Trends in Civil Society

excerpted from the book

The New Progressive Era

Toward a Fair and Deliberative Democracy

by Peter Levine

Rowman and Littlefield, 2000, paper

p75
Only by cooperating can ordinary citizens put much pressure on the government: thus associational life is a source of political power that can partially counterbalance the influence of money. To the extent that people cooperate voluntarily, they do not have to legislate or litigate to solve their problems, so they can reserve their political energies for necessarily contentious issues. And citizens who participate in voluntary associations may develop a moral concern for others, a public-spiritedness that is normally cultivated neither by private economic behavior nor by solitary voting. Both the political system and the market are intensely competitive. Cooperation occurs much more easily in the sphere of civil society; and once people have cooperated as members of a voluntary group, they may be less antagonistic in the political realm.

p77
... the rate of union membership in the United States (less than 9 percent of adults) is paltry compared to that in some other industrialized democracies.

p78
Church-based associations account for the relative strength of civil society in the United States. They have attracted almost half of the U.S. population, compared to just 13 percent of people in the average industrialized democracy.

p78
Fundamentalist Denominations

Fundamentalist denominations are no exception. They aggressively recruit people of all backgrounds and motivate them to participate politically. Since most evangelical churches are managed by lay people, they are especially likely to offer their members political experience and to cultivate strong interpersonal ties. For example, as part of their church activities, Baptists are much more likely to plan meetings and make presentations than Catholics are. (Not all Baptists are fundamentalists, but all fundamentalists belong to Protestant denominations that teach civic skills.) It is true that fundamentalists join considerably fewer groups than people who call themselves religious moderates or liberals do. They are also less likely to vote, to trust other people, and to read a daily newspaper. However, fundamentalists have lower-than-average family incomes. If we control for income, most of the differences between fundamentalists and religious moderates and liberals disappear. For example, adjusting for income, fundamentalists belong to about the same number of associations as average Americans do and are actually more likely to vote in some years.

Although fundamentalist denominations build communities of mutual support, they also promote suspicion of outsiders. However, political participation does not suffer as a result. If anything, people seem to be motivated to vote by a belief that many of their compatriots are immoral. In short, the results of successful evangelization probably include more civic participation by some poor and low-status people, but also more generalized distrust and ideological division.

p81
The proportion of people who agree that "You can trust the government in Washington to do what is right just about always, or most of the time" has fallen from 72 percent in 1960 to about 22 percent today. This decline has been continuous except for a modest rebound during the Reagan years...

Finally, reported trust in the press has plummeted in recent years. The proportion of Americans who said that they had "a great deal of confidence" in television news dropped from 55 percent in 1988 to 25 percent in 1993. In the same period, confidence in newspapers fell from 50 percent to 20 percent, and confidence in magazines declined from 38 percent to 12 percent. Only 10 percent of Americans now say they have "a great deal of confidence" in the press overall (down from 29 percent in 1976).

p84
Since residential segregation by wealth is growing, many middle-income Americans no longer live near those who are most likely to commit violent crimes: the poor. Furthermore, those who can afford private security services prefer to spend money protecting themselves, rather than fighting crime in their broader communities. This is economically rational policy: why act as an unpaid crime-fighter in a potentially dangerous neighborhood when you can move far away from most of the potential lawbreakers? And why pay taxes for police and schools when you can hire a specialist to keep criminals away from your house? In fact, three times as many people are now employed by private protective services as by police forces; and private security consumes $52 billion a year, 73 percent more than public law enforcement (up from 57 percent more in 1980). As the National Institute of Justice reported in 1990, "Private security is now clearly the nation's primary protective resource."

p84
The epitome of suburban life may be a development like Bear Creek in Washington State, where "there are no pesky doorbellers, be they politicians or Girl Scouts.... A random encounter is the last thing people want here. There is a new park, every blade of grass in shape-but for members only. Four private security guards man the entrance gates 24 hours a day, keeping the residents of Bear Creek in a nearly crime-free bubble. And should a dog try to stray outside its yard, the pet would be instantly zapped by an electronic monitor." Bear Creek is a civil society: a well-ordered, nongovernmental association. Residents probably trust one another; they certainly share resources and delegate impressive powers to their community association. However, Bear Creek is exclusive and inward-looking; its walls signify a deep mistrust of the society beyond. About four million Americans now live in "gated communities."

