Getting citizens more involved in the civic life and health of their communities must begin with citizens themselves, according to Citizens at the Center: A New Approach to Civic Engagement, written by Dr. Cynthia Gibson and commissioned by the Case Foundation. Based on interviews with researchers and experts in service/civic engagement, politics, and marketing,

Many Americans have turned away from politics and political institutions for the same reasons they have turned away from other civic institutions -- a sense that what they do matters little when it comes to the civic life and health of their communities or the country. Shifting to an approach that puts citizens at the center can be a powerful way to help ordinary people take action on the problems that are most important to them, and in the ways they choose.

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Recommendations

To develop and adopt citizen-centered approaches, the service and civic engagement field should:

• Shift the focus. Instead of asking how to encourage civic engagement, consider the best ways to give people opportunities to define and solve problems themselves.
• Start young. Don't wait till high school to begin developing the basic skills that young people will need to be effective problem-solvers.
• Involve all community institutions. Engage faith-based organizations, schools, businesses, and government agencies in providing public deliberation and problem-solving for all citizens.
• Use technology to create a new kind of "public commons." Leverage technology's power to encourage, facilitate, and increase citizen-centered dialogue, deliberation, organizing, and action around a wide variety of issues.
• Explore and create new mechanisms. Don't assume that traditional venues like town hall meetings are sufficient to truly get different types of people to engage and share perspectives. Look at where people are already interacting (such as neighborhood organizations, schools, and workplaces) and consider other approaches, structures, and venues.
• Conduct rigorous research about what works and why. While considerable research has been conducted on the levels of volunteering, voting, community service, and political participation, there is a need for more evaluation about the motivating forces behind such behaviors -- and what approaches are effectively solving community problems.
• Encourage more funding for these approaches. Many funders may be reluctant to support long-term, local efforts, preferring to support bigger initiatives with a more immediate "payoff." Attracting more funding will require demonstrating the concrete results of local deliberation and action.
• Help communities move from deliberation to action. Deliberation should serve as a means to the end of communities being able to take action collectively in ways that reap results they can see and experience.

What Do Citizen-Centered Approaches Look Like?

• They focus primarily on culture change, rather than short-term outcomes, issues, or victories.
• They provide opportunities for people to form and promote their own decisions, build capacities for self-government, and promote open-ended civic processes.
• They are pluralistic and nonpartisan.
• They help to transcend ideological silos.
• They get beyond the debate over whether service or political action is more important.
• They're not just about talking.
• They do not replace politics or other democratic processes.

COMMENTS:                                               Send a comment

John Dedrick, Kettering Foundation:

"Citizens at the Center develops a critical synthesis of an emergent approach to understanding and acting in the context of democratic politics.   Cindy Gibson has made another vital contribution to the field!"

Jayne Cravens, Coyote Communications:

It was nice to read an affirmation of so much of what was said and profiled at the NetSquared Conference back in May.

What I would like to see in this and other similar efforts is an acknowledgement that the American work week is more prohibitive than ever to allow people to volunteer or be otherwise involved in civic activities. It's to the point that a sizeable percentage of Americans don't even take their tiny two-week vacations, or if they do, work the entire time via their laptops and Blackberries. IMO, there is no more time to volunteer or to be engaged in the community; there must be a serious re-thinking of what the American work week should look like in order to create time for people to again be involved in their communities.

Another thing I would like to see highlighted is the frustration I am hearing again and again from people who want to volunteer or to be a political activist: When they look for information about a particular local organization, particularly traditional local political groups, they cannot find the information needed online. No website, or a website that just says "information coming soon." Or, worse, they email organizations for more information, with questions, with an expression of interest in being involved, etc., and they receive no reply, or a "We'll get back to you!" message that's never followed up. It's 2006! How can tiny new all-volunteer nonprofits be doing such a great job online while established, traditional organizations are still thinking about maybe doing something online at some point?

On the flip side, if an organization goes to a corporate funder and says they want funding for a full-time volunteer manager, for technology, or for staff training to better use technology, the corporate funder balks. "We want our money to go to program, not to administration," they cry. Therefore, organizations are, in many ways, set up for failure when it comes to responding to the new wave of community engagement outlined in this paper.

