Mobilising Vs. Organising

This blog post is a quick summary by Jim Coe of the concepts in Hahrie Han’s book ‘How Organizations Develop Activists’ (Han is based in the USA). In an age of wildfire communications and the ease of widespread but easy engagement, the argument is for leadership development and distributed responsibility that delivers depth of participation.

“Maintaining members’ commitment is likely to be more successful in an organising model. Organising approaches help build a sense of community, as well as reinforcing people’s sense of themselves as activists. This can lock in sustained support in a way that commitment to an issue alone – the motivation that mobilising approaches tend to rely on – may not.”

Listen to Jim Coe talking to Hahrie Han, and check out more of Hahrie Han’s research contributions on political organizing to the P3 Lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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