Watch Hahrie Han (Wellesley), Jane Mansbridge (Harvard), and Sarah Hodgdon (Sierra Club) discuss How Organizations Develop Activists on a panel moderated by Archon Fung (Harvard).

Read Hahrie discussing organizing and mobilizing on OrgTheory.

How The ‘People’s Climate March’ Could Translate Into Political Action

In New York City Tuesday, more than 120 world leaders gathered to talk about emissions reductions and work toward a new climate treaty.

Chapter 1 Introduction to How Organizations Develop Activists in Harvard Ash Center Archives

"Han’s book explores the world of activism, and the role organizations play in mobilizing and organizing people. She makes the provocative argument that organizations vary in whether they simply want to mobilize community members or whether they want to transform them into activist leaders. Only certain organizations devote the resources to the time-consuming process of transformation. What makes Han’s book so interesting is the way it straddles the disciplinary concerns of political science with some practical lessons and advice for organizations. The audience for this book, thus, is wide."

"Protestors in Ferguson risk the same fizzle unless they can build — and maintain — a base of engaged activists and leaders who will persist even after the cameras leave. Transformation of entrenched power structures like a military regime in Egypt, or structures of inequality and state-sanctioned police force in the United States happens only when there is a counterbalancing base of power. That counterbalancing base of power, has to come from the people."

Read it here!

Read it here.

"So, does distributed campaigning matter? I found that the organizations that had strongest activist base did distributed campaigning. They had 7 to 20 percentage points more activists than organizations that just did simple mobilizing."