p85
Furthermore, any given type of broadcast may change over time. Between 1988 and 1995, "the number of minutes devoted to crime on the nightly news" quintupled. Crime reporting has fallen since 1995, but a third of the average local news broadcast is still devoted to it. In a community of several million people, there may be a heinous outrage every week, even if the crime rate is low. The worse the horror, the more we can expect the television news to give us a riveting, prurient, vicarious experience of it. A decline in interpersonal trust seems almost predictable under these circumstances. Summarizing various studies, Putnam concludes that "heavy watchers of TV are unusually skeptical about the benevolence of other people-overestimating crime rates, for example."

p87
In January 1996, the Washington Post published a lead article to announce the results of an extensive poll. The headline proclaimed, "Who's in Control? Many Don't Know or Care." Indeed, only 52 percent of respondents could say correctly whether the Democrats or the Republicans were the more conservative party; about a third could name their U.S. representative; 27 percent were aware (or guessed) that the federal government spent more on Medicare than foreign aid, and 6 percent could name the chief justice. People who knew a great deal were likely to vote, no matter how interested they were in politics. But those with little `) knowledge generally believed that they were powerless-and abstained from voting. If they did vote, their choices at the polls were so unconnected to their stated priorities that "it was as if their vote was random," according to Michael Delli Carpini, a political scientist.

Anyone who was alarmed by these findings would have been further distressed when fewer than half of eligible adults voted in the 1996 elections, the lowest turnout in a presidential election since 1924. Nor did matters improve in 1998, when participation was the worst in an off-year election since 1942, and a record number of citizens did not vote. The United States always has extremely low: levels of participation compared to other countries; only Switzerland is obviously worse among the industrialized democracies.

p88
... public ignorance and alienation have been the topics of debate since at least the Progressive Era, when Lippmann gathered anecdotal information and concluded:

The random collection of bystanders who constitute a public could not, even if they had a mind to intervene in all the problems of the day. They can and must play a part occasionally, I believe, but they cannot take an interest in, they cannot make even the coarsest judgments about, and they will not act even in the most grossly partisan way on, all the questions arising daily in a complex and changing society. Normally, they leave their proxies to a kind of professional public consisting of more or less eminent persons. Most issues are never carried beyond this ruling group; the lay publics catch only echoes of the debate.

Lippmann did not present himself as a moral critic of ordinary citizens. Dismissing the theory that people were "competent to direct the course of affairs," he wrote: "I think it is a false idea. I do not mean an undesirable ideal. I mean an unattainable ideal, bad only in the sense that it is bad for a fat man to try to be a ballet dancer."

Although Dewey tried to answer Lippmann in The Public and Its Problems, he did not deny Lippmann's anecdotal information. He conceded that citizens were unprepared to understand political and social issues, but he thought that they could be made competent by educational and political reform. Lippmann and Dewey represented two influential positions in the Progressive-Era debate. Diehard skeptics favored professional management, doubting the capacities of the public, while reformers hoped that more and better schooling could produce an informed electorate.

Neither side had much hard information with which to support its case. But during and after the Second World War, public opinion became a subject of statistical measurement. Polling data, George Gallup predicted, would show that "the case against the common man has frequently proceeded on the basis of the flimsiest circumstantial evidence." Gallup admitted that his polls were just the "early returns," but he was sure that further data would only confirm his faith in the "honesty and common sense" of most citizens. Ordinary people grasped the "broad principles" of policy and adjusted "themselves to the ever-changing movement of events."

He was wrong. When academic researchers began to poll people scientifically, all their results seemed to confirm Lippmann's anecdotal evidence about public ignorance. A group of political scientists associated with the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan conducted the first large-scale longitudinal studies, from which they concluded that "the average citizen is very much less involved in politics than is often imagined. His awareness of political events is limited and his concern with ideological problems is only rudimentary."

Most students of democracy had assumed that citizens could make rational choices among policy alternatives, and that professional leaders offered people such choices at election time. But the Michigan researchers drew "a portrait of an electorate almost wholly without detailed information about decision making in government." The public, they argued, "knows little about what government has done . . . or what the parties propose to do. It is almost completely unable to judge the rationality of government actions; knowing little of particular policies and what has led to them, the mass electorate is not able to appraise either its goals or the appropriateness of the means chosen to serve these goals." Consequently, election results were less meaningful than most politicians had believed, and leaders ought to make decisions without heeding so-called public opinion.

One member of the Michigan School was Philip E. Converse, who found that most people's opinions on given issues did not remain stable, nor did their attitudes evolve in response to events. Rather, a typical individual's responses over time were "statistically random." Nevertheless, most Americans had deep partisan loyalties. Thus, although they might randomly change their minds about issues such as school desegregation, they would vote reliably for one party and its candidates. This was putting the cart before the horse, Converse thought, because a party was supposed to be "an instrument to further particular policy preferences."

