The American Political Science Association (APSA) is currently holding its Annual Meeting in Seattle under the theme of “The Politics of Rights.”

Each year, APSA appoints a task force to investigate a topic of critical interest. This year, NESRI participated in the task force on Democracy, Economic Security and Social Justice in a Volatile World, chaired by Michael Goodhart. At a plenary session today, the task force presents its report, titled “Democratic Imperatives: Innovations in Rights, Participation, and Economic Citizenship.” Download an advance copy of the report here or below.

From the Executive Summary: “The report seizes the present moment of social, economic, and political crisis to question and challenge some of the dominant narratives that shape current thinking about politics. Specifically, it focuses on promising democratic innovations in three arenas: human rights–based approaches to democratization, welfare, and development; participatory governance; and economic citizenship.”

“One of our key findings is that innovations in these three fields share crucial objectives in common: deepening democracy; enhancing collective and individual agency; reducing poverty; achieving greater equality of wealth, power, respect, legal status, or opportunity; and cultivating solidarity in democratic communities. We view these as imperatives for revitalizing democracy in the volatile world, and the innovations we highlight throughout have been selected to illustrate how this revitalization might take place.”

As examples of innovative human rights-based movements in the United States, the report features (on pages 20-21) NESRI partners, the Vermont Worker’s Center and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. 

APSA defines the role of its task forces as follows: “The APSA task forces seek to expand the public presence of political science by putting the best of political science research and knowledge at the service of critical issues that have major public policy implications, and by sharing with broader society what political scientists know about important trends and issues in areas of public concern.”