Does the Civic Renewal Movement Have a Future?

A civic ideal is an ideal of deliberative self-governance. People who participate in discussing what their own groups should do are being civic. Civic venues, institutions, and habits have waned since the mid-1990s. In the 1990s, a movement arose to restore them, under the banner of "civic renewal." This movement was carefully nonpartisan, often impartial about specific issues, and interested in creating alternative settings that could complement such basic political institutions as Congress and elections. As the condition of democracy has worsened in recent years, this approach looks inadequate or irrelevant. The most promising sources of civic renewal now are parties and social movements that have substantive agendas, such as racial justice, and that improve civic life as a collateral benefit.