Levine What Should We Do - Full Book Copy-Compressed

1
The Citizen’s Fundamental Question
I assume that you are a citizen, in the sense of someone who belongs to one or
more communities that you hope to improve. Your communities may range
from a city block or a religious congregation to the whole earth. As a citizen of
these communities, you seek to address their problems and influence their dir-
ections; but more than that, you want to make them through your thought, your
work, and your passion. You want to be a co-creator of the human world.
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As a good person, you ask, “What should I do?” But as a good citizen, you must
ask, “What should we do?” The question becomes plural for two reasons: no one
can accomplish much alone, and we must reason together to improve our opin-
ions and to check biases and self-interest. Reasoning together is an indispensable
way to think well about matters of public concern. To be sure, the individual per-
spective never vanishes, because people should reflect on which groups they be-
long to (membership is not always explicit, obvious, or voluntary), which ones
they should seek to join, and which ones they should exit. Those are matters of
individual ethics. But to be a citizen, one must also adopt the plural “we.”1
The citizen’s question—“What should we do?”—ends with an action verb be-
cause it is not enough to form and express opinions; citizens must actually affect
the world. They must decide under conditions of uncertainty and limited time,
and then act. (Refraining from action is a form of action for which members of a
group are responsible.) Acting and then reflecting on the results is an important
way to a make a group’s discussions and learning serious.
Importantly, the question is not “What should be done?” or “How should
things be?” These are the predominant questions in political theory, political phi-
losophy, and the study of public policy. They are often far too easy. For instance,
what should be done about the threat to the global climate? Carbon should be
taxed everywhere to reduce production, and the proceeds should be used to mit-
igate the harm of rising temperatures, with most of the funds going to the world’s
poor. The carbon tax might not even have to be very high, and other tax cuts
could offset it.2 I think this proposal is correct, but it is also empty. I cannot actu-
ally tax the world’s carbon; neither can you. We are not influential in any group
that has that power. Our responsibility and accountability vanish if we ask what
Copyright 2022. Oxford University Press.
1 Portions of c hapters 1, 2, and 3 appeared in Levine 2019 and are reprinted here with permission.
2 Metcalf 2019.
What Should We Do?. Peter Levine, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197570494.003.0001
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2 What Should We Do?
should be done instead of what we should do, where “we” refers to a group in
which we have tangible agency.
The opposite pitfall is to be satisfied with individual actions or shared volun-
tary decisions by small groups. A family or a few friends can agree to turn off
their lights and stop eating beef to save carbon, but 7.5 billion other human be-
ings will go on as before. The hard question is how any group in which I have
genuine agency can affect large problems. A good citizen does not shy away from
that question because it is difficult.
The “should” in “What should we do?” is also essential. Good citizenship is
not about doing what we want, or what our biases or interests or norms tell us
to do. It is about struggling to pursue the best ends with the right means. We
are responsible for altering our wants, biases, and interests to make them better.
Since good ends and means cannot simply be looked up, the pursuit of moral im-
provement is intellectually difficult. We know that we can be wrong about right
and wrong, for all the people who have sincerely believed in slavery, patriarchy,
and violence have been badly misguided—and we share the limitations of those
fellow human beings. But although we can be wrong, we must try to be right. The
good citizen does not shy away from the question “what should we do?” because
the answers are contested.
Finally, the word “what” in this question matters, because the good citizen
must be concerned about the options: their costs, risks, and probable outcomes.
Empirical information is essential in this analysis. When time is scarce, addi-
tional empirical investigation can be too costly or time-consuming, but the good
citizen is not afraid to face the implications of the available evidence.
By putting the emphasis on what we should do, I am not suggesting that eve-
ryone bears primary responsibility for addressing every issue. You may be the
victim of a social injustice that someone else has created or has the best oppor-
tunity to remedy. In such cases, it is most important for them to decide what they
are obliged to do to improve your situation. Not every problem is your problem.
Nevertheless, “What should we do?” remains an important question for vir-
tually all of us. Even if the main moral responsibility lies with someone else, the
only thing we can control is what we do. We may decide that we should demand
justice from another person or group, but making a demand is also a form of
action that we choose to take. In fact, making demands on “target authorities”
is the characteristic activity of social movements;3 and social movements are
composed of people who ask, “What should we do?” It’s just that their goal is to
compel other people to take more responsibility.
Furthermore, acting is not merely a price we must pay in order to improve
the world. It can also be a benefit that we reap, since exercising agency can be
3 Tilly 2004, 7.
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The Citizen’s Fundamental Question 3
an aspect of a good life. Although we should encourage—and sometimes even

compel—other people to ask what they should do (the focus of chapter 6), it is also
worth asking that question on our own behalf, regardless of our circumstances.
One important demand that social movements make on target authorities—
usually, national governments—is to change who counts as a citizen in the legal
sense. Two leaders and thinkers whom I will consider at length in this book are
famous for making such demands. Mohandas K. Gandhi wanted the people of
India to leave the British Empire and become citizens of a free India. Martin
Luther King Jr. wanted African Americans to become full citizens of the United
States; he endorsed a “revolution to ‘get in.’ ”4 Their demands remind us—if a
reminder were necessary—that the question of who holds which kinds of mem-
bership in which political entities is a serious matter. The modern state has a
profound influence on most aspects of society. In particular, its laws and policies
regarding associations may determine which other groups, apart from the state
itself, we may join or leave. And it offers a kind of membership—legal citizen-
ship—that is often not under our control. Whereas we may decide to form a vol-
untary association with like-minded peers to address a common concern, a state
may tell us that we are in or out, whether we like it or not.5
Therefore, the question of legal citizenship in states has generated a substan-
tial and valuable literature. These are some of the empirical questions it ad-
dresses: Who has which forms of legal citizenship in which states? (Note that de
facto citizenship may differ from rights on paper.) And why, in various contexts,
is legal citizenship defined in particular ways and protected for some while being
denied to others? For example, why were the founding documents of the United
States so reticent about the definition of citizenship?6 The ethical questions in-
clude: Who ought to have which rights in each polity? Who is responsible for
remedying any unjust citizenship laws and policies?7
These issues are germane to this book and arise periodically in my analysis.
Nevertheless, my focus is different, for two reasons. First, I adopt and defend a
“polycentric” view of politics, in which the state is not a monolith that exercises
4 M. L. King 1966/1991, 58. Also discussed in Mantena 2018, 91.

5 Cf. E. Cohen 2009, 21: “Democratic theory that suggests that citizens make citizenship through
their actions [a fair description of this book] exhibits a particularly influential and yet problematic
normative presumption. This line of inquiry is premised on the notion that it is citizens themselves
who determine the content of their membership through specific forms of voluntary political beha-
vior. But engaging in acts of citizenship does not automatically impart citizenship, let alone recogni-
tion of that citizenship by peers or political institutions.” On p. 29, she adds, “some political authority
must identify which acts will be privileged as acts of citizenship, and whose performance of these acts
will be regarded as citizenly.”
6 Smith 1999 (118) explains that reticence as a result of unresolved disagreements between “cen-
tralists and decentralists, large and small states, and opponents and advocates of slavery.”
7 An example of an influential principle is Robert A. Dahl’s: “Every adult subject to a government
and its laws must be presumed to be qualified as, and has an unqualified right to be, a member of the
demos.” Dahl 1989, 127.
ultimate sovereignty. Rather, it is a name for a whole array of offices and bureaus,
officials, rules, norms, and laws that may be in mutual tension and that inevitably
shade into other institutions that are not strictly governmental. Many non-state
groups and institutions exercise power over governmental bodies. The state is
in the midst of associations of all kinds, not the fundamental basis of all other
associations.
Second, even when we decide that a government’s policies about who should
have which rights are the most pressing issues, the main question for us re-
mains: what should we do about it? Although it is worth analyzing citizenship
rights in a given state and arguing that they should be defined or enforced differ-
ently, we cannot stop with such analysis. If the status quo is unjust, we should try
to change who has legal citizenship. To do that will probably require joining or
forming groups other than the state that can advocate change, whether they are
lobbies, social movements, or guerrilla armies. So my focus is on membership in
a wide range of groups, in a world in which membership is not always voluntary,
and in which people are often included or excluded against their will.8
To take this stance is to be “republican” in one ancient sense of that word.
Etymologically, a republic is the “public thing” (or “public good”). In this book,
I assume that a very wide range of goods belong to their associated publics: the
safety of a street belongs to the neighborhood; a country’s laws belong to its citi-
zenry; and the global climate belongs to us all. These publics have both the right
and the responsibility to exercise ownership of their respective goods—with the
question of who collectively owns which goods constantly arising. Collective
goods are compatible with (and often essential for) private goods. For instance,
the safety of a street is a public good even if all the buildings have private owners.
To own a public good is to ask what we should do about it. It means resisting the
passive question, “What should be done?” Classical republics were born when
the public wrested responsibility from a monarch, a clique, a clergy, or a foreign
power, thereby adopting an active voice.9
To do a good job of collectively governing any good requires appropriate vir-
tues and institutions. Some of these virtues are discursive: good speaking, rea-
soning, and listening. But discursive virtues will not suffice; people must also
work, sacrifice, and sometimes fight to defend their common goods. It is natural
to use the word “civic” for the skills, habits, virtues, and institutional forms that
enable us to govern common goods well; thus we speak of “civic discourse,” “civic
8
In the terms of Tully 2008 (8), this is a “civic,” not a “civil/national,” notion of citizenship.
9
Cf. Constant 1819: “the liberty of the ancients . . . consists of exercising collectively, but directly,
many parts of absolute sovereignty, [and the right] to deliberate, in a public space, about war and
peace, to ratify treaties of alliance with foreigners, to vote laws, pronounce decisions, examine the
accounts, actions, and management of officials, to compel them to appear before the whole people, to
accuse them, to condemn or acquit them.”
engagement,” “civic associations,” “civic forums,” and “civic courage.” This book
is a contribution to civic republican theory, although I dissent from some uses of
that phrase.
It can also be seen as a contribution to democratic theory. “Democracy” is
defined in many ways, but I find it most useful as the name of a system in which
voting plays an important role and in which everyone who is a full member gets
an equitable share of the vote. To make voting legitimate and valuable may re-
quire additional features, from freedom of speech and rule of law to some degree
of social equality. These features buttress the central architectural element of a
democracy, the vote, whose purpose is to equalize power.10 It seems likely that
democracy, so defined, is the best system for governing the public goods that are
the laws of most (perhaps all) sovereign states. Therefore, states should generally
be civic republican democracies. It is a more complex question whether other
important entities—such as religious denominations, professions, academic dis-
ciplines, computer networks, extended family and kinship groups, markets, and
the earth as a whole—should be democracies. It is possible for people to own and
govern these things without ever voting. Still, all should be civic and republican,
because in each case, a group must define and govern itself and its goods wisely.
From Ethics to Politics
This book’s question, “What should we do?,” has a plural verb because politics
exists once people belong to groups of any kind, from small voluntary associ-
ations to nation-states. The plural question raises a new set of issues that are not
directly addressed in individual ethics.
To start, problems of complicity arise once you belong to a group. Consider
a case like the firebombing of Dresden by Allied forces during World War II,
which probably caused 35,000 civilian deaths on one night and did nothing to
advance the Allied victory over Nazism. The firestorm sucked oxygen out of the
air and caused civilians in shelters to die of asphyxiation. It was started by bombs
from one thousand airplanes. Eight thousand crewmen flew in those planes,
and “many thousands further were involved in planning and support.” Exactly
the same number of deaths would have occurred if 999 bombers had flown in-
stead of one thousand. Thus, as Christopher Kutz observes, each crewman or
10 Robert Dahl defines democracy as “voting equality at the decisive stage” (Dahl 1989, 109–11).
I find this narrow definition useful for analytic purpose; it allows us to investigate what is needed to
make democracy work well and what outcomes democracies accomplish. If we load other features
into the definition, the resulting system (e.g., voting plus deliberation, or voting plus social equality)
may be more attractive, but it’s harder to analyze whether voting equality is necessary or sufficient.
ground-support person could rightly say, “I made no difference, and I had no

control over the outcome.”11
Indeed, because these people did not separately cause the firestorm, no one
should accuse them of homicide. But they do have a deep and permanent moral
connection to the Dresden firestorm, unlike someone who was home in Iowa at
the time. This moral connection requires actions and attitudes on their part: for
instance, regret, memory, confession, self-scrutiny, and perhaps active support
for peace with postwar Germany. We should consider as morally defective an-
yone who says, “I was part of a group that killed 35,000 civilians for no mil-
itary purpose, but I had no effect on the numbers killed, so I don’t care what
happened.”
Kutz argues for two principles: (1) “I am accountable for what others do when
I intentionally participate in the wrong they do or the harm they cause”; and
(2) “I am accountable for the harm or wrong we do together, independently of
the actual difference I make.” Kutz explores difficulties that arise when it’s not
clear whether a person is an intentional participant in a group. If you buy a stock,
you are complicit in what the company does even if your investment made no
difference, but what if you buy a tube of toothpaste from a company or walk
through its building?
Complicity means involvement in the harmful or unethical activities of a
group. The mirror image is one’s positive obligation to be loyal to groups under
appropriate circumstances. A group can accomplish more than an individual
can—whether for good or evil—as long as it holds together. To form and main-
tain a functioning group is an achievement, requiring individuals to coordinate
their behaviors and often to sacrifice for the whole. Because groups have poten-
tial and are vulnerable, it can be wise to support less-than-ideal behavior in order
to maintain the group for another day. In Talking to Strangers, Danielle Allen em-
phasizes that democracy always involves sacrifice, and the amount and type of
sacrifice is usually unequal.12 Long before her, W. E. B. Du Bois had written this
three-word sentence: “Organization is sacrifice.” He elaborated:
You cannot have absolutely your own way—you cannot be a free lance; you
cannot be strongly and fiercely individual if you belong to an organization. For
this reason some folk hunt and work alone. It is their nature. But the world’s
greatest work must be done by team work. This demands organization, and that
is the sacrifice of some individual will and wish to the good of all.13
11 See Kutz 2000, 115–21.

12 D. Allen 2004, c hapter 3 (“Sacrifice, a Democratic Fact”), 25–36.
13 Du Bois 1920, 8.
For someone as fiercely principled and intellectually independent as Du Bois,

this realization that “Organization is sacrifice” must have come hard; but he saw
a truth. To be able to ask the question, “What should we do?” implies that all have
given—and some may have given much more than others—to create the “we”
that acts together. There comes a point when the sacrifice is too high or too un-
equal to sustain (Du Bois later quit the NAACP over a matter of principle), but
some sacrifice is necessary to create the conditions for politics in the first place.
In groups, we decide what we should do together—not necessarily dem-
ocratically or equitably, but as a result of several people’s influence. Since each
of us is fallible, and other perspectives have value, it may be wise to yield to a
group’s judgment even if you would have done something different on your own.
A group offers multiple perspectives, which ought to challenge individual views
of what is right to do. You may be especially inclined to go along with a group’s
decisions if its processes were equitable and deliberative. The virtues of intellec-
tual humility and civility argue for supporting the group’s decisions. However,
this is the wrong choice if the group is misguided. You retain the option of exit if
you don’t believe voice will work and loyalty is misplaced.14
Three prevalent ways of addressing the individual’s ethical question—“What
should I do?”—are: (1) to universalize, asking what you would want anyone to
do who was similarly situated; (2) to maximize, asking how you can do the most
good for the most people, given your resources and options; or (3) to exhibit
and develop virtues, such as courage, generosity, and truthfulness.15 Although
philosophers love scenarios in which these methods yield conflicting answers,
in everyday life, they typically generate different reasons for the same moral con-
clusions.16 Each of the prevalent methods for addressing individual ethical ques-
tions can also be applied in groups, but with important modulations.
First, instead of universalizing in a hypothetical mode, we can create actual
covenants that bind all. In ethics, a person asks, “What would I want anyone to
do if she faced my situation?” In a group, however, we can ask, “What must eve-
ryone actually do in situations like this, and how will we set and enforce penalties
for those who fail to do it?” Sometimes, actual covenants should differ from eth-
ical ideals, because it can be wise to overlook or even accept non-ideal behavior
in order to preserve liberty or to maintain a group whose members would quit if
the rules were too strict. That means that the logic of real covenants differs from
the logic of hypotheticals.
Second, instead of maximizing the benefits of individual actions, we can max-
imize the benefits of what a group does together. The main difference is that we
14Hirschman 1970.
15See, e.g., Baron, Philip & Slote 1997.
16 The famous trolley problem (Thomson 1985) offers a fictional scenario that poses a conflict be-
tween maximizing and universalizing.
must consider the group’s future capacity to act effectively. In many cases, a group
that tried to do the most possible good for the whole world would dissolve, be-
cause the level of sacrifice expected of its members would be too great, and they
would exit. Since the existence of a group permits deliberation and coordinated
action, which are impossible for individuals, dissolution may be too high a price
to pay.
Third, we can consider the virtues of a group—virtues understood, in an
Aristotelian way, as dispositions that are reflected in, and reinforced by, actions.
In other words, virtues are habits that are durable but can be deliberately shaped.
Groups as well as people can have virtues, such as courage, temperance, magna-
nimity, etc. To cite an example developed by Donald Beggs, the individual mem-
bers of a knitting club may not be concerned enough about people with HIV/
AIDS that they would take action on their own. But the group (possibly under
external influence) can develop a strong tradition of knitting for AIDS patients.
Then the group has durable dispositions or virtues, such as empathy and inclu-
siveness.17 Groups also have “epistemic” virtues or vices that make them good or
bad at understanding the world, for example, an ethnocentric group is bad at un-
derstanding outsiders.18 Developing and maintaining virtues requires different
strategies when a group (instead of an individual) is the thing that has character
traits.
We will revisit these issues of loyalty and complicity in chapter 7, equipped
with a more robust theoretical structure for thinking about collective action.
The “I” and the “We”
This discussion has assumed a simple dichotomy of individuals and groups. That
scheme must be complicated in three ways.
First, individuals do not really precede groups. Anyone who thinks in a lan-
guage is already part of a linguistic community. People who ask, “What should
we do as a city?” were probably influenced by the history, norms, and prevailing
values of that city, which had existed before they did. Even if they react critically
to the dominant opinions of the city, the city still influenced them by causing
their reaction. These are examples of the dependence of individuals on groups
that we never chose to join.
Second, groups are not merely accumulations of individuals. Consider these
statements: “A group just is the people who make it up.” “If a group can be said
to have intentions at all, its intentions must somehow be the intentions of its
17 Beggs 2003, 468.

18 Anderson 2012.
members.” Brian Epstein criticizes an assumption that is implicit in these state-

ments: namely, that social phenomena can be fully explained by talking about
people.19 After all, is Starbucks composed of the people who work for it? Clearly
not, because the coffee beans and water, the physical buildings, the company’s
stock value, the customers and vendors, its iconic logo, the rival coffee shops in
the same markets, and many other factors make it the company that we know, just
as much as its employees do. Indeed, its personnel could all turn over through an
orderly process, and it would still be Starbucks.20
Likewise, when the Supreme Court decided to end de jure racial segregation
in schools, was its intention a function of the preferences of the nine individual
justices? No, because in order for them to intend to overturn the ban, they had to
be legitimate Supreme Court justices within a legal system that presented them
with this decision at a given moment. I can form an opinion of Brown v Board of
Education, but I cannot rule on that case, or seriously intend to rule on it, because
I was not a Supreme Court justice in 1954. Nine men were justices at the moment
when the Brown case came before the court because of a whole series of deci-
sions by other people: presidents who nominated them, senators who confirmed
them, eighteenth-century founders who wrote those rules, state legislators who
chose those founders, and so on back into history.
In general, Epstein writes, “facts about a group are not determined just by facts
about its members.”21 And it’s not just other human beings who matter; non-
human phenomena can be implicated in complicated ways. For instance, the
Supreme Court is in session on certain days, and on all other days, a “vote” by a
justice would not really be a vote. What makes us say that a certain day has ar-
rived is the movement of the earth around the sun. So the motion of a heavenly
body is implicated in the existence and the intentions of the Supreme Court. The
sun isn’t a cause of the Supreme Court’s decisions, but it is a ground of it. Human
beings can intentionally ground facts about groups in circumstances beyond the
control of their members, or indeed in facts that are under no human being’s
control (such as the motion of the earth). It can be wise to limit the power of
group members in just these ways. Epstein writes, “Our ability to anchor social
facts to have nearly arbitrary grounds . . . makes the social world so flexible and
powerful.”22
Third, when two or more groups interact with each other, both individual
human beings and larger institutions may interrelate. For instance, when the for-
eign ministers of the world’s most powerful countries meet in a room, we could
simplify the situation and say that these “states” are negotiating. But the meeting
19 Epstein 2015.
20 Epstein 2015, 47–49.
21 Epstein 2015, 272.
22 Epstein 2015, 168.
actually involves a limited number of people who stand in complex relationships

with many other people, from the other diplomats in the room, to their own re-
spective heads of state back home, to the ordinary citizens whose support (tacit
or active) is essential even in dictatorships. One of many factors that may deter-
mine the outcome of the meeting is whether the foreign minister of, say, France,
identifies more with her own interests, her ministry, her party, her nation, the
club of foreign ministers, the European Union, and/or the world. If we zero in
on her ministry, we find that it is both an accumulation of people with whom
she relates and—just as I noted earlier of Starbucks—a configuration of durable
assets, traditions, and rules, all influenced by people outside its headquarters on
the Quai d’Orsay.
In short, it is impossible to distinguish sharply between the individual and the
group, the “I” and the “we.” Which pronoun is most appropriate is often a choice
that requires judgment. The focus of this book is on the “we,” with an understanding
that the “I” always remains as well.
Three Categories of Problems for Groups
At all scales, citizens confront myriad concrete issues: poverty, tyranny, crime, racial
injustice, environmental degradation, and many more. These issues are too various
and contextual to be addressed by any single theory. However, beneath such specific
challenges lie three general categories of problems. Political theory that is useful to
citizens must address these three categories.
First, we often struggle to coordinate our separate interests and choices to ac-
complish valuable ends. Here I refer to problems of collective action. When these
problems defeat us, we fail to achieve goals that everyone would agree are worthy.
For example, even the many nations that agree that carbon emissions threaten the
earth’s environment have so far failed to enact agreements that would restrict their
respective use of carbon sufficiently. Most lament this failure; it nevertheless persists
as a collective-action problem.
Second, we often disagree about what outcomes we should value or what
means are ethical and appropriate. Some people hold extremely bad opinions of
those questions. Their values pose a threat, and the fact that they hold them re-
minds us that we, too, could be wrong. We may try to identify the right values by
discussing contested issues with other people, but such discussions can go badly
for a set of reasons that I will call problems of discourse. In 2015, the US Senate,
frequently called the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” defeated an amend-
ment that would have expressed the body’s opinion that “climate change is real;
and human activity significantly contributes to climate change.”23 Considering

the overwhelming evidence in favor of those clauses, this would seem to be a
failure of discourse.
The philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas writes that any group of
people who communicate about what they should do (my gloss of his phrase
“communicative action”) must “seek to avoid two risks: the risk of not coming
to understanding, that is, of disagreement or misunderstanding, and the risk of
a plan of action miscarrying, that is, of failure.”24 Those risks name the two cat-
egories of problem mentioned so far, and they often interrelate. For example,
perhaps the US Senate failed to reach an understanding about the facts of cli-
mate change (a discourse failure) because reaching an agreement about the truth
would have pressured the body to enact regulations, which many senators op-
posed for reasons of collective action—because they preferred other people in
other nations to pay the price for environmental protection.
In any case, there is a third category as well. People may not see themselves as
participants in a group that should decide anything together in the first place.
They may not recognize a “we,” but rather an “us” versus a “them,” separated in
fundamental ways, such as by differences in identity. The line between us and
them can run through a group in which some dominate others. Or people may
be treated as members of a group yet deny their identity as part of it. Gandhi’s
movement essentially wanted to leave the British Empire; King’s movement de-
manded full inclusion in the democracy of the United States. Both leaders faced
problems of identity-based exclusion that often contribute to the difficulty of ad-
dressing shared problems.
23 Senate Amendment 58 to Senate Amendment 2, 114th Congress (2015–2016), via Congress.gov.

24 Habermas 1987, vol. 2, 127.
2
A Case
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
The three categories of problems introduced in chapter 1—collective action,

discourse, and exclusion—are prominent in a well-known American example,
the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–1956. This was a textbook case of a so-
cial movement episode that accomplished its immediate goals despite severe
obstacles. The boycott catapulted the twenty-six-year-old Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. into international prominence and launched similar episodes in many
American cities across the South and then also the North. The case is now quite
old, which raises questions about whether its lessons still apply. I return to that
topic in chapter 8, where I discuss current social movements against white su-
premacy and ask whether the ideas explored in this chapter remain relevant. For
now, the classic example of the Montgomery bus boycott serves to illustrate the
three categories of problems that civic actors face and demonstrates that these
problems can sometimes be overcome.
Within hours of Rosa Parks’s arrest, many of the most prominent Black cit-
izens of Montgomery, Alabama—including pastors, educators, union leaders,
and businesspeople—had gathered in a church basement to discuss and decide
what they should do. Like other groups before and since, they had to choose
objectives, targets, tactics, rhetorical framings, and rules for making their own
decisions. The fact that they accomplished their immediate goals might suggest
that their objectives were too modest, that conditions were favorable, or that so-
lutions were obvious. In fact, these decision makers faced extraordinarily diffi-
cult choices. They could not predict the responses from other members of their
own community, their opponents, courts, or observers across the nation and
world. Under conditions of uncertainty and unpredictability, they had to choose
among worthy principles and goals that seemed to conflict. Groups of civic ac-
tors across time and around the world often find themselves in similar circum-
stances. After summarizing the case, I will identify some of the generic problems
for civic actors that arose for the boycott’s organizers.
The story certainly begins before the boycott. Long before then, African
Americans—and Black Alabamans, in particular—had built substantial organ-
izations and networks that were resources for resistance to white supremacy.
These included Black-led churches, schools, colleges and universities, businesses,
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197570494.003.0002
The Montgomery Bus Boycott 13
associations, and at least one important labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping
Car Porters. Such organizations represented social capital—a concept explored
in more detail in c hapter 4.
The sociologist Aldon Morris credited Black churches with creating forums
for discussion, identifying and training leaders, and offering symbols around
which individuals could cohere. In the decades before the civil rights move-
ment got going, some well-placed and sympathetic observers had argued that
the strength of the Black church was an obstacle to social change, because it di-
verted attention away from political activism.1 But the 1950s showed that deter-
mined leaders could redeploy the assets of the Black church to create a political
movement. According to Morris, the “presence of indigenous resources” did
not guarantee success, but leaders could “re-direct and transform” available as-
sets to “develop and sustain social protest.”2 Recent scholarship has emphasized
the importance of other forms of African American social capital in addition
to churches. Some categories of organization (e.g., Black newspapers) were al-
ready political before 1910, and some (e.g., beauty salons) were owned and led
by women.3
African American organizers had also accumulated relevant experience. As
early as 1942, the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) had organized sit-ins and
other forms of nonviolent civil disobedience. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, African
Americans had even conducted a bus boycott similar to the Montgomery bus
boycott in 1953.
These organizations, networks, and experiments nurtured leaders. For ex-
ample, by the time she was arrested on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks had served
as a professional staff member of the Alabama NAACP and had been an active
participant in the League of Women Voters. When a young African American
woman, Mrs. Recy Taylor, was gang-raped by White men, Parks had helped
to form the Committee for Equal Justice for her, a significant effort to combat
both white supremacy and violence against women. Parks was employed as a
domestic worker by one of the most progressive White couples in Montgomery,
Clifford and Virginia Durr, who helped her to participate in trainings in nonvi-
olent civil disobedience at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. One of her
mentors at Highlander was Septima Clark, often called the “Queen Mother” or
“Grandmother” of the civil rights movement.
The boycott began after Parks boarded a Montgomery bus that was racially
segregated by law, with Whites seated at the front and Blacks at the back. Black
female domestic workers predominated as passengers on Montgomery’s buses
1 Brown & Brown 2003, 634, summarizing arguments by E. Franklin Frazier and Gunnar Myrdal.
2 Morris 1986, 78, 291.
3 Ling 2006; Jones 2010.
and were frequently sexually harassed as they interacted with the White male
drivers. Parks sat in the “colored” section but was ordered (with several others) to
renounce her seat to a White rider. She refused and was arrested. The charge was
refusing to give up a seat in the “colored” section.
When Parks was arrested, she called her mother, who called E. D. Nixon, the
president of both the Montgomery branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters and the state’s NAACP chapter. Nixon called Clifford Durr, the White
liberal lawyer. After Nixon and Durr posted bail for Parks and she agreed to con-
test her arrest, Nixon made a list of people he would call the next morning, in-
cluding two young Black pastors, Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Meanwhile, someone else called Fred Grey, a Black attorney in town, who, in
turn, called Jo Ann Robinson, who was a professor at the local Black college,
Alabama State, and the president of the Women’s Political Council, an African
American women’s group. Robinson assembled some of her friends on the
Alabama State campus late on the night of Parks’s arrest and used the college
mimeograph machine to make flyers announcing a public meeting in support of
Parks. It was Grey who called Robinson, but she had also worked with Nixon and
had served as a leader in King’s church.
These connections are examples of the ties among a network of African
American leaders (plus a few supportive Whites) in Montgomery. The day
after Parks’s arrest, about fifty local Black leaders gathered in the basement of
King’s church.4 Most of them probably knew each other already. Collectively,
they controlled notable assets, from Alabama State’s mimeograph machine to
several churches and a union hall that offered reasonably safe places to meet.
Montgomery’s Black-owned taxi companies could ferry commuters to work if
there was a bus boycott. Lawyers and people with financial assets were among
those who convened in the church. Their discussion is an exemplar of a group
deciding what they should do.
At first, their natural leader appeared to be Rev. L. Roy Bennett, who was
president of the Black ministers’ group in Montgomery. This group, the
Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, also looked like the right organization
to coordinate any activism. However, Bennett exasperated most of the other ac-
tivists by lecturing at length and refusing to share the floor. The other existing
Black organizations in Montgomery either had narrow memberships or were
vulnerable if they took a prominent role. For example, Jo Ann Robinson could
be fired from Alabama State if the Women’s Political Council, which she led,
was seen as too political. A group of activists decided to create a brand-new as-
sociation, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). They persuaded
a somewhat reluctant King to be its first president and elected Bennett as the
4 Branch 1988, 128–133; Garrow 1986, 12–18.
vice president, managing that transition through private conversations, not a re-
corded vote.5
The Montgomery Improvement Association first met in the Alabama Negro
Baptist Center, until the Center’s White donors demanded the radicals be thrown
out; then in the Citizens Club, until the city threatened to revoke its license; then
temporarily in the First Baptist Church building; and finally, in the Bricklayers
Union Hall. “Here the white community could not force us out, since most of
the members and all of the officers of the union that owned the building were
Negroes.” In this passage, King quickly names four existing Black organizations
that were able to offer the physical capital of space because of their social capital.
Overall, King writes, “Labor, civic, and social groups were our stanch supporters,
and in many communities new organizations were founded just to support the
protest.”6
The MIA’s elected officers met regularly and made key decisions throughout
the Montgomery campaign. Thousands of individuals from Montgomery’s
African American community joined and contributed to the MIA. At mass
meetings held in churches, everyone would vote by calling out “aye” or “nay” on
such matters as whether to start (or, later, to stop) the bus boycott. However, the
board had already decided on a course of action, and the mass votes merely rati-
fied their decisions.
As the MIA considered and reconsidered the question, “What should we
do?,” they had to address the difficulty of coordinating individual acts of resist-
ance. Before Rosa Parks, other individuals had refused to give up their seats on
segregated buses (including a young woman named Claudette Colvin earlier
in Montgomery in 1955). Individuals had protested segregation in many other
ways as well. However, if one or a few people resisted at a time, they would not
make much positive difference, and they would risk violent reprisals. On the
other hand, if thousands of people resisted at the same time, they would be safer
and they could have a major impact.7 When thousands of Black Montgomerians
boycotted the city’s buses, they did so safely and defeated the bus company.
Fear and pessimism could make the challenge of coordination more difficult.
By 1955, Black Americans had experienced 336 years of slavery and then vio-
lently enforced white supremacy.8 Many people responded by exiting the state
entirely. About one third of Alabama’s African Americans had participated in
the “Great Migration” to cities in the North.9 Their exit gave Montgomery’s civil
rights movement connections to family members outside the South and probably
5 Garrow 1986, 18–22; cf. Branch 1988, 137, for a somewhat different account.
6 M.L. King 1958/2010, Kindle loc. 1139, 1094.
7 This is the overall topic of Chong 1991. For the Montgomery Bus Boycott, see 101–2.
8 Thornton 2018.
9 Gregory n.d.
encouraged Southern authorities to moderate their racist policies to some extent

to prevent further loss of the labor force. Isabel Wilkerson writes, “Their world—
the former Confederacy—was made better in part by the pressures put upon it by
those who made the sacrifice to leave it.”10 However, the immediate challenge in
1955 was to organize a collective political voice instead of individual exit.
This was a logistical challenge as well as a motivational one. Enabling almost
all Black commuters to boycott city buses meant giving 17,500 riders alternate
ways to get to work each day for months. At first, Black-owned taxi companies
carried the workers for the price of a bus ticket, but then the city threatened to
enforce a minimum-fare law. Next, more than 150 people volunteered to drive
boycotters to work in their own cars. These volunteers “responded immediately,”
King recalls, but “they started out simply cruising the streets of Montgomery
with no particular system.” Many commuters must have missed getting available
rides. Ministers responded by calling for new volunteers from their pulpits, and
even more drivers came out, but that meant (King writes) that “the real job was
just beginning—that of working out some system for these three hundred-odd
automobiles, to replace their haphazard movement around the city.”11
Committees were formed and roles were assigned. It was easy to identify
morning meeting points, because African Americans lived in dense urban
neighborhoods. But “we discovered that we were at a loss in selecting [after-
noon] pick-up stations,” because domestic workers were employed all over the
White neighborhoods. Two Black postal workers “who knew the city from end to
end” helped design regular routes. King recalls all this organizational work with
evident pride and concludes, “Altogether the operation of the motor pool repre-
sented organization and coordination at their best. Reporters and visitors from
all over the country looked upon the system as a unique accomplishment.”12
To achieve this victory, the leaders of the Montgomery bus boycott had to dis-
cuss and then make fundamental choices. These choices were the substance of
their deliberations.
First, they had to choose objectives: what to strive for. In any movement, var-
ious members may favor different objectives, their objectives may change over
time, and the movement may not explicitly disclose all of its goals. Nevertheless,
at a given time, a movement typically strives for something, and it has the power
to choose that objective.
In the case of the Montgomery bus boycott, the objective sometimes seemed
very narrow. The MIA originally wanted to prevent Black bus passengers from
having to give up their seats to White passengers when the White section of the
10 Wilkerson 2010, 527.

11 M.L. King 1958/2010, Kindle loc. 1041.
bus was full. In other words, they did not originally contest segregation on city
buses, just the additional injustice of having to give up seats in the Black section
at the back. The NAACP was critical of this objective because it sought to abolish
segregation on all transportation and did not want to concede that separate but
equal buses could ever be acceptable.
However, even on the night when the MIA voted to boycott buses, King de-
picted their objective as much deeper and broader than changing who could sit
where on buses. He told the mass meeting of the MIA, “We, the disinherited of
this land, we who have been oppressed so long, are tired of going through the
long night of captivity. And now we are reaching out for the daybreak of freedom
and justice and equality.”13
A movement must also choose one or more organizations, agencies, or people
as its targets and create costs or difficulties for them. The MIA targeted the
Montgomery City Lines Inc. (the city’s bus company) by organizing a boycott
that would cost the company thousands of fares each day.
Other potential targets could have been chosen. For example, during the boy-
cott, Montgomery’s police commissioner joined the White Citizens Council, an
organization explicitly committed to preserving white supremacy. The commis-
sioner, the police department, or the White Citizens Council could have been
chosen as the main target, as could downtown stores or the Democratic Party.
The MIA chose the bus company because they saw a particular vulnerability that
they could exploit: the city’s buses depended on Black riders who could refuse to
ride and find other ways to work.
The MIA told the bus company and the City of Montgomery that Black com-
muters would go back to riding the city’s buses if: (1) Black riders did not have
to give up their seats to Whites; (2) drivers treated Black passengers courteously;
and (3) some Blacks were hired as drivers. These three points were their initial
demands. Meanwhile, Fred Grey and others involved with the MIA sued the city
and the bus lines to end all segregation in public transportation. They ultimately
won their case.14 They made different demands in court because a federal lawsuit
was a different context from a boycott. Demands are different from objectives
(often narrower and more modest), and they vary depending on the target.
The MIA also had to choose a strategy. Its main strategy was to organize and
sustain a boycott of the city’s buses for many months. Meanwhile, the MIA
sued to end segregation in federal court. When the police indicted eighty-eight
leaders of the boycott (including King), these leaders surrendered voluntarily
and made their imprisonment into an act of nonviolent resistance that brought
13 M.L. King 1955.

14 Browder v. Gayle, 142 F. Supp. 707 (1956).
international media attention to their cause. They also presented their case to re-
porters and raised money from supporters across the country and overseas.
These were the strategies of the MIA, but they could have taken other actions
instead or as well. Later, the civil rights movement would often violate police
or court orders against marching so that the police would arrest them and they
would fill jails with thousands of supporters. They organized sit-ins, they regis-
tered voters, and they held large funeral ceremonies for martyrs. In Memphis in
1968, they supported a major strike. The civil rights movement could have em-
ployed violence against people or property, although it chose not to.
The movement also had to decide what to say and how to say it to various
audiences. The MIA made Martin Luther King Jr. into its main spokesperson,
and King gave speeches that are still widely read, as well as many interviews to
reporters. Soon after the movement’s success in Montgomery, he published a
book, Stride toward Freedom, that presented his early views more fully to a global
audience.
During the mass meeting that launched the boycott, King described Parks’s
recent arrest this way:
Mrs. Rosa Parks is a fine person. And, since it had to happen, I’m happy that it
happened to a person like Mrs. Parks, for nobody can doubt the boundless out-
reach of her integrity. Nobody can doubt the height of her character. Nobody
can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teach-
ings of Jesus. And I’m happy since it had to happen, it happened to a person
that nobody can call a disturbing factor in the community. Mrs. Parks is a fine
Christian person, unassuming, and yet there is integrity and character there.
And just because she refused to get up, she was arrested.15
Like any exercise in public communication, this passage reflects choices. The
MIA did not have to choose Martin Luther King as its leader. Rosa Parks could
have spoken in addition to King or instead of him. Or King could have spoken
about Parks’s experience as a militant activist and her long record of fighting
sexual violence against Black women. Instead, he chose to emphasize the invol-
untary nature of her arrest and her Christian faith. During the boycott and later,
King invoked American history, democracy, law, Christianity, and racial justice
in specific ways to influence fellow members of the Black community, relatively
sympathetic Whites, majorities of Americans, and global audiences.
The leaders of the Montgomery Bus Boycott had to make concrete choices of
objectives, targets, demands, strategies, and rhetorical framings; and they had
to design procedures to make these decisions collectively and implement the
15 M.L. King 1955. He tells the story in a similar way in M.L. King 1958/2010, Kindle loc. 651–652.
results successfully. They applied detailed information and insights about their
own circumstances. They also displayed an impressive understanding of more
general problems that typically confront civic actors. Here I will itemize these
problems and consider how they arose in the Montgomery case.
Collective Action Problems
In general, it is difficult for people to coordinate their individual actions to accom-

plish a common goal, even when they agree on the goal. After Reconstruction,
white supremacists in Alabama had built an effective means of coordination.
The state collected taxes (enforced, mandatory payments) and used the resulting
funds for police, prisons, segregated schools, and other governmental functions
that reinforced white supremacy, regardless of how individuals might feel about
that system. Influential state officials also belonged to private associations like
the White Citizens Council and the Klan and could use extrajudicial means to
reinforce their legal powers. Voters influenced the state through elections (which
are mechanisms for turning individual preferences into collective decisions), but
Whites outnumbered African Americans at the state level, most Black residents
were disenfranchised, and an association that was formally committed to white
supremacy, the Alabama Democratic Party, controlled electoral outcomes.
These were strategies for coordinating individual action to produce a common
end: white supremacy. To disrupt that system, Black Alabamans had to organize
their own effective collective action. That meant organizing thousands of people
to boycott, provide free rides to others, risk arrest, avoid violence, and convey
a reasonably coherent message—all at the same time. King later came to view
moments of popular collective action as miraculous, as sudden glimpses of a
promised future intruding into the present. He saw that to delay such moments
would almost always defeat them, because they were fragile and evanescent. That
is why, in his “I Have a Dream” speech, King seeks to “remind America of the
fierce urgency of now.” He rejects “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism” and ar-
gues, “It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment.”16
When a quarter of a million people come together on the National Mall to de-
mand change, a door opens to a better future.
Put in generic terms, these are some aspects of the problem of collective
action:
16 M.L. King 1963a. Cf. M.L. King 1963b on “the myth concerning time.” And see Luban 1989 for a
detailed study of King’s account of time in conjunction with Walter Benjamin’s idea of Jetztzeit, “time
of the now.”
Free-riders: It is often tempting to let other people carry the burden for a
public good, in which case the good may not be provided even if everyone wants
it. Examples range from a failure to clean the dishes in a shared house, to a deci-
sion not to vote and let others choose the government, to the refusal of nations to
limit their carbon emissions.
Although the term “free-rider” conveys moral disapproval, that is not appro-
priate in cases like the Montgomery bus boycott. Individual African Americans
could hardly be reproached for hesitating to challenge white supremacy, because
resistance would be dangerous and futile in the absence of a powerful and effec-
tive movement. It would be reasonable for Black individuals to hope that others
might resist and then benefit from their sacrifice. Meanwhile, the system of white
supremacy had overcome its own challenges of free-riding by paying the police
and others to enforce a racial hierarchy. Thus, free-riding is not always a moral
failing, and solving a dilemma of free-ridership does not always improve the
world. Nevertheless, free-riding is a challenge to any effort to coordinate human
action, whether for good or evil.
Free-riding bears a family resemblance to other situations that game-theorists
model as prisoner’s dilemmas, arms races, games of “chicken,” and other types.17
Understanding the differences among these situations can be important for
selecting the best solutions. However, for the purpose of this chapter, the point
is simply that people often make individual, independent choices that are rea-
sonable for achieving their respective goals (including understandable or even
praiseworthy goals) but that produce bad outcomes for the whole group.
Path dependence: Once enslaved people were transported to the future
United States, economic and political interests arose that favored slavery. The
national economy depended on cheap Black labor and had its own inertia. The
cost of banning slavery would have been low in 1650; doing so would have put us
on a different path. Much later, in the 1870s, when formerly enslaved people were
denied a share of the land that they had worked, a new economy developed that
had a political constituency and economic inertia. In short, to change to a system
of economic and social equality is costly once it exists.
This is an illustration of path dependence, which can also be observed in many
other contexts. For example, we might all be better off if, a century ago, cars had
been developed to use electricity instead of gasoline. By the twenty-first century,
electric cars would be fantastically fuel-efficient and convenient.18 But the petro-
leum path was chosen, and now to shift to electricity is very expensive and diffi-
cult—so much so that it might even be unwise.
17 It is plausible that an arms race is a prisoner’s dilemma (Plous 1993, 163).

18 Arthur 1990.
The Iron Law of Oligarchy: The founders of the MIA were committed to dem-
ocratic and egalitarian values. However, from its launch, the MIA was dominated
by pastors, professors, lawyers, and other Black Montgomerians who held ad-
vanced degrees—and, often, extensive prior experience in civil rights organi-
zations. During the remaining dozen years of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life, the
composition of the leadership of the national movement became a point of fre-
quent tension, with groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) chafing at the dominance of somewhat older and more seasoned leaders
like King and his colleagues in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC). Women were clearly underrepresented in the inner councils of the
movement, despite their enormous contributions. Ella Baker, who played central
roles in both SCLC and SNCC, observed that younger people often told her she
would have been famous and held more exalted positions if she had been male;
and she agreed that the movement had been “largely caried by women.” She op-
posed depending on strong, charismatic leaders.19 Another example of bias was
the decision to keep Bayard Rustin offstage because he was gay.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that the leadership of the national
movement could have done a better job of including more and more diverse
people. However, the challenge is intrinsic and cannot be explained entirely on
the basis of biases, such as sexism or homophobia. There is a general tendency
for small subsets of people who already possess the most experience to dominate
even the most egalitarian groups.
The sociologist Robert Michels coined the phrase “Iron Law of Oligarchy”
in his eponymous 1911 book, which focused on the democratic socialist par-
ties of Europe. Even though these parties were committed in theory to internally
democratic processes, they formed bureaucracies that empowered their senior
leaders.20 Michels believed that this pattern represented an “Iron Law,” because
organizations require specialization and hierarchy, and that undermines egal-
itarian goals. Even if Michels’s supposed “law” is just a tendency, it is frequent
enough to constitute a generic problem.
Problematic decision rules: The MIA reached decisions by deliberating in-
tensively within a small leadership group, who typically reached a consensus
that they then presented to the mass membership for a vote by acclamation. This
19Baker n.d. (but before 1973), 350–351. See also Payne 1989.
20Michels 1915, thesis first stated on p. 11. Doerr 2018 provides an insightful account of oli-
garchical tendencies among left-wing groups in Europe and the United States today that echoes
Michels. However, Hirschman (1970, 84) offers an analysis that undermines Michels’s claim of a
universal law. For Hirschman, oligarchy within small radical parties reflects ease of exit; members
prefer to leave rather than challenge a party’s leadership, because they have choices. In systems with
a few, large parties, members will have more incentive to exercise voice, and leaders may be made
more accountable.
method worked well enough because the movement had momentum and deep
support.
However, when people disagree, a rule requiring consensus may favor sup-
porters of the status quo. Majority rule is an alternative that has natural appeal.
In the case of the MIA, genuine majority rule would have required putting con-
tested choices to a vote by the whole membership. But that method is not always
wise. In a majority-rule system, the majority can badly mistreat a minority—as
was the case in the state of Alabama as a whole. And when a vote is close, it maxi-
mizes the number of people who are dissatisfied. In a voluntary association like
the MIA, dissatisfied people may exit, weakening the organization. The founders
of the MIA demonstrated civic skill by gently moving Rev. Bennett into second
place below Dr. King without forcing a vote on the matter, which would have
been divisive.21
In fact, it has been proven that no system for turning votes into decisions can
simultaneously meet several obvious criteria.22 In practical terms, the main im-
plication of this finding is that we must often choose between voting systems
that force a two-sided choice (like referenda or two-party elections) or voting
systems that allow many to win small shares of power (as in Israeli elections). The
former systems disadvantage anyone who is dissatisfied with the forced choice.
The latter can lead to stalemate or unpopular minority rule. The choice of rules is
somewhat arbitrary and yet may determine the outcome.
Boundary problems: In the 1960s, Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture)
began to emphasize that Blacks actually represented a majority in many
Southern counties and Northern cities. Voting rights would therefore enable
what Carmichael called (using a term that already had a long history) “Black
Power.”23
In this instance, Carmichael focused on the fact that the boundaries of
American political jurisdictions sometimes favored African Americans, if they
could vote. However, by the same logic, the boundaries of US states favored
Whites, since they then constituted a majority of every state except Hawaii. And
the United States as a whole had a White-majority electorate, which has posed a
consistent challenge for Black Nationalists in this country.
The generic problem is that political outcomes are relative to the boundaries
that we draw around communities. This is why the drawing of electoral districts
is so important to outcomes. Similar problems arise at larger scales as well. The
proper status of Northern Ireland would be decided differently if the decision be-
longed to residents of that province, residents of the island of Ireland, residents of
21 For a similar example with a theoretical explanation, see Mansbridge 1980, 67.
22 Arrow 1950.
23 E.g., Carmichael 1966.
the United Kingdom, or residents of the European Union. The main point of de-
bate is which population should determine sovereignty. Such problems can arise
not only for political jurisdictions within which people vote on laws and leaders,
but also for other boundaries, such as school catchment zones, parishes and dio-
ceses, and even the membership bodies of private associations.
Principal/agent conflicts: An agent is someone whom a principal employs to
take care of her interests. For instance, I employ my dentist to take care of my
teeth. But my dentist’s interests may diverge from mine; she may want me to have
expensive surgery that I do not need.
The same divergence can occur in political contexts. The state of Alabama pre-
sented itself as an agent of all its citizens, which was clearly false with respect to
Black Alabamans and plausibly untrue for many Whites as well. Perhaps cases
like this are not best understood as principal/agent dilemmas, because the ex-
ercise of raw power is so evident. But the civil rights movement provides clearer
examples. Leaders like King sought to be agents of their community. This was
their genuine goal, but they did not always accomplish it in practice. They might,
for example, have valid reasons to try to protect their own reputations, influ-
ence, access to powerful politicians, and budgets so that they could continue to
lead, and that desire might cause their interests to diverge from the people they
tried to represent. Without naming individuals, Ella Baker criticized movement
leaders who “get so involved with playing the game of being important that they
exhaust themselves and their time, and they don’t do the work of actually orga-
nizing people”24 As with free-riding, the Iron Law of Oligarchy, and problematic
decision rules and boundaries, this challenge is intrinsic and not reducible to bad
choices by individuals.
Discourse Problems
Under segregation, race was deeply encoded in language, even in the way people
addressed each other. In the North, too, Americans talked about race in ways
that reinforced white supremacy.25 One of goals and accomplishments of the
civil rights movement was to change how we talk and think about race. But the
movement also had certain ways of presenting its own values that can be con-
tested. I have cited King’s presentation of Parks as a tired Christian worker in-
stead of a seasoned campaigner against rape. Another example is the frequent
use of patriotic and religious language by King and other leaders of the SCLC.
24 Baker n.d., 351

25 Gates 2019 is a wide-ranging study of anti-Black racist ideology and the struggles against it.
Although I interpret their rhetoric as authentic rather than merely strategic, and
I see powerful arguments in favor of it, it is certainly contestable.
Put more generically, civic actors confront discourse problems, many of which
we can categorize as ideology, propaganda, and polarization.
Ideology: This word can be defined in various ways, but here I mean a set of
assumptions that distort one’s other beliefs. Jason Stanley writes that everyone
has an ideology, but “flawed ideologies” are those that serve as “persistent bar-
riers to the acquisition of knowledge.”26
Racism is an ideology, in this sense. We could also cite less objectionable
examples and cases in which ideology besets people on both sides of a valuable
debate. For instance, some people believe that the United States was once a wel-
fare state with a social safety net that has been badly frayed because of neolib-
eralism. And other people believe that the United States was once a society of
free, self-reliant entrepreneurs that is becoming socialist. They cannot both be
right, but they could both be wrong. The federal government of the United States
has controlled a fluctuating proportion of between 15 and 25 percent of Gross
National Product since 1955, with no evident long-term trend during that pe-
riod.27 That is just a discrete fact, but it complicates narratives of decline from
right and left alike. When adherents of any given view will not adjust their posi-
tion in response to inconvenient facts, we have a problem of ideology.
Propaganda: Although it would be difficult to quantify the degree to which
segregation relied on Confederate statues, Gone with the Wind, and textbooks
that told a sanitized version of American history, such forms of communication
may well have reinforced the system. More generally, it is possible to influence
public opinion by deploying resources. One can pay for advertisements, hire
writers and artists, erect monuments or billboards, and collect data to determine
which message will be effective with which audience. Money and power can shift
what people believe and value. When money is widely deployed to persuade,
it becomes unclear what people authentically value, let alone what they should
value.28
Polarization: Most Black and White Alabamans held dramatically divergent
views of the social system. This divergence was not the problem; racism was.
Whites needed to learn how things looked to African Americans. However, di-
vergence can be an intrinsic problem. Numerous studies have found that groups
on one general side of an issue will migrate toward more radical opinions when
26Stanley 2015, 223.

27Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, “Federal Net Outlays as Percent of Gross Domestic Product,”
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S.
28 I am defining propaganda as well-resourced persuasive communication, regardless of quality
or purpose. Hobbs 2020 suggests that calling a communication propaganda can be subjective and
depends on context, but she emphasizes the criteria of mass scale and intersection with entertain-
ment (8–9).
they form an enclave of like-minded people.29 Groups that span a wide spectrum
of opinion will often polarize into relatively radical opposing subgroups. One
of several reasons for this is that individuals want to be accepted into groups of
like-minded peers. Insofar as this problem arose in the civil rights movement, it
was most evident once the major groups began to splinter over funding, credit,
strategic choices, and issues like Vietnam.30 These disagreements were substan-
tive and valid, yet members of each component organization—from the NAACP
to SNCC—began to view the other groups in somewhat stereotyped terms and
intentionally chose divergent approaches.
Examples of Problems of Injustice Based on Identity
An identity is an answer to the question: “Who am I?” (Or, “Who is he/she/

they?”). This question relates to the civic question in at least two important ways.
First, you must consider who you are in order to figure out what “we” you are part
of that can ask, “What should we do?”
Second, the “we” can be defined badly, and that can be the civic problem.
Individuals may be excluded unjustly or included against their will. Christopher
Lebron analyzes how Frederick Douglass, in his “What, to a Slave, Is the Fourth
of July?” speech (1852), confronts his White audience with the fact that that the
nation is theirs, not his, and they are morally responsible for his exclusion from
it. Douglass pointedly uses “you” instead of “we.”31 Some Alabamans in 1955
presumably acknowledged that Whites and African Americans constituted a rel-
evant group (the people of Alabama), but they emphasized race as a basis for
inequality within that population. That meant that they spoke in bad faith when
they talked about Alabamans as “we.” Many other groups err in similar ways.
An identity is logically different from an interest or an opinion. When inter-
ests conflict, they can be negotiated, and it is sometimes possible to design and
maintain systems to manage interests fairly. When opinions conflict, they can be
discussed, and well-structured conversations may (sometimes) convince indi-
viduals to converge on the same opinions. When identities differ, it is not clear
that individuals should negotiate, compromise, or give reasons for their differ-
ences. When people say that they are “unapologetically” members of a given
group, they are implying that they should not have to compromise or alter their
identity in response to either pressure or reasons. However, it can be controver-
sial whether a given characteristic, such as adhering to a religion, constitutes an
29 A recent contribution to this literature is Gabbay, Kelly, Reedy & Gastil 2018. These authors find
that facilitation can address the problem.

30 Barkan 1986.
31 Lebron 2017, 10–11.
interest, an opinion, an identity, or more than one of these. Disagreements about

such questions can lead to disputes about whether individuals should be open to
negotiation and responsive to arguments, or not.
It can be problematic to talk about identity in general terms, as if each of us has
a unique bundle of identities, and we are all different. Some identity differences
are vastly more significant to social justice than others. For instance, racism is the
United States is not just an example of an identity-difference that has measurable
effects on people’s perceptions and emotional reactions (although it is that). It has
also been the basis for slavery and exploitation at a massive level, and the results
persist. Using data collected in 2020, I estimate that being African American al-
most quintuples the odds of being treated unfairly by the police, once many other
factors are accounted for.32
But without flattening the differences among identities, we can gain insights
by identifying general categories of problems that arise—in different ways and to
different degrees—in cases when identities conflict.33
Problems of distance: In some cases, an identity distinction emerges because
two groups of people act and think very differently and have little history of con-
tact. An independent observer could easily categorize them as different groups,
and they may demonstrate poor mutual understanding.34 Encounters between
European colonists and indigenous peoples, or between refugees and host com-
munities, provide many examples. Civic problems arise, such as inequality, due
to the differences, stereotyping, and prejudice against the out-group; a need for
literal translation and mutual understanding; and disagreements about what
norms, rules, and institutions are legitimate for resolving disputes.
Identities that are created and reinforced to underpin injustice: In other
cases, people are quite similar, intimately connected, and liable to mix or ex-
change places. Then there can be powerful incentives to erect and insist on iden-
tity distinctions.
For example, in the early days of the Virginia colony, settlers emphasized a
distinction between heathens and Christians as their justification for slavery and
conquest. They had an incentive to differentiate themselves from people they
wanted to enslave or dispossess. The religious boundary that they first erected
no longer worked once the enslaved people became Christians. A linguistic
32 In a binomial logistic regression using a national survey conducted by the Tufts University
Priority Area Research Group on Equity in Health, Wealth, and Civic Engagement with Ipsos
(n =1,267), I find that identifying as African American raises the odds of reporting that “you have
been unfairly stopped, searched, questioned, physically threatened or abused by the police” by 4.6
times when controlling for self-reported gender, education, age, English-language proficiency,
household income, housing type, and any mental health diagnosis, as well as Census estimates of me-
dian income at the county level.
33 Wimmer 2008, 975.
34 Barth 1969 begins his influential account with examples like this, before arguing that many
identity differences do not reflect objective differences in behavior or values.
boundary would have failed for a similar reason, so Whites developed a new cat-
egory based on the convenient visual cue of skin color. The path from religion
to race went through an intermediary stage, the idea that some people could
never become full Christians—what Rebecca Anne Goetz calls “hereditary
heathenism.”35
Today, race is deeply ingrained. Many Americans identify a photograph of a
face with a racial category and have a consequent emotional reaction within one
tenth of one second after seeing it.36 Although race is socially constructed, it does
not follow that it is easy to reconstruct or deconstruct. It is now a powerful reality.
Identity groups (groups that define who people are rather than what they do or
think) often remain durable over time, notwithstanding gradual evolution due to
births and deaths, conversions and excommunications, marriages and divorces.
But groups’ beliefs and behavior often change, as do the rationales for the bound-
aries among them. Identity boundaries may not mark dramatic differences or
gaps in communication. On the contrary, people often accentuate boundaries
when they perceive interactions and similarities across the line.37 The Black/
White boundary in America is a perfect example: interactions have often been
intimate and pervasive, and both groups often share the same religion, language,
and many other aspects of culture, yet the color line has been profoundly impor-
tant. Boundaries reflect the incentives created by institutions (such as states and
markets), power differentials, network ties, and path-dependence, among other
factors.38
A wide range of criteria can be used to create identity distinctions, of which
skin color is only one example. Sometimes, a third party can be hard pressed to
detect a difference that is highly salient to the people on both sides of a boundary
that structures their interactions.39 There can be disagreements about where a
line lies, about what it entails, or about both. For instance, over the course of
US history, conflict has frequently focused on whether the Black/White binary
does, may, or should mark a disparity in status and rights. But disagreement
about where the line lies has been relatively rare. With some exceptions, African
Americans and Whites typically share the same view of who is Black or White.
That is notable because the racial boundary is defined quite differently in other
countries and did not exist until the 1600s.40
One response would be to question the very concept of identity.41 However,
that may be futile, given the pervasive use of identity boundaries to structure
35 Goetz 2012; cf. T. Allen 1994.

36 Kubota & Ito 2007.
37 Barth 1969.
38 Wimmer 2008. Cf. Bowen 1996.
39 Barth 1969.
40 Wimmer 2008, 1000.
41 See, e.g., Butler 1990, ix.
human interactions. Besides, creating or redefining an identity can be an achieve-

ment, a form of human flourishing. “In this forging of identity, we connect with
others and engage in collective work.”42 A world of diversity and pluralism may
require the maintenance of distinct identities and the creation of new ones. As
Langston Hughes wrote of African Americans in his time, “they still hold their
own individuality in the face of American standardization.”43 Still, the flexibility
and variability of identities creates the possibility that they can be used for nefar-
ious purposes, as New World slavery illustrates. Civic actors must be able to dif-
ferentiate between beneficial and pernicious identity distinctions and transform
the harmful ones into something better.
Quiescence: Sometimes people who face objectively unjust and remediable
circumstances fail to take action, and the explanation can be traced to their ac-
ceptance of their own inferior position. They believe that who they are condemns
them to an inferior position or justifies it.
Countering any claim that African Americans have been quiescent is the
long history of Black resistance in churches, associations, families, and Black-
owned businesses and the frequent appearance of those critical conversations
in the White-dominated public sphere, whether in the time of Phillis Wheatley,
Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, or today. However, one group that was
quiescent in the same region and in the same period as the Montgomery bus
boycott was the White population of the Appalachian mining valley depicted
by John Gaventa.44 Gaventa demonstrates that although they were pervasively
exploited, these people tended to view their situation as natural and accept it.
Similarly, Gandhi told his fellow Indians, “The English have not taken India; we
have given it to them. They are not in India because of their strength, but because
we keep them.”45 And the South African founder of Black Consciousness, Steve
Biko, wrote that “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the
mind of the oppressed. If one is free at heart, no man-made chains can bind one
to servitude, but if one’s mind is so manipulated and controlled by the oppressor
as to make the oppressed believe that he is a liability to the White man, then there
will be nothing the oppressed can do to scare his powerful masters.”46
Each of these problems has a practical dimension: we need effective means to

overcome it. Given the vast range of relevant circumstances, no single strategy
42 Bickford 1997, 124.

43 Hughes 1926/2009. Chike Jeffers hopes to see black people persist as “a cultural group” even
after the defeat of racism (Jeffers 2019).
44 Gaventa 1982.
45 Gandhi 1921, 26.
46 Biko 1973, 92.
will be effective in all instances of any category of problem. The most successful
strategies will vary and will require experience and judgment to select.
Each of these problems also has a normative dimension (using the word “nor-
mative” in its philosophical sense, to mean differences between ideas or actions
that are fair, just, or good versus those that are unfair, unjust, or bad). We need
normative judgment to decide whether situations that fit the criteria I have
described in this chapter are actually problems, and what would count as solu-
tions. For instance, firms that must compete for customers face what they could
plausibly call a collective-action problem. A cartel would solve their problem. It
would require an agreement for mutual accountability, coordination, and mon-
itoring. Yet we have good reasons to denounce cartels. We may see price-fixing
as a threat to the public interest (since a few producers will profit at the expense
of many consumers) or as a form of cheating (since competitors should demon-
strate fair play by competing over prices), or both. One could perhaps defend
business cartels under certain circumstances. For our purposes here, the point is
that calling something a “problem” almost always requires a normative argument
as well as a technical analysis.
The three sets of problems are connected. Yet none of the three is, in my view,
reducible to another. A very ambitious game theorist might assume that all
breakdowns of human interaction are problems of collective action.47 But game
theory takes as givens the values and identities of the players. In general, identi-
ties are not fixed but are created and changed by discourse. For example, a swath
of countries across the Middle East is currently embroiled in conflicts between
Shiites and Sunnis. If one takes the existence of those two opposing groups for
granted, then game theory may be helpful for explaining certain developments,
such as the arms race between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the tit-for-tat sectarian
violence against civilians. But identification with these two groups is a variable,
not a constant. Adam Gaiser writes that identifying with an Islamic sect is a “dy-
namic and conscious process of adoption, maintenance, and manipulation of
certain types of narrative identities in particular places and at particular times by
particular persons or groups of persons.”48 Other identities apart from sects (e.g.,
Islam as a whole, Arab versus Persian nationality, or pan-regional solidarity) can
be salient instead of the sectarian split. How people identify is a choice that can
be influenced by discourse.
In fact, some cultural critics may argue that all of our problems arise from
discourse, which produces our values and identities. But even if we all sin-
cerely agreed about something as important as climate change, problems of
47 An example is Tarko 2017, 7–11, which I mention because of its subject. It is a fine book, but
I disagree with Tarko that we only have institutions because of transaction costs or that Ostrom
would have thought so.
48 Gaiser 2017, 62.
collective action would still be formidable. We would not only face the mother of
all tragedies-of-the-commons but also challenges of path-dependence (e.g., our
reliance on internal combustion engines), boundary issues (the countries that
use the most carbon are separated from the big producers), and indifference to
people we view as alien.
Nor is it plausible that we would automatically reach consensus about values
and coordinate our actions if we could eliminate power imbalances based on
identities. Seeking an example of a community in which everyone shares the
same identity, I considered Mount Athos, which is now an autonomous monastic
republic within Greece and the European Union. Every resident on Mount Athos
must be an Orthodox man; even female animals (with the exceptions of insects,
cats, and birds) have been banned for centuries. Thus there are no distinctions
of religion or gender on Mount Athos. The monks do represent different nation-
alities, but that does not seem to have been the root of the problem in 1913. The
issue then was whether the Name of Jesus as God is the same as God Himself.
The monks split on this question in a 661–517 vote (with many abstentions) that
provoked “not only verbal but physical violence.”49 Although one side was led by
a Russian noble, the tsar of Russia felt it necessary to send gunboats and troops to
support the other side, ordering the arrest, excommunication, and exile of hun-
dreds of monks. In game-theory terms, we would say that two sets of players had
reached a destructive impasse that was settled by an outsider. The situation was
highly problematic even though issues of identity were irrelevant.
A subset of these three sets of problems will typically confront any concrete
group of human beings who aim to influence their worlds. In many circum-
stances, the various problems will closely interrelate, causing webs or cycles of
challenges.
Human Cognitive Limitations
Complicating all of these separate problems are pervasive human cognitive

limitations. As creatures who evolved to hunt and gather in small bands on an
open savanna, we are not naturally equipped with the mental tools we need to be
moral agents in complex modern societies—or even to calculate our narrow self-
interests under modern conditions.
Some cognitive limitations have been known for centuries. For example, in
1620, Francis Bacon published a precise and penetrating analysis of the phe-
nomenon now known as “confirmation bias.” He noticed that once a mind
holds an opinion, it naturally collects supportive evidence and “either neglects
49 Larchet 2016.
and despises” or else finds reasons to discount all evidence on their other side.
Later in the same paragraph, Bacon also recognizes what we now call positivity
or optimism bias: “it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human intellect to
be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives; whereas it ought
properly to hold itself indifferently disposed toward both alike.”50
Although some theorists have long been interested in such cognitive limita-
tions, a model of individuals as rational utility-maximizers was essential to clas-
sical and neoclassical economics. These disciplines made strong assumptions
about people’s ability to understand complex situations and predict the outcomes
of their private choices. Beginning in the late 1960s, Amos Tversky and Daniel
Kahneman shook that model with experiments that demonstrated that human
beings use “simplifying heuristics rather than extensive algorithmic processing”
to make decisions. Individuals err in predictable ways even when they want to
think rationally.51
Tversky and Kahneman’s program spread across the behavioral sciences and
constantly discovers new biases that are predictable enough to bear their own
names. Attribution Bias means explaining one’s failures as the results of difficult
external circumstances, while others’ failures must flow from their bad choices.
The Bandwagon Effect is a tendency to endorse ideas that many others are ex-
pressing. The Control Illusion is the tendency to overestimate how much we
control events. One could continue an alphabetical list through to the Zeigarnik
Effect (we remember interrupted tasks better than completed ones).
Two other clusters of limitations are central enough to the concerns of this
book that they deserve their own brief summaries:
Implicit bias: A large body of experiments shows that people hold implicit
negative attitudes toward various categories of human beings—attitudes that
influence their explicit decisions even when they sincerely deny holding them.
Dozens of experiments have tested hiring managers’ reactions to fictitious
résumés that are identical except that the applicants’ names are common for ei-
ther Whites, Blacks, or Latinos. Identical résumés with White-sounding names
have received 36 percent more callbacks than those with Black-sounding names,
and 24 percent more than those with Latino-sounding names, with no evident
change in these disparities since the first study in 1989.52 This is a fairly pure and
unambiguous example of bias, although an unknown proportion of it may be ex-
plicit and intentional rather than implicit. Similar forms of bias also arise when
50Bacon 1620/1863, xlvi.

51Gilovich & Griffin 2002, 1.
52 Quillian, Pager, Hexel & Midtbøen 2017. Cf. Bertrand & Mullainathan 2004. In a similar ex-
periment with nonprofit job openings in Chicago and Boston, colleagues and I found that Latino-
sounding names drew more callbacks than whites, followed by Blacks. Levine, Kawashima-Ginsberg,
Benenson & Hayat 2018.
human beings impose other categories on each other: gender, religion, sexual
orientation, and many others.
Motivated reasoning means that we are good at selecting and emphasizing
facts that support our predetermined ideas, and equally good at marginalizing or
debunking facts that complicate or challenge those ideas. For example, as people
obtain more education, their opinions of climate change correlate more with
their political ideology. Conservatives become less likely to believe in climate
change, and liberals more so, the more education they have.53 Well-educated
conservatives are sophisticated enough to recognize that accepting evidence of
climate change would challenge their economic views, so they use mental tech-
niques (also exhibited by liberals on other topics54) to reject or marginalize the
evidence. Deliberate efforts to debunk myths actually reinforce the same myths
because people hear the information selectively. That “backfire effect” is a strong
illustration of the more general tendency of human beings to assimilate new in-
formation with bias.55
These phenomena are held to be deeply rooted in the cognitive limitations of
human beings.56 Not only has the burgeoning literature on cognitive biases chal-
lenged market models, but it undermines the “folk theory” of democracy taught
in civics textbooks and widely believed by citizens and pundits, which holds that
“Ordinary people have preferences about what their government should do.
They choose leaders who will do these things, or they enact their preferences
directly in referendums. In either case, what the majority wants becomes gov-
ernment policy.”57 Citing the research on human cognitive limitations as well as
other evidence, Achen and Bartels argue that this folk theory is not only false as a
description of actual politics in the United States; it is impossible.
All the problems briefly summarized here raise serious doubts about whether
citizens can reason together about what they should do and then act collabo-
ratively. However, groups of people do solve human problems. They do build
institutions and norms that improve life. They build tools—daily newspapers,
adversarial courtrooms, secret ballots—that mitigate the limitations of human
reason and allow us to discuss, coordinate, and form functional groups. Every
decent government, association, neighborhood, and network is a triumph of rea-
sonable hope over chastened experience. Some citizens who ask, “What should
we do?” have learned how to overcome these problems.
53 Pew Research Center 2008.

54 Bartels 2002.
55 Nyhan & Reifler 2010.
56 Aligica 2017.
57 Achen & Bartels 2016, 1.
3
Three Traditions in Search of Solutions
No single thinker can answer the question, “What should we do?” Armchair
theorizing cannot reveal satisfactory solutions to problems as thorny as free-
riding, motivated reasoning, or quiescence. Nor will it suffice to study the re-
cord of past and current solutions that have already been invented by practical
people such as activists and political leaders. Often, to motivate a solution,
a new idea is needed: theory must provide the inspiration. However, an idea
rarely succeeds when it is first tested. To make any social experiment work,
we must refine and improve it until the hypothesis becomes right. The original
idea combines—at least implicitly—empirical evidence, normative principle,
strategic insight, and design. It almost always incorporates previous theories
and experiments. But the new idea only becomes right if it leads to experimen-
tation and critical reflection that ultimately yield desirable outcomes. Because
this cycle requires the contributions of many people over decades, we should
seek guidance from relevant theory/practice traditions, not from individual
authors alone.
An everyday example is public schooling. Nineteenth-century reformers like
Horace Mann drew from previous thinkers—and from successful experiences
in countries like Prussia—to propose a new idea: every child should be educated
at the government’s expense in a state-funded common school. Since then, not
only have educators and policymakers refined and revised most aspects of public
schooling, but scholars have critically evaluated actual schools from a wide va-
riety of perspectives. A few observers have concluded that Mann’s core idea was
misplaced,1 but most see their role as helping to make his vision become suc-
cessful. Public schools did not arise like a new species in Darwinian evolution
to survive or fail on its own. Nor did Mann propose a hypothesis that could be
tested with a single experiment (e.g., “Common schools will work”). Rather,
1 E.g., the libertarians Milton and Rose Friedman argue that a mandate is unnecessary and the
public school monopoly poorly serves children: “We believe that the growing role that government
has played in financing and administering schooling has led not only to enormous waste of taxpayers’
money but also to a far poorer educational system than would have developed had voluntary coop-
eration continued to play a larger role.” (Friedman & Friedman 1980, 187) From a very different per-
spective, Illich 1971 argues that schools exist to indoctrinate children into the assumption that they
must obey institutions.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197570494.003.0003
universal public schooling originated with an argument that combined values

and empirical predictions, and it launched a process of improvement that has
combined research with practice.
Public schooling is a familiar example of an iterative theory/practice tradi-
tion that has unfolded over more than a century (so far) and has involved many
thousands of devoted thinkers and actors. At the heart of this book are three
other theory/practice traditions, chosen because they have respectively ad-
dressed the three clusters of problems described earlier in this chapter. Whereas
Mann and his allies sought to educate children, these three traditions aim to
address the citizen’s generic question by focusing on important categories of
questions about collective action, discourse, and power/identity.
The first tradition is the Bloomington School, exemplified by the late
Indiana University Professor Elinor (“Lin”) Ostrom, her husband and collab-
orator Vincent Ostrom, and the many hundreds of scholars and practitioners
from many disciplines who have been involved with the Ostroms’ Workshop
in Political Theory and Policy since 1973.2 Elinor Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for a lifetime of work studying how
people solve problems of collective action. Vincent was a more explicit the-
orist of constitutions, and their combined efforts yielded a robust account of
citizenship in which the citizen is fundamentally a person who helps resolve
problems of collective action. The Ostroms were indebted to certain core in-
sights of libertarianism or neoliberalism, but their conclusions elude ideolog-
ical labels.
The Ostroms were not solitary theorists but were deeply involved with lab-
oratory experiments, field experiments, and the close observation of practices
around the world. They have had particularly strong influence on environmen-
talists, because human beings’ interactions with nature supply many clear in-
stances of collective-action problems. (Even when we agree that we should not
destroy nature, a failure to coordinate causes its destruction.) However, the im-
plications of the Bloomington School extend far beyond environmental issues.
This tradition will be the topic of c hapter 4.
The second tradition is the Frankfurt School, particularly as it has evolved
under the leadership of Jürgen Habermas. Originating in the 1920s with Marxist
scholars and activists who were critical of capitalist, technological, mass society,
the Frankfurt School has always offered insights about discourse problems, par-
ticularly ideology and propaganda. From the start (and in contrast to orthodox
or “scientific” Marxism), members of the School were always concerned about
the normative dimension of public problems: how can we reliably differentiate
2 For the history of the label, see Aligica 2014, xii.
Three Traditions in Search of Solutions 35
between good and bad systems? Compared to the Bloomington School, they
were more explicit and self-conscious about normative questions and more in-
terested in discourse and public reasoning, although much less helpful about
problems of collective action.
In my reading, the first generation of the Frankfurt School offered scant so-
lutions to the problems they insightfully mapped. After the Second World War,
Habermas refocused the School on making distinctions between good and bad
discourse and understanding the social conditions of desirable deliberation. In
the process, he has moved even farther from Marxism, although he has retained
a critical edge. One could say that for Habermas, a good citizen is one who delib-
erates well with others and makes deliberation possible.
Habermas is certainly an academic theorist, but practitioners have attempted
many practical experiments with public deliberation in the past four decades.
The tradition that I will explore in chapter 5 consists of the thought of Habermas,
responses from his key critics, and this array of practical experimentation.
The third tradition involves mass social movements that are nonviolent or that
sharply limit their participants’ use of violence. A pivotal figure in this tradition
is M. K. Gandhi. He drew on theoretical works, including the late writings of
Tolstoy, the Bhagavad Gita, and Henry David Thoreau, as well as practical initia-
tives such as the civil disobedience of British suffragists. But he also innovated,
both theoretically and practically, calling his life My Experiments with Truth.3
The Gandhian tradition has radiated to many other countries, and I will focus
on its return to the United States via the civil rights movement and its echoes in a
set of self-limiting popular uprisings since 1989 known as the Color Revolutions.
One could say that for Gandhi, the ideal citizen is the satyagrahi, the bearer of
truth-force.
I will argue in c hapter 6 that the Gandhian tradition is more useful than the
other two when clashes of identity are combined with great disparities of power,
as was the case when the British ruled India and wherever Whites have domi-
nated African Americans. This tradition is about movement, while the other two
theories are more comfortable with stability. It also offers a distinctive set of nor-
mative ideals of wide application. It is less useful than the other two traditions,
however, for designing and refining durable institutions.
After discussing each of these three traditions in its own chapter, I will con-
clude with the outline of a synthesis that uses each tradition to compensate for
the weaknesses of the others.
3 Gandhi 1927.
Other Starting Places
In focusing on the Bloomington School, the second generation of the Frankfurt

School, and the tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience, I do not mean to imply
that they are the only valuable resources for addressing the citizen’s core ques-
tion: What should we do? Each tradition has developed from a particular or-
igin and drawn its own community of thinkers and practitioners. Other clusters
of thinkers and actors could start with different intellectual origins and achieve
just as much. One might start instead with Catholic Social Thought, Buddhist
modernism, Frantz Fanon’s responses to colonial oppression, the Capabilities
Approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, or strands of feminism, to
name just a few examples. Those have and will supply material for other books.
I would, however, like to explain why I have not devoted nearly as much of
this book to three particular traditions, even though they are congenial, influen-
tial, and familiar to me. The first of these is John Dewey’s version of pragmatism.
Dewey advocates for all contexts (schools, workplaces, etc.) to become fully dem-
ocratic. Dewey rejects a definition of “democracy” as majority rule (or as any set
of processes and institutions). It is rather the whole culture that develops when
people solve problems together.4 In a true democracy, members can change any
of the rules—including such apparently sacrosanct ones as “general suffrage,
elected representatives, majority rule, and so on”—in response to experience.5
Dewey also rejects a narrow definition of “education” as what children get
from schools. Rather, we learn throughout our lives by interacting with our fellow
human beings and with nature, particularly as we pose and address problems
collectively. Dewey denies that a “community” is any group of people who happen
to live in a location or interact. Instead, a true community is a group of people
who have come to understand their shared interests.6 Finally, he defines “science”
as more than experimenting on nature, instead using it to mean any organized,
cumulative, and critical process by which people build knowledge. Participation
in a scientific, democratic learning community (in Dewey’s idiosyncratic senses of
these four words) would be a compelling description of civic agency.
That is why his view is congenial. But Dewey was far too optimistic about
the outcomes of democratic participation and learning. In 1924, he wrote that
“the current has set steadily in one direction: toward democratic forms.” Human
4 “Democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of
conjoint communal experience.” Dewey 1916/1985, 93.

5 Dewey 1927, 144.
6 “Wherever there is conjoint activity whose consequences are appreciated as good by all singular
persons who take part in it, and where the realization of the good is such as to effect an energetic
desire and effort to sustain it in being just because it is a good shared by all, there is in so far a com-
munity. The clear consciousness of a communal life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of
democracy.” Dewey 1927, 149.
beings had drawn the “well-attested conclusion from historic facts”—in short,
we had learned—that “government exists to serve its community, and that this
purpose cannot be achieved unless the community itself shares in selecting its
governors and determining their policies.”7 People had become democrats by re-
flecting on experience. Their future experiments would only deepen and enrich
democratic culture.
Even at that moment, a few wealthy and well-armed nations that were democrat-
ically governed by their own people were holding most of the rest of the world as
exploited colonies. Within two decades, millions had perished in senseless wars and
domestic slaughters that had popular support. The democratic current was hardly
steady. Here Dewey ignores the fact that human beings can “learn” all manner of
lessons, including the evil lessons that other people are subhuman and deserve ex-
ploitation, if not extermination. As Cornel West observes, Dewey drew from his op-
timistic American forebears Jefferson and Emerson, but he “failed to seriously meet
the challenge posed by Lincoln—namely, defining the relation of democratic ways
thought and life to a profound sense of evil.”8
Dewey’s optimism about learning and self-government led him to reject all limi-
tations on new institutions and procedures. He decried ideas like “the Constitution,
the Supreme Court, private property, free contract, and so on,” for which “the words
‘sacred’ and ‘sanctity’ come readily to our lips.”9 Everything should be open to ex-
perimentation. But if the problems I listed earlier are dangerous, then institutional
innovations can be harmful instead of helpful, and some of the forms that we have
built so far may be precious achievements. Perhaps we should block changes by cre-
ating rigid norms and rules, including written constitutions that we hold sacrosanct.
Because pragmatism is overly sanguine about progress, it fails to give much guid-
ance in a world rife with dangers.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Dewey grappled more explicitly with evil, partly as
a result of sharp critiques from the likes of Lewis Mumford (who thought pragma-
tism had weakened Americans’ will to resist tyranny) and Reinhold Niebuhr (who
charged Dewey with naive optimism).10 Like his younger self, the septuagenarian
Dewey was commendably open to learning from the experiences of those dark
years and from his critics. Still, I do not find in the late Dewey an adequate account
of how to prevent corruption, barbarism, or social collapse.
Unlike Dewey, Hannah Arendt was fully aware of evil. Writing in the shadow
of the Holocaust, from which she had herself escaped, she predicted in 1945 that
“the problem of evil will be the fundamental question of postwar intellectual life
7 Dewey 1927, 146.

8 West 2008, 175.
9 Dewey 1927, 169–70.
10 Westbrook 1991, 510–36.
in Europe.”11 Her thought is congenial to the spirit of this book because she un-
derstood that being an active citizen under conditions of injustice is part of living
a full life. She thought that Jefferson and other American revolutionaries had dis-
covered that “no one could be called happy without his share in public happi-
ness, that no one could be called free without his experience in public freedom,
and that no one could be called either happy or free without participating, and
having a share, in public business.”12 She saw that people who deliberate about
what to do and then act together in public are free, equal, and dignified in ways
that are impossible for those who are governed, even benignly. In common with
other civic republican thinkers, Arendt recognized that politics (the active en-
gagement of diverse people in public spaces) is a good in itself, not merely a way
of obtaining desirable outcomes, such as security and prosperity.
Arendt also contributed valuable ideas about the public domain as distinct from
the private sphere. She was especially helpful on this topic because the public/pri-
vate distinction had often been used to deprive women of public roles, but Arendt
was a tireless fighter for women’s liberation (and an important female public figure
herself) who believed that privacy should be reconsidered and protected rather
than abandoned.
Finally, Arendt offered insights about institutional design, derived from what
she considered her discovery of the “lost treasure” of the “revolutionary tradition.”13
During revolutions, she thought, people spontaneously construct small, self-gov-
erning units that run their own workplaces as well as their villages or neighbor-
hoods. Revolutionary leaders are threatened by these rival sources of power and
usually shut them down, but they permit dignified politics while they last.
There is, indeed, much to be learned from spontaneous revolutionary organ-
izations, but Arendt does not have enough to say about how they could be made
durable and expanded to a large scale. Although her words echo through this
book, I don’t treat her thought as a separate tradition on par with the three I that
explore more deeply.
A final tradition that deserves consideration derives from two ideas in
Aristotle. In chapter 6 of his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle uses the word
phronesis (practical wisdom) to refer to a trait of character that yields wise all-
things-considered decisions under conditions of moral and empirical uncer-
tainty. Phronesis is not rule-governed; there are no algorithms for it. It comes
from experience and from openness to the situation at hand. Phronesis is how we
choose the right means to pursue good ends.14
11Dews 2005, 51.

12Arendt 1963/1977, 247.
13Arendt 1963/1977, 207.
14 Moss 2011 argues that for Aristotle, our knowledge of the right ends does not come from
phronesis but from a kind of imagination or visualization of good outcomes.
Two chapters later in the same book, Aristotle develops the idea of friendship
(philia) in a particularly political or civic way, calling it the basis of the city. For
Aristotle, friends are people who value their relationships, not only the outcomes
or activities that they accomplish together. This sounds like a utopian ideal, con-
trary to the assumption that people are basically selfish or concerned only with
getting results that they desire. But we actually observe many situations in which
groups of people show as much concern for the quality of their relationships as
for the decisions that they make together or the outcomes that result.15 In turn,
citizenship is the interaction of civic friends who exercise phronesis together.
This account is broadly consistent with the Bloomington School, the
Frankfurt School, and the Gandhian tradition. Moreover, the phronetic aspect
of Aristotelianism has recently been revived by the influential Danish planning
professor Bent Flyvbjerg, who shook up social science when he argued that the
search for general, predictive rules was a “wasteful dead end.”16 Instead, he has
argued, social scientists should display phronesis in collaboration with laypeople.
They should ask of any specific situation: (1) “Where are we going?”; (2) “Who
gains and who loses and by which mechanisms of power?”; (3) “Is it desirable?”;
and (4) “What should be done?”17 Although Flyvbjerg states the culminating
question in a passive form, he is really asking social scientists and laypeople
to decide together what they should do. And although he asks whether a phe-
nomenon is “desirable,” rather than whether it is good or just, his third question
makes room for normative analysis.
I find this tradition valuable, but I have chosen not to devote extensive space to
it because of certain limitations. For one thing, Aristotle’s discussions of phronesis
and philia occupy just a few hundred suggestive words in the Nichomachean
Ethics. Even if we decide to use these words as slogans, we need a lot more detail
about what they should mean for us in practice. For instance, civic friends will
have to overcome free-riding; but how to do that is not explained in Aristotle.
Second, Flyvbjerg is relentlessly skeptical about general rules. “No predic-
tive theories have been arrived at in social science, despite centuries of trying.”18
Flyvbjerg evokes phronesis as an alternative to the vain search for general laws of
human behavior. But the Bloomington School demonstrates that we can usefully
generalize about human behavior and use the resulting principles and predic-
tions to improve our odds of success as citizens. The Ostroms avoided simplistic
generalizations, but they sought to generalize carefully as a way of improving de-
cisions. If that approach is consistent with Aristotle’s phronesis, then his position
15 Mansbridge 1980.
16 Flyvbjerg 2006b, 38.
17 Flyvbjerg 2010, 145ff; cf. Flyvbjerg 2006a, 374.
18 Flyvbjerg 2006b, 38.
is moderate and unassailable, but not very challenging. By the same token,
Flyvbjerg’s more radical version seems implausible.
Finally, although Flyvbjerg is impressively attuned to imbalances of power,
I am not sure that either he or Aristotle has enough to say about large-scale in-
justices that arise from clashes of identities. Aristotle thought of civic friends as
well-born Greek men in small cities. Flyvbjerg’s best case is his own successful
campaign against an unjust municipal zoning campaign.19 Impressive as this ef-
fort was, it succeeded within a modest-sized Danish city that had a free press,
independent courts, substantial social equality, and a responsive national gov-
ernment. Gandhi could count on few of those advantages.
A Focus on Means
The three traditions that I emphasize in this book share a focus on getting the
means right. They are much vaguer about their ultimate objectives or ends.
This puts them at odds with much political philosophy in the English-speaking
world since the 1960s, which has been focused on defining justice, understood
as an end-state, a goal. Philosophy seeks to define the objective of political ac-
tion as sharply as possible. Political ethics then involves a set of questions about
whether various means (e.g., civil disobedience, propaganda, compromise, or
violence) are acceptable—or necessary—when pursuing justice under various
circumstances.
A century ago, as Karuna Mantena notes, there was a more vibrant debate
about political means.20 The central question was not what constituted justice
but whether and when to use electoral campaigns, strikes, boycotts, assassin-
ations, or revolutions, among other options. Mantena reads Gandhi as a par-
ticipant in that debate who developed and defended nonviolence as a cluster of
strategies. Moreover, Gandhi explicitly argued that the best way to think about
politics was to determine the right means or strategies, not to pretend to define
justice as an end.
“Means are after all everything,” Gandhi wrote, in response to a group of
Indian political leaders who had issued an “Appeal to the Nation” in 1924. These
leaders had proposed a concrete ideal of justice: the immediate creation of a new,
independent “Federated Republic of the United States of India.” They argued that
this end justified a wide range of strategies. They wanted to “delete the words ‘by
peaceful and legitimate means’ from the Congress creed, so that men holding
19Flyvbjerg 2010, 141–65.

20Mantena 2012b. As Moss (2011) interprets him, Aristotle anticipates this focus on getting the
means right. Aristotle does insist on having the right end (which is happiness), but our picture of that
end is vague, and our primary task is to reason about appropriate means.
every shade of opinion may have no difficulty in joining” the independence

struggle. That would have expanded the range of means employed to achieve the
end of home-rule.
Gandhi replied that these leaders had no right to define an abstract concept of
justice, such as “independence,” by themselves. The “only universal definition to
give it is ‘that status of India which her people desire at a given moment.’ If I were
asked what India desires at the present moment, I should say I do not know.”
Furthermore, for Gandhi, the means used to pursue swaraj (independence in its
deepest sense) had to be good ones. “As the means so the end. Violent means will
give violent swaraj. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.”21
Drawing on Mantena, I would suggest the following Gandhian reasons to focus
on means rather than ends. Human beings are cognitively limited and cannot see
justice far beyond our own present circumstances. That is why Gandhi empha-
sizes that what Indians “desire at a given moment” is only the justice of that time,
not of the future. Human beings are motivationally flawed and highly suscep-
tible to various distorting and destructive impulses. Therefore, we must choose
modes of politics that channel our impulses in beneficial rather than harmful
directions. Forming too sharp a definition of justice (or any of its components,
such as national sovereignty) can simply excuse bad behavior. Consequences are
always difficult to predict and control; trying to pursue elaborate ends is foolish.
We disagree, and what we decide about justice right now is contingent on how
we are organized, so it is crucial to get the organization right. Finally, how we
participate in politics helps to constitute the world. By acting, we don’t merely
bring about a result (usually an unpredictable one); we immediately create a new
reality just in virtue of our action.
After denying that he knew what the precise goal of the Indian independence
struggle should be, Gandhi specified three criteria of a good movement for in-
dependence: “truthful relations between Hindus and Mussalmans, bread for the
masses and removal of untouchability.” The movement would have to be inter-
faith, would have to address poverty immediately and directly, and would have to
unify caste and Dalit (then called “untouchable”) Hindus. Gandhi explained, “I
give that definition because I claim to be a practical man. I know that we want po-
litical independence of England. It will not be attained without the three things
mentioned by me.”22
21 Gandhi 1924/1999, vol. 28, 307–10 (May 22, 1924–August 15, 1924). I owe the reference to
Mantena 2012a, 457. See also Gandhi 1921, 81: “The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree;
and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between
the seed and the tree.” It is ironic that Jawaharlal Nehru later wrote, “If anyone wants to know what
India wants, let him go to Gandhi.” And still later, Gandhi said, “Nehru . . . has got ability, know-
ledge, and close touch with the public here and can interpret India’s mind.” Guha 2018, 666, 985. Each
founder of India was eager to declaim knowledge of India’s goals and attribute that knowledge to his
colleague.
22 Gandhi 1924/1999, vol. 28, 310.
At an abstract level, Gandhi was arguing that it would be a mistake to iden-

tify a goal or end-state and then choose the most effective means to achieve it.
Instead, he wanted to belong to a movement for the general ideal of swaraj that
would be characterized by interfaith cooperation, anti-poverty work, and the in-
clusion of Dalits.
A concrete example may clarify his approach. Gandhi joined and then led
the khadi campaign: a mass effort to boycott European cloth, wear only home-
spun Indian khadi cloth, and enlist everyone—of all classes—in personally spin-
ning and weaving their own clothes. While Gandhi spoke to huge audiences all
across India, he typically spun. Since most people could not hear his un-ampli-
fied words, it is likely that his act of spinning was more influential than his verbal
arguments.
The khadi campaign is widely understood as a means to one of the following
ends: political independence from Britain through economic pressure, rural ec-
onomic development, or spiritual education for those who spun.23 But Gandhi
thought of it differently. It was impossible to know whether khadi would affect
British policy, but an India full of people (Hindu and Muslim, rich and poor,
caste and Dalit) who wove their own clothes in the cause of independence would
immediately be a different place. It would be more decentralized, cooperative,
equitable, ruminative, united, and free. Even if the campaign worked and the
British went home, it would be important to keep weaving khadi in their ab-
sence.24 “The attempt to win swaraj was swaraj itself.”25 Khadi was educational,
but equally important, it represented an institution that the people had “built up
for themselves.”26 Education wasn’t an outcome of spinning, as knowledge might
be an outcome of schooling. In khadi, the learning was intrinsic to what Gandhi
called the “public work” of building a new system for textile production. Gandhi
described the political work accomplished by a committee and the public work of
weaving in the same passage, as part of the same struggle. Physical production
was an essential component because “awareness is possible only through public
work and not through talks.”27
For Gandhi, “What is justice?” was the wrong question. Our focus should be
on forming groups of people who interact in ways that bring out the best in them.
He saw a nation of home-spinners and weavers as such a group. We could cer-
tainly debate his specific vision of a khadi campaign, but the same general ap-
proach can take many forms. For example, Habermas represents a dramatically
23Mantena 2012b, 9–12.

24Gandhi 1921, 118.
25 Mantena 2012a, 462.
26 Gandhi interviewed by Nirmal Kumar Bose, November 9–10, 1934, in Gandhi 1999, vol. 65,
317. I owe the reference to Mantena 2012b, 9.

27 Gandhi, personal note (1925), in Gandhi 1999, vol. 32, 262–63. I owe this reference to Mantena
2012b, 11.
different cultural context and political sensibility from Gandhi’s, but he also re-
jects instrumental, means/ends reasoning in favor of creating groups of people
who endlessly make justice by interacting. It’s just that Habermas’s interactive
groups are highly critical, explicit, and discursive, whereas Gandhi’s weavers may
be literally silent.
Likewise, the Bloomington School focuses on how people can construct insti-
tutions for managing common resources. Paul Dragos Aligica, a major represen-
tative of the School, cites the distinction between “end state social theories” and
“process theories,” which “focus on the way ends states emerge.” He observes,
“While a large part of theorizing in political economy is more or less explicitly
‘end state’ oriented, the Ostroms’ research agenda seems to be closer to the ‘pro-
cess’ perspective.”28 Another phrase that could describe all of these schools is
“open-ended”—action that one undertakes with intentional uncertainty about
where it will conclude.29
Even if we know what justice is, the wisest direction is not always straight to-
ward it. For example, Christopher Winship acknowledges that improving the
justice of American education would require raising the quality of the schooling
available to the least advantaged students. However, he argues, “the best way to
approach serving the interests of the least well off [may be] to avoid policies that
decisively pit the interests of the less advantaged families against those of the
more advantaged families.” He cites evidence that Scandinavian countries have
achieved the highest levels of shared prosperity and economic equality in the
world not by directly pursuing equality but by negotiating policies that are at-
tractive to business as well as labor.30 Winship’s advice may or may not apply in
any given situation; the general point is that the best path to any given end is not
always direct.
In the movie Lincoln, the president tells Rep. Thaddeus Stevens:
A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it’ll—it’ll point you True North from
where you’re standing, but it’s got no advice about the swamps and deserts and
chasms that you’ll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination you
plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a
swamp, what’s the use of knowing True North?
These are the words of the screenwriter Tony Kushner, not (as far as I know)
of President Lincoln himself. But they make an important point. Knowing
28 Aligica 2014, 28.

29 Levine 2013a.
30 Winship 2016, 177–78.
where we ought to end as a society tells us very little about our best next move.
Sometimes a tactical retreat or a sidestep is well advised.
I would push the point further. There is no end, no True North. As we move
through time as a community, we keep deciding where we ought to go. Moving in
the right direction is important, but so is holding ourselves together as a group so
that we can keep deciding where to go. We didn’t know a century ago that same-
sex marriage was a human right, but we maintained a republican form of gov-
ernment long enough to learn that. Sometimes, the imperative of maintaining
our ability to govern ourselves is more important than forward motion. Stephen
Elkin introduces this metaphor:
Those who wish to constitute a republican regime are like shipbuilding sailors
on a partly uncharted sea who know the direction in which they sail, since
the kinds of ports they prefer lie that way. This much they can agree on. To at-
tempt to agree on anything more specific will defeat them, their opinions on the
matter differing significantly. They also know too little for substantive agree-
ment to be possible. . . . It is clear that the relations among the shipbuilders are
fundamental. Because they must build, rebuild, repair, and modify the vessel
as they sail and learn—and because they must alter their course . . .—it mat-
ters whether the shipbuilders’ modes of association are such as to facilitate this
learning and the decisions they must make. . . . These modes of association are
then at least as important as the ports toward which the shipbuilders sail.
Elkin adds: the “essential problem is one of creating a design that provides the
capabilities that are needed to keep the regime oriented in the right direction.”31
Although our focus should be broader than regimes—we should consider all
forms of groups—Elkin offers good advice. Our main task is to join, sustain, and
(if necessary) design and find a diverse array of organizations that encourage
diverse people to work and learn together, oriented generally toward justice but
open to exploring what justice may actually mean.
A focus on means and a reluctance to specify ends does pose a risk. Whether
intentionally or inadvertently, a person might select and defend means that de-
termine a foreseeable outcome or that foreclose an outcome that others prefer.
This could be a back-door strategy for getting the ends that the person wanted
in the first place. To claim that you are too humble and aware of your own limits
to know the best ends is disingenuous if it’s clear where your favored means will
take you.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, later the founder of Pakistan, made essentially this
complaint against Gandhi. Gandhi insisted that the social movement for Indian
31 Elkin 2007, 107–8.
independence must involve close collaborations among Hindus, Muslims, and

adherents of other faiths. Immediately after saying that he did not know what
India wanted, he added that he only endorsed three values, one of which was
“truthful relations between Hindus and Mussalmans.”32 (“Truthful,” for him,
would imply a close, sincere, and interactive relationship.) For Gandhi, the means
of political action in India must incorporate interfaith dialogue and cooperation.
Although Gandhi insisted that “Congress leaves swaraj undefined,”33 Jinnah
could see that if Hindus and Muslims won independence together, they would
find a democracy with a large Hindu majority. This new country might be sec-
ular, or it might be Hindu-dominated, but it couldn’t be an Islamic republic—
simply because of demographics. Jinnah identified the Congress as a Hindu
organization and created the Muslim League as an alternative. He objected
when Congress tried to place its Muslim president, Maulana Azad, in the provi-
sional cabinet for British India, arguing that the Muslim League should name all
Muslim members.34 After Gandhi’s assassination, Jinnah eulogized him as “one
of the greatest men produced by the Hindu community and a leader who com-
manded their [sic] universal confidence and respect.” Jinnah regretted Gandhi’s
death “so soon after the birth of freedom for Hindustan [his term for India]
and Pakistan.”35 Thus, although Gandhi claimed that “means are after all every-
thing,” Jinnah saw that Gandhi’s means would prevent Jinnah’s goal, a sovereign
Pakistan. And he charged Gandhi with having an implicit goal of his own: the
creation of a “Hindustan.”
Similar debates could arise with the other theorists I will explore in this book.
For the Bloomington School, the means of self-government should be partic-
ipatory, experimental, decentralized, and pluralist—involving many partially
overlapping and nested institutions of different types. That method of self-gov-
ernance is unlikely to produce a dominant national government, as nationalists
or state-socialists might prefer. For the Frankfurt School, the means of politics
must involve critical and skeptical discussion of all assumptions and traditions.
That approach is unlikely to preserve a traditional culture and society, as some
conservatives and reactionaries might prefer.
In fact, all the means defended in this book will tend toward outcomes that
are generally more democratic, liberal, cosmopolitan, decentralized, peaceful,
and open to change than some alternatives. You may think this is a good con-
sequence, but the problem is methodological. Am I advocating a liberal, dem-
ocratic, cosmopolitan, polycentric, relatively pacific, and progressive order
32 Gandhi 1999, vol. 28, 310.