It seemed, too, that answers to opinion polls were extremely sensitive to the exact phrasing and ordering of questions. As a result, pollsters struggled (with some success) to devise questionnaires that would draw consistent and meaningful answers. But their difficulties suggested that citizens had a rather shallow acquaintance with important issues. If, for example, most people had thought about school desegregation by 196O, they wouldn't have been influenced by subtle changes in question-order. Apparently, the Progressives' ideal of an independent and rational voter was a fantasy.

As information about scanty public knowledge came to light, Anthony Downs wrote a classic book explaining why most people didn't seek more information. "In general," he wrote, "it is irrational to be politically well-informed." All information had a price; even acquiring "free" news and opinion took time, which could be used for other purposes. Information relevant to people's work was comparatively valuable, since it could raise their incomes. But political information could only make their votes more intelligent. Given the large number of people voting, this was not particularly important to each person or to anyone else. Unless people gained pleasure or satisfaction from acts of citizenship, it was irrational for them to go to the polls-let alone inform themselves about candidates and issues. Downs noted, further, that poor people had a harder time paying the costs of information and voting, so they were especially likely to opt out of politics. We know today that people at the bottom of the economic ladder are distressingly ill-informed about political matters that may directly affect them. For instance, two out of three of the poorest Americans cannot describe the political parties' attitudes toward government spending, whereas most wealthy Americans know exactly how the Democrats differ from the Republicans. This information gap helps to explain the difference in voter participation between rich and poor, because it makes no sense to vote if you lack information about the issues.

While members of the Michigan School were analyzing poll data, a small group of students on the same campus read Dewey and adopted his moral stance. The public had to become competent, they thought, or else the transformative potential of democracy would be wasted. In particular, the poor and dispossessed had to participate, or else policy would continue to be set by a satisfied bourgeoisie. These students deplored rampant apathy and the "withdrawal from public life." For instance, they denounced "the faceless ones polled by Gallup who listed 'international affairs' fourteenth on their list of 'problems' but who also expected thermonuclear war in the next few years." For them, inconsistent answers to poll questions were a source of moral outrage.

Thus SDS was born; and soon a whole movement aimed to bring political awareness to an apathetic public. The radicals were not entirely unsuccessful. Individuals' opinions became strikingly more consistent between 1960 and 1964, and they stayed both consistent and polarized throughout the decade of Johnson and McGovern, Goldwater and Wallace. Leaders on the extreme right and left offered people distinct political choices, clarifying their opinions. Participation generally rose and Americans' reported interest in government and politics was relatively high in the decade after 1964. Almost half the population could name their own U.S. representatives in 1974, the highest level ever recorded.

Nevertheless, voter turnout began its long decline in 196O, and the gains in knowledge and participation receded during the 1970s. Today, most people do not know basic information about the official political system, such as who represents them in Congress or whether the Republicans are more conservative than the Democrats. We could argue that these facts don't matter. There is, after all, hardly any difference between the two parties, and the names of politicians could be considered trivia. But in practice there is usually a link between factual knowledge and habits of deliberation. As Richard Niemi and Jane Junn write, "One can live one's daily life without knowing that the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces or, for that matter, without knowing the name of the president. But how many political discussions and how many news reports would be incomprehensible without this information?"' What's more, people who do know such facts tend to vote; and this active, informed minority is disproportionately wealthy, educated, and white. After the 1998 election, news reports suggested that the Democrats had performed unexpectedly well because of comparatively high turnout among poor people (two-thirds of whom voted Democratic). But the poorest fifth of the population still represented just 8 percent of the electorate.

If those who participated in politics somehow came to reflect the racial, economic, regional, and sexual composition of the overall population, then elections would be fair. But even if the electorate were representative, it would still be disappointing if most Americans knew little about government and abstained from voting. The Progressives dreamed of a national dialogue about moral and political questions that aimed toward consensus. Elections are opportunities for such discussion, but if half of the population opts out of the conversation, then there is no hope for consensus, and little reason to believe that a truly popular opinion has formed. Nor can we assume that the people who abstain from politics are satisfied with the status quo: they are so poorly informed about the government's behavior that their passive acquiescence does not signify support.

p93
We know that people who are asked to participate in politics tend to comply, but less than half are ever asked.

p93
We could, I think: broaden political participation and knowledge if we increased the rate of membership in voluntary associations. Certainly there is a clear correlation between membership and political engagement.

