Dr. Stephanie McNulty, the Honorable John C. and Katherine Kunkel Professor of Government at Franklin & Marshall College, is the author of several books about decentralization and citizen engagement, and the coauthor of The Power and Perils of Participatory Democracy: Participatory Budgeting and Democracy in Peru (Oxford University Press, 2026). Her work has also been published in scholarly journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Latin American Politics and Society, the Journal of Development Studies, Revista de Ciencia Política, Current History, and the Journal of Public Deliberation, among other outlets. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Fulbright, the American Association of University Women, the Hewlett Foundation, and the American Political Science Association. At Franklin & Marshall College, she teaches courses on global democracy and participatory politics.
Dr. McNulty’s Fulbright Global Scholar project is challenging the prevailing narrative that democracy is dying. While representative democracy (legislatures, courts, etc.) may be struggling, the project argues that participatory democracy, where ordinary citizens engage in direct decision-making, is expanding globally. It also seeks to correct the record by documenting both the ancient roots and modern expansions of these practices. As part of the project, she is conducting research in Greece, India, and Peru to document forms of participatory democracy that are largely absent from the historical records. In India, she is documenting the gram sabha (village assembly) structure, which may predate Athenian democracy and is currently practiced in around 250,000 villages.