Abstract
From the earliest days of the American republic, local communities have been incubators of civic health in the United States. While national, state, and local assessments of civic health show a lack of public engagement in political and social activities that were once the foundation of healthy local democracy, these first decades of the 21st century have revealed both new challenges for local governments and new tools for engagement. As local leaders revisit the important role of engaged citizens in local programs and policies, the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy offers an example of how schools of public policy and public administration can help with this task by equipping current and future local government leaders with the vital skills needed to engage citizens in addressing public problems.
Public Engagement: A Vital Leadership Skill
The Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership originated in 2005 with the launch of a bipartisan nonprofit called Common Sense California (CSC), under the mission of engaging Californians in policy decisions that affect their everyday lives. Early on, CSC found that the lack of a clear connection between the purposes and processes of effective participation often hindered the public engagement efforts of local government. In response, CSC developed a public engagement seminar for mid- to upper-level government staff and increased its focus on promoting best practices and research in regards to public engagement. In 2010, this new emphasis on education, in tandem with CSC’s already robust grant-making and consulting programs, opened the door for CSC to combine with an existing policy institute at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy to become the Davenport Institute. Over the past five years, the symbiotic relationship between the institute and the university has increased legitimacy for institute trainings and research in the eyes of public- sector officials, while offering Pepperdine students access to new coursework in participatory leadership, graduate assistant opportunities, and internships.
In an era of decreased public confidence in almost all public institutions (Gallup, 2015), it is no longer sufficient for schools of public policy and public administration to produce graduates skilled solely in the technical aspects of governance (e.g., planning, administration, etc.). They must also prepare graduates capable of rebuilding trust and leading in an era when the relationship between citizens 1 and government is fundamentally changing. This article examines the state of civic health and local political engagement in the United States. Drawing on two surveys tracing the attitudes of both local government officials and community-based organizations in California, it explores the changing attitudes about engaging citizens and why residents often remain disengaged. The article also outlines how universities are uniquely positioned to help improve these processes by supporting and training local government leaders and by preparing a new generation of leaders skilled in public engagement.
Finally, the article identifies five key lessons useful to other universities interested in undertaking similar efforts in public engagement.
Local Engagement: The Nexus of Social and Political Civic Health
In its California Civic Health Index (CHI)—a report which the Davenport Institute partnered around in 2010—the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) described two “branches” of civic health: political civic engagement and social civic engagement. The former centers on factors such as voter registration and turnout as well as community meeting attendance, contact with public officials, discussing politics, and working with others to improve one’s community. The latter includes activities such as service and volunteering, membership in community associations, and connectedness to family, friends, and neighbors through shared meals, exchanged favors, etc. Together, these elements comprise a community’s civic health (NCoC, 2010).
Data gathered in 2013 from two supplements to the Current Population Survey (CPS) 2 showed significant room for improvement in the areas of both political and social civic engagement. The 2013 data revealed that only 8.2% of Americans were active in their neighborhoods, while over 37% did not exchange favors with neighbors at all. On the political side, only 27% of Americans discussed politics frequently, over 30% never voted in local elections, and almost 90% had not contacted or visited a public official in the past year (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013). These findings coincide with a national average of just over 26% of Americans participating in one or more non-electoral political activities in the previous year (NCoC, 2010). In this context, public engagement in local communities takes on particular significance because social civic engagement and political civic engagement are most closely connected at the local level.
Writing in the early years of the American experiment, Alexis de Tocqueville praised the vital role of civic associations in American public life and the of New England township system of local government. Tocqueville (1835/2000) observed “Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite … I often admired the infinite art with which the inhabitants of the United States managed to fix a common goal to the efforts of many men and to get them to advance to it freely” (p. 489). This is a classic American example of social civic engagement—the image of a pioneer barn-raising comes to mind— but it is not altogether separate from political civic engagement. Indeed, Tocqueville saw these as inextricably related: “Civil associations … facilitate political associations; but, on the other hand, political association singularly develops and perfects civil association” (p. 496).
Tocqueville (1835/2000) observed a direct engagement of citizens in the governance of New England townships: “Affairs that touch the interest of all are treated in the public square and within the general assembly of citizens, as in Athens” (p. 40). For the individual citizen, then, Tocqueville noted that this created a sense of both belonging within and ownership of local government: “He is interested in it because he cooperates in directing it” (p. 65).
