Thoughts on Civic Muscle

I have the privilege to be part of PACE, a network of philanthropies who think together periodically about fundamental questions related to civic engagement. Over the past two days we have been exploring the idea of flexing and developing “civic muscle,” especially at a time when society faces multiple crises at once.

The idea of civic muscle is a metaphor, a way of making sense of difficult-to-speak-of conceptual ideas. When I encounter such metaphors, I find it is a helpful thought experiment to take them as literally as possible, and see where that takes you.

What we might we mean by “muscle:”

• • A muscle creates a capability, or capacity
  • A muscle can be atrophied from underuse
  • A muscle can be developed through use
  • The using of the muscle is what develops it
  • A muscle exerts power, which (as one colleague pointed out in our conversation, is simply “the ability to achieve an outcome”)

What would be a “civic” muscle? There are two dimensions to this, two ways to take the question. First, we might be talking about capacities held by individuals that benefit the broader good. Second, we might also be talking about capacities held by groups of people that they can collectively use to benefit their collectivity.

Both of these dimensions are important, and they exist in a dynamic relationship to one another. As individuals’ civic muscles develop, so, too, do collective civic muscles develop.

For example, one example of an individual civic muscle might be the capacity to weigh different options for action against what is held valuable. This leads to better decisions , and if I and others can develop that civic muscle, it will benefit our broader community. The capacity to collectively weigh options together depends on individuals’ discrete capacities — but also is its own kind of effort. Collective deliberation can result in different decisions than individual deliberation.

In my work at the Kettering Foundation, I study both individual and collective civic capacities. I find the collective civic muscles much more difficult to discuss, because the concepts are so abstract. Yet they are critical to the civic health of communities.

Some of the collective civic muscles that have atrophied, but could be developed through use:

• • Collective civic learning (that is, learning as a community about what benefits the community)
  • Shared sense of responsibility to wider community
  • Ability to act in complementary ways with others, without explicit coordination
  • Collective decision making on issues where there is disagreement
  • Ability for disparate networks to interact productively

Some of the civic pathologies we are now experiencing can be seen as both the result of such atrophy, but also opportunities for development. For instance, the culture wars over wearing masks are both a symptom of the atrophy in our ability accept responsibility for the well-being of the broader community, but also may become opportunities to improve our ability to make collective decisions.

What collective civic muscles do you see? Which are atrophied? Which are strong?

A Decade of Deliberation

Today marks ten years as executive editor of the Kettering Foundation’s issue guide series.

The team of colleagues that I have been working with to develop these materials is remarkably talented and insightful, and has grown to be a second family. I am grateful to have had this opportunity to do meaningful work to further the public good.

Kettering creates these issue guides for the National Issues Forums network to use in deliberative forums that people all across the country (and world) convene. In these forums, people talk about and make decisions on many of the most difficult questions facing our communities. Issues like health care, immigration, public safety and policing, and more.

The Kettering Foundation is a research institute that studies the question: What does it take to make democracy work as it should? An excellent overview of Kettering’s core insights is here.

In the past ten years we have produced 52 such documents. A conservative estimate suggests that more than 40,000 people have used these materials over the years, in group settings in communities all over.

While these publications are almost always brief, a great deal of research goes into them including in-depth conversations with ordinary people from all walks of life, and scans of strategic facts and the main arguments being made about each issue. This document describes the process, so anyone could do it in their own community or network.

I am thankful to have reached this milestone. There is much more to be done, but this has been a start.

Forest Rangers in Community

A kind of entity that may exist in a community: one that sees its role as developing the capacity of the community to address shared problems and opportunities.

Note that the role is developmental, and not focused on execution. There are a myriad of entities in any locale that are working directly on projects. This is a different kind of entity – whether it be an organization, a coalition, a loose association, or something else – that can be seen as part of the “civic infrastructure” of a place.

Such an entity is analogous to the role of, say, a forest ranger. A forest ranger sees their role as tending to the health and development of the forest that is in their charge. They are not in control of the forest. They harness resources that enable the forest to grow, and heal, itself. Sometimes the ranger engages in direct intervention, but this is not the norm.

