Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
action. In a striking example of this, the New Deal involved a
renegotiation of the compact between citizens and government, in
which “the American Way of Life” came to include many new social
programs and governmental initiatives. Liberals in the United States
as well as in Europe had enormous faith in government’s capacities
to advance social progress.
As in the 1930s, the nation today faces not only external threats
like the growth of Islamic fundamentalism but also internal challenges.
Real wages of nonsupervisory workers have stagnated for
30 years, while social benefits—most important, employer-based
health insurance—have declined since 2000. We are surrounded by
growing inequalities, huge technological transformations, fraying
social ties, widespread feelings of powerlessness, and a materialistic,
consumerist, hedonistic mass culture that celebrates dog-eat-dog
competition.
Unlike the 1930s, intellectuals and the general public are far
more skeptical about state action as the solution. Multiple studies,
in the United States and around the world, have shown how expertdriven
government action inattentive to local cultures can devastate
communities. Republicans have had great success in charging,
“I trust the people; my opponent trusts the government,” as George
W. Bush put it in 2000. It is unlikely that progressives in the 21st century
will revive Laski’s belief that government is “the keystone of
the social arch.” A more promising approach is a model of democratic
governance in which the state is less a prime mover and more a
catalyst for multiple social actors.
Here there are traditions of catalytic public action to draw on
from the 1930s, parallel to the traditions of public professional work.
Post offices, local schools, soil conservation districts, public work
projects like the CCC and the WPA, and a host of other government
bodies and initiatives played roles as civic catalysts and embedded
civic centers of community life. As the research of civic scholars,
such as Carmen Sirianni and Scott Peters, has demonstrated, these
work-centered professional, land-grant, and governmental practices
continue as vital subterranean traditions to recover and build upon
in the making of a different paradigm of public action.
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