The first one was that [the Campaign for Stronger Democracy] looked like a surrogate campaign for the US brand of left-liberalism. The focus has a clear appeal more to the US left than the right and one suspects that the demands for ‘democracy’ are for a version that wouldn’t have cross-partisan appeal in the US. The second problem my interlocutors suggested was that there aren’t the kind of agreed definitions of democracy in the UK that could make for an effective campaign without being hi-jacked...Paul responds with a thoughtful list of 17 principles that, he thinks, define the democracy movement, are neutral ideologically, and deserve to be championed by some kind of campaign. Examples include: "Wider participation in policy formation is a good thing--it increases the public stake in collective decision-making." "Interest groups are good at achieving their aims at the expense of everybody else. These powers must be counterbalanced." The whole list is worth reading. In the US, I see an important debate about the relationship between democratic or civic reform, on one hand, and partisanship and ideology, on the other. Some proponents of civic renewal regard it as ideologically neutral and scrupulously nonpartisan, an effort to improve our democratic processes that should be welcomed by well-meaning political activists across the spectrum. For instance, Martín Carcasson and his colleagues see "passionate impartiality" as one of the "Key Aspects of the Deliberative Democracy Movement" (which, while not identical to a civic renewal movement, bears a close resemblance to it). Others view civic renewal as ideologically centrist, filling a gap between the hostile major political parties and appealing to moderate voters. For example, the Declaration of the No Labels campaign states, "We believe in the vital civil center." Yet another group holds that civic renewal is the heir to participatory democracy in the 1960s--the decentralizing and populist impulses of the New Left--and is thus the best strategy to revive the political left, including Greens, democratic socialists, and left-liberals. A few thinkers have argued that civic renewal is authentically conservative in its embrace of small, voluntary groups and local traditions. These disagreements are by no means an embarrassment but represent an opportunity. Many different kinds of Americans can find a place in discussions of civic renewal and contribute their own insights. It would be a victory if the major political parties began to incorporate insights from their respective allies who are working on various flavors of civic renewal. We need to have a debate about what "democracy" means and how to promote it, much like the debates we already have about what "prosperity" means and how to attain that. The result will not be consensus but helpful competition. Within the democracy field itself, we should expect the internal ideological debates to be heated and divisive, because the underlying disagreements are genuine and important. For instance, the Coffee Party split in 2011 when a faction committed to liberal economic and social reforms created Coffee Party Progressives as a left counterforce to the Tea Party. On behalf of the original Coffee Party, Eric Byler responded that, although he welcomed "an energetic, populist left" to participate, his vision was a broader, more ideologically diverse movement that would reduce political polarization. This kind of disagreement is to be expected, possibly even welcomed, but it will not always be pleasant. For myself, I believe we need to pursue the cause of stronger democracy where it takes us, even if that makes us seem partisan or ideological because one party happens to agree with more of our principles than the other one does. My Ten Point for Civic Renewal plan is not all about neutral processes. I favor controversial policies, from charter schools to campaign finance reform, as means to strengthen citizenship. On the other hand, speaking for myself, I do not think this is a liberal agenda. It challenges some prevailing elements of modern American liberalism, such as faith in expert-driven, centralized, regulatory solutions. In the field of education, for example, I support lots of local public participation in schools. Smart liberals like Jonathan Chait hold exactly the opposite position. Chait says that local control would strangle reform. "'Local control' almost invariably means letting a policy question be dominated by the strongest local economic interest, with no countervailing power. In education, the only real economic interest with skin in the game is the teachers' union." I don't want teachers' unions to exercise all power, but I see huge untapped potential in community engagement for better schools. To get citizens engaged means empowering them. That is far from a mainstream liberal view; it may even get a better hearing from today's conservatives.]]>
There is some evidence that students learn more when they work together with people who are different from themselves on community projects. (See this, for example.) There is also some evidence that it is harder to have frank discussions of pertinent issues when the group is diverse. In this paper for CIRCLE, David Campbell reports, “as the percentage of white students increases, black students are less likely to report that their teachers encourage political discussion in class, and as the percentage of black students increases, white students report less discussion in schools with a larger black population. In other words … teachers appear to shy away from the discussion of political and social issues in schools where students have divergent views.” That is a problem that requires constant and skillful attention. The best scenario may be a diverse group led by a skillful person (either an adult or a youth) who knows how to support frank yet civil discussions. But that situation appears to be rare.
Do you have any anecdotal and/or quantifiable information about how the “spirit” of a youth project impacts its success?
I think it is very important for the spirit of the program to match the real needs of a community and the values of the young people who serve. In this paper for CIRCLE, Michelle Charles finds that many African American teenagers from the inner city of Philadelphia are unmotivated by projects that involve street cleaning and graffiti-removal (to which they are frequently assigned), because they “see first-hand how the clean-up sites repeatedly become trash-strewn after all their organized efforts,” and because such work may seem to deserve pay by the city government. On the other hand, in the same study, African American youth were observed “thriving in their mentoring roles with younger children,” which they regarded as a path to long-term and fundamental change.]]>
We Americans are in a bad mood about our nation and our public life. By two to one, we think that we are heading in the "wrong direction" rather than the "right track." Unemployment, bankruptcies, bailouts, and other repercussions of the Great Recession are surely on our minds, but our pessimistic mood started well before that. A majority of Americans said they were satisfied with the nation's course briefly at the conclusion of the First Gulf War and shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. At all other times during the last 20 years, most Americans have been dissatisfied.
Perhaps this is because we face an accumulation of profound problems. They have been called "wicked problems" because better policies alone could not fix them (although our bad policies surely make matters worse). Our problems interlock, so that each one can be seen as a symptom of another. They are entangled with cultural norms and personal behavior as well as conflicting rights and limited resources. Any of the purported solutions could do more damage than good. How to define and diagnose our problems is fundamentally controversial, inseparable from our diverse religious and philosophical commitments. Advancing some of our interests and values would set other Americans back. For those who identify with particular interests and ideologies, watching our opponents express themselves in public can be deeply frustrating. For those who feel little stake in national debates, the bitter controversy itself is alienating.
I do not claim that our condition is worse than it usually is. On the contrary, we are richer, safer, and more respectful of rights than we were half a century ago—and far more so than when Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office. A consistent theme in American politics is the Jeremiad, a lament that we have suddenly lost our way and face imminent destruction. James Fallows notes that "only six years after the Arbella brought John Winthrop to Massachusetts, a Congregationalist minister was lamenting the lost golden age of the colony, asking parishioners, 'Are all [God's] kindnesses forgotten? all your promises forgotten?'' After four centuries of such Jeremiads, we should doubt that our current problems are unprecedented. The end is not nigh.
But I do claim that the obligation to address our problems falls on us—American citizens—more profoundly than in the past. Our political institutions are inadequate to address our accumulated problems; and the prevailing ideologies offer no plausible solutions. *Peter Levine, "The Public and Our Problems," National Civic Review, Volume 100, Issue 1, pages 42–50, Spring 2011]]>