For much of the 20th century, this picture of political and social civic engagement declined as a more expert-driven, bureaucratic, administrative form of governance became the norm. Many schools of public administration and public policy were founded during this time—as a result of both the New Deal and Great Society federal programs—to train the experts, bureaucrats, and administrators required to serve this view of government. Yet in the first decades of the 21st century, the policymaking landscape at all levels, but especially the local level, is changing. This change necessitates that universities rethink how they are preparing graduates to lead in this new landscape.
A New Era of Engagement and a New Opportunity for Education
The 2010 California Civic Health Index3 did not paint a glowing picture of civic engagement in California but did reveal several notable trends. First, the index showed a slow but steady increase in the number of Californians who reported “working with neighbors to improve the community,” from 5.7% in 2006 to 8.3% in 2009 (NCoC, 2010, p. 9). Perhaps more significantly, the index also showed an increase among Californians who attended public meetings, from 6.9% in 2006 to 9.3% in 2009 (p. 6). On their own, these numbers (still less than 10%) may not look very hopeful; however, these increases are paralleled by a change in outlook on the part of local government leaders and may indeed signal the first fruits of a significant culture change underway in municipal government.
In 2012, the Davenport Institute collaborated with the Institute for Local Government and the survey firm Public Agenda on a study funded by the James Irvine Foundation. The study surveyed over 900 local officials across California as well as 500 leaders of civic and community-based organizations in California about their attitudes toward citizen engagement. The results of the public-officials survey were published in a report titled Testing the Waters, while the results of the civic-leaders survey comprised a sister report, Beyond Business as Usual. Among local officials surveyed (who had worked an average of 22 years in public service), 85% indicated that their views on public engagement had changed since their careers began, with 42% noting that their views had “changed a lot” (Hagelskamp, Immerwahr, & Hess, 2013a, p. 14). Given the opportunity for free response, most officials added that they had come to understand and value public engagement. 4 Some officials, however, admitted growing disillusioned by polarization resulting from activists pushing out individual citizen voices (I will return to this concern later in the article).
Growing interest in public engagement is not limited to California. For instance, the 2015 International City County Managers Association (ICMA) annual conference offered over 20 sessions relating to online and offline community engagement (conference program available at http://icma.org/en/icma/events/conference/welcome), while the two 2014 National League of Cities national meetings together offered 10 sessions relating to engagement (programs available at http://www.nlccongressofcities.org and http://ccc.nlc.org). Several factors are driving this energy around citizen engagement, but perhaps the most ubiquitous of these is technology, especially mobile technology, allowing easy access to information and easy connectivity to others. The public relies increasingly on technology-enabled collaboration in their day-to-day lives. Consider, for example, how a mobile ride-hail company like Uber matches an available driver with a diner wanting transportation home and how access to data and online reviews builds trust in this interaction. An increasing number of tools are available for building such collaborations and trust between residents and government. As John Walton, then-CIO for the City of San Francisco (now CIO for the County of San Mateo, California), explained in an interview with GOVERNING magazine a few years ago:
Back when we started focusing on e-government in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, it was about automation. Taking manual systems or maybe old mainframe systems, and trying to come up with a website or an automated way to do it. That was e-government … open data for me is not just about automating manual processes, but is an example of how you engage with the citizen. “E” before was “electronic.” “E” now is about “engagement.” That’s the contribution I think that technology now provides to government. (Hanson, 2012)
Financial pressure is also driving the new emphasis on expanded engagement. Although the Great Recession has eased, unfunded obligations and other pressures confirm what Harvard Kennedy School Professor Stephen Goldsmith predicted in 2010 when he stated, “The current fiscal crisis isn’t a passing phase; it’s a new, enduring reality that must be confronted. Crisis is now the norm” (Goldsmith, 2010). Within this “new normal,” municipalities continue to make tough tradeoffs, namely in relation to fundamental decisions about what a community prioritizes. Questions of values and priorities cannot be solved by experts alone; they require inclusive discussions, not just with traditionally engaged groups but with all members of the community.
