“The Tension that Drives Social Progress”

Sahar Heydari Fard (Ohio State University)

Public Talk (all are welcome!) hosted by PIKSI-Boston.

Abstract: Social movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter have exposed a persistent tension at the heart of democracy: the clash between the need for urgent social change and the stabilizing norms that are meant to guide progress. This paper argues that this tension is not a temporary obstacle or a misunderstanding between opposing sides—it is a structural feature of democracy itself. Democracies aspire to both preserve stability and enable transformation, yet the norms designed to secure order often fail to accommodate the disruptive processes through which meaningful progress occurs. Drawing on democratic theory, the history of science, and formal models of collective inquiry, I show that democratic progress unfolds in two distinct phases: one that builds consensus and another that disrupts it. While democratic norms help maintain stability in the first phase, they often obstruct necessary change in the second. Rather than viewing this conflict as a threat to democracy, I argue that the productive friction between stability and disruption is essential for social progress. Ultimately, the paper calls for rethinking democratic norms to better support both phases of progress and highlights the importance of structural conditions that shape whose voices are heard and whose demands for change are taken seriously.