33 Gandhi 1999, vol. 28, 309.
34 Guha 2018, pp. 1026–27.
35 Guha 2018, 1083.
without forthrightly defending it? Do critics of those values have any reason to
accept the arguments of this book?
My response is that democracy, liberalism, cosmopolitanism, polycentricity,
peacefulness, and openness to change are vague terms, subject to many formu-
lations and degrees, and sometimes in mutual tension. (For example, the dem-
ocratic value of responsiveness to public opinion can easily conflict with the
liberal value of individual rights.) Human cognitive and motivational limitations
suggest that we should not try to define these values in advance or permanently.
Instead, we should adopt means that are decentralized (in the Ostroms’ sense),
deliberative (in Habermas’s sense), and peaceful (in Gandhi’s sense) and leave
the ends undefined. The actual outcome will predictably be somewhat demo-
cratic, liberal, and so on, but we cannot and should not know what that will mean
in detail.36
Why the Civic Perspective Is Often Missing
To call an intellectual development a “Copernican turn” is a cliché, but it hap-

pens to fit rather precisely the shift accomplished by the Bloomington School,
the second generation of the Frankfurt School, and the Gandhian tradition.
The usual questions for theory—“How should things be?” and “What should
be done?”—put social institutions at the center and derive guidance for active
citizens from a proper understanding of the institutions. The three traditions of
civic theory instead put the citizen at the center, recognize that citizens must act
together to have any impact, and so begin with the question, “What should we
do?” It is from this origin that these traditions proceed to investigate govern-
ments, markets, and laws.37
Just as Ptolemaic astronomy already studied the visible heavenly objects, so
social science already notices citizens and the problems that confront them.
“Civic engagement” is a topic of mainstream empirical research. A search on
Google Scholar yields more than 77,000 books or articles on free-riding and
9,000 citations of implicit bias (two of the citizen’s problems that I listed earlier).
36 What does this conclusion imply about the argument between Gandhi and Jinnah? I would say
that Gandhi joined and then led an interfaith party for swaraj that encouraged debates about both
means and goals. Jinnah was a member of that party, albeit mostly before Gandhi’s arrival from South
Africa. Jinnah and others had the right to quit the party and movement. Exit is a legitimate choice in
movements and party politics. As a result of Jinnah’s exit, Gandhi’s means failed: Congress ceased to
be a forum for dialogue and cooperation that included the kinds of people who preferred the Muslim
League. But Gandhi’s failure doesn’t invalidate his general advice to focus on means rather than spe-
cific ends.
37 Vincent Ostrom uses the same analogy in V. Ostrom 1997, 282. See Fotos 2015.
biases uncertainty
social sciences “truth”

+
opinions, preference, and values
=
policy recommendations
+
strategic action
=
change
Fig. 3.1 A standard model of policy analysis
However, academic disciplines are often taught and practiced in ways that
marginalize the citizen’s concerns. We can begin with a standard model of how
the social sciences ought to work (fig. 3.1).38 According to this model, a social
scientist aims at truth about how the world works. The chief questions are “What
is happening?” and “why?” From the very first day of a class on social science,
any responsible teacher will note that social science is beset by biases. Also, our
understanding of the world is inevitably uncertain. Therefore, “truth” deserves
quotation marks; it is always problematic. Still, social scientists use a large array
of sophisticated tools to reduce both bias and uncertainty and cumulatively ap-
proximate truth.39
The truth about what is happening and why does not tell anyone what to do;
facts are not judgments or prescriptions. To move from description to policy ad-
vice, we need something else: opinions, preferences, or values about what should
be. Those cannot come from social science, viewed as a science.40 They may
come from public opinion, or from policymakers, or perhaps from a different
discipline, such as philosophy. Wherever they come from, they are added to facts
to produce policy recommendations.
But policy recommendations do not jump off the shelf to implement them-
selves. Someone must take strategic action to implement any recommendation.
38 Cf. what Diem, Young, Welton, Mansfield & Lee (2014) call the “traditional model” of policy
analysis.
39 Portions of this section of text appeared as Levine 2017 and are reprinted here with permission.
40 “The majority of sociologists consider it illegitimate to move from explanation to evaluation.
In their view, sociology should strive to be value-free, objective, or at least to avoid making explicit
value-judgements.” J. Scott & Marshall 2009, 520.
That someone is usually quite separate from the social scientist who originally
studied the truth about the social world. Policy recommendations plus strategic
action equals change in this standard model, which delineates a very specific role
for the analyst as an independent and value-neutral seeker after truth.
There are many problems with the model in fig. 3.1, and I will just sketch a few
major ones. To start with, norms or moral commitments are not mere biases.
If I say, “education is good,” I am not expressing an opinion that might bias my
analysis. I am proposing a truth, albeit one that needs more detail. (What kind
of education is good? For whom? Why?) How to ground or justify moral claims
is a complex question, but it is nihilistic to treat facts as objective and all moral
claims as subjective in the sense of arbitrary. There are better and worse moral
claims.
Meanwhile, data are— and should be— imbued with norms. When we
measure an educational system by calculating graduation rates or test scores, we
are claiming that these outcomes are valuable. A set of requirements for grad-
uation or a list of questions on an exam must reflect value judgments. There is
no such thing as a value-neutral measurement, nor should we aim for one.41
A thoughtful, humane assessment of students is much better than a measure-
ment system meant to uphold a social injustice. Social scientists should not only
study the values held by other people, and not only disclose the values that they
happen to hold as possible sources of bias, but also strive to identify and justify
the best values and employ those values in collecting and interpreting data.
Not only must values influence empirical information, but data also rightly
and inevitably influence values. After all, why do I think that education is good?
In part because we have more than a century’s experience with near-universal
schooling. It has not benefited every student, but it has been good enough for
enough children to support the ideal of making school available to all. Our expe-
rience influences this normative judgment.
Another reason for the norm in favor of education is that we have developed a
strategy for making schooling universal. We know how to pass laws that require
enrollment and how to fund a system of public education. “Everyone should be
educated” is not an empty slogan or a utopian ideal that might have terrible un-
anticipated consequences when put into action. It is a policy framework that
has had decent results in practice, although it needs constant review and im-
provement. In contrast, the ideal that every human being should have highly re-
warding work may be appealing in the abstract, but it is not clear what it means
for policy. In general, our norms are, and ought to be, influenced by what we
know about how to implement them.
41 Cf. Latour 2004, e.g., 98–101.
And why do we have data on students’ performance and graduation, but not
on many other topics that might be equally important, such as their happiness?
Because people have organized to compel institutions to collect certain kinds of
data, but not other kinds. In that sense, strategy influences the empirical evi-
dence that we have.
In asking “What should we do?,” a citizen must consider facts, values, and
strategies in an integrated way, for they are deeply interpenetrated and practi-
cally inseparable. Ruth Anna Putnam writes, “facts and values emerge at the end
of inquiry on an equal footing: the facts are value-laden, and the values are fact-
laden.”42 It is consistent with her pragmatist background to add strategies as a
third term. But the division of labor within the academy—reflecting conceptual
distinctions between values and facts and between theory and practice—separ-
ates the different aspects of the citizen’s question in harmful ways. To be sure, no
individual is capable of putting all the aspects back together. To address values,
facts, and strategies together requires cumulative, collaborative work. That is
why I write of whole traditions, not individual authors, that unite these three
topics. Citizens need models that integrate strategy, empirical evidence, and nor-
mative argument much more thoroughly.
Not only is academic research compartmentalized, but it tends to be cynical
in a particular way. Because the social sciences focus on the explanation of so-
cial phenomena, they often conclude that intentional acts are not particularly
significant. Market outcomes and shifts in populations and technologies often
have greater causal impact than the deliberate choices made by members and
leaders of groups. A common distinction is structure versus agency, and often
structure emerges as the more significant explanation. For instance, the con-
dition of the economy in the last six months seems to affect the outcome of an
election more than any candidate’s choice of policies or strategies.43 However,
the factors that explain outcomes are not necessarily the factors that should
matter most to us as actors. For us, the important question is our own agency:
what we can accomplish by acting in various ways.44 Only if we have zero po-
tential impact should we give up, and even then, we should devote our atten-
tion to a different problem rather than ceasing to act at all. The social sciences
tend to ask, “What is happening and why?” or “What would happen if this
were done?” rather than what is best for any particular group of citizens to try
to do.45 To focus on what we should do as members of groups requires more
focused inquiry into how groups work.
42R. A. Putnam 1998, 7, summarizing a series of previous articles.

43Achen & Bartels 2016, c hapter 6.
44 C. Cohen 2010 analyzes how the Black youth in her study combine structure and agency in un-
derstanding their circumstances.

45 Cf. Habermas 1996, 9: “practical philosophy has taken its basic questions (‘What ought I do?’
or ‘What is good for us in the long run and on the whole?’) from everyday life in an unmediated way,
If we turn from the social science to the humanistic disciplines of philos-

ophy, political theory, and theology, we find scholarship that poses normative
questions much more explicitly. The resulting discussion is useful for citizens,
but it tends to focus on what should be rather than what we should do. For in-
stance, on the first page of the first chapter of the single most influential modern
work of political philosophy written in English, A Theory of Justice, John Rawls
writes, “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.” He presumes that philos-
ophy ought to reveal what makes institutions just, and then individuals should
comply with the laws of just societies and strive to reform or revolutionize un-
just ones. “For us,” he writes, “the primary subject of justice is the basic structure
of society, or more exactly, the way in which major social institutions distribute
fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from
social cooperation.” Rawls acknowledges that the same principles that apply to
the basic institutions of a just society may not also work at the global level or for
“private associations” and “less comprehensive social groups” than a society as a
whole. But he carefully selects the whole society as his focus, explaining that to
define ideal legal, economic, and social institutions is necessary before we can
know how to act when institutions are not fully just: in other words, before we
can address such topics as charity for the oppressed, civil disobedience, or revo-
lution.46 Nonideal theory is an offshoot of ideal theory. Rawls later writes, “until
the ideal is identified . . . nonideal theory lacks an objective, an aim, by reference
to which its queries can be answered.”47
But no actual group to which someone like me belongs can found the fun-
damental institutions of a society or rewrite its constitution. Thus our role as
citizens recedes into the background of Rawls’s philosophy. The same is true of
many other modern doctrines. For instance, Philip Pettit is a republican rather
than a liberal in Rawls’s sense. Pettit defines republicanism as “a consequentialist
doctrine which assigns to government, in particular to governmental authori-
ties, the task of promoting freedom as non-domination.” He explains that his
“interest in a republican conception of liberty comes of the hope that it can per-
suasively articulate what a state ought to try to achieve, and what form it ought
to assume, in the modern world.”48 Pettit acknowledges that “public life” must
have an appropriate character—citizens must value and defend liberty. But that
implies for him that “the state should concern itself with public life in order to
treating these questions without the objectivating filter of social science.” We need a social science of
what we ought to do that objectively investigates the conditions under which groups work.
46Rawls 1971, 3, 7, 8.
47Rawls 1999, 90. Defending Rawls’s view, Swift 2008, 382, writes, “only by reference to philos-
ophy—abstract, pure, context-free philosophy—can we have an adequate basis for thinking about
how to promote justice in our current, radically nonideal circumstances.”
48 Pettit 2000, 207, 129.
make sure that people enjoy the benefits of non-domination.”49 The state is the
Copyright © 2022. Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under
responsible agent even when citizens actually deliver justice through their ac-
tions and opinions.
Another important alternative to Rawlsian liberalism is the Capabilities
Approach. In an influential statement of that view, Martha Nussbaum writes, “Of
course governments may delegate . . . to private entities, but in the end it is gov-
ernment, meaning the society’s basic political structure, that bears the ultimate re-
sponsibility for securing capabilities. . . . The Capabilities Approach . . . insists that
all entitlements involve an affirmative task for government: it must actively support
people’s capabilities, not just fail to set up obstacles. . . . Fundamental rights are only
words unless and until they are made real by government action.”50
Even a position that calls for substantially reducing the power of the state—lib-
ertarianism—is still state-centric in a similar way. In Capitalism as Freedom, Milton
Friedman writes, “The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him
nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather ‘What can I and my compat-
riots do through government’ to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to
achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And
he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we
create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we estab-
lish it to protect?”51 These authors disagree about what the government should do
and what powers it should have. Friedman wants as little government as necessary
to protect a certain kind of freedom. Nussbaum and Rawls would assign the state
the powers it needs to guarantee a range of social outcomes. Pettit starts with a cer-
tain conception of freedom and concludes with an argument for an assertive state.
But all agree that justice means getting the role of the government right.
They also share the assumption that each political community maps onto
a single state that has one sovereign government. In 1961, Vincent Ostrom,
Charles M. Tiebout, and Robert Warren proposed an alternative polycentric
view, according to which we belong at once to many overlapping publics of var-
ious scales, each constituted by its own set of public goods.52 Polycentrism seems
much more plausible as an account of the way the world functions.
Another objection is that no government alone can determine whether people
experience justice or injustice. Amartya Sen begins The Idea of Justice with a
quotation from Great Expectations (“In the little world in which children have
their existence, nothing is so finely felt and perceived as injustice”) to support the
U.S. or applicable copyright law.
point that non-state actors—in Pip’s case, an older sister—can be just or unjust in
ways that no state would be able to determine.53
49 Pettit, 166.
50 Nussbaum 2011, 64–65.
51 Milton Friedman, 1962/2002, 2.
52 V. Ostrom, Tiebout & Warren 1961, 832–33.
53 Sen 2011, vii.
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I would add a third objection. The books I have quoted in this chapter are all
about justice, yet their authors and readers are not governments. These books are
written by people for people. People can adopt views of what governments should
do, and sometimes people influence governments. But individual people—even
dictators—cannot directly make governments either just or unjust. Pettit at
one point distinguishes the objectives of “the authorities” (people who exercise
power in a republican system) from what “we, as system designers” seek.54 He
imagines his readers to be system-designers, but we are not that. We are partici-
pants in existing systems, capable of influencing them. As Elinor Ostrom writes,
the choice confronting us is whether to support or oppose each aspect of a regime
that governs us, not which regime to select (as if from a menu)—nor can we de-
sign and implement new regimes from scratch.55
From our perspective as political actors, governments enter the picture, as do
families, markets, customs, religions, ecosystems, laws of nature, and many other
tools and constraints. The question for us is not how each of these things should
ideally work (if so, we should choose laws of nature that guarantee us all perfect
happiness forever), but rather how we should manage the constraints and oppor-
tunities that confront us.
In particular, the governments that we deal with differ greatly. Some of us live
in Denmark; others in North Korea or Somalia. All the political philosophers
I have cited would agree that Denmark has a better government than the other
countries, but that conclusion has limited value for their residents. Citizens of
Denmark can fine-tune the justice of their national policies by supporting the
competitive political parties that best reflect their views. In North Korea (be-
cause of tyranny) and in Somalia (because the state currently lacks the capacity
to govern most of its territory56), that approach to improving the world isn’t pres-
ently available.
I would venture an analogy to a family of theological views. For many the-
ists, God is the Unmoved Mover, ultimately responsible for everything but not
subject to being changed. Our stance toward God should involve such virtues as
hope and faith. We can pray for certain outcomes, and we can be confident that
divine choices will be just. We can ask what God is likely to do, given that God is
just. We cannot, however, choose how God will act.
Likewise, in all the political philosophies cited in this chapter, the state is the
unmoved mover of a system of justice. These theories suppose that the question
of justice is, “What is the ideal state?” That resembles the theological question,
54Pettit 2000, 207.

55E. Ostrom 1990, 194.
56 Somalia’s “government effectiveness” score for 2006 was the world’s lowest, per Kaufmann,
Kraay & Mastruzzi 2007, 84.
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“What are the attributes of God?” It is a matter for analysis and inquiry, but not
a choice.
Unlike the deity, the modern Danish state didn’t arise spontaneously; Danes
made it and sustain it. They have also made the Danish language and economy
and the physical layout of Danish towns and the countryside. How did a strategy
for influencing the world become available in Denmark that is absent in North
Korea and Somalia? The answer lies in the past behavior of people, both inside
these countries and beyond. But the strategies and ethics of citizens’ action are
sidelined in all the political philosophies that focus on the state—even Friedman’s
libertarianism. He wants the state to do little, and private actors to do what they
want; but that is still not a theory of how we can accomplish justice. Again, if we
are Danes who agree with Friedman, we can vote for classical-liberal candidates;
but if we are North Koreans, Friedman’s ideals are empty.
Perhaps the reason that most political philosophers focus on the state rather
than people as citizens is that the actions of citizens appear to be theoretically un-
interesting. Action is a matter of praxis, and the only question is empirical: given
the actual circumstances, what will work to move the society toward justice?
That is taken to be a question for strategists and empirical students of activism,
lobbying, elections, social movements, revolutions, and so on, but not for polit-
ical philosophers.
This is where I dissent. When we set out to change the world, we must de-
cide what is right for us to do under the circumstances. The main way to test
our answers to that question is to discuss them with other people. We must
also coordinate our actions to increase our odds of changing the world. Unless
we have already coordinated with some other people, we probably lack a
venue in which to deliberate, because a deliberation is a shared activity, and it
almost always takes place within an organization, network, or other structure
that we must sustain.
Deliberating and coordinating action generate the relatively consistent classes
of problems listed in chapter 2. These are hard problems, yet some groups of
people have solved them. They are just as conceptually and ethically complex as
the problem of designing a good state. But they are more pressing for us, because
we can deliberate and coordinate, but we cannot implement our ideas of a good
state. The only way that states will get better is if people (including those who
work in and for states) deliberate and coordinate better. And—while we are at
it—we can also change cultures, markets, religions, and even ecosystems.57
57 Philosophy has recently seen a welcome turn to nonideal theory (Stemplowska & Swift 2012,
372–88), but it has mostly addressed two questions that are not quite satisfactory for us as active citi-
zens. One question is how to compare societies that fail to be ideal (Sen 2011). The other is the ethics
of individual action under circumstances of injustice. For instance, when should a citizen resist an
unjust law? But citizens are typically not in a position to choose one regime over another, nor should
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An Agenda for Research and Practice

Fig. 3.2 displays the main content of this book in graphical form. Near the top
is the basic question, “What should we do?” It is closely connected to two other
issues: “Who am I?” and “What groups do I belong to?” (Group membership
may sometimes be involuntary or ascribed, not chosen.) Once we are in a posi-
tion to ask what we should do, we confront the three major questions that I ex-
plore in chapters 4–6: how to build or sustain functional groups, how to address
disagreements about values, and how to deal with groups that wrongfully ex-
clude us. Those topics then prompt interconnected questions about choosing
and designing institutions, organizing communities, generating social capital,
launching social movements, educating for citizenship, and weighing violent
versus nonviolent strategies. The topics shown in square brackets are relevant but
beyond the scope of this book.
This flowchart is not meant to be a tool for practitioners or activists to use as
they address specific problems, such as white supremacy, authoritarianism, or
global warming (among many others). Practitioners must focus on the detailed
contours of their situations and causes. Instead, it is an agenda for learning (in a
broad sense). First, each item in the diagram is researchable, a subject for cumu-
lative scholarship. In this book, I summarize some research about every item, but
that is a mere sample of the available knowledge, and much more can and will be
produced. Second, each item is worth careful consideration as part of an educa-
tion for active and responsible citizenship. If, for example, you have thought in
advance about how to form and maintain functional groups and have considered
the seven design principles proposed by the Bloomington School (chapter 4),
you will be better prepared to deal with the specific challenges that arise in real
institutions and movements.
The logic of fig. 3.2 is the opposite of the typical civic education curriculum.58
In most countries, civic education at all levels—from grade school to adult ed-
ucation—begins with institutions, particularly governments. Educators explain
how these institutions work and sometimes consider normative debates about
how they should work. How citizens may and should influence these institutions
is also a common topic, although not a primary one. How we should work to-
gether in other contexts to change the world is usually an afterthought. In con-
trast, the model in fig. 3.2 does address institutions, but it places citizens at the
center and reaches institutions once we consider the tools available to us.
they be satisfied with acting ethically as individuals. They must take effective action together. Still
missing is a consideration of what groups of citizens should do to promote justice when it is absent.
58 See c hapter 5 for more discussion of civic education as it is and as it should be.
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Which
Who am I? groups do I
belong to?
What should we do?
How can we
How should we How should
create/
address dis- we deal with
sustain a
agreements groups that
functioning
about values? exclude us?
group?
[wars, revolutions]
What rules
How should How can
and norms How to build yes
we speak institutions
encourage trust and Violently?
and respond promote
collective reciprocity?
to others? discourse?
action?
no
What makes
How to How to
social
organize educate for Why
movements
communities? citizenship? nonviolence?
work?
Which [states]
institutions?
Strategic Ethical
reasons reasons
[markets]
[networks]
Fig. 3.2 The logic of this book
This model melds normative, empirical, and strategic questions all the way
through. In that respect, it challenges the division of responsibilities in the social
sciences and humanities, but it resembles some forms of professional education.
For example, prospective lawyers learn constitutional principles and legal ethics,
facts about actual laws and decisions, strategies for litigation, and the structure
of the courts. A profession’s learning objectives might be mapped with a diagram
analogous to fig. 3.2. However, professional education assumes that students will
fill roles within existing social institutions, such as law or medicine. A similar
education aimed at citizens must be more open-ended, because citizens must de-
cide which roles they ought to adopt and which institutions they ought to main-
tain or change. An education for citizens that combines values, facts, strategies,
and institutional design principles can be called a “liberal education,” returning
to the root of that phrase as the ideal of a free citizen. Or it can be called “civic
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education,” meaning not lessons on how the current political system works but
rather advanced inquiry into effective and ethical collective action. Either way,
such education requires an interdisciplinary focus on the question that often
slips through the tessellation of the modern academic disciplines: What should
we do? The next three chapters explore traditions that address that question
head on.
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4
The Bloomington School and the Citizen

as Solver of Collective-Action Problems*
Picture a pond full of tasty and nutritious fish. There is no fence around it; people
live conveniently nearby. They will take some of the fish to eat or sell. If they take
the last few, the fish will cease to reproduce and vanish from the pond, perhaps
also harming the whole ecosystem. While a few breeding pairs of fish remain,
individuals may realize that to take the last ones is to end the food supply. But
if I decide to sacrifice my interests by leaving the surviving fish alone, sooner or
later someone else will take them, and the supply will end. I might as well be the
one to benefit from the last fish.
This is the “tragedy of the commons,” as Garrett Hardin named it in an epony-
mous 1968 article that was “one of the most often-cited scientific papers written
in the second half of the twentieth century.”1 Hardin wrote about a pasture rather
than a pond, but he wanted the example to stand for a much broader phenom-
enon. Indeed, his opening sentence was about the nuclear arms race between
the United States and the Soviet Union. Hardin viewed the arms race and the
explosive growth of human population (then seen as a more pressing threat
than carbon emissions) as terrifying versions of the same “class of human prob-
lems.” What made them all tragedies, Hardin explained (quoting Alfred North
Whitehead), was the “solemnity of the relentless working of things,” “the inevita-
bleness of destiny,” and “the futility of escape.”2
These problems can be modeled as games in which the outcomes are disas-
trous regardless of the will of the players. To model a human interaction as a
game means understanding it as a set of discrete choices made by independent
parties that yield results for all.3 A game model does not presume that the players
choose privately or secretly. They may communicate and negotiate, but the game
* Portions of this chapter appeared as Levine 2011 and are reprinted here with permission.
1 Dietz, Dolsak, E. Ostrom & Stern 2002, 6. On December 4, 2020, a search on Google Scholar
yields more than 45,000 citations of Hardin’s article.
2 Hardin 1968, 1243–44.
3 Johnson 2020 argues that models are ways of clarifying concepts, not hypotheses or propositions
that generate hypotheses. To model the relationship between a president and Congress as a game is
not to make a testable claim; it is to explain that your topic of interest is the set of independent deci-
sions that the president and Congress can make and how those interact. (This is my example, inspired
by Johnson.)
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197570494.003.0004
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is ultimately decided by their individual choices. The game model also does not
assume that the players are selfish. They may have any given goals, including al-
truistic ones. In fact, purely altruistic players can easily find themselves in tragic
circumstances. Consider the monks on Mount Athos who came to blows over a
question of Christology (chapter 1). They had a workable system for resolving
disputes—voting—but faced an impasse because so many abstained from the
available choices or voted for the losing option such that a majority of the com-
munity was badly dissatisfied. Or imagine a pair of friends, each of whom only
wants go to the restaurant that the other one prefers. They may have a great deal
of difficulty deciding and may even withhold or distort information about their
own tastes to increase the odds of satisfying the other person’s preference. This
stylized example shows that the relentless, remorseless, solemn conclusions of
classical game theory do not depend on an assumption of selfishness, nor would
teaching people to be altruistic solve the problem.4
Hardin believed that all solutions to collective-action problems involve
“coercion, of some sort.” Generally, coercion must come from an external
source if the players alone face a situation that destines them for tragedy. For
instance, it has been assumed that an arms race among nations can only be
stopped by a larger nation or coalition willing to punish the competitors. The
tsar felt that he had to send troops to Mount Athos to resolve a dispute left fes-
tering after a close vote. As for pastures and ponds, Hardin argued, there were
two categories of possible solutions: privatizing the resources or empowering
the government to enforce legal limits on access. A private owner of a whole
pond will not consume the last fish because she benefits from their reproduc-
tion. She will manage the pond to maximize the number of fish over the long
term. A government can do the same thing if it so chooses, or if it is compelled
to preserve the fish by law. “These, I think, are all the reasonable possibilities.
They are all objectionable. But we must choose.”5 All involve coercion because
either a private owner or a state gains the power to dictate what happens to the
resource.
The past century has seen a global debate about whether to privatize or na-
tionalize natural resources—the former solution being more popular among
conservative governments, development agencies, and libertarian thinkers, the
latter among progressive reformers and socialist and communist states. Between
them, they have altered traditional ways of managing common resources across
the face of the earth—often with disastrous consequences that extend as far as
4 This is my point, not Hardin’s. He assumes a natural tendency to selfishness and thinks that
“Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing” by teaching temperance
(Hardin 1968, 1245–46). But he sees problems of collective action as tragic because education will be
inadequate and transient
5 Hardin 1968, 1247, 1245.
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The Bloomington School 59
mass starvation. And neither side has considered that there may indeed be other
“reasonable possibilities.”
Hardin was already aware of some of the ways that privatization and na-
tionalization could go wrong, but we can elaborate on the risks. First, private
ownership does not automatically prevent people from taking the fish. Poaching
is a rather common crime, and when a pond is viewed as another person’s pro-
perty rather than a common resource, the temptation is high to take some free
fish while no one is looking. The owner can deploy guards, fences, and cameras;
but at best, those are costs, and at worse, they fail to accomplish their purposes.
For instance, the guards can sleep on the job or take bribes, which are examples
of principal/agent dilemmas.
Viewed from a greater distance, the private owner of one piece of property
may be a polluter or despoiler of other plots. In that case, dividing the land
among private owners just shifts the collective-action problem to a larger scale.
Often, private property is respected because people understand and follow
the rules. But compliance requires local norms of respect for private pro-
perty, effective law-enforcement, or both—and those are fragile solutions to
difficult collective-action problems, not default circumstances for human
beings.
Poaching on a pond of modest size is fairly easy to detect because fishing
must be conducted in the open and takes time. Forests are harder to police be-
cause we can’t see far through trees, and because birds and land animals move
easily across human borders. As Hardin notes (1245), “the air and waters sur-
rounding [a nation] cannot readily be fenced,” so they cannot be privatized
at all. In short, the solution of privatization requires certain types of physical
circumstances.
Government control brings its own problems. A government, too, would
need guards, fences, and cameras to protect the pond, unless all prospective vis-
itors were strongly committed to obeying the rules voluntarily, in which case
the government would hardly be necessary in the first place. The government
would also have to understand the pond: where the fish are, how and when they
are fished, and what affects their reproduction. That information does not come
free; its cost must be added to the price of wardens and fences. Like fences,
facts about ponds are undependable, because they may come from would-be
poachers who lie.
Most important, the government is not an agent. It is made of people who

have individual agency. Guards who represent either a governmental depart-
ment or a private landowner are paid to prevent fishing, but they can be paid
more to allow poaching or can choose to do some illicit fishing themselves.
Again, this is an example of a principal/agent problem. Similarly, a business
can illegally bribe the local authorities or legally press them to loosen the rules.
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Hardin claimed that federal management of Western lands has not prevented
overgrazing because cattlemen “constantly [pressure] federal authorities to

increase the head count to the point where overgrazing produces erosion and
weed-dominance.” That is an example of pressure that is legally permissible.
Government power always raises the question, “Who will watch the watchers
themselves?”6
These are some intrinsic limitations of the two prevailing modern responses
to the tragedy of the commons: state control and privatization. I call these two
responses “modern” because they have been widely introduced since 1900 to re-
place much older, more various, and more local practices for managing scarce
or vulnerable resources. They are also “modern” in the sense that James C. Scott
means when he analyzes “high modernism” as an ideology. It demonstrates
“strong, one might even say muscle-bound, self-confidence about scientific and
technological progress,” a desire to make nature and society fully legible to out-
siders (and a confidence that such understanding is possible), and “a truly rad-
ical break with history and tradition,” which are seen as “the products of myth,
superstition, and religious prejudice.”7 Relatedly, modernism recommends at-
tending only to the future. A rule taught in business schools is to “ignore sunk
costs”: the only question for a manager is what will maximize benefits in the fu-
ture. In contrast, most human communities look backward for guidance and
prize continuity.
To impose a system of private property or state control (or both) on a tra-
ditional society requires high-modernist techniques, such as surveying and
apportioning land and counting and measuring human beings and resources.
It requires a confidence that any technical problems can be overcome; for in-
stance, poachers can be caught on camera, identified, and fined. And its hubris
frequently generates catastrophe. As Elinor Ostrom writes, “In many settings
where individuals have managed small-to medium-sized resources for centu-
ries, drawing on local knowledge and locally crafted institutions, their disem-
powerment led to a worsening of environmental problems rather than their
betterment.”8 This is no small matter: human famine and the extinction of nat-
ural species have sometimes resulted. It is estimated that as many as 45 million
Chinese people died in the Great Leap Forward, which was an example of central
control. In Tanzania, the government of Julius Nyerere was democratic and hu-
mane, yet centralized planning failed there, too. On the other hand, the world’s
rainforests, fisheries, and climate are also at severe risk due to privatization.
6 Hardin 1968, 1245–46 (quoting Juvenal).

7 J. C. Scott 1998, 4, 93–94.
8 E. Ostrom 2000b, 11.
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From Tragedy to Drama

A claim of inevitability is essential to Hardin’s argument. The commons faces

a “tragedy” in the precise sense that its demise is inexorable. As long as any re-
source is a commons, it does not matter what human beings intend for it; the
commons is doomed.
Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues have shown, in contrast, that communities
can successfully manage and own common assets.9 This does not mean that a
government that represents the community owns it. Nor does it mean that a non-
profit corporation manages the asset as the community’s trustee. The community
can actually own the resource. It needs rules, norms, traditions, or processes that
limit the asset’s use and/or cause people to replenish it.
For instance, the huertas system near Valencia, Spain, seems to have lasted
for more than 1,000 years. Its origins are lost in history, but it is believed to have
survived Moorish conquest, Catholic reconquest, the unification and centraliza-
tion of Spain, Bourbon absolutism, civil war, fascism, and democracy—fading
only recently as a result of economic growth and urbanization. In the huertas, the
land is private. The scarce water is unownable as long as it is in the atmosphere
in the form of clouds or rain. When water flows through a canal, it can be used
by the neighboring landowner, but it is not sold or traded. Each farmer may take
as much water as he needs when it is his turn. The farmer opens a sluice gate and
must stand next to it as long as the water flows through. He decides how much he
needs. The next farmer must watch from his own land, and if he is not watching
when the gate closes, he misses his turn. This is his incentive for monitoring his
neighbor. The order is rotated.10
The huertas system involves an element of discussion. In 1435, during an im-
portant meeting at a Franciscan monastery, eighty-four local farmers codified
the formal regulations that have evolved into today’s rules-in-use.11 When dis-
putes arise, they can be taken before a deliberative body, a water court, that has
met weekly since time immemorial by the door of the largest house of worship in
Valencia: now a cathedral, formerly a mosque. Its procedures have been traced
to Islamic law. Ostrom observes that human beings do not have to rely on “blind
variation” (the process that drives biological evolution), because we can “try to
use reason and persuasion in [our] efforts to devise better rules.”
However, she insists that choosing rules requires experience. We must try
things in the world to see whether and how they work. And if they work well
enough, we may be better off not talking about them anymore. Thus the huertas
9 Dietz et al. 2002, 3–26; E. Ostrom 2004.

10 E. Ostrom 1990, 71–76.
11 E. Ostrom 2004, 29.
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system should not be seen primarily as an example of people communicating

and seeking to resolve problems of discourse or identity. Many years have passed
since the 1435 meeting yielded written rules. The characteristic act, opening a
sluice gate in view of a distant neighbor, is wordless. People conduct hard, quiet
labor to maintain the canals and to farm using the scarce water. Work, rather
than talk, is the basic mode of human interaction in this case. The huertas repre-
sent a solution to a difficult problem of collective action accomplished by people’s
bodies more than their mouths and ears. In the influential framework developed
by Harry C. Boyte, the huertas farmers are involved in “public work,” and the
moments when they discuss are part of their work.12 (Consider also Gandhi’s
use of this phrase for the act of spinning khadi cloth, discussed in chapter 3.)
Examples from c hapter 5 will provide a contrast, because there the central act
will always be communication.
Another of Ostrom’s cases is a crisis of overfishing off Alanya, Turkey.13 Its
physical conditions differ in important ways from the imaginary pond with
which I began this chapter and from the water needs of Valencia. In the open sea,
fish move. Fishing boats can move, too, but not infinitely fast; and the number of
fishing locations is finite. It is hard to know where the fish are: they are not vis-
ible from the surface. But locals know the subtle regularities of fish behavior. The
situation also has significant institutional and cultural contexts. A strong cen-
tral government (the Republic of Turkey) has power to compel. But that govern-
ment does not know where the fish are. Thanks to their experience, some people
know where to fish. The community has insiders and outsiders. You are either a
Turkish fisher from Alanya or you are not.
In this case, central control would fail because the state would have to ob-
tain knowledge of the fish and the fishers and use the information in the best
interest of the people and/or the fish. None of that comes automatically, reliably,
or cheaply. Privatization, meanwhile, is not really relevant. The boats are already
private. Fish already belong to the person who catches them. The labor market
is private. The problem is the uncaught fish: like rain in Spain, they are “fugitive
resources.” They cannot be privatized.
The fishers solved the problem through an ingenious system of randomly as-
signing all the licensed boats to specific starting points and rotating these loca-
tions on a fixed schedule. The fishers knew exactly where to put each location.
The best solution was a self-created one.
In both cases, the rules for governing a commons include large doses of indi-
vidual property rights. Still, we can say that the community owns the fishery if
only approved people can fish there and if each can only take a certain number of
12 Boyte 2011.
13 E. Ostrom 1990, 19–20.
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fish. If these rules are local government ordinances, we may say that the commu-
nity owns the fishery and uses the government as one of its instruments of con-
trol. (It will almost certainly use other tools as well, including private vigilance.)
In many cases, the rules are effectively enforced without official government en-
dorsement. Violence and threats of violence may never be necessary either, if
local ties are strong and outsiders are rare.
The Breadth of the Theory
The implications of Elinor Ostrom’s research would be limited if she only ad-
dressed tangible natural resources such as water and fish. But she and her col-
leagues show that the same general principles apply to wide range of goods that
matter to civic actors of almost all kinds.
In the mid- twentieth century, economists distinguished two types of
goods: public and private.14 Ostrom and colleagues have multiplied those types
to at least four. A subtractable good is one that becomes less valuable to others
when it is consumed.15 An excludable good is one that individuals can be pre-
vented from using. As shown in table 4.1, these are independent distinctions, so
they produce four possible combinations.
A pond, for example, is subtractable because removing any fish keeps other
people from catching those fish. In contrast, sunlight is not subtractable because
using it for energy does not reduce the supply for others. A pond is excludable if
there are efficient and affordable ways of blocking people from fishing from it.
Table 4.1 Types of good
Excludable Not excludable
Subtractable Ordinary private goods such as Common-pool resources such as wild

houses, cars, and shoes. A small fish, public safety, or the earth’s carbon
pond could be excludable. reserves.
Not Club goods such as the right to Pure public goods such as sunlight,
subtractable receive a cable TV channel. basic knowledge, and national defense.
14 Samuelson 1954.
15 Ostrom uses “subtractable” and “rivalrous” synonymously (e.g., E. Ostrom 2010). Rivalrousness
has a specific meaning in economics: a good is rivalrous if one person’s use prevents another’s.
I would use “subtractability” in a broader sense, to mean that individuals can degrade the resource,
whether by using it, failing to preserve it, or undermining its value in other ways. I would then define
common-pool resources as subtractable and non-excludable without invoking rivalrousness.
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But a pond is not excludable if its size or location would make barriers imprac-
tical or excessively expensive.

Goods that are both subtractable and non-excludable are called common-
pool resources, or “commons.” They are particularly challenging to provide and
manage. Because they are subtractable, consumption must be limited and con-
trolled. Because they are not excludable, anyone can take advantage of them
without contributing to them. They cannot be easily regulated or privatized. For
instance, large ponds and seas cannot be privatized because people cannot (for
practical reasons) be prevented from using them. The sun is also non-excludable,
but that is not a problem because it is not subtractable; it is a pure public good.
Hardin thought that all public goods were subject to the tragedy of the commons.
It would have been more precise to say that all common-pool resources face that
threat; pure public goods are not vulnerable. However, Elinor Ostrom and col-
leagues have found that people sometimes succeed in generating and protecting
common-pool resources despite their vulnerability.
To consider a non-physical example, the public safety of any community is a
common-pool resource. Everyone benefits from a lack of crime. Residents and
neighbors cannot easily be prevented from enjoying its benefits, which include
more economic growth, freedom from fear, and freer movement. Even would-be
criminals are better off where crime is rare. However, anyone can degrade public
safety by failing to intervene to stop crimes or by committing crimes themselves.
Therefore, public safety is both subtractable and non-excludable.
One solution is policing. Residents can be taxed to pay specific people—the
police—to enforce laws, and the police can be given a monopoly on the legiti-
mate use of force. This is a Hardin-like coercive solution to the problem of crime.
It is not, however, the only way to enhance public safety. Most human communi-
ties have not employed police at all, and even those that do use police also rely on
informal norms, education, citizens monitoring each other, and positive incen-
tives like philanthropy and social welfare to reduce crime.16
One problem with policing is the potential for bias. I offered evidence in
chapter 2 that police in the United States display substantial racial bias. In fact,
one could interpret American police as providing a varied mix of public safety
and white supremacy. For those who are White, white supremacy has the logic
of a common-pool resource. Holding other factors constant, it benefits everyone
who has white skin, even those who do not want the benefit, which is why we call
whiteness a “privilege.” But this advantage is subtractable because individuals

can reduce it by promoting equity. Because white supremacy is both subtractable
and non-excludable, it is vulnerable—as all common-pool resources are. One
potential solution is again a police force. The police can be paid and empowered
16 Sharkey, Torrats-Espinosa & Takyar 2017; Sampson 2012.
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to enforce safe streets, white privilege, or both. Certainly, in Alabama in 1954,

preserving white supremacy was an explicit purpose of policing. Trying to solve

the problem of public safety without tolerating unjust policing is a central goal of
today’s Black Lives Matter movement. This is a specific problem, but almost all
civic actors wrestle with common-pool resources of one kind or another.
A different current example is knowledge. Pure knowledge, such as laws of
nature, are non-rivalrous public goods. My knowledge of Newtonian physics
does not detract from yours. However, an actual book or website that explains a
law of nature requires incentives to create and to maintain. One way to generate
such resources is to treat them as private goods: the author sells a copyright to
a publisher who sells copies of books to consumers. This is a useful solution in
some circumstances, but not the only solution. Wikipedia provides millions of
pages of free material generated by the free labor of volunteers. It rests on the
Internet, which consists of privately or state-owned physical components (wires,
servers, satellites); private intellectual property; open-access intellectual pro-
perty, such as open-source software; and unowned protocols that connect all
the components into one network. People demonstrate various degrees of trust,
trustworthiness, and generosity when they interact online. In turn, science relies
on widespread voluntary compliance with norms such as publicity and equality
of opportunity.17 Protocols, open-source intellectual goods, and norms are
common-pool resources that can be degraded or enhanced, depending on how
we manage them. It is a civic task to get the whole “knowledge commons” right.18
The implications of Ostrom’s work would also be limited if successful cases of
durable common-pool management, such as Wikipedia or the heurtas system in
Valencia, were highly anomalous. It could be the case that collective-action prob-
lems almost always end in disaster, yet by canvassing the whole world, Ostrom
could find enough dramas with happy endings to fill Governing the Commons.
We will return later to the ratio of success and failure and its implications. For
now, I would note that there are many other positive cases, some of which do not
immediately resemble systems for managing environmental resources.
For example, in Europe during the 1100s, the largely autonomous cities of
Italy and Germany worked out a set of norms and processes for self-government.
Their core values were not democratic, in the sense of equal shares of power;
they rather emphasized covenants plus enforcement, deliberation in public
forums, the rule of law, education for collaborative virtues, and officers who
held limited powers and terms. These forms were very widely imitated in guilds,
chapter houses, and colleges, and they found echoes in larger units such as the
17
Merton 1973.
18
Hess & Ostrom 2006, including my chapter, “Collective Action, Civic Engagement, and the
Knowledge Commons” (247–76).
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Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. A medieval

man might thus find himself nested in a set of covenants for his guild, his city,
and the larger political unit that required his service and protected his rights.19
Here I cite European cases, but similar traditions are certainly evident in other
regions of the world. I would acknowledge that Europe also provides numerous
examples of monarchical absolutism, bureaucratic consolidation, hypertrophic
markets, and militarism. Still, its successful cases of common-pool management
have left a deep legacy.
The Bloomington School does not find that people always solve collective-ac-
tion problems, or that central control and privatization are always worse than
voluntary collaborative governance. Rather, success is a variable that depends
on many factors. For instance, one study conducted in Nepal compared farmer-
managed irrigation systems, which held annual meetings at which rules for dis-
tribution were debated and negotiated, with government-managed systems that
imposed rules from the top. Both systems failed the least advantaged farmers
most of the time during the driest months: 24 percent of farmer-managed ir-
rigation systems and just 8 percent of government-managed systems were able
to deliver adequate water to the users who were farthest from the source in the
dry season.20 However, the participatory systems were three times more likely
to succeed than the agencies. This is a typical result: self-governance is a prom-
ising alternative but not a panacea. “A frequent finding is that when the users of a
common-pool resource organize themselves to devise and enforce some of their
own basic rules, they tend to manage local resources more sustainably than when
rules are externally imposed on them.”21
The problem that confronts these Nepali farmers is scare water. For them, tech-
nology might provide an alternative to self-governance. The Israeli firm TaKaDu
Ltd. has patented a “computerized method for monitoring a water utility net-
work” that promises vast savings by quickly identifying the locations of leaks.22
That is a sophisticated twenty-first-century tool, but since ancient times, people
have worked to invent better pipes and other components of water distribution
systems. If a technical solution is available, people should consider using it, if
only so that they can direct their energies to other problems. Time and energy
for collaboration are scarce resources that should be economized. The quip var-
iously attributed to Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw—“the problem with
democracy [or socialism] is that it takes too many evenings”—also applies to
common-pool resource management. If a community can hire engineers or
19 Berman 2009; Sabetti 2014.

20 E. Ostrom & Gardner 1993, data on 103.
21 E. Ostrom 2000a, 148.
22 “System and method for monitoring resources in a water utility network,” US 7920983 B1.
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deploy a tool to take care of its water problems, residents can use their time to
work on something else instead.

On the other hand, technologies must be developed, deployed, and managed.
TaKaDu holds a patent for the general idea of analyzing water data and providing
the information to clients via a “user interface.” Nepali villages are unlikely to be
able to afford that service. Under a different legal regime, the same idea might
be treated as a public good. That would make it free to Nepali farmers but would
present a different problem: why would anyone be motivated to develop the in-
terface and the underlying tools in the first place, if they must be offered free? My
point is not that technologies for water management should be public or private
goods, but that how they are managed will determine their use. In turn, how they
are managed depends on who organizes and controls systems of property rights.
The question of governance is inescapable even when technological solutions are
possible.
Another example from Nepal illustrates this point. Starting in 1983, with
funds from the US Agency for International Development, the Nepali govern-
ment hired engineers to build an expensive and sophisticated irrigation system
in a community where five old-fashioned irrigation systems had long ago been
“built, governed, and managed by the farmers who owned the land served by
these systems.” The new canals and other components quickly failed due to local
soil conditions. Realizing that they needed local farmers’ input, state authorities
designed and assembled a wholly new farmers’ council to which they appointed
the leaders. (They were not aware of the existing farmers’ organizations.) The
government and the new local council had incentives and knowledge that were
poorly aligned with the interests of most of the community; and the farmers who
were not enlisted for the council lost the means to coordinate their power and
labor. “Thus at the end of this effort to improve agricultural productivity through
an investment in physical capital, a smaller service area is being served, water
deliveries are unreliable, a newly established water-users committee is nonfunc-
tional, and five farmer organizations that used to keep systems operating well [by
applying labor and knowledge through long-established voluntary covenants]
have been severely weakened. . . . Similar processes have occurred with other
government-controlled systems.”23 Ostrom elsewhere generalizes the point: “If
external agents of change do not take into account the delicate balance of inter-
ests embedded in social capital, when investments in physical capital are under-
taken efforts to improve productivity can have the opposite effect [i.e., they may
reduce productivity]. Institutions that are slowly developed through many years
of tough bargaining and trial and error processes may be quickly destroyed by
insensitive overemphasis on physical technology.”24 Again, the point is not that
23 E. Ostrom 2000c, 195, 197.
24 E. Ostrom 1995, 157.
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physical capital and technological innovations are worthless, but that their value
for a common-pool resource almost always depends on how the community is

governed.
Indeed, we can understand any functional constitutional government as a
covenant for overcoming collective-action problems. According to its Preamble,
the US Constitution forms a “Union” (a collective management regime) to pro-
vide two pure public goods—“domestic Tranquility” and the “common de-
fence”—and three common-pool resources—“Justice,” “general Welfare,” and
the “Blessings of Liberty”—for the Founders and their posterity. Under the US
Constitution, states, localities, and private associations also provide those goods
within their own jurisdictions. Again, this example demonstrates that common-
pool management regimes are not exotic cases.25
This example also shows that the Ostroms’ model does not merely apply at
small scales. In a seminal 1965 book, Mancur Olson argued that scale was a de-
cisive variable in determining whether groups could provide public goods: small
groups could; large ones could not.26 The Bloomington School’s category of
common-pool resources is somewhat different from public goods, but Olson’s
thesis remains plausible on its face. Perhaps small groups of people who know
and trust one another can manage common-pool resources, and large popu-
lations cannot. However, many large-scale problems involve finite numbers of
decision makers. For example, the US Constitution was written by selected rep-
resentatives of just thirteen states. The arms race between the United States and
the former Soviet Union that figures in Garrett Hardin’s article was basically a
game with two players that managed to negotiate significant treaties. The distin-
guished scholar of international relations Robert O. Keohane coedited a book
with Elinor Ostrom that explored the close parallels between collective-action
problems in small communities and among states.27 In both contexts, there is
typically no single enforcer who can determine the behavior of the parties. There
is plenty of room for disaster, yet sometimes the parties work out solutions: sys-
tems for apportioning water in Valencia or treaty regimes among states.
Furthermore, governments do not merely work “within their jurisdictions by
imposing authoritative rules on their subjects.”28 Even dictatorships cannot do
that, because they cannot police and control their populations without a great
deal of voluntary cooperation. That means that any functioning state is already
25 Here I presume that domestic tranquility and common defense are not excludable or
subtractable, because once they are established within a perimeter, everyone benefits without rivalry.
I presume that welfare, justice, and liberty are excludable because people within the perimeter can be
denied these goods, but they are not rivalrous. This analysis is subject to debate, but the important
point is that constitutions preserve some mix of pure public goods and common-pool resources.
26 Olson 1971.
27 Keohane & E. Ostrom 1995.
28 Keohane & E. Ostrom 1995 (Introduction), 11.
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a large-scale solution to a collective-action problem. Vincent Ostrom originally

developed an approach that viewed any government not as a single actor that
stands apart from society and directs it, but rather as a whole set of human actors
(politicians, civil servants, front-line workers) who constantly interact with each
other and with people outside the government.29 Not much is accomplished un-
less they are able to motivate voluntary compliance with agreements.
A picture emerges of governance as “polycentric.” Ostrom, Tiebout, and
Warren used that term (originally from Michael Polanyi30) in a classic 1961 ar-
ticle. They wrote that a “polycentric political system” exists when “many centers
of decision-making which are formally independent of each other . . . take each
other into account in competitive relationships, enter into various contractual
and cooperative undertakings or have recourse to central mechanisms to resolve
conflicts.” The whole can be called a “system” to the extent that the separate insti-
tutions “function in a coherent manner with consistent and predictable patterns
of interacting behavior.”31
Such systems may be more the norm than exception. At the local level, we
are constantly interacting in game-like situations with other people who may ei-
ther cooperate or not. There are islands of command-and-control in which some
individuals tell others what to do, but their capacity to control usually depends
on some willing compliance. Nation-states exist in a global anarchy, without any
power above them, but they have managed to work out some arrangements for
cooperation. And between nation-states and local communities are complex
webs of intermediary organizations such as firms, municipalities and regional
governments, parties, interest groups, and media organizations. Cooperation,
competition, and mutual destruction are all possible in all of these contexts.
Criticizing Elinor Ostrom from the left, David Harvey acknowledges that she
is officially committed to polycentricity, which means sharing power among
units at all scales, including nation-states. However, he thinks that most real,
functioning commons are actually small. Therefore, Ostrom is biased in favor
of small, voluntary groups and against nation-states. Harvey sees a similarity to
neoliberalism, which also “favors administrative decentralization and the maxi-
mization of local autonomy.” For him, the problem is that “decentralization and
autonomy are primary vehicles for producing greater inequality.” For instance,
locally controlled schools and police forces will have unequal resources and re-
sults. Indeed, Ostrom often advocates shifting power to smaller units and dis-
misses concerns that decentralization will block redistribution by arguing either

that large democratic governments fail to redistribute resources anyway, or that
29 V. Ostrom, 2007.
30 Tarko, 58; Aligica 2014, 39ff.
31 V. Ostrom, Tiebout & Warren 1961, 831.
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more money wouldn’t solve poor communities’ problems.32 Harvey thinks that
Ostrom’s statements about “higher-order decision-making” are relatively empty,

because the practical implication of her work is to encourage decentraliza-
tion, which weakens governments that might otherwise be able to redistribute
resources.33
I would agree that the problem of scale is difficult—we will return to it in
chapter 9. I also agree that Elinor Ostrom shared certain views with the foun-
ders of neoliberalism. Like Friedrich Hayek, she was an opponent of centralized
planning. If she must be placed on a left-right political spectrum, there is a case
for placing her on the right (although she can also be claimed for the left34). In
any event, we should take seriously her argument that common-pool resource-
management can work at all scales, even at the global level, because we have
seen nations enact covenants to protect common resources. Further, if we are
serious about what we should do, we cannot just call for states to govern fairly.
That is passing the responsibility from ourselves to the state. In fact, creating and
maintaining fair states is just as hard a problem as developing and enforcing cov-
enants at large scales. Civic agency is most tangible and tractable in small groups
and most elusive at the global level. But this just as much a problem for state-cen-
tric views as for Elinor Ostrom’s version of polycentricity. The statist progressive
owes an account of how we can get good governments when they don’t already
exist. For people whose question is “What should we do?,” a powerful and cen-
tralized state is one possible tool, but the circumstances will determine whether
that tool is available, possible, necessary, sufficient, and preferable to alternative
arrangements.
Polycentrism implies a whole social/political theory, perhaps best developed
by Paul Dragos Aligica on the foundations of the Ostroms’ work.35 It is a posi-
tive argument for a range of autonomous, differentiated, interacting institutions,
such as a democratic national government, regional and local governments, an
independent legal system with its own logic, a civil service and regulatory agen-
cies, bureaucratic firms, markets, voluntary associations, religious denomin-
ations that vary from hierarchical to congregational, labor unions, parties and
political movements, an institutionalized press, autonomous scholarly and sci-
entific bodies and institutions, loose networks, and various kinds of families—
each as centers of power. None should dominate. Each should check the others.
One reason for polycentricity is that unitary political systems degenerate into
tyranny regardless of their original or official objectives. The Chinese Communist

Party has evolved from a radically egalitarian movement into an organization
32 Both arguments in the same paragraph in E. Ostrom & Whitaker 1974, 315.
33 Harvey 2012, 81–84, quoting 82–83.
34 Wall 2017.
35 Aligica 2014, 30–70; Aligica 2018, chapter 1.
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closely associated with billionaires. How could that happen? Because, in the long
run, it doesn’t matter what you believe or say you will do. It matters whether and
how your power is checked.
Another reason for polycentricity is the Hayekian argument that we are in-
capable of designing highly complex systems that are any good. We are better
off with emergent social organization.36 But this premise does not imply that a
market plus common law is the perfect manifestation of emergent social order,
as Hayek claimed. Markets are actually designed systems, and they tend to col-
onize the other domains if unchecked. A truly emergent society encompasses
many different forms and allows people to choose among the forms and inno-
vate within them.37 In other words, a society that has an assertive state and a
strong market is more polycentric than one with only a market (as if that were
possible).
The resolution of conflicts among institutions can have different effects
on different people. For example, a free trade agreement (which favors mar-
kets over states) might benefit consumers and firms but cost some people jobs,
which, in turn, damages and even shortens their lives. Therefore, it is appro-
priate to assess any arrangement from the perspective of distributive or social
justice. We can ask, “Is this good and fair?” However, the social choice tradition
that deeply influenced the Ostroms urges us to doubt that any sovereign insti-
tution—such as a government—can consistently, wisely, and fairly define and
enforce principles of distributive justice (not only in the short term, but over
generations). Not only would such an institution have to work as advertised, but
it would have to gain its power in the face of resistance without becoming cor-
rupted by the struggle.
The polycentric alternative is that people must assess and enforce distributive
justice, and that we should do so through the various institutions available to
us: a whole range of governments, movements, courts, media forums, etc. Since
we are unlikely to agree about what constitutes justice, we will have to debate and
compete for influence. This is a citizen-centered rather than a state-or market-
centered model. It doesn’t negate the significance of struggles between states and
markets, yet it doesn’t assume that the relationship must be zero-sum. We could
have stronger democratic states and more efficient markets. I would also empha-
size that states and markets are only two of many important types of institution
through which people exercise authority.
36 Hayek states this foundational position forcefully and clearly in Hayek 1967/1978, 71.
37 Cf. Polanyi (1962/2000), 19. Although Polanyi is an originator of the idea of emergent order,
he rejects the implication that science should be subsumed to the market. It is a different order that
needs to be kept separate.
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Social Capital
In the Nepali irrigation system case, Elinor Ostrom observes that external inter-
ventions undermined “social capital.” She defines this as “the shared knowledge,
understandings, norms, rules, and expectations about patterns of interactions
that groups of individuals bring to a recurrent activity.” When individuals face
problems of collective action, they “may easily follow short-term, maximizing
strategies that leave them all worse off.” However, she observes, people some-
times develop “shared norms,” “rule systems,” “conventions” (which can arise
“without as much collective, self-conscious thought” as rules), or even formal
bodies to solve collective- action problems.38 Such achievements tend to
strengthen people’s capacity to govern themselves in the future, rather than using
up their reserves of problem-solving power: “Social capital does not wear out
with use but rather with disuse.” Further, people generally must make their own
social capital, which “is hard to construct through external interventions” but
vulnerable to being undermined by outside influences.39
A major stream of research on social capital derives from the sociologist James
S. Coleman. Studying schools in the United States, Coleman found that young
people benefited from “the social relationships that exist among parents,” the
structure of those relationships, and “the parents’ relations with institutions of
the community.” He called those factors social capital.40 The political scientist
Robert D. Putnam has both popularized and deepened this concept. In Bowling
Alone, Putnam explains: “Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and
human capital refers to properties of individuals [such as their own skills], social
capital refers to connections among individuals—social networks and the norms
of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.”41
Putnam typically uses survey measures of individuals’ participation in collec-
tive activities (such as belonging to groups, volunteering, and attending meet-
ings) and the degree to which they say that they trust others to derive summary
statistics for communities that he labels social capital. The aggregate social cap-
ital of a community’s residents then predicts a wide range of positive outcomes
for individuals, such as better schools, less crime, and better government. Robert
Sampson and his colleagues use an overlapping but somewhat different set of
measures to assess what they call “collective efficacy” and find that it strongly
predicts well-being at the level of neighborhoods.42
38 E. Ostrom 2000c, 176–177.

