Masami nishishiba Portland State University
Margaret Banyan Florida Gulf Coast University
douglas f. Morgan Portland State University
inTroDuCTion
In the United States . . . [there is a widely held belief that] providence has given to each individual, whoever he may be, the degree of reason necessary for him to be able to direct himself in things that interest him exclusively. . . . Extended to the entirety of
the nation, it becomes the dogma of the sovereignty of the people.
—de Tocqueville, 2000, p. 381
Tocqueville did not view private voluntarism as an amusing carnival midway of private intentions, but as a fundamental part of a national power system.
—Hall, 1992, p. 85
The American founding experience uniquely frames the role of citizen participation and civic engagement1 in the United States. While there is ongoing debate over the meaning of this experience, there is widespread consensus that the primary goal of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution was to create a system of government that would max- imize the enjoyment of individual liberty (Arendt, 1963; Morgan, Green, Shinn, & Robinson, 2008). This libertarian focus of the American political system is commonly understood as negative freedom (Berlin, 1969), which means “freedom from interference, from being pushed around, restricted, locked up” (Held, 1984, p. 124). This negative approach to liberty has three important implications for understanding the debate over citizen participa- tion and civic engagement throughout the course of American history.
First, one’s definition of “good citizenship” depends largely on the role that citizens need to play in guarding the political system from the chief threats to liberty. Are these threats most likely to come from the abuse of power by government officials? Are they to come from a system that has too little capacity to enforce the laws needed to protect individual liberty from internal and external threats? Or finally, will doux commerce2 undermine the republican spirit upon which liberty itself rests?In Part I of this chapter, we will review answers to these questions, showing how each set of answers creates a quite different framework for thinking about “good citizenship.”
A second implication of the libertarian focus of the American political system is that the public sphere is viewed as quite small and of lesser impor- tance than the private spheres of economic and civic activity. This results in a truncated view of public life and those who spend time making it work.
The public stage is not regarded as a place where men gather to seek self- understanding and self-enlargement by presenting themselves to others in an open dialogue of thought and action. The citizen is expected to disclose but a fraction of himself to the public gaze . . . and regard it as entirely legiti- mate that he will seek to translate his private will into public policy through whatever political instruments are available to him and we assume that he has a right to keep his political opinions and conclusions to himself. Politics quickly comes to be thought of as a distinctly second-order and instrumental activity and occupation, subordinate to the primary concerns of the private life. (Schaar, 1964, p. 888)
In Part II of this chapter, we will show how these libertarian assumptions have shaped American views of the appropriate relationship of citizens to
their governing institutions, resulting in four different models for defining the meaning of “good citizenship.”
Finally, in Part III, we will explore the third important implication of the libertarian focus of the American political system, namely, the assump- tion that citizens will spend the most meaningful part of their life engaging in economic activity and participating in voluntary associations. Alexis de Tocqueville was especially struck in his travels across the United States in the 1830s by the vibrancy and abundance of voluntary associations and the importance they have in facilitating a shared sense of the common good.
Everywhere . . . at the head of a new undertaking count on it that you will perceive an association in the United States. . . . The free institutions that the inhabitants of the United States possess . . . recall to each citizen constantly and in a thousand ways that he lives in society. At every moment they bring his mind back to [the] idea that the duty as well as the interest of men is to render themselves useful to those like them. . . . Sentiments and ideas renew themselves, the heart is enlarged and the human is developed [through par- ticipation in these associations]. (de Tocqueville, 2000, pp. 489, 488, 491) But we have come to discover over the last 150 years that not all associa- tions are equally salutary to the public good, especially in an age of technol- ogy in which advocacy groups can be created and multiplied without ever
“enlarging the heart.” In Part III of this chapter, we will further explore these considerations and present four different models for better understanding how participation in the voluntary sector contributes to our understanding of what “good citizenship” means in the context of the civic sphere.
