For many years, practitioners have talked about the beneficial secondary effects of good democratic process, and rightly so. But placing people’s experience at the heart of our work calls on us to be explicit about the experience of democracy and how it can and should contribute to human flourishing.
Civic life, particularly the aspects of civic life that interact directly with government, can often seem lifeless. What role do happiness, pleasure, and joy play in participatory democracy? What possibilities might we imagine together if we paid particular attention to nurturing those emotions in our work and in our civic spaces.
A greater understanding of which practices nurture a sense of belonging among community members and which practices do not can help us strengthen public engagement efforts and do a better job of providing for human needs.
Universal programs often distribute resources where they are not most needed. Targeted programs, on the other hand, are politically vulnerable. Targeted universalism sidesteps those problems by focusing on broad goals followed by specific strategies.
