(This post is meant to resemble my “primers” on community economic development and relational community organizing–each an element of the civic renewal network or movement.)

At the national level, there are at least a dozen organizations devoted to “good government” in ways that Progressive Era reformers like Robert M. La Follette and Teddy Roosevelt would immediately recognize and endorse. They have a handful of consistent political allies, notably former Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI). Another set of organizations has a libertarian definition of reform: small government is good government. These two networks are largely opposed, but they make strange bedfellows on certain issues.

The main elements of the Progressive “good government” reform agenda are: (1) opposition to money in politics; (2) transparency in government, and (3) an accessible, equitable voting system that yields consequential decisions. Thus today’s priorities for concrete, practical reforms include such measures as public funding for elections, a public right to information, and easier voting. (The last could be accomplished, for example, by allowing people to register at the same time and place that they vote.)

Over the past century, the “good government” agenda has shifted somewhat in response to arguments, experiences, and crises. The direct election of Senators and the right of voters to recall elected officials were high priorities early in the last century; open meeting acts and disclosure of campaign contributions were victories of the 1970s; and opposition to filibuster abuse has risen on the agenda in the past decade. Referenda were objectives of good government reformers circa 1900; now they appear highly problematic in states like California where they are used for routine lawmaking. Deregulation of such industries as long-distance trucking was a good government priority in the 1970s. Re-regulation of the financial industry is a priority now.

The structure and strategies of the good government groups have also evolved. The League of Women Voters was founded in 1920 and still uses the model that was typical in civil society then: active local chapters with face-to-face meetings and events, state organizations and conferences, and a professional national staff guided by the members. Common Cause, Public Citizen, and the Public Interest Research Groups were founded around 1970 with an innovative model: mass mailings to raise small donations to support professional staffs who litigate, lobby, and “expose” corruption to motivate more support. The models of the 1920 and 1970s are suffering due to declines in civic engagement, and the newcomers mostly rely on digital technologies, loose networks of volunteers, and/or foundation grants. They include the Sunlight Foundation (founded in 2006), Fix Congress First! (2008), and the Coffee Party (2010).

Beneath the specific policy agenda at any moment lies a distinctive and durable political philosophy that ought to be taken seriously–but also assessed critically. At its heart is a distinction between “citizens” or “the people” (on one hand) and “special interests” and “politicians” (on the other). The people should rule; politicians should be responsible and accountable to them; and special interests should be curtailed. Citizens are not necessarily virtuous and wise, nor are organized political groups and elected leaders inevitably corrupt. Rather, when people act through the channels organized for them as citizens, the odds are high that they will act well. As citizens, we talk with diverse others about common issues without coercion or bribes. As citizens, we vote, and that is basically a public-spirited act because the cost of voting isn’t worthwhile if one thinks of the payoff in narrowly selfish terms. As citizens, we promote our values and interests, which, even if foolish or selfish, are at least checked by the rival interests and values of millions of peers. Frederic Howe, the Progressive Era reformer and writer, launched his own political career with a characteristic speech against machine politicians, “men who have substituted corruption for discussion, and ours is a government of discussion.”

In contrast to citizens, special interests expend resources to get favorable policies, and they sometimes obtain lucrative returns on their investments. (For example, $15 million of lobbying on last year’s financial reform bill bought a provision worth $10 billion.) In contrast to citizens, firms and coalitions of firms are required to maximize returns for their own shareholders are are thus blocked from deliberating about what is just or best. La Follette thundered against the special interests of his day: “Their resources are inexhaustible. Their efforts never relax. Their political methods are insidious.” But, he thought, “the united power of the people expressed directly through the ballot can overthrow the enemy.”

In sum, the “public interest” is what the people would want if they talked, listened, learned, and voted freely. Corruption is the undue influence of special interests, whether inside or outside the government, especially if their influence can be traced to money or to special powers that they can wield. If the people show demonstrable weaknesses as citizens (such as low knowledge or weak motivation), the solution is education, broadly defined. Thomas Jefferson’s words apply: “I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”

One alternative philosophy is embodied in the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision, which treats lobbying and campaign contributions as free speech, and businesses as voluntary associations responsible to their citizen-owners. It legitimizes and renders fully respectable the combination of money and politics.