This leads directly to a consideration of a third factor changing the landscape of engagement: the rise of single-issue organizations and special interests groups. Writing about political organizations in the 1970s, Mancur Olson (1971) maintained that as the size of a group grows, the self-interest of the few outweighs the broader interests of the many. This seems borne out in an era marked by perceptions of deeply divided, polarized communities. It also reflects the most often-cited objections offered by officials who have grown disillusioned with public engagement. As one planning director elaborated in Testing the Waters, “The voice of a single resident is lacking now, because it isn’t heard over the voices of special interest lobbying groups” (Hagelskamp et al., 2013a, p. 15). Such concerns highlight the need for legitimate citizen engagement while at the same time suggesting an insufficiency in traditional engagement methods, making it more important than ever to ensure that public engagement reflects the diversity and multiple interests of the broader community.
In the surveys conducted by the Davenport Institute, local government leaders and community organization leaders offered different but closely related diagnoses of problems associated with current public engagement efforts. Seventy-six percent of local officials said public meetings are “typically dominated by people with narrow agendas” (Hagelskamp et al., 2013a, p. 11); 64% said that “public hearings typically attract complainers and ‘professional citizens’” (p. 11); and 48% worried that “community members who do not belong to an organized group that can mobilize them are often left out of the public decision making process” (p. 12). Community organization leaders, for their part, also feared the influence of special interests, with 75% indicating that “local officials only pay attention to the most powerful interest groups” (Hagelskamp et al., 2013b, p. 10) and 66% agreeing that “public hearings often lead to gripe sessions” (p. 12) rather than productive solutions. This type of ambivalence may help explain why, despite an increased interest in engagement, less than 10% of Americans actually attend public meetings or contact public officials.
These findings suggest that typical public meetings are not working. In Megaprojects and Risk, Flyvbjerg, Bruzelius, and Rothengatter (2003) examine the most ambitious projects of the late-20th and early-21st centuries in an attempt to explain why, despite apparently elegant risk-analysis models, so many projects exceed their budgets or fail to deliver on their promises. In addition to other factors, the authors point to a problem with public engagement: “The lack of public involvement also tends to generate a situation where those groups who worry about the project, and are left without information and influence, are inclined to act destructively” (p. 88), adding to costs or even derailing projects entirely. They go on to note, “If groups who feel concerned were included in the project development process for a large-scale project at an early stage, the result would be improved chances that those conditions that people view as important to making a decision would be taken into account” (pp. 88-89).
Since the mid-20th century, public hearings and meetings in local governments throughout the country have followed a predictable format. Meetings take place in a council room or auditorium with the public seated as audience members and decision-makers seated at the front (sometimes on a dais). After experts and decision-makers speak, the meeting is opened for public comment, with residents directed to come to the front (or center) of the meeting venue to express their opinions about the agenda issue(s) under discussion in no more than two to five minutes (depending on local rules).
This is exactly the format that leads to engagement-related problems identified by both public officials and community organization leaders. First, the very set up of the meeting room hinders collaboration, placing official decision- makers in front of or above community members. Conversation is primarily one- way. Experts, public officials, and community members speak during different portions of the meeting, with questions or objections reserved for their appropriate “place” on the agenda. Additionally, community members address their comments to the front of the room, speaking to the public officials rather than with their fellow citizens. In an era of community organization and special interests, this format easily devolves into either a “stack the decks” situation in which a particularly involved group hoards available comment time or an equally unhelpful shouting match between strongly opposed viewpoints. Both situations effectively silence voices of dissent or moderation, and neither encourages a self- reflective evaluation of benefits and tradeoffs relative to the issues under consideration.5
Local government leaders know they need new, more deliberative ways of engaging the public. Ninety percent of local officials surveyed in Testing the Waters could think of at least one specific issue that would lend itself well to a deliberative engagement process (Hagelskamp et al., 2013a, p.19), and 77% indicated they were “interested in hearing more about public engagement practices that have worked in other places” (p. 13).
The Role of the University
Many local governments and their citizens know no other alternatives to engagement than the traditional format described earlier. Moreover, many graduate schools of public policy and administration are, ironically, accomplices to the creation of the expertise mystique—a superior attitude toward the public rationalized by one’s years of education and experience.
