New Study on Civic Health -- Signs of Improvement But A Lot to Do

On September 22, 2008, the National Conference on Citizenship released a new study concerning “civic health.” The results of the survey appear to document some of the mixed feelings that many democracy-watchers feel about this election cycle and the trends in our democracy, namely that on one hand, people are much more engaged in this election cycle. For instance, more than half of respondents tried to persuade someone else to vote or against a particular candidate. On the other hand, there is little evidence that this heavy involvement will sustain itself beyond the election cycle -- although the ideal of sustained democratic involvement is ever present in our society. For instance, just 14% of respondents were confident they would try to change local policies in school, neighborhoods, or the workplace, and less than 20% were sure they were talk further about issues raised in the campaign. The survey also found encouraging signs that the American people are interested in policies that encourage community service and engagement of some kind. 87% of respondents support giving young people the opportunity to earn tuition money by completing a year of national service; 76% would like to see service learning required in schools. More important, however, for the life-blood of democracy: 80% favor holing a national deliberation on a major issue and requiring congress to respond. As the life-blood of democracy is citizen engagement, I opine that this democracy depends not only on the ideals of citizen engagement but the experience of citizen engagement. The commitment of engagement but include the experience of trying to have an effect on the process of being governed. (In a later article, I hope to devise a more practical definition of the experience of democracy). The results of the survey found that our society does not have an activist way of discussing citizenship involvement. Of those who participated in the survey, when asked to define citizenship, 27% made references to being born or naturalized in the US and 20% made reference to duties like voting and jury duty. It is disappointing for this writer than a question could yield responses like voting and jury duty, but not civic engagement or democractic activism. The term “civic engagement” yielded a bunch (“33%”) of “what’s that” type of responses. Only 16% mentioned participating in politics or political institutions. 31% thought of community organizing as “helping others locally” and 21% didn’t know what the term meant. What’s even more telling and troubling about these results is that 57% of respondents to this survey participated in a primary or caucus, whereas actual voter turnout was 30%, thus one might infer that either that each of these numbers should be divided in half to reflect the correct results or Americans generally want to portray themselves as more civically engaged than they are.