There must be 50 ways: Participating in democracy #9: Scaling up in centralized nation-states

Participating in democracy is easiest in many ways in countries that are more free with stronger metrics of democracy--while this sounds like a tautology, it bears mentioning. Local organizing can be whisked into a political trash bin when a local victory is rendered moot by centralized nation-states. In the US this has happened, for example, when municipalities and even states pass gun control measures by popular vote driven by strong community organizing only to have the federal courts sweep aside that decision by the citizens, citing the Republican-dominated Supreme Court interpretation of the Second Amendment. 

This has also happened when, for example, a state legislature passes a measure, signed by the governor, to boycott products from certain repressive countries--only to have US federal courts decide that such boycotts amount to state usurpation of federal power to make foreign policy. This is especially egregious when the laws are made by initiative and referendum--direct democracy reflecting the precise wishes of the electorate.

Key to overcoming at least some of the diktats of centralized nation-state authorities is momentum and the imposition of political cost on authoritarian conduct by federal officials. In other words, when local organizers can not only mobilize their own local citizenry but can devise ways to cause that organizing to spread quickly across much or all of the country, centralized power can prove too cumbersome to put out the local brush fire of opposition before it becomes viral, national. 

This is at least part of how Bulgarian anti-fracking organizers succeeded in achieving a scale-up of local victory into some national policy success (Mihaylov, 2021), imparting lessons for others in countries featuring increased autocratic trends. People power toward democracy can work best when it works fast, especially in countries lacking stronger metrics of democracy and freedom. 

References

Mihaylov, N. L. (2021). Speaking power to power: Grassroots democracy in the anti‐fracking movement in Bulgaria. Journal of Community Psychology, 49(8), 3054–3078. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1002/jcop.22358