Mid-20th-century schools of public policy and public administration taught that leaders should seek to solve problems by offering expert solutions and controlling outcomes. Brewer and deLeon (1983) outlined this scientific or analytic approach to not only policy research but also implementation as a six- phase policy process comprising initiation, estimation, selection, implementation, evaluation, and termination. Peter deLeon’s Advice and Consent (1988) traced the policy sciences development in the mid-20th century that led to this type of process. In an article he co-authored with Kathleen Gallagher in 2011, deLeon revisited this seminal work, noting that two changes to the policy landscape challenge this approach in the 21st century: the unprecedented growth of the nonprofit sector and the emergence of the concept of “governance”—that is, how public, private, and nonprofit sectors work together to create policy (deLeon & Gallagher, 2011).
These changes, along with those mentioned earlier, require new efforts from schools of public policy if they are to make a significant impact both in supporting current leaders and in preparing future leaders to govern in this “new normal” in which public engagement is not a formality to ensure transparent expert decisions, but rather a vital public leadership and problem-solving skill in the toolbox of local officials.
Universities are uniquely positioned to support legitimate engagement in several ways. First, universities are already prepared as educators; they know how to teach. Training offered by a university carries a distinctive legitimacy. The Davenport Institute, for example, has seen the benefits of offering training conducted through a well-respected graduate school of public policy rather than through a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.
Institute or center affiliation with a school of public policy is particularly beneficial for providing the type of research and training that benefits current public leaders. The Davenport Institute is a member of the University Network for Collaborative Governance (UNCG) (for more information, see http://www.policyconsensus.org/uncg), which comprises 27 institutes and centers with similar missions. UNCG members offer a wide variety of models. Some members (like the Davenport Institute) are institutionalized within the host school through an endowment, supplemented by their own grants. Others are sustained by general university funds in addition to various grants and service fees. Some employ a number of staff members from a variety of backgrounds, while others employ a very small staff supported by advisors in the local government field and supplemented by facilitation consultants.
Regardless of the particular model implemented, university institutes and centers offer scaled programmatic support and institutional legitimacy to the public engagement field beyond what can possibly be undertaken by a faculty member working alone, particularly during the school year when other class and research obligations vie for attention. For example, on the Pepperdine campus, the Davenport Institute is responsible for the School of Public Policy’s engagement coursework, for providing research and mentorship opportunities to graduate schools, and for facilitating relationships between students and potential employers in the local government and public engagement fields. Beyond this, however, the institute allows the School of Public Policy to have an active presence off campus. Over the past eight years, the Davenport Institute has trained well over 1,000 public officials in cities, counties, special districts, and public safety agencies. Institute staff have been involved in projects in more than 117 municipalities throughout California and have awarded 45 funded consulting grants to municipalities in support of legitimate public engagement. The institute is thus becoming a recognized “brand” in the California public engagement world, a place for local governments to turn to when they want to improve their engagement. In addition to consultation undertaken by institute staff and the expertise the institute is able to draw on through its advisory council (composed of 20 mostly retired municipal officials and public engagement practitioners), the Davenport Institute has been able to develop and maintain a broad network of consultants across the state, allowing it to become a go-to resource for cities looking to partner with consultants to address specific issues or challenges.
Centers like the Davenport Institute also provide opportunities to engage community professionals who are not regular faculty but who have specific experiences and skills in local government practice, deliberation, facilitation, and public participation. Additionally, centers and institutes can offer valuable connections between a university and local government, including internship and job opportunities for students in public policy and public administration programs.
Secondly, universities shape future leaders by preparing them for this new culture of governance before they ever start their careers. Universities can educate future leaders to design and facilitate public processes, ultimately helping the public to develop collaborative sustainable solutions. The past half-decade has seen a rise in the number of core and elective courses on public engagement offered by schools of public policy and public administration in response to this need. One third of the top public affairs schools (U.S. News & World Report, 2015) now offer at least some coursework in public engagement, with a number of these offering undergraduate majors or graduate certification or concentration in this area.6
Finally, universities can support a culture shift in public engagement through research and publications. A new approach to public engagement is emerging, drawing on a historically American approach to democratic governance but adapting it to the social and digital context of the 21st century. Any new field of practice or study offers fertile ground for academic research. Drawing from multiple social science disciplines, public engagement offers opportunities for both hard and soft research.