39 E. Ostrom 2000c, 179.
40 Coleman 1988, S. 98, S. 113.
41 Putnam 2000, 19
42 See Sampson 2012.
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The outcomes in this kind of research are social goods, such as fields that are
irrigated, streets that are safe from crime, and schools that effectively educate
their students. Contributing to these outcomes are members of the community,
acting voluntarily. Farmers clear clogged irrigation channels (and refrain from
taking more water than they need); city dwellers obey the law and keep their
eyes on the streets to report violence; and parents assist schools with their vol-
untary labor, vote for taxes to fund education, and hold schools accountable for
results. The Bloomington School posits that behind these displays of coordinated
voluntary action are conventions and rules, whether tacit or explicit, that pre-
vent free-riding and other collective-action problems. Those conventions and
rules constitute social capital. In the work of Putnam, Sampson, and their many
colleagues, social capital is instead a statistical construct composed of survey
measures of individuals’ membership and trust that correlates with desirable
outcomes.
Since social capital is not directly observable and was born of a metaphor, it
may not be fruitful to debate what it actually is. More useful is to explore em-
pirically the relationships among the following factors: (1) individual behaviors
and attitudes, such as voluntarily participating in collective efforts; (2) explicit
rules and institutions; (3) implicit conventions and norms; (4) effective collec-
tive actions; and (5) positive social outcomes. The available body of research
finds many causal pathways and reciprocal relationships among these factors.
For instance, higher levels of social capital produce better schools, but better ed-
ucational attainment boosts social capital.43 Regardless of how we choose to de-
fine and apply the phrase “social capital,” the metaphor rightly suggests that it
is a “stock” that provides a valuable “flow.” Working together leads to more suc-
cessful collaboration.
The Ostroms’ Agenda
The study of Nepali water distribution— very typical of the Bloomington

School—compares a participant-led method for managing a common resource
against a top-down method, using a metric of efficiency (in this case, the per-
centage of farmers in the least advantaged physical locations who received water
under each system). It might seem that Elinor Ostrom was interested in deter-
mining the relative efficiency of various forms of management. To the extent that
she hoped the bottom-up, participatory approaches were more efficient, that
would be a bias that could distort her findings unless she checked it carefully.
Furthermore, we would expect the results to vary. Nepali farmers might surpass
43 See, e.g., Putnam 2001.
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Nepali state agencies and engineers at distributing water during the dry season,
but sometimes governments, experts, or markets would be more efficient than

collaborating farmers. Ostrom and her colleagues would rigorously ask which
methods worked better in which circumstances.
Although Ostrom never explicitly described her own agenda in terms other
than these—and she was proud to be considered a scientist who was consistently
funded for decades by the National Science Foundation—I believe she had a
different agenda and a different relationship to empirical evidence. Her norma-
tive position emerges in passages like the following: “Individuals who have no
self-organizing and self-governing authority are stuck in a single-tier world. The
structure of their problems is given to them.” Here she refers to situations, such
as the prisoner’s dilemma, in which the structure of the game produces harmful
outcomes “relentlessly” and “inevitably” (to use Hardin’s terms). Human agency
is missing. Ostrom writes, “As long as people are described as prisoners, policy
prescriptions will address this metaphor. I would rather address the question
how to enhance the capabilities of those involved to change the constraining
rules of the game to lead to outcomes other than remorseless tragedy.” First-
person sentences are relatively rare in Ostrom’s formal writing, but by saying
what she would “rather address,” she expresses a personal value commitment.
She wants people to be able to solve their own problems collaboratively, because
that is a form of liberation from constraint. It is dignified and creative. She seeks
to enhance their capacities for self-governance.44
The presiding spirit of Ostrom’s Indiana Workshop in Political Theory and
Policy Analysis is Alexis de Tocqueville, whose portrait hangs prominently there.
Vincent Ostrom interprets Tocqueville’s project as an effort to support “citizen
sovereigns” who govern (in Alexander Hamilton’s phrase) by “reflection and
choice” not “accident and force.” Vincent Ostrom writes, “When citizens are sov-
ereign, political scientists confront the task of civic education reaching toward
knowledgeable enlightenment and working collegiality in shared communities
of sympathy and understanding. This is our intellectual challenge in political sci-
ence as we extend patterns of association and political authority from the local to
the global in the next millennium.”45
Note the half dozen explicitly moral words in these two sentences. Elinor
Ostrom shared these moral objectives. Her normative commitments were rela-
tively private because she chose to interact publicly with people who saw them-
selves as value-neutral or value-free scientists.46 But I see in her work and that
44 E. Ostrom 1990, 54, 7.

45 V. Ostrom 2006, 13, 16.
46 Hardin is an illustrative example. In Hardin 1968, he considers whether a system of private
property plus legal inheritance is just. He answers that it is not, because “legal possession should
be perfectly correlated with biological inheritance—that those who are biologically more fit to be
the custodians of property and power should legally inherit more.” Instead, in our system, “an idiot
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of her colleagues two normative commitments that could not be justified in

scientific terms. These scholars hope that people’s collaborative efforts succeed,
and they are loyal enough to practitioners that when they see evidence of failure,
they suggest improvements rather than give up on self-governance. Ostrom, for
example, shared advice with practical people as diverse as Indianapolis law en-
forcement officials and Nepali farmers. It is not at first obvious why she would
hope that common-property resource management and other forms of self-gov-
ernance are successful. It might be easier to turn all resources into private or state
property than to encourage communities to manage resources as common pro-
perty. And it would be easier for professionals to govern schools and cities than
to share their authority with overlapping boards, panels, and associations in the
“polycentric” governance that Ostrom recommended. So why do Bloomington
School researchers evidently hope that common-property regimes produce
more sustainable and efficient economic outcomes than expert management,
and why do they hope that decentralized public participation generates more
legitimate and fair policies than governments do?
One can imagine that they hold normative principles that are utilitarian
(common-property regimes produce more goods at lower cost than other sys-
tems), Kantian (participants display and develop rational autonomy by man-
aging their own resources), communitarian (the social bonds and trust that
develop among participants are intrinsically good), liberal (common-property
regimes protect against state tyranny), anarchistic (common-pool resources are
free from domination), Burkean (common resource regimes are traditional, pre-
modern, and deserve respect), or perhaps a hybrid like that of Sen’s Capabilities
Approach (people should have the maximum feasible capacities to conduct cer-
tain human activities).47
A different answer emerges when Ostrom and colleagues write, “Just as ev-
olutionary and developmental biology progressed by studying the fruitfly,
Drosophila melanogaster, an organism well suited to the tools available, we sug-
gest that studies of the commons and related problems are an ideal test bed for
many key questions in the social sciences,” such as how to “control individuals’
egoistic and antisocial impulses” and “which social arrangements persist.”48
can inherit millions,” which we “must admit” is unjust, although it does prevent the tragedy of the
commons (1247). He says that this conclusion about justice follows from his training as a biologist.
In fact, biology cannot demonstrate that the biologically fittest deserve the most property. Biology
cannot yield normative conclusions at all. From the perspective of science—the study of nature—
there is no justice, not even a reason to prefer environmental sustainability over a tragedy of the com-
mons. Hardin’s concern for saving the earth is commendable, but it comes from sources other than
biology. His article manifests an inability to give plausible reasons for normative positions.
47 Aligica 2004, 22, notes that “the Ostrom brand of institutionalism has a robust normative
component.”
48 Dietz et al., 5.
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These may be problems for social scientists, but more important, they are prob-
lems for citizens acting together in groups. In order to know what we should do,
we must learn which durable arrangements counter antisocial impulses. Goods
(such as rainwater and Wikipedia articles) that are subtractable but not easily ex-
cludable—common-pool resources—provide valuable cases because they are es-
pecially hard to govern. In fact, Hardin assumed that such goods were doomed,
yet they have often been managed successfully. Learning how to solve these hard
collective-action problems should yield insights into situations where easier
solutions may be available. Studying them helps citizens to be sovereigns, gov-
erning ourselves by reflection and choice.
In her Nobel Lecture, Ostrom notes that Paul Samuelson’s “classic defini-
tional essay” of 1954 divided all goods into two types (public and private),
divided all workable institutions into two forms (governments and markets),
and therefore viewed “the people of the world . . . primarily as consumers
or voters.”49 Ostrom and her colleagues complicated these distinctions and
added new types of goods and institutions, notably common-pool resources
and common-property regimes. She does not quite say what else people might
be, other than consumers or voters, but an answer emerges in the rest of the
lecture and her whole body of work. People are co-constructors of systems
of rules and norms, by no means limited to classic markets and hierarchical
states. To make these systems, they must talk; to sustain them they must work.
Thus citizens are members, deliberators, planners, and creators as well as con-
sumers and voters. Whereas Michel Foucault’s discovery of the pervasiveness
of power suggested that people were oppressed in countless venues and ways,
Ostrom and her colleagues’ theory of polycentric governance suggests that
citizens are empowered in many settings and contexts, or can be.50 Ostrom
contributed to the “The New Civic Politics” statement and particularly to pas-
sages like this one:
Human action is partly a product of causal structures. Human action is also a

product of human engagement and skill, institutionally organized and guided
by systematic and disciplined thinking. Some of those skills are inherited.
Others are learned, but not taught. But an important subcategory is that of
teachable skills.
One way to combine these two perspectives is to think of actions as produced
by structures of power, but to think of structures of power as themselves a re-

sult of design, redesign, and human labor. According to such a view human be-
ings are both ruled (subject to structures of power) and rulers (designers of the
49 E. Ostrom 2010, referring to Samuelson 1954.

50 Aligica 2018.
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structures of power). And this conception is rooted in Greek and Aristotelian

definitions of a citizen, but generalized and made more abstract.51
Practical Implications
Members of the Bloomington School have always acknowledged that many fac-
tors should influence the best choice of rules and processes; hence it is important
to avoid hasty generalizations. However, they have developed lists of rule-of-
thumb principles and considerations, subject to being balanced against each
other and constantly refined. Here are some recurrent examples:52
1. Clear boundaries: Both the resource and the community of people who use
it should be delimited in ways that are relatively uncontroversial and inex-
pensive to define. This is often a reason to use natural boundaries, such as
rivers, to delimit resources and communities. All the enrolled students at
a university or all the individuals who have passwords for a given website
may also be easily defined groups.
2. The users of a resource should do their own monitoring. They should mon-
itor both other users and the resource. Ideally, the act of monitoring will be
built into other acts—as in the huertas system, where a farmer can work on
his own field while he watches his neighbor at the sluice gate.
3. Sanctions should begin modestly but rise with repeated infractions. It is
important that violations of covenants lead reliably to sanctions; otherwise,
people will free-ride. However, if sanctions are draconian, the community
may hesitate to use them at all; and when harsh punishments are imposed,
they may provoke resistance and social raptures. Therefore, many effective
communities impose minor penalties, such as merely naming a violator
publicly or levying a small automatic charge. Such penalties impose costs
and can harm reputations, but violators can recover fully from being penal-
ized. The costs are gradually increased with repeated infractions.
4. The rules must be congruent with local physical, cultural, and institutional
conditions. For instance, water comes periodically with rain, flows down-
hill, and sinks into the earth or evaporates. Trees stay still, grow slowly, and
reproduce. Therefore, rules for water and trees should differ. Water may
also have different cultural meanings in different places, and local gov-
ernmental authorities may view it differently.53 All these factors must be
considered.
51 Boyte, Elkin, Levine, Mansbridge, E. Ostrom, Sołtan & Rogers Smith 2007/2014.
52 Drawing on E. Ostrom 1990 and E. Ostrom 2010, 653.
53 An elaborate, multidisciplinary application of Bloomington School ideas to water is Islam &
Susskind 2013.
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5. Participation: most of the users should be able to help make and enforce the
rules. Participation tends to yield wiser choices and increases support for
the rules.
6. Conflict-resolution mechanisms should be rapid and easy to use. The main
objective is not that every resolution is perfectly consistent with an abstract
ideal of justice, but that people can get clear resolutions with minimal effort.
7. Smaller systems should be nested in larger systems, and the more pow-
erful big systems should recognize or at least tolerate the authority of the
smaller ones. This is an application of the Ostroms’ broader principle of
“polycentricity.”
Social capital is not named on this list, but given its frequent importance in
Ostrom’s diagnoses and recommendations, we might add an eighth design prin-
ciple. In my formulation:
8. Increase local reserves of social capital, and make sure that external assis-
tance does not undermine social capital.
Alternatively, we could see the seven design principles that are explicitly pro-
posed by the Bloomington School as a rule of thumb for expanding the current
stock of social capital. We would also expect the design principles to work better
when communities already have social capital that they can apply. Since self-gov-
ernance both requires and generates social capital, it is possible for a community
to enter a virtuous cycle in which success begets success.
To be sure, these design principles are far from sufficient to tell us what we
should do. They are vague, incomplete, and sometimes in tension. For example,
setting “clear boundaries” may conflict with “local physical, cultural, and insti-
tutional conditions” if the local situation involves vague and porous borders. It
wouldn’t be wise to choose a river as a boundary if the community or the an-
imal population crosses that river regularly. The Bloomington School does not
promise an algorithm for resolving all collective-action problems, but its emer-
ging and evolving principles are meant to improve phronesis.
Recall the categories of problems listed in c hapter 2 under the heading of
“collective action”: free-riders, arms races (and prisoner’s dilemmas), principal/
agent dilemmas, path dependence, problematic decision rules (and voting di-
lemmas), boundary problems, and the Iron Law of Oligarchy. The Bloomington
School does not solve any of these problems definitively. If there were a complete
and replicable solution, it would be widely reported, and the problem would
no longer trouble us. But even as these problems persist, the Bloomington
School offers a three-part response. First, none of the problems is a tragedy in
the sense of an inexorable march to defeat. Each has frequently been managed
and mitigated, if not completely prevented. Second, such problems require
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covenants: actually applied agreements (whether explicit or tacit) that not only
guide everyone’s behavior but create predictable consequences. If I leave my

goat to graze too long on common land, I will find her tied up in the middle of
the village and will have to retrieve her before everyone’s eyes. Knowing that,
I strive not to over-graze.
Third, covenants ought to embody a range of “best practices” that are found
all over the world. For example, when some members of a group are selected to
monitor others, that creates a principal/agent dilemma. The monitors can over-
look their own selfish behavior, extract payments from people whom they mon-
itor, or receive bribes to look the other way. Therefore, it’s generally wiser to make
everyone a monitor of everyone else and to build oversight into daily routines.
That is true of the huertas farmers who watch their neighbors at the sluice gate.
But sometimes it is impractical to expect everyone to monitor. Modern ship cap-
tains cannot be trusted to refrain from discharging oil waste on the high seas, nor
can they monitor each other over the horizon. Instead, insurers are now required
to certify that all ships have functioning equipment that measures discharges.
Insurers already carefully assess each ship, so it is practical to build an environ-
mental oversight function into their existing routines. Insurers are “ ‘natural’
monitors and enforcers” whose incentives align with the common good.54 The
general insight is that monitoring is best dispersed among parties who can watch
others reliably and at low cost.
Another example: rotating leadership among all members of a group miti-
gates free-riding and the tendency to oligarchy by making everyone a leader
who needs others’ support, and then a follower for whom contributing is bur-
densome, and then a leader again. Random selection of short-term leaders can
prevent individuals from planning to profit from their power. A way to mitigate
boundary problems is to use arbitrary but clear boundaries, such as rivers or
major roads within cities, to delimit quasi-autonomous communities.
In general, Elinor Ostrom hoped to help people to change and preserve the
rules that would serve them best. To do this, she offered “empirically validated
theories of human organization,” building toward a “policy science that can in-
form decisions about the likely consequences of a multitude of ways of orga-
nizing human activities.” Theoretical inquiry involves a search for regularities.
“The basic strategy is to identify those aspects of the physical, cultural, and insti-
tutional setting that are likely to affect [the results]. Once one has all the needed
information, one can then abstract from the richness of the empirical situation to
devise a playable game that will capture the essence of the problems the individ-
uals are facing.”55
54 Mitchell 1995, 248, and see 232, 245.

55 E. Ostrom 1990, 24, 55.
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Their conceptual framework has motivated Ostrom and her colleagues to

advocate on behalf of several reforms. In the fields of environmental protec-

tion, public services, and economic development, they have argued for decen-
tralization and local participatory institutions. In her early work on water and
police services, Ostrom found that when many local bodies and boards were
empowered, they did not duplicate services (even when their boundaries over-
lapped), but instead worked more efficiently than the centralized systems being
advocated by management reformers. Not only did these small, participatory
organizations work efficiently, but they served as schools for citizenship. Elinor
Ostrom argued that de Tocqueville’s “art and science of association” did not
come naturally because many of its principles were counterintuitive. They “must
be taught to each generation as part of the culture of a democratic citizenry.”56
The traditional way to learn these crafts was experiential: we learned self-gov-
ernment by governing ourselves. Centralization (in the name of efficiency) has
reduced such opportunities. Based on data collected by Ostrom, I estimate that
the proportion of Americans who serve on a public board has declined by about
75 percent since the mid-twentieth century.57 I also estimate that an outright ma-
jority of American adults belonged either to church or a union (or both) as re-
cently as 1972, thereby potentially gaining experience with self-government; but
that rate had fallen to one in three by 2016.58 The Bloomington School suggests
that it is important to reverse these trends by expanding opportunities for local
self-government. Meanwhile, we may be able to improve how people govern
common resources by making the principles of effective self-governance explicit
and explaining them. For instance, we can directly explain to students that grad-
uated sanctions work best for deterring free-riders. During her presidency of the
American Political Science Association (1996–1997) and at many other points,
Elinor Ostrom advocated for civic education of this type. She thought that stu-
dents should learn the principles of collective action, and specifically common-
pool resource management, rather than merely studying how the government
works.59
Limitations and Future Directions
Some limitations of the Bloomington School will become evident in the next two
chapters, when I explore the relative advantages of the later Frankfurt School and
the tradition of nonviolent social movements. Here I will suggest two limitations
56 E. Ostrom 1998b, 1.
57 Based on data in E. Ostrom 2005, 8–9, and population estimates from decennial US Censuses.
58 Author’s analysis of General Social Survey data.
59 E. Ostrom 1998a, E. Ostrom 1998b.
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of the Bloomington School that can be addressed within the broad framework
established by the Ostroms. These are immanent critiques.

First, Elinor Ostrom was not only reticent about the normative motivations
of her own work; she was also reluctant to explore the normative implications of
her specific findings. For example, she and her colleagues found that common-
property regimes usually work better when the boundaries are clear. But a given
boundary can exclude people who have a human right to the resource. That is one
example of a normative dilemma raised but not resolved (as yet) by the Ostrom
framework. Another example involves traditional norms and values. These can
be seen as resources that allow people to coordinate their actions. However, it
can make a normative difference whether the local values that enable coordina-
tion are worthy or not.
An archetypal story about boundaries and traditions is the biblical Book of
Nehemiah, in which the eponymous prophet organizes the clans and guilds to
rebuild the ruined city of Jerusalem by first constructing an external wall. While
the unpaid and voluntary work proceeds, divisions arise among the Jews, some of
whom get rich at the expense of others. This makes Nehemiah “very angry,” and
he institutes social reforms, including a ban on usury. Importantly, he personally
eschews special treatment, “not eat[ing] the bread of the governor” (5:14), but
working with his bare hands.
A wall benefits everyone inside it once it is whole and complete. The Jews
sanctify the common good and the space it encloses. The sanctified and complete
wall then becomes a framework within which individuals can construct private
property. At first, “the city was large and great: but the people were few therein,
and the houses were not builded” (7:4). Then the people come with their servants
and personal property, and some give gold and silver to the city for common
purposes.
The community needs not only a framework and a mix of common and collec-
tive goods, but also rules to guide the interactions of its members. So the people
gather and listen to the Law as narrated by Ezra. “The ears of all the people were
attentive unto the book of the law” (8:3). Finally, they celebrate a common ritual
that consists of each household’s building its own small booth of “live branches,
and pine branches, and myrtle branches, and palm branches” (8:15) until the
whole city is a place of “mirth” (8:12) and “solemn assembly” (8:18). I presume
that the social purpose of this assembly is to build the trust and solidarity that
will inspire the people to continue their cooperation. But the particular details
come from religious tradition, and the people need tradition to create a cere-
mony that motivates them.
The Book of Nehemiah is an early and moving example of a common-property
regime. It exemplifies several helpful practices discovered by the Bloomington
School in other settings, including participation, congruence with local norms,
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and clarity of the external boundary. But a wall also has another aspect. It shuts
some people out even as it protects those within. The desire to distinguish be-
tween the Jews and their “heathen” enemies is a consistent theme throughout
the Book of Nehemiah. At first, the various outsiders—named in the King James
Version as a Horonite, a servant, an Ammonite, and an Arabian—scoff at the
rebuilding, and Nehemiah says, “unto them, The God of heaven, he will prosper
us; therefore we his servants will arise and build: but ye have no portion, nor
right, nor memorial, in Jerusalem” (2:19–20). Then the same people mentioned
as scoffing conspire “all of them together to come and to fight against Jerusalem,
and to hinder it.” The Jews must now work with spears at the ready and on twenty-
four-hour guard. They are successful, nevertheless, at finishing the wall. “And it
came to pass, that when all our enemies heard thereof, and all the heathen that
were about us saw these things, they were much cast down in their own eyes: for
they perceived that this work was wrought of our God” (6:16).
Then, once the wall is complete and the “heathen” are shut out, Nehemiah
institutes legal reforms that separate Jews from gentiles. “And the seed of Israel
separated themselves from all strangers, and stood and confessed their sins, and
the iniquities of their fathers” (9:2). The people now tell a story of their own past
that emphasizes their previous conquests. They recall that God “subdued . . . the
inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites” and took “their hands, with their kings,
and the people of the land, that they might do with them as they would. And they
took strong cities, and a fat land, and possessed houses full of all goods, wells
digged, vineyards, and oliveyards, and fruit trees in abundance: so they did eat,
and were filled, and became fat, and delighted themselves in thy great goodness”
(9:24).
The Nehemiah story is about building a safe and supportive common frame-
work for a whole people—and about shutting other people out. It is about cel-
ebrating common bonds—and memorializing the enemies’ defeat. The Jews
participate to some degree in creating their own rules (consistent with the
Bloomington School’s principle of participation), but the gentiles have no voice
in this constructed community. The rules are congruent with Jewish religious
values and traditions, but not with those of the neighbors. Perhaps Bloomington
School analysis would suggest that the decision to place a wall between the
Israelites and their neighbors was a mistake because it created an arbitrary
and artificial boundary that bred conflict. However, from the perspective of
Nehemiah, the resulting conflicts are not problematic because his people win,
and the boundary is not arbitrary because it has divine sanction.
Clearly, to allow every human being to participate in every community’s
decisions would make self- governance impossible. Boundaries are essen-
tial, but which ones are just? Clarity about borders is desirable but insufficient.
More broadly, the Bloomington School provides useful insights for addressing
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situations that we have already decided to call “problems,” but it is not nearly as
helpful at deciding what we should consider problematic in the first place. For
similar reasons, it provides few normative grounds for choosing among the prin-
ciples of self-governance when they conflict.
The Nehemiah story also hints at a second limitation. The prophet and his
people can govern themselves at the scale of a small ancient city. Theirs is a group
of considerable but not vast size. One Jerusalemite can talk to another and mon-
itor his behavior. The larger unit to which they belong is the Persian Empire,
which is a monarchy prone to conflicts with its neighbors. The Bloomington
School would advise us to see this whole situation as polycentric. The commu-
nity of Jerusalem faces collective-action problems; so does the Persian Empire
in relation to the Greek city-states to its west. Similar principles apply at both
scales: for instance, agreements among states, like covenants among people,
often work better if every party is involved in monitoring.
But scale makes a difference to our agency as citizens. If you and I are residents
of ancient Jerusalem and we believe the wall should be designed or used in a dif-
ferent way, then we have the options of voice (persuading our fellow citizens),
exit (leaving the city and thus reducing its wealth and importance), or loyalty
(remaining committed to the group despite a disagreement with its direction).60
These actions may not succeed, but they grant us agency. If I am Nehemiah, who
is a cupbearer to the Persian king Artaxerxes, then I can show the king my sad
countenance and ask him as a favor to allow my people to build a wall (Nehemiah
2:1–2). I can also advise him on dealings with other powers. If I am Artaxerxes,
I can decide how the empire will respond to such pleas. But if I am an ordinary
Jerusalemite, I can do none of those things. Even if (implausibly) the ancient
Persian Empire turned into a democracy, each citizen would have only one vote
among the numberless hosts. The Ostroms recovered a precious form of agency
that seemed impossible in the era of Garrett Hardin, but the question is whether
such agency has any bearing on national and global problems.
Elinor Ostrom advocated changes in institutions that would allow more
people to be involved in governing common-pool resources at all scales. She
argued against centralized command-and-control regimes, whether for policing
American metropolitan areas or for providing water to Nepali farmers. For in-
stance, in the field of public safety, she advocated preserving or creating a whole
array of small and partially overlapping police departments, sheriffs’ offices, and
the like, each one closely connected to neighborhoods and community organi-
zations. She opposed the modernist tendency to centralize authority and achieve
efficiency through scale.61 If her recommendations were implemented, more
60 Hirschman 1970.
61 E. Ostrom, Baugh, Guarasci, Parks & Whitaker 1973.
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people would be able to collaborate on boards, commissions, assemblies, and

other forums, some of which would be responsible for assets of substantial size
and value, such as the public safety of a whole metropolitan area. In that sense,
she offered a solution to the problem of self-governance at scale.
But institutions did not change en masse in the directions that Ostrom recom-
mended, even though she had a prominent platform as president of the American
Political Science Association, a MacArthur “genius” fellow, and a Nobel laureate.
Proposing policies that encourage people to govern common-pool resources at
large scales does not give people such powers. Actually changing institutions is
a collective-action problem. It will encounter opposition and will require sus-
tained effort to succeed. “Reform institutions to allow self-governance” is an an-
swer to the question, “What should be done?,” not “What should we do?” I will
return to this dilemma in the last chapter of this book.
An environmental example illustrates the challenge. In a 2016 Nature article,
Joshua E. Cinner and his many coauthors find that some coral reefs are faring
much better than predicted, despite climate change and other human-created
stresses. Among the causes of their success are local institutions and norms:
Our initial exploration revealed that bright spots were more likely to have
high levels of local engagement in the management process, high dependence
on coastal resources, and the presence of sociocultural governance institu-
tions such as customary tenure or taboos. . . . For example, in one bright spot,
Karkar Island, Papua New Guinea, resource use is restricted through an adap-
tive rotational harvest system based on ecological feedbacks, marine tenure
that allows for the exclusion of fishers from outside the local village, and initi-
ation rights that limit individuals’ entry into certain fisheries.62
Here we see local people employing principles also analyzed in many other set-
tings by the Bloomington School, including clearly defined boundaries, rules for
appropriating resources that are congruent with the local biological and cultural
circumstances, practical means of monitoring the resource, and procedures that
most people in the community have some capacity to influence. If more people
were permitted—or even supported—to manage local resources as the Karkar
Islanders do, the world would be in better condition. One diagnosis of environ-
mental degradation is the tendency to erode such local governance system in
favor of markets and states.

But deadly external threats beset local resources (in this case, coral reefs). As
long as we heat the earth at a global scale, it’s virtually inevitable that many or
62 Cinner et al. 2016.
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most reefs will be destroyed, regardless of how local people manage them. In
theory, the 270 nations of the world have the capacity to agree on a shared cov-
enant that limits global carbon emissions and that employs all the advice of the
Bloomington School: clear boundaries, monitoring by the members, graduated
sanctions, and so on. The question is how we—any concrete group to which you
and I belong—can make that happen.
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5
The Frankfurt School and the Citizen

as Deliberator
Picture a traditional community, perhaps an Old World village. The residents

know one another. Some have more power and wealth than others, but their
relationships are personal, emotional, and direct. Members of this community
believe that they know the difference between right and wrong in most circum-
stances and what underlies that distinction, whether it is divine will, reason,
tradition, or nature. When they disagree or face moral uncertainty, they know
where to turn for resolution. Most of them occupy social roles that were deter-
mined from their birth, and many accept these roles as just, or at least as inevi-
table. The purpose of the whole community and its place in the larger world are
also understood as fixed and appropriate. For long periods, the village resolves
its own problems of collective action (such as scarce natural resources), uncer-
tainty and disagreements about values, and differences in identity and power by
resorting to traditional, indigenous means.
Now compare the residents of a modern city, perhaps a European metropolis
like Frankfurt in 1923. Most of the people whom one encounters on the street or
even in the workplace are anonymous strangers. As religious traditions have lost
some of their hold, the market, the state, and science have gained prestige. People
now relate to one another as customers, employers, and clients; as state officials
and legal subjects; or as researchers or the objects of research. They use formal
agreements and enforceable rules as substitutes for personal trust. The abstrac-
tions of money, law, and science often allow them to coordinate fairly well, but
catastrophic problems of collective action beset the society. Just for example,
an arms race among the great powers ultimately led to 17 million deaths in the
years 1914–1918, and the coordination problem of hyperinflation caused one US
dollar to be worth 4 trillion German marks for a time during 1923.
Residents of the modern city disagree about basic moral principles, and the
very existence of such disagreements has raised doubts about whether right and
wrong can be objectively distinguished. They suspect that what anyone values
may be an expression of arbitrary preference or power, not truth. The dominant
modes of reasoning take ends for granted, whether the ends are profit (in the
market), security and order (for the state), or mastery of nature (for science).
People are good at means/ends reasoning but not confident about what ends and
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197570494.003.0005
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The Frankfurt School 87
purposes are valuable in the first place. In principle, social roles are now flex-
ible and open to talents, but many individuals find their aspirations blocked by
others who already hold the desirable positions. In the absence of close, secure,
and emotional ties, many fall prey to neuroses.
The First Generation of the Frankfurt School
The Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) was founded in
Frankfurt in 1923 by a Marxist professor named Carl Grünberg. During the
1920s, it attracted leftist thinkers, mostly German Jews. Nazism forced them
into exile in New York (where the institute became associated with Columbia
University in 1935) and elsewhere in the English-speaking world; one leading
figure, Walter Benjamin, killed himself on his way toward safety. The associ-
ates of the Frankfurt School were intellectually diverse, membership was never
formally defined, and there was no manifesto. However, I will venture the gen-
eralization that members of the Frankfurt School opposed the traditional life
described in the first paragraph of this chapter. They saw themselves as heirs of
the Enlightenment and proponents of emancipation. They considered a tradi-
tional society too constrained politically, intellectually, and emotionally.
At the same time, they were sharply critical of the form that modernity had
taken so far. From Karl Marx, they derived a critique of the market and cap-
ital. Some Frankfurt School theorists were communists or otherwise fairly or-
thodox Marxists; others preferred the early Marx of the Economic-Philosophical
Manuscripts and The German Ideology, which came to light during the 1930s and
revealed Marx in his more moral, less “scientific” phase. From Sigmund Freud,
they derived a strong interest in the psychological distresses of modernity. And
from Max Weber, they drew critical views of bureaucracy and science. They com-
bined these influences in diverse ways and added other sources as well.
One important way that they broke with orthodox Marxism was in their view
of discourse. According to Marx’s theory of base and superstructure, the “real
foundation” of any society is its “economic structure.” From that base “arises a
legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of
social consciousness.”1 According to this theory, how people think is traceable
to the underlying economic system. As long as the bourgeoisie controls the
economy, it will produce a set of ideas, arguments, and cultural expressions that
favor capitalism. But these forms of discourse will violate the economic interests
of the working class, who have the most potential economic and political power
as the real producers of the society’s wealth. It is in the workers’ interest to seize
1 Marx 1859/1977, Preface.
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power, and once they set about doing so, they will express values, arguments, and
cultural creations that support communism instead of capitalism. Thus the path
to changing a culture (including everything that people believe, want, and say) is
to organize the workers politically so that they revolutionize the economic base.
Trying to change the culture without a revolution is pointless.
The problem with that theory was the behavior of the European working class,
as seen from the vantage point of ca. 1923. Workers were supposed to endorse
and propagate communist ideas as an expression of their class interest. Instead,
they had voted in their respective nations to enter a war in which they had suf-
fered terribly, yet many veterans had drawn the conclusion that their countries
should have been more aggressive. Many remained religious despite the or-
thodox Marxist view that religion was an opiate of the masses. And they were
just beginning to endorse the right-wing movements that would dominate the
continent for the next twenty years: Mussolini had already taken power in 1922.
Members of the Frankfurt School came to believe that discourse had its own
power. Propaganda by states and businesses, ideology (in the pejorative sense),
and other forms of distorted communication could protect or even create an un-
just social order. In response, members of the Frankfurt School practiced what
they called “critical theory”: the critical analysis of culture, both high and low,
intended to loosen its hold on the public. Much as Freud had pioneered the
“talking cure” to remove neuroses by bringing their causes to light, so critical
theorists sought to reveal the sources of modern distress and thus defang them.2
The Frankfurt School’s approach to critical theory has been one major—al-
though not the only—influence on subsequent movements of cultural criticism
such as Second Wave feminism, critical race studies, and postcolonialism.
The first generation of the Frankfurt School, active before the Second World
War, were skillful at identifying the distortions caused by culture and their roots
in power. But their project of uncovering ideology and propaganda had three
major limitations. First, critical theorists had difficulty distinguishing among
modern regimes. If, for example, capitalist propaganda must be influential every-
where that modern markets dominated, then in what way was Hitler’s Germany
worse than Franklin Roosevelt’s United States? Habermas writes that their failure
to recognize the complexities of a society like the United States blinded them to
its “potentials” and motivated them only to investigate why radical left protests
seemed to be absent in the Western democracies.3
2 Cf. Geuss 1981, 2–3: “The very heart of the critical theory of society is the criticism of ideology.
Their ideology is what prevents the agents in the society from correctly perceiving their true situation
and real interests; if they are to free themselves from social repression, the agents must rid themselves
of ideological illusion.”
3 Habermas 1987, 381.
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Second, they struggled to explain and justify their own knowledge. If human
beings are easily shaped and misled by discourse, then why were members of
the Frankfurt School likely to be correct? It was easy for their theory to become
self-refuting. Theodor Adorno wrote, “There is no exit from the entanglement.
The only responsible option is to deny oneself the ideological misuse of one’s own
existence, and for the rest, to behave in private as modestly and inconspicuously
as required, not for reasons of a good upbringing, but because of the shame that
when one is in hell, there is still air to breathe.”4 Since Adorno’s Minima Moralia
is an aphoristic book drenched with irony and changes of perspective, it wouldn’t
be safe to take this quoted sentence as a literal summary of the author’s view. But
it suggests the kinds of impasse that faced the prewar Frankfurt School as they
explored the ubiquity of ideology. Anything that is ubiquitous must also influ-
ence the theorist who posits it.
Third, and most important, ideology and propaganda did not seem to weaken
when they were pointed out. Cultural criticism lacked political power. Two of
the thinkers who were most central to the whole School, Max Horkheimer and
Adorno, published a book in 1944 that exemplified this impasse. In The Dialectic
of Enlightenment, they argued that every tool (science, government, statistics)
introduced to emancipate people from traditional limitations creates equally
powerful new shackles. Progress is impossible.
Habermas’s Response
My focus is on the next generation. Jürgen Habermas was born in 1929, in time
to be drafted near the end of the Second World War. He rose quickly to promi-
nence in the Federal Republic of Germany, thanks to his talents and also to the
fact that few pro-democratic thinkers were alive and active in Germany immedi-
ately after the war. Starting in 1956, he studied at the Institute for Social Research
with Horkheimer and Adorno, but he left because he believed that the School
had reached a dead end. By 1964, he had succeeded Horkheimer (with Adorno’s
support) and become the acknowledged leader of the Frankfurt School. Since
then, he has been an influential voice in each phase of German and European
history and remains active at the time of writing, more than half a century after
he gained prominence.
The main difference between Habermas and his predecessors is that he is com-
mitted to making normative distinctions. Ideology and propaganda are real, but
they are not inevitable. It is possible to have authentic conversations about what
to believe and do, conversations that yield morally valuable conclusions. Much
4 Adorno 1951/2012, aphorism 6.
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as Ostrom shifted from the tragedy of the commons to a drama, so Habermas

considers it an open question whether people reason well together. Sometimes

they do and sometimes they don’t. The primary responsibilities of a human agent
are to participate well in discourse and to create the conditions for others to do
so as well.
Habermas’s philosophical views have continuously evolved during his many
decades, and a full understanding of his thought should explore these changes.
However, that would require more detail than we need here. In the following
short section, I offer a reconstruction of some basic Habermasian ideas that I find
in his writing since the 1970s, at the latest. My summary omits many other ideas
he has proposed and may be more consistent with The Theory of Communicative
Action (first published in German in 1981) than with Between Facts & Norms
(first German edition, 1992), since the latter emphasizes law and the state more
than my summary would imply. But this is the Habermas that we need as a source
of civic theory.5
At the root of his thought is a distinction between: (1) strategic or instru-
mental action and (2) communicative action. When taking instrumental action,
you try to get someone else to do what you want; you make him your instrument.
For instance, you threaten or pay him or use selective arguments and evidence to
convince him to believe that what you want is in his interests. In communicative
action, on the other hand, you try to persuade someone else to agree freely with
you on the merits of what you say.
Communicative action typically has three goals: “truth, normative rightness,
[and] authenticity.”6 For example, I might stand up in a community meeting to
say, “We should increase the school tax by 10 percent so that we can afford a
reading specialist.” Here I am making three types of claim at once. As matters of
truth, I am asserting (or implying) that a 10 percent increase is both necessary
and sufficient for hiring a reading specialist and that we have the legal authority
to raise taxes. As matters of normative rightness, I am asserting that it would be
good for our community to employ a reading specialist and that the expense is
worth the extra taxation. And as a matter of authenticity, I am suggesting that
I really value and seek this change in policy. Each of these aspects of my claim is
then subject to critical review. Maybe a 10 percent tax would not be sufficient or
is not necessary because we can already afford a reading specialist. Maybe lower
taxes would be more valuable for the community than an extra employee. And
5 Vincent and Elinor Ostrom also held views that evolved and developed over their long careers.
In chapter 3, I ignored those changes to offer a static summary. However, I believe that my summary
accurately reflects Elinor Ostrom’s views at the end of her life, whereas for Habermas, I reconstruct a
position from several of his classic texts that he may not fully embrace today.
6 Quoting Habermas 1987, 398, but this threefold distinction is pervasive. See, e.g., Habermas
1996, 5.
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maybe I do not really want what I say that I want. Perhaps I am just trying to
make myself popular or create a diversion from a different issue.

In a positivistic, science-dominated culture, it is easiest to see how to assess
the validity of the factual aspects of my claim. But the other two aspects are also
subject to assessment. Authenticity can be evaluated by considering the totality
of a person’s statements and actions. (Do I take the same position on school taxes
when I am in private?) Meanwhile, I put forward my normative assertion about
the value of a reading specialist in the hope of obtaining consensus. Someone
who disagrees because she believes in lower taxes can respond. She can give
reasons for her normative view; and I, for mine. The logic of the situation pushes
us both to make relatively general, principled arguments, because mere expres-
sions of self-interest are unpersuasive.7 If my debating partner says, “I want to
pay lower taxes,” no one has a reason to be moved. She must say, “We should
pay lower taxes” and then cite a reason. For example, perhaps she would use the
money saved from a tax cut to hire more workers. Her reasons then become test-
able. Is it true that she would hire more workers?
The discipline of having to reach uncoerced agreement turns discourse into
the joint pursuit of truth, normative agreement, and authenticity rather than an
expression of mere opinion or interest. A valid communication, then, is one that
would persuade in the absence of coercion and other flaws (such as lack of time
and attention). It would persuade other people in what Habermas envisions as an
“ideal speech situation” in which “no force except that of the better argument is
exercised.”8
The benefits of such conversations include better public understanding of
what is right and good and also richer and more defensible inner thoughts.9 We
each have the moral beliefs that we are taught by our culture. It is a matter of
luck what we believe. Habermas was born and raised under the Nazi dictator-
ship, yet he became a committed democrat. That outcome reflects learning on his
part and in his society. Our primary moral responsibility is to test our inherited
beliefs in dialogue with others who are differently situated. The discussion may
change what we believe, in which case our public statements are not inauthentic;
they are educated and enlightened.
People certainly exhibit instrumental action. In the real world, they threaten,
bribe, and trick each other and use words to achieve their ends rather than to
pursue truth. Whether communicative or instrumental action pays off depends
on the social or institutional context. Habermas knows that there is no such
7 Habermas 1987, 96.

8 Habermas 1973/1975, 110, 108.
9 Habermas seeks “an undamaged intersubjectivity that allows both for unconstrained mutual un-
derstanding among individuals and for the identities of individuals to come to an unconstrained
understanding with themselves” (Habermas 1987, 2).
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thing as an ideal speech situation, but real situations vary significantly, and the
ideal is a useful heuristic.

One important example of an institutional change was the rise of the bour-
geois liberal Public Sphere in the Enlightenment. Under the Old Regime, govern-
mental affairs were considered the king’s business, not the public’s. Even talking
about politics and policy could be punishable. But people started meeting in
coffeehouses to talk about current events and reading newspapers. Coffeehouses
and newspapers were institutional manifestations of a new ideal. The ideal
said: everyone has a right to an opinion, opinions should be freely and civilly
exchanged, the only force should be the force of the best argument (regardless of
who says it), and the public opinion that emerges should be listened to.10
This ideal was not a true description of the world. Not everyone had a voice
in the coffeehouses, and the government did not listen to public opinion. But
the ideal had power because people could be challenged to live up to it. Over
the course of more than a century, the ideal inspired laws protecting free speech
and the public’s right to information, universal suffrage and universal educa-
tion, and parliamentary government. A parliament reflected the discourse of
whole population (which chose the legislators) and also exemplified delibera-
tion in its own chamber. A parliament was the hinge between public opinion and
administration.
The modern Public Sphere is the set of forums and institutions in which di-
verse people come together to talk about common concerns and form opinion
that has political power.11 The Public Sphere includes legislatures, constitutional
courts, civic associations, editorial pages of newspapers, New England town
meetings, and parts of the Internet. The logic of public discourse in these spaces
demands that one give general reasons and explanations for one’s views—other-
wise, one cannot be persuasive.
Habermas defends the Public Sphere that emerged as a result of revolution
and reform between roughly 1680 and 1900, but he sees it always at risk. A par-
ticularly grave risk in our current era arises from what he calls the “coloniza-
tion of the Lifeworld by System.” Understanding that risk requires two additional
pieces of Habermasian vocabulary.
The “Lifeworld,” for Habermas, is the background of ordinary life: mainly pri-
vate, somewhat naive and biased, but also authentic and essential to our satis-
faction as human beings. It is a “reservoir of taken-for-granteds, of unshaken
convictions that participants in communication draw upon in cooperative pro-

cesses of interpretation.” In the Lifeworld, we mostly communicate with people
we know and who share our daily experience, so our communications tend to
10 Habermas 1962/1991.
11 Habermas 1974.
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be opaque to outsiders and certainly not persuasive to people unlike us. But
Habermas argues that we are incapable of thinking about everything at once.

In order to reason and communicate, we must take most points as givens. Only
then can “single elements, specific taken-for-granteds” be brought up for conver-
sation and critical analysis.12
Meanwhile, the “System” is composed of formal organizations, such as gov-
ernments, corporations, parties, unions, and courts.13 People in a System have
official roles and must pursue predefined goals (albeit sometimes with ethical
constraints). For example, defense lawyers are required to defend their clients,
corporate CEOs are supposed to maximize profit, and comptrollers are supposed
to reduce waste in their own organizations. In the current period, there are fun-
damentally two Systems: markets (in which instrumental action leads to profit)
and governments (in which instrumental action demonstrates power). Although
the people who work in markets and governments are complex individuals with
other commitments, their official work responsibilities are to maximize money
or to administer power.
To illustrate the Lifeworld, Habermas invites us to envision an “older construc-
tion worker who sends a younger and newly arrived co-worker to fetch some beer,
telling him to hurry up and be back in a few minutes.” The senior worker assumes
that a whole set of beliefs and values are shared on the team: German construction
workers enjoy and expect to drink beer at breaks during the workday, beer is for
sale in the vicinity, the younger and/or most recently hired person is the one who
does unpaid chores for the group, and so on. Each of these assumptions could be
brought into doubt and subjected to debate. For instance, as Habermas suggests,
the younger worker might say, “But I don’t have a car,” or “I’m not thirsty.” Other
“elements of the situation” might generally pass unnoticed yet become relevant as
circumstances change. If the younger worker is an immigrant without health cov-
erage and he falls off the ladder as he goes to buy the beer, several relevant laws and
controversies may suddenly occur to the workers, moving from their background
knowledge to topics of explicit discussion.14 But at any given moment, simply by
virtue of being human, the workers must assume most features of the situation as a
shared and implicit background, a “vast and incalculable web of presuppositions.”15
This is their Lifeworld.
In order for the workers (or any other group of people) to be free and self-
governing, they must be able to render any aspect of the Lifeworld problematic. It
is a definitive feature of modernity that no assumptions are considered immune
12 Habermas 1987, 124.

