Preprint
Advancing Multiracial Democracy: A Manifesto for Party-Building
SSRN Electronic Journal
2025
Abstract
a reassessment of our goals and tactics in the continued fight for an inclusive multiracial democracy. Failures to address enduring economic and social inequality, far more than the remaining formal and informal barriers in relation to voting, are the source of our continued shortcomings, leaving our existing paradigm for change, which remains preoccupied with legal barriers to participation in electoral politics, mismatched to current needs and circumstances. This chapter, therefore, develops a new paradigm for change-one that measures progress in terms of the policy returns of political participation. The new paradigm prioritizing building political power through political parties, as the only institutions capable of making political participation matter, and the party-centric reforms that would revitalize our party system. In recognition of the skepticism with which voting rights advocates and the communities they represent are likely to approach a call that involves working with political parties, the chapter devotes significant attention to the promises and pitfalls for communities of color of more fully embracing a party-centric power-building strategy in the fight for a meaningfully inclusive multiracial democracy.
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Details
- Title
- Advancing Multiracial Democracy: A Manifesto for Party-Building
- Creators
- Tabatha Abu El-Haj - Drexel University
- Publication Details
- SSRN Electronic Journal
- Resource Type
- Preprint
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Thomas R. Kline School of Law
- Other Identifier
- 991022061628004721