With more municipalities seeking better ways to engage residents, the technologies, methods, and vendors of platforms for engaging residents both on and offline have proliferated, making it difficult to determine which are truly effective and in what contexts. There is a growing need for improved metrics, methods of data collection, and evaluation of engagement efforts. Online engagement platforms offer a wealth of demographic data that can inform questions regarding who engages where and how online. These data are often automatically collected and may be made available to scholars. Demographic studies of various types of communities, especially underrepresented populations, could offer very valuable insights into promoting effective engagement among those groups.
In addition, there continues to be a great need for public engagement case studies and for scholars who are also effective storytellers. This is a burgeoning field, in terms of both face-to-face and online engagement, especially as mobile application and Internet platform developers continue to offer new promises (not all of them well-founded) of technological connectedness. As noted earlier, a majority of public leaders are seeking examples of public engagement practices that have worked elsewhere. In the same “soft research” vein is the growing need for articles on public engagement that can take hard data and make them accessible to non-academics such as city managers and department heads. Public leaders want to know what works but are often too busy with day-to-day responsibilities to read long academic journal articles or sort through pages of tables in a research paper. The Davenport Institute has helped fill this gap, engaging graduate students in a participatory project for the City of Vallejo (as one example) and providing executive summaries, blog posts, and op-eds especially geared to local government practitioners.
Conclusion: What Better Engagement Looks Like
The purpose of this article is not to offer a “one-size-fits-all” model for how universities should promote civic health through public engagement. Indeed, legitimate engagement is built upon a commitment to the local and the particular—a recognition that different communities and the people that comprise them have different priorities, different strengths, and different needs, and that a community is most healthy when it acknowledges its own particularities. The same is true for universities, centers housed within universities, and the students and communities they serve.
At the same time, when it comes to content, there are identifiable components of legitimate public engagement. The Davenport Institute has trained public officials across California and around the nation, developed a graduate seminar for students pursuing a master’s in public policy, consulted on and facilitated local engagement processes, and contributed research and case studies to the field. This article concludes by offering five key lessons about deliberative public engagement that should be central themes of any university effort to promote local engagement.
Lesson 1
There is a gap between how today’s senior local leaders were prepared in their undergraduate and graduate programs and how today’s leaders need to be prepared for leadership in the “new normal.”
At a Pepperdine conference several years ago, a former municipal planning director noted, “We (in the planning department) always put people up in front of the public who are the least prepared to be there.” She was not suggesting that her planners had not been well trained in their policy or planning schools; rather, she was acknowledging that in some ways their very immersion in the field of planning had left them unprepared to explain technical issues in a non- technical way or to collaborate with residents who may have priorities beyond that field of expertise.
This is not an entirely new observation. Indeed, as early as 1992, deLeon called for a new “participatory policy analysis” to bridge the gap between citizens and policy-makers and analysts. DeLeon referred to this as “separation syndrome.” John Ellwood (2009) noted that the graduate policy programs represented by the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) are grounded in the Progressive era and “represent various flavors of the reliance on expertise, the rise and resilience of the professions, and an effort to create interdisciplinary programs that sought to impart the latest techniques to make public sector programs more efficient” (p. 174). He argued that increased complexity requires a different sort of education that will facilitate “a greater capacity for strategic leadership among policy analysts as advisors, and the promotion of a style of leadership that emphasizes listening and conversation” (p. 203).
In other words, leaders able to lead deliberative public processes must seek not to solve problems themselves but to enable the public to participate in the solution; they must be able to control the process without controlling the outcome, with the goal of reaching a collaborative, sustainable solution (see Figure 1). Yet this is not how schools of public policy have been preparing these leaders.
The Davenport Institute’s training seminars are designed to help bridge this preparation gap by offering a sort of “Public Engagement 101” for leaders trained under the old approach. This increases officials’ fluency in and comfort with the processes and benefits of public engagement. Over 90% of local officials who have attended the institute’s half-day training have reported that the seminar increased or greatly increased their knowledge of the positive values of civic engagement. About 58% of attendees indicated that they would be more likely to promote civic engagement as a result of participating in the seminar, while about 35% reported that they were already promoting engagement (a number of these added as a free response that they had gained tools to help them more effectively promote engagement within their respective organization).7
Lesson 2
Purpose determines process for any public engagement endeavor.