13 Habermas 1987, 301–404.
14 Habermas 1987, 122–24.
15 Habermas, 1987, 131.
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to critique;16 and it is a condition of democracy that no critique is blocked by law

or other force.17 When the younger construction worker notes that no beer is
available within walking distance and he doesn’t have a car, he is giving a reason
for someone else to go. This turns his work group into a small Public Sphere. To
the extent it is democratic and deliberative, his reasons will require responses.
Imagine (to go beyond Habermas’s presentation of this example) that the
radio is playing as these men work. A news program includes an interview with
a feminist activist who criticizes the construction industry for hiring very few
women, followed by an immigrant leader who notes that alcohol is forbidden
to Muslims (thus the assumption that everyone wants to drink beer is exclu-
sionary), followed by a health expert who attributes disease to excessive daytime
beer consumption. These people are making arguments that compel critical at-
tention to specific aspects of the workers’ Lifeworld. They represent the larger
Public Sphere of the Federal Republic or the European Union. It doesn’t matter
whether the interviewees have self-interested motivations, such as selling copies
of their books, or whether the radio station is a for-profit company trying to at-
tract listeners. The format of any reasonably well-run news program will compel
the speakers to give reasons that can be checked and assessed by reporters and
listeners.18 This is a case of a democratic Public Sphere challenging citizens to
reflect about aspects of their Lifeworld.
But although every particular point should be subject to discussion, the whole
Lifeworld must be protected. One reason is that we need the Lifeworld to think
at all, for we are capable of testing a specific assumption only while holding our
other assumptions for granted. A second reason is that our Lifeworld is ours, a
condition of living authentically. Any political program that tries to strip a group
of people of their accumulated assumptions all at once would be totalitarian.
A radio program that brings separate issues to the workers’ attention expands
their thinking; but if a revolutionary government seizes all the radio stations and
begins broadcasting propaganda against contemporary German working-class
culture as a whole, that is a threat to their Lifeworld.
Meanwhile, the Lifeworld is vulnerable to manipulation by interested parties
who act instrumentally. For example, suppose that on the radio, the workers hear
men with similar accents to their own praising a particular brand of beer. Maybe
women are also heard, enjoying these men’s company and appreciating their
good taste. It sounds as if friends have entered the real Lifeworld of the construc-
tion site, but these supposed friends are really actors who are paid to sell beer.
Of course, the workers will understand the purpose of an advertisement, yet by
16 Habermas, 1987, 133.

17 Habermas 1973/1975, 107–8.
18 Habermas, 1987, 391.
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skillfully imitating their authentic Lifeworld, the ad can affect their behavior. No
reasons need be given; no rebuttal is invited. In this case, Habermas would say
that the Lifeworld of the workers has been colonized by the System of markets. The
System of government might similarly colonize their Lifeworld if a candidate for
public office started talking on the radio as if he were their friend who shared
their values and experiences.
In discussions of Systems colonizing Lifeworlds, common examples include
commercial advertisements that masquerade as authentic communications.
These are cases of “commodification”: firms mining the Lifeworld for economic
advantage. Habermas also emphasizes the tendency of welfare state bureau-
cracies to “juridify” or “judicialize” the Lifeworld. For instance, when well-in-
tentioned states seek to protect pupils and parents against unfairness in testing
and discipline, fairness “is gained at the cost of a judicialization and bureauc-
ratization that penetrates deep into the teaching and learning process,” deper-
sonalizing the school, inhibiting innovation, and undermining relationships.19
A neo-Marxist line of criticism faults Habermas for equating juridification with
commodification and the state with the market.20 This critique hold that the un-
derlying process is capitalist exploitation, and the welfare-state is only a threat
to the Lifeworld because it is a tool of capital. Habermas disagrees. For him the
underlying process is growing specialization, a feature of modernity.21 He insists
that in socialist societies, the state colonizes the Lifeworld in a parallel way to the
market’s colonization in capitalist societies; and in welfare states, both threats
operate at once.
Intrusions by advertisers and bureaucrats are widely cited categories of colo-
nization. I want to mention a subtler example just to suggest the pervasiveness of
the problem. Nina Eliasoph studied a group of women in the Pacific Northwest
who had “organized to oppose a toxic incinerator.” In their meetings, “broad po-
litical questions were foremost—the activists talked about where waste should
go, why so much waste is produced (especially by the US military), what gov-
ernmental policies could prevent corporations from producing more waste, why
not to believe corporation or government statements about the proposed plant’s
safety, why to be in principle against incineration-for-profit.” They did not take
for granted that the incinerator near their homes should be closed, because then
it might be moved to another community. They explicitly worried about people
beside themselves.
These women exemplified the Public Sphere—in their private gatherings.

However, “in front of the press . . ., group members spoke completely differently.
19 Habermas 1987, 371.

20 See Edwards 2004, esp. 120–121.
21 E.g., Habermas 1987, 340: “Weber’s prognosis has proven correct: the abolition of private capi-
talism would not at all mean the destruction of the iron cage of modern industrial labor.”
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Suddenly, the activists presented themselves as panicked ‘moms,’ and self-in-

terested property owners. The discourse would often shift the very moment the
reporters turned on the cameras and microphones, and shift back again the mo-
ment the cameras and microphones went off.” For instance, one woman who had
been “an activist since the civil rights movement . . . always presented herself as a
‘Mom’ in more formal settings.” Eliasoph also describes a woman who presents
herself to reporters as “a concerned property owner” and publicly insists she is
only concerned about the impact of pollution on her property values. Eliasoph
adds, “But the very moment the cameras and mikes went off, she turned to me
and a fellow activist to say, ‘This is getting to be more than a concern to me; it’s
getting to be a matter of the lives of the future generations here.’ ”22
According to Habermas’s theory, we typically hold private views among our
friends that are biased and naive, even if they are authentic. They reflect our
Lifeworld. Once we come into the Public Sphere, the logic of the situation re-
quires us to abandon mere expressions of interests and identities in order to
make testable assertions about the common good. Eliasoph finds women who
are avid and skillful at making such assertions—in private. As soon as they enter
the official Public Sphere by talking on the record with reporters, they “forget”
their public arguments and merely assert their interests as “moms” and property
owners. In public, they feign being trapped in the Lifeworld. The model that
Habermas presents is turned upside-down.
One explanation must be gender. Men are expected to deliberate in public;
women and homemakers simply express their emotions and interests. But skep-
ticism about public-spirited discourse may sometimes also extend to men as well.
In a culture that expects individuals to represent markets or governments, an-
yone who talks about the public good before strangers risks ridicule. The women
in Eliasoph’s study pretend to be less public-spirited than they authentically are
in order to avoid a charge of pretentiousness or hypocrisy. This is a subtle case of
the Lifeworld having been colonized by System.
In a different case explored by Nicole Doerr, a resident speaks in Spanish at
a public meeting in city hall, “making it plain that she [speaks] both for herself
and for others in the . . . coalition” to which she belongs. The official facilitator
interrupts her, saying in English: “ ‘I know you want to comment on the experi-
ences of your community. But at this point, you can only make individual com-
ments. Speak for yourself.’ . . . Carmen then lowered her voice and seemed to
shrink into herself.”23 Although this latter case can be interpreted as a simple at-
tempt to silence a resident, the facilitator may also be assuming that women—or
22 Eliasoph 1998, 3–5.

23 Doerr, 92.
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individuals of any gender—cannot speak on behalf of their whole communities,

only for themselves in their private capacities. Again, the System has prevailed.
Two reform agendas emerge for Habermas: defending the authentic Lifeworld
against colonization, and enhancing the deliberative Public Sphere that should
allow people from different Lifeworlds to reason together and influence society.
Deliberative Democracy as a Theory/Practice Tradition
Jürgen Habermas is a formidable and often abstract theorist, and the Frankfurt
School has been criticized since its first decades for being obscurely theoretical
instead of relevant to practice. However, deliberative democracy is a practical
field. With or without inspiration from Habermas, it has developed during his
lifetime in ways that illuminate his thought. I will present Habermasian delib-
erative democracy as a theory/practice tradition comparable to common-pool
resource management.
At a large scale, the Federal Republic of Germany is an imperfect but robust
deliberative democracy, with a vibrant Public Sphere and layers of representative
legislative bodies from those in many German cities up to the federal Bundestag.
The thesis of Matthew G. Specter’s Habermas: An Intellectual Biography is that
Habermas has always been deeply engaged in the most pressing constitutional
questions facing the Federal Republic.24 In the 1950s, a key question was whether
the Constitutional Court could safeguard democracy or whether the legislature
and people had to be active proponents of democratic values. In the 1960s, the
issues included how to come to terms with the suppressed Nazi past and how
to deal with radical student protests—a complex problem for Habermas, who
placed himself to the left of the Social Democratic Party but also upheld the dem-
ocratic system. In the 1970s and 1980s, the era of anti-nuclear protest, a leading
issue was civil disobedience: extra-legal activism in a constitutional democracy.
After 1989, Habermas’s attention turned to German unification; he argued that
the East offered no worthy political institutions but that the Lifeworld of the
German Democratic Republic’s citizens should be honored and the people of the
newly unified Germany should write a constitution instead of using the postwar
West German constitution written by the Allies. Since the turn of the millen-
nium, Habermas has been concerned about the European Union and particu-
larly how it should treat religious minorities. He has always been a critical friend
of the Federal Republic, Europe, and the United States who has used his con-
siderable fame to introduce timely comments on topical matters. Anglophone
readers may see him as a philosopher in dialogue with other major thinkers,
24 Specter 2010.
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both living and long dead. But Specter helps to show that at the top of Habermas’s
mind have usually been timely questions facing his own country and its allies.
Sometimes Habermas’s interventions have been effective. However, speaking
publicly from a position of prominence and prestige about the importance of
deliberative democracy is a problematic strategy. For those of us who are not fa-
mous public intellectuals, the option of addressing large publics is closed. And
it is unclear that even the most distinguished thinkers have as much influence
today as they appeared to have in the mid-1900s. As Tony Judt notes, Habermas
and Jacques Derrida (together), Umberto Eco, Richard Rorty, and several other
leading intellectuals published coordinated essays on one day near the outset of
the Iraq War in a range of prominent European newspapers. Their effort, Judt
says, “passed virtually unnoticed. It was not reported as news, nor was it quoted
by sympathizers. No one implored the authors to take up their pens and lead
the way forward. . . . The whole project sputtered out. One hundred years after
the Dreyfus Affair, fifty years after the apotheosis of Jean-Paul Sartre, Europe’s
leading intellectuals had thrown a petition—and no one came.”25 One could offer
a Habermasian explanation for the decline of elite European newspapers’ edito-
rial pages as a component of the Public Sphere. Perhaps much less deliberative
media platforms, such as those owned by Silvio Berlusconi and Rupert Murdoch,
had captured Europeans’ attention by deploying money and power. But a solu-
tion is harder to develop than a diagnosis.
A second strategy, not explicitly endorsed by Habermas but often advocated
by practical deliberative democrats who cite him, is to build deliberative forums.
Typically, a finite group of citizens who somehow represent a larger public is
convened for moderated discussions and asked to produce statements or deci-
sions. These “minipublics” provide interesting test cases, rather like the efforts
to manage common-pool resources that are “fruit flies” for the Bloomington
School. They yield findings about how people discuss contested issues under
relatively favorable circumstances. They also suggest a possible strategy for pro-
tecting and expanding deliberative democracy: proliferate the most valuable
minipublics. Proponents of deliberative democracy turn to major institutions
(governments, companies, philanthropies, parties, or social movements) and
urge them to support minipublics that go beyond rare experiments. Sometimes
the proponents make idealistic arguments about the value of public deliberation.
Sometimes they rely more on pragmatic claims that democratic participation
will produce more popular and effective outcomes and satisfy restive citizens.26
Their arguments sometimes work. Caroline Lee argues that the field of “dia-
logue and deliberation” attracts more than $100 million annually and employs
25 Judt 2005, 785–87.

26 See, e.g., Lerner 2014 and Nabatchi & Leighninger 2015.
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thousands of specialist professionals. She asserts that organizers and proponents

of deliberation are influential; indeed, they have “influenced democratic politics

and work and community life beyond their wildest dreams.” Their models have
“metastasized across sectors and among vastly different groups of people.”27
In 2005, John Gastil and I collected evidence about a dozen forms of
minipublics. We focused not on single experiments but on fields of practice
that had developed and refined models over the course of years.28 For instance,
James Fishkin has pioneered deliberative polls, randomly selected panels of citi-
zens who meet for several days, deliberate intensively, and then issue guidance to
formal institutions that have empaneled them and sought their input.29 In con-
trast, study circles, a Scandinavian format imported to the United States by the
organization Everyday Democracy and others, take the form of small voluntary
discussions organized throughout a community.30 Participatory Budgeting (PB)
originated in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and has since spread to more than 1,500 cases
around the world. In PB, municipal governments or other institutions (such as
colleges) agree in advance to allocate public funds to projects that citizens de-
velop and choose in large deliberative forums.31 PB provides the strongest evi-
dence that powerful incumbent politicians and governments can be persuaded
to create minipublics in their own interest, to achieve popularity and legitimacy.
As a vivid and recent example, I will mention the 2016 Massachusetts Citizens
Initiative Review. Working with an organization called Healthy Democracy
and the office of State Representative Jonathan Hecht, my colleagues randomly
selected a pool of thousands of Massachusetts citizens to deliberate a topic (legal-
izing marijuana) that would come before the whole electorate later that year as a
referendum question. From the respondents who indicated a willingness to par-
ticipate, we selected a demographically and ideologically representative panel
of twenty. These citizens met face-to-face for four days to hear expert witnesses
and deliberate intensively. They collectively produced an explanation of the con-
sequences of the referendum as well as arguments for and against it, meant to
inform the voting public. In Oregon, where the Citizens Initiative Review has
the force of law, the panel’s explanation is mailed to all registered voters. In
Massachusetts, where our effort was nongovernmental, we simply disseminated
the statement through the news media and online.32
In a deeply Habermasian spirit, the Citizens Initiative Review strives to com-
bine a small deliberation that approximates an ideal speech situation with a
27 Lee 2015, 52, 7, 28.

28 Gastil & Levine 2005.
29 Fishkin & Farrar 2005; Fishkin 2011.
30 Scully & McCoy 2005.
31 Coelho, Pozzoni & Montoya, 2005.
32 Gastil, Knobloch, Hannah, Maiorca, Paicopolos & Watter 2016.
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massive exercise of popular democracy, the referendum. I can report that the
atmosphere in the room was intensely serious, civil, and dignified. Even as the
national presidential candidates were spending $6.5 billion to influence voters33
(often with inflammatory, misleading, or downright false claims), these ran-
domly selected citizens were passionately committed to understanding the
ethics and empirics of an issue that the public would decide directly. Some held
prior views of marijuana legalization, but it was impossible to tell that from their
discussions. Proponents, for example, worked skillfully and sincerely to develop
arguments against the ballot question. Of course, no discussion could be an ideal
speech situation, but the level of focus and mutual respect among demographi-
cally diverse citizens was palpable.34
The citizens’ job was to produce a written explanation of the ballot initiative
for the public. This document differed from the available alternatives in a way
that illustrates Habermas’s thesis. The state’s lawyers produce an explanation of
each ballot initiative that is accurate but strictly legalistic, without any commen-
tary about likely outcomes or moral tradeoffs. It is written at an advanced level
and is difficult for laypeople to interpret. It passes through layers of legal review
within the System of the state government. Meanwhile, proponents and oppon-
ents of the ballot question write dueling statements for the state’s official voter
guide that are simplified and exaggerated. As pre-committed advocacy organiza-
tions, they manifest instrumental rather than communicative reason. Of course,
the state’s lawyers and the advocates and opponents of the ballot question are
citizens, performing appropriate roles within the overall democratic System. Yet
the people who understand themselves as “citizens” in a normative sense are the
laypeople who participate in an activity designed to be deliberative. Their sum-
mary statement combines moral ideas with empirical predictions, addressing
the question, “What should we do?” The statement is written in accessible and
balanced prose at an advanced high school reading level.35 The authors probably
choose that level instinctively, but it seems appropriate because a high school ed-
ucation is widely seen as necessary and sufficient for civic competence.
Archon Fung has argued that minipublics can be usefully categorized on the
basis of how participants are recruited, what kind of topics are deliberated, the
duration of the deliberative process (from a single meeting to years of work), the
power given to the participants (e.g., to make binding legal decisions or simply
to influence public opinion), the stakes of the outcomes to the participants them-
selves, and the degree to which the participants are involved in implementing
or monitoring as well as proposing or assessing policies. These are matters of
33 Sultan 2017.
34 Cf. Knobloch, Gastil, Reedy & Walsh 2013 on the Oregon case.
35 Gastil, Knobloch, Hannah, Maiorca, Paicopolos & Watter 2016, 13.
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intentional design, and they have implications for how the deliberations turn
out. In practice, deliberations differ in quality, equality, impact on policy, impact

on the participants, legitimacy, and other variables.36
Minipublics are not new: they build on experiences such as juries, town meet-
ings, church synods, and ordinary Tocquevillian voluntary associations that
began centuries ago. They have, however, burgeoned into a substantial field since
the 1980s. As with common-pool resource-management systems, they offer a
mix of successful and unsuccessful cases, but they certainly provide enough suc-
cesses for an existence proof. It is possible to convene representative citizens for
conversations that approximate Habermasian criteria of ideal speech situations
and that satisfy the participants as well as important external stakeholders.37 In
these settings, the problems of discourse I listed in chapter 2—ideology, propa-
ganda, motivated reasoning, and polarization—are not negated, but they can be
skillfully managed, with promising results.
The question is whether building minipublics is a viable strategy if our goal
is to enhance opportunities for people to decide what they should do: collective
human agency. The strategy of “selling” deliberation to powerful institutions has
evident limitations. For one thing, I am not sure that the field of dialogue and
deliberation is as robust or well-funded as Caroline Lee suggests it is. But even
when it has attracted support, it can yield only sporadic deliberative events that
stand in contrast to ordinary politics. Lee believes that these events communi-
cate an unintended lesson. Participants learn that they should deliberate politely
in ideal settings instead of confronting power. To cite an example that occurred
after Lee’s book was published, the city of Vallejo, California, gave its citizens
the opportunity to allocate $3 million in capital funding through PB. Vallejo
had just emerged from literal bankruptcy and had cut its core budget by many
times more than $3 million.38 If Lee’s thesis is correct, PB taught Vallejo citizens
that the right way for them to behave is to allocate small amounts of money in
a forum controlled by the government, rather than march on the state capitol
to demand an entirely different budget. “I argue,” she writes, “that what we take
to be good engagement is itself the problem.”39 Lee does not offer empirical evi-
dence that experiencing deliberative democracy suppresses contentious politics,
but that threat must be taken seriously. Along somewhat similar lines, Christina
Lafont argues that the success of small, well-designed minipublics makes any
full-scale democratic system look less legitimate, by contrast; therefore, prolifer-
ating minipublics could undermine democracy, writ large.40
36 Fung 2003.
37 Nabatchi & Leighninger 2015.
38 Samuels 2014.
39 Lee 2015, 28.
40 Lafont 2017.
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In the academic discussion of public deliberation, the focus has recently

shifted from minipublics—relatively pure examples of deliberative forums that

may serve as examples and be multiplied across a society—toward “deliberative
systems” or “communication ecologies” at the scale of communities.41 A whole
system or ecology can be deliberative if its various components promote public
consideration of important issues. The whole may encompass companies that
sell news for profit, competing political parties and social movements that de-
mand attention to their issues and arguments, educational institutions that pre-
pare young people to speak and listen because those are job skills, and so on.
On one hand, the shift from specific forums to whole systems is demanding,
since it requires reform of powerful institutions. On the other hand, it is arguably
more realistic, since it expects most of the actors in the system to profit or benefit
politically from their activities. Yet it does not treat all systems as adequately de-
liberative. For instance, political parties may prompt public discussion, or they
may distort and suppress it. The deliberative ideal guides reform.
Habermas does not himself write about minipublics, and it’s not clear that he
would favor an expansion of small deliberative bodies. He is a sociologist with
an abiding interest in the big Systems of a modern polity: markets, firms, legisla-
tures, bureaucracies, courts, unions, and the like. He understands modernity as
a process of differentiation in which institutions that have diverse organizational
logics and incentives arise and interrelate. The “subsystems of the economy and
the state become more and more complex as a result of capitalist growth, and
penetrate ever deeper into the symbolic representation of the lifeworld.”42 Thus
Habermas anticipates the recent shift to deliberative systems.43
Ideal deliberative forums are venues where diverse and representative citizens
come together to exchange reasons. But Habermas more characteristically advo-
cates social movements, especially the “new” movements that have arisen since
the 1970s, which he understands as efforts to resist the encroachment of the state
and the market on everyday life. As examples he names squatter movements that
occupy houses in German cities and anti-tax protests.44 He argues that these
movements, which are not themselves deliberative, revivify the public sphere by
forcing the public to debate the proper role of state and market in relation to pri-
vate life. More generally, Habermas calls for “rival organizations” to improve the
Public Sphere by contesting for power in the right ways.45
41 Compare Gastil & Levine 2005 with Parkinson & Mansbridge 2012. For “communication ecolo-
gies,” see Friedland 2001.

42 Habermas 1987, 367.
43 As acknowledged by Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Christiano, Fung, Parkinson, Thompson
& Warren 2012, 2, note 1, and Chambers 2012, 54.

44 Habermas 1987, 393. A version of this section also appeared as Habermas 1981; see 34.
45 Habermas 1974, 55.
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At the end of the chapter, I will turn to non-deliberative strategies for enhan-
cing deliberative democracy, which may be closer to Habermas’s intent and

interests. The question for a deliberative democrat is whether to enable deliber-
ation directly—by organizing deliberative spaces and projects—or to promote
changes in the political economy that may generate deliberation as a byproduct.
Criticisms of Habermas and Deliberative Democracy
Habermas’s work has launched a very large critical literature. Just one of his
books, The Theory of Communicative Action, has been cited more than 26,000
times. The literature is much larger if we include independent proponents and
analysts of minipublics and deliberative systems who may be influenced by
Habermasian ideals, even if he would not necessarily endorse their strategies.
In this literature taken as a whole, several points of criticism and debate have
become prominent. Here I briefly summarize them and offer partial responses
from a Habermasian perspective.
Perhaps the People Do Not Want to Govern Deliberatively
It should come as no surprise when elites try to undermine democracies and

other forms of republican self-government. It is not in their interest to share
power. But what if the people don’t want to rule? This is an acute worry at the
time of writing, when leaders who disparage democratic values—among them,
Brazilian president Jair Bolsanaro, US president Donald Trump, and Indian
prime minister Narendra Modi—enjoy strong popular support, and the only
governments in the world that appear to be broadly trusted are in China, the
United Arab Emirates, India, Indonesia, and Singapore.46 Meanwhile, influen-
tial frameworks or paradigms in political psychology are raising doubts about
people’s ability to participate in, and to support, democracy.
These concerns were at least as grave between the world wars, when dicta-
tors emerged as popular figures, sometimes attaining office through genuine
elections, and when theorists like Walter Lippmann and Joseph Schumpeter
anticipated today’s academic skepticism about people’s desire and capacity for
self-government.
One cluster of research on this problem was the Frankfurt School, whose
most pressing original topic was the failure of the European working class to
support revolution. The Frankfurt School propounded a species of republican
46 Edelman Trust Barometer (Edelman 2017).
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theory: they wanted the people (equated with the workers) to rule themselves
instead of being ruled by capital. And they were concerned about a very real
problem: workers’ support for right-wing authoritarians. By exploring the hypo-
thesis that popular opinion might affect history and not simply result from histor-
ical forces, the Frankfurt School broke from one orthodox current in Marxism
and gave more attention to “subjective states.”47 This turn was reminiscent of
today’s focus on subjective states, such as racial resentment, as explanations for
outcomes like Trump’s 2016 election.48
Wanting to add an empirical dimension to the research, Max Horkheimer
hired Erich Fromm to conduct a survey. Fromm and colleagues collected data
from 584 Germans, including items about their objective circumstances, their
Lifeworlds, and their opinions. Among the questions were: “What do you and
your wife think about early sex education for children (birth, procreation, sexual
diseases)?” and “Do you like jazz?” Fromm and colleagues concluded that many
of the workers who belonged to left parties held authoritarian attitudes in their
personal lives and showed other telltale signs of fascism, such as anti-Semitism
and admiration for Mussolini.49
This study was the main inspiration for The Authoritarian Personality, the
major work that the Frankfurt School’s Theodor Adorno and several American
colleagues published in 1950. Given the change of time and place, the question
had shifted from “Why doesn’t the working class support Marxist revolution?” to
“Why don’t voters support liberal democracy?” But the threat was the same: au-
thoritarianism. “The major concern was the potentially fascistic individual, one
whose structure is such as to render him particularly susceptible to anti-dem-
ocratic propaganda.”50 The conclusion was also similar to Fromm’s: a substan-
tial proportion of Americans appeared to be potential fascists. The authors made
their theory vivid and concrete by presenting portraits of two pseudonymous
subjects, both Republican-voting, college-educated, White men in their twen-
ties. Larry was reluctant to categorize people into groups or make assumptions
about individuals based on their demographic characteristics. He was interested
in a wide variety of people, self-critical, and overtly opposed discrimination. In
contrast, Mack quickly categorized people into groups he saw as homogeneous,
he viewed their underlying traits as inescapable, and he assumed that the groups
to which he belonged were in zero-sum conflict with the others. Unlike Larry,
Mack was “pre-fascist” or susceptible to authoritarian politics.
Comparable findings emerged at the start of the twenty-first century. In

Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs about How Government Should Work, John
47 Gabardi 1987, 167.

48 Gordon 2017.
49 Horkheimer 1936. (Pages 229–462 represent Fromm’s work.)
50 Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson & Sanford 1950/2019, 1.
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R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse found that many Americans believed

that political disagreement was a sign of corruption and preferred government

by disinterested elites.51 And the currently very influential Moral Foundations
theory of Jonathan Haidt proposes that many people display a latent variable of
Authority, which sounds at least potentially undemocratic, especially if it is a
predominant factor for an individual.52 Moral Foundations theory implies that
people will generally be resistant to sharing political power with other citizens
who emphasize different Foundations from their own. And the theory suggests
that we cannot deliberate about our differences because our opinions are driven
by fixed, underlying psychological traits; the reasons we give for them in conver-
sation are mere rationalizations.53
Each of these research programs has been criticized. The authors of The
Authoritarian Personality did not field their scales with representative samples
of the US population, so they could not estimate the prevalence of potential fas-
cism.54 They did not attempt to identify pro-democratic personalities or estimate
their prevalence. And they did not explore whether there might be left-authori-
tarians as well as right-authoritarians.
Michael Neblo and colleagues challenged the Stealth Democracy thesis by
asking questions that were the reverse of those fielded by Hibbing and Theiss-
Morse. For instance, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse had tested the proposition: “Our
government would run better if decisions were left up to nonelected, independent
experts rather than politicians or the people.” Thirty-one percent agreed, which
Hibbing and Theiss-Morse considered high. Neblo et al. tested: “It is important
for the people and their elected representatives to have the final say in running
government, rather than leaving it up to unelected experts.” Ninety-two percent
agreed.55 By asking questions that were opposites of Hibbing and Theiss-Morse’s
items, Neblo et al. revealed that even most people who held anti-democratic
views also held pro-democratic views. One way to make sense of the apparent
contradiction is to think that people want real dialogue and deliberation but are
unimpressed by the actual debate in Congress.
51 Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2002.

52 Haidt 2012.
53 Graham, Nosek, Haidt, Iyer, Koleva, Spassena & Ditto 2011, 368. But see Cushman 2020, for an
argument that rationalization can reflect a prior exercise in explicit reasoning.

54 The authors acknowledge but occasionally forget this limitation: e.g., Adorno, Frenkel-
Brunswik, Levinson & Sanford, c hapter 3, note 1.

55 Neblo, Esterling, Kennedy, Lazer & Sokhey (2010). Hibbing and Theiss- Morse found that
86 percent agreed that “Elected officials would help the country more if they would stop talking and
just take action on important problems.” But Neblo et al. found that 92 percent agreed that “It is
important for elected officials to discuss and debate things thoroughly before making major policy
changes.” Hibbing and Theiss Morse found a majority (64%) in favor of the statement: “What people
call ‘compromise’ in politics is really just selling out one’s principles.” But Neblo et al. found that
84 percent agreed that “One of the main reasons that elected officials have to debate issues is that they
are responsible to represent the interests of diverse constituencies across the country.”
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Neblo and colleagues also conducted a field experiment, offering people a

chance to deliberate with real members of Congress. People were more likely
to accept if they held negative attitudes toward elected leaders and the debates
in Washington. Again, that could be because they did not reject deliberation in
principle but disliked the official debates that they heard about or watched on
television. People who held those skeptical views were especially impressed by
an offer from their real congressional representative to deliberate. Individuals
were also more likely to accept the offer to deliberate if they were young and if
they had low education. Further, if people showed up to deliberate, their opin-
ions of the experience were very positive. According to the paper, “95% Agreed
(72% Strongly Agreed) that such sessions are ‘very valuable to our democracy’
and 96% Agreed (80% Strongly Agreed) that they would be interested in doing
similar online sessions for other issues.”
Finally, Kevin B. Smith and colleagues cast doubts on three strong claims of
the Moral Foundations theory: that the dispositions labeled “foundations” are
stable for individuals over time, that these foundations predict and explain
political ideology (and hence explain ideological differences), and that the
foundations are inherited—as they must be if they result from Darwinian se-
lection. Surveying twins along with other family members, Smith et al. find that
“moral foundations are not particularly stable within individuals across time,
at least compared to ideology.” At a given point, individuals’ answers to Moral
Foundations questions do relate to their ideologies, but their views change over
time. The causal arrow seems to point from ideology to moral foundations, as
much as the reverse. Presumably, people are influenced by events, experiences,
and discussions to revise their political views, thereby changing their Moral
Foundations (which are not actually foundational). Thus the stream of research
exemplified in Moral Foundations Theory has been “overly dismissive of the role
of conscious deliberation.”56
I also believe that we should be careful about generalizing findings from pri-
vate survey items to political contexts. Like Fromm in 1930s and the authors of
the Authoritarian Personality in the 1940s, Haidt et al. ask individuals to make
private judgments about emotionally charged questions that are often related to
universal human biological functions. In completing these questionnaires, re-
spondents need not act, make decisions together, preserve relationships with
fellow decision makers, follow procedures for group decision-making, or assess
the kinds of complex, changing, and morally mixed institutions that are the main
topics of politics—things like the US government, or the neighborhood’s public
schools, or Islam.57 The Foundations may recede in importance once we enter
the Public Sphere.
56 K. Smith, Alford, Hibbing, Martin & Hatemi 2017.
57 Walzer 1994; Haste 2013; Flanagan 2016.
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So far, I have summarized some empirical evidence that challenges the as-
sumption that people really want to govern themselves, and then some rebuttal
evidence. But once any evidence emerges that people may not want to deliberate
and rule themselves, the worm of skepticism is already inside the apple. Perhaps
some studies have overstated the prevalence of anti-democratic attitudes; nev-
ertheless, it’s clear that such attitudes exist, and they may be prevalent in a given
time and place. That helps to make sense of the fact that 44 percent of Americans
approved of Donald Trump’s performance as he left the job.
This is the main response I would offer: some people are authoritarian.
It is not wrong to suppose that such people help to cause democracies to fail.
However, that is not the whole causal story. Something makes people author-
itarian. If authoritarianism were inherited or hard-wired, then we could not
explain massive changes in attitudes toward democracy within the same popu-
lations. In Fromm’s time, many Germans were proto-fascists, which they dem-
onstrated by giving Hitler’s party the largest share of the vote in 1932. Today,
their descendants widely support one of the most stable and best-performing
liberal democracies in history. Context and experience must matter. Some
combination of centuries of feudalism followed by rapid industrialization,
the slaughter and then defeat of World War I, hyperinflation, and sophisti-
cated Nazi propaganda could make people into fascists. As Adorno observed,
“Spontaneous anti-Jewish demonstrations in the Third Reich were, without
exception, manipulated, switched on and off.”58 On the other hand, living in
Angela Merkel’s Germany made or kept most people liberal and democratic.
As Neblo and colleagues show, inviting people to a well-designed deliberative
event with their own elected representatives increases their commitment to
democracy. The Tocquevillian argument is that “experience with liberty” and
“experience with solving problems directly through collective action” inculcate
liberal and democratic virtues.59
One conclusion might be that elites—the people in charge of institutions—
should create rewarding opportunities for self-governance at many scales, from
empowered student governments in middle schools to national deliberations
that influence Congress. Then people will learn to be civic republicans.
That conclusion is true but empty. Elites will not share power because they
should. They will do so if they believe it is in their self-interest, and they are more
likely to reach that conclusion to the extent that the public organizes to demand
self-governance. Unfortunately, such pressure will be weak to the extent that

most people have lost experience with, and appetite for, self-governance.
58 Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson & Sanford 1950/2019, Kindle loc. 1087–88

59 Allen, Stevens & Berg 2018, 36.
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A vicious cycle is certainly possible, and probably evident in many countries

today. But the situation is not as dire as it might seem. The good news is that we
do not need the active support of a majority of citizens to spread opportunities
for self-rule. Some of us can build such opportunities and invite others in, and we
can thereby expand the constituency for real democracy.
If we could ask the public—in a truly valid and reliable way—whether they
want a deliberative democracy, the results would probably be mixed and am-
bivalent. Depending on the political context, more or fewer people would agree.
Unfortunately, at crisis points, when it is most important for people to stand up for
democracy, their support is likely to be the softest.
But whether a whole society should be a deliberative democracy is not the sa-
lient question, anyway. None of us can decide to make it one. The salient question
is whether we—you and I and our colleagues and allies—should build and expand
opportunities for deliberative democracy in the various contexts where we have in-
fluence: our schools and colleges, neighborhoods, voluntary associations, and on-
line venues.
The answer to that question may not always be yes. Values other than delib-
eration and democracy may be paramount in some contexts, such as a scientific
lab, an artist’s studio, or aboard a warship. But there are good reasons for us to
build more deliberative democratic opportunities than we find around us today.
These opportunities can make their immediate contexts better and can extend the
public’s appetite for deliberative democracy at larger scales.
Habermas’s Distinction between Communicative and

Instrumental Reason May Be Psychologically Naive
Central to Habermas’s whole philosophy is a distinction between instrumental

action (persuading other people to adopt a conclusion that the speaker favors)
and communicative action (exchanging reasons in order to decide what is right
to do). Instrumental rationality is rewarded or even required by Systems. For ex-
ample, commercial advertisers aim to sell products, not to deliberate about the
products’ value; and legal counsel try to win cases for their clients. In the context
of fair market competition or well-designed adversarial trials, such instrumental
behavior can serve the public interest. Still, we need forums for communicative
reasoning if for no other purpose than to assess the legitimacy of institutions,

such as markets and courts. A market yields prices as a result of supply and de-
mand, and a regulatory state and market may jointly shape an industry. We can
think of those outcomes as compromises among interests. Habermas argues that
citizens must deliberate about the justice of such compromises. If citizens can
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identify a common good in their deliberations, that ideal should challenge the
outcome of Systems.60
This call for communicative reasoning is naive if people are not actually
moved by good reasons, if such reasons almost always lose in competition with
manipulative and simplifying messages, or if, indeed, we cannot tell the differ-
ence between trying to decide what is right to do versus persuading other people
to take our side. A wealth of results from social psychology suggest that “we are
continually swayed by irrelevant factors, by gut feelings and unconscious motiv-
ations.”61 The explanations that people provide for their own judgments are post-
hoc rationalizations for their instinctive feelings. “Individuals are often unable
to access the [real] causes of their moral judgments.62 We may believe we are
disclosing the principles that yield our beliefs, but we are actually rationalizing
what we want—to ourselves and to others.63 Such findings are consistent with
evolutionary psychology, which assumes that we are equipped with adequate
mental capacity for tasks like identifying threats, hunting collectively, and iden-
tifying mates, but not for deliberating about ends. And they are consistent with
evidence that simplistic and emotion-provoking messages work best for moving
mass audiences.
A Habermasian can find some comfort in a wealth of research on the impor-
tance of context. The psychologist Paul Bloom writes, “If you want to see people at
their stupidest, check out national politics, which is replete with us-vs.-them dy-
namics and virtue signaling, and where the cost of having silly views is harmless.”
We don’t strive to understand the facts about issues “like climate change or the
arms deal with Iran” because we know that our influence via a vote is minimal.
It’s revelatory, then, that we do much better when the stakes are high, where
being rational really matters. . . . Look at the discussions that adults have over
whether to buy a house or where to send their kids to school, or consider the
social negotiations that occur among friends deciding where to go for dinner,
planning a hike, or figuring out how to help someone who just had a baby. Or
60 “Even if a ‘class-compromise’ came about in advanced capitalism under conditions of a balance
of power, the justifiability of the compromise would remain questionable as long as it excluded the
possibility of discursively testing whether it was in fact a matter, on both sides, of particular interests
that did not permit of a rational will and were thus accessible only to compromise” (Habermas 1973/
1975, 112).
61 Bloom 2016. See, e.g., Nyhan & Reifler 2010: “humans are goal-directed information processors
who tend to evaluate information with a directional bias toward reinforcing their pre-existing views.”
62 Quotation from Graham, Nosek, Haidt, Iyer, Koleva, Spassena & Ditto 2011, 368. Cf. Haidt
2012, 27–51; Swidler 2001; and Thiele 2006.

63 Cushman 2020 argues that judgments that emerge from gut reactions may sometimes encode
previous explicit reasoning that we (or our culture) have chosen to make habitual. Thus, when we ra-
tionalize a gut reaction, we may be revealing reasons that we previously developed through conscious
thought.
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even look at a different sort of politics—the type of politics where individuals

might actually make a difference, such as a town hall meeting where people dis-
cuss zoning regulations and where to put a stop sign. My own experience is that
the level of rational discourse in these situations is high.64
The observation that people are at their stupidest in national elections goes
back at least to Joseph Schumpeter, who wrote in 1942 that even educated and
successful people display a shocking “ignorance and lack of judgment in matters
of domestic and foreign policy.” He predicted: “Without the initiative that comes
from immediate responsibility, ignorance will persist in the face of masses of in-
formation however complete and correct. . . . The typical citizen drops down to a
lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He ar-
gues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within
the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again. His thinking be-
comes associative and affective.”65 Schumpeter, an economist, was explaining
our failure to reason about politics in rational-choice terms, as a collective-ac-
tion problem.
On the other hand, as Bloom notes, people sometimes reason well when they
have “immediate responsibility” as part of groups. Good deliberations occur in
well-designed minipublics. Several of the troubling recent empirical studies of
citizens’ rationality also acknowledge that the results are context-dependent.
Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler conducted experiments in which people who
held demonstrably false information were shown corrections, which backfired
by reinforcing their prior assumptions. But Nyhan and Reifler conclude with
a call for research on when and how corrections work, because evidently they
sometimes do.66 Leticia Bode and Emily Vraga were then able to test a Facebook
algorithm that led people to correct their own false views by providing them with
counterevidence.67 These are studies of false empirical beliefs, but moral princi-
ples also shift under favorable circumstances.
In turn, we can shape the circumstances in which people reason together. For
example, people are not very good at measuring time and would not naturally be
able to coordinate their temporal rhythms in a mass society. However, most of
us carry little prosthetic devices on our wrists that tell us what time it is. Clocks
also hang on walls and appear on our computer screens. We tend to know what
time it is.
Similarly, a newspaper is a prosthetic device for telling us what important

events are occurring around the world that are relevant to our decisions as
64 Bloom 2016.
65 Schumpeter 1942/2008, 261.
66 Nyhan & Reifler 2010.
67 Bode & Vraga 2015.
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consumers, workers, and citizens. We are not naturally very good at separating
reliable information from misinformation, seeing the world from perspectives

other than our own, or absorbing information that challenges our prior assump-
tions. We are not automatically motivated to collect reliable information about
public issues. The evidence about human cognitive and motivational limitations
would suggest that a professional, politically independent, reliable press is im-
possible. Human beings who evolved to hunt-and-gather on an open savanna
would be unwilling to sacrifice some of their personal property to support the
collection of relatively abstract and dispassionate information about the world
as whole. They wouldn’t be equipped to understand what reliable information
was, nor would they care about the situations of people beyond their own groups.
And yet, for about a century, most Americans did buy a metropolitan
newspaper every day, and the proceeds funded shoe-leather journalism. The
newspaper’s financial model worked because people paid for classified ads,
comics, and sports as well as news, but subscribers saw the daily headlines on the
front page, which told them what they should care about as citizens. Although
reporters and readers inevitably demonstrate bias, studies show that receiving
substantial amounts of information changes minds.68 A newspaper typically be-
longed to a corporation or a wealthy individual, so we could (in Habermasian
terms) assign to it to the market System instead of the Public Sphere. But a
profitable—hence sustainable—newspaper couldn’t have existed without the
dedication of the people whom we call “the press”: professional reporters, edi-
tors, publishers, journalism educators, and some newspaper owners, who were
motivated in part by an ideal of “news” that guided them as they built their en-
terprises. As members of the press, they did belong to the Public Sphere.69 It is
fortunate that the founders of modern journalism did not dwell on human cog-
nitive limitations, or they wouldn’t have believed that they could succeed.
The appropriate conclusion is that collective reasoning about facts and values
is hard. It does not come naturally for human beings and is not common in a mass
society. Yet it can be found in relatively well designed contexts, such as the pages
of a good metropolitan daily newspaper or a minipublic like the Massachusetts
Citizens Initiative Review, described earlier. The question for Habermasians be-
comes how to expand the scale and impact of such contexts. Any context that can
achieve substantial impact must attract support, in the form of money, citizens’
time, and political attention. Proponents of deliberation must therefore think in-
stitutionally, developing organizations and practices that align well enough with
existing interests that they can survive and expand in a world otherwise domi-
nated by money and power.
68 Bullock 2009.
69 Habermas 1996, 376–79.
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Deliberation May Be Impossible in a “Post-Truth” World

In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary chose “post-truth” as its word of the year.
This word captures the fear that the role of truth has changed fundamentally for
the worse. Of course, people were never reliably respectful of truth or correct
about most topics; and scrupulous concern for truth has rarely paid off in poli-
tics. Propaganda, error, and anti-intellectualism are ancient and perennial phe-
nomena. Perhaps these problems worsened when mass communications became
more influential and governments and companies developed professional exper-
tise in misinformation. However, those conditions were already in place by the
1920s, when Walter Lippmann and John Dewey conducted an insightful debate
about how to respond.70
Still, there are grounds for particular anxiety today. We can see people holding
demonstrably false beliefs en masse because so much communication is online,
where it can be searched and catalogued. Social media may also make falsehoods
spread faster and convince more people than they would have otherwise.71
People can more efficiently find like-minded peers to share ideas without having
to encounter alternative views.72 Technologies for deliberate deception, such as
automated “bots” that appear to be people or the manipulated videos known as
“deep fakes,” are growing more sophisticated.73 Traditional sources of informa-
tion that were once fairly reliable, such as major national newspapers and broad-
cast networks, have given way to a much wider array of outlets, some of which
are blatantly mendacious. When politicians are also media celebrities, they ben-
efit from amusing, angering, or flattering their own audiences, not from using
reasons to convince their critics.74 And some politicians (not for the first time in
history) have achieved electoral success by openly challenging the value of truth
“as a mechanism for asserting dominance.”75
In deliberations, individuals should respect truth. If you know (or could find
out) that an organization’s budget is $20 million, you should not say that it is
$10 million. If reliable polls show that a majority of the public opposes a proposal,
you should not claim that it is popular. And since human use of carbon is actu-
ally causing the world’s climate to warm at a dangerous rate, you should not deny
global warming. By the same token, anything that undermines people’s respon-
sibility to truth—human cognitive limitations, techniques of misinformation,
70 Lippmann 1925; Dewey 1927.

71 Lazer et al. 2018 raise that possibility but find the evidence unclear. An example of a study that
suggests a causal link is Zollo & Quattrociocchi 2018.
72 DelVicario, Bessi, Zollo, Petroni, Scala, Caldarelli, Stanley & Quattrociocchi 2016.
73 Hobbs 2020, 3.
74 Kalpokas 2018.
75 McIntyre 2018, xiv.
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polarization into like-minded communities, or successful political movements

that oppose truth—poses a threat to deliberative democracy.

Yet what counts as a fact is not an obvious matter, especially in political con-
texts. I do not personally observe the burning of carbon causing the whole earth
to warm. I am confident this is happening because of what I read in the press
and in a selection of scientific articles. That means that I trust certain reporters,
editors, and the scientists who appear in these articles. For their part, scientists
do not personally observe the phenomenon or the causes of global warming.
They contribute specific findings to a large field of research that depends on basic
theories, instruments, and accumulated data and previous analyses. No one can
generate or reproduce all of that alone. Science depends on trust in institutions
and social processes. I happen to have reasons to trust major American research
universities, which have treated me well all my life. But if I were differently situ-
ated in society, I might place my trust differently.
Worse, the claim that a fact enjoys scientific consensus serves to block further
debate about it. It can make the current scientific position “incontestable” and
thus “render ordinary political life impotent.”76 Given the history of severe racial
and gender bias in science (among other faults), people have reasons to mistrust
scientists. Science also appears in tension with—if not actually opposed to—a
range of beliefs that we may feel people have a right to hold, from the literal truth
of scripture, to the idea that nature has intrinsic value, to the “creation stories that
give us [Dakota people] values for living, narrate our common history, cohere us
as a people with a common moral framework, and tie us to a sacred landbase.”77
Knowledge is a common-pool resource. It can benefit people even if they do
not help to produce it, yet individuals can degrade it.78 As such, it is fragile and
requires appropriate rules, incentives, and norms. Like many other resources, it
can be good for some and bad for others. For instance, ascertaining genuine facts
can give some the ability to dominate others.
Managing common-pool resources is a civic task. It requires skillful design as
well as ethical reflection. The current moment provides extraordinarily successful
examples of knowledge as a common-pool resource, such as Wikipedia, and ex-
traordinary threats to it, such as social media platforms that profit by addicting
uses to false information. The successful examples of “knowledge commons”
make deliberation more accessible and easier. The new threats to truth make
deliberation more challenging. Above all, we need deliberation about how to
manage knowledge: how to design and regulate institutions that produce it, and
which existing institutions merit trust. This discussion should occur in many
76 Latour 204, 10.

77 TallBear 2007, 416.
78 Hess & Ostrom 2006.
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locations and scales, corresponding to the many types and sizes of institutions
that generate or preserve truth. Some of those institutions will surely disappoint,
but some will succeed—and their success is up to us.
Habermas May Be Naive about Parliaments,

the Public Sphere, and Culture
The actual republics that arose in the wake of the English, American, and French
revolutions developed a set of institutions that were meant to elicit delibera-
tion and give political power to reasonable public opinion. Those institutions
included parliaments: deliberative bodies chosen by the people but meant, in
James Madison’s phrase, to exercise “the mild voice of reason” on a public stage.79
They included newspapers, discussed in the previous sections, as well as a wide
range of cultural products, from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Brecht’s Threepenny Opera,
that provoked and enriched public discourse.
The criticism is that all of these institutions merely purport to offer or en-
courage communicative reasoning.80 Legislatures are actually populated by self-
interested politicians who seek re-election and rely on wealthy special interests or
disciplined political parties (depending on the political system) for the resources
they need to persuade voters to support them. The characteristic communication
that emanates from a legislature is not a valid and principled argument about the
public good but an inflammatory television advertisement funded by corporate
donors or an attention-seeking remark disseminated through a privately owned
news channel. Likewise, newspapers, publishing companies, and other cultural
institutions are Systems masquerading as participants in the Public Sphere. In
a venue like cable television news, fear-mongering, mockery, flattery, and vit-
riol draw larger audiences (and thus larger profits) than discussions of substance.
That is a drawback of a for-profit media system.81
The Habermasian response is that communicative reasoning is always a coun-
terfactual ideal. Actual institutions strive to avoid honoring this ideal, but citi-
zens use it to measure them and test their legitimacy. The struggle is constant.
Quite likely, it is being lost today as Systems colonize the Public Sphere and as
citizens fail to recognize their role or organize effectively in defense of delibera-
tive values.
The Habermasian question then becomes how to reverse those losses. If we

insist on asking what we should do instead of what should be done, then we
79 The Federalist, no. 42.

80 J. L. Cohen 1999, 71ff.
81 Berry & Sobieraj 2016.
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must not rely on such as answers as “Turn legislatures into spaces for authentic
deliberation” or “Regulate the broadcast news business.” Those steps are not
in the power of any group to which I belong. We might, however, adopt strate-
gies that are within the reach of concrete groups of citizens and compatible with
Habermasian values. For instance:
• When acting in political pressure groups (ones that lobby, mobilize voters,
endorse candidates, or otherwise directly influence politics), attend to de-
liberative values as well as policy goals. For example, given the choice be-
tween two candidates who pursue goals roughly consistent with one’s own
policy preferences, support the one who has a better record of exchanging
reasons, changing her mind in response to arguments, and attempting to
engage the whole population instead of a narrow majority.
• Create spaces that are reasonably deliberative within one’s own community
and organizations, on the theory that such spaces teach deliberative values
and encourage voters and consumers to prefer deliberative leaders when
they have the choice. Here, the word “deliberative” does not merely mean
civil, substantive, and reasonable (a set of discursive values). It also means
equitable, free, and connected to important decisions.
• Produce and disseminate cultural products (books, blogs, films, songs, and
works in many other formats) that enrich the Public Sphere and manage
these products so that they work as common-pool resources. As we saw in
chapter 4, a common-pool resource need not be publicly owned. It can in-
volve a large dose of private property. The fishing grounds off Alanya, Turkey,
worked as a common-pool resource even though the ships, equipment, and
caught fish belong to private owners. Likewise, a private enterprise can pro-
duce and sell news and commentary. If this enterprise is dependent on, and
accountable to, some kind of community, and if its products accumulate
in accessible forums such as public libraries and the Internet, then it may
contribute invaluably to a “knowledge commons.”82 On the other hand, if a
media company is strictly dedicated to maximizing returns for shareholders
and is willing to generate any news that sells, then it detracts from the Public
Sphere. We can build and support the former and challenge the latter.
These are answers to the question, “How can we enhance deliberation?,” where
the “we” is concrete. None of us can make the whole Public Sphere deliberative,
but we can tangibly contribute to it.
Habermas sometimes asserts that the only sovereign political institution
is a national legislature. “To generate political power,” he writes, citizens must
82 Levine 2006.
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influence “democratically elected assemblies,” and their ideas must “assume

an authorized form in formal decisions.”83 This assumption may be a remnant

of Habermas’s social-democratic theory of the state: each nation elects one le-
gitimate body that rules with and for them. If we relax that assumption and
acknowledge that many institutions do (and should) govern at once in a polycen-
tric order, then citizens have more opportunities for influence. If the legislature is
corrupt, citizens can govern themselves in private associations. If a powerful as-
sociation is unresponsive, citizens can turn to various agencies and organs of the
state. Polycentricity does not solve the problem of corruption, but it opens more
fronts in the struggle between deliberative public opinion and power.
Habermas Prizes a Kind of Dispassionate, Rationalistic

Discourse That May Be Inadequate, Culturally Biased, or Both
In 2001, Iris Marion Young published an article organized as a debate between

two imaginary persons. One character “claims that the parties to political con-
flict ought to deliberate with one another and though reasonable argument try
to come to an agreement on policy satisfactory to all.” This person is identified as
the “deliberative democrat.” The opponent, named the “activist,” is “suspicious of
exhortations to deliberate” because he thinks that the “norms of deliberation are
usually biased toward more powerful agents.” The activist favors “critical oppo-
sitional activity” over attempts to come to consensus with those who are already
powerful.84
It is not clear that the deliberative democrat is a fair representation of
Habermas. For one thing, neither Habermas nor any influential theorist clearly
argues that discussants should only exchange proposals and reasons that lead to
consensus.85 To the extent that Habermas analyzes discussions in ideal settings,
this is a way of yielding insights about the logic of communication.86 His social
83 Habermas 1996, 371–72.

