Belfer Case Study Room (S020), CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA 02138
The Department of Government Presents
The Sidney Verba Lecture Series
Jamila Michener, Cornell University
Power from the Margins and the Promise of Democracy
Abstract: Pundits, scholars and ordinary people alike lament the troubling decline of democracy in the contemporary United States. Trust in democratic institutions is at a nadir while political cynicism and support for authoritarianism are on the rise. In this broader context of political malaise, where are the avenues for building a more robust democratic polity? Drawing on insights from extensive qualitative research, I’ll highlight how building power within racially and economically marginalized communities around issues directly related to their material interests (like health and housing) is a promising pathway. Grassroots political organizing is (perhaps unexpectedly) an antidote to the social cleavages that accelerate democratic backsliding. What’s more is that such organizing can forge a route to transforming both the polity and the political economy it is embedded within such that both are more attuned to communities that teeter at the margins of the existing power structures.
Jamila Michener is an associate professor of Government and Public Policy at Cornell University. Her research focuses on poverty, racial inequality and public policy in the United States, with a particular emphasis on health and housing. Her work investigates the ways public policy and political institutions shape the material and political lives of people who are economically and racially marginalized—and the ways that members of such groups gain power to affect policy and politics.