the World Bank and active citizenship

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The World Bank has published a book entitled Accountability Through Public Opinion: From Inertia to Public Action. Its premise: governments perform better when citizens hold them accountable by seeking information, deliberating, and acting politically. Anyone who holds strongly negative stereotypes about the Bank–as a bastion of neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus–may be surprised to see, for instance, Marshall Ganz’ chapter on “Public Narrative, Collective Action, and Power.” (Ganz is a leading figure in the American left.)

My chapter is entitled “‘Social Accountability’ as Public Work.” I address the increasingly common practice of governments asking citizens to evaluate, influence, or inform policy. I see merit in this strategy, but also limitations …

  • Motivational: Most people lack sufficient reason to devote substantial time and energy to improving the performance of government. If governments provide incentives to participate, then citizens’ engagement is dependent on government.
  • Epistemic: If you are merely asked to assess the government, without having deep experience in addressing public problems, you may not know enough to evaluate well. You may have information but not deeply held, considered, experience-based values.
  • Political: Public forums and meetings are what John Gaventa calls “invited spaces.” The officials who issue invitations can revoke them. Power remains with the government.

I suggest an alternative, drawing on Harry Boyte’s concept of “public work.” Many millions of people are already at work addressing public problems, either as part of their jobs or as unpaid efforts. Work is motivating, educational, and empowering. If we see public consultations, deliberations, and input as aspects of public work, we can reframe these processes somewhat. In particular, we can embed them more thoroughly in jobs, professional roles, and volunteer activities.

Justice Souter at CIRCLE

Posted on the CIRCLE website today:

On May 16, U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter (retired) and Susan Leahy, the president of the New Hampshire Supreme Court Society, visited CIRCLE’s offices at Tufts University to discuss civic education in New Hampshire. Justice Souter has written and spoken publicly about the need to revive civic education in order to protect constitutional principles—including the independence of the judiciary—and to preserve and spread the ideals and practices of democratic government that he learned from the New England town meetings of his childhood. He and Susan Leahy represented the New Hampshire Supreme Court Society’s Civics Task Force, a diverse group of the state’s leaders who are concerned that New Hampshire has no core curriculum in civics, nor any detailed goals for civic education. Although valuable opportunities for civic learning are available in the state (for students and adults), they are sporadic and episodic.

CIRCLE staff shared research on civic education and discussed a range of strategies for enhancing it at the state level, with a special focus on “professional development” (or educational opportunities for teachers). New Hampshire educators have identified professional development in civics as a priority, and research shows that it is valuable. For example, see the CIRCLE Fact Sheet entitled How Teachers’ Preparation Relates to Students’ Civic Knowledge and Engagement in the United States: Analysis from the IEA Civic Education Study by Judith Torney-Purta, Carolyn Henry Barber, and Wendy Klandl Richardson.

reform the university to meet the public’s knowledge needs in an age of information overload

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In this ten-minute video (from the Tisch College Tenth Anniversary celebration), I argue: 1) there is just too much information available for citizens to digest; 2) in order for the public to engage with information, we need appropriate institutions; 3) the institutions that formerly played that role, especially metropolitan daily newspapers, are in desperate condition; so 4) we need to rethink the communications function of the university.

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why civility doesn’t pay

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E.J. Dionne describes a recent letter from Catholic professors to Speaker John Boehnher as “civil.” I think that’s right–in a specific and important sense. Note that the letter is deeply critical. For example:

Mr. Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings. From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor. Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress. This fundamental concern should have great urgency for Catholic policy makers. Yet, even now, you work in opposition to it.

Those are harsh words. A practicing Catholic like Mr. Boehner should prefer to be called insulting names than to be told that his record is directly contrary to the ancient and consistent magisterium (teaching authority) of the one true Church.

In what sense, then, is the letter “civil”? I think civility’s core value is the attempt to maintain a conversation, to invite a reply from which one might learn and then reply in turn. A civil interlocutor acknowledges that the other person is worthy of engaging and might have something valuable to say. Not everyone is worthy of engaging; civility is not a transcendent virtue–but it has an important place in a democratic society.

So defined, civility is consistent with sharp criticism. It all depends on the context: sometimes you have to be polite or even nice to keep a conversation going; but sometimes a harsh accusation is more effective. The question is whether you are likely to shut down or open up a conversation.