Matt Leighninger, Executive Director, Deliberative Democracy Consortium:

Citizens at the Center is a breakthrough because it challenges some of the predominant assumptions held by national civic thinkers and experts.  Gibson questions the kind of civic work that starts out with an abstract model of what citizens ought to be (voters, volunteers, etc.), and then tries various ways of convincing, recruiting, or training people to fulfill those valuable but limited roles.  

I think these kinds of projects can be beneficial, but they are not driving the current tectonic shift in democracy.  The real catalysts for change are the political breakdowns that have frustrated citizens and public officials -- bankrupt city governments, instances of police misconduct, and angry debates over school closures, landfills, or housing developments. These are symptoms of a changed citizen-government dynamic:  Citizens are better at governing, and worse at being governed, than ever before.  

All kinds of public leaders, including mayors, school superintendents, and neighborhood organizers (and increasingly, state and federal officials as well), are reacting to this trend by experimenting with citizen-centered approaches.  Some of these projects are successful, some aren't -- and even the most successful examples raise interesting new questions and challenges.  Citizen-centered projects are proliferating much faster than most of us realize -- Gibson's bulleted list is but the tip of the iceberg -- and they are moving forward without a high degree of attention, evaluation, or support from national civic organizations, foundations, or other observers.  We have been looking off into the distance at remote civic archetypes; Citizens at the Center helps us refocus on a phenomenon that is suddenly right in front of us.

Lisa Frank, Youth Innovation Fund, National Service-Learning Partnership:

As one of the many young people involved with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Youth Innovation Fund (mentioned in the report and in comments by Kenny Holdsman), I second the idea that giving youth the opportunity to take control of civic action and service-learning projects is essential. Since we (the Portland, Ore., Youth Innovation Fund) had a youth-led board that did its own research, wrote requests for proposals, and had the final say in giving mini-grants to other youth-led service-learning projects, we were able to involve the key components of quality service-learning -- learning, community impact, youth leadership, and reflection. We were able to watch each other and ourselves grow more confident, more concerned with education, and ultimately better citizens. By beginning civics-related education at a young age and making all teaching hands-on with results youth can see and be proud of, the next generations will be prepared for a life of dedication to their school work, community, and country. It is important to let young people experience these types of civic action to open their eyes to the field of service-learning, which is shown to be one of the best ways to improve civic engagement in youth. Once you are involved in one service-learning project, you become aware of what others are doing in your city and country and are motivated to implement more positive permanent change, setting the example for those who come after you. It is this method that will lead to the day when it is commonplace for young people to be respected as intelligent, active citizens.

Will Friedman, Executive Director, and Alison Kadlec, Associate Director, Center for Advances in Public Engagement at Public Agenda:

Like most of the respondents in this space, and along with our colleagues at Public Agenda, we are heartened by Cynthia Gibson's analysis and argument for a citizen-centered approach to civic engagement. Her essay provides a cogent overview of critical issues, challenging practitioners, theorists and funders alike to think about democratic citizenship in fresh ways. We'd like to offer reflections on a few key points.

First, rather than pitting culture change against "short-term outcomes, issues, or victories," we suggest that we ask instead how citizens can pursue tangible progress on concrete problems facing their communities in ways that create, rather than obstruct, democratic habits and culture. People come to the democratic table to address common concerns and move ahead on common projects, not as a response to abstract calls for a more democratic culture. But how the approach to such problems and projects are structured and pursued (as Gibson makes clear) makes all the difference as to whether people are encouraged to become passive consumers or enabled to become active citizens. (For those who might be interested, this theme is developed in our recent article, "Deliberative Democracy and the Problem of Power.")

Second, while it is critically important to liberate the concept and practice of civic engagement from volunteering and voting alone, as Gibson does, we would add that it is also useful to think through the potential relationship between the personal and individualistic acts of voting/volunteering and the inherently social and public character of citizen-centered problem-solving. At the heart of the latter is the work of citizens deliberating together, in full recognition of their differences, about the shared consequences of public decisions. It is this which makes civic engagement a critical engine for democratic culture change in ways that the personal choices to vote or volunteer, which require no consultation beyond our own preferences, do not.

