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O<\/span>n 1 January, to mark his inauguration as mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani threw a block party. As he was sworn in outside city hall in front of a crowd of a few thousand of us, a nearby street in Manhattan was closed to traffic so that tens of thousands more could gather to watch the historic moment live on enormous screens. The weather \u2013 a cloudless blue sky and arctic winds \u2013 felt somehow fitting: a licence to dream and a warning against complacency.<\/p>\n Mayors don\u2019t usually take office amid such a festival atmosphere. A smaller, more exclusive event is normally adequate. But a key feature of Mamdani\u2019s rise has been the desire for mass participation in politics. There was no chance this day was going to pass without an open-invitation party.<\/p>\n Throughout his mayoral campaign, Mamdani found novel ways to include people in his movement. It began in November 2024 with a viral video taking to the streets to interview people in parts of Queens and the Bronx that had swung heavily to Donald Trump in the election. As his popularity grew, he inspired an army of volunteers for canvassing and door-knocking whom he eulogised in his speeches. In August of last year, he organised a city-wide scavenger hunt that thousands of people took part in. There was a football tournament not long after. After his victory in November, he immediately opened a jobs portal where people could submit their CV and area of interest, prompting 74,000 applications. In mid-December, he invited New Yorkers to speak with him about their problems and concerns in 15-minute slots, across 12 hours. No longer is politics \u201csomething that is done to us\u201d, he declared in his victory speech. \u201cNow, it is something that we do.\u201d<\/p>\n These forms of participation are not trivial publicity stunts: they are as much a part of Mamdani\u2019s rejection of the old neoliberal consensus as his universalist welfare policies are. For decades, major political parties across the west subscribed to a negative image of politics, in which government\u2019s declared role was to get out of the way of private business and to help people only begrudgingly. In this framing, receiving welfare could feel like a sign of individual failure and participating in electoral politics like a waste of time. Political leaders themselves stoked disillusionment and suspicion toward their power. \u201cThe nine most terrifying words in the English language are \u2018I\u2019m from the government and I\u2019m here to help,\u2019\u201d President Ronald Reagan famously declared. Former British prime minister Tony Blair felt compelled to say in 2000: \u201cI don\u2019t feel myself a politician even now.\u201d As election turnouts fell or stalled, and political parties shed their partisan purpose and their memberships, a generalised feeling of depoliticisation and apathy set in. By 2006, the political scientist Peter Mair could aptly describe governing western democracies as \u201cruling the void\u201d.<\/p>\n Mamdani\u2019s remarkable achievement is for seeing that this \u201cvoid\u201d is full of interesting voices, overlapping interests and shared yearnings \u2013 and for unashamedly stating that the government should be here to help them. His project is, in this sense, to transform the role politics plays in people\u2019s lives. <\/em>Enacting his universalist welfare reforms \u2013 free childcare, free buses for all and a rent freeze on all rent-stabilised apartments, free from any stigma about who \u201cneeds\u201d it \u2013 is one part of the challenge. The other part is to continuously explore ways to include people in politics. It is a far harder task when governing than when campaigning, but one that Mamdani and his team see clearly. \u201cI don\u2019t think the campaign can end,\u201d Mamdani said in a recent interview. \u201cThe same people who got us to this point, we want to keep moving forward with them.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018A key feature of Mamdani\u2019s rise has been the desire for mass participation in politics.\u2019 New Yorkers watch a live broadcast of Zohran Mamdani\u2019s speech.<\/span> Photograph: Guerin Charles\/ABACA\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n The inauguration event felt like both a triumphant culmination and a symbolic continuation of the campaign. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders provided the supporting cast, as they had at various moments in the mayoral election. There were chants of \u201ctax the rich\u201d, the unofficial soundtrack of the campaign. Volunteer leads were given the bulk of the seats, and every attendant received a pamphlet with \u201ca message from the mayor\u201d that paid exclusive homage to their efforts. \u201cWe are able to gather together only because more than 104,000 of our friends and neighbours \u2026 gave their time and energy to this movement,\u201d it read. For the finale, Mamdani\u2019s closing speech provided both a love letter to New York and an ode to the power of collective action, heralding \u201ca new era\u201d of \u201cbig government\u201d. \u201cIf our campaign demonstrated that the people of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mamdani is far from the first politician to seek to answer this yearning. Since the 2008 financial crash, spurred by social media and disillusionment with the major parties, various movements have arisen to meet this burgeoning desire for participation, this appetite for alternatives, across the political spectrum. Even the likes of Trump and Nigel Farage \u2013 with their mass rallies and social media fluency \u2013 give their supporters a feeling of inclusion and an appearance of an alternative. But the negative image of politics, which longs to rule a void, persists. Keir Starmer\u2019s uniform unpopularity offers a warning of where this approach can lead.<\/p>\n Unlike Mamdani, Starmer has assumed that people want less politics. As he explained in January 2024, after 14 years of Tory misrule, people wanted \u201ca politics that treads a little lighter on all of our lives\u201d, because \u201cthe thing about populism\u201d is that it \u201cneeds your full attention \u2026 and that\u2019s exhausting, isn\u2019t it?\u201d In this vision, the best prime minister is one who lets us go about our business in peace once again. But the intended quiet didn\u2019t last long, and soon all sorts of noisy actors rushed in to fill that silent void.<\/p>\n The assumption that people want less politics affirms the conflation of politics with disappointment, scandal and devious leadership, surrendering to the disillusionment of past decades. Mamdani has shown the opposite can be the case. Many people want more from politics, and more of it: a movement to believe in, work for, mobilise and socialise through \u2013 spurred by the dream of a collective life, not a quiet one. \u201cIt will be loud, it will be different,\u201d Mamdani told the crowd. With the block party broadcasting his speech a few streets away, it sounded as if his words were echoing through the city. Even Manhattan\u2019s imposing skyscrapers were standing to attention.<\/p>\n