Note that the forest ranger often lives in the forest itself – they themselves are part of the ecology that they seek to develop. And also note that there is rarely just one.

Not every locale has such an entity. Not every forest has a ranger. But some do.

Not every forest needs a ranger. But some do.

Announcing the Hidden Common Ground Initiative

I am pleased to announce a new initiative in which I am playing a small part in my role at the Kettering Foundation:

The National Issues Forums network and the Kettering Foundation are joining a major initiative spearheaded by Public Agenda and USA TODAY to examine how Americans think and talk about the most urgent concerns facing us in the coming election year.

On November 11, the USA TODAY network released the following statement:

As part of its unique local-to-national coverage of the 2020 presidential election, the USA TODAY network and Public Agenda are joining forces to explore the Hidden Common Ground in American public life.

Through nationwide polling, detailed reporting and community events, Hidden Common Ground will explore areas of authentic public agreement on major issues facing the American electorate.

The project will launch in December with an exploration of where citizens stand on the need for common ground and its role in our democracy. Subsequent installments will delve into health care, immigration and economic opportunity, all accompanied by original commentary from USA TODAY’s award-winning Opinion team.

“We believe a strong focus on what Americans agree on can make it more possible for Americans to confront and navigate their real divides and disagreements, such as those stemming from tensions of race, class and fundamental questions of political philosophy,” said Will Friedman, president and CEO of Public Agenda.

The Hidden Common Ground project will also feature a unique partnership with the National Issues Forums (NIF). The nonpartisan forums will be sponsored by libraries, educational institutions, and civic organizations all across the country. The issues will be those USA TODAY has selected for its election coverage, starting with Partisan Divisiveness and the Collaborative Divide and how it might be bridged, and followed by health care, immigration, and the economy.

Each of the four partners will play a key role:

• • • • Public Agenda will research and explore the issues, publishing its findings every few months beginning in December 2019;
      • The National Issues Forums Institute will encourage other sponsors to join the NIF network and also provide online forums that will be available to everyone through the Common Ground for Action platform.
      • The Kettering Foundation will use its research to provide nonpartisan issue guides on these major election issues.
      • The USA TODAY network will publish stories and opinion pieces on each issue and the associated research, as well as surface “Strange Bedfellow” stories of people in communities actually working together for the common good across partisan and other divides.

This unique partnership provides an opportunity to bring more thoughtful public judgment to bear on our nation’s most important elections.

Let me know if you are curious to know more, and I can connect you with the proper contact person.

See here for the original of this release.

Naming Public Issues: Economic Concerns Illustrated

Two reasons that people find it difficult to work on shared problems are that the way they are talked about obscures their nature, and an assumed course of action is implied even though there is not broad agreement on either.

When developing materials for people to deliberate together on shared problems, we try to mitigate those reasons by finding a way of stating it such that almost all would agree that it is indeed a problem that we must talk about in order to decide what to do. Such a shared problem might also be called an issue. The challenge is to determine and state what is at issue in a public way.

In order to develop these ideas, we start by listening to people’s concerns about the general topic. What people say when talking about what concerns them can give a window into what it is they feel is most valuable, and that they feel is at stake. Listening closely, and making sense of what is said, can help zero in on the issue.

Concerns about the economy – a broad topic — provide one example.

Many express worry over how well the economy is working for people. That is an abstract way of putting it, and the way it shows up in ordinary speech might be something like “The rich get richer and working people have it harder and harder.” This sounds clear, but even this plain language obscures a number of embedded issues.

Consider this (literal) napkin drawing that was sketched in a recent informal conversation by people thinking about the topic. The axes are amount of wealth (vertical) and time (horizontal). The graph shows the wealthy (top line) earning more and more, poorer people (bottom line) earning less and less, with the amount needed to just get by in between them (dotted middle line).

