| Summary/Abstract |
If there are two things that unite the stunningly diverse movements of the last five years, it is their reliance on new digital media and their determination to enact, as well as bring about, more participatory forms of democracy. In this paper, I look at these developments separately and together. Why has enthusiasm for consensus-based decision making and leaderless organizations that were seemingly abandoned by the 1970s gained new life? How has that enthusiasm come to be shared by the right and left, by Tea Party members alongside Occupy activists? Without diminishing the importance of economic crises and policymakers’ responses to those crises in shaping the movements of the last five years, I call attention to developments both outside and within movements that have made ours into a participatory age. Among those developments, the rise of the Internet has not only made protests easier to organize, it has also produced new understandings of equality, organization, and democracy. Yet the contemporary zeal for participation has also created new challenges for activists. Among these is the challenge to make participatory democracy attractive to people who do not have a deep ideological commitment to it.
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