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Does civic engagement (or you can call it “democratic participation,” or “stronger civil society”) help communities economically? I don’t think there is a large literature on that question, at least with explicit reference to the United States. Of course, wealthier communities tend to be more engaged, but that could be because income and other assets make engagement easier. It is trickier to detect a causal arrow that points in the opposite direction. However, based on the sources listed below, I would make the following hypothesis: the quality–not the quantity–of civic engagement is related to whether communities can withstand economic crises and make difficult collective decisions that help them to recover.
- Vaughn L. Grisham’s, Tupelo: The Evolution of a Community, which associates the remarkable economic success of Tupelo, Miss, with its civic infrastructure.
- Sean Safford, “Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown: Civic infrastructure and mobilization in economic crises,” which emphasizes differences in network structures, not raw amounts of engagement.
- Jeffrey Berry, Kent Portney, and Ken Thomson, The Rebirth of Urban Democracy, which shows that cities with stronger associational participation are able to make difficult decisions better.
If I am missing research or plausible hypotheses, I would love to know.
Hi Peter – What do you think of the Soul of the Community research? http://www.soulofthecommunity.org
Matt
There’s some research on comparative economic growth in US states and Swiss cantons with more or less democratic elements in their constitution, which I found and quoted in a short thinkpiece last year: http://www.scribd.com/doc/33445290/Democracy-Pays-White-Paper (PDF at http://www.demsoc.org/projects/old/)
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I haven’t seen any research on the subject but I would assume that there are definitely economic benefits from civic engagement. For instance, I don’t think New York City would have recovered from 9/11 as well and robustly as it did if it wasn’t for its abundance of civic engagement.
At the moment I am reading an essay entitled “The Weak Foundation of Arab Democracy” (NYT). It deals with something similar to your question, Peter, but the other way around. The author, Timur Kuran, explains that the weakness is very much due to a lack or absence of civic engagement in business terms. As he explains, the Arab world doesn’t have corporations or the business networks on which a lot of civic engagement develops and relies on.
So from this I come away thinking that civic engagement is good for democracy and in turn good for business and the economy. Civic engagement and networking seems to be central to both democracy and the economy, and symbiotic.
I think networking is the key here, something that has been emerging in the Arab streets recently in its demands for freedom, democracy and an end to systemic corruption.
Peter, the literature review section of my thesis, ‘Dialogue and decision-making: Understanding dialogue and factors measurably influencing City decision-making processes’ (( beginning at pg. 9 of http://slidesha.re/l97pa4 )) provides material on the connection of social capital, networks, and civic engagement to the economy. The rest of the paper provides a study of how dialogue in the City of Salinas was performed on the budget. Additionally, I would strongly recommend you read ‘The Influence of Social Capital on Knowledge Sharing and Value Creation in the Cluster: An Empirical Analysis of Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park in Taiwan.’ It is available by a download link in the brief comment section here: http://www.socialcapitalinc.org/comment/reply/641/179 (Both of these papers describe vital bridging activities.) As an example of one organization that has specifically uses its funds for civic engagement in an effort to focus its plans for economic activity, there is Fund for Our Economic Future, “a collaboration of philanthropic organizations and individuals that have united to strengthen the economic competitiveness of Northeast Ohio through grantmaking, research and civic engagement.” They are at http://www.futurefundneo.org/
Thank you for your message. I will be on vacation and mostly offline until July 5.
Peter Levine
CIRCLE and Tisch College
Tufts University
Peter, and other interested persons on this discussion, regarding the literature review section of my thesis, ‘Dialogue and decision-making: Understanding dialogue and factors measurably influencing City decision-making processes’ referred to in an earlier post on this page, the slideshare link is no longer working to access the paper. It can now be accessed and downloaded here:
http://www.datafilehost.com/download-856abeb5.html