The Catholic academics’ letter explicitly welcomes further dialogue with Mr. Boehner and gives him openings to respond. It begins:

We congratulate you on the occasion of your commencement address to The Catholic University of America. It is good for Catholic universities to host and engage the thoughts of powerful public figures, even Catholics such as yourself who fail to recognize (whether out of a lack of awareness or dissent) important aspects of Catholic teaching. We write in the hope that this visit will reawaken your familiarity with the teachings of your Church on matters of faith and morals as they relate to governance.

Not only does this letter acknowledge Mr. Boehner’s standing to speak at Catholic University, but it invites him to “dissent” and explain why his position on the federal budget does not contradict the Church “on matters of faith and morals.”

Dionne notes that the letter drew hardly any media attention, in contrast to the protests at Notre Dame against President Obama’s visit in 2009. There could be several reasons for this difference, including the higher profile of a president. But Mr. Boehner is the leader of the national Republican Party and a Catholic, which makes his argument with Catholic theologians arguably more interesting than anti-abortion protests at Notre Dame.

I agree with Dionne that the recent letter was ignored because of its civility. If you say, “John Boehner must not speak at our institution; we do not want to hear him,” that is news. (Attempting to block a scheduled campus speaker follows a well-known news script.) If you say, “John Boehner is welcome to speak at our campus, but his actions violate two thousand years of theological consensus,” the press yawns. Perhaps the substance is too hard for reporters to grasp, or it sounds like just another debate about abstract ideas. In any case, we must find ways to reward civility, or we won’t see much of it.

how to evaluate advocacy

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Foundations and rich individuals invest hundreds of millions of dollars in efforts to change policy, such as the 20-year struggle for health care reform and the campaign to address global warming. One of those efforts achieved major legislation; the other has fizzled for now. The question arises: How can we tell when and why  investments in advocacy work? If we can’t evaluate them, most donors will be skeptical about spending much money on advocacy. Those who are willing to take the risk won’t know where to invest.

Steve Teles and Mark Schmitt have an important new paper called “The Elusive Craft of Evaluating Advocacy” (PDF). It’s short, free of jargon, and largely free of data and citations, but it is based on a remarkable combination of experience and reflection. Teles is author of (among many other publications, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law, which is basically an evaluation of a long, complex advocacy effort that was successful in remaking the American judiciary. Schmitt has been an important Senate staffer (hence, a target of advocacy) and a thoughtful participant in DC think tanks and their advocacy efforts.

They argue that the methods appropriate for assessing services cannot work for advocacy efforts. Because of the unpredictability of politics, the many players who focus on any single topic, and the bias toward the status quo (among other reasons), detecting the policy impact of a particular project or organization is virtually impossible.

They don’t quite say this, but it could be a serious error to try to detect causality, as if one could find a replicable recipe for policy change and then put all one’s money into it. Quite the contrary, funders should use what this article (following Teles’ book) calls “a spread-betting approach to making grants.” It’s almost always smart to fund a diverse set of strategies and flavors of reform–the radical outsiders, the expert-driven negotiators, the grassroots organizers, and others–because success depends on a mix of these, in unpredictable proportions.

A corollary of the last point: Don’t try to build some kind of unified coalition, let alone one “go-to” organization. On the contrary, maintain and expand a diverse and somewhat contentious network.

That is good strategic advice, but how to evaluate outcomes? Teles and Schmitt recommend: 1) evaluating a whole portfolio, not individual projects; 2) setting the longest possible time horizon, because failures suddenly become successes, and even the most thrilling legislative victories can disappoint; 3) evaluate the advocates (i.e., organizations and leaders), not the individual projects or strategies, because you want to encourage adaptability and resilience, 4) assess positions in networks if you want to purchase influence; 5) use peer appraisals to assess advocates; and 6) drop all pretense of positivist social science and allow yourself to exercise judgment, or what Aristotle and the contemporary theorist Bent Flyvbjerg calls “phronesis.” (Flyvbjerg is hardly a household name, and his work may not be known in think tanks, but he has shaken up American political science with his radical alternative to standard social science–which resembles the recommendations of Schmitt and Teles. One additional tip he offers is to be attentive to who benefits from any given strategy, even the most idealistic ones.)

If you are interested in this topic, I also recommend Lobbying and Policy Change:Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why by my Tufts colleague Jeffrey Berry and four colleagues. Their book demonstrates that having the most money does not determine success in advocacy. In fact, money explains only about five percent of the variance in outcomes. Strategy counts, but so do uncontrollable factors such as the profound bias in favor of the status quo.