In this book talk, Lisa Mitchell argues that not all instances of collective assembly can be understood as resistance to the state, as rejections of its sovereignty, or as demands for exceptions as typically theorized. Instead, she offers examples that show how we can see collective actions–from dharnas and strikes to yatras and rail rokos–as reflecting desires for greater connection with and access to the state and as mechanisms for gaining the attention of elected officials and holding them accountable to their campaign promises and existing legal provisions. Her book also shifts the ethnographic and historical attention of scholarship on democracy away from an exclusive focus on elections to analyze the ways that democratic processes function in the long periods between elections.