Civil Society

I've collected some recent thoughts under the heading of "What Does it Mean to be Civic?" (March 16, 2004).

When I was deputy director of the National Commission on Civic Renewal, I developed an Index of National Civic Health (or INCH) that showed the following troubling trend (click here for details):

My recommendations for improving U.S. civil society include civic (or public) journalism (go to article), stronger unions, tax reform, civic education, and other ideas that are described in my book, The New Progressive Era.

Here are some other relevant articles that you can read online:

• "The Internet and Civil Society," Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy, Volume 20, Number 4, Fall 2000.
• "Lessons from the Brooklyn Museum Controversy," Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy, Volume 20, Number 2/3, Summer 2000
• "Michael Edwards, Future Positive: International Co-operation in the 21st Century," book review in the IDEA Newsletter, May 2000
• "Getting Practical About Deliberative Democracy," The Report from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, Fall 1999
• "The Legitimacy of Labor Unions"
• "America's Civic Condition: A Glance at the Evidence" (with William A. Galston), The Brookings Review, vol. 15, no. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 23-26. This article is reprinted in E.J. Dionne, Jr., editor, Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), pp. 30-36.