SNF Agora Case Studies
Practitioners, teachers, trainers, and organizations can use SNF Agora case studies to deepen skills, develop insights about how to approach strategic choices and dilemmas, and to get to know each other better and work more effectively.About the SNF Agora Institute
The SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, founded in 2017, is a multi-disciplinary academic and public forum dedicated to strengthening global democracy by improving and expanding civic engagement and inclusive dialogue, and by supporting inquiry that leads to real-world change. By building integrated partnerships with scholars, practitioners, students, and the public, we use research to identify and sharpen strategic choices that members of the public and civic and political stakeholders around the world can make to realize the promise of democracy.
For more information about the institute, please read SNF Agora’s strategic plan here.
SNF Agora Case Studies on Democracy
Click on any of the case studies below to read more or to download the PDF. We will be adding more case studies soon, so please check back!
- Case Study The Gilets Jaunes Protests, Macron’s Democratic Experiment, and Deliberative Mini Publics
- Case Study Public Service–Spirited Media Takes on the Memory Wars
- Case Study Navigating the Youth Turn in Taiwan’s Labor Politics
- Case Study The Revival of the Nevada Democratic Party
- Case Study Vote16USA’s Campaign to Lower the Voting Age in San Francisco
- Case Study Building a Party with Activists: The Case of the Uruguayan FA
- Case Study The ISAIAH Trash Referendum
- Case Study The American Enterprise Institute’s Near-Death Experience
- Case Study The AMOS Project and the Campaign for Universal Preschool
- Case Study The Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Case Study The Center for Popular Democracy’s Education Justice Campaign
About SNF Agora Case Studies
SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University has developed this series of Case Studies on Democracy that show how civic and political actors navigated real-life challenges. Practitioners, teachers, organizational leaders, and trainers working with civic and political leaders, students, and trainees can use our case studies to deepen their skills, to develop insights about how to approach strategic choices and dilemmas, and to get to know each other better and work more effectively.
Unlike many case studies, ours do not focus on individual leaders or other decision-makers. Instead, the SNF Agora case studies are about choices that groups make collectively. Therefore, these cases work well as prompts for group discussions. The basic question in each case is: “What would we do?” After reading a case, your group may role-play the people who were actually involved in the situation, treating the discussion as a simulation, or you may speak as yourselves, discussing the strategies you would advocate for the group described in the case.
These case studies have been developed by a mix of SNF Agora’s core faculty, visiting fellows, and research team members, along with other experts associated with the institute.
We invite you to explore and download our case studies, which we provide to the public, free of charge, for for academic and educational use only; they may not be used as part of any commercial activity.