84 Young 2001, 671.
85 Habermas describes an Enlightenment Era ideal of public reason, but this represents his inter-
pretation of previous thinkers, not his own full view (Habermas 1962/1991, 54). He also describes
the “ideal speech situation” as a venue for exchanging reasons of a particular kind (Habermas 1973/
1975), but this ideal is only one aspect of his theory of democracy. Another candidate for a highly
rationalistic account would be John Rawls’s “criterion of reciprocity as expressed in public reason”
(Rawls 1997, 771), which suggests that citizens must give sincere reasons that “we also reasonably
think that other citizens might also reasonably accept.” However, Rawls carefully delimits the people
and the contexts for which this criterion is required. Many recent deliberative theorists explicitly
defend the role of emotions or passions; e.g., Hall 2007. Perhaps the mainstream view within deliber-
ative democratic theory is that of John Dryzek. He argues that a range of speech acts, including testi-
mony, storytelling, and greetings, can improve deliberation, yet “argument always has to be central.”
For him, argument alone is intrinsically required (Dryzek 2000, 71).
86 Well summarized in Thomassen 2010, 84–96.
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prescription is not to create many such ideal settings but rather to reverse the col-
onizing expansion of markets and bureaucracies, and he sees an important role

for contentious social movements in doing so. It is in this spirit that Habermas
celebrates “large demonstrations . . . which drew an entire city into the rhythm
and whirl of an expressive, enthusiastic mass event.”87
But even if Young’s “deliberative democrat” is not a good portrayal of
Habermas, this character provides a useful contrast with the “activist.” They are
two poles of a recognizable continuum. The activist recommends tactics “more
effective in conveying his criticism” than sitting down to discuss, such as “pick-
eting, leafleting, guerilla theater, large and loud street demonstrations, sit-ins,
and other forms of direct action.” Young adds, “Sometimes activists invade the
houses of deliberation and disrupt their business by unfurling banners, throwing
stink bombs, or running and shouting in the aisles.” Faced with an unjust power
structure, their goal may be to “stop its business.”88
Young’s article was sufficiently influential and valuable that Rose Marie
Nierras and I decided to talk to actual deliberative democrats and actual activ-
ists to see what they thought about these issues.89 We facilitated and recorded
four international meetings that involved more than sixty people from fourteen
countries. A few of the participants described themselves as proponents of de-
liberative democracy or public deliberation, but most were activists for social
justice who also favored democracy (in some form) but expressed significant
doubts about deliberation as a mode of democratic engagement.90
Our informants provided some support for Young’s argument. In an anony-
mous written comment, one of the activists defined “deliberation” as “calm, cool,
civil, incremental change.” But, as Lynn M. Sanders writes, a preference for talk
that is “rational, contained, and oriented toward a shared problem” may come
“perilously close to suppressing the challenging perspectives of marginalized
groups.”91 In one of our meetings, Joel Rocamora, a Filipino activist, said, “The
problem is that deliberation privileges reasonableness. And that’s why I have
asked, ‘does deliberation exclude struggle?’ ”
Rocamora also reminded us that deliberative formats may favor people who
have certain cultural and educational backgrounds. “The discourse of peasants
87 Habermas 1985, 98.

88 Young 2001, 673.
89 Portions of this section previously appeared in Levine & Nierras 2007 and are reused here with
permission.
90 Levine & Nierras 2007. The meetings were Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC)/
LogoLink North-South Meeting (Washington, DC, June 2004), twenty-one participants from seven
countries; LogoLink Partners’ Meeting (Brighton, England, July 2004), thirteen participants from
seven countries; meetings in Porto Alegre, Brazil (October 2004), fourteen participants, all Brazilian;
DDC Researcher and Practitioner Network Meeting (Washington, DC, June 2005), thirty partici-
pants from six countries.
91 Sanders 1997, 362, 370.
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is often not explicit—often hard to understand.” In contrast, formally educated

people from the middle classes are more likely to be clear and forceful. Putting
people who are not well prepared to speak into a deliberative setting can merely
demoralize or alienate them. As Bettina von Lieres from South Africa observed,
“In a situation where people have no experience of effective representative de-
mocracy . . . to take groups of people like that into deliberative processes . . . it can
be completely threatening, and it can actually alienate people from democratic
processes in the future.”
Deliberation may also be biased toward certain kinds of issues. For example, as
Nelsa Ines Fabian Nespolo from Brazil noted, PB works well for allocating a pool
of public funds. “But there are many other struggles that go beyond public re-
sources. . . . We need to recognize that PB cannot provide everything—that may
be asking too much of the PB process itself.” Maria Leonice de Deus da Silva pro-
vided an example. She said that about half of the women councilors in Santiago,
Chile, are primarily concerned about rights. “Gender politics has taken up much
of this collective reflection and yet this is not a constant theme/subject/priority
in PB processes.” Lewis A. Friedland similarly argues that members of a US com-
munity should be able to make an issue out of specific “failing schools” that serve
students of color. But “if the same citizens want to link school problems to pat-
terns in housing markets they will have a harder time.”92 In my terms, they may
struggle to have a conversation that can seriously ask, “What should we do?”
about the whole economy that affects local housing patterns.
On the other hand, Nierras and I found that organizers of actual public de-
liberations are not very likely to use adjectives like “rational” and “reason-
able” when describing excellent public conversations. For them, the chief goal
is to get a representative group of people together to communicate about some
common issue. They often see emotion as an asset if it increases engagement,
provides information about the intensity of participants’ views, or encourages
introspection.93 Young’s imaginary activist argued for “nondiscursive means,”
such as “pictures, song, poetic imagery, and expressions of mockery and longing
performed in rowdy and even playful ways.”94 Many of the people who organize
actual dialogues and deliberations are quite comfortable with those forms of
communication. They typically distinguish good conversations from bad ones,
but their standards do not emphasize rationality. They cite the value of reliable
information, but also equality, mutual respect, engagement, and participation.
Few practical people in the field of public deliberation define it so narrowly as

to exclude storytelling, emotional testimony, or even songs. This means that the
92 Friedland 2001, 374–76.

93 See the comments of professional facilitators who assessed the quality of actual (taped) deliber-
ations in Mansbridge, Amengual, Hartz-Karp & Gastil 2006.
94 Young 2001, 687.
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theory/practice tradition of deliberative democracy is not overly committed to

“reasonable” discourse.
Meanwhile, many of the social justice activists told us they would be com-
fortable understanding deliberation not as the essence of democracy but as one
phase in a cycle of social change that also includes the organization of interest-
based social movements. As Sérgio Baierle of Brazil said, “There is no doubt that
deliberation and social movements are [both] essential elements of democratic
life.” If people lack political power and are merely invited to a deliberation, that
invitation will be a gift from the organizers that can be withdrawn at any time.
Even if the deliberation itself is fair, there is no way to ensure that any results
will be implemented as intended. Social movements address these problems by
capturing power for those traditionally excluded. Once power is redistributed,
deliberation can be a valuable tool for making collective decisions. Later in this
chapter, I will explore Habermas’s own rather similar reasons for endorsing the
New Social Movements that arose in the 1970s and 1980s.95
And even for effective social movements, deliberation has a benefit that
should not be overlooked: its capacity to improve activists’ views. Young starts
with the premise that the activist is right—he stands for “social justice.”96 But real
activists may be misguided or prejudiced in various ways. As Robert B. Talisse
argues, deliberation is problematic for any activist who “takes himself to know
what justice is and what justice requires.”97 But that is a dangerous assumption to
make. Activists should be open to alternative ideas and perspectives and possible
changes of mind.
Fung argues that it is naive to commit oneself to give reasons and arguments
(and nothing but reasons and arguments) even when powerful people refuse to
listen. Strikes, boycotts, lawsuits, voter-mobilization campaigns, nonviolent pro-
tests, and even occasionally violent uprisings may be necessary. At the same time,
Fung believes it is a mistake to abandon deliberation altogether until political
equality prevails. If one waits for the “revolution” before becoming a deliberative
democrat, then the imperfections of our current order can justify abandoning all
pretense of deliberation and simply trying to amass power. That is a path to cyn-
icism and corruption. Fung favors a middle course. The realistic (yet idealistic)
deliberative democrat should try to make the world more deliberative through
effective political activism, but he or she should be ethically constrained by cer-
tain deliberative norms. Specifically, the activist should keep in mind the goal of
making institutions more fair and more influenced by reasons. He or she should
95 Young 2001, 690, credits Habermas with insights about hegemonic discourse but finds his
theory of deliberative democracy in Between Facts and Norms (Habermas 1996) “surprising and dis-
appointing.” But there are other resources in Habermas’s extensive body of work.
96 Young 2001, 672.
97 Talisse 2005, 42.
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assume that others will deliberate in good faith until they show by their behavior
that they will not. The activist should exhaust deliberative forms of politics (e.g.,
giving arguments, organizing open meetings) before resorting to non-delibera-
tive tactics. And any non-deliberative responses should be strictly proportional
to the situation.98
Deliberation May Undermine Political Action and

Thus Favor the Status Quo
Diana Mutz has found that people who are exposed to political disagreement
learn to understand the other side of debates, but at the same time, they become
less likely to demonstrate an interest in politics, to vote, and to join social move-
ments. This finding suggests a trade-off between deliberative values and polit-
ical activism.99 Mutz’s work is consistent with a substantial body of research that
links heterogeneity to lower levels of political action. For example, residents of
racially and economically heterogeneous neighborhoods tend to be less civi-
cally engaged and less likely to join associations, and students in racially diverse
classrooms are less likely to disagree with each other in class and to plan to vote
once they turn eighteen.100 Since heterogeneity is necessary for deliberation,
these findings suggest that the conditions for deliberation are disempowering or
demobilizing.
There is some empirical counterevidence, and the trade-off shouldn’t be
viewed as a law of nature.101 But Mutz’s finding should be taken seriously be-
cause it has several persuasive explanations. People who are exposed to diverse
perspectives and opinions may become less confident in their own views, and
hence less likely to act. People who perceive their views to be in the minority may
censor themselves in order to avoid standing out, and as a result of their silence
become less politically active. Even individuals whose views are relatively pop-
ular may avoid talking about politics in diverse groups in order to maintain the
group’s harmony.102 But once politics is off the table, citizens cannot encourage
one another to take political action. In contrast, social movements tend to orig-
inate in social networks where everyone agrees, yet those are not favorable con-
texts for deliberation.103
98 Fung 2005.
99 Mutz 2006, 33, 99, 111–115, 118.
100 Alesina & La Ferrara 2000; Costa & Kahne 2003; Campbell 2007.
101 E.g., Quintelier, Stolle & Harell 2012.
102 Eliasoph 1988, 42.
103 McAdam, McCarthy & Zald 1996.
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One Habermasian response is that relatively homogeneous social move-

ments are necessary, along with spaces for deliberation. I will return to this point
when I consider Habermas’s explicit writing about social movements. Another
response is that by carefully designing deliberations, we can reduce the trade-
off between “hearing the other side” (the title of Mutz’s book) and taking polit-
ical action. In a study of American adolescents, Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg and
I found that racial diversity in classrooms reduced the odds that students would
be electorally and civically engaged once they graduate. Racial diversity served
as a rough proxy for diversity of perspectives and opinions in this national study,
and we concluded from our statistical model that exposing students to diverse
perspectives made them less motivated to vote. However, students in racially
pluralistic schools who also recalled discussing controversial issues in class—
where a teacher might facilitate a real deliberation—voted at higher rates.104 This
suggests that the classroom can be a space to teach deliberative skills and values
and motivate action.
The problem is that classrooms are controlled environments where the in-
vestment is quite high (there is a paid and trained teacher in each room, and
the students are compelled to attend), yet the political stakes are relatively low.
Students are just talking, not making crucial decisions that might attract disci-
plined opposition from interest groups. The stakes are higher when adults delib-
erate about community issues that they can directly influence. For proponents
of Habermasian deliberative democracy, the challenge is to expand the scale and
prevalence of settings that work like well-run classrooms.
Perhaps Habermas Errs in Discussing the Public Sphere:

Any Society Should Encompass Many Groups with
Their Own Public Spheres
As a strong defender of Habermas, Jean Cohen is somewhat unsympathetic

to claims that deliberation intrinsically favors formally educated White men.
She writes, “The claim that the ideal of rational argument constitutively fa-
vors a particular gender, class, or race while silencing and privatizing others
is . . . u
nconvincing and even condescending.” However, she acknowledges that
demographic and cultural groups have diverse prevailing styles of communi-
cation, and those differences can produce inequality within a single forum. As
a solution, she proposes that we abandon “a unitary conception of the public
sphere in favor of a pluralistic model.” There should be many “cultural, civil, and
political publics.”105
104 Kawashima-Ginsberg & Levine 2014a.
105 Cohen 1999, 72–73.
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Pushing a similar argument further, Nancy Fraser writes, “public life in egali-
tarian, multicultural societies cannot consist exclusively in a single, comprehen-

sive public sphere. That would be tantamount to filtering diverse rhetorical and
stylistic norms through a single, overarching lens.” Fraser favors “a multiplicity
of publics” over a “single public”; and she particularly celebrates “subaltern
counterpublics,” meaning “parallel discursive arenas where members of subor-
dinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses to formulate oppo-
sitional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs.”106 She cites the
women’s movement of the late 1900s as a powerful example.
Practitioners make similar points when they call for separate dialogues for
youth, women, or minorities, sometimes as a prelude to larger discussions that
will represent the whole population. An activist named Fatma Yusuf from South
Africa told Nierras and me, “We don’t necessarily want to have a unified dis-
course. We do want a divided discourse. Because it’s that much richer. So we’d
rather be talking about ‘participation’ instead of ‘deliberation.’ ” This view is a
challenge to Habermas, who began by writing of “the Public Sphere” and who
recommends integrating communication across at least a polity, if not across the
whole world.107
I think two different issues arise from this critique. One involves equity: can a
single discussion be equitable, or must people with heterogeneous power, status,
and styles of communication at least begin by talking in separate groups? This is
an empirical and pragmatic question, subject to experimental investigation. It
arises at almost all scales and contexts where people are diverse. For instance, it
may—perhaps—be useful to encourage people of color to talk amongst them-
selves before convening a discussion that includes White people. Certainly,
Habermas insists on equity in deliberative forums, and if equity is best served by
initial separation, he should swallow that conclusion. I think the answer will vary
depending on the circumstances.
The second issue is whether the ideal ought to be one Public Sphere per po-
litical jurisdiction. In other words, should there be a one-to-one correspond-
ence between the public, with its deliberated opinions, and the state, with its
power? Even if producing a single public in an unequal, multicultural society
is a long journey, does democracy demand that destination? Fraser suggests
it does when she refers to an “additional, more comprehensive arena in which
members of different, more limited publics talk across lines of cultural diversity.”
106 Fraser 1994, 126, 127, 123.

107 Habermas 1994, 425, accepts the criticism that he should write about public spheres in the
plural. He clearly describes plural “publics” in, e.g., Habermas 1996, 373–74. The phrase “Public
Sphere” in English translations of Habermas represents the German word Öffentlichkeit, which is a
singular abstract noun, sometimes translated as “publicness” in other works. As an abstraction, it is
not as clearly singular as “sphere” sounds in English (Calhoun 2010, 329).
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This is the appropriate arena in which “to entertain debates over policies and
issues affecting everyone.”108 Fraser hopes that such a conversation is possible,

and so must Habermas. Their hope follows from a premise of classical repub-
lican theory: that a “people” consists of a bounded group, all of whose mem-
bers have equal rights to discuss and decide all the issues that came before them.
The people should therefore ultimately form a single community with one Public
Sphere. Their job is to exercise what the French Revolutionary theorist Benjamin
Constant called the “liberty of the ancients,” meaning the right “to deliberate, in
a public space.”109 Habermas describes a “legal community . . . as an association
of free and equal citizens [that] determines for itself what rules should govern
social interactions.”110
An alternative theory is gaining popularity. On this theory of affected inter-
ests, a democracy is not a single group of people who constitute a fixed polity
that has a right to decide on everything that comes before it. Rather, each person
belongs to various groups with interests, and any group should be consulted on
all the decisions that affect it. The groups to which we belong often spill over
or ignore national boundaries. Fung proposes as the basic democratic principle
that “An individual should be able to influence an organization if and only if that
organization makes decisions that regularly or deeply affect that individual’s
important interests.” On that basis, I may have a right to influence Cambridge,
Massachusetts, where I live, but also the People’s Republic of China, Microsoft,
the National Security Agency, and the American Political Science Association.
The world becomes more democratic to the extent that each person influences
the various overlapping organizations that affect him or her, wherever they may
be headquartered.111 We would then expect to see many separate Public Spheres,
each representing a group with relatively similar objective interests. Each group
discusses its own issues before targeting the most relevant authorities with its de-
mands. They need never coalesce into one Public Sphere.
Empirically, this seems to be one direction politics is taking in our digitally
enabled, interconnected world. Social movements now draw people from a
range of political jurisdictions who share a common interest. Movements target
the appropriate organizations, which may be governments, corporations, or
NGOs. They work like networks rather than institutions: people who share inter-
ests come together to protest, boycott, or otherwise confront organizations.
108 Fraser 1994, 126. She takes it as logically necessary that multicultural societies require subal-
tern publics, and as an empirical question whether a unified and equitable public sphere is ultimately
possible. For a republican theorist, a unified and equitable public sphere is a normative necessity, and
it’s an important empirical question whether subaltern publics are necessary to achieve a fair public
sphere.
109 Constant 1819.
110 Habermas 1996, 9.
111 Fung 2013.
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Fung cites the example of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, farm laborers
in the Florida tomato industry who were subject to terrible pay, stolen wages,
and even documented cases of slavery. Classical republican theory would not
serve them well because few of them are citizens of the US republic, they would
be badly outvoted even if they were citizens, and they work in a global market.
Instead, the workers identified consumers from many nations who felt a moral
stake in not supporting oppression. (These consumers had an interest, but not a
purely selfish one.) The workers organized a boycott that forced the major buyers
to negotiate. The result was a binding code of conduct that the workers can help
enforce.112
In essence, these workers identified a common interest with certain friendly
global consumers, targeted a set of international companies, and created a new
micro-democracy just for their issue, in which they have considerable clout.
One could define a more democratic world as one in which there are more such
movements that represent more interests more effectively. The nation-state
would be decreasingly relevant. Note that this conclusion is highly consistent
with the Bloomington School’s concept of polycentric governance, understood
both as a description of the way the world most typically works and as a norma-
tive proscription.
However, we should consider what would be lost if the sovereignty theory
gave way entirely to a theory of affected interests. Constant spoke for a long line
of civic republican theorists who envisioned citizens as groups of people who
do not assess their individual interests in an ad-hoc way and decide what affects
them. Rather, they take responsibility for forming opinions about all matters that
involve the group, giving at least some attention to abstract principles of justice
as well as interests. Because they are responsible for considering a wide range
of issues, they can weigh conflicting claims. For example, they should not only
care about the farmworkers but also industry, the environment, and consumers.
They should make laws that govern not only the tomato industry but the whole
economy. And they should be subject to the laws that they influence, consistent
with Aristotle’s definition of a citizen as one who both rules and obeys.113
So far, the democratic nation-state has provided the main venue for this kind
of citizenship. It has limitations and should not be the only venue for democracy.
Yet the democratic state is an achievement that we should not casually discard.
Nations are big enough that they encompass some diversity of culture and class,
and the successful ones have been able to organize one reasonably representa-
tive national discussion about justice. That requires an inclusive Public Sphere,
a powerful and accountable legislature, and a sense of “shared fate” that draws
112 Kristofer 2011.

113 Aristotle, Politics III:5.
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people’s attention to the public good.114 I see works as diverse as the “Gettysburg
Address” and Bleak House as contributions to building that sense of common

fate at the national level. Perhaps we should now also understand ourselves as
global citizens,115 but we are not literally people who both rule and obey at that
scale. Meanwhile, we are at some risk of losing the national solidarity that under-
lies hard-won sovereign democratic institutions.
No concrete group to which you or I belong can make our whole society into
one deliberative Public Sphere, nor can we ensure that every set of people with
definable interest has a Public Sphere of its own. However, we can be inspired
either to proliferate and protect “subaltern publics” or to try to integrate various
conversations into one—or we can attempt both, perhaps at different moments.
At times, the Public Sphere of a given polity may be enriched and invigorated by
the existence of numerous, fairly separate publics. At other points, we may need
to bring these conversations together into one equitable public conversation that
influences the state.
Habermas Fails to Explain What Would Motivate Individuals

to Participate in Deliberative Dialogues
Danielle Allen criticizes Habermas for presuming that speakers “enter the de-
liberative forum already mutually well-minded toward one another.” She writes,
“If they do so enter, the battle to achieve a reasonable policy outcome is already
75 percent won. The hard part is getting citizens to that point of being mutually
well-intentioned.”
Allen proposes rhetorical solutions to this problem: ways of communicating
that encourage other people to want to hear your reasons and respond with good
arguments, rather than walk out or shout you down. For example, you can begin
a conversation by making an unsolicited sacrifice, which is “the most powerful
tool for generating trust.” You can also “aim to convince 100 percent” of the au-
dience instead of trying to build a mere majority, and you can look for ways to
“ameliorate the remaining disagreement and distrust” after a decision has been
reached.116 These are techniques for creating the conditions for the kind of de-
liberation that we associate with Habermas: exchanging reasons about what is
right to do.
The rhetorical techniques that Allen suggests manifest political friendship,

in the Aristotelian sense. First you act like a friend; then people will trust you
114 Ben-Porath 2012.

115 Zuckerman 2013.
116 D. Allen 2004, 157.
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enough to deliberate with you. Gandhi explicitly advocated similar techniques.

He argued that Hindus must grant voluntary concessions to Muslims to create

the conditions for cooperation, since Hindus (as the majority) would have the
potential to dominate.117
The good news is that many people exhibit a desire for friendship that makes
deliberation possible. In the early 1980s, James Youniss, a developmental psy-
chologist who had studied with Habermas, wrote that individuals “enter discus-
sion, debate, negotiation, and so on” for a range of reasons, including relational
ones. “They want to understand and to be understood. They want to show that
they care and want to be cared for in return.”118 In The Theory of Communicative
Action, Habermas, too, emphasizes that people not only communicate in order
to pose and test claims, but also to “develop, confirm, and renew their member-
ships in social groups and their own identities.”119
These relational motives make deliberation seem plausible. Talking can be its
own reward insofar as people value friendship. The mode of discussion may have
to be emotional and personal and may have to involve speech-acts like making
sacrifices. Abstract arguments will fall on deaf ears unless trust has been built.
Allen’s rhetorical suggestions are valuable as long as relevant citizens have
chosen to gather together at one time and place to communicate. However, most
people allocate their time and energy to purposes other than meetings. Those
who stay away altogether are not susceptible to rhetoric that might capture their
trust. They may be foolishly renouncing their influence, or selfishly free-riding
on others’ efforts—but both behaviors are predictable.
Once a group forms, it can allocate resources, which gives the members
something to talk about. This is true of even modestly funded groups. After a
Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) raises money at a bake sale, it has a budget to
deliberate about. But we cannot assume that such a group exists. Someone must
organize the PTA and overcome free-riding before deliberation is possible. Only
then can members invite, entice, cajole, or reward other people to participate.
In many circumstances, the problem is more difficult than that. It is a matter
not just of generating a resource that can be discussed but of capturing it from
someone else. For instance, if the municipal government sets the city budget,
then a public meeting about priorities is not really a deliberation; it is just a
forum for talking to power. Forcing or persuading the city to share its power
would require an organized political effort that would precede a citizen deliber-
ation about taxing and spending. But how to get people involved in that political
effort is again a problem of motivation and coordination.
117 See Mantena 2021a, 466.

118 Youniss 1982, 76.
119 Habermas 1987, 139.
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To anticipate c hapter 7, I believe that the insights about governance from the
Bloomington School must complement any theory of deliberative democracy.

In order to have something to talk about, we need functional groups, and groups
depend on rules-in-use that are often not designed in deliberations but rather
invented by a few founders or inherited from the past. Thus, discourse problems
are closely related to problems of collective action.
That said, Habermas’s focus on discourse helpfully draws our attention to cer-
tain forms of governance that enable discussion. A requirement to serve on juries
solves the problem of free-riding by imposing legal penalties on those who fail
to appear. For a Habermasian, the jury is not just a way of resolving disputes;
it is a space for deliberation. A law that forces people to participate thus has a
Habermasian justification.
The broader point is that anything remotely resembling an ideal speech situ-
ation depends on rules, and those must not only cover the speech itself (e.g., by
giving everyone an equal chance to talk) but must also create groups that have
the power to make decisions that are worth talking about. For deliberative demo-
crats, the lesson is to form, join, and reform groups that create assets and then to
advocate governance rules that favor deliberation.
Social Movements and Relational Politics
Yet another criticism of Habermas holds that he fails to explain why major in-
stitutions or networks with significant resources would ever promote delibera-
tive values instead of undermining them in their own interests.120 Albert Dzur
has asked, “Who will spark public deliberation, where will it take place, [and]
how will the strong counterdeliberative forces in American political life be kept
at bay?”121 That haunting question may make deliberative democracy seem
utopian.
However, as I’ve noted already, Habermas has written in generally favor-
able ways about social movements since the 1980s. Specifically, he sees them
as sources of power aligned with stronger democracy. Since a social movement
is not an idealized deliberative body but rather a manifestation of contentious
politics that unites relatively like-minded people in opposition to an opponent,
Habermas’s embrace of social movements complicates the stereotypical reading
of him as a deliberative democrat. He sees a place not only for civil discussions
but for democracy with a whiff of tear gas.122
120 An earlier version of this section appeared as Levine 2016 and is reused here with permission.
121 Dzur 2008, 77.
122 Levine 2018.
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In 1981, Habermas chose to list the following “New Social Movements” that
were then active in Germany: the anti-nuclear and environmental movements;

the “peace movement”; “the citizens’ action movement”; the “alternative” move-
ment that included urban squatters and new rural communities; movements of
“minorities (the elderly, homosexuals, disabled people, etc.)”; support groups
and youth sects; “religious fundamentalism”; the “tax protest movement”;
“school protests” by parent associations; architectural preservation and other
forms of “resistance to modernist reforms”; and the “women’s movement.”123
This was a German list, but an American at the same moment would have added
Black Power, the Chicano Movement or El Movimiento, the American Indian
Movement (AIM), and other such efforts by people of color.
Some of these movements might be classified with the left, and others (no-
tably, tax protests and religious fundamentalism) with the right. One way to
describe them all would be as versions of “identity politics,” on the ground
that they tended to emphasize personal identities—such as gender, religious
affiliation, and sexual orientation—in contrast to the distributional issues
that had been more common in “Old” social movements, such as socialism
and trade unionism. An extensive debate on the advantages and limitations
of identity politics arose in the 1980s and persists today.124 For his part,
Habermas uses the word “identity” only in passing,125 and identity politics
does not seem a helpful category for environmentalism, historical preserva-
tion campaigns, or peace movements, which are also on his list of New Social
Movements.
Habermas’s Frankfurt School colleague Claus Offe interpreted the New
Social Movements not as identity politics but as revolts against aspects of the
welfare state. Writing in 1985, Offe observed that European capital and labor
had reached a postwar entente. Unionized, private-sector employment would
deliver prosperity, and workers would be free to develop identities, interests, and
memberships during their youth and student years, their growing leisure time,
and their lengthy retirements. The issues for politics were growth, economic
distribution, and security. These were contested within narrow constraints (for
instance, everyone in government was a Keynesian) and not expected to occupy
much of the public’s attention.
The New Social Movements then arose when people critically assessed the pat-
terns that prevailed in the domains that were supposed to be left private, such as
childhood, marriage, church, and nature. Activists demanded large-scale change
123 Habermas 1987, 393; Habermas 1981, 34.

124 For an overview with a fair presentation of multiple perspectives, see Bickford 1997.
125 People may use “ascriptive characteristics such as gender, age, skin color, neighborhood or lo-
cality, and religious affiliation . . . to establish subculturally protected communities supportive of the
search for personal and collective identity” (Habermas 1987, 395).
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in these domains, but not via direct state action, because they opposed “manipu-
lation, control, dependence, bureaucratization, regulation, etc.”126

Recall that for Habermas, any System is governed by instrumental ration-
ality: it treats individuals as means to a given end. Both state bureaucracies and
capitalist markets are Systems. As a person of the left, Habermas favors a rela-
tively large state bureaucracy controlled by a popularly elected legislature. But
both governmental and market Systems are problematic when they extend into
the Lifeworld composed of authentic human relationships. Thus, even as a wel-
fare state like the Federal Republic of Germany neared success at the “old” goals
of eliminating poverty and narrowing gaps of wealth and power, it risked col-
onizing the Lifeworld by turning everyone into a consumer and an employee,
employer, or welfare client and then regulating their behavior accordingly.
Habermas wrote in 1981:
Precisely these roles are the target of protest. Alternative praxis is opposed to
the profit-oriented instrumentalization of professional labor, the market-de-
pendent mobilization of labor, the extension of competitiveness and perfor-
mance pressure into elementary school. It is also directed against the process
whereby services, relations and time become monetary values, against the
consumerist redefinition of private life spheres and personal life styles.
Furthermore, the clients’ relation to public service agencies is intended to be
broken and restructured according to the participatory model of self-help
organizations.127
Habermas proposed, “at least cursorily,” that all the New Social Movements rep-
resented “resistance to tendencies to colonize the lifeworld.” That was true, he
thought, of the conservative movements as well as the radical ones. To apply his
thinking to an American context, we might say: whether you moved to Vermont
to go back to nature or to New Hampshire to live free or die, you were opting out
of Systems seen as instrumental in order to live more authentically. Habermas
concluded that even if the New Social Movements were “unrealistic,” they offered
symbols of resistance to the “colonization of the life-world.”128
For both Habermas and Offe, the New Social Movements were different from
the Old because they no longer addressed issues that could be resolved with
money or rights. Instead, these movements asked “how to defend or reinstate
endangered life styles, or how to put reformed life styles into practice.” One could
debate whether feminism and gay liberation were really “lifestyle” movements
126 Offe 1985, 829.

127 Habermas 1981, 36. Cf. (in a different translation) Habermas 1987, 395.
128 Habermas 1981, 35, 37.
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as opposed to struggles for basic equality (thus continuous with the “Old” social
movements), but they certainly highlighted informal, interpersonal, and attitu-

dinal issues more than older movements had. Habermas observed that “High
value is placed on the particular, the provincial, small social spaces, decentralized
forms of interaction and de-specialized activities, simple interaction and non-
differentiated public spheres. This is all intended to promote the revitalization of
buried possibilities for expression and communication. Resistance to reformist
intervention also belongs here.”129 In a different piece, he celebrated the “sponta-
neously organized, heterogeneously constituted, and widely-dispersed citizens’
groups working in a decentralized fashion” that had emerged as an amalgam of
peace, environmental, and women’s movements.130
The German sociologist Ulrich Beck, evidently drawing on Habermas, offered
the perspective that the core social problem had shifted from the distribution
of wealth and power to the distribution of risk. Human beings had always faced
risks, but new dangers (e.g., nuclear power plants melting down, chemicals in
one’s food) were harder to diagnose and prevent, less a matter of individuals’ neg-
ligence than outputs of state and market Systems, and not necessarily correlated
with wealth. “Risk positions are not class positions,” he wrote, because people
with money may sometimes face more risk, and risk can spread contagiously.131
This is one reason that Offe’s middle-class radicals were so prominent in the New
Social Movements, all of which were “environmentalist” in the broadest sense
of that term. Whether one wanted to defend the biological environment against
manufactured chemicals or the moral environment against degrading repre-
sentations of women, the central issue had become the quality of everyday life
rather than the three traditional questions of politics: “Who gets what, when, and
how”?132
Meanwhile, in the other half of Europe, movements were also struggling
against a System—in their case, the single-headed System of state commu-
nism. Like the Western New Social Movements, they built up alternative spaces
meant to be authentic (“Living in Truth”) and voluntary. “The mainstream of
the [Polish] opposition was deliberately and profoundly anti-political,” writes
Aleksander Smolar. “Faced with the strategic choice described by Adam Michnik
in his letter from prison, the answer of the opposition was clear. The objective
was not to defeat the ruling power but to progressively liberate society from its
control” by building a better alternative in civil society.133 Václav Havel simi-
larly recalled that the dissident movement to which he had belonged was not a
129 Habermas 1981, 33, 36.

130 Habermas 1985, 98.
131 Beck 1986/1992.
132 Lasswell 1936.
133 Smolar 2009.
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“competition for power” or an effort to “promote a given ideological or political

conception.” He thought it had rather reflected a stance of “strong and utterly

personal sense of responsibility for the world, a politics deriving from the aware-
ness that none of us as an individual can save the world as a whole, but that nev-
ertheless each of us must behave as though it were in our power to do so.”134
Defending the Lifeworld does not necessarily imply democracy. Religious
communities and families are often hierarchical and paternalistic, and they con-
stitute aspects of some people’s Lifeworlds. In fact, a conservative religious be-
liever who opposes the influence of a liberal democratic state is a defender of
a Lifeworld who is at least partly anti-democratic. Authenticity is not logically
equivalent to democratic participation.
Nevertheless, across a wide range of New Social Movements, one could ob-
serve a certain type of democratic politics emerge. To use the framework of Jane
Mansbridge, the New Social Movements prized unitary rather than adversary
democracy. They presumed that people who cooperated voluntarily outside of
large Systems could achieve consensus. Mansbridge observed that small vol-
untary groups “appeared everywhere like fragile bubbles” in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. They made decisions in face-to-face meetings, after much discus-
sion, when someone expressed the consensus of the group. They avoided formal
distinctions among participants or offices. And they honored a norm against
making self-interested statements (even when that norm silenced minorities
within the group who should have been able to advocate for important interests).
Mansbridge found strikingly similar norms and processes at work in a radical
urban commune and a traditional, culturally conservative New England village
governed by town meeting.135 Both communities could be seen as alternative to
the twin Systems of politics and markets: one an effort to pioneer and expand a
revolutionary counterculture, the other a defensive effort to protect a way of life
that dated back to colonial times.
Habermas contrasts Lifeworld and System. I would propose a phrase that
captures better what he finds valuable about the New Social Movements: “re-
lational politics,” which I would contrast to “impersonal politics.” In relational
politics, participants make decisions or take actions knowing something about
one another’s ideas, preferences, and interests. Each participant has at least the
potential to influence and to be influenced by each of the others. Relational poli-
tics does not depend on—or necessarily yield—consensus. People can have close
political interactions with their opponents and critics. It need not be democratic,
in the sense of offering members equal votes at any decisive stage. It certainly
does not have to be rational (in any sense of that word); affect is more prominent.
134 Havel 1992.

135 Mansbridge 1980.
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The defining feature of relational politics is mutual knowledge and influence, or

“intimate face-to-face participation.”136

In contrast, impersonal politics yields decisions and actions without the par-
ticipants having to know one another. Examples of impersonal politics include
populations that vote by secret ballot, consumers who determine prices by the
aggregate of their purchasing decisions, and rulers who issue laws, orders, or
edicts that apply to unknown individuals. Each of these is an act of leverage in
the Archimedean sense. As actors in impersonal politics, we can move distant
objects, even if our impact is minuscule or outweighed by others’. Systems mani-
fest impersonal politics.
Relational politics has characteristic drawbacks and limitations. For one
thing, it would be prohibitively inefficient to govern a large polity or economy re-
lationally; such impersonal tools as votes, market exchanges, and laws are indis-
pensable. One problem with relational politics is that it takes too many evenings.
Another set of problems involves well-documented negative outcomes from
participating in intense, face-to-face discussions. As noted earlier, deliberation
can suppress conflict and political action, give unfair advantages to participants
who have special skills and status or longevity in the group,137 and make people
deeply uncomfortable. One solution to such problems is to make political inter-
actions less relational. Mansbridge observes that “when a polity has to handle
many questions of conflicting interest, most people prefer a secret ballot and a
method of combining preferences, like referenda or electoral representation, that
puts some distance between them and their opponents.”138
Indeed, personal knowledge can be used for evil instead of good. The phrase
“office politics” has a negative ring because so many interactions in a workplace
where colleagues know one another are manipulative, unfair, exclusive, or just
tedious. The extreme case is torture, which is as relational an interaction as we
can conceive. David Luban observes: “The torturer inflicts pain one-on-one, de-
liberately, up close and personal, in order to break the spirit of the victim—in
other words, to tyrannize and dominate the victim. The relationship between
them becomes a perverse parody of friendship and intimacy.”139
All that having been said, a society that runs on impersonal politics alone will
leave a void. Many people want from politics not only liberty and equality but also
fraternity, which is akin to such concepts as Aristotelian friendship, solidarity,
reciprocity, or the “sisterhood” of Second Wave feminism. Jane Mansbridge ob-
serves, “Many individuals want the exhilaration, mutual trust, and reciprocity of
working with equals. They want colleagues, not minions or bosses.” Relational
136 Lerner 2014, 206.

137 Mansbridge 1980, 161, 186–89.
138 Mansbridge 1980, 34.
139 Luban 2005, 1430.
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politics is indispensable to yield those goods.140 Relational politics may also be

necessary if the impersonal forms, such as representative democracy and market

exchange, are to function well. If citizens regard one another purely as strangers
and rivals, then they will be tempted to demand unfair outcomes when they have
the power to get what they want, to withdraw their consent when they lose, or
to become free riders. Democracies, systems of law, and markets depend on the
webs of constructive relationships among citizens that constitute social capital.
According to the Bloomington School, social capital is essential for addressing
collective action problems.
Relational politics can also boost the participation of disadvantaged people
in the more impersonal forms of politics, such as voting. Talking to people in-
dividually and developing personal trust encourages them to participate in
formal politics.141 More generally, citizens gain agency by relating to peers. In
a presidential election in the United States, well above 100 million citizens may
vote. Each voter exercises Archimedean leverage over the government, but very
little of it—so little that rational-choice analysis suggests it is irrational to vote at
all.142 To the extent that people vote, it is often because they belong to groups in
which they can influence and be influenced by peers, and such groups encourage
voting.
Relational politics opens possibilities for ethical interaction. If you know an-
other person’s interests and values, you can try to honor them. In fact, relational
politics both rewards and teaches the ethics of friendship. A voluntary group
risks falling apart as soon as it encounters conflicting interests, because some will
have to sacrifice to resolve the disagreement. If the people on the losing side of a
controversy care more about their peers or the group than about their own inter-
ests, they may sacrifice voluntarily; but the unequal treatment still introduces a
source of instability. Solutions are available in such circumstances. The winners
can acknowledge the losers’ sacrifice and credit them for preserving the group.
They can minimize the short-term cost to the minority and look for opportu-
nities to reciprocate. They can use rhetorical techniques (such as explicit con-
cessions) that prevent the minority from losing face as well as votes. They can
manage conflicts offstage to avoid public votes and decisions that leave one side
clearly defeated. These techniques pay off for the individuals who employ them,
assuming that they benefit from the group’s continued existence. But they are not
merely profitable strategies. They also manifest the virtues of friendship, which
include a concern for the continued relationship as well as the outcomes. Danielle
Allen argues that “Trust only grows through experience; habits of citizenship are
140 Mansbridge 1980, 29.

141 See, e.g., McKenna & Han 2015.
142 Downs 1957.
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fashioned only through actual interaction.” Citizens, she writes, “must take risks
together in shared decisions making with real consequences, if they wish to so-
lidify a politics based on political friendship.”143
Finally, we can learn from relational politics, seeing the world from other per-
spectives and enlarging our own mentalities. To be sure, we can also learn from
statistics and impersonal arguments, but the experience of actually interacting
with another person on matters of common concern seems indispensable for
moral growth.
For all these reasons, societies that run on adversarial politics see recurrent
efforts to recover fraternity by developing methods of decision-making that are
relational. A wave of such experiments derived from the New Left of the 1960s,
whose inaugural Port Huron Statement declared that “Human relationships
should involve fraternity and honesty. . . . Personal links between man and man
are needed. . . . Loneliness, estrangement, isolation describe the vast distance be-
tween man and man today.” The New Social Movements that Habermas cata-
logued in 1981 echoed that manifesto, and similar aspirations have recurred ever
since. They create spaces for the kinds of communicative action that Habermas
champions.
Conclusion
Habermas’s embrace of New Social Movements offers some hints about how we
might protect and enhance the Lifeworld and the public sphere. It counters the
misreading of Habermas as an advocate of staid and static rational discourse;
he also welcomes crowds that take to the streets and subcultures that preserve
human relationships against impersonal Systems. Most strategies for attaining
Habermasian ends depend on larger social movements for success. For instance,
Habermas’s editorial against the Iraq War did not launch an antiwar movement
but would have assisted such a movement had a stronger one existed.
At the same time, Habermas’s embrace of social movements raises questions
to which the Frankfurt School does not always provide the most useful answers.
What defines social movements? Why do they sometimes arise and sometimes
succeed? What makes some of them beneficial and others harmful? Is nonvio-
lence a condition of being a valuable social movement? And how should move-
ments address the problems of collective action illuminated by Elinor Ostrom

within the tradition of rational choice theory? We turn to those issues in
chapter 6.
143 D. Allen 2004, 182–83, 174.
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6
Nonviolent Social Movements and

the Citizen as Bearer of Soul Force
Picture more than five hundred citizens walking across a concrete-and-steel

bridge from Selma, Alabama, toward their state capitol in Montgomery. Their
purpose is to talk to their governor, George Wallace, about the recent killing
of a peaceful protester, Jimmie Lee Jackson, by a state trooper. The Edmund
Pettus Bridge has a high central span. As the marchers reach the peak and begin
to descend into Dallas County, they see a crowd waiting for them. Earlier that
morning, the Dallas County sheriff, Jim Clark, had ordered all the county’s
White men over the age of twenty-one to be deputized as law enforcement offi-
cials. A substantial contingent of the new “deputies” now stand with professional
troopers ready for his command. When Clark orders the marchers to disband,
one of their leaders, Rev. Hosea Williams, asks to discuss the matter. The sheriff
refuses to talk and instead orders an immediate attack with nightsticks, tear gas,
and charging horses. Seventeen marchers, including John Lewis, are hospitalized
with serious injuries; nevertheless, none responds with any violence at all.
Two weeks later, after several attempts, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and 25,000
peaceful protesters reach the state capitol building. James Karales captures the
visual impact of that day with perhaps the most famous photograph of the Civil
Rights era, “Selma-to-Montgomery March” (1965), which shows a line of Black
(and a few White) men in suits and hats, some carrying American flags, cler-
gymen in clerical garb, and women in white blouses, all silhouetted against a
lowering sky with light in the distance like a biblical portent. They are demon-
strating what Charles Tilly called “WUNC”: worthiness, unity, numbers, and
commitment, the main assets of a social movement.1 Five months after that
march, President Lyndon Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law.
These episodes belong to a social movement, the civil rights movement. They
are also striking examples of nonviolence, epitomized by Lewis’s ability to refrain
from raising a hand against his assailants (contrary to all usual human instincts).
Social movements and nonviolence are distinct categories, because a movement
can be violent, and a nonviolent individual can operate outside of any move-
ment—think of Thoreau dwelling alone on Walden Pond. However, the two
1 Tilly 2004, 7.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197570494.003.0006
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categories intersect when social movements adopt nonviolence as a strategy, a

principle, or both. That intersection offers a rich vein of experience and theory
that helps answer the generic question for this book.
The characteristic activities described in the previous chapters—for example,
monitoring a neighbor’s water use or meeting to discuss public policy—can be
rather static. We can envision societies in which these activities are institutional-
ized and routinized and yield predictable results. In contrast, a social movement
moves. It is all about disrupting the status quo and creating a substantially dif-
ferent set of norms and rules. The other activities presuppose a set of participants
who demonstrate some willingness to collaborate and deliberate. They begin
with a “we.” In contrast, social movements begin when some “they” refuse to
see themselves as part of the same group with us. Social movements can compel
those other people to engage deliberatively and collaboratively. They rarely
change the hearts and minds of their most obdurate opponents, but they have an
impressive record of shifting bystanders’ views in ways that rewrite fundamental
social contracts.
What Is a Social Movement?
Charles Tilly writes that “A distinctive way of pursuing public politics began to
take shape in Western countries during the later eighteenth century” and then
spread and developed globally. It is called a “social movement” and it combines
“three elements: 1) campaigns of collective claims on target authorities; 2) an
array of claim-making performances including special-purpose associations,
public meetings, media statements, and demonstrations; 3) public representa-
tions of the cause’s worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment [WUNC].”2
The American civil rights movement fits Tilly’s definition. Participants made
claims on federal, state, and local governments and other major institutions,
such as churches and businesses. They organized coherent campaigns composed
of many episodes and events. They used the whole repertoire of “performances”
mentioned by Tilly in the previous paragraph, marches, boycotts, media cam-
paigns, sit-ins, and many more. And they took full advantage of their WUNC
assets.
Tilly argues that social movements are not ubiquitous in human history and
may not continue to arise forever. The phenomenon known as a social move-
ment “has a history,” with an origin, evolution, and possibly an end in the future.3
Some of the specific techniques used by social movements, such as marches,
2 Tilly 2004, 7.
3 Tilly 2004, 7.
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Nonviolent Social Movements 137
funerals of martyrs, and civil disobedience, are older than social movements
and may be used by entities that are not movements, such as religious revivals
and political parties. It is the whole ensemble that makes a social movement. The
boundaries, however, may be somewhat fuzzy, because a partisan campaign or
even a commercial marketing effort can borrow enough components of a social
movement to take on that feel.
Drawing on Tilly and others, I would define a social movement using five cri-
teria (listed below). Note that this is a value-neutral definition. It could fit a fas-
cist movement as well as a liberal and democratic one, and it doesn’t imply that
social movements are preferable to other phenomena, such as political parties. It
is merely intended to categorize a set of phenomena so that we can study them.
1. A social movement consists of many autonomous groups and individuals.

Movements are polycentric rather than hierarchical or centralized. A single
organization can adopt the feel and spirit of a movement by empowering
separate groups internally, but it is only an actual movement if those groups
are autonomous and collaborate voluntarily.
2. It persists over numerous episodes and campaigns.4 The marches over the
Edmund Pettus Bridge were episodes. The struggle for the Voting Rights
Act was a campaign. The civil rights movement consisted of thousands of
episodes and several campaigns.
3. It makes demands on holders of power.5 The powerholders may be gov-
ernments, firms, media entities, universities, or any other institutions. If
people make no demands on any institutions, they are not participants in a
social movement. They might form an important grouping, such as a spir-
itual revival or a self-help network, but it would not be a social movement.
Just as important, a social movement makes demands on holders of power

rather than trying to supplant them. A political party seeks offices. A revolu-
tionary cadre strives to overthrow and replace the state. An established labor
union negotiates contracts with a firm. None of these meet the definition of a
social movement, which stands apart from the institution and makes demands
on it. I acknowledge that a broad-based social movement can encompass elem-
ents that act like parties, revolutionary cadres, or collective bargainers. The civil
rights movement encompassed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the
Black Panther Party, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (a union); but
it was a movement because it wasn’t defined by any of those groups.
4 McAdam, Tarrow & Tilly 2001.

5 Tilly 2004, 3.
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4. It supports its demands by displaying WUNC: Tilly observes that social move-
ments don’t just express demands; they back them up with the four assets
mentioned earlier: worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment. For ex-
ample, there were 25,000 Selma marchers (numbers), they marched together
on the same day and with the same demands (unity), they took a chance of
being arrested and beaten (commitment), and they included distinguished
and famous leaders, many of whom were clergy (worthiness). Worthiness can
mean respectability, as in this case, when some marchers carried American
flags and wore clerical garb. But sometimes, highly oppressed groups claim
the worthiness that comes from suffering, abuse, and exclusion.
5. It imposes limits on itself: Social movements typically adopt and attempt to
enforce limits on themselves: “We will not run for office or endorse any par-
ties.” “We will negotiate with companies but will not form our own busi-
nesses.” “We renounce terrorism.” “We call for a new nation but will not
commit treason against the existing state.” No particular form of self-lim-
itation is definitive of social movements. As noted, imposing the specific
limitation of nonviolence is not a condition for being a social movement.
However, social movements characteristically choose some limitations that
they enforce on their own members. We will explore the benefits below.6
Any social movement needs resources, such as money, existing organizations

that have members, physical spaces, tools for communication, people with spe-
cial skills, and allies within existing power structures. These resources are some-
what flexible; for instance, you can do without money if you have in-kind assets.7
The social movement uses strategies to deploy its resources. It organizes ac-
tions, such as mass meetings, boycotts, strikes, processions, performances, and
occupations (among many others). These actions accomplish results, such as
demonstrating the capacity to enlist and deploy large numbers of people, who
are reasonably diverse yet unified behind the cause; sacrificing goods, salary,
time, personal safety, or even lives; demonstrating legitimacy, whether of the
“respectable” kind (orderly marches led by clergy and parents with children) or
more challenging types (occupations by dispossessed people, funerals of mar-
tyrs); discussing questions of means and ends within the movement to achieve
at least a working consensus on core issues; enforcing tacit norms about what
means and ends are appropriate for the movement (e.g., no violence in a nonvi-
olent movement); and communicating with outsiders, at least so that they know
the movement’s positions, and ideally so that the outsiders learn from the in-
siders, and vice versa.
6 Roberts & Garton Ash 2009.

