Monthly Archives: August 2009

building public capacity

At last week’s meetings in Washington, about 100 proponents of democratic reform, representing several different traditions and flavors, came together to develop a common agenda that was welcomed by the White House as advice. I was one of a fairly substantial minority that put the development of civic skills on the agenda. It occurs to me that civic skill-development is the defining goal of my own work and of the main organizations I work for, CIRCLE and the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service.

Skill- or capacity-development is always a central purpose and outcome of admirable popular movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement in the US, the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, or the Labor Party in Brazil. The need for skills–as well as confidence and knowledge–is very obvious when one works with disadvantaged people. In contrast, good-government reformers tend to focus on procedural changes and may overlook the need for people to change in their minds and hearts.

I worked for two years for Common Cause and remain a strong supporter of theirs (and of the League of Women Voters, of which I am a member). I agree with them that it’s essential to reform the rules of campaign finance, legislative districting, and the Senate. But there is a reason this is a middle-class agenda. Although procedural reforms would disproportionately benefit low-income people, low-income people are not likely to fight for such reforms or use the new rules to their advantage. These matters are too abstract and distant to engage without specialized skills. (But working-class people have other skills that they can use effectively in social movements.)

At CIRCLE, we study how young people develop the skills they need to be effective citizens. At Tisch College, we teach such skills and are becoming increasingly deliberate about selecting the important skills and developing appropriate curricula. These are just two examples of initiatives underway in civil society.

For the government, I would recommend the following agenda:

  • As AmeriCorps is tripled in size, make it an essential goal to develop the civic skills of participants.
  • As the Administration implements the remarkable presidential memorandum on transparency, participation, and collaboration, make sure that each project and program that involves civic engagement includes an element of skill-building for the public and for federal managers.
  • Make civic education a high priority in federal education law.
  • Invest in federal programs that provide trainings, conferences, toolkits, etc. for civic groups that collaborate with the government.

going offline

My family and I are taking a short New England vacation until Friday, when I’ll fly to San Francisco for the American Sociological Association’s annual conference. On Saturday, I’ll speak at a presidential plenary session of the ASA, entitled “Why Obama Won (and What that Says about Democracy and Change in America).” Until then, I’m planning to go offline and avoid both the consumption and the production of blogs.

interacting with the administration

(Washington, DC): I’m at Strengthening Our Nation’s Democracy II, a conference organized by Demos and by two organizations on whose boards I serve, AmericaSpeaks and Everyday Democracy. About 100 proponents of democratic reform have convened to develop a common agenda. One goal is to interact with the White House, which has sent four high-level officials to speak and some others to participate in discussions. Their remarks are “off the record,” to permit candor. For that reason, and also because of the complexity and richness of the conversation, I will not attempt to summarize the way they think about civic renewal and democracy.

But I am struck by a problem. Some members of the administration, not including the president, are probably committed to “interest-group liberalism.” They think their job is to pass fair, just, and helpful legislation. They see a public divided into organized interest groups, whose leaders represent their rank-and-file. Unfortunately, interest groups’ power is unequal: the US Chamber of Commerce has much more power than the National Coalition for the Homeless. So a major task of a progressive administration is to inform, listen to, and mobilize organizations that represent the disadvantaged. Meanwhile, legislation is very complicated, elaborate, and fast-moving. Most Americans cannot possibly follow all the details, so the White House has both the need and the ethical responsibility to discuss pertinent aspects of each proposal with interest groups that especially care.

Most of participants at this conference, on the other hand, reject interest-group politics. The political reform groups (League of Women Voters, OpentheGovernment.org, etc.) have a progressive model, in which the “common good” means abstract and general rules that apply to all. The proponents of deliberation and dialog want open-minded and diverse citizens to discuss issues, learn from one another, and break out of interest-group categories. The popular education and civic education people want to go straight to the grassroots and empower people, without organized and professionalized intermediaries.

I suspect that when White House staffers look down from the podium at our group, they feel reinforced in some of their interest-group liberal assumptions. They see a predominantly white, upper-middle-class, professional audience with a significant sprinkling of professors and Beltway experts. They do not see representatives of the public interest, but rather a particular special interest–the “good government” lobby.

This is partly unfair, because the streams of political reform that are represented in the room have deep resonance for disadvantaged American communities and often emerged in the Civil Rights Movement or community organizing. But the impression is real and is substantially our fault. When we pull together leaders for high-level meetings, we somehow end up with a bunch of Ivy League professors and Washington lawyers.

the view from South Africa

(Washington, DC) Xolela Mangu, a distinguished South African social scientist and columnist, joined our conference last week on the Obama civic agenda. In his national column, he reflects on “service” (with its hints of moral obligation, on one side, and dependency on the other) versus civic empowerment:

    LAST week I participated in a cross-Atlantic conference with officials and academics closely aligned with the Obama administration.

    On this side, I was joined by the distinguished scholar-activist, Harry Boyte.

    The conference was convened to ask one question: how far has Obama gone in fulfilling his campaign promise of making active citizenship the centre of his administration?

    The chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service, Alan Solomont, provided a wide-ranging account of what the administration had done in increasing funding for public service and getting the youth actively involved in community service work.

    The administration has also done well in opening up the government.

    Obama’s foreign policy speeches have also set the tone for civic engagement around the world.

    However, Harvard University’s Marshall Ganz was more cautious about the emphasis on service as opposed to building community.

    Boyte could sense technocracy creeping into the language of the administration, from the mobilising theme of “yes, we can”, with the government and the people working together, to “yes, we should”, which is more about doing for communities.

    My own view is that instead of foreign policy discussions proceeding only in terms of the human rights/national interest dichotomy, we should be exploring international collaboration around issues such as active citizenship.

Interestingly, the masthead editorial in the same edition of the same newspaper (The Weekender) echoes the same themes. Commenting on recent grassroots protests in South Africa, The Weekender says:

    The community-based protests have been the catalyst for a long-overdue conversation on the “service delivery” issue, which was all but drowned out of the election campaign earlier this year by the power struggle within the ANC and Zuma’s battle to avoid prosecution. But it is not clear the party has any viable alternative to vague promises based on a top-down delivery model–hence the hastily arranged national summit to establish the cause of the flare-ups. …

    There is a lot more to it than unrealistic expectations, though. The very basis of the term “service delivery” needs to be revisited–what is meant by it, how is it understood by the poor, and is it appropriate given the capacity and skills challenges the state faces?

    “Service delivery” implies from the outset that poor communities are passive recipients of state largesse, and this clearly accords with the view of many ruling party politicians, who unashamedly link political support with handouts. Yet it has been shown the world over that community involvement in projects such as infrastructure development not only helps ensure that the product is looked after but enhances individual confidence, self- respect and skills levels.

    Several commentators have pointed out that the nub of the protests is not so much about delivery–although that clearly leaves much to be desired in most parts of the country–but the fact that communities are seldom consulted about what they really want.

“Community service” is not the same thing as “service delivery.” The former usually involves amateurs who are unpaid or given small stipends; the latter, agencies and professionals. Yet it is no coincidence that the two phrases share a word. Their shared problem is a conception of people as needy clients, not as active agents. In both the United States and South Africa, now that left-of-center governments hold power, there is a quiet struggle underway between “service” and civic agency.