Facing a democracy deficit worldwide, millions of vulnerable people lack avenues through which they can collectively negotiate their interests. Faith-based institutions committed to human dignity and pluralism can play an instrumental role in building the infrastructure required for grassroots organizing at scale.
WASHINGTON, DC—In his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV presents two possible futures for humanity: top-down, technocratic rule, symbolized by the Tower of Babel, and bottom-up reconstruction, much like Nehemiah organized exiles to rebuild Jerusalem in the face of fierce opposition. In a world increasingly dominated by billionaires, the second vision of collective action seems as commendable as it is futile.
But it has been done before. The challenge today is that most ordinary people lack avenues through which to achieve the Nehemiah vision. According to the V-Dem Institute, 74% of the global population now live in autocracies, while those fortunate to reside in democracies are increasingly critical of how their governments work. People overwhelmingly value democracy, but large majorities don’t believe that their elected officials care about their views. Rapid technological and cultural change, along with rising economic insecurity, have eroded support for liberal institutions and fomented anti-elite sentiment across the political spectrum.
At the heart of this discontent is a deeper problem: a crisis of agency. People lack the ability to influence the decisions that shape their lives. As Leo writes in his encyclical, “most people are watching and waiting, observing from afar and merely hoping for the best.”
That is certainly the case in global development, where projects are often designed by aid agencies and managed by foreign contractors and NGOs. In 2023, the People’s Ecumenical Organization for the Development of Haiti, Communities of Faith Organizing for Action in El Salvador, and Faith in Action International asked the US Agency for International Development to pause its non-emergency work for six weeks and send its staff to listen to people about the kind of aid they wanted. The Haitian organization was in the midst of a fruitless effort to change USAID’s agricultural programming in their communities. While then-USAID Administrator Samantha Power had embraced the mission of reforming the agency, she and her staff could not fathom shifting decision-making to beneficiaries. The best they could muster was a presentation on USAID’s work in the country, delivered at the organization’s office in Terrier-Rouge. Haitians were left to hope for the best.
Democratic governments and international institutions must create meaningful channels for the people affected by their decisions to influence the outcome. To be sure, many have undertaken well-meaning reforms. There have been participatory budgeting schemes that give people a say in how some government money is spent, civil-society complaint mechanisms at international financial institutions, and initiatives to shift development funding from global to local organizations.
But, as the example of USAID in Haiti shows, even the best-intentioned reforms often fail to deliver. Large bureaucratic institutions are unlikely to hold themselves fully accountable without outside pressure. This is the demand side of the democracy deficit: millions of people need organizations through which they can collectively negotiate their interests.
Faith-based institutions committed to human dignity and pluralism can play an essential role here, not only in inspiring people to act, but also in building the infrastructure required for organizing at scale.
One model is the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. Inspired by Pope Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical, Populorum Progressio, US Catholic bishops established the CCHD two years later in Chicago with the goal of supporting organizations that address poverty’s root causes. The CCHD raises funds through an annual collection and disperses them based on the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, namely that decisions should be made closest to the people they affect. To be eligible for a grant, an organization must not only seek to change the policies and systems that keep people in poverty, but also maintain a governing board in which at least half of the members are involuntarily low-income.
For more than 50 years, the CCHD has been instrumental in fostering an anti-poverty ecosystem that has won concrete victories: higher wages, paid family leave, more affordable housing units, and health coverage for the uninsured. It has also nurtured generations of grassroots leaders and organizations. Today, many of the most prominent local and state groups, both secular and faith-based, anchoring the defense of American democracy got their start with multiyear general support grants from the CCHD.
The world needs an equivalent mechanism—say, an International Campaign for Integral Human Development—that provides long-term funding to help people launch and expand grassroots organizations powerful enough to influence policy at the national or global level. It could draw on Catholic experience while including other faiths, as well as secular funders who have been vocal about the need to shift decision-making to local communities.
To be sure, any global fund runs the risk of becoming overly bureaucratic and taking a top-down approach. The CCHD model guards against this by combining clear criteria with a decentralized structure. Making decisions locally and regionally, as the CCHD does, would help ease some of the challenges of operating a joint fund meant to operate across significantly different contexts. And it would be well worth the effort: dedicating even 1% of private development financing to grassroots organizing would be transformative.
In Magnifica Humanitas, Leo describes listening and dialogue as “the common ground upon which to cultivate justice and fraternity.” Dialogue is not the absence of conflict, but without conflict there is no change. And without change, many of the world’s most vulnerable people will remain powerless, watching and waiting for their situation to improve. If even a small share of development funding is devoted to channeling their priorities, they can get to work building a humane path forward for their communities and the world—what Leo calls “the ‘construction site’ of our time.”
