On Collapse and the Next U.S. Democracy: Elements of Applied Systemic Research

Abstract

While concern has been growing in recent years about the structural precursors to economic collapse in the United States, and a parallel decline in democracy, few have asked: (1) what moral and cultural foundations might be necessary as building blocks to launch a democratic renewal and (2) whether a different and “deep” democracy might be constructed this time that accords everyday citizens the agency they will need to initiate policy at the national level. The article introduces a research methodology to frame and assess change at this macro, or systemic, register and examines the role that education can play in teaching citizens how to exercise agency in a reconstituted democracy that is more nearly “by, for, and of the people.”

2017 CAE Presidential Address: Intergenerational Disruption or Ideological Incongruency?

“…After Anderson Levitt, our next CAE presidents, Perry Gilmore (), Norma Gonzalez (), Terry McCarty (), Bryan Brayboy (), Katherine Shultz (), Greg Tanaka (), Rosemary Henze (), and Marjorie Faulstich Orellana (), validated and reinforced how our mission statement was part of our identity. Thus, the questioning by Levinson () last year brought back the concerns of those who felt displaced by the mission statement more than ten years ago.…”

More than the Second Amendment: Liberal gun owners, citizenship, and emancipatory democracy in the United States

“…Critiques of Second Amendment ascendency presumed that some gun restrictions might improve public well‐being through diminishing violence, and Redditors’ arguments were less about the inanimate object itself and more about being a certain kind of citizen who prioritizes public safety over unfettered individual ownership. The promotion of education‐based expertise reinforced the issue of equal access to quality educations, but not only for the sake of commensurability but to advocate for the resultant knowledge constructed collectively by a broad body of educated citizens steeped in science and fact, rather than individualistic political ideology, thus employing education to reclaim democracy (Tanaka 2015). At the same time, the endorsement of a state‐funded social safety net recognized that while liberal democracies are premised on citizen equality (Paley 2004, p. 479), mass inequalities are structurally embedded in the system.…”

“…Contemporary scholars of democracy across disciplines have noted its increasingly fragile nature, castigating the manner in which external agencies such as the International Monetary Fund make decisions on behalf of indebted nations (Paley 2002); recognizing how liberal democracies promote an inegalitarian social order in the name of a neoliberal “possessive individualism” where collective well‐being is reduced to “individualistic market decisions” (Smith 1998, p. 11, 13) masquerading as democratic rights and bemoaning the rise of a “selfish individualism” that negates the shared visions of citizen rights needed to maintain a social contract (Tanaka 2015). We have seen the specific manifestations of this: Racial justice protesters being confronted by armed Proud Boys; a former president crafting claims to electoral illegitimacy and attempting to compel election officials to “find” more votes when the tally was complete, and state congresses facilitating a rise of bills proposing limits to voter access.…”