Moreover, and to the present point, deliberative civic engagement is what makes voting and volunteering most meaningfully democratic, transforming them from purely individual acts and weaving them into the public fabric of a vital and expanding democratic culture. As a practical example of how this can look, during the '04 election cycle Public Agenda ran a campaign called "First Choice: Know What You Want Before You Decide Who You Want." The idea was to provide citizens with tools to deliberate with others about issues they cared about so they could better decide for themselves who they wanted to vote for.

Citizen-centered civic engagement of this type aims to enrich and deepen the democratic meaning of voting by embedding it in a larger process of public dialogue and deliberation. The same holds true for volunteering; when it is the outcome of public conversation rather than a substitute for it, volunteering is an expression of a shared and deepening understanding of public life and how to be of service within it.

Finally, we'd like to expand on Gibson's exhortation to "conduct rigorous research" on citizen-centered civic engagement in American life by suggesting that such research include serious attention to the obstacles to deliberative engagement that proliferate in our political culture today, as well as emerging opportunities to overcome these obstacles. For example:

• What are the forces and habits that breed and reinforce the hostile, polarizing rhetoric that characterizes most of what passes for "public discourse" today, and what is the impact of those forces and habits on citizens' capacity for and willingness to engage in dialogue across boundaries?
• Are citizens tiring of today's degraded public rhetoric -- as seems to us to be the case -- and if so, how can citizen-centered strategies take advantage of this discontent?
• In a society encumbered by deep-seated inequality, what conditions are required for the creation of genuinely inclusive opportunities for civic engagement for those individuals and groups that are least likely to be included and most likely to be cynical about public dialogue and participation?
• How can such attributes of the Internet as enhanced access to information and rapid networking be used to offset societal inequalities and generally, to empower citizens and enable dialogue across boundaries, rather than to increase existing tendencies toward segmentation and polarization?
• How do different choices in the design and facilitation of citizen-centered engagement impact participation, and which choices are most likely to foster ongoing commitment to collaboration and problem-solving among citizens?
• Under what conditions and through what strategies is citizen-centered civic engagement likely to lead to broader impact and foster change, and how can we gauge different sorts of impacts over time? This last item means to reinforce Hal Saunder's call for a better articulated theory of change. If the civic engagement field is to fulfill the promise so richly suggested by Gibson's essay, such a conceptualization will be a critical step.
  

Ruth Wooden, President, Public Agenda:

I would like to look further at the issue of making certain that dialogue and engagement with citizens is authentic, and not an exercise to overly structure or control the conversation to try to get to a "desired point of view."  Too many so-called "citizen feedback" events are designed to sell a position, and the organizers are working more on marketing or "getting the right message" than in keeping the engagement totally open to citizen viewpoints.  There's a real "learning deficit" operating in these situations, to use Alison Fine's term from her new book Momentum, and in fact, these dialogues are public relations exercises more than a true citizen engagements.

Given that the current political environment is so polarized (which is well described as a big part of the problem in Dr. Gibson's report), there's a tendency today for everyone (including nonprofits) to operate in "advocacy" mode, but it's not appropriate or helpful to look at public engagement as an advocacy tool.  There may be useful findings that emerge for advocacy and messaging, but that's not the purpose of citizen-centered engagement.

Harold H. Saunders, President, International Institute for Sustained Dialogue:

I strongly endorse the direction of Cynthia Gibson's paper on "citizen-centered approaches to citizen engagement." I would like to take a step further by developing explicitly two critical points to which she alludes tangentially in her paper. She rightly speaks of civic engagement as an open-ended civic process -- not just an act, a tactic, or a practice. She speaks of citizens coming together, deliberating, and acting collectively. Although she appropriately sets our sights on culture change rather than on short term outcomes, at the same time she quotes a warning: "If people are just engaged in process and not results, it's an empty promise." Two points:

First, if rather than short-term outcomes, culture change is the objective, we need a rigorous strategy or theory of change deeply rooted in experience. If we are going to focus on citizen-centered approaches, we must understand in depth how they work, how to teach them, and how to conduct them to produce fundamental change.

