From Access to Agency: Civic Infrastructure, Federated Democracy & the Organizational Work that Policy Cannot Do

Abstract

Scholars of American civic life have documented the decline of federated membership associations and the participatory costs of their replacement by professionally managed advocacy organizations. That literature treats cross-level coordination largely as a feature of a vanished organizational era. This essay offers a practitioner 's account of the mechanism operating today. Drawing on the recent litigation, election protection, and voter engagement work of the League of Women Voters, it describes how “federated coordination” – addressing problems identified atone organizational level with resources from another – can sustain civic infrastructure under contemporary conditions. Engaging Lisa García Bedolla's analysis of disengagement among eligible voters, it suggests what durable voter participation requires.