A New Civic Engagement? Examining Accounts of Polarization as Democratic Crisis

• In Event: Engagement in Civic and Charitable Organizations

Abstract

Democratic theorists have long defended the civil society as a necessary component of liberal democracies because of its role as a space where civic engagement—the activity where common interests and activities are identified and mobilized—happens. One iteration of civic engagement, called Civic Renewal Movements (CRM’s), advertise themselves as strengthening democracy through nonpartisan initiatives that aim to build a broader civic identity and teach citizen skills through public action. However, the meaning of civic engagement has drastically shifted and expanded over the last 30 years due to the changes in power and funding structures in civic organizations. Furthermore, there is an uptick in contemporary civic engagement initiatives, claiming a likeness to CRM’s, who have adopted a hyper-focused platform connecting political polarization and democratic crisis.
The structural transformations, described here in regards to funding, organizational decision-making, and programming represent a broader depoliticization and de-democratization of civic engagement. In the conditions created by these shifts, the adoption of the articulation of ‘polarization as democratic crisis’ by CRM’s is able to cleanly conceal a bipartisan political platform as nonpartisan. The over-emphasis of this articulation by CRM’s is problematic for three reasons. First, it challenges understandings of the values of cross-cutting ties and critical rationality. Second, it oversimplifies elements of democratic crisis around a central cause and solution that bypasses democratic practices and decision-making. Third, this framing over-exaggerates the role of CRM’s in the political system in a way that diminishes important aspects of the political.
In this paper, I utilize several case studies through which to explore the relationship between CRM’s and the articulation of polarization as democratic crisis. First, I examine the central features of CRM’s, ultimately testing their relevance to liberal democracy by the presence of values, practices, and scope that reflect democratic process, decision-making, and action. Then I examine the structural changes to civic engagement in reference to financial decisions like Citizens United, trends of organizational decision-making, and programming trends that emphasize individual transformation and the use of deliberation as an end, not a means toward decision-making and action. Third, I explore the articulation of polarization as democratic crisis and investigate the ways in which it alters certain assumptions deemed valuable to CRM’s before concluding with a discussion of how to re-center the scope to CRM’s to reflect contemporary conditions while maintaining a strong political and democratic relevance.

Author

• Erika Coe, Indiana Unversity