p95
Just talking about political issues-even in homogenous groups and without much information-allows us to develop preferences and values that can guide us as we vote and make decisions in the market. Without this simplest kind of deliberation, we are incapable of democratic citizenship, because we have no views for the government to reflect. Therefore, simply talking (or reading and writing) about political issues is essential. But if we only talk to relatives or old friends, then we won't be exposed to many new ideas and values. Talking in diverse groups is better; it may expose us to a broader range of perspectives and make our judgments both wiser and less selfish. Finally, a conversation that is serious, civil, fair, and inclusive creates the potential for consensus, which is the ideal outcome, because it renders coercion unnecessary. This is another reason that associations are crucial to the health of a democracy.

p97
Most people never seriously discuss the distribution of wealth, status, and power between workers and management, professionals and laborers, the middle class and the poor. The status quo seems almost natural: it is part of the immutable backdrop before which life is played. People complain about abusive employers, but mainly because of their personal failings; and they lament general unfairness, but much as they might deplore inclement weather. Proposals for radical change are discussed mainly in academic circles. Average Americans don't so much disagree with such proposals as ignore them; for no one raises them in conversation.

More discussion of class interests would produce more controversy. Tension always increases when leaders like Patrick Buchanan and Jesse Jackson invoke class distinctions. The ultimate aim of a civil society is not conflict but consensus. As Theodore Roosevelt said in 1904, "No republic can permanently exist when it becomes a republic of classes, where the man feels not the interest of the whole people, but the particular class to which he belongs, or fancies that he belongs, as being of prime importance." Many of Roosevelt's contemporaries, including Woodrow Wilson, also deplored class rhetoric. But Americans' general silence about class does not reflect true consensus. What Rauschenbusch wrote in 1907 could be said as well today: "We hear passionate protests against the use of the word 'class' in America. There are no classes in our country, we are told. But the hateful part is not the word, but the thing."

Why do Americans shy away from discussions of class? One possible reason is ideology-in particular, the widely held view that we all belong to one economic class, although race and gender divide us. There is no question that many Americans believe this ideology, but that does not explain their silence about class: we want to know why alternative views are so rarely heard. American classes lack the self-consciousness and assertiveness of ethnic and sexual groups.

But our lack of class-consciousness could result from the dearth of conversation, rather than vice versa. In any case, only 60 percent of Americans describe themselves as "middle-class," which means that at least 40 percent of the population acknowledges class differences.

Perhaps the underlying cause of the silence is that true deliberation only occurs among peers, and our peers (almost by definition) do not belong to our class. Black and white workers, male and female colleagues are forced to listen to each other to some degree, however biased they may be, because officially they are equals. But employers and employees are officially unequal, so deliberation about economic issues is almost impossible in the workplace. If workers complain about the distribution of profit between labor and management, they risk being fired. No one expects the firm's ownership to try to reach consensus with its workers on terms of equality, unless the workers happen to belong to a strong union: now a rare circumstance. Fraternal organizations (such as the Elks and Masons) often permitted middle-class people and workers to talk as equals. However, their membership levels have fallen dramatically. The shift in membership from fraternal organizations to professional associations suggests that class differences have worsened even as other barriers have lifted.

p99
A New Deal slogan had been: "If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic." But in recent decades, many traditional Democrats have actually begun to live as Republicans used to live in the 1930s-in affluence-and so they have begun to vote like Republicans. In 1993, a 41-percent plurality of adults favored cuts in government services (and not just in spending) if this would permit lower taxes; only 20 percent favored more services and more taxes.

How many people we call "affluent" depends on our definition of the word. But the median household income-roughly $37,000 in 1997-is remarkably high by global and historical standards. It puts more than half of the population in the bourgeoisie, an unprecedented phenomenon. Also, three-fifths of American families have accumulated at least $30,000 in assets; and by the time they reach retirement age, people in this group have saved a median of $138,000. Almost two-thirds of the population own their own home (with median equity of almost $47,000); and four-fifths own at least one car. About half of the rising generation is educated beyond high school. Nevertheless, some Americans remain in poverty, and the actual quality of life of the urban poor may have declined since World War II. ,~ According to John Kenneth Galbraith, the activist government of the New Deal and the Great Society seemed at first to be a "permanent revolution." But in reality, the welfare state was "a self-liquidating political movement." He writes:

With the spread of well-being, more and more people have a comfortable satisfaction with their own economic position. Once thus blessed, they find, as in all past times, a suitably persuasive reason for separating themselves and their consciences from the still-persisting poverty of the now less numerous poor.... Those who are financially secure are the people who are most likely to vote in elections and who are best able to contribute to the high cost, especially in the United States, of modern political campaigns. So endowed, they vote out of power those who made the revolution on behalf of the insecure and the poor and who would continue efforts on behalf of the smaller number of the underprivileged who remain.