 

Different aspects of this set of facts trouble people in different ways, expressed as basic concerns. This is shown by the circled numbers:

1. 1. The rich make much too much
   2. The vast difference in income between the rich and the rest is unfair
   3. Working people make less and less each year
   4. More and more people don’t make enough to get by
   5. The rich make too much more than they need

Any one of these ideas may be in play when someone says they are worried about “economic inequality” or “economic opportunity.” (And of course there may be other embedded concerns.)

Keeping these different concerns conceptually distinct is important in developing a clear statement of what is at issue. Different concerns will suggest different underlying problems, and different remedies, some strikingly so.

The challenge is to find a way of stating the shared problem – the issue — such that most all can see their interest reflected in it. Too often, when it comes to the economy, the dominant political discourse takes one of the specific concerns above, and treats that as the whole issue.

 

Ways of Addressing Political Division

Broadly speaking, I am in a field in which many are trying to address the political division that appears to be increasingly engulfing our nation.

One way to make sense of all these efforts is to explore what appear to be the assumptions underlying their approaches. What do the designers of an initiative think will happen if their work succeeds? Why will it do so? Some might call this their theory of change.

There appear to be three main such theories:

1. If more people interacted with one another more, they would be less likely to engage in extremely divisive rhetoric and behavior. This appears to be the thinking behind a number of initiatives that aim to “bring people together.” Sometimes these initiatives are focused on making space for interactions that do not currently have such space. Often, attention is given to unlikely pairings and diversity of thought among these groups. (Examples: World Cafe, National Conversation Project.)
2. People need interventions in order to break out of their in-group tribalism and see people from other groups as fully human. The idea here is that people are divided, in conflict, due to psychological reasons or habits of thought that can be overcome. Initiatives that operate on this assumption tend to rely on highly trained moderators and specialized interaction mechanisms. (Examples: Living Room Conversations, Better Angels.)
3. If people could face and work through the inherent trade offs and tensions between different ways of looking at difficult public issues, some common ground for action might emerge. In this view, it is the issues themselves — and how they are presented — that divide people. If they are reframed people can address them with less rancor. Such initiatives put a lot of care and thought into how they present the issues to be discussed. (Examples: National Issues Forums, Everyday Democracy.)

The divisions between these ways sets of assumptions are not rigid. But in looking at the field, for the most part there appears to be a dominant assumption at work.

What other assumptions are missing from this list?

Explanation Day

For his column commemorating Independence Day, my friend and Hofstra University professor Michael d’Innocenzo points out that in fact July 2 was the date that the Continental Congress took the decision to become independent. And indeed, in a letter to his wife, Abigail, on July 3, John Adams predicted that “The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the history of America – I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary Festival.”

But it was not the decision that is now celebrated; it is instead the document explaining its necessity. One might call today “Explanation Day.”

Even more important was Adams’s view of what led up to the Colonies’ declaration:

“Time has been given for the whole people, maturely, to consider the great question of independence and to ripen their judgments, dissipate their fears, and allure their hopes, by discussing it in newspapers and pamphlets, by debating it, in assemblies, conventions, committees of safety and inspection, in town and county meetings, as well as in private conversations, so that the whole people in every colony of the 13, have now adopted it, as their own act.”

One gets the sense that across the countryside, people have been talking about independence, weighing its pros and cons. In taverns, at crossroads, in kitchens, stables, salons. All throughout the nascent America. Thomas Jefferson’s document captured its ethos.

Michael points out: “Adams’ approach to transformational change in politics and society is worth bearing in mind during our current polarized political season. John Adams had confidence that Americans can engage in communities of discourse in which their views can ‘ripen’ so that common ground for action is found.”

This is the democracy that lives, persists, grows whether the political system is amenable to it or not. The ordinary exertion of self-governance by everyday people. I see it happening all around me today, even as worried think-pieces tell me “democracy is dying.” I have not yet brought out my funeral clothes. The institutional mechanisms of democratic government may be under great stress, but the roots still grow.

