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A protest against the killing of Renee Good last Wednesday, only hours after it happened. The 2010s saw more people take part in political protests than any decade before. The 2020s are shaping up to be bigger still — on the day I write this, the US is facing another big wave of protests over…
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When confronted with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, John F. Kennedy had on his mind a book that he had recently read. It was The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman’s newly-published and now-classic account of how the European powers blundered into the First World War. Kennedy was impressed by the book and encouraged many…
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Zohran Mamdani (left) out campaigning in Flushing last June. The New York City mayoral election has drawn more attention than usual this year, thanks to the initially surprising rise and eventual victory last night of the radical left candidate Zohran Mamdani. At a time when American democracy is declining at an alarming speed thanks to…
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In the summer of 1914 most of Europe plunged into a war so catastrophic that it unhinged the continent’s politics and beliefs in a way that took generations to recover from. The disaster terrified its survivors, shocked that a civilization that had blandly assumed itself to be a model for the rest of the world…
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Frome, a mid-sized town in the English county of Somerset A few of us have predicted that radical assembly-based parties could be The Next Big Thing in politics. But how would one actually work? Assemblies What do we mean by assembly-based? This would partly mean that the party would use the incredible potential of randomly-selected…
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Why am I so prone to bending covers? As the former CEO of Oxfam, the venerable charity for global poverty relief, Danny Sriskandarajah has met with many well-known figures. Among them was Prince Philip: As I began to reply that I had been drawn to an association built on shared values like democracy, Prince Philip…
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In April 2012, Bill Shorten, a minister in the Australian government, gave an interview that drew unusually wide attention, and has occasionally been circulated since. The topic was about Peter Slipper, the parliamentary speaker who had temporarily left his post in light of allegations of sexual abuse. Shorten was asked whether Slipper should return to…
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Roger Hallam is not known for optimism. The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil is quite the fire-and-brimstone preacher when it comes to climate change. But when I heard him a few weeks ago on a call with Assemble and like-minded activists, he sounded genuinely hopeful about the assemblies that they were about…
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(A view of Penzance. No sign of any pirates.) I’ve discussed in an earlier post about the problem that citizens’ assemblies cost so much money to run, and possible solutions. This is why I was intrigued to find articles about a citizens’ assembly in the southwestern corner of England. It was run for only £1,500.…
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The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony is an excellent guide to humans’ powerful group instincts, written by psychologists Jay Van Bavel and Dominic J. Packer. Our group instincts drive us to work together in groups and have underpinned all of our greatest achievements, from…
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