A theory of change must analyze:

• what brings citizens together;
• what causes them to see themselves as political actors;
• how they select an instrument for change and learn how to use it;
• how a change process transforms relationships that block change into relationships that can design and implement change; and
• how citizens in dialogue can design a scenario of interactive steps to engage larger numbers of citizens in actions that result in fundamental change.

Ira Harkavy, Director, Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania:

Cindy Gibson's Citizens at the Center is extraordinarily timely and significant. It directs attention to the need for a profound deepening and strengthening of civic engagement in American society. Her call for a civic renewal movement that spring from the interests, concerns, talents, and actions of citizens themselves is powerful and convincing. She also moves discussion from narrow, academic (in the pejorative sense) debates about service versus politics to the significant real-world intellectual question of how to produce sustained, significant, serious cultural change (and by implication, serious social change) that involves a shift in attitudes, values, relationships, and actions. And Gibson provides us with a way forward that includes an emphasis on youth, collaboration and institutional partnerships, and a focus on action, not just deliberation.

Needless to say, Gibson has not (nor could she have) provided us a map for increased civic engagement. Her report does, however, lead to a number of important questions. For example:

• What groups and institutions, under what circumstances, are likely to catalyze and lead a civic renewal movement?
• What could be done to encourage these groups and institutions to take actions likely to lead to a civic renewal movement?
• How can civic renewal be "institutionalized" -- that is, how can schools, colleges and universities, communities of faith, unions, businesses, and governmental agencies, etc. function as civic institutions that encourage and support citizen-centered engagement?

Marnie Webb, Vice President for Knowledge Services, CompuMentor:

In our current work, and especially in work with public libraries supported by the Gates Foundation, we are trying to model deploying technology to generate the kind of civic engagement Dr. Gibson advocates.  And we hope to push this even further -- by working with partners like CivicSpace Labs to develop the toolsets -- the commons -- that the paper discusses.

As always, there is a gap between saying "This is what should be done" and actually doing it. One of our ideas is to create a very concrete guide to using new technologies to promote citizen-centered engagement.  It could be progressive -- "here's an easy way to start out" -- and then build to more complex things.

Often, I think, we implicitly encourage folks jumping in on the deep end of building technology solutions. It's tempting to read the paper and start imagining the comprehensive wiki or Drupal or Plone platform that can help encourage the kind of engagement talked about. But, short of creating new platforms, it is possible to utilize the vast amount of content already out there -- blog posts, shared photos, Wikipedia entries -- to get at some of things talked about.  It seems important to identify and promulgate the small, immediate ways that passionate people can deploy existing technology to move this agenda forward. It would be great to do a fully featured how-to to help move this agenda.

Liz Hollander, Executive Director, Campus Compact:

In the early 1830s, Alexis DeToqueville characterized American democracy by saying "the duties of private citizens are not supposed to have lapsed because the state has come into action; but every one is ready, on the contrary, to guide and support it. This action of individuals, joined to that of the public authorities, frequently accomplishes what the most energetic centralized administration would be unable to do."

Gibson's paper makes a very strong case for recapturing this genius of our American democratic way of life.  At Campus Compact, we have always promoted "public and community service to develop the skills and habits of citizenship" in college students but what we have learned is that the one does not necessarily lead to the other without conscious effort. Students need to join their enthusiasm for making a difference with subtle understanding of the assets in challenged communities and the work they can do to build community capacity. Students need to understand systemic causes of social and economic ills and the ways that citizens can engage in their democracy to address them.

We talk about doing the "hard work" of democracy, because true participation is not simple.  As Commissioner of Planning in Chicago, I was constantly confronted with different communities within each geographic community -- homeowners, renters, preservationists, developers, champions of low-income housing , and "not in my back-yarders."  The most powerful plans for neighborhood revitalization are shaped through broad citizen participation efforts in which these interests have to sit at the table together with the public authorities and seek common interest. It's messy and patient work, but as Robert Putnam puts it, "better together."