Wrapping Up Spring at the Kettering Foundation

I was preparing my registration materials for an upcoming philanthropy sector meeting, and I was asked to give a recap of major items I wanted my colleagues to know about. The past spring (2019, in case you are reading this in the future) has been a busy one at the Kettering Foundation, and I thought the list might be more broadly of interest:

• • Report: Our Divided Nation: Is There a Role for Philanthropy in Renewing Democracy? American democracy faces challenges that raise difficult questions for philanthropy. This report from the Council on Foundations and the Kettering Foundation summarizes a two-day symposium the two organizations convened in May 2018 to wrestle with these questions. A group of prominent foundation leaders working at the national, state, and community levels explored how philanthropy can narrow the gap between people and institutions, strengthen public engagement, build civic capacity, and generally bolster democratic norms and practices in the United States. This report also served as the basis for a standing room-only session at Council on Foundations in April.

• • Paper: With the People: Making Democracy Work as It Should. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address, and he spoke of an ideal of government, one that is of, by, and for the people. Do Americans today think our government is really “of” the people? That’s debatable. “By” the people? Doubtful. “For” the people? Perhaps for some, sometimes. This Cousins Research Group paper, based on a chapter from a forthcoming book by David Mathews, suggests trying another preposition—government with the people. It offers a strategy for bridging some of the divide separating the people of the United States from their government and from the country’s major institutions. It envisions a form of collaboration that would have institutions working with citizens, not just for them.

• • Event: A Public Voice, at National Press Club, DC. The 29th annual A Public Voice event was held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on May 9. The two-hour discussion brought together legislators, local elected officials, congressional staffers, and citizens from the National Issues Forums network. APV 2019 focused in part on the deliberations held in recent months using the NIF issue guide on political divisiveness, A House Divided: What Would We Have to Give Up to Get the Political System We Want? The program also looked ahead at what issues should be topics for issue guides and deliberative forums in the coming year.

• • Report: Beyond The Clash: How a Deliberative Public Talks about Immigration. Over the course of 2018, an array of organizations, under the auspices of the National Issues Forums Institute, convened 86 nonpartisan public conversations in 28 states across the country about one of the nation’s pressing issues: immigration. This report on the 2018 National Issues Forums on immigration offers a powerful demonstration that typical Americans with differing views can exchange ideas on immigration and that, as they listen to one another, their views become more nuanced and pragmatic. Most important, it shows that people with different starting points can and will find areas of common ground for action on which they would be willing to come together.

The Problem(s) With Facts

My friend, David C. Barker of American University sent me a copy of his new book, One Nation, Two Realities: Dueling Facts in American Democracy. It is an important addition to the current questions about “facts,” “truth,” “interpretation,” and “polarization.”

Co-authored with Morgan Marietta of UMass Lowell, the book is quite a comprehensive and I commend it to you.

In particular, the two write a remarkably clear description and outline of the the problem(s) with much of what people suggest as solutions to the “facts” puzzle. It is not so simple as just getting the right information out there.

I hope David won’t mind if I quote at length from the introduction which lays out some of the book’s argument; it is worth reading in its own right:

[T]he most commonly offered correctives—education and fact-checking—are not effective and may actually be counterproductive. Perhaps the most consistent (and sobering) finding across many recent empirical studies is that specific fact perceptions are not predicted by education or political knowledge. The evidence demonstrates that as citizens rise in political sophistication, motivated reasoning becomes stronger rather than weaker. Our findings regarding value projection reach the same conclusion. As cognitive resources grow, citizens simply become more adept at attaching their priors to their perceptions.

Contributing to education’s lack of efficacy in reducing DFPs [Dueling Fact Perceptions] is the erosion of trust in traditional sources of knowledge. Recent national surveys demonstrate that a surprisingly large proportion of Americans hold a low degree of trust in the knowledge created by universities. When the primary institution that discerns and disseminates knowledge for the nation is no longer trusted, this fosters a susceptibility to alternative sources of information. Our data bear this out more precisely. The changes in the perception of the university as an external source of authority are another foundation for pessimism about the effective role of education in creating a consensus.