A different alternative holds that corporations basically run modern market economies, not just by deliberately lobbying and funding politicians, but also by making discretionary (and completely legal) decisions about their own investments. Thus democracy is basically a sham without economic reform of a type that is too radical for our actual citizens today. Charles A. Beard criticized Progressives from this perspective in 1916. He was challenging any “good government” strategy that puts political reform ahead of economic reform.

My own views would require a longer essay to defend, but I can summarize my conclusions as follows. I am enthusiastic about the policy agenda of the good government groups, especially their opposition to private money in campaigns. I agree with their philosophical distinctions between citizens and special interests; the public interest and corruption; political reform and economic reform. Even though no specific legislation will keep money completely out of politics, it seems important to pass laws that not only restrain the practical impact of money but also reinforce the norm that using cash to influence the government is basically disreputable.

Of all the objectives of the field today, I think transparency is the least important because information does not translate easily into power; and transparency in the public sector can simply weaken the government unless it is matched by transparency in private business. Meanwhile, one item on the 1970s agenda has since been forgotten and should be revived: the struggle against delegating legislative powers to unelected bureaucrats. Finally, I agree with the implicit definition of citizens as deliberators and voters, but I believe that we all learn best from experience and action. Thus citizens will not be able to do their job of talking, listening, monitoring, and voting until we all have opportunities to do public work as well. That is why such fields of practice as relational organizing and community economic development (mentioned at the very top of this post) are important complements to good government reform.

I believe the most important thing for citizens to know is the proper arrangement of state, market, and civil society–not only how much tax the state should collect or how it should regulate the market (although those are important questions) but also the goals and methods appropriate to each sector. For example, what is the appropriate place of competition, efficiency, innovation, openness, procedural fairness, transparency, and equality of voice in each kind of institution? These questions do not have correct answers; the objective is not consensus but a vibrant and constructive debate. Each person should have coherent, thoughtful, responsible views that guide his or her personal work as well as voting.

How can we learn what to think about the three sectors?

1. We can replicate the view of parents and other authority figures.

2. We can read and discuss relevant texts, such as works of politics, philosophy, history, and economics.

3. As consumers or service-recipients, we can experience the three sectors.

4. We can experience working in the private sector as an ordinary worker (mainly a follower of rules and instructions).

5. We can experience working in the public or non-profit sector as an ordinary worker (mainly a follower of rules and instructions).

6. We can experience running or helping to run a business.

7. We can experience leading or helping to govern a public or not-for-profit entity.

All these sources of learning are appropriate, and individuals derive all kinds of unpredictable lessons from each. But each has limitations without the others. For example, if you have never tried to meet a payroll or survive in a competitive market, you could draw the conclusion that regulation was cheaper and easier than it is. By the same token, if you have never managed an organization that has an obligation to honor the voice of every member of a community, you could draw the conclusion that public sector entities should be more efficient than they are.

Because people have diverse experiences and can draw unpredictable lessons even from the same experience, I hesitate to generalize about how Americans (or any subgroup of Americans, such as elected leaders) learn about public life. But I think a few troubling trends are evident.

First, we have lost most opportunities to experience the governing of public or not-for profit entities. As I wrote on this blog several years ago:

Elinor Ostrom calculates that in 1932, 900,000 American families had one member with formal responsibilities on a government panel or board, such as one of the 128,548 school boards then in existence. Given rotation in office, well over 1 million families had some policymaking experience in their own recent memories. Today, thanks to consolidation, there are only 15,000 school districts, an 89% decline. Meanwhile, the population has more than doubled. The result is a decline of probably 95% in all opportunities to serve in local government. The same thing has happened in high schools: a three-generation panel study run by Kent Jennings and Laura Stoker finds a 50% decline in participation in most student groups, thanks largely to the consolidation of schools. (Fewer schools mean fewer seats on student governments.)

Meanwhile, the proportion of people who say they have worked on a community problem or attended a community meeting has fallen since the 1970s.

Second, we don’t teach diverse opinions and arguments about the appropriate roles and values of the public, private, and nonprofit sectors very well in schools and colleges.

Third, the people whose dominant experiences are as ordinary workers (receivers of orders) very rarely find themselves in positions of political leadership, such as members of Congress.