Tom Erlich, Senior Scholar, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching:

Cynthia Gibson has written an important and provocative essay on civic engagement.  The message that citizen-centered participation and deliberation can work and should be encouraged is a welcome one.  My colleagues and I at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching have written a book titled Educating for Democracy: Preparing Undergraduates for Political Engagement, published by Jossey-Bass.  The book deals directly with how colleges and universities can promote the understanding, skills, and attitudes needed for citizen-centered engagement.

It is true, as the essay indicates, that many people, especially young people, do not view public policy-making and electoral politics as arenas where they can make a difference.  We argue in our book, however, that American democracy needs citizen participation in politics, broadly defined, and that institutions of higher education have both the opportunity and the obligation to educate their students to become politically engaged.  We focus on 21 courses and programs at a range of different colleges and universities and analyze the goals of this education, the strategies to achieve those goals, and the ways to promote open inquiry and avoid political bias in the process. 

Judy Woodruff, "NewsHour":

Cindy has done terrific and important work, and I know it will be a spur to action for those who care about the health of our democracy. To confirm some of Cindy's findings, I've seen in my own conversations this summer with American young people that the more they feel their voices are listened to, the more they feel they have serious opportunities to contribute to the public dialogue, and to take responsibility for outcomes, the more likely they are to engage in the civic fabric of the nation. On the other hand, when they see public figures acting in ways that don't represent their views and values, when they feel left out of the dialogue, the more powerless they feel to impact change.

Kenny Holdsman, Academy for Educational Development:

Citizens at the Center makes an important and compelling argument that in order for citizen involvement to become a catalyst for community change and civic renewal, the philosophy and strategies of citizen engagement must be altered. In sum, they must become more organic, more inclusive, and in Dr. Gibson's words, the work of civic engagement must become more "citizen-centered" and "citizen-driven."...The W.K. Kellogg Youth Innovation Fund, which is referenced in this paper, embraces the fundamental notion that youth-centered and youth-directed civic action is the most effective way to engage young citizens in the hard work of community change. The hundreds of young people who are actively involved in the Youth Fund's efforts are pursuing engagement approaches that intentionally move beyond volunteerism and charity work to more potent forms of change and justice-oriented action. The architects of the Youth Fund, based at the Kellogg Foundation and the National Service-Learning Partnership at AED, call these approaches "multiple action pathways" -- approaches such as youth in governance, youth-generated media, youth philanthropy, youth social entrepreneurship, and youth organizing. With supportive policies and structures, youth and citizen engagement can become a systemic part of the civic and political fabric of community life.

John Bridgeland, CEO, Civic Enterprises

This paper "breaks the silence." For those of us who have labored on the policymaking side of these issues and are confronted with the very real question "So how do we actually help foster a culture of service and civic engagement?", this paper is a breakthrough. It moves the discussion beyond the very hopeful movements in volunteer and national service and civic education to the hope that we can do much better -- and foster a stronger ethic of civic engagement in our schools, workplaces, faith-based institutions, communities, and neighborhoods, not defined by experts or politicians or national leaders, but defined by us in local communities. To pull that off in any systemic way is the real challenge and is a challenge every generation has struggled with since our founding. Coupled with our new report, Broken Engagement: America's Civic Health Index, which serves as a wake-up call to the country that our civic stock is declining and provides a few signs of hope upon which we can build, Cindy's paper provides some specific ideas on how we might move forward. Well done!

Daniel Ben-Horin, Executive Director, CompuMentor

By referring to "technologists," not "technology," we make the point that the "movers," the "agents" in this process of meaningful civic engagement, are people. These particular people (and their ranks are increasing almost exponentially) who know how to use technology are, in many cases, very open to using this technology in a civically engaged fashion, if they can but discern the opportunity. These people are fully able to communicate virtually, but, being people, they enjoy and need more visceral contact as well. So through this frame, the issue isn't "Organize via technology or organize more traditionally?" but "How do we create a pathway into the process for technologists, and once they're part of the discussion, inside and outside of organizations, how do we give them enough room and resources to make a difference?"