PArT i. THe AmeriCAn founDing:
imPLiCATionS of LiberTAriAn DemoCrACY for CiTizen PArTiCiPATion AnD CiViC engAgemenT As we suggested in the introduction to this chapter, one’s definition of
“good citizenship” in the American context depends on what kind of role citizens want government to play in securing their liberty. This debate is framed by two simple questions: “Who should govern?” and “What is the proper role of government?” But as the Founders discovered, answers to these questions are not so simple, mainly because of the multitude of ways in which individual liberty can be undermined (Morgan, 2001; Morgan et al., 2008).
The American Revolution began with the Boston Tea Party and the man- tra “No taxation without representation.” This mantra reflected deep-seated unhappiness with King George and the perception that he was exercising arbitrary and capricious power. To correct this abuse, the colonists not only
declared their independence from Great Britain, but they created a correc- tive against the future tyrannical abuse of executive power by establishing both national- and state-level systems of government that placed controlling power in the hands of the legislative branch (Thach, 1969). This effort to create more citizen-centered governance quickly succumbed to the reality that without adequate capacity at the executive level, General George Wash- ington could not be supplied with the troops and logistical support neces- sary to win the war. This prompted a call for a Constitutional Convention to fix the inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation. On the road to the Philadelphia convention, delegates were reminded of the problem of “ma- jority tyranny” by an armed rebellion of farmers in western Massachusetts, who took up arms to forestall foreclosures on their property by local courts (known as Shay’s Rebellion). The farmers surrounded the courthouse, threatening to shoot any judge who rendered a foreclosure decision.
The founding deliberations were significantly shaped by the Anti-Fed- eralists who argued against a strong central government, especially one that encourages the private pursuit of material gain and is dependent on a professionalized cadre of experts. Such a government would tend to dis- courage civic engagement. Once ordinary citizens become disengaged and started to “bowl alone” (Putnam, 2000), the Anti-Federalists believed that this would undermine the kind of eternal vigilance needed to prevent gov- ernment from pursuing grand, glorious, costly, and elusive adventures at home and abroad, and result in policies that disproportionately advantage the few at the expense of the many (Storing & Dry, 1981a, 1981b).
These contending arguments about what was needed to secure liberty against a multiplicity of dangers resulted in the creation of a complex system of government that significantly confounds the meaning and requirements of “good citizenship.” We have summarized this complexity in Table 2.1 be- low. The left-hand column lists the source of danger to liberty. The middle column summarizes how each of the dangers was addressed by members of the Constitutional Convention. The right-hand column summarizes the im- plications of the solutions for democratic citizenship. As Table 2.1 suggests, the framers produced two models of “good citizenship,” which have been characterized as the “procedural republic” model and the “civic republic.”
model The contrasting characteristics of these two models are summarized in Table 2.2 (Morgan, et al., 2008, p. 53).
As Tables 2.1 and 2.2 indicate, for the Founding generation, the role of citizens in promoting the public good was problematic because each of the four sources of danger to liberty could not be corrected without making the other problems worse. There was an irreconcilable four-way tension among the need for government competence, popular sovereignty, the preservation of minority rights, and an engaged citizenry. For the Federal- ists, too little governmental power at the center and majority tyranny were
far more deleterious to the public interest than the Anti-Federalists’ fear of too much power at the center and lack of a spirited and engaged citizenry.
In the next section, we use the libertarian focus of the American founding to create four models for describing the relationship of citizens to their formal institutions of government.