7 Ganz 2000, 2028.
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As a result of its actions, the movement can put tangible pressure on target
authorities. The powers that be lose money due to boycotts, lose elections due
to voter mobilization, lose allies who defect to the movement, or lose control of
streets and buildings. It then becomes possible to negotiate an end to a particular
campaign, even if the larger movement continues with new demands and new
target authorities. The negotiation may be relatively formal: movement leaders
sitting around a table with officials. Or it may be tacit, an understanding that if
the law is changed, then most of the protesters will go home. Even if there are
formal negotiators, the ultimate success of any settlement depends on its popu-
larity within the movement and within the official institutions.
Some movements fall apart before they can exert enough pressure to nego-
tiate. A few movements do not end with negotiations because they supplant the
powers that be, becoming the new authorities. I think those cases represent the
boundaries of social movement politics—the points at which movements cease
to be such.
Reasons for Nonviolence
The civil rights movement was nonviolent, which places it in the same category
as Gandhi’s liberation campaigns in South Africa and India and subsequent non-
violent social movements around the world. “Nonviolence,” like the Sanskrit
word ahimsa that Gandhi popularized, is defined by negation: it literally means
the lack of violence. However, most proponents urge that political nonviolence
does not merely mean an absence. Some advocates are pragmatic, presenting
nonviolence as a set of morally neutral but effective techniques for confronting
governments. Others offer strongly spiritual reasons for nonviolent strategies.8
Here I review the major arguments in favor of nonviolence.
Nonviolence Works
In an influential 2011 book, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan find that
many nonviolent campaigns that target states achieve their objectives. They
study durable campaigns that have names and goals and exclude loose and
8 Gandhi 1951, 161, 221, hedges on this question. He first says, “I accept the interpretation of
ahimsa, namely, that it is not merely a negative state of harmlessness but it is a positive state of love, of
doing good even unto the evil-doer.” But later in the same book, he adds, “Here there is no question
of superiority. Those, who hold non-violence for the attainment of freedom as article of faith, are in
no way superior to those with whom it is a mere policy, even as there is no such inequality between
brown men and yellow men. Each acts according to his lights.”
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inchoate networks, individual events, activities, and specific organizations. The

campaigns in their study employ extra-legal activity, not merely regular elections
or lawsuits. Among the 323 nonviolent and violent “resistance campaigns” that
occurred between 1900 and 2006, the nonviolent ones have been almost twice
as likely to succeed.9 The frequency of nonviolent resistance campaigns has
increased in recent decades. Their success rate also increased until the 1990s, but
has fallen since, a trend that Chenoweth and Stephan attribute to increasing so-
phistication by autocrats.10
The authors provide evidence that nonviolence increases the odds of success
when other factors are held constant. (Thus their theory is causal, not merely
correlational.) Moreover, countries that have experienced successful nonvio-
lent campaigns are much more likely to achieve “durable and internally peaceful
democracies” than those that have experienced violence.11
One reason for the success of nonviolent campaigns is scale. Chenoweth and
Stephen argue that nonviolent campaigns are less costly and dangerous to join
than violent struggles, so they draw many more people. Although a few parti-
cipants typically take prominent and perilous roles in a nonviolent campaign,
there is also plenty of room for modest acts of support that can preserve the par-
ticipants’ anonymity and safety. Campaigns sometimes achieve critical mass,
when the sheer size of the protests makes it safe to join—and possibly dangerous
not to. Chenoweth and Stephen find a clear pattern that bigger movements are
more likely to achieve their goals. To be sure, some people are drawn by the polit-
ical potential of violence, the romance of armed struggle, or the sense that being
willing to fight confers solidarity and dignity. But the people attracted to violence
tend to be young and male, and a broader base is necessary for victory.12
A second advantage is pluralism. Nonviolent campaigns draw “robust, diverse,
and broad-based membership.” This diversity is an asset beyond sheer numbers.
For one thing, when protests are diverse, the authorities can’t “isolate the par-
ticipants and adopt a repressive strategy short of maximal and indiscriminate
repression.” Although violent state crackdowns reduce the chance of successful
resistance, they also increase the gap in the success rate between nonviolent and
violent campaigns. In other words, if the government is going to attack its own
citizens, that is bad news, yet the citizens’ smartest move is to remain nonviolent.
What’s more, diverse campaigns typically generate a range of messages, tactics,
and strategies; and such “tactical diversity” allows some options to succeed even
if others don’t. In contrast, violent campaigns tend to make irreversible strategic

decisions that prove fatal if they fail. A movement with diverse members is more
9 Chenoweth & Stephan 2011.

10 Chenoweth & Stephan, 2016.
11 Chenoweth & Stephan 2011, Kindle loc. 351.
12 Chenoweth & Stephan 2011, Kindle loc. 839, 812, 892, 769.
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likely to include people who have personal ties to the security forces, the govern-
ment, or the business class, so it is more likely to fracture the opposition. Sixty
percent of the larger nonviolent campaigns achieve “security force defections.”
“Fraternization” is an ingredient of many campaigns’ success.13
A third reason for the success of some nonviolent campaigns is unity.
Chenoweth and Stephen cite “achieving unity around shared goals and methods”
as a “crucial determinant” of success. For example, the failure of the Palestinian
leadership to achieve consensus during the First Intifada is the reason they offer
for its defeat.14 Tilly had cited “unity” as a characteristic of social movements, but
Chenoweth and Stephen suggest that it ought to be e pluribus unum: unity that is
forged from great deal of diversity.15
A fourth explanation is depth. Social movements, including nonviolent cam-
paigns, deeply transform some of their members, changing their values, goals,
skills, networks, and identities. Those leaders become essential for success.
This fourth explanation is much less explicit than the others in Chenoweth and
Stephen. They note that movements recruit people who already have valuable
skills; they do not discuss movements as venues for developing skills.16 But the
transformational impact of nonviolent campaigns is well documented in other
sources. In Why We Can’t Wait, Martin Luther King Jr. observes, “Human beings
with all their faults and strengths constitute the mechanism of a social move-
ment. They must make mistakes and learn from them, make more mistakes
and learn anew. They must taste defeat as well as success, and discover how to
live with each. Time and action are the teachers.”17 That is depth in a nutshell.
Similar accounts echo in the nineteen case studies collected by Adam Roberts
and Timothy Garten Ash.18
I have listed scale, pluralism, unity, and depth (SPUD) as assets that nonvi-
olent campaigns use to achieve success. Unfortunately, they are in tension.
Plurality makes unity more difficult to accomplish. Scale and depth trade off be-
cause resources must either be spent recruiting lots of newcomers or developing
a relatively small number of leaders. Fig. 6.1 illustrates that these goods trade off
along two axes.
Many groups struggle with these trade-offs. Scott Reed, who leads the faith-
based and offline community-organizing network known as PICO, described to
me the deep and transformative work that PICO does with its grassroots leaders.
13 Chenoweth & Stephan 2011, Kindle loc. 351, 892, 1098, 1421, 1040, 1995.
14 Chenoweth & Stephan 2011, Kindle loc. 910, italics added, 2666.
15 Cf. Keyes 1981.
16 Their book focuses on contrasts between violent and nonviolent struggles. Both kinds of move-
ment develop skillful leaders. That may be why this aspect of nonviolent campaigns does not in-
terest them.
17 M.L. King 1963c, 34–35.
18 Roberts & Garton Ash 2009.
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Scale
Pluralism Unity
Depth
Fig. 6.1 Scale, unity, pluralism, and depth (SPUD)
But “scale is what we are trying to figure out,” he said. “How do you get to scale,
because we are nowhere near where we want?” Meanwhile, Anna Galland, who
led the online network MoveOn, told me that her organization has “tremendous
scale and little depth.” Members rarely change their views or develop new cap-
acities and commitments. MoveOn’s goal, Galland said, is to “move from a list of
8 million to horizontal connectivity.”19
Groups like MoveOn choose unity over viewpoint diversity. Galland explained
that her organization has developed a “threshold of torque.” When one third of
members dissent on an issue, it triggers a formal process. “We are member-led,”
she said, and one-third disagreement is too much. Other groups prefer diversity
over unity. Martha McCoy, executive director of Everyday Democracy, described
to me the painstaking efforts her organization takes to bring together people who
sharply disagree. But Everyday Democracy is far smaller than MoveOn.20
Nevertheless, it is possible to accomplish all aspects of SPUD at once. For a
familiar example, consider the global Catholic Church. At 1.3 billion members,
it has scale. For some Catholics—clergy, devoted faithful, saints—it offers great
depth. Its unity is reflected in a single leader, a catechism, a shared calendar, and
many other expressions of concord. Yet it encompasses a great plurality of cul-
ture, context, and even liturgy and theology. Catholicism demonstrates that the
19 Personal interviews conducted on May 8, 2016, with Tufts University Human Subject Review
and “on the record.”

20 Personal interview conducted on May 2, 2016.
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SPUD components can all be achieved, albeit with tensions and challenges, and
(in this case) as a result of two millennia of hard work.

The Catholic Church is not a movement, even though sometimes it takes part
in movements. But consider also the civil rights movement in the United States
between 1955 and 1965. The movement could draw a quarter of a million people
to Washington, with many more active supporters; but it also deeply transformed
its core activists. It could coalesce for moments of unity, yet it also offered much
pluralism in the form of components that differed in demographics, agendas,
organizational formats, and strategies. The Southern Christian Leadership
Conference was a coalition of pastors; the Mississippi Freedom Democratic
Party was an insurgent party; the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was an
all-male union; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) had chapters in virtually every Black community and a carefully
crafted litigation strategy; and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
was founded by college students involved in direct action. These components of
the movement (and others) not only differed; they often disagreed. One reason
for the movement’s success was “spread-betting”: various actors tried a range of
strategies, and some ideas turned out to work.21 If the movement had coalesced
around a single strategy, the odds are it would have failed.
I conclude that collective enterprises in general are more likely to succeed
when they achieve SPUD, and nonviolent campaigns show a strong record of
achieving SPUD against concerted opposition. Nonviolence helps explain their
success.
Nonviolence Creates the Conditions for a

Better Society after the Conflict
Another reason to favor nonviolence is that it forces the movement to envision

and begin to embody a society governed without violence after the revolutionary
change occurs. Violence is inimical to the kinds of agency that are illustrated in
the two previous chapters by common-pool resource regimes and deliberative
minipublics (as well as by ordinary voluntary associations and democratic polit-
ical systems). When movements use violent means to achieve just ends, they fail
to create the conditions for collaboration and deliberation. On the other hand,
when they eschew violence, they force their members to develop advanced delib-
erative and collaborative skills and often to invent new forms of interaction that
persist beyond the movement. People who are committed not to use violence
21 I borrow the term and concept from Teles 2010, 20, although his subject is not the civil rights
movement.
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against their opponents become skillful at interacting with those who strongly
disagree, a capacity that serves them well once the movement ends.
Another explanation for the pattern that nonviolent campaigns generate
peaceful democracies may be that that nonviolent leaders can more credibly ne-
gotiate with an existing regime. Oppressive authorities have sincere reasons to
fear giving up power. Many former rulers have ended their lives before firing
squads. Campaigns that are able to maintain the discipline of nonviolence can
credibly promise to honor agreements made at the negotiating table, and that in-
creases incumbents’ willingness to yield or share power.22
Gandhi insisted that the struggle for independence (swaraj) had two
sides: “outward agitation” and “constructive work.”23 The agitation was against
British colonialism, caste, and sectarian hatred. The constructive work meant
building up an alternative India. For example, as I noted in chapter 3, the
khadi campaign had a critical side. By boycotting British-made cloth, Indians
would put economic pressure on the empire (via the owners and employees of
Lancashire mills). But Gandhi was never convinced that any such tactic would
work, and he limited his own responsibility for its political outcomes. At least as
important for him was the immediate creation of a society in which every Indian
wove her or his own clothing. Although their motivation would be to boycott the
British, they would be transformed by their work into a more egalitarian, self-re-
liant, and ruminative people.
In an interview with Nirmal Kumar Bose, Gandhi said, “While working out
the khadi programme our aim should be purely humanitarian, that is, economic.
We should leave out all political considerations whatsoever. But it is bound to
produce important political consequences which nobody can prevent and no-
body need deplore.” It is significant that Gandhi did not specify these conse-
quences. Bose asked, “Could we not start small battles on local and specific issues
against capitalism in the villages and use them as a means of strengthening the
people or bringing about a sense of co-operation among them, in preference to
the khadi method?” Gandhi replied, “I cannot say if fights on local and specific
issues against capitalists are more likely to generate the kind of determination
and courage needed in a non-violent campaign. But if I concede you that point,
then khadi would have to be sacrificed under the circumstances you quote.” He
didn’t want to sacrifice khadi because it would immediately constitute a better
society that would then outlast independence. “We are fighting for swaraj in the
non-violent way. . . . Before civil disobedience can be practiced on a vast scale,

people must learn the art of civil or voluntary obedience.”24
22 Chenoweth & Stephen 2011, Kindle loc. 3119.

23 E.g., notes for June 17–September 24, 1925, in Gandhi 1999, vol. 32, 362.
24 Interview with Nirmal Kumar Bose, November 9/10, 1934, in Gandhi 1999, vol. 65, 316.
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Gandhi’s dream of millions of self-reliant spinners proved unrealistic, or per-

haps undesirable, and Indians still buy cloth on the international market. But there
was wisdom in his insistence that how one struggles for a political end determines
the end.
Nonviolence Is a Variety of Self-Limitation, and Self-Limitation Is

Necessary for the Success of Social Movements
Any movement can fizzle out if not enough people simultaneously commit to par-
ticipate. It can be destroyed by an effective enemy that eliminates its leaders and its
ability to communicate. It can split into factions. It can overboil and douse its own
sources of energy, which happens when large numbers of people turn out prema-
turely and nothing happens. Finally, it can gain power that corrupts it. The record of
violent revolutions is quite bleak: almost all of them have turned into dictatorships
under the control of the former insurgents. Once the incumbent powerholders yield
to a movement’s force, a powerful temptation arises to replace them as new tyrants.
To regulate the tempo of a movement and to prevent it from being corrupted
by its own power, it must set limits on itself. Coordinating the behavior of many
autonomous groups and individuals is extraordinarily difficult. Movements are
easily destroyed by internal disagreements or by escalation to a point where they
lose their support. Successful movements avoid escalation by choosing limits,
and they economize on the topics that are open to discussion. For instance, if the
movement eschews electoral politics, then it needn’t decide who should run for
which office. If it renounces violence, it needn’t debate which targets to hit with
which weapons. For these reasons, self-limitation increases the odds of success.
Nonviolence is an example of a self-limitation, but it is not the only one.
Although the First Intifada involved much strictly nonviolent resistance (as well
as some conventional violence), it was most famous for scenes of Palestinian
children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks. Stone-throwing caused injuries, and not
everyone saw it as a nonviolent tactic. Mubarak Awad, a great Palestinian pro-
ponent of nonviolence who had influenced the uprising, consistently opposed
the use of stones. However, throwing stones instead of firing guns did represent
self-restraint and self-limitation and it required skillful messaging and training
to accomplish. It was a deliberate choice, widely honored. The political leader
Hatem Abd al-Qadir Eid recalled, “Part of the Command wanted to make the in-
tifada military. I thought to myself, this is not good for us—the intifada must be
popular, civilian, not war, some stones, maybe a demonstration, but not opening
fire, not throwing bombs. . . . This was our policy in the Command.”25
25 M.E. King 2007, Kindle loc. 3490 (on Awad), 2870–1.
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The First Intifada imposed the rule: no firearms or explosives. Similarly,

George Washington and his colleagues imposed rules on themselves that in-
cluded adherence to eighteenth-century norms of war; power-sharing among
the thirteen colonies, with many checks and balances; and a commitment to
writing and honoring constitutions. Washington led troops into large battles;
Palestinian protesters threw stones. Both limited themselves but neither form of
limitation could be called nonviolence.
However, nonviolence has something important to recommend it. To get
many people to do something very hard requires a clear definition of what they
must all do. Without a bright-line test, individuals will start pushing the limits,
and discipline will break down. “Don’t ever hurt anyone physically” is a clear
rule, a bright line. Using stones and Molotov cocktails but no bombs may be too
vague and ad hoc; it invites escalation. When we face brutality and oppression,
the temptation is overwhelming to strike back. (“I and the public know /What all
schoolchildren learn, /Those to whom evil is done /Do evil in return.”26) It helps
enormously if participants in a social movement believe in nonviolence not just
as a wise precaution or clever tactic, but as a deep moral imperative. For instance,
it helps if they believe that God wants them to turn the other cheek. Every major
faith tradition—Christianity and Hinduism not excepted—offers a mix of pro-
and anti-violence messages. In modern social movements, skillful leaders em-
phasize the anti-violence themes for the good of the cause. Spiritual traditions of
nonviolence are resources for social movements to use in the important task of
self-limitation.
The Velvet Revolution is a new type of episode that has developed since 1989
and that also manifests the advantages of self-limitation.27 Its archetype is in
Eastern Europe at the end of the communist era, but other important examples
have occurred in South Africa, the Philippines, Chile, Ukraine, and the Arab
world. After the metaphor of velvet seemed to wear out, the language shifted
to colors, so that we have now seen a Rose Revolution in Georgia, an Orange
Revolution in Ukraine, a Pink Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, a frustrated Green
Revolution in Iran, and a Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia.
Timothy Garton Ash writes:
Painting with a deliberately broad brush, an ideal type of 1989-style revolu-

tion, VR, might be contrasted with an ideal type of 1789-style revolution, as
further developed in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Mao’s Chinese rev-
olution. The 1789 ideal type is violent, utopian, professedly class-based, and
26 Auden 1939.
27 I take the idea of an episode as distinct from a mechanism or process from McAdam, Tarrow &
Tilly 2001.
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characterized by a progressive radicalization, culminating in terror. A revolu-

tion is not a dinner party, Mao Zedong famously observed, and he went on: “A
revolution is an uprising, an act of violence whereby one class overthrows an-
other. . . . To right a wrong it is necessary to exceed proper limits, and the wrong
cannot be righted without the proper limits being exceeded.” The 1989 ideal
type, by contrast, is nonviolent, anti-utopian, based not on a single class but
on broad social coalitions, and characterized by the application of mass social
pressure—“people power”—to bring the current powerholders to negotiate. It
culminates not in terror but in compromise. If the totem of 1789-type revolu-
tion is the guillotine, that of 1989 is the round table.28
A Velvet or Color Revolution locates the ideal outcome not in a hitherto un-
realized future, but in a real past or in an actual existing situation from today’s
world. Actual parliamentary democracies of the present are treated as normal,
and the goal is to attain normality. This is very different from trying to end his-
tory or achieve a novel kind of state. It creates a kind of self-limitation, because
the revolutionaries are committed to stop when a vote is held. Even when the
movements that produce successful Color Revolutions are not literally nonvi-
olent, they at least impose similar rules. In Iran in 2009, protesters seemed to
fasten on the rule: “Hurt the machines, love the human beings.” They violently
pelted Revolutionary Guard motorcyclists with stones until the Guardsmen were
unseated, at which point they would give them medical assistance. The Color
Revolutions reinforce the argument that social movements benefit from regu-
lating their own tempo and intensity; self-limitation is necessary for that pur-
pose; and a self-imposed rule against physical violence is an effective form of
self-limitation.
Nonviolence Sculpts the Self into a Citizen
Only by consistently emphasizing nonviolence can we generate reliably nonvi-

olent behavior under pressure. John Lewis was able to respond with remarkable
discipline because he had made nonviolence his central precept, rather than
viewing it as mere tactic. Throughout his career in the House of Representatives,
Lewis often cast the sole vote against defense authorization bills because he was a
pure pacifist. As Gandhi and other authors have argued, such discipline changes
the human personality. It creates virtues that are then useful for the ordinary de-
liberative and collaborative forms of politics described in c hapters 4 and 5.
28 Garton Ash 2009.
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Martin Luther King Jr. describes his goal as “seeking to instill in my people
a sense of dignity and self- respect.”29 He recalls that participants in the

Montgomery Bus Boycott were not frightened. Some were even disappointed not
to be selected by the sheriff for arrest. “A once fear-ridden people had been trans-
formed. Those who had previously trembled before the law were now proud to
be arrested for the cause of freedom. . . . They looked the solicitor and the judge
in the eye with a courage and dignity for which there was no answer.”30 As indi-
viduals, they would have had overwhelming reasons to be afraid. But in the com-
pany of thousands of others, it was possible to put fear aside; it was the solidarity
born of collective action that changed people’s spirits.
To be sure, people can also gain confidence and dignity in other ways, in-
cluding by winning in business or in violent conflicts. An evident feature of the
Russian Revolution—which was violent throughout—was an immediate in-
crease in “class honour,” manifested in a willingness to look rich men in the eye.31
Still, nonviolence has particular advantages for sculpting the self. Because parti-
cipants have eschewed weapons and other extrinsic resources (such as bribes),
they can attribute their success strictly to themselves. And because they have
committed to treating their opponents with dignity, they create the basis for
relating to others as fellow citizens once the conditions exist for negotiation and
deliberation.
Nonviolence Reflects an Appropriate

Theory of Cognition and Emotion
Both Gandhi and King were activists who were attentive to their own move-
ments’ cognitive and ethical limitations. To some extent, they based their views
of human beings on theological texts and arguments, but I will argue that the es-
sential points translate to secular thought and are persuasive.
For Gandhi, there were truths—for example, about the good life and the just
society—but they exceeded any individual’s comprehension. Almost everyone
(perhaps literally everyone32) could contribute valuable insights by observing
the world from her own limited and fallible perspective.
The golden rule of conduct, therefore, is mutual toleration, seeing that we will
never all think alike and we shall see Truth in fragment and from different an-
gles of vision. Conscience is not the same thing for all. Whilst, therefore, it is a

31 Miéville 2018, 40.
32 That is Parek’s reading of Gandhi (Parekh 1997, 54).
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good guide for individual conduct, imposition of that conduct upon all will be
an insufferable interference with everybody’s freedom of conscience.
Q. With regard to your Satyagraha doctrine, so far as I understand it, it involves the
pursuit of Truth and in that pursuit you invite suffering on yourself and do not
cause violence to anybody else.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. However honestly a man may strive in his search for Truth, his notions of Truth
may be different from the notions of others. Who then is to determine the Truth?
A. The individual himself would determine that.
Q. Different individuals would have different views as to Truth. Would that not
lead to confusion? . . .
A. That is why the non-violence part was a necessary corollary. Without that
there would be confusion and worse.33
According to Bhikhu Parek, Gandhi believed that “rational discussion and

persuasion” was the “best way to resolve conflict.”34 However, these methods
depended on well-motivated reasoners who could overcome our species’ deep
cognitive and ethical limitations. Under ordinary circumstances, reasoning
was likely to fail, because people are mired in our own interests and not rational
enough to be persuaded by arguments. Cognition is inseparable from affect and
interest. Given these premises, violence was tempting but intrinsically problem-
atic. Gandhi writes that “holding on to Truth . . . excludes the use of violence
because man is not capable of knowing the absolute truth and, therefore, not
competent to punish.”35 The violent actor assumes that she is right, even though
we are all deeply subject to error and “no man can claim to be absolutely in the
right, or that a particular thing is wrong, because he thinks so.”36 Violence also
threatens to erase the insights of the target by silencing or even eliminating her, or
it may force her to do something without being sincere. On the other hand, vol-
untary sacrifice can touch the other person’s heart without negating her freedom.
Gandhi shared with the Frankfurt School the goal of distancing people from
their inherited prejudices, such as subservience to Europeans or caste superi-
ority. But whereas Habermas hopes that talking about one aspect of the Lifeworld
at a time can give us critical distance from it, Gandhi was skeptical of talk alone.
People must be nonviolently compelled to take a fresh look at their assumptions.37
33 Gandhi 1951, 29.

34 Parekh 1997, 51
35 Gandhi 1951, 3.
36 Gandhi 1921, 91
37 Parekh 1989, 156, 164 (explicitly comparing Gandhi with the Frankfurt School).
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Gandhi also believed that we ought to perform actions that were intrinsically
meritorious without being concerned about their outcomes, which lie beyond
our control. As Krishna teaches in the Baghavad Gita, “Motive should never be in
the fruits of action.” Actions must be sincere in order to have value, and sincerity
requires commitment by the heart and mind together. Unlike a typical action
that is taken to achieve an end beyond the direct control of the actor, sacrifice
remains connected to the person who sacrifices. For example, if I choose not to
eat, that remains my will until the end of my fast. If my refusal to eat causes you to
change your behavior, that may be good (assuming that my cause was right), but
I am responsible only for forgoing the food, not for your behavior. A satyagrahi
“will fight by inflicting injuries on his own person.”38 I thus escape the pitfall of
attaching my happiness and meaning to an end beyond my control.
Like Gandhi, King held that violence “is immoral because it seeks to humiliate
the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than
convert. . . . It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue.” Nonviolence is
“the ultimate form of persuasion,” where the word “ultimate” means both the
most powerful form and the one to try last, after arguments have failed.39 King
also shared with Gandhi a theory of the human soul as both rational and affec-
tive, a recognition of the limitations of human understanding, and the ideal of a
transcendent truth that we can only approach together. He says that he found in
Hegel the idea that “truth is the whole,” which is roughly analogous to Gandhi’s
remarks about Brahman, the universal soul.40
However, King’s framework was Protestant rather than classically Indian, so
his metaphysics was somewhat different. Human beings were made in God’s
image and granted freedom, but we are also fallen. God was personal, an ac-
tual character who loves us and can work with us. King says that personalism
“is my basic philosophy,” the foundation of his faith in an active personal God
and “the metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality.”
People have dignity and worth not because they are good but because of divine
grace. King says that he agrees with Reinhold Niebuhr about “the reality of sin
on every level of man’s existence,” contrary to a “great segment of Protestant
liberalism” that is too optimistic about human nature. “While I still believed in
man’s potential for good, Niebuhr made me realize his potential for evil as well.”
King ultimately came to believe that Niebuhr had “overemphasized the corrup-
tion of human nature” because he had “overlooked” the power of divine grace
to work with communities of people; yet King retained a sharp awareness of sin
and evil.41
38 Gandhi 1951, 20.

39 M.L. King, 1958/2010, Kindle loc. 2850, 2892.
40 M.L. King, 1958/2010, Kindle loc. 1355; cf. Gier 2004, 40–41.
41 M.L. King 1958/2010, Kindle locs. 1355, 1327.
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Agape—disinterested love—was the answer for King. It explained the nature

and will of God, our relationship to God, and our obligation to other people. It
was not “sentimental” and it did not ignore sin. Instead, King defined nonviolent
resistance as “a very stern love that would organize itself into collective action to
right a wrong by taking on suffering.”42 The combination of organization and col-
lective action, love, and nonviolent sacrifice was essential.
These philosophical and theological positions cannot both be completely
right, because they conflict at points. For instance, King’s God was personal
whereas Gandhi’s divine was abstract. Gandhi acknowledged that God is love
but attributed that view to Christianity and endorsed it in the context of saying
that “the human mind is a limited thing and you have to labour under limitations
when you think of a being or entity who is beyond the power of man to grasp.”43
Christians had contributed the partial insight that God is love; for Gandhi him-
self, God was Truth.
Nevertheless, the overlapping premises of these two philosophies seem plau-
sible even in secular contexts and are compatible with behavioral science.44
People really are cognitively and ethically limited when we think and act alone,
but we are capable of reasoning better when we come together in groups that are
organized to bring out the best in us. We really do make better decisions when we
preserve alternative views instead of violently suppressing them. Yet we cannot
expect the best conclusions to emerge from deliberation alone; change also re-
quires organized sacrifice.
Problems for Theory of Nonviolent Social Movements
Like the theoretical orientations explored in the previous two chapters, nonvio-
lent social movements offer much that is useful and inspiring. However, this third
tradition also presents some limitations and dilemmas, to which I now turn.
The Problem of Collective Action
Participating in a social movement imposes costs. At a minimum, attending a

protest takes time and energy. In the face of a powerful and resolute enemy, the
costs can be much higher than that: arrests, beatings, torture, death. If vast num-
bers of people turn out, everyone is relatively safe, and success is relatively likely.
42M.L. King 1959a/1992, 44.

43Cited in Todd 2004, 106.
44 Beem 2015 relates Niebuhr’s theological commitment to human limitations to the findings of
modern psychology and draws political implications.
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But for each person, the need for others to participate is a classic collective-action
problem. Free-riding is a constant temptation, potentially fatal to the movement.

What is the point of standing up to an armed state if nobody else will; and if eve-
ryone else does, why do they need you?
Elinor Ostrom encouraged us to think of collective-action problems as
dramas, not as tragedies. It is hard to get many people to stand up at once for jus-
tice, but it does happen. Substantial research suggests that success is more likely
when people already have social capital.45 In chapter 2, I described how Black
leaders in Montgomery took advantage of a strong network of churches, associ-
ations, a union, and businesses to organize and maintain a large-scale boycott for
months.
But what to do if your community isn’t already well organized? Social cap-
ital can seem mysterious, for it is invisible, its origins are always in the past, and
its connections to tangible outcomes seem obscure. Survey data show that some
communities have much higher rates of membership and trust than others do,46
and that can be discouraging for the ones with low levels of social capital (so
measured).
It is worth recalling that social capital is a metaphor: Montgomery’s African
Americans did not have a literal deposit of social capital in the bank. It is more
helpful to see social capital as the “rules-in-use” for solving collective action
problems: the ways that people in a given community manage to act voluntarily
in concert. Because these are rules in use, they are not simply policies or agree-
ments, and they may not be explicit. Instead, they are actual collaborations that
generate expectations of compliance by others. In this instance, what mattered
was getting Montgomery’s Black commuters to work without using the bus
system. That required agreements. The existing organizations of the city’s African
American community helped with this organizational challenge. The fact that
most people attended a church on Sunday made it easier to hold meetings about
the boycott. However, the movement had to invent new rules-in-use for its new
activities, such as organizing volunteers to give free rides to 17,500 people every
day. Like other forms of capital, social capital built up in one way (e.g., to get
parishioners into pews) could be used in another way (e.g., to get commuters
to work). But what won the desegregation struggle was actually organizing the
carpools that sustained the boycott. The fact that there were already covenants in
the African American community of Montgomery probably increased the odds
of success, but this was only a contributing factor.
45 Paxton 2002, 257–58.

46 Putnam 2000, 291, notes that states differ, by ratios of three-to-one, in several component meas-
ures of his social capital index, such as the percentage of people who trust others and the number of
associations per capita.
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We tend to think of social movements as examples of contentious politics,

along with protests, strikes, and even revolutions. A different literature—

introduced in chapter 4—concerns how communities organize themselves to
provide services and manage common resources over the long term. For the
most part, these two discussions are rather separate. They draw on different
disciplines and have different dominant rhetorical styles. But actual social
movements rely heavily on what could be called “common pool resource man-
agement.” For instance, the two postal workers who designed routes exemplify
lessons from the research of Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues: local people
tend to have the most detailed relevant information, which they accumulate
during their regular routines. Clear rules enable coordination even if they are
arbitrary. Public goods can be rotated geographically to serve many people.
When the City of Montgomery tried to ban the bus boycott, the legal question,
King recalled, “boiled down to this: Was the car pool a ‘private enterprise’ oper-
ating without a franchise? Or was it a voluntary ‘share-a-ride’ plan provided by
Negro churches without a profit?”47 Leaving aside this fine legal distinction, the
carpool was definitely an organization that reliably coordinated individual be-
havior: an “enterprise” of a sort. Without a successful organization, there would
have been no boycott.
Gandhi also realized that organization was necessary in social movements.
He was deeply concerned with human cognitive limitations and the ways that
people can go wrong, both on their own and in mass movements, which are
easily captured by hysteria. His solution was often to create some kind of deliber-
ative governing body for volunteers. “As I intended to make it a mass movement,
I thought that the constitution of some such Committee as we had appointed
was necessary, so that no man should become a law unto himself, and therefore
we conceived a plan that the Committee should be able to show what laws might
be broken.” Asked whether individual volunteers might disagree with the com-
mittee, Gandhi replied that “We had such Satyagrahis in abundance,” and they
were not bound by the committee.48
In that case, why should the committee exist at all? I would offer an analogy to
the preservation of churches in Protestant denominations. Martin Luther began
the Reformation with an individual act of exit (“I can do no other”) and preached
the Priesthood of all Believers: every soul comes individually before God. Yet he
assumed that we are too frail to believe or do right, so we need the help of a group
of peers and some kind of leader. Being part of a church does not negate our con-
science; it fortifies it.

48 Gandhi 1951, 21.
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Although Gandhi acknowledged the need for organization, designing sys-

tems was not his strength.49 For example, the khadi campaign would have en-
tailed hundreds of millions of Indians spinning daily on their own home looms.
Where would they get the fiber? Who would spin for those who couldn’t spin for
themselves? What about free-riders, who might expect others to weave for them?
Gandhi could envision spiritual transformation better than organizational struc-
ture, and Indians did not actually take up home-weaving by the hundreds of mil-
lions. Some of his practical initiatives were fiascos. At one point he told the All
India Village Industries Association (which he had launched to promote self-re-
liant crafts, such as khadi), “Our ambition is to make a least one member for each
of our 700,000 villages . . ., but our actual membership is 517!”50
The practical implication is that people who want to confront power often
benefit from learning how to organize systems and processes that look more like
nonprofit organizations than mass protests. They should assess and use their
existing social capital—Aldon Morris’s “indigenous resources”—but they must
make their own covenants as well.51
The Problem of Sacrifice
A characteristic aspect of any nonviolent movement is sacrifice. Participants

sacrifice by renouncing consumer goods, by contributing money, by spending
evenings at rallies, by putting their bodies in harm’s way, by going on hunger
strikes, or even by choosing to die before onrushing tanks. In Stride toward
Freedom, Martin Luther King describes the “laborers and domestic workers,
many of them well past middle age,” who had to “trudge” as many as 12 miles
each day to sustain the Montgomery bus boycott. King writes, “They knew why
they walked, and the knowledge was evident in the way they carried themselves.
And as I watched them I knew that there is nothing more majestic that the deter-
mined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and
dignity.” The words “sacrifice” and “suffering” create a leitmotif in the book as a
whole. Similarly, Gandhi defines “soul-force” as “sacrifice of self.”52
49 Karuna Mantena reaches a different conclusion: “Unlike Gandhi, whose genius was always
centrally linked to his organizational and tactical acumen, King’s originality and power came more
through the clarity of his moral and political vision” (Mantena 2018, 83). I think that Gandhi’s tac-
tical genius was best expressed in events—above all the Salt March—not in organizational design.
And whether or not King had personal skills for organizational design, he certainly belonged to a
movement that was good at it, and he vividly described the movement’s methods in his writing.
50 Lelyveld 2011, 262.
51 Morris 1986, 291.
52 Gandhi 1921, 90.
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Sacrifice deserves scrutiny because it is powerful. Occasionally it shakes the

conscience of opponents. More often, it persuades enablers of the current regime

and bystanders to take the insurgents’ side. It demonstrates worthiness, commit-
ment, and unity, three of the four assets of any social movement, according to
Tilly. (The fourth asset, numbers, is necessary to make sacrifice effective.) If the
characteristic civic acts that occur within functional groups are cooperating and
deliberating, the essential act for people who are excluded from a given group
is often sacrifice. By making a sacrifice, people get themselves included. Yet, as
we will see, sacrifice is not always appropriate or valuable. Critical analysis is
necessary.
Before we can analyze the kind of sacrifice that is evident in nonviolent move-
ments, we need a serviceable definition of it. Some characteristics of nonviolent
political sacrifice also arise in other contexts. For example, soldiers make sacri-
fices that are (in certain respects) just like those of nonviolent protesters. Gandhi
was once asked whether his “activities [could] be described as war.” He says he
“had no hesitation in replying, ‘Our struggle has all the attributes of a war.’ ”53 Yet
his nonviolent campaign surely differed from an actual war in more than just its
refusal to use physical violence. Thus we need a relatively precise definition of the
phenomenon.
I posit that the category of sacrifice found in nonviolent social movements
(but not necessarily there alone) has four features. First, it is concerned with
public—social or political—issues. If you give up your career to care for a sick
relative, that is a sacrifice but not of the relevant kind. Second, it has a real cost to
the one who sacrifices. If you boycott a good that you didn’t like anyway, or for
which there are easy substitutes, that is not a sacrifice, even though it may be a
politically effective act. Third, the cost is concentrated on the one who sacrifices.
If you blow yourself up on an airplane, along with all the other passengers, that
is a political sacrifice, but not the kind offered in nonviolent social movements.
Finally, the act of sacrifice is performative and communicative. A relevant audi-
ence must understand that you are sacrificing for a given cause. They must recog-
nize your intention and objective and the cost that you bear.
This fourth criterion goes a long way toward explaining why sacrifice is pow-
erful. It is a form of rhetoric. When you voluntarily bear a steep cost, you provide
compelling reasons for observers to draw the following conclusions: you sincerely
care about the issue; you and the others who join you are willing to act and will
not be easily ignored; in contrast to a violent actor, you are likely to respond pos-
itively to reasonable concessions; and you have a perspective that should at least
be considered by anyone who wants to understand what people believe about
the issue. These reasons fall short of an actual justification of your position. You
53 Quoted in Howard 2013, 75.
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could sincerely hold a perspective that is unjust. However, the sacrifice draws at-
tention to your voice and clears away certain barriers to being heard, such as the
assumption that you are insincere or unserious. Sacrifice thereby creates the op-
portunity to offer actual justifications. King writes, “nonviolence comes in as the
ultimate form of persuasion. . . . We will try to persuade with our words, but if
our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts.”
Various complications arise for this four-part definition. For one thing, even
if sacrifice always has a cost, that doesn’t mean that the impact on the sacrificer
must be a net negative. Gandhi holds that “a life of sacrifice is the pinnacle of
art, and is full of true joy.” This aphorism comes amid his summary of the meta-
physics of the Bhagavad Gita, according to which “the world cannot subsist for
a single moment without yajna [sacrifice]” and “the body, therefore, has been
given us, only in order that we may serve all creation with it.”54 Gandhi also holds
that worldly entanglements prevent equanimity, so sacrificing them is the way
to avoid distress.55 These arguments are rooted in specific religious and philo-
sophical traditions, but people from a wide range of cultures and faiths have ex-
perienced joy while making political sacrifices. King observed workers walking
miles to work with their heads held high because they were part of a boycott that
was part of a movement for dignity. Although walking for miles is a sacrifice, it
can bring more satisfaction than discomfort, even during the march. A week in
jail with one’s comrades can be a time of solidarity and inspiration even though
one’s liberty and comfort have truly been taken away. I think a sacrifice is still a
sacrifice even if the net impact on the actor’s utility happens to be positive. If it
brings joy, so much the better.
Another complication is that it is very difficult to bear all the costs of a sacri-
fice oneself. In Stride toward Freedom, King subtly but pervasively traces the im-
pact of his actions on innocent others, starting with his own family. He says that
he “gradually lost [his] role as husband and father” because of his activism. His
father fell “into a state of constant terror,” and “mother too had suffered,” even
taking to her bed under the strain that her son was causing. “I was worried about
their worry. I knew that if I continued the struggle I would be plagued by the pain
I was inflicting on them.” Years after he wrote these words, when he was finally
assassinated, his relatives were again the ones who bore his loss—along with con-
centric circles of people who had loved him, extending to millions of human be-
ings. Anyone who is cared about causes collateral damage by sacrificing herself.
I think a reasonable definition of nonviolent sacrifice should encompass acts that

distress the innocent, even though it must exclude intentional efforts to harm
opponents.
54 Gandhi 1959a/1999, 17, 15.

55 Howard 2013.
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A third complication is that violent acts can work just like nonviolent civil
disobedience under certain circumstances. Gandhi often analogizes satyagraha

campaigns to battles. In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln eulogizes the men who
“gave the last full measure of devotion” by sacrificing their lives on a literal battle-
field. They were trying to kill their enemies while surviving to fight another day.
However, in contrast to most martial speeches, the Gettysburg Address never
mentions the Union victory or the Confederate defeat; apart from one use of
the word “fought,” it is all about suffering, not winning. Pointedly, Lincoln re-
fuses to differentiate between the sides. He converts a bloody battle into an act of
pure self-sacrifice, as if the casualties had died while turning the other cheek. The
result is effective rhetoric for the same reason that an act of civil disobedience
is persuasive. Lincoln presents the soldiers’ sacrifice as a call to our conscience.
This is a borderline case, about which readers may disagree, but I am inclined to
think that Lincoln successfully expands the category that we are considering so
that it includes violent conflicts, as long as they are interpreted as shared sacri-
fices in the common interest.
At this point, we have a rough, four-part definition of nonviolent political
sacrifice. We can also see why it is often effective. It serves as a powerful form
of persuasion and it sculpts the soul. King holds that “unearned suffering is re-
demptive. Suffering, the nonviolent resister realizes, has tremendous educational
and transformative possibilities.” King proceeds to quote Gandhi to reinforce
this point.56
With this definition in hand, we can also consider whether nonviolent po-
litical sacrifice is always praiseworthy. I think it is not. For one thing, the costs
transmitted to others can be too high. In a section of his autobiography enti-
tled “Quickened Spirit of Sacrifice,” Gandhi recalls that an American salesman
talked him into buying a life insurance policy for the sake of his wife and chil-
dren. Gandhi’s decision to buy the insurance demonstrated his own “mixed de-
sire. The spirit of self-sacrifice was tempered by the desire to lay by something
for the future.” But then his “outlook changed” and he decided that everything he
did should be “in the name of God and for His service.” Gandhi stopped making
the insurance payments, reasoning that his brother could care for his family if he
died, and that, by purchasing insurance, he had “had robbed [his] wife and chil-
dren of their self-reliance. Why should they not be expected to take care of them-
selves? What happened to the families of the numberless poor in the world? Why
should I not count myself as one of them?”57 Note the way that Gandhi’s “self-
sacrifice” is strictly borne by his wife and children. He never hints that the insur-
ance payments undermined his ability to lead a nonviolent movement; rather
56 M.L. King 1959b.

57 Gandhi 1927, 315–316.
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he sacrificed his family’s income security because he wanted to purify his own
stance. In the same book, Gandhi recalls that he “did not hesitate to sacrifice” his
children’s literary education in the interest of having them remove human waste
from the house and walk five miles each day to his office and back. “My sons
have therefore some reason for a grievance against me. Indeed they have occa-
sionally given expression to it, and I must plead guilty to a certain extent. . . . But
I hold that I sacrificed their literary training to what I genuinely, though may be
wrongly, believed to be service to the community.”58 Even if Gandhi’s decision
was right, the case is close enough to make the point that sacrificing others is not
always justified. A more famous Gandhian example is his unilateral decision to
become celibate, although married.
Even if one could bear 100 percent of the cost, sacrifice might not be ethical.
Imagine a person with no friends or family who dies in a hunger strike. There is
no damage to innocent third-parties, but the sacrificer has destroyed her own life.
A utilitarian calculus holds that every life counts the same, including one’s own.
By that standard, the sacrifice is ethical if—but only if—it does sufficient good
to outweigh the death. Other philosophical traditions (notably, Kantianism) go
further and assert that we have duties to ourselves. It could be wrong to squander
oneself in a political cause. Gandhi writes, “Morally I have no doubt that all self-
restraint is good for the soul.”59 I find that claim implausible and would suggest
John Stuart Mill’s alternative view: sacrifice “must be for some end.” Mill adds:
All honor to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of
life when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount
of happiness in the world; but he who does it or professes to do it for any other
purpose is no more deserving of admiration than the ascetic mounted on his
pillar. He may be an aspiring proof of what men can do, but assuredly not an
example of what they should.60
There is a metaphysical gap between Mill, a consequentialist, and Gandhi, who

doubts that we are ever connected to the “fruits” of our actions; but this disagree-
ment can also be translated into an empirical question about whether self-re-
straint automatically improves the self. I doubt it.
At the same time, bringing suffering onto others can be exactly the right thing
to do. African American parents sent their children to segregated Little Rock
schools in 1957 in the face of mob violence. That was an act of sacrifice in the
sense that people voluntarily risked something of great value to achieve a political
58 Gandhi 1927, 374.

59 Gandhi 1951, 5.
60 Mill 1864/2002, 16.
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end. The suffering fell on their children. Hannah Arendt famously disapproved.
Partly, that was because she interpreted US racial conflict from the perspective of
a formerly assimilated German Jew who had concluded that Jews would never be
accepted in Europe; thus she leaned toward separatism rather than integration.
It is possible that she simply underemphasized the evil of racism in the United
States. But most interesting for our purposes, she overlooked the value of sacri-
fice when it is borne by others. It didn’t fit her republican political theory.
In a republic, citizens are both rulers and ruled (to use Aristotle’s definition).
They make joint, binding decisions about life-and-death matters after airing
their differences in public forums. A core republican idea is “non-domination.”61
No citizen may just tell any other citizen what to do. Citizens are governed by
general laws that must be defended with general arguments. Therefore, the par-
adigmatic examples of sacrifice for Christians—God telling Abraham to sacri-
fice Isaac; God sacrificing His only-begotten son for love of the world—are not
models for republican politics.
People are either citizens of a given republic or not. Arendt strongly op-
posed statelessness because it made refugees into citizens of nowhere. She
thought that children and adolescents were not citizens because they couldn’t
rule. In “Reflections on Little Rock,” she describes schooling as preparation
for “future citizenship” (italics added). Because children are not current but
future citizens, to ask them to act politically is to expect them to be ruled
without ruling.
However, the most startling part of the whole business was the Federal deci-
sion to start integration in, of all places, the public schools. It certainly did not
require too much imagination to see that this was to burden children, black
and white, with the working out of a problem which adults for generations
have confessed themselves unable to solve. I think no one will find it easy to
forget the photograph reproduced in newspapers and magazines throughout
the country, showing a Negro girl, accompanied by a white friend of her father,
walking away from school, persecuted and followed into bodily proximity by a
jeering and grimacing mob of youngsters. The girl, obviously was asked to be a
hero—that is, something neither her absent father nor the equally absent rep-
resentatives of the NAACP felt called upon to be. It will be hard for the white
youngsters, or at least those among them who outgrow their present brutality,
to live down this photograph which exposes so mercilessly their juvenile de-
linquency. The picture looked to me like a fantastic caricature of progressive
education which, by abolishing the authority of adults, implicitly denies their
61 Pettit 2000. I think he overemphasizes non-domination and underemphasizes civic virtue in his
summary of the republican tradition, but to be sure, non-domination is a theme in that tradition.
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responsibility for the world into which they have borne their children and re-
fuses the duty of guiding them into it. Have we now come to the point where it
is the children who are being asked to change or improve the world? And do we
intend to have our political battles fought out in the schoolyards?62
Arendt doesn’t reject “sacrifice” in this passage, because the word was not part
of her vocabulary at this stage, but she fails to recognize the profound sacrifice
parents made in exposing their children to these scenes of hatred. Ralph Ellison
took her to task on that point in an interview with Robert Penn Warren:
That’s right—you’re forgetting sacrifice, and the idea of sacrifice is very deeply
inbred in Negroes. This is the thing—my mother always said I don’t know
what’s going to happen to us if you young Negroes don’t do so-and-so-and-
so. The command went out and it still goes out. You’re supposed to be some-
body, and it’s in relationship to the group. This is part of the American Negro
experience, and this also means that the idea of sacrifice is always right there.
This is where Hannah Arendt is way off in left base in her reflections on Little
Rock. She has no conception of what goes on in the parents who send their kids
through these lines. The kid is supposed to be able to go through the line—he’s
a Negro, and he’s supposed to have mastered those tensions, and if he gets hurt
then this is one more sacrifice.63
To her credit, Arendt wrote to Ellison, “It is precisely the ideal of sacrifice that
I didn’t understand.”64
Danielle Allen makes the dispute between Arendt and Ellison a central issue
for democratic theory.65 Allen argues that sacrifice is a characteristic political act,
because even belonging to a community requires giving things up, and changing
it usually carries a higher price. Although formally we all sacrifice by belonging
to a community, the actual level of sacrifice always differs very unfairly. Unequal
sacrifice is thus a fundamental reality; it calls for specific responses, such as ac-
knowledgment and recompense.
The Problem of Selecting Just Aims

Dedicated participants in nonviolent campaigns attract admiration for their

courage and self-sacrifice. Particularly because they eschew violence, they
62 Arendt 1959/2003, 236.

63 Ellison 1964/2017.
64 Young-Bruehl 2004, 316.
65 D. Allen 2004 (chapter 3: “Sacrifice: A Democratic Fact”), 25–36.
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encourage us to trust their aims. How could someone who is willing to turn the
other cheek to men with guns be after the wrong goals?

This is not a rhetorical question; people can sacrifice nonviolently for bad
objectives. In 1932, the British government issued a plan for Indian elections in
which Muslims and Dalits (then known as “Untouchables”) would each vote sep-
arately for their own representatives: a quota system. Separate elections had been
a demand of the great Dalit leader Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. From his jail cell,
Gandhi not only opposed the idea; he swore to oppose it “unto death” by going
on a hunger strike until the proposal was withdrawn. Some observers felt that
Gandhi was worried that the Congress Party would lose seats if the electorate
was divided in this way. Patriotism is a more charitable interpretation: maybe
Gandhi wanted everyone to vote simply as an Indian. Another possible explana-
tion is religious: Gandhi felt that Dalits were Hindus who needed to be embraced
as such, for the good of the faith. Lelyveld writes of this episode, “retreating into
the religious realm is the Mahatma’s way of ringing down the curtain on debate,
of announcing that he has heard the inner voice that vouchsafes the ‘truth’ on
which he relies.” Gandhi had previously criticized hunger strikes as “the worst
form of coercion,” but now he was prepared to use the full power of this tech-
nique to prevent separate elections for Dalits.66
When Ambedkar visited the literally starving Gandhi in prison, the two men
negotiated a compromise involving a temporary set-aside of seats for Dalits.
Ambedkar wanted that provision to last for ten years “to stabilise opinion.”
Gandhi countered:
Five years or my life. Tell your followers that is what Gandhi says and plead my
case before them, and if they do not accept this from you surely they do not de-
serve to be called your followers. My life is in your pocket. I may be a despicable
creature, but when the truth speaks through me I am invincible. You have a per-
fect right to demand cent percent security by statutory safeguards, but from my
fiery bed, I beg of you not to insist upon that right. I am here today to ask for a
reprieve for my caste Hindu brethren.67
Gandhi used a threat to end his own life to limit a provision intended to help
the least advantaged Indians. Soon, the Mahatma converted his fast into an at-
tack on the very principle of Untouchability, but he still used a threat to sacrifice
himself to defeat Ambedkar, who was never persuaded on the merits, yet found
Gandhi politically “invincible.” In 1936, when Ambedkar was considering a mass
conversion of Dalits to another faith, such as Sikhism, Christianity, or Buddhism
66 Lelyveld 2011, 227–29.

