I just spent my morning meeting with some representatives of a UK nonprofit and then some Australian Parliamentarians. The Brits are interested in starting a voluntary national service program; the Aussies want to improve e-government. It seems to be the season to come to Washington on fact-finding tours, and some people believe that I have facts to dispense. I did my best.

I lead a peculiar professional life, one that’s hard to describe to acquaintances; but I’m hardly unique. There are distinguished and successful people who are much further along a similar path than I–to name just a few, Harry Boyte, Barbara Ferman, Lew Friedland, Archon Fung, Bill Galston, John Gaventa, Liz Hollander, Jenny Mansbridge, Elinor Ostrom, John McKnight, Karen Pittman, Jay Rosen, Carmen Sirianni, and Linda Williams. These are all scholars who promote democracy in practical ways. I like to think that my blog describes how one can live that sort of life, in case other people want to try it. My own activities are by no means exemplary, but I often report on what my colleagues are doing.

In brief, they are serious scholars who are developing elaborate worldviews in articles and books. But they draw a lot of their knowledge from hands-on work outside the academy. That description would also cover plenty of academics who are experts in fields of policy and advocates for particular positions. For example, there are hundreds of science professors who promote green policies in conjunction with advocacy groups. That is a completely appropriate form of engagement. But the people I mentioned above are more interested in the democratic process. Specifically, they are concerned about citizens’ capacity to form their own opinions and to shape the world accordingly.

Continue reading →

Last night I received another 140 spam comments, and these were advertisements for photos of rape, incest, and torture. (I’m quoting verbatim from their own descriptions.) Anyone who can place 140 horrifying comments on my site can place 1,400, and completely shut me down. Therefore, instead of posting something substantive today, I’ve spent my blogging time trying to protect this site from the true scum of the earth.

I wanted to follow Nick Beaudrot’s good advice to install a “visual filter” or “captcha” that would test whether those trying to post comments are (sighted) human beings. Despite an ethical qualm about blocking access to blind people, I will install such a filter if it proves necessary. However, a quick search didn’t turn up any user-friendly versions. There are scripts available online, but they lack installation instructions simple enough for dummies like me. Therefore, I have followed the advice on this page, which basically suggests creating non-standard names for software files to fool automated spammers. As a result of the changes I’ve made today, you must now pass through two steps to leave a comment, but it’s straightforward.

The Washington Post interviewed some undecided voters who had watched John Kerry’s convention speech on Thursday. One viewer “said Kerry made her feel that she had a role to play as a citizen. ‘He seemed to be saying we all have to make this happen. Give me a shovel. I want to dig,’ she said. ‘With Bush, it’s like he’s going to take care of it and we’re supposed to go about our business.” Another said: “He was energizing me. I felt like I need to go out and do something for the country.”

I don’t actually see much evidence of this theme in Kerry’s speech; so far, I’m not convinced that he would substantially increase opportunities for citizens to create public goods or to protect America. However, I do find it heartening that people want those opportunities.

The public role of ordinary citizens has shrunk over the last century. This is partly because professionals and experts have taken over many traditional duties of citizens, from managing towns to setting educational policy to lobbying. (Lin Ostrom notes that four percent of American families included a member of a government legislature, council, or board in 1932, compared to roughly one percent today). At the same time, many civic functions have been privatized. For example, Americans often pay companies to provide neighborhood security or to watch their small children.

All that is left for citizens to do is to complain, vote, and volunteer. Volunteering can be valuable, but it is usually squeezed between work and family time. Moreover, conventional volunteering tends to mean direct, face-to-face service that does not change policies or institutions or grant much power to those who participate. A national survey of Americans conducted in 2002 found that many volunteered, at least occasionally, but only 20 percent of the volunteers (and 10 percent of young volunteers) described their participation as a way to address a ?social or political problem.? In a qualitative study of Minnesota citizens completed in 2000, respondents said that volunteering often consigned them ?to positions of mediocrity with the assumption that they lacke[ed] the capacity to work on big issues that impact the community.? At its best, public service is demanding, creative, responsible, serious business.

It is typical not only of the Bush administration but of modern government in general that no one could think of much for citizens to do after 9/11 other than volunteering to help neighbors; shopping to boost GNP; and possibly enlisting in the military. Our 2002 survey found that young Americans wanted to serve, but weren’t actually doing anything more than they had in 2000–probably because no one was asking them to work in demanding ways.

A president who really wanted to increase opportunities for public work could implement many concrete policies to that end. (See “Idea #4” at the end of this mini-essay, and some proposals for getting citizens involved in national security, here.)

Yesterday, building off an essay by Jay Rosen, I argued that modern presidential nominating conventions are very interesting–not as part of the struggle to get 51% of the vote, but as rituals, performances, symbols.

Rituals, in turn, really affect politics and public policy. Political scientists and reporters typically try to explain politicians’ behavior by assuming that they want to get elected and re-elected, or that they want to enact particular policies. But this analysis begs the question of why anyone would want to hold public office in the first place. Most people would rather die. It’s no answer to say that politicians want “power.” First of all, most people don’t. Second, most political offices in the US don’t come with much power; often their power is insufficient to achieve the outcomes that voters expect.

I think that some politicians are quite altruistic (contrary to what Nick Beaudrot says in a comment on this blog), and this partly explains their entry into politics. But to a large extent, I believe they want to participate in our public rituals. They want to hear someone announce them: “LAY-dies and gentlemen, the next great mayor of our magnificent city … ” They want to watch balloons rise up in a great hall when they take the podium. They want to cut ribbons and kiss babies and get interviewed on Nightline.

All this means that different people would enter politics if we had different rituals. (Likewise, different scholars would deliberately go into college administration if our academic rituals were different.) In this sense, ritual matters.

On our recent trip to Burgundy, I began re-reading one of my favorite books, Johan Huizinga’s Waning of the Middle Ages (1919). Huizinga argues that chivalry (jousts, orders of knighthood, the cult of courtly love) was completely artificial by the fifteenth century. It didn’t reflect the underlying reality of a commercial, urbanizing Europe. Yet people continued to “play” at chivalry very seriously throughout the century. In turn, chivalry mattered. It meant that political leaders had to be good at jousting. It caused some wealthy bourgeois (the “real” pillars of the society) to ruin their fortunes by marrying their children to poor nobles with good chivalric credentials. It certainly ate up a lot of social resources. And it served as an–increasingly inadequate–tool with which people tried to understand their world.

Modern political conventions are like the jousts of fifteenth-century Burgundy. They have lost their original purpose. In the long run, they are doomed. Yet they still matter.