Fourth, there is a stark contrast in the experience of Democratic and Republican elected leaders. Roll Call’s guide to the 112th Congress describes a newly elected Democrat, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL). She views policy from the perspective of someone who has led or made discretionary decisions within the state sector. “An [elementary school principal] before she launched a political career, Wilson hopes to play a role in revamping the No Child Left Behind Act, which she says has hurt some students with its focus on testing and college preparedness.”

Roll Call also describes a whole batch of newly elected Republicans, almost all of whom explicitly cite their negative experiences as private sector managers who dealt with government. For example, Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Iowa), a physician in private practice, says, “Small businesses and corporations are being smothered by regulations that are keeping us from being competitive with foreign countries.” Rep. Bill Flores (R-FL) “does not have any political experience, [but] he says his business success has prepared him for service in Congress. He worked his way up from modest means to become chief executive of Phoenix Exploration, an energy company. ‘I know what it means to sign a paycheck, make a payroll, balance a budget, repay debt, acquire health care coverage,’ he says. ‘That’s what sets me apart.'”

Finally, the overall balance of the Congress has shifted decisively. The current House has 181 members who identify as business people, up from 162 four years ago. Another 148 are in law, 40 in real estate, 24 in agriculture, and 19 in medicine–all likely to be responsible for leading private enterprises. The numbers from typically public-sector careers such as education, law enforcement, and the military have either fallen (education is down by 21 percent) or remained constant.

Many millions of Americans used to belong to associations that developed civic skills, managed and created public goods, promoted discussions, and connected people to their government. People typically entered such associations not because they had strong, pre-existing civic commitments, but because of economic needs, religious beliefs, social ties, and personal identities. The unions, fraternal associations, churches, and synagogues that they joined then turned them into active citizens.

These organizations have since shed most of their members and have also lost impact because of the corruption of our formal political institutions, which increasingly respond to narrow special interests, money, and expertise. Now we need a broad base of active citizens to promote the types of associations that recruit people into political life and demand political reforms that make government more responsive and fair. But since people are not organized into civic groups, we lack the base we need. This is a conundrum.

The solution begins with recognizing that a significant minority of Americans have recently participated in meaningful civic work that includes aspects of open-ended discussion, problem-solving, education, and collaboration with diverse peers. As in the past, our civic organizations do not rely solely on recruits who have remarkable civic motivations from the start. Instead, they offer various concrete and sometimes even materialistic benefits, such as jobs, educational credentials, or solutions to local problems. But often the people they recruit have rewarding experiences when they are invited to act as deliberative, constructive citizens. They enjoy themselves, they feel that they have solved problems, and they gain satisfaction.

These Americans represent a base for civic renewal. We need them to develop a greater self-awareness as active citizens, a set of network ties, and an agenda for renewing democracy together.

How many Americans have participated recently in worthy democratic activities? One way to answer that question is to ask representative samples about their own experiences.

• Eighteen percent of survey respondents in 2007 said that they had participated within the past year in a meeting with people of diverse views “to determine ideas and solutions for problems in their community.” That 18 percent was diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, and educational background.

• A different source is Census data collected annually from 2005-7, which suggest that 11.8 percent of adult Americans have either attended community meetings or worked on community problems. That group is somewhat skewed toward older, richer, better educated, native-born, white people.

• In 2003, a team of political scientists surveyed 1,001 Americans about various deliberative experiences and found that 25 percent had “attended a formal or informal meeting … to specifically discuss a local, national, or international issue—for example, neighborhood crime, housing, schools, social security, election reform, terrorism, global warming, or any other public issue that affects people.” In this study, African-Americans and young people (ages 18-29) were as numerous or even slightly more numerous among the deliberators as in the whole sample.

It is no surprise that these estimates of the proportions of active citizens differ, given the diverse survey questions and sampling methods. But a fairly consistent pattern emerges: somewhere between 10 percent and 25 percent of adult Americans claim that they have engaged in deliberative politics, with the number falling as we add conditions. Although voting and volunteering are stratified by social class, talking and working together on local problems draw a diverse and representative segment of the population. Talk alone is more common than talk combined with action, as might be expected. If the lower range of these estimates is correct, 10 percent of adult Americans participate annually. That is a base of 30 million people: plenty to build a movement.