TAbLe 2.1 How to Address the multiple Threats to individual Liberty sources of danger to liberty solutions Citizenship implications Arbitrary abuse of power by
government officials:
“The King George Problem”
• “Rule of Law”
prophylactics such as the Bill of Rights
• Separation of powers
• Checks and balances
• Federalism
• Strong representative government and frequent elections
• Limited and enumerated government powers
• Reliance on representational institutions by which citizens exercise control through periodic elections
• Reliance on the “auxiliary precautions” of formal legal structures and processes, which reduce citizenship demands Weak, incompetent, and fickle
government:
“The George Washington Problem”
• Strong executive branch
• Reliance on experienced leaders with expertise
• Separation of powers
• Checks and balances
• Structural incentives to encourage continuity in office and independent and informed judgment
• Creation of mediating structures that reduce dependence on highly active and knowledgeable citizenry (i.e., Senate chosen by the states, court with life tenure, president elected by an electoral college with no term limits)
Majority tyranny:
“The Shay’s Rebellion Problem”
• Structural checks and balances, both internally in the government and externally in the socioeconomic setting
• Foster a large commercial republic that would create a multiplicity of interests
• Bill of Rights
• Reliance on a procedural democracy that places few demands on citizens except to pursue their own interests within a limited legal framework that protects rights
Disengaged citizens and loss of republican virtue:
“The Bowling Alone Problem”
• Small, simple, and limited government
• Large representative body composed of the
“those in middling circumstances”
• Constraints on the
“emergence of a large commercial republic”
• Reliance on a civic republic in which small, local, and direct democracy is sufficient to address the major problems faced by citizens
Part II. FramIng CIvIC EngagEmEnt tradItIons In thE UnItEd statEs: “Who shoUld govErn?” and “What Is
thE ProPEr rolE oF govErnmEnt?”
As we described in the previous section, civic engagement has been signifi- cantly shaped by the way in which the Founders chose to answer the follow- ing two questions: “Who should govern?” and “What is the proper role of government?” These two questions in Figure 2.1 below serve as the build- ing blocks of our four models for describing the relationship of citizens to their formal institutions of government. Debate over these core questions has produced some enduring patterns that reflect the kind and quality of civic engagement that is most needed to preserve individual liberty. These TAbLe 2.2 good Citizenship Traditions
Civic republic tradition Procedural republic tradition Origins • Anti-Federalists
• small agrarian republic
• Federalists
• interest group pluralism Characteristics • face-to-face communication
• emphasis on substantive equality
• emphasis on substantive agreement and consensus
• emphasis on action, i.e., doing things together rather than getting formal agreement
• community good is socially constructed
• emphasis on importance of place
• reliance on indirect representation
• reliance on procedural equality
• emphasis on voting and majority rule principle
• community is a legal agreement
• emphasis on procedural fairness with open access and right to participate
• rule of law orientation
• emphasis on rights over duties Citizenship
requirements
• high level of deliberative skills
• development of relevant knowledge and expertise
• personal participation
• citizen ownership and control of decision making
• voting
• heavy reliance on interest group participation
• opportunity for individuals to give advice and counsel
• heavy reliance on elected officials and career administrators Legitimating
criteria
• degree of participation • electoral oversight
• due notice of important decisions and open access to decision making
• degree of citizen control • opportunity for a “hearing” and right to be heard
• sense of ownership of both process and outcome
• procedural fairness in gathering and assessing information Source: Adapted from Morgan, et al., 2008, p. 53.
patterns have acquired the institutional status of traditions, which we have organized into four models that are described in greater detail in the sec- tions that follow.
“Who Should govern?” Dimension (X axis)
The horizontal axis in Figure 2.1 summarizes the range of possible an- swers to the question of “Who should govern?” The left end of the axis represents those who believe that liberty is best protected by relying on governing experience and expertise. The right end of the axis represents those who believe that democracy is safest when decision making and policy implementation is placed directly in the hands of the people rather than with experts.
As we saw in Part I, the American Revolution celebrated the principle that government should be based on “We the People,” which is memorial- ized in both the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the U.S.
Constitution. But this “ode to the people” was tempered by the experience of unsuccessfully trying to levy and collect taxes, raise and supply an army, and negotiate complicated relations with foreign nations without an expe- Figure 2.1 The founding debate: How to make democracy successful.
rienced cadre of governing agents who could devote full time to their work.