As suggested earlier, the existence of a variety of definitions and understandings of public engagement can be a major challenge to institutionalizing effective engagement. One way to provide a common framework for approaching public engagement is to point out that the concept
encompasses a spectrum of activities. The Davenport Institute uses a slightly modified version of the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) Public Engagement Spectrum to describe this (see Figure 2).
As public engagement activities move from the left to the right side of the spectrum—that is, from unidirectional communication and transparency to sophisticated deliberative exercises to actual co-delivery of services—different processes are required. The traditional setup of a public hearing or city council meeting, may, in fact, be perfectly sufficient for an information session about how new state mandates are going to affect city revenues and expenditures. However, this type of room setup cannot facilitate the sort of dialogue and creative collaboration needed for more deliberative engagement. Instead, rooms set up with round tables and meetings facilitated to encourage dialogue among participants (rather than public comments directed at government leaders) become key.8 Nor is it enough for government staff to merely understand the purpose of engagement and why a particular process has been chosen. They must also be able to communicate these decisions and reasonings in such a way that public participants clearly understand the purpose. This recommendation, key to building public trust, is frequently cited as a top takeaway from institute training sessions in the free-response section of evaluations.
Lesson 3
When engaging the public in more deliberative or collaborative processes, local leaders must be willing to control the process by which a decision is made rather than the outcome of that decision.
As illustrated by the public engagement spectrum in Figure 2, as soon as a government moves from merely informing the public—whether it seeks to consult with the public on pre-set options, engage the public in developing creative solutions, or empower the public for co-delivery of services—it is vital for public officials to relinquish control over the final decision or outcome. Public trust and public engagement are damaged greatly when residents are consulted in name only, when it is clear that decision-makers already know what they want to do and are using “engagement” simply as a cover for selling the public on a preferred outcome.
Letting go of the outcome, however, does not mean abdicating all responsibilities for the quality of the engagement. On the contrary, this is where new leadership skills become so vital. Local government is uniquely positioned as a convener of citizens working to address public issues, and a well-designed and well-managed process is essential to productive public collaboration. Simple preparations like room setup can impact the effectiveness of a public engagement. For most engagement processes, the Davenport Institute recommends round tables of six to eight people, dividing groups who arrive together into separate tables whenever possible, and, if feasible, engaging an outside facilitator to encourage a sense of safety and neutrality. The overarching goal is to encourage participants to engage with one another as well as with government officials. Simple as they may seem, such strategies can go a long way toward moderating polarization by making it much harder for any single resident or group of residents to see themselves as the sole representative of “the people.” This approach also neutralizes the “gadfly” who may still be able to dominate conversation at one table but can no longer dominate the room.9
Lesson 4
Local governments (and community members) must move away from viewing residents as customers toward engaging them as citizens.
This is one of the “a-ha moments” for participants in Davenport Institute trainings. In the 1970s, many local government practitioners and educators turned to a “customer service” model borrowed from business service industries as a means of providing more efficient and higher-quality public services. Staff members were sent to trainings similar to those offered by large department stores. In many ways, this approach made sense: When paying property taxes, or registering for parks and recreation classes, residents are very much in the position of customers. Yet in adhering to this viewpoint, a deeper sense of residents as citizens can easily get lost.
This customer service mentality is particularly detrimental to engagement because the characteristics of citizens look very different from the characteristics of customers. Customers expect to be served. They function as consumers not as creators or problem-solvers, and even allow others to define their needs (e.g., think of the role of advertising or the advice and direction provided by salespeople in commercial exchanges). This is, in essence, an abdication of power; customers do not expect service providers to ask them for input on how to address a problem—let alone for help in delivering a solution.
By contrast, the very idea of citizenship carries with it a sense of ownership and responsibility. Citizens expect to be involved in setting the course for the future and demand accountability as programs are implemented. Acknowledging the citizen role of residents also allows them to exercise creativity, bringing a broad range of ideas and experience to the conversation. Achieving this requires a change in perception from both the governing officials and from residents themselves.