The health-care crisis illustrates Galbraith's thesis. In 1991, with health-care reform rising quickly on the national agenda, 66 percent of Americans still rated their own health insurance as "excellent" or "good." And on the eve of President Clinton's announcement of a health-reform package in 1993, polls showed that more than 80 percent of adults were satisfied with their own medical benefits and services. These people could not be expected to support national health insurance with much enthusiasm, unless it somehow brought them lower health bills. Forty-three million uninsured people constitute a vast human tragedy, perhaps the worst social disaster in the developed world; but uninsured people do not cast very many votes in a nation of 250 million. Most people with family incomes under $3O,000 predicted that the Clinton plan would make health care better, while wealthier people thought that it would make things worse. But only one-third of voters belonged to the under-$30,000 income category. Thus a majority of American voters may have been basically happy when health-care reform stopped at the point it had reached in 1968: with Medicare for the elderly (because everyone gets old), Medicaid to provide minimal support for the very poor, and $65 billion a year in tax deductions for middle- and upper-income taxpayers who buy their own health insurance.

In general, the existing balance of power has prevented most kinds of social intervention, including the establishment of a public health-care system or any aggressive action against unemployment, poverty, or homelessness. However, government action has been possible in restricted areas. For example, 86.3 percent of all American families own a car, but none can afford their own highways. Federal aid for road construction has therefore remained popular, although support for mass transportation-which is used by a generally poor minority-has been weak. And most Americans remain committed to public higher education, because private universities are so expensive that only a wealthy minority can afford them without subsidy. But most people are not interested in redistributing funds to poor public school districts; they would rather raise funds for their schools within their own communities, where everyone usually enjoys a similar income level. For example, a proposed Texas amendment to force wealthy school districts to share funds with poor ones was defeated in a 1993 referendum, two-to-one.

Opinions in favor of redistribution have consistently correlated with income. For example, a 1939 Roper poll asked: "Do you think our government should or should not redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich?" Thirty-four percent more poor people than "prosperous" people said yes. The same kind of correlation has shown up in polls ever since. Many middle-class Americans have generous feelings toward their less-fortunate compatriots, but they express these feelings at the donation box, not the ballot box. A government cannot survive for long as a charity, spending taxpayers' money on purely altruistic goals, if only because private, nonprofit organizations are better equipped to fulfill people's charitable priorities. Therefore, a population with a middle-class majority will probably lack widespread support for income redistribution.

In a host of suburban communities across the country, people essentially get what they pay for from local government-little more, little less. In an economically homogeneous area, such as the typical suburb (where a majority of voters now lives), everyone pays a roughly equal share of the cost of police protection, schools, and roadworks, and everyone benefits from these amenities to a roughly equal degree." There are few free-riders, because the poor are safely closeted away across political boundaries in the inner cities or countryside. In a few suburbs, all children are excluded by zoning laws, thereby obviating the need for any school taxes. On the other hand, the people who live in this kind of community get less than they pay for from federal domestic programs, because the beneficiaries of health, employment, and welfare programs have less-than-average incomes. Therefore, middle-class suburbanites no longer need or want many traditional kinds of federal programs.

p101
To be severely harmed by a majority of one's fellow citizens is hardly better than being oppressed by a despot.

p101
... a sin of omission by the government is little better than a sin of commission. Progressives do not accept the naturalness of market outcomes; for them, only democracy is sovereign. A truly democratic society must examine itself critically, not tolerating some people's suffering just because the market has caused it. To refuse to provide medical care for poor workers is a serious moral omission, since we can clearly afford universal insurance. Wealthy Americans should not be bullied (any more than poor ones), but they should have to negotiate a mutually acceptable arrangement with the less advantaged. Instead, they dominate the electoral process and hardly care what the minority thinks.

Progressives should also object to antigovernment policies because they reflect a general retreat from the public sphere. Citizens are free to decide how big the private and public sectors should be. There is nothing in Progressivism that requires intrusive government or high taxes. But beyond a certain point, the decision to solve problems privately is harmful to democracy. Consider, for example, `[ the current fashion for gated communities, malls with private security forces, and professional guards for homes and offices. By hiring a security service and posting its logo on our front lawn, we hope that we can persuade criminals to stay away-even if that means that they will rob someone else who lacks such protection. At the same time, many of us withdraw our financial support from the city and state governments that provide general law enforcement, education, and employment programs. As a result, we may no longer deliberate together about an issue that has traditionally been considered public: crime and punishment. The scope of civil society and democratic government has narrowed frighteningly. Civilization itself implies joint action against violence; taking care of one's own s the law of the jungle

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