The problem with surveys about obviously desirable activities (such as collaborating with one’s diverse neighbors) is the tendency for respondents to exaggerate their own participation. The best conducted surveys of voting do not suffer from serious response bias. If you are asked whether you voted in a recent election, an incorrect answer is probably a lie, and less than two percent of adults seem to lie about their voting in the biennial Census survey. However, the problem may be worse when we try to measure an activity less concrete and discrete than voting. For example, some subsamples in some surveys are eight times more likely to say that they regularly watch the news as actually watch the news. Similarly, if you are asked whether you talked with your neighbors about community issues within the last year, you can probably persuade yourself that you did so, even if a close observer would say that you did not.

Another way to build an estimate of the number of already engaged citizens is to aggregate counts of the actual participants in particular initiatives. For example:

• The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation has more than 2,000 individual members who are interested enough in organizing and facilitating public discussions (often linked to local action) that they subscribe to the NCDD mailing list, which is full of practical suggestions.

• Public Allies is an AmeriCorps-funded program that recruits mostly disadvantaged young people and places them in leadership roles in nonprofits, developing their ability to invent solutions in collaboration with peers. Public Allies has 2,800 alumni.

• The American Democracy Project (ADP) of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities is one of several national networks of campuses that enhance the civic engagement of their own students and build partnerships with local civil society. ADP is distinctive because its member campuses are mostly non-selective, local, state colleges and universities that serve demographically diverse students. I estimate that ADP involves at least 11,000 people nationally.

• Community Development Corporations employ almost 200,000 people, but I estimate that about 13,800 CDC employees are directly involved with deliberation, community organizing, civic education, or public work.

• The River Network is a movement that empowers residents to understand, enjoy, and protect their local watersheds. Its focus is local collaboration and problem-solving rather than centralized regulation. It has formal partnerships with 600 nonprofit organizations across the country. If we assume that each nonprofit involves an average of 30 people (staff and volunteers), that implies a movement of about 18,000 active participants.

• In 2008, the Case Foundation announced a grant competition called “Make it Your Own,” seeking projects that they defined as “citizen-centered.” The Foundation expected all applicants to promote deliberation about goals, to move from talk to action, and to build capacity for future projects. I estimate that the competition drew about 1,840 applicants who truly understood and practiced citizen-centered work, representing roughly 36,800 people.

• Everyday Democracy has been promoting Study Circles and other forms of deliberative community organizing since 1989. It has worked on more than 450 separate dialogue projects in 600 communities. Since each project by definition involves a substantial group, I cautiously estimate the number of “alumni” of Study Circles at 60,000.

• The Coffee Party, a movement for civility and political reform, attracted 335,000 Facebook “friends”; but a safer estimate of its active membership in March 2011 would be its email list, which numbers 65,000 people.

• YouthBuild USA recruits young people who have dropped out of high school by offering them both hourly pay and training opportunities. Once in YouthBuild, participants find themselves governing their own work sites through deliberative democracy, and some members progress through a set of civic education experiences to become highly effective leaders. YouthBuild USA claims 100,000 alumni.

• Community, Migrant, Homeless, and Public Housing Health Centers are not-for-profit corporations that provide health care, that are rooted in poor communities and unable to move, and that are governed in part by their own clients. Those that qualify as Federally Qualified Health Centers must have governing boards of which more than half are current clients of the center who demographically represent the population that the center serves. “The governing board ensures that the center is community based and responsive to the community’s health care needs.” Overall, community health centers employ 123,000 full-time workers or the equivalent. There are 12,000 centers, and if the average board numbers 10, that implies 120,000 board members.

• More than 165,000 people are employed full-time in our public schools to teach social studies or civics. Part of their job is to encourage and moderate informed, civil discussions of issues. Most say that they do so. Ninety-four percent of high school civics teachers say they use “controversies as teaching opportunities to get students engaged and to model civil debate and discussion.” That response suggests that about 150,000 adults promote deliberation with democratic goals and a developmental ethic.

• The League of Women Voters claims 150,000 members and active supporters, organized in chapters, states, and a national network. Typical League activities include holding and facilitating local discussions, advocating for political reforms, and educating the public.

• AmericaSpeaks organizes large, day-long deliberations called Twenty-First Century Town Meetings that have significant influence over governmental decisions. At least 160,000 people have participated in these events since 1995.

• Members of the Industrial Areas Foundation are religious congregations and other institutions, not individual people. No census of participants is available, but there are 47 regional IAF organizations, each a hub for scores of local congregations. The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (by no means the largest or oldest IAF affiliate) drew 4,000 individuals to its founding assembly in 1998. If similar numbers of people are active participants at the average IAF site, then the total count would be almost 200,000 Americans.

