Does the Civic Renewal Movement Have a Future?

Abstract

A civic ideal is an ideal of deliberative self‐governance. People who participate in discussing what their own groups should do are being civic. Civic venues, institutions, and habits have waned since the mid‐1900s. In the 1990s, a movement arose to restore them, under the banner of “civic renewal.” This movement was carefully nonpartisan, often impartial about specific issues, and interested in creating alternative settings that could complement such basic political institutions as Congress and elections. As the condition of democracy has worsened in recent years, this approach looks inadequate or irrelevant. The most promising sources of civic renewal now are parties and social movements that have substantive agendas, such as racial justice, and that improve civic life as a collateral benefit. [Correction added on 27 September 2021, after first online publication: In the abstract, “mid‐1990s” has been changed to “mid‐1900s”.]

Devouring and Asphyxia: Symptoms of a Cultural Complex in Present Times1

“…We oscillate, like our patients, between fear and some rush of courage. We struggle to avoid the introjection of the victim that pushes us into the abyss, since living in dark times leads to destructive inertia, subjugation and moral cowardice: in the words of Brecht (1939) "when there was only injustice and no outrage" (Levine, 2014). Integration is hard to obtain in a state of continuous dissociation.…”

Recommendations for Better Civic Learning: Building and Rebuilding Democracy

“…The cautionary lesson of these movements is that filtering political and moral goals from complex local and institutional entanglements can make those goals more forceful but also sharper edged and less open to accommodations within the preexisting political processes. Peter Levine's essay identifies and questions a certain anti‐institutional bias, within a notion of “civic renewal,” that is so concerned with deliberative action that it inadvertently becomes overly apolitical or even antigovernmental and can play into authoritarian hands 27 . In the 1990s, the civic renewal movement tended to take for granted the sustainability of background political party, electoral, and governance institutions, believing that more widespread participatory and deliberative activities at local levels would make those processes more accountable, reasonable, and progressive.…”