For some of the same reasons, fact-checking does not ameliorate divisions in fact perceptions in the intuitive way we might expect. . . . [W]e provide a critical assessment of the epistemological foundations of the fact-check industry, and . . . reinforce other scholarly findings that citizens tend to reject the fact-checks that dispute their prior beliefs. Greater education merely facilitates this process. This is the case even among people who are predisposed to trust fact checkers, even when the perception relates to a candidate from the same political party. These findings further reinforce our conclusion that politically motivated fact perceptions are at least as much about value differences as they are about partisan tribalism and external leadership.

Finally, we find that the durability of DFPs is a reflection of the ideological symmetry of their origins. While some scholars have suggested that dueling facts are essentially a phenomenon of the Right, driven by conservative values and Republican leadership, it became clear in analyzing several years of survey data that this is simply not the case. . . . [T]he influence of value projection and partisan leadership is remarkably symmetric across various DFPs, and in some ways we find evidence of liberal asymmetry. . . .

Perceiving the world accurately has always been difficult, but the polarization problem has increased the epistemological problem. Unfortunately, there is more to the origins of dueling facts than laziness by the public and lying by elites; the core problem is not merely miseducation or misdirection but divided values projected onto perceived facts. Greater education and political sophistication are employed to sharpen rather than dull the connections between the strength of internal beliefs and the perception of external realities. The consequences of the dueling facts phenomenon include a degeneration of the close tie between education and democracy.

I urge you to buy and read the whole book.

Two Competing Mythologies

Many people speak of a “tribalism” that seems to be on the rise in America and in our communities these days. By this they appear to mean, for the most part, a bipolar set of group identities, locked in conflict with one another and whose boundaries are based in large part on antipathy toward the other. In other words, two “tribes” each internally united by their hatred of the other.

I thought I would examine the apparent mindsets of these two groups. (I recognize there are not only two such groups but I am responding to the dominant narrative.) My circle of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances spans both groups both in terms of social media exposure but also, more important, personal face-to-face interactions. I wanted to get a sense of the internal story of a generic member of each. It is relatively easy to articulate, from each perspective, the case against the other (indeed Axios reports on a study from Survey Monkey that indicates each group sees the other as primarily “ignorant” and “spiteful”). But I wanted to get a sense of the best positive case each group might make to itself about itself, and how that would then interface with the story they might tell about the other.

Group One:

Collective security drives the story this group tells about itself. The world is dangerous and we must band together in order to survive.

In a world where our survival depends upon cohesion, what is our strongest imperative? Maintain order. We value order above all, and shun disorder. There have to be rules, they must be followed, internal enemies must be overcome.

This organizing concept of order can be seen in the story this group tells about its rivals. They are a “mob.”

This organizing concept can also be seen in the virtue signals that group members use to reinforce their group membership. In everyday interactions, it is easy to see exaggerated displays of deference to protocol, reinforcement of hierarchy, expressions of opposition to protest, and statements of loyalty to authority which often serve as evidence of piety.

Group Two:

This group’s story rests on being treated fairly. In a dangerous world in which we must work together in order to survive, I must know I am not being taken advantage of by those with more power in the group.

How does this translate into a driving value that we share and propagate? Demonstrate compassion. We show compassion above all, and shun meanness. People must be treated fairly, that means especially the vulnerable. Inequitable outcomes must be corrected.

The story this group tells about their enemy group: they are “hateful” people.

The virtue signals people in this group deploy are similarly easy to see: exaggerated displays of intra-group empathy, expressions of guilt about one’s privilege, expressions of opposition to “hate,” and displays of anger at perceived injustice towards other marginalized subgroups.

Most of my professional work is aimed at undermining this polarized way of looking at what is a much more nuanced landscape. For instance, it is simplistic to think there are only two such “tribes” and to treat them as monolithic. Note, too, that the fundamental drivers of each group’s story are universal: all human beings want to be treated fairly, and all human beings need collective security. So it is not strictly correct to say that there are “order” people and “compassion” people. These are constructed identity groups.

However, I still feel it can be useful conceptually to examine the two competing self-mythologies. They are, after all, the stories we tell ourselves. I need to understand and empathize with people’s starting points before I can see them as whole beings.