Podcast
What Would It Mean for a Party to Actually Represent You?
Abstract
The latest This Old Democracy features Tabatha Abu El-Haj on associational party building, the power of a ballot line, and what democratic accountability can look like in practice.
Something is missing from American politics — and it's not a policy position or a charismatic leader. It's a structural connection between the people who hold office and the communities they claim to represent.
Tabatha Abu El-Haj, a professor of law at Drexel University and a nationally recognized scholar of the First Amendment and the law of democracy, has a name for what's missing. She calls it associational party building, and it's the subject of both a paper recently released by New America under the title A Model for Associational Party Building and a rich conversation with host Micah Sifry on the latest episode of This Old Democracy.
The argument is deceptively simple: parties work best not as top-down electoral machines, but as living, rooted civic associations — embedded in the communities they represent, rich in face-to-face relationships, and accountable in ways that money alone can never manufacture. Abu El-Haj came to this view through an indirect route. She had spent years studying money in politics, but arrived at a sobering conclusion: you can't take money out of politics. So where does that leave ordinary people?
Metrics
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Details
- Title
- What Would It Mean for a Party to Actually Represent You?
- Creators
- Tabatha A Abu El-Haj - Drexel University, Thomas R. Kline School of LawMicah Sifry
- Resource Type
- Podcast
- Academic Unit
- Thomas R. Kline School of Law
- Other Identifier
- 991022199151104721