By Scot Nakagawa

Most of the pro-democracy field has the first. The second is where the actual fight is decided – and it’s where we’ve been trying to do original work.

Ask most organizations fighting authoritarianism what their theory of change is, and you’ll get a competent answer. Block the authoritarian, bridge across our differences, build something better than what we had. Do it strategically, do it nonviolently, do it at scale. It’s true. We believe a version of it ourselves.

But a theory of change is just a statement of the outcome you want and the general path to it. It tells you where you’re going. It doesn’t tell you how power actually works, where it’s held, where it’s soft, where to stand, and what you’d have to build to move it.

That second thing is a theory of power, and it’s the one that decides whether a movement wins or just feels righteous on the way to losing.

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