Appendix B: Glossary of Key Frameworks and Concepts
Terms and named frameworks the reader will encounter repeatedly in this curriculum. Listed alphabetically. Primary location in the syllabus is noted for each entry.
3.5% participation threshold - An empirical finding by political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan that across 323 campaigns of mass political resistance between 1900 and 2006, no nonviolent campaign that achieved sustained active participation from 3.5 percent of a population failed to produce significant political change. The threshold is not a sufficient condition, only a necessary one, and is less robust for campaigns after 2010 as authoritarian regimes have adapted. Primary location: Module 7.
Authoritarianism - A political system or movement characterized by concentration of power in a single leader or ruling elite, limited political pluralism, and the erosion or rejection of independent institutions that constrain that power. Contemporary authoritarianism often preserves the formal structures of democracy (elections, legislatures, courts) while hollowing out their substance. Primary location: Module 2.
Bridging versus bonding social capital - A distinction developed by political scientist Robert Putnam. Bonding social capital strengthens ties within existing groups (a congregation, a neighborhood, an identity-based association); bridging social capital builds relationships across lines of difference. Democratic cultures require both, but bridging capital is harder to sustain and the first to erode. Primary location: Module 5.
Civil resistance - Organized mass political action conducted through nonviolent means - strikes, boycotts, protest, civil disobedience, noncooperation - to produce political change. The academic study of civil resistance documents its strategic logic and empirical effectiveness. See also 3.5% participation threshold. Primary location: Module 7.
Constitution of knowledge - Journalist Jonathan Rauch's term for the network of institutions, norms, and practices - free press, peer review, professional journalism, evidence standards, judicial fact-finding - that produces the shared factual basis democratic deliberation requires. When the constitution of knowledge is under attack, democratic deliberation collapses into competing realities. Primary location: Module 5.
Democratic backsliding - The incremental weakening of democratic institutions through legal and procedural means rather than through a single coup or constitutional rupture. Distinguished from democratic collapse (sudden, visible failure) by its gradualism. The concept is central to comparative political science and is the organizing diagnostic frame of this syllabus. Primary location: Purpose and Module 1.
Fascism - A specific form of authoritarianism historically associated with interwar Italy and Germany and characterized by ultranationalism, rejection of liberal democracy, rhetoric of national rebirth from perceived internal and external enemies, cult of leadership, paramilitary mobilization, and the fusion of party and state. Robert Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism provides the scholarly reference definition. Primary location: Module 2.
Guardrails (democratic) - A framework developed by political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt identifying two core norms that distinguish stable democracies from those in decline: mutual toleration and institutional forbearance. When both guardrails are intact, democratic competition operates within shared limits. When either breaks down, democratic backsliding becomes possible. Primary location: Module 1.
Institutional capture - The gradual takeover of a public institution - an agency, a court, an election board, a party committee, a school board - by actors who use procedural and appointment powers to realign the institution with a particular political or ideological project. Capture typically operates through legal mechanisms and is visible only in retrospect without deliberate monitoring. Primary location: Module 3.
Institutional forbearance - One of two democratic guardrails in the Levitsky and Ziblatt framework. The practice of political actors not pushing constitutional and legal powers to their maximum limit for partisan advantage, even when doing so would be technically permitted. The collapse of forbearance produces procedural maximalism - using every available legal tool against political opponents - which accelerates democratic breakdown. Primary location: Module 1.
Mobilizing versus organizing - A distinction developed by organizer Jane McAlevey. Mobilizing activates people who already agree with you and counts attendance and participation as success. Organizing builds new leadership and capacity in communities not yet with you and counts durable institutional power as success. Both have their place; only the latter produces the kind of power that sustains democratic movements. Primary location: Module 7.
Mutual toleration - One of two democratic guardrails in the Levitsky and Ziblatt framework. The acceptance by political actors of their opponents as legitimate rivals - as citizens with a rightful claim to political power - rather than as existential enemies who must be defeated by any means available. Democracies collapse when mutual toleration collapses. Primary location: Module 1.
Politics of eternity - Timothy Snyder's term for the manufactured nostalgia, organized around a mythic past under constant threat from internal enemies, that authoritarian movements substitute for the politics of possibility democratic engagement requires. The politics of eternity disables the sense of democratic agency - the idea that collective action today can produce a different future - and replaces it with permanent grievance. Primary location: Module 2.
Positive versus negative freedom - A distinction from political philosophy. Negative freedom is freedom from interference, restriction, or coercion by government or others. Positive freedom is freedom to participate, create, belong, and exercise meaningful agency. Timothy Snyder's On Freedom argues that democratic renewal requires recovering a robust account of positive freedom rather than settling for a defensive account organized only around what government should not do. Primary location: Module 9.
Power throughline (this syllabus) - A marker used in this syllabus to identify readings that make race, class, or gender dynamics explicit as mechanisms of democratic failure rather than as separate topics. The marker signals that the dynamics those readings engage are operating across every module, not only the ones where they are named. Module 4 is the dedicated treatment; the markers elsewhere track the same mechanisms across the full curriculum.
Public story framework - Marshall Ganz's narrative framework for organizing and civic leadership. A public story has three components: story of self (what called the speaker to this work), story of us (what connects the speaker to others doing it), and story of now (what is at stake and why the present moment demands action). A well-developed public story is speakable in three to five minutes and is the primary tool by which democratic citizens invite others into shared work. Primary location: Module 7 and Module 9.
Relational organizing - An organizing practice, developed most rigorously by Marshall Ganz, that builds political power through sustained one-on-one conversations about values, concerns, and shared interests rather than through transactional contact. Relational organizing builds the kind of relationships that sustain long-term engagement. Contrasted with transactional outreach (canvassing, surveys, call lists) and with mobilizing models that assume existing agreement. Primary location: Module 7.
Stanley's ten fascist strategies - Philosopher Jason Stanley's identification of ten rhetorical and political moves common to fascist movements historically and currently: mythic past, propaganda, anti-intellectualism, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety, appeals to the heartland, and the dismantling of public welfare and unity. The framework is widely used for real-time pattern recognition of authoritarian politics. Primary location: Module 2.
Structural minority rule - The use of legal and procedural mechanisms - gerrymandering, Senate malapportionment, the Electoral College, voter suppression, judicial appointments for life - to secure political outcomes that do not reflect the preferences of democratic majorities. Structural minority rule is legal; it operates within democratic forms; it erodes democratic substance. Primary location: Module 3.
Transactional versus transformational organizing - A distinction developed by political scientist Hahrie Han. Transactional organizations exchange discrete services or actions with members (sign this petition, attend this rally, donate this amount) without building their capacity. Transformational organizations build members' leadership over time, producing durable networks of people who can lead the next cycle of work. The distinction has empirical consequences for which organizations generate sustained democratic engagement. Primary location: Module 5 and Module 7.
Twenty lessons (Snyder) - Timothy Snyder's twenty short lessons drawn from twentieth-century European resistance to fascism and Soviet communism, applied to contemporary American civic life. The lessons are a named framework frequently referenced in the democratic defense literature and one of the most widely distributed civic primers of the past decade. Primary location: Module 1.