Aggregated, these organizations and professions number more than one million members, even if one presumes that they overlap a bit. (Some social studies teachers belong to the League of Women Voters; some CDC workers are active in IAF). The list is illustrative, not exhaustive, and it could easily be extended, even doubled.

Thus it is safe to say that we have a base of at least one million people for civic renewal. We need to communicate this message to them: You have personally experienced dignified, valuable, effective civic work. That kind of opportunity is rare and undervalued today. Would you like to talk with peers who have had similar experiences about how to expand the movement?

I love the phrase “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” Barack Obama didn’t coin it and never said he did, but its origins seem a little obscure. Some websites call it a Hopi elders’ phrase, but I see no evidence that the Hopis were using it long ago. David Mathews, president of the Kettering Foundation, calls it “an old song from the civil rights movement” (Is There a Public for Public Schools, Kettering Foundation Press, 1996). But David may have heard it sung by Sweet Honey and the Rock, and Alice Walker explains, “It was the poet June Jordan who wrote, ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for.’ Sweet Honey in the Rock turned those words into a song. Hearing that song, I have witnessed thousands of people rise to their feet in joyful recognition and affirmation.” (Walker, The Ones We Have Been Waiting For, The New Press, 2007, p. 3).

I have tracked down the line in Jordan’s “Poem for South African Women,” which she presented at the United Nations on August 9, 1978 in “commemoration of the 40,000 women and children who, August 9, 1956, presented themselves in bodily protest against the ‘dompass’ in the capital of apartheid.” So Jordan may have invented this phrase in, or not long before, 1978. That would make it a song of the late civil rights movement. But the sentence is italicized and typeset as its own stanza, as if it were an epigraph. So maybe Jordan quoted it from anonymous predecessors, which would certainly be appropriate in a poem. Both Senator John Edwards and Sojourners CEO Jim Wallis quote the late activist Lisa Sullivan (1961-2011) as their source for the phrase. See Edwards, “Ending Poverty: The Great Moral Issue of Our Time,” Yale Law & Policy Review vol. 25, no. 37 (2006-2007), p. 348 and Wallis, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (HarperCollins, 2006), p. 374. Either Sullivan quoted Jordan, or both had older sources.

I sort of wish the phrase had an anonymous, folk origin, because that seems to reflect its spirit. Also, June Jordan is not really my hero as a poet. I enjoy her wry humor and endorse her fierce expression of identity and solidarity as a Black, bisexual woman in the 1970s. But her very direct, literal, informal poetry now seems dated. The political moment has also passed. Consider, for example, her “Poem of Personal Greeting for Fidel on the Occasion of his Trip to the United Nations, 1979”:

el norteamericano media …

dismiss the grace of your arithmetic

transliterating bullets into butter

hospitals and books for children

The same collection also includes a welcoming poem for Khomenei. Castro and the Ayatollah strike me as a couple of macho megalomaniacs dependent on mass imprisonment and judicial murder for their power–but that is easier to see in 2011 than in 1978. Anyway, in case Jordan is the original author of my favorite political slogan, let me say that her “Poem for South African Women” is a striking work with several strong images, especially: “the babies cease alarm as mothers / raising arms / and heart high …”

Just a few years ago, the Council for Excellence in Government (CEG) and the Academy for Educational Development (AED) seemed like robust and permanent parts of the Washington scene. They occupied big pieces of real estate: a Connecticut Avenue office building for AED and a floor of offices on K Street for CEG.

They were important to me personally. CEG housed the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, the old Center for Democracy and Citizenship, the Campaign for Young Voters, and the Partnership for Trust in Government, all collaborators of mine in various ways. AED housed the National Service-Learning Partnership, the State Education Agency K-12 Service-Learning Network, and the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research–again, all partners. Their business models, as far as I could tell, were to serve as holding companies for externally funded contracts and projects.

And now they are gone. CEG closed its doors in 2009. AED is going out of business after 50 years. I received a pay check from AED as long ago as 1989 and spent so much time in CEG that I knew the men’s room passcode by heart. I think their demise is both a symptom of the very difficult environment for all nonprofits–many are hanging on by threads–and perhaps an indication that the “holding company” model doesn’t work any more.