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Building on James Burk's contention that militaries must not only protect society from external enemies but also help sustain democratic values, this article reframes debates about women in the military that too often polarize conservatives who stress military effectiveness and liberals who advocate women's rights. Calling upon the citizen-soldier tradition, the article discusses gender integration in light of these civic premises: a) as democratic citizens, women are the civic equals of men; b) therefore, they must share responsibility for the military service; c) which is necessary to defend the United States of America against any forces, foreign or domestic, that threaten to undermine its democratic values. The article uses this "civic perspective" to analyze a variety of issues surrounding gender integration with a particular emphasis on debates about basic training.

Like many organizations, the American Political Science Association has taken the dawn of the new millennium as an opportunity to reevaluate its institutional mission. At APSA's 2000 annual meeting, the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) presented to the APSA Council its final report on “the overall condition of the Association relative to its mission and to the key challenges and opportunities in the external environment” (among other things). Interestingly, the SPC acknowledges that when first asked to “view the future of the APSA through the prism of its organizational mission and objectives,” it was “surprised to learn that the Association had no explicit mission statement beyond its purpose, in the original words of its Constitution, ‘to encourage the study of Political Science’ ” (). Accordingly, the Committee decided to craft an APSA mission statement suitable for the twenty-first century.

This article contests the conservative revisionism that emphasizes the importance of traditional families, pietistic religion, individual moral virtue, and small government for undergirding democratic self-government. The first part exposes the conservative misreading of American history and political theory. The second part uses the civic engagement of middle-and upper-class women in 19th-century America to construct a progressive alternative to conservative narratives. It shows that women did not stay home and focus on the family during the 19th century but instead entered civil society to address the problems created by industrialization, formed social reform movements, built institutions to pursue a social justice agenda, and demanded that the government take an active role in solving public problems. Their civic engagement built on and created social capital, grew out of and produced a sense of civic virtue (defined as public-spiritedness), and resulted in the demand for progressive government.