POLITICS-U.S.: New Emphasis on Restoring ‘Citizenship’

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jul 1 1998 (IPS) - Three years after a prominent Harvard University sociologist found that membership in US bowling leagues had been declining sharply, the issue of how to restore good citizenship and social cohesion is claiming renewed attention here.

In just the past week, two major reports decrying public cynicism and apathy have been released. Both called for increased efforts by schools to provide civic education and greater commitment by citizens at the grassroots level to take responsibility for community affairs.

The bigger of the two reports, published by the National Commission on Civic Renewal, was entitled ‘A Nation of Spectators’ and stressed that “citizenship begins with commitment, rather than expertise.”

The report blamed the entertainment industry and local television news programmes for encouraging disengagement from public affairs.

“Television is doing a lot of damage because it privatises us, drawing us away from social relations and civic engagement…” according to the Commission, which was chaired by two prominent conservatives, former Democratic Sen. Samuel Nunn and Republican commentator and possible presidential aspirant, William Bennett.

Public-opinion polls and surveys, as well as declining voter turnout rates, have shown a steady erosion of civic consciousness, particularly since the 1960s. Turnout in presidential elections, for example, peaked at more than 60 percent in the mid-1960s and fell below 50 percent in 1996, the lowest rate since the 1920s.

Newspaper columnists and civic leaders grimly noted these and related trends over the years but it was not until 1995, with the publication by Harvard professor Robert Putnam of an article entitled ‘Bowling Alone’, that the parlous state of public engagement became a national issue.

Putnam cited the declining membership in local bowling leagues as indicative of a society that was losing its social cohesion and community spirit, two characteristics which the French social critic Alexis de Tocqueville found particularly strong in the United States almost two centuries ago in his book, ‘Democracy in America’.

As citizens felt increasingly disconnected from each other, Putnam argued, the country was losing its supply of “social capital” on which the health of democratic governance is largely based.

His thesis was not universally accepted but prompted considerable debate by a variety of participants ranging across the political spectrum. Some blamed the decline of “traditional values” and the rise of multiculturalism; others, the decline of the middle class as a result of economic globalisation and corporate down-sizing; others, the growing influence of “special interests,” particularly corporations, on the country’s political system; and still others, the influence of the mass media.

The loss of social consciousness and commitment also was linked to a measurable decline in public confidence in the federal government, a decline which also dates from the late 1960s when the Vietnam War still raged; Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated; and the paranoic Richard Nixon claimed the presidency only to lose it six years later in the Watergate scandal.

Earlier this year, the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press found in a major survey that only 34 percent of the public “basically trust the government.” While that was a higher percentage than in 1994, when right-wing Republicans won Congressional seats in unprecedented numbers, it was still far below historic levels of well over two-thirds. The survey also confirmed the sense that citizens, especially young adults, were becoming increasingly detached from the public sphere.

The two latest reports found some glimmers of hope for restoring civic life but were mostly concerned about the very difficult obstacles which must be overcome.

The National Issues Forum (NIF) of the Kettering Foundation based its report on a survey of more than 1,400 individuals and on 150 community forums about democratic governance conducted across the country during the last six months.

It found that the notion of restoring a sense of civic involvement in the public “struck a deep, responsive chord” in the participants. Specific means by which this could be achieved, according to the participants, included revamping civic education in the schools and having high school students work at social agencies; using more direct-democracy measures, like referendums, to reduce the influence of lobbyists and special interests; and encouraging more direct community involvement by all citizens, “even if this makes the process more difficult and time- consuming.”

The study also found that participants wanted more authority to be transferred from the federal to state and local governments, provided that this not result in cutting services or discrimination against vulnerable groups. Similarly, where most participants expressed an interest in privatising government services, a strong majority opposed privatisation “if that meant some services would no longer be available for everybody.”

Despite its conservative leadership, the National Commission on Civic Renewal called on all citizens to see government in a better light. “We must set aside the false and cynical proposition that the national government ruins everything it touches,” according to the report. “Civic renewal means working to improve our government, not abandoning it.”

It, too, called for increased attention to civic education in the schools, including community service for high-school students and requirements that students read and discuss newspapers, “because the habit of newspaper reading has been shown to enhance civic information and participation throughout adult life.”

The report also called for greater involvement by religious- based institutions in community affairs and proposes changes in the tax laws to encourage charitable contributions to private social agencies, including commitments of time, as well as money.

The Commission was especially critical of local television news programmes which it said “increasingly emphasize violence, outrageous conduct, and the negative aspects of our society at the expense of civic efforts to improve communities.” Likewise, the entertainment industry, which stresses “violence, sexual license, and the pursuit of immediate intense sensation, …must (be held) as accountable for civic harm as …the tobacco industry for physical harm,” according to the report.