Sequence 5 parts 2015–2016
Civic Renewal
Partisanship gives us sides to cheer for. Does it give us much power to act? These essays ask what citizens could do with more of it.
Citizen, Renew Thyself
A citizens movement doesn’t have to be leaderless, but the kinds of leaders ensconced at the top of large institutions are not well-suited to be the leaders of civic renewal movements. They can inspire and celebrate such movements, but neither Barack Obama nor Bernie Sanders nor Pope Francis can lead them. Their institutional authority appears to be inimical to the very bottom-up power they’re trying to engender.
Elections, Partisanship, and the Call for Moderation in Civic Life
No matter how much we might disagree about one law or policy, that disagreement should not be allowed to destroy the possibility of a future alliance on a different problem. Citizens tempted by partisanship have to find a way to hold their ideas and convictions loosely. They have to preserve civic friendship and reject permanent divisions.
Partisanship Has Reduced Our Efficacy as Citizens
I’ve been thinking a lot about the new evidence that partisan distrust and even hatred now trumps racial hatred. Consider the now-famous Iyengar/Westwood study, ” Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization .” Iyengar and Westwood showed that partisan identification has ceased to be a wholly ideological or instrumental self-description. It’s…
Should Public Civic Education Be Descriptive or Normative?
What should schools do about the fact that politicians are frequently both wrong and immoral in ways that violate educational norms? How can civics education be civil if civic engagement rarely is?
Diversity, Equality, and Realignment
As the political participation of disaffected, unrepresented voters drops, this reserve army of the unallied gets bigger. It’s especially potent in primaries, which are very low turnout events. My suspicion is that if disaffected voters could be reliably re-engaged, the parties would likely find wedge issues to divvy them up over a relatively short set of elections. But they may well divvy them up differently than the parties had previously done. This would be the seed of a realignment.