The issue of citizen versus expert-centered governance came into sharp fo- cus in the Constitutional Convention, as delegates debated the kind of gov- ernment that was most needed to preserve liberty. As an accommodation to control the tyranny of the majority and a lack of energetic government, the framers sought to have the best of both worlds. The establishment of three branches of government (the U.S. Senate, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court) would attract those with more experience and give these individuals the independence to exercise judgment without fear of immediate retribu- tion by voters at the polls. To control for too much power at the center and to ensure that government rested on the “consent of the governed,” the rule of experts was tempered by reliance on regular elections, the enumera- tion of government powers, the development of a system of checks and bal- ances within a federal system, and the adoption of a Bill of Rights.
The American constitutional system of indirect democracy doesn’t as- sume that everyone needs to spend considerable time and energy oversee- ing the work of their elected representatives. Through a combination of regular elections and institutional checks and balances, the majority of the founding generation believed that liberty could be secured from a multi- plicity of dangers. The framers bet on Alexander Hamilton’s assumption that the confidence of the people in, and obedience to, a government “will commonly be proportioned to the goodness or badness of its administra- tion,” and that the federal institutions they had designed would on the whole produce better administration over time than their state counter- parts (Hamilton, Madison, & Jay, 1961, p.174). This Federalist emphasis on expertise as the best security for preserving a regime of ordered liberty has been constantly renewed over the course of American history, first by the Progressive Movement’s emphasis on “scientific management” of the busi- ness of government and the need for leaders to serve as moral exemplars for the masses. It was refueled again during the New Deal period and kept alive by both World War II and the expansion of the regulatory role of the government, all of which required a growing cadre of trained experts who devoted their careers to public service (Morgan et al., 2008, ch. 4).
As the role of experts in making democracy work has grown over the course of American history, ironically, this has not necessarily come at the expense of those who share the Anti-Federalist and Jeffersonian view of a citizen-centered democracy. This view is represented by the right side of the X axis in Figure 2.1. This side of the axis emphasizes the importance of decentralized government, with a focus on local face-to-face governance in which people take personal responsibility for decision making and policy implementation rather than depending entirely on career experts to do the public’s work (Box, 1998). In its extreme form, this model is similar to direct democracy (in contrast to representative democracy), which is found
in small geographic areas, such as the New England town meetings, local neighborhood associations, or is represented by co-produced public servic- es in local government (i.e., community policing). This Jeffersonian vision has occasionally captured the hearts and minds of a national constituency and taken on the characteristics of a movement. This has occurred at sev- eral key points in American history, starting with the Jacksonian revolution in the 1830s, which introduced the principle of “rotation in office” as an antidote to rule by the rich and privileged elites. It resurfaced during the Populist era in the 1890s as the initiative, referendum, recall, the “long bal- lot,” civil service reform, regulatory control over corruption, and nonparti- san elections were popularized. During this period, the Pendleton Act was passed. The Act created a merit system for the appointment and promotion of career public servants. Reformers argued that such a system was needed to counter the corruption of the principle of “rotation in office,” which had deteriorated into the “spoils system,” which rewarded individuals for their loyalty to various kinds of ruling elites. The Jeffersonian model resurfaced once again as an important influence in structuring the implementation of President Johnson’s antipoverty programs in the 1960s and more recently has been a galvanizing force for the antitax revolt in the West and the Tea Party movement in the 2010 congressional elections.3
To summarize, the answer to the question of “Who should govern?” has shifted over the course of American history, much like a pendulum that shifts toward one end of the X axis more than the other, but never to the ex- clusion of the claims represented by the countervailing antagonist. In this swing, the Federalist emphasis on the importance of experience and ex- pertise has been the protagonist, with the Jeffersonian tradition constantly serving as the preeminent antagonist. As we will see in the next section, a similar story can be told of the answer to the second critical question that has shaped the American civic engagement tradition: “What is the proper role of the government?”
“What is the Proper role of government?” Dimension (Y axis)
In Figure 2.1, the vertical Y axis represents contending views regarding the proper role of government within American democracy. The upper end of the Y axis represents the view that the government should be taking an active role in protecting individual liberty. For the purpose of this chapter, we refer to this idea as a “strong government” role. The bottom end of the Y axis represents the view that institutions other than the government should take an active part in the protection of individual liberty, with gov-