fix our democratic system? That made Tom a perfect guest for Micah to talk with. The show started with some level-setting. Micah asked Asher, "Is democracy in America in trouble? is this something new or is it something we've been through before?" Tom's response: "Yes, yes and yes." Asher explained that America has faced democratic threats before – citing Father Coughlin and Joe McCarthy. But these voices were checked by institutions; Coughlin was ultimately subdued by his own church's hierarchy as well as the radio broadcasters trade association; McCarthyism was ultimately restrained by the U.S. Senate and the free press. Today, the kinds of institutions capable of providing checks on authoritarian movements have lost courage, standing and power. Asher connects the reduced power of civil society institutions to the decline in membership organizations that inculcated democratic values and skills. "If you think about unions, for example, at mid-century, one American worker in three belonged to a union. Today it's one in ten… But it's not only that. It's that if you read their literature from, say, the mid-19th century past the mid-20th century, they not only worked to build their membership and to fight for higher wages, but they actually expressed the goal of cultivating the democratic capacities of their members and the ideal of defending democracy itself. And that's not the case today. The great federated associations, the Elks, the Women's Clubs, the American Legion, which gathered people and taught them real democratic skills, oriented them toward active civic life, have lost most of their membership after the 1970s, and they've never recovered." The hollowing out of civil society – and of political parties – has been a running theme on This Old Democracy. We've covered the research and perspectives of Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Daniel Schlozman, Didi Kuo and others – all making the case that richer parties make for a more resilient democracy. Asher argues that the hollowing out has been more substantial on the left than on the right. "As the union hall, the mainline congregation, the lodge, the local party offices were hollowing out, the need for belonging didn't disappear with them. When the old rooms closed, people were looking for new ones, and the right built those rooms and waited and invited people in. And what they built were mega churches organized around small group discussions, Turning Point chapters, Moms for Liberty gatherings, and these were often weekly, in-person, meeting people where they already were." Asher explains why this matters, and the distinction between the left and the right. These kinds of groups say, "[J]oin us, sit with us, have fun at our rollicking events, regardless of what you believe. Belonging, as Hahrie Han, the great political scientist, puts it, comes before belief. The politics arrive later, carried by the relationships. And the left offers something very different. Believe in our cause and send $25. Citizens are treated more as its targets, not participants." Micah challenges Asher, pointing to social projects on the left like Black Lives Matter, the Women's March and the No Kings marches. Asher says these are different. "Compare the two parties and how they received their insurgents. The Tea Party was absorbed by the Republican Party, it got remade in its own image, and it remade the Tea Party as well. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, borrows the movements' language, it spends their energies at election time. But it tends to resist the demands the rest of the year. And someone in our convening put it really provocatively… [T]he Republican Party, this person said, loves its base. The Democratic Party appears to hate or at least fear its own." Asher believes we need parties that are thick in two directions. He explains: "They need to be socially thick. That means present year-round, useful to people between elections, and embedded to a greater degree than they are in people's routine lives. But they also need to be politically thick with real internal debate, factions, and decision maps that members can win or lose, and live with that losing. That's really important in a democracy, and we seem to be losing that skill." "And then second, we need to wrestle to a greater degree than we have with whether to invite groups that stand adjacent to the parties closer to the inside. So organizations like Faith in Minnesota that did so much of the mobilizing around the anti-ICE movement, or Voto Latino, both of which have a base of their own. They drive voter turnout, but they're often treated more like vendors than they are treated as if they're meaningful members of the party." Asher says his group's preliminary report also supports electoral system reforms that present a wider array of choices to "reflect the preferences of voters in a way that they simply do not right now … a wider suite of policy choices that 'I want to be represented should you win.'" Going forward, Asher says the Columbia World Projects working group will be exploring the potential for more dynamism at the city and state level and the role that digital platforms have played in changing our political system, as well as the role of influencers. Listen to the full episode to drink in the nuance of Asher's critique of our politics and share it with others who follow new thinking about how to repair this imperfect, precious, worn down marvel – otherwise known as this old democracy of ours.