Lesson 5
Never underestimate the power of food and fellowship.
In many ways this final recommendation brings this article full circle to the relationship between social and political civic engagement. Starting public engagement processes with a shared meal (and providing time for casual conversation over food) offers a non-threatening environment where people meet as individuals not as abstractions. Shared meals offer opportunities for conversations about both personal experiences and shared interests before a potentially divisive public issue is ever raised. Seeing someone with another viewpoint as a reasonable—and perhaps even pleasant—individual is the first step toward building respect and civility.
This becomes increasingly important in an era of what journalist Bill Bishop (2008) calls “the big sort.” Consciously or unconsciously, Americans have cloistered themselves into groups of like-minded people. Both online and offline, consumer choice and physical mobility often prevent us from ever encountering people with different viewpoints. It is worth closing with a quote from Bishop’s conclusion to his demographic study of migration and association patterns:
Finding cultural comfort in “people like us,” we have migrated into ever-narrower communities and churches and political groups. We have created, and are creating, new institutions distinguished by their isolation and single-mindedness … And we have worked quietly and hard to remove any trace of the “constant clashing of opinions” from daily life … Now more isolated than ever in our private lives, cocooned with our fellows, we approach public life with the sensibility of customers who are always right. “Tailor- made” has worked so well for industry and social networking sites, for subdivisions and churches, we expect it from our government, too. But democracy doesn’t seem to work that way. (p. 302)
This is a timely and apt reflection for universities seeking to impact civic health but especially for those working to strengthen local civic engagement by preparing those students headed for careers in the public and civic sectors. The sorting that Bishop describes happens not only between communities but within communities, and both civic health and healthy citizen engagement require a mixing of people with different experiences, priorities, and, sometimes, goals. Nor can universities forget their own tendency toward isolation, that those in academia are themselves often more siloed than they realize, that they have no claim to a monopoly on legitimate or rational interests. Such self-reflection is key to recognizing and promoting genuine deliberation.
With the support of self-aware universities and the renewed interest of local governments, the 21st century may prove to be a new era of local democracy that goes beyond discussions about the relative merits of representative verses direct democracy to embrace a more participatory democracy that is associative, built on relationships between individuals, civic associations, and governments; deliberative, guided by conversations across diverse elements of communities;, and collaborative, with residents functioning as participants rather than mere consumers.
Endnotes
1 Many facilitators and public engagement advocates avoid the word citizen as exclusive of undocumented residents. However, the idea of citizenship implies a sense of belonging and ownership not captured by the word resident. For that reason, citizen and citizen engagement, as used throughout this article, should be understood to refer to all residents invested in a particular community regardless of nationality or legal status.
2 The Current Population Survey is a monthly survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. Data used to measure civic health comes from the Volunteer Supplement and the Civic Supplement. The Corporation for National & Community Service and the congressionally chartered National Conference on Citizenship make these data readily available through the Volunteering and Civic Life in America website: http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov.
3 At the time of this writing, the 2010 California Civic Health Index was the most recent version available; the state is due for an update.
4 Typical of these responses is that of one city manager from a Central Coast community: “I’ve realized public engagement is critical for making important and fundamental decisions about the community’s future. The old style of decision making just doesn’t allow for good community participation” (Hagelskamp et al., 2013a, p. 14)
5 A helpful review of the literature on these outcomes can be found in Byson, Quick, Slotterback, and Crosby’s “Designing Public Participation Processes,” a 2013 article in Public Administration Review. The authors explore a number of studies and articles on this phenomenon and note, in particular, that “all too often, supposedly participatory processes end up including the ‘usual suspects,’ people who are easily recruited, vocal, and reasonably comfortable in public arenas. Stakeholder identification and analysis are critical tasks to undertake to ensure that marginalized groups are at least considered and may have a place at the table” (p.29).
6 These numbers were generated by the author and a graduate assistant through a survey of the courses listed in the catalogues of the U.S. News & World Report’s top-ranked schools.
