What Does Democracy Need?

What democracy needs, in both its civic-organic aspects as well as its institutional aspects, in order to work as it should:

Access

All people must have a meaningful ability to engage with, affect, and participate in the fundamental institutions and mechanisms of democratic governance. This includes but is not limited to fair and secure voting, representation, and participation.

Accountability

There must be controls in place so that the institutional mechanisms function in conformance with the collective will of the citizenry. This includes respect for rule of law and for democratic norms.

Agency

People from all walks of life and in all situations must have agency, with freedom and power to act on their own behalf and in their own interests.

Action

People in communities (of place, of interest, and other kinds) must decide about and act together on the issues and problems that they see. Associational life must be robust.

Alignment

Institutions and organizations must operate in ways that do not diminish agency or action, and are additive to what people do in their capacity as citizens.

These are just my own thoughts, as I reflect on the state of democracy today. How would you answer the question? What does democracy need to work as it should? Does it need something now that is different from what it might have needed at another time?

The Resistance to Democracy

Lately I have been thinking about resistance to democracy.

By democracy I mean people exerting citizenship (that is, making choices and acting together on shared challenges), starting in their communities (the places where people make decisions and act), supported by governing institutions (such as government, NGOs, businesses, and other organizations).

Three problems can fundamentally interfere with the functioning of this democracy: when people don’t exert citizenship; when they do not work together in community; and when the work of institutions and that of citizens is out of alignment.

There are many possible reasons for these problems, and some of those reasons may reside in the other problems. For instance, maybe people do not exert citizenship because governing institutions treat them as clients instead of as producers.

I also believe there are psychological elements behind some of these problems, which in my own thinking I collectively term “The Resistance.” (An adaptation of Steven Pressfield’s thinking.) Thinking about these sometimes allows me to better understand behavior of people in a democracy.

What is behind The Resistance?

These are not the only ones, but here are three inbuilt psychological elements of The Resistance:

1. Fear of Agency. This applies to individual citizens in their informal capacity as well as professionals in their organizational capacity. As an ordinary person, I can tell you there are many situations where I actively seem to shun freedom. Think of all the times I have been asked, what would you like to do? And then, terrified of the choice, I instead wonder: What do they want me to answer? Can’t they just decide what to do?  Deep down, sometimes, some part of me wants to be told what to do.When it comes to the professional realm, the fear is then inverted: What would actually happen if everyone had freedom? Wouldn’t my job become ten times more difficult? What if they (people in the public) decided they didn’t need me?
   
2. Drive for Homeostasis. In other words, equilibrium — lack of disturbance. Human beings crave homeostasis and are constantly acting in ways to keep things as they are. This often manifests itself as denial of problems. I refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of climate change because, if I did, then I would be obligated to change what I do.
   
3. Hatred of the Other. While we can and do express love, we are all also indeed built to mistrust those from other groups. We are programmed over eons to search for and identify potential enemy groups. Today, in modern life, I think about all the ways that we seek to categorize people in our day to day lives, and to separate the world into people we do care about . . . and people we don’t.  We live in a world where all the different groups are very much in alignment and so these boundaries are reinforced.

I think these are elements that are within all of us, that they are common and shared. That suggests that those who are trying to improve democracy should remember these headwinds that lurk in our human hearts.

The Gymnasia

Imagine you walk into a gymnasium. Different people doing different things all over. There are all sorts of stations: weightlifting areas, cardio machines, fitness rooms. There is a yoga room and a room for a spin class. There is a basketball court.

Too, there are all sorts of people all throughout the gym. They’re each doing their own workouts, trying to get fit. Maybe it is January, and they feel like it is time to get serious about their resolutions! Weightlifting, elliptical, treadmill, stair machine, calisthenics, aerobics. Each with their own plan, or no plan.

Some people have come in small groups. They enjoy working out with friends. It motivates them, and it is fun.

Into this gym, now add a few trainers and coaches. Some people are being trained one on one. Others in more small groups, being led on how to do certain exercises. These coaches can help them build skills, stay motivated, progress, and stay on track.

There are larger fitness classes, in some of the side rooms. Yoga, led by a yoga teacher. Cardio, led by a fitness instructor. Spin class, led by my friend Kenny. These classes also help people build skills, build connections with others, and get fit.

Now . . .

Imagine that some of the coaches and fitness instructors are trying to pass along more than just workout routines. They want to teach their students and groups that they can get fit anywhere. That all they need is some fresh air and a place to run. That they can do it themselves, along with others if they so choose, without any special apparatus or guidebook or video. Imagine the yoga instructor enjoys helping people do the poses, but also wants them to walk away knowing that they could do the yoga at home. Or, that they could themselves teach their family how to do the poses. These coaches and instructors are trying to pass on a mindset toward health.

These kinds of coaches and fitness instructors are a bit analogous to some of the people in civic life you might meet in communities. Sure, they work on projects, but they also try to do so in a way that leaves behind greater capacity. They want to arrange things so that when the project is over, everyone involved can go on to start their own projects, and work on their own issues.

Back to the gym. Someone started that gym. They decided that they wanted to lease the land, build the building, install the equipment, and put effort into making sure it is there for people. Imagine that the owner wanted it to be the kind of place where the coaches and instructors we talked about before felt at home. Imagine they wanted it to be the kind of place where coaches could pass on lifelong fitness attitudes, and it could be a place where people could come together to work out – and to do more than that. The gym could become a place where people got a new mindset toward what they are already doing.

Sure, people come to work out . . . but they are doing more than that. The coaches are trying to do more than that. The gym owner is trying to make it a place where it is welcoming for all kinds: people just working out, and people who have been bitten by the lifelong fitness and health mindset.

The gym owner is somewhat like the institutes, or centers, that exist in some communities. Organizations that work with others who are in turn doing their own projects. These institutes serve as a way to knit together disparate efforts, making space for them, and creating a place where people can learn from one another.

Imagine a learning community or network made up of these kinds of gym owners and some of the more expansive-thinking coaches. They share what they are learning about how they approach their craft, how they set up their spaces. Their craft isn’t exercise routines – it is awakening people to fitness.

Just think what all these gym owners and coaches could unleash, simply by arranging and fostering the right kinds of conditions, and removing obstacles to this kind of development. Imagine what they could learn from one another about how to do that.

Imagine what a new gym owner, someone with the germ of an idea, could learn from such a network.

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.