7 All survey information referenced in this section was taken from evaluations collected following half-day trainings in the cities of Vallejo, Benicia, Soledad, Riverside, San Francisco, and Rancho Palos Verdes. These represent some of the most diverse cities the institute has trained. Evaluation data are collected, reviewed, and saved internally by the Davenport Institute. The data are available for review upon request. Respondents’ names and positions are confidential, but a spreadsheet with survey responses can be obtained by contacting the Davenport Institute.
8 As noted earlier, while the polarizing or exclusionary outcomes of the traditional “three- minute-at-a-microphone” meeting setup are well documented (again, see Byson, Quick, Slotterback, & Crosby, 2013), much of the current literature on effective process design and room setup are in the form of case studies or guidebooks. One excellent example of this type of literature is Meaningful Public Conversations (Gelinas & James, 2008), which draws on research from psychology and business management. However, this remains an area very much open to further research.
9 While the Davenport Institute has found this meeting design to be helpful, there remains a significant opportunity for research into process design, room set-up, etc.
References
Bishop, B. (2009). The big sort: Why the clustering of like-minded America is tearing us apart. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Brewer, G. D., & deLeon, P. (1983). The foundations of policy analysis. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Bryson, J. M., Quick, K. S., Slotterback, C. S., & Crosby, B. C. (2013). Designing public participation processes. Public Administration Review, 73(1), 23- 34.
deLeon, P. (1988). Advice and consent: The development of the policy sciences.
New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
deLeon, P. (1992). The democratization of the policy sciences. Public Administration Review, 52(2), 125-129.
deLeon, P., & Gallagher, B. K. (2011). A contemporary reading of Advice and Consent. Policy Studies Journal, 29(S1), 27-39.
de Tocqueville, A. (2000). Democracy in America. (H. Mansfield & D. Winthrop, Trans., Eds.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1835, 1840)
Ellwood, J. W. (2009). Challenges to public policy and public management education. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Vol 27, No.1: 172-187. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.lib.pepperdine.edu/doi/10.1002/pam.20313/ pdf
Flyvbjerg, B., Bruzelius, N., & Rothengatter, W. (2003). Megaprojects and risk: An anatomy of ambition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Gallup. (2015). Confidence in institutions. Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx
Gelinas, M., & James, R. (2008). Meaningful public conversations. Retrieved from http://gelinasjames.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/04/MngflPublConv.pdf
Goldsmith, S. (2010). The new political reality. E21: Economic policies for the 21st century. New York: Manhattan Institute. Retrieved from http://www.economics21.org/commentary/new-political-reality
Hagelskamp, C., Immerwahr, J., & Hess, J. (2013a). Testing the waters: California’s local officials experiment with new ways to engage the public. San Francisco: Public Agenda. Retrieved from http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/davenport-institute/news/public- engagement-surveys.htm
Hagelskamp, C., Immerwahr, J., & Hess, J. (2013b). Beyond business as usual.
San Francisco: Public Agenda. Retrieved from http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/davenport-institute/content/public- engagement-surveys/beyond-business-full.pdf
Hanson, W. (2012). Can governments keep up their open data initiatives.
Government Technology. Retrieved from http://www.govtech.com/templates/gov_print_article?id=155835605
International Association of Public Participation. (2007). IAP2 spectrum of public participation. Retrieved from http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.iap2.org/resource/resmgr/imported/ IAP2%20Spectrum_vertical.pdf
National Conference on Citizenship. (2010). California civic health index 2010. Financial crisis, civic engagement and the “new normal.” Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://ncoc.net/cachi2010
Olson, M. (1971). The logic of collective action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
U.S. News & World Report. (2012). Best grad schools: Public affairs. Retrieved from http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate- schools/top-public-affairs-schools/public-affairs-rankings?int=a7cd09
Author
Ashley Trim has worked in public policy at the local, state and national level, for both governments and non- profit organizations. Trim has a BA in Government from Patrick Henry College and an MPP from the Pepperdine School of Public Policy. After receiving her Master’s degree, she spent a year teaching in a low-performing public school, an experience which reinvigorated her interest in the potential of public engagement to address some of our most pressing public issues – particularly at the local level. She currently serves as Senior Editor of the Davenport Institute’s four blogs and writes about public engagement issues for local and online news organizations. Trim also coordinates Davenport’s training seminars and events, and works with Pete Peterson on the Institute’s research and engagement projects.