67 Prahladan 2016.
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(his ultimate choice), Gandhi accused him of negotiating souls for political pur-
poses. Ambedkar referred back to the agreement about seats for Dalits, the so-
called Poona Pact. “When Mr. Gandhi says [that conversion] cannot be a matter
for barter . . ., my reply is that this argument cannot now lie in his mouth. At the
time of the Poona Pact he treated the thing as one for barter.”68 In other words,
Ambedkar recalled no principled argument from Gandhi but rather an exercise
of force that had resulted in an unsatisfactory compromise.
Of course, Gandhi may have been right; that is a matter of judgment. But he
may also have been wrong, and the fact that he was willing to sacrifice his life
for his cause (and probably bring mass violence on the whole Subcontinent
as a response to his death) does not guarantee his rightness. Ambedkar is a
more revered figure in India today than Gandhi is, although Gandhi is far
better known internationally.69 It may be that Gandhi’s success with nonvio-
lent strategies has captured the admiration of people far removed from India’s
issues, but Indians who are concerned with social equity think that Ambedkar
was right. Gandhi insisted that he inflicted injuries only on his own person
and claimed that civil disobedience was never the cause of violence, even when
it “resolved itself ” into violence,70 but his strategies did harm other people.
Admirable means do not guarantee ideal ends. As Habermas writes, “even
those who employ moral insights [in civil disobedience campaigns] can err.
The fools of today are not always the heroes of tomorrow: many will remain
the fools of yesterday. . . . Moreover, the legitimacy of acts of resistance cannot
be deduced simply from the ethical seriousness of the actors’ motives.”71 King
knew this well. He remarked, “The pacifist would have a greater appeal if he did
not claim to be free from the moral dilemmas that the nonpacifist Christian
confronts.”72
One response to this problem is to reason well about ends, not just about
means. Don’t assume that your willingness to sacrifice guarantees the justice of
your cause but use whatever resources you have—philosophical, spiritual, em-
pirical—to think critically about what is right to do. That is valid advice, so far
as it goes; but Ambedkar and Gandhi were both critical thinkers, yet they never
reached consensus. Neither did Gandhi and Jinnah, as explored in chapter 3. In
these debates, it is hard to say whose process of reasoning was better.
Another recommendation is to deliberate with people who are differently sit-
uated from oneself and use the deliberation as a means of moral growth. This
response has the advantage of guiding action and evaluation. A person either
68 Ambedkar, August 8, 1936, in Guha 2018, 864.

69 Lelyveld 2011, 217.
70 Gandhi 1951, 20, 222.
71 Habermas 1985, 105.
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deliberates or does not; a movement either encompasses diverse perspectives

or it is uniform; the conversation within the movement either influences indi-

viduals or leaves them unchanged. From this perspective, the problem with
Gandhi’s treatment of Ambedkar was not that Gandhi’s position was wrong but
that his threat to starve himself blocked deliberation with someone who held a
different view.
Nonviolent campaigns and other social movements are not deliberative
forums. They do not purport or strive to represent all perspectives in the broader
population. On the contrary, they often try to marginalize a target group. Some
take appropriate pride in being based in, and led by, a particular group within
the society. They are not predominantly concerned with talking and listening
or forming opinions. Often, their basic demands are settled at the outset, and
their characteristic behavior is “direct action”—occupations, boycotts, and mar-
ches—rather than discussion. As Tilly notes, they gain power from displays of
“unity”: marchers wearing the same color and carrying coordinated signs, songs
sung in mass unison, or people using the same hashtag on Twitter.
Given the need for unity and for large, disruptive “direct actions” like strikes
and occupations, it may seem utopian to expect social movements to spend
much energy on discussion. However, Chenoweth and Stephen emphasize that
size and unity are not enough for success: movements must turn diversity into
partial and temporary consensus. To get diverse people to agree requires dis-
cussion. Talking also helps committed leaders to engage larger numbers of fol-
lowers, and vice versa. In short, both axes of the SPUD framework (plurality and
unity; scale and depth) need discussion to resolve.
As Marshall Ganz writes in his study of the California Farm Worker
Movement:
leadership teams that conduct regular, open, and authoritative deliberations to

devise strategy benefit synergistically from team members’ knowledge in ways
that organizations in which a “lone ranger” decides strategy cannot. The par-
ticipation of a variety of team members linked to a diversity of constituencies
contributes feedback that enables a team to evaluate changing circumstances
swiftly. . . . Furthermore, team motivation is enhanced when members can con-
tribute to making strategic choices upon which they then act.
Sustaining a creative deliberative process, however, is challenging and re-
quires leadership with a high tolerance for ambiguity. . . . A group’s tendency

over time is to lose its diversity. Particular organizational practices are thus re-
quired to preserve diverse perspectives.73
73 Ganz 2010, 17–18.
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Elsewhere, Ganz observes that “Deliberation open to heterogeneous points of

view enhances strategic capacity because ‘deviant’ perspectives facilitate better

decisions.”74
When nonviolent social movements go wrong, it is often because they fail to
deliberate enough. For example, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 began as truly
diverse, encompassing religious revolutionaries, secular Marxists, merchants
hoping for economic liberalization, civil libertarians, and even a Hippie drug
counterculture. To achieve unity along with all that pluralism, the movement set-
tled on the Ayatollah Khomeini as a leader, not because they all agreed with his
positions but because he seemed uniquely viable as an alternative to the Shah. In
fact, there wasn’t much discussion within the revolution itself about what Iran
should look like after the government fell. This weakness proved fatal once the
Shah was deposed, the Ayatollah gained power, and he and his allies ruthlessly
destroyed all the internal opposition. This was a case of too much scale and unity
achieved with too little discussion.75
There is a long tradition of social movements in general—and nonviolent
campaigns specifically—developing innovative venues for internal discussion,
what Sara Evans and Harry C. Boyte call “free spaces,” or “environments in which
people are able to learn a new self-respect, a deeper and more assertive group
identity, public skills, and values of cooperation and civic virtue.” They observe
that “a prelude to democratic movement, visible in different times and settings,
has been the emergence of avenues for wider sociability”; and they name, among
many other examples, “female abolition networks” in antebellum America,
ethnic associations that built steelworkers’ unions, “labor education schools” in
the 1930s, the freedom schools of the civil rights movement, “and the alternative
institutions of the women’s movement.”76 These are places in which people use
talk to turn plurality into unity.
Embracing differences and promoting discussion within social movements
are easier to recommend than to accomplish. Participants in nonviolent cam-
paigns are often dramatically diverse, and conversations can be emotionally
challenging, especially under duress. Soon after Donald Trump was elected
president, organized protests challenged his executive order to block entry from
selected countries (all of which had Muslim majorities). Protesters completely
filled Boston’s Logan Airport international terminal. They included many people
who were new to protest and who had generally positive relationships with
public institutions. The Boston police were helpful, directing the protesters and
managing parking. The city’s major and both of the state’s senators appeared in
74 Ganz 2000, 1017.

75 Chenoweth & Stephan 2011, Kindle locs. 2084–2111, 2196.
76 Evans & Boyte 1986, 17, 191.
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person to support the protest. But the organizers were seasoned activists who had
been confronting the Boston police and city government for years. They tried to
get the crowd to denounce the police and the politicians who spoke. Without the
organizers, there would have been no protest. But without many newcomers, the
protest would have been small and easily marginalized. The ideological, demo-
graphic, and emotional gap between the two components of the movement was
palpable.77
Chenoweth and Stephen suggest that only by bridging such gaps can a move-
ment succeed. But that is hard work. Talk is time-consuming, even draining, but
it helps movements to win.
Coda: The Prophetic Mode in Nonviolent Social Movements
Each of the traditions explored in this book offers a way of reuniting facts, values,
and strategies, which have been sundered by the scientific positivism character-
istic of modernity. For the Bloomington School, the solution is to study actual
successes in managing common-pool resources in order to help people become
artisans of their own regimes—an ethical objective. For the Frankfurt School,
it is to advocate social structures that permit free and equal people to delib-
erate about what is right to do (a question that unites normative and empirical
issues). In the tradition of nonviolent social movements, we encounter a new
mode: prophecy.
Martin Luther King Jr. writes, “Any discussion of the Christian minister today
must ultimately emphasize the need for prophecy.” His writing and speaking
constantly evokes the original biblical prophets. Just for instance, in the “I Have
a Dream” speech, King quotes Amos 5:24 (“But let judgment run down as wa-
ters, and righteousness as a mighty stream”) and Isaiah 40:4 (“Every valley shall
be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked
shall be made straight, and the rough places plain”). Kenyatta R. Gilbert traces
King’s rhetorical mode to three influential and original Black preachers active
during the Great Migration: Baptist pastor Adam C. Powell Sr., the African
Methodist Episcopal Zion Church pastor Florence S. Randolph, and the African
Methodist Episcopal (AME) bishop Reverdy C. Ransom. All three were polit-
ical reformers and community leaders who echoed the Hebrew prophets (as
well as the Gospels) in their sermons.78

The nineteen biblical books traditionally called Nevi’im, prophecies, are
heterogeneous texts, containing biographical information, autobiographical
77 Author’s observations, January 28, 2017.

78 Gilbert 2017. See also Luban 1989.
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passages, dramatic narratives (like Jonah in the whale), reports of the Lord’s
words, dialogues between the prophet and the Lord, dreams, acts of these wise
men and women, sermons, predictions, and much poetry.
Although this whole body of text enriched King’s speech and thought, I think
that we have something more specific in mind when we use the word “prophetic”
for his words. A prophecy, in the narrower sense, begins with a moral condem-
nation of the present, often directed explicitly at the most powerful people: the
kings, priests, and rich men:
Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him
burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in
them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.
For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the
just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.
(Amos 5:11–12)
The prophecy may forecast the punishment and fall of these wicked men.
“Woe unto you,” says the Lord, through Amos, six verses later. A classic prophecy
then predicts a better time, a time of justice. This prediction is not empirical,
based on continuing the current trends into the future. Rather, it is moral and
hortatory. If the people begin to act righteously, then God will help them make
the world better. “Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the
gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of
Joseph” (Amos 5:15).
A Hebrew prophet derives his authority from God’s interactions with him (or
her, since Sarah, Miriam, Devorah, Hannah, Avigail, Huldah, and Esther are tra-
ditionally named prophets along with the bearded men). In contrast, a modern
political prophet should be cautious about claiming direct divine inspiration.
Instead, a modern prophet invites the audience to consider a moral descrip-
tion of the present. If they agree, and they behave as recommended, then the
prophecy may become true as a result of their coordinated action.
So understood, prophecies can be rather humdrum. You are using the pro-
phetic mode if you stand up at a school meeting and say, “The playground is a
mess. If we all get together and clean it up this Saturday, the kids will be safer and
happier next week.” The divine intervention and high-flown language of the King
James Version are missing, but you are still submitting a moral condemnation
of the present, an exhortation to action, and a vision of the better world that will
result.
The problem is that some prophecies are good, and some are bad. The bad
ones either recommend a morally worse world or demand unproductive actions.
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We need methods for distinguishing good prophecies from bad ones. And two
dominant modes of thought are unhelpful.

The scientific (and social-scientific) mode is unhelpful because it tries to sepa-
rate empirical descriptions from moral judgments. Moral judgment is presented
as mere opinion, and anyone’s opinion is as good as anyone else’s. This mode is
also unhelpful because it predicts the future based on data from the past. We
can make the future different from the past, but only if we refuse to assume that
observed patterns must hold.
The professional mode used in bureaucracies (whether governmental or cor-
porate) is also unhelpful because it is limited to means/ends reasoning. It says: if
you want this to happen, you may (or should) do that. But what should you want
to happen? The scientific mode fits neatly together with the professional/bureau-
cratic mode when institutions use social science to find efficient means to their
fixed ends.
The prophetic mode challenges these ways of thinking. A prophetic voice
claims that some things really are bad (not merely in the prophet’s opinion), that
a better future is possible, and that we can and must create that future by chan-
ging how we act. Prophecies are not hypotheses that are either true or false. They
are exhortations that we can make true by how we react to them. They should
be rooted in the experience of the speaker, the experiences of the audience, and
a deeper tradition that preserves many others’ experiences, such as the biblical
background on which King drew so regularly.
In a book aimed at offering concrete advice, Gilbert notes that prophetic
preaching has these features. It:
1. unmasks systemic evil and deceptive human practices by means of moral

suasion and subversive rhetoric;
2. remains interminably hopeful when confronted with human tragedy and
communal despair;
3. connects the speech act with just actions as concrete praxis to help people
freely participate in naming their reality; and
4. carries an impulse for beauty it its use of language and culture.79
King and his fellow African American Christian civil rights leaders exempli-
fied prophetic thought. Their texts—together with the ways they were received
and used—are models of a form of reasoning that is essential to citizenship in all

times and places.
79 Gilbert 2018, 124.
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7
Synthesis
At this point, we can begin to put the three traditions together, using each to com-
pensate for the limitations of the others.
We might begin with a classic situation for the Bloomington School: a group of
people is trying to manage a common-pool resource, which may be as traditional
and tangible as a fishery or as current and abstract as protocols for the Internet. They
should consider the list of design principles enumerated by Elinor Ostrom and her
colleagues, including clear boundaries, graduated sanctions, shared monitoring,
rules congruent with the context, and efficient mechanisms for conflict resolution.
However, inspired by Habermas, we will elevate one design principle above the
rest—participation—and will define it to be basically synonymous with public de-
liberation. People should deliberate about which of the other principles to employ,
and how. This is because deliberation is our best mechanism for deciding what is
right and wrong. It is also because talking and listening with other people about
public matters is an important aspect of the good life for human beings; it enriches
our inner lives. While deliberating, people should strive for an ideal speech situ-
ation, one that is devoid of coercion and constraint, so that the only power is the
power of the best argument.
Now the theory is beginning to sound fully Habermasian, but the Bloomington
School puts deliberation in an essential context. After all, it is easier not to attend
a discussion in the first place and let others do the work of governance. Thus the
very existence of a discussion implies at least a partial prior solution to a free-rider
problem. What’s more, the fact that the group has something to manage implies that
they have already done some work together. Discussion rarely precedes governance;
it is more typically a moment in an ongoing process of governance. Often a small
group of founders chooses the rules-in-use that create a group in which deliberation
can occur.
One way that people use words when they discuss “What should we do?” is to
make proposals for collective action and support their proposals with reasons,
which they are prepared to defend with additional reasons. They seek con-
sensus—or at least uncoerced agreement—about what to do. This is the most
deliberative aspect of conversation. It may encompass various forms of “rhet-
oric” (storytelling, testimony, prophesy, and concrete and vivid examples),
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197570494.003.0007
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Synthesis 169
understood as types of reasons that support proposals.1 Stories can be just as

valid as statistics.
However, members of groups also do many other things with words. They ex-
change greetings, seek and express sympathy, joke and cry, state dissents “just for
the record” (without expecting to persuade), acknowledge others’ disagreements
(without being persuaded), make promises, and so on. These forms of speech
can contribute to the maintenance of the group: its social capital or capacity to
act collectively.2 And unless a group has social capital, there is no point in dis-
cussing what it should do. Hence these other forms of discourse are just as im-
portant as deliberation. After all, the norms that allow groups to approach an
ideal speech situation—norms like civility, reasonable trust, and openness—are
fragile common resources that members must build and sustain.
Almost all real discussions are imperfect. Some people are missing because
they chose to free-ride, some participants undermine civility and trust in the way
they talk, and time usually runs out before consensus can be reached, necessi-
tating votes. Thus the degree to which groups meet the Habermasian ideal of
reasonable discourse depends on how well they have already addressed core
collective-action problems.
And not everything can be thrown open to discussion. The Bloomington
School advises that boundaries must be clear and rules must be congruent with
local circumstances and traditions in order for people to coordinate. In theory,
boundaries and traditions could be freely discussed. Citizens could deliberate
about who should be included in the group and what norms they should hold
dear. But since a discussion already requires a reasonably functional group, and
forming a group requires boundaries and congruence with local traditions, it is
not literally possible to start from a neutral place. Instead, a group with some
kind of boundary and set of traditions can consider modifying them in the inter-
ests of justice or practicality. They can rebuild their ship at sea, but they cannot
start from scratch. The group comes first; then the discussion.
Although moments of explicit deliberation have special normative value, they
need not be frequent (recall from chapter 4 that the last conference to decide the
huertas’ rules took place near Valencia almost six centuries ago), and discourse
should not be allowed to overshadow other kinds of contribution to the com-
mons. People also contribute with their emotions, their labor, and their bodies.
In this combination of Habermas plus Ostrom, we have the nucleus of a sat-
isfactory theory, but it doesn’t tell us what to do when some other group feels
itself fundamentally different and has no interest in joining the deliberation or
sharing resources fairly. That is when we need the distinctive contributions of
1 Dryzek 2000, 71; Allen 2004.

2 As acknowledged by Habermas himself: e.g., Habermas 1987, 139; see Friedland 2001.
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nonviolent social movements. They can force changes in the underlying rules
and norms that govern a situation. They can force people to deliberate and to
cooperate. They can make the oppressed efficacious, bystanders supportive, and
oppression yield.
However, nonviolent social movements need insights from the schools of
Habermas and of Ostrom, for three important reasons. First, not every nonvi-
olent social movement has desirable or worthy ends. The only way for human
beings to test and reconsider whether their own values are appropriate is to de-
liberate with people who do not agree with them (see Habermas). Second, a suc-
cessful social movement requires people to coordinate their sacrifices, and that
happens only when they already belong to, or can create, functional self-gov-
erning entities (see Ostrom). Finally, a social movement cannot move forever.
It must pursue a relatively stable or even permanent outcome as its objective.
Participants in the civil rights movement did not imagine that the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 would remove racism from the United States, but they pursued that
legislation as a meaningful target during the early 1960s. The Civil Rights Act
was an appropriate goal because it incorporated good institutional design (see
Ostrom) and would require ongoing deliberation (see Habermas). With this
kind of example, the three strands truly come together.
Civic Work in a Variety of Settings
These three theories invite us to envision different concrete examples as ideal

types. The Bloomington School focuses our attention on groups of human be-
ings (perhaps in traditional villages, perhaps working online) who voluntarily
manage and conserve scarce common resources. The postwar Frankfurt School
turns our attention to groups of people (legislators, citizens in town meetings)
who convene to discuss issues and produce informed public opinion that influ-
ences major institutions, such as the state. Finally, the literature on nonviolent
social movements makes us think of coalitions that put large numbers of civil-
ians onto the streets to confront regimes.
Many other groups and institutions that are much more pervasive than any
of these three ideal types exhibit similar functions and processes. For example,
any for-profit business preserves, manages, and expands its own economic as-
sets, overcoming problems such as workers who don’t attend to their responsibil-
ities and managers who look out for themselves instead of investors (free-riding
and principal/agent dilemmas). The employees of a business inevitably form
opinions about it, and those opinions are influenced by some degree of com-
munication and discussion. Workers’ opinions may affect the enterprise, even
if they speak only behind the bosses’ backs. And, at least in principle, a business
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Synthesis 171
can become part of a social movement. A “private computer company, the Stone
Group, was a major participant in the movement” for democracy that culmi-
nated in Tiananmen Square. “It provided advanced communications networks,
photocopiers, computers, and fax machines; and Wan Runnan, the head of the
company, joined in the Tiananmen demonstrations.”3
Any durable church or other religious congregation is a steward of tangible
assets, such as its building, and it draws people together to create its services and
other activities through their active and voluntary participation. That means that
a church manages a common-pool resource. It may also house and encourage
vibrant discussions of issues that are not narrowly spiritual but also have political
and social implications. And it can certainly be integral to a social movement.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church was as close the heart of the US
civil rights movement as any institution or network was.
A functioning military unit draws collective action from its members and pre-
serves its own tangible assets, such as arms, materiel, and location. Units may be
so hierarchical that they do not harbor much discussion, but “scuttlebutt” and
other discourse is common in ordinary units, and some military organizations
(the Levelers’ regiments during the English Civil War, the POUM Militias in the
Spanish Guerra Civil) have been hotbeds of political deliberation. Occasionally,
military units contribute to truly nonviolent social movements. The Portuguese
military deserves more credit for the successful, nonviolent “Revolution of the
Carnations” than any other component of that society.4 Much more commonly,
military units participate in self-limiting social change because they impose dis-
cipline on themselves. George Washington’s Continental Army was not nonvio-
lent, but it imposed limits on itself that helped the transition to a new republic.
A government office, a nonprofit organization, a school or college, a news-
room, a theatrical troupe, a lab, or a ship at sea can also exhibit these functions.
It is good news that many settings provide opportunities for managing common
resources, deliberating about public issues, and confronting exclusions based on
identities, because then these forms of civic work have a chance of becoming
pervasive. People should and do address problems of collective action, discourse,
and identity/exclusion in a wide range of institutional settings, from churches to
military units to for-profit companies.
Still, it is valuable to focus on the three ideal types as inspirations for practice
and as cases that can produce theoretical insights. That is because each of the
ideal types sets itself the task of performing one of the major civic tasks in a pure
way and without distracting objectives.
3 Goldman 2009, 252.

4 Maxwell 2009.
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A community that manages common-pool resources must solve collective ac-

tion problems when the goods are subtractable but not excludable. That is a hard
task—widely thought impossible until Elinor Ostrom and others showed that it
has often been accomplished. In contrast, it is easier for a typical for-profit firm to
manage its own assets, which are private goods. A car dealership owns its stock,
exchanges each car for money, and pays dealers with salary and commissions.
That is a relatively straightforward way of managing the goods. But even as the
dealership faces a relatively easy management problem, it is influenced by im-
peratives other than managing the cars on its lot. Above all, it seeks to maximize
profits for its owners, who may not participate directly in the enterprise. The
managers and workers cannot freely ask, “What should we do?” because their
goals are set from outside. In short, although the dealership offers some opportu-
nities for solving collective-action problems, discussing issues, and perhaps even
confronting social injustices, it is not an ideal setting for any of those purposes.
Likewise, a government agency can harbor valuable discussions of public
issues. However, as part of a larger bureaucratic System, the agency will (and
should) be constrained by definitions of means and ends that have been set by
people beyond the agency. In an ideal democracy, the means and ends are chosen
by political leaders accountable to a deliberating public; then all citizens can ask,
“What should we do?” But the agency itself is not an ideal place for this conversa-
tion because it is constrained by the other citizens who form the public. And, in a
less democratic system, the constraints will come from a powerful few.
A church can participate intensively in a social movement, or even be the set-
ting that launches the movement. That was true not only in the US civil rights
struggle but also (for example) in the nonviolent resistance to Polish commu-
nism.5 Still, a church has other functions than participating in a social move-
ment, including mediating the congregants’ relationship to God and preserving
traditions.
These examples illustrate the general point that no institutions exemplify civic
work as clearly as common-pool resource management regimes, deliberative
assemblies, and nonviolent social movements do. Each emphasizes one form of
civic work, so we should learn from all three. Table 7.1 summarizes their central
claims.
Revisiting Loyalty and Complicity
In chapter 1, I argued that the fundamental question of individual ethics, “What

should I do?,” is complicated by the existence of groups. We cannot accomplish
5 Smolar 2009, 97.
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Table 7.1 A summary of the three theoretical traditions along several dimensions
Ostrom Habermas Gandhi
Fundamental People fail to achieve People manipulate other People fail to

problem what would be good for people by influencing their view others (or
them collectively opinions and goals themselves) as
fully human
Characteristic People know what they People don’t know what Some people
starting point want but can’t get it they want or want the won’t recognize
wrong things other people as
fellow citizens
Prominent We destroy an Government or corporate One national
example of environmental asset by propaganda distorts our or ethnic group
failure failing to work together authentic values exploits another
Essential Working together Talking and listening about Using nonviolent
behavior of a to make or preserve controversial values sacrifice to
citizen something compel change
Keyword Collaboration Deliberation Relationships
Instead of homo Homo faber (the person Homo sapiens (the person A satyagrahi (the
economicus as a maker) as a reasoner) or homo person as a bearer
(the individual politicus (the participant in of soul force)
who maximizes public assemblies)
material
self-interest), we
need . . .
Role of the state A set of nested The source of law, which A target of
and overlapping should be influenced by demands
associations, not public opinion, which
fundamentally derives from citizens.
different from other
associations (firms,
nonprofits, etc.)
Modernity is . . . A threat to local and A process of (For Gandhi)
traditional ways of enlightenment that an imperialist
cooperating, but we liberates people, but it imposition,
can use science to assist goes wrong when states undermining
people in solving their and markets “colonize” the swaraj
own problems private domain
How facts Not explicitly; By proposing In a prophetic
and values are implicitly by using counterfactual ideals mode
combined research on collective such as “the ideal speech
action to liberate situation” and diagnosing

people for reflective the reasons these are not
self-government met
Main Game theory Normative philosophy Critical theology
interdisciplinary plus observations (mainly achieved through plus military
combination of indigenous critical readings of past strategy
problem-solving philosophers) plus system-
level sociology
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much alone, nor can we reason well alone about appropriate means and ends.
Therefore, we need groups, which deserve a measure of loyalty even when our in-
dividual goals and values do not perfectly align with theirs. Under some circum-
stances, a dissatisfied member should advocate within the group for a change of
direction and accept the collective decision after due discussion—partly because
the group has potential for improving the world, and partly because it may be
wise to defer to the thoughts of many peers. Still, groups can err or even turn evil,
and then the member should quit to avoid complicity. When to choose loyalty
and voice versus exit is a question of individual ethics that is made pressing by
the importance of groups and the cognitive limitations of individuals.
The three major perspectives explored in c hapters 4–6 now offer some guid-
ance about when to choose loyalty and voice versus exit. First, a worthy group
must have rules-in-use, actually honored covenants, that address collective-ac-
tion problems. If a group tolerates free-riders and runs only on the labor of a
few, it does not merit membership. As an individual, you should not accept this
situation, whether you are a free-rider or a hard-working contributor. A group
that lacks adequate covenants may have the potential to form them, in which
case it can be worthwhile to stay in the group and address its collective-action
problems with your fellow members. In fact, hardly any group perfectly solves
all collective-action problems, so it is a matter of judgment how much imper-
fection to tolerate. But if a group exhibits a consistent and substantial failure to
develop rules-in-use that prevent free-riding, harmful externalities, principal/
agent dilemmas, and other problems of collective action, that is a reason to quit.
As Hirschman argues, exit serves as a form of discipline, weakening the group
and thus pressuring it to address problems of collective action or else vanish alto-
gether. Your exit not only protects you from making disproportionate sacrifices;
it also protects other members from being so exploited.
Second, the group should create an internal Public Sphere in which issues of
means and ends are deliberated. There should be no obstacles to critical discus-
sion by any individuals or categories of people within the group or about any
classes of issues. If a group is unwilling to spend time on discussion or is reluc-
tant to address certain topics, or if discussions within the group are consistently
distorted by money, threats, or arbitrary differences in status and power, these
are reasons to exit. Again, no group is perfect, and it may be wise to tolerate some
distortions of deliberation in order to preserve the group and use it for bene-
ficial purposes. But exit is an available tool for disciplining groups that fail to
deliberate.
Third, the group must relate justly to other groups. Any group is a “we,” which
implies a “them” outside of it. The only group that has no human outsiders is
the human race, and at that vast scale, agency becomes vanishingly weak—a
problem to which I will return in the next section. Still, any “we” can relate to
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Synthesis 175
any “them” peacefully instead of violently or coercively. As I argued in c hapter 6,

peaceful interaction increases the odds of a better resolution of conflicts and also
transforms the active parties into better citizens. “We” can relate to “them” not
merely peacefully (which implies an absence of violence and threats) but also
justly and lovingly—in active pursuit of a better arrangement that includes both
sets of people, and others as well.
Alas, the three criteria of worthy groups may conflict. Consider a group that
offers a wonderfully rich and dynamic forum for internal debates. Since every-
thing is always up for discussion in this group, no one takes responsibility for
making sure the lights are on. In contrast, imagine a group that reliably elicits
and rewards contributions from all of its members so that they count on fair
treatment. A contributing cause of its stability—and the interpersonal trust that
results—is the group’s reluctance to discuss issues that might prove divisive or
that might unpredictably change the rules-in-use. Elinor Ostrom describes so-
cial capital as a “delicate balance of mutual expectations,” often “slowly devel-
oped through many years of tough bargaining and trial and error,” that generates
shared understandings that most people will follow the rules most of the time
and that “non-conformance” will reliably be sanctioned.6 Discussion of contest-
able principles can easily endanger such expectations. We might then predict
that some groups can achieve more deliberation only at the cost of less satisfac-
tory collaboration, or vice versa.
Likewise, a given group may prove highly effective at pushing for justice in the
society as a whole because its members are so unified on matters of principle that
they spend no time deliberating among themselves about matters of principle.
Many advocacy groups in contemporary America have clear and simple object-
ives. Members contribute money if they agree, and the staff make judgments
about specific strategies and objectives. That arrangement maximizes social im-
pact at the cost of internal deliberation. On the other hand, a group might harbor
diverse conversations that deeply inform the members and improve their views
yet render it incapable of pursuing justice in the society at large.
In general, trade-offs among incompatible values do not have algorithmic
solutions: they require judgment and choice. Individuals must decide which
values are most important under the circumstances that confront them. For in-
stance, when resources are scarce and fragile, durable and fair rules for allocating
responsibilities may be more valuable than fully open discussions. But when
communities are riven by hidden disagreements or closed to new ideas, open

discussions may be more valuable than reliable covenants. Fortunately, indi-
viduals in modern societies are not limited to one membership per person. We
6 E. Ostrom 1995, 157, 132, 130.
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can belong to many organizations, some of which afford more of one value than
others.
John Dewey’s definition of “the democratic idea in its generic social sense”
captures the three criteria. He proposes that every group must derive the full
benefit of all its members’ contributions: “it demands liberation of the potential-
ities of members of a group in harmony with the interests and good which are in
common.” That is compatible with the criterion that a worthy group must resolve
problems of collective action that would cause some members to be exploited
or that would block harmony. Dewey also proposes that everyone must have “a
responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the activities of
the groups to which [he or she] belongs.” That is a gesture to deliberation within
the group. Finally, Dewey says, everyone should belong to many groups, which
must “interact flexibly and fully” with each other.
In sum: “Wherever there is conjoint activity whose consequences are appre-
ciated as good by all singular persons who take part in it, and where realization
of the good is such as to effect an energetic desire and effort to sustain it in being
just because it is a good shared by all, there is in so far a community.” And, for
Dewey, a democracy is identical to community in its ideal form.7 Although
I would prefer to reserve the word “democracy” for methods of decision-making
that grant everyone equal power, Dewey’s vision is useful. A good society is com-
posed of groups that liberate their members’ potential, support internal discus-
sions, and relate to other groups justly. We cannot make a society like that all by
ourselves; too many other people are involved in shaping it. However, we can
allocate our own memberships to groups that meet these criteria and withhold
our support from groups that don’t, and that should help move the whole society
toward what Dewey would call the Great Community.
7 Dewey 1927, 147–48.
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8
A Case
Black Lives Matter
At the time of writing, the Movement for Black Lives may be the largest move-
ment in the history of the United States.1 It is neither an echo nor a continuation
of the civil rights movement discussed in chapter 2. It has other roots and influ-
ences: notably, Black feminism. Although, like any movement, it encompasses
diverse views, a central claim derives from the opening section of the Combahee
River Collective’s Statement of 1977: “we are actively committed to struggling
against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our partic-
ular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the
fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these
oppressions creates the conditions of our lives.”2 Oppressive systems are analyt-
ically distinguishable, but they are equally serious and support each other. As
Audre Lorde wrote in 1983, “There is no hierarchy of oppression.”3 As a result,
diagnoses of social injustice should always incorporate multiple causes.
The Movement for Black Lives insists that diagnoses should be structural
rather than individual—for instance, African American police are likely to
enforce anti-Black racism, because of their role as police.4 People who experi-
ence several forms of oppression at once should be noticed and heard and make
valuable leaders for the movement. One of the founders, Alicia Garza, writes,
“Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled
folks, Black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives
along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been marginalized within
Black liberation movements.”5 The movement is attuned to the potential for op-
pression within its own ranks. For instance, it guards against the risk that White
“allies” or straight Black men will dominate.6 Such concerns reinforce the desire
1 Buchanan, Bui & Patel, 2020.

2 Combahee River Collective 1977. Another watershed is the idea of intersectionality as intro-
duced in Crenshaw 1989. That is a law review article, primarily concerned with critiquing the
way that anti-discrimination law treated cases involving people who face both race and gender
discrimination.
3 Lorde 1983/2009.
4 Ransby 2018, Kindle loc. 1366.
5 Garza 2016, 25.
6 “Herstory” on the Black Lives Matter website https://blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197570494.003.0008
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for horizontal and decentralized governance, which makes domination of any

kind less likely.

More generally, the movement strives to enact its own values internally, for
example, by using restorative justice rather than resorting to criminal law when
charges of sexual violence are made against its own.7 This approach can be
seen as consistent with the feminist idea that the personal is political, cited by
the Combahee River Collective in 1977, by Brandi Collins-Dexter from Color
of Change, and by many other current activists.8 It may also have practical ad-
vantages: if the movement embodies its own humane values, members are more
likely to be able to persist. Garza describes the “importance of community and
of collective care” for making “it possible for me to live to fight another day.”9
Finally, the concern with applying the movement’s values to itself is consistent
with a core Gandhian idea. If we can turn our political means (in this case, the
movement) into an exemplar, then we can be less concerned about defining the
ends precisely. We can improve the world directly by acting better.
I have neither the standing nor the expertise to evaluate these diagnoses,
values, and commitments. People who want to decide whether to join or support
(or oppose) Black Lives Matter should consider its substantive positions, its as-
sets and strategies, and the particular values that it imposes on itself. They should
also decide whether they would make appropriate participants or supporters.
I do not pretend to offer valuable insights on those questions. Instead, I will use
the movement as an example to elucidate the three traditions shown in table 7.1
in the previous and to raise generic questions that confront those traditions at
the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Black Lives Matter most directly fits the right-most column of table 7.1: it is
a nonviolent social movement that challenges the oppression of a population
based on identity. Its fundamental demand—that Black lives should matter to the
whole society—is a classic example of a demand to be included in the “we” that
deliberates and governs. It meets all of the criteria for nonviolence and for social
movements explored in chapter 6. Its nonviolent character is demonstrated by
outcomes: in 96 percent of documented Black Lives Matter protests, there was no
property damage, and in 98 percent, no injuries were reported. Those statistics
reflect training and commitment to nonviolence.10 For analysts of social move-
ments in general, Black Lives Matter raises questions that have theoretical and
strategic significance.
First, many Black Lives Matter participants favor a decentralized structure

and explicitly criticize organizations that rely on charismatic leaders who have
7 Ransby 2018, Kindle loc. 1805.

8 Stewart & Ghaffary 2020.
9 Pozner 2016.
10 Chenoweth & Pressman 2020.
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Black Lives Matter 179
accumulated fame and authority. The civil rights movement was polycentric, but
Black Lives Matter is more so. It would not be correct to describe Black Lives
Matter as unorganized or as resistant to formal structures of any kind. Barbara
Ransby describes “an assemblage of dozens of organizations and individuals that
are actively in one another’s orbit, having collectively employed an array of tac-
tics together.” Many of these organizations are autonomous nonprofits; some
are companies or programs within organizations that also have other purposes.
Ransby emphasizes the importance of local chapters, of organizations whose
main purpose is to “weave together” these local groups, and of significant confer-
ences, such as a gathering of more than two thousand organizers in Cleveland in
July 2015.11 Most dedicated activists in the movement have long resumes of roles
in formal organizations.
However, the structure looks different from that of the civil rights movement.
The NAACP, the Urban League, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
exemplified a model that was influential in the United States during the first
half of the 1900s. National organizations often had state units and local chap-
ters; members paid dues that were shared by the three tiers; and leaders were
elected at each level, often at face-to-face conventions. Individuals made whole
careers within one of these organizations. One reason that the Sleeping Car
Porters’ A. Philip Randolph, the National Urban League’s Whitney Young Jr., and
the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins emerged as nationally famous civil rights leaders was
that they headed their respective organizations, and smaller groups like King’s
Southern Christian Leadership Conference imitated the same structure.12
However, this format shrank and weakened dramatically in the United States
after the 1960s.13 Instead, US civil society is now dominated by autonomous
nonprofits that rely on donations, grants, or contracts. They usually have self-
perpetuating boards and relate to each other in networks rather than hierarchies.
Many are both led and staffed by their original founders. Individuals typically af-
filiate with several of these nonprofits and add and subtract affiliations frequently.
One view would be that relatively loose, voluntary networks are preferable to
centralized organizations, because organization is a cause of oligarchy. Fredrick
Harris writes, “When activists remind us that the Black Lives Matter movement
is different from the civil rights movement, they are making a conscious decision
to avoid mistakes from the past. They are rejecting the charismatic leadership
model that has dominated black politics for the past half century, and for good
reason.”14
11 Ransby 2018, Kindle locs. 255, 283, 2292, 2352.

12 Southern Christian Leadership Conference 1957 (providing for affiliates with voting rights and
an elected national board, but no state tier).
13 Skocpol 2013.
14 Harris 2015, 36.
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Even if formal organizations were necessary half a century ago, electronic

networks may enable decentralized movements to succeed today. Incorporated

nonprofits like the NAACP and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters played
the same role that for-profit firms play in markets, according to Ronald Coase: al-
lowing coordination at large scales. But a hashtag is an example of technological
tool that enables coordination without hierarchy and bureaucracy.15 Black Lives
Matter has used social media effectively for recruitment, communication, and
coalition-building.16 Perhaps Michels’s Iron Law of Oligarchy is thereby resolved.
An alternate view is that the current structure of civil society is too fragmented
and dependent on philanthropy. According to this view, there are advantages to
dues-funded national movements that provide a range of services to their mem-
bers and select their leaders and policies by debating and voting.17 An elected
leader of a national organization is in a position to negotiate with mayors, corpo-
rate boards, and presidents. In order to negotiate, a leader must be able to cred-
ibly promise that many people will vote, go back to work, or end a direct action
in return for a concession. Black Lives Matter arguably lacks that capacity so far,
mainly because of broader trends in US civil society that have undermined large,
membership-based organizations.
A related issue is social capital. To involve many people in a risky and de-
manding social movement requires a solution to a collective action problem.
Many studies find that such solutions are easier when people are already config-
ured in functional groups.18 As we saw in c hapter 2, Montgomery’s Black leaders
reconfigured the social capital of African American churches to generate an ef-
fective bus boycott. One view is that pre-existing social capital is less important
today because digital networks now allow organizers to identify and coordinate
people at low cost. Another view is that social capital is still important, and the
activists of Black Lives Matter have it. Their biographies often reveal long histo-
ries of involvement with organizations. A third view is that Black Lives Matter
depends on social capital but doesn’t yet have enough of it. Many people have
been involved in the movement, but not enough to win durable policy victories
at large scale, and the reason is a general weakness of social capital in contem-
porary America. People who are already motivated to participate in a political
movement can easily find each other online, but it is harder to recruit people who
lack political motivations as long as social capital is weak. Black Montgomerians
went to church for God and community, and once in their pews, they could
be recruited for bus boycotts. Churches (and their functional equivalents) are
scarcer today.
15 Shirky 2008, 30 and later, citing Coase 1937.

16 Mundt, Ross & Burnett 2018.
17 Han 2017.
18 E.g., Paxton 2002.
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A third topic is raised by the critique of respectability politics in twenty-first-

century movements like Black Lives Matter. Tilly identifies “worthiness” as one
of the assets of social movements. King and his fellow pastors often demon-
strated worthiness by acting as pillars of morally conventional, Protestant faith
communities in the Southern United States. A prevalent view today is that con-
forming to mainstream definitions of worthiness perpetuates oppression. One
response is that worthiness has always come in many forms, and young activists
who demonstrate that they have been personally oppressed on account of their
intersecting identities—for example, race, gender, and sexual orientation—are
asserting a kind of worthiness. A different response is that social movements still
benefit from recruiting conventionally respectable allies.
If Black Lives Matter is most obviously a nonviolent social movement, it also
contributes to the Habermasian Public Sphere of the United States. It origi-
nated when Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi began using the
hashtag #BlackLivesMatter to identify material shared on social media that re-
vealed racist policing and criminal justice policies. These were fundamentally
discursive acts. The movement challenged a public silence about racist policing
and mass incarceration. But the flexibility and openness of the hashtag allowed
many perspectives to air. Among the people who would generally identify with
Black Lives Matter, the range of opinions, ideologies, and perspectives has been
notable.19 The movement has also provoked discursive responses. Prominent
examples include #AllLivesMatter (disputing—or failing to grasp—the premise
that society discounts Black lives) and #BlueLivesMatter (treating the police as
the wronged and misunderstood group).
Given Habermas’s reputation as a proponent of dispassionate deliberation
that reflects every perspective, Black Lives Matter may not come to mind as an
illustration of his theory. It is a movement with objectives; it is rooted in a partic-
ular demographic group, and it is fueled by strong emotions and committed to
adversarial tactics. But I hope to have shown in c hapter 5 that Habermas’s repu-
tation is misleading; he advocates adversarial social movements that revive the
Public Sphere. Black Lives Matter is classically Habermasian in its efforts to make
unrecognized aspects of people’s Lifeworlds, such as their unconscious racial
biases, matters of explicit debate.
The discussion of race in America is currently polarized. In response to Black
Lives Matter, some communities and institutions are discussing structural racism
with unprecedented depth. In other communities, the movement is seen as vio-

lent and racist against Whites.20 When people talk only to others who generally
agree with them, they can fail to learn, they may weaken their own influence, and
they can encourage the spread of false information. However, that does not mean
19 Tillery 2019.
20 For this pattern on Twitter, see Ray, Brown, Fraistat & Summers 2017.
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that we need one national Public Sphere right away. If everyone (or a representa-
tive sample of everyone) were involved in one big discussion, then it would have
a White, suburban plurality and it would marginalize ostensibly radical ideas,
like defunding the police. The conversation is richer if it at least begins in many
different settings that have different majorities. In chapter 5, I reviewed argu-
ments in favor of multiple public spheres. Having many different discussions is
preferable to one majority-dominated conversation that marginalizes important
topics. Black Lives Matter has enriched and generated public discourse.
Within a Habermasian framework, one issue that arises is whether move-
ments like Black Lives Matter are obliged to propose policies supported by
reasons that should persuade everyone, including White people. That kind of
discourse sounds Habermasian, but some Black Lives Matter activists have dis-
puted its value.
For example, Julius Jones of Black Lives Matter encountered Hillary Clinton
while she was running for president in 2015.21 Jones told Clinton, “You and your
family have been personally and politically responsible for policies that have
caused . . . disasters in impoverished communities of color. . . . And so I just want
to know how you feel about your role in that violence and how you plan to re-
verse it?” In response, Clinton acknowledged the harmful consequences of the
War on Drugs and mass incarceration. The two then disagreed about whether
those policies were “extensions of white supremacist violence” (Jones) or else
well-intentioned responses to the “very serious crime wave that was impacting
primarily communities of color and poor people” and to the “very real concerns
of people in the communities themselves” (Clinton).
So far, this exchange reads as a disagreement about a shared question. But
Clinton repeatedly asks Jones for policy proposals, and Jones repeatedly presses
Clinton for more explicit expressions of regret or changes of heart. The dialogue
ends with this exchange:
JONES: The piece that’s most important, and I stand here in your space, and I say
this as respectfully as I can, but you don’t tell Black people what we need to
do. And we won’t tell you all what you need to do.
HILLARY CLINTON: I’m not telling you—I’m just telling you to tell me. . . . Well,
respectfully, if that is your position then I will talk only to White people about
how we are going to deal with the very real problems—
21 Public event in Keene, New Hampshire, August 11, 2015, transcribed by Marina Fang, https://
www.scribd.com/doc/275013188/Transcr ipt-Hillary-C linton-meet ing-with-Black-L ives-Mat

ter-activists?irgwc=1&content=27795&campaign=VigLink&ad_group=561053&keyword=ft500
noi&source=impactradius&medium=affiliate.
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JONES: That’s not what I mean. That’s not what I mean. But like what I’m saying is
what you just said was a form of victim-blaming. Right you were saying that
what the Black Lives Matter movement needs to do to change white hearts—
HILLARY CLINTON: Look I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change
laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems
operate. . . .
One disagreement here is about mechanisms of change. Clinton acknow-

ledges that there is value to the “the consciousness-raising, the advocacy, the
passion, . . . of your movement,” but she believes that change always requires the
passage of laws that reallocate rights and powers. Jones thinks that what Clinton
believes and says to other White people about their own responsibility is a crucial
element of change.
Another difference is about the diagnosis of social problems. Clinton sees
a set of interlocking causes for mass incarceration, including well-intentioned
laws and economic trends as well as racism. “You know, it’s not just an economic
issue—although I grant that some of you will see it like that. But it’s more than
that and I think there is a sense that, low level offenders, disparity treatment,
we’ve got to do something about that. I think that a lot of the issues about housing
and about job opportunities—‘Ban The Box’—a lot of these things, let’s get an
agenda that addresses as much of the problem as we can.”
In partial contrast, Jones sees one root cause of the problem, and it involves
the hearts of White people (which Clinton has said you can’t change). Jones says,
“Until someone takes that message and speaks that truth to White people in this
country so that we can actually take on anti-Blackness as a founding problem in
this country, I don’t believe that there is going to be a solution.”
But for our purposes, the most significant difference involves the question of
who should explain what to whom. In her famous remarks entitled “The Master’s
Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” Audre Lorde argued that it is
not the job of oppressed peoples to educate their oppressors. “This is an old and
primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s
concerns.” For instance, to say that women of color must educate White women
“is a diversion and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought.”22 In his ex-
change with Clinton, Jones echoes Lorde’s argument. Complaining that the op-
pressed haven’t proposed specific solutions—as Clinton does—is “blaming the
victim.”
In Clinton’s mind, she is a would-be lawmaker, trying to gain power in the
System of government. Because the System is a democracy, she is responsible
to the public for saying what she plans to do, and why. In her mind, Jones is a
22 Lorde 1984.
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citizen, which means that he has a right to petition government for the redress
of grievances and to receive a response with an explanation. He also has an ob-

ligation to envision a more just outcome. If this is her theory, it is compatible
with Habermas. It assumes that both parties are part of a “we” that is involved
in governance. Jones, in contrast, sees himself as a Black person confronting a
White person who is asking him to solve the problems that White people have
caused. The only acceptable outcome is for her to fully and publicly accept her
own responsibility. The question of general theoretical significance is whether
and when a social movement must offer arguments about the public good that
are meant for all.
Despite Jones’s reluctance to propose policies in this particular exchange,
Black Lives Matter has, in fact, developed policy demands that include reforms
of formal institutions. On the list of demands is “community control.”
We demand a world where those most impacted in our communities control

the laws, institutions, and policies that are meant to serve us—from our schools
to our local budgets, economies, police departments, and our land—while rec-
ognizing that the rights and histories of our Indigenous family must also be
respected. This includes:
Direct democratic community control of local, state, and federal law en-
forcement agencies, ensuring that communities most harmed by destructive
policing have the power to hire and fire officers, determine disciplinary action,
control budgets and policies, and subpoena relevant agency information.
An end to the privatization of education and real community control by
parents, students and community members of schools including democratic
school boards and community control of curriculum, hiring, firing and disci-
pline policies.
Participatory budgeting at the local, state and federal level.23
These ideas are highly congruent with the Bloomington School. As it happens,
Elinor Ostrom extensively studied policing early in her career and drew many of
her fundamental insights from her criminal justice research. She did not add an-
ything original or significant to the debate about racism in the United States. She
did not recognize that policing might be designed to reproduce white supremacy
(a common-pool resource for White people) as well as, or sometimes instead of,
public safety (a common-pool resource for all). However, she offered trenchant
thoughts about how to put communities in control of police.
23 The Movement for Black Lives, Platform, Community Control: https://m4bl.org/policy-plat-
forms/community-control/
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Ostrom saw police as consumers and providers of a whole set of “services”

(training, forensics, traffic control, patrol, arrests, pretrial detention, investi-

gation, and more). Each unit within the world of policing—whether a forensic
lab, a police station, or a specialized investigative team—negotiated with many
other units to do its work. Some negotiations were formal, such as a town’s po-
lice department paying a different city’s forensic lab for services. More often, the
negotiations within and among police systems were informal. Citizens were also
organized in numerous overlapping ways—towns, counties, states, voluntary
associations, juries—that influenced the police.
Ostrom analyzed all this complexity from the perspective of individuals, some
of whom might happen to be police officers or other kinds of “professionals.”
Citizens—meaning all individuals concerned with solving problems—would
generally benefit if: (1) there were many potential providers of services, so that
they had some choice; (2) the scale and boundaries of problems matched the
scale and mandate of organizations; and (3) they could influence the goals and
priorities of the police.
Her main empirical finding was that consolidating police departments
reduced the quality of policing—as defined by citizens.24 Consolidation limited
the choice available for services like training and forensics. It reduced the lev-
erage that local police had over larger entities. It kept front-line professionals
from being able to define goals and priorities, because they got slotted into larger
systems. It kept them from addressing local problems (e.g., dangerous streets)
because they had to meet targets, such as numbers of arrests, that came down
from bureaucracies. And it blocked citizens in diverse communities from de-
fining what “good policing” should mean. Ostrom and Gordon P. Whitaker spe-
cifically showed that Black citizens were more satisfied with both the fairness and
the efficiency of policing in small, majority-Black autonomous urban areas than
in comparable neighborhoods within Chicago.25
Public safety (with a dimension of fairness to all) is a common-pool resource.
Everyone benefits when it is provided, but anyone can degrade it by illegally
harming others; and many people must actively contribute to make it available.
As we saw in c hapter 4, the Bloomington School developed design principles that
help with the management of common-pool resources. Here I examine whether
policing in the United States meets these criteria:
1. Clear boundaries. Policing in the United States generally fulfills this de-
sign principle. Most police forces and organizations have clearly defined
jurisdictions. The fact that the geographical boundaries around police
24 E. Ostrom, Baugh, Guarasci, Parks & Whitaker 1973.

25 E. Ostrom & Whitaker 1974.
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departments, sheriffs’ departments, state police, and federal law enforce-

ment agencies form a complex pattern is probably an advantage, not a

source of inefficiency or damaging conflict, according to the Ostroms’ poly-
centric theory.
2. The users of a resource should do their own monitoring. This principle would
imply that the people who rely on the police for public safety would also
have the means to track the performance of police and take effective ac-
tion when they detect inefficiency, corruption, and bias. There are existing
examples of relatively ambitious processes for that purpose, such as Beat
Meetings in Chicago.26 However, monitoring systems seem poorly devel-
oped in the United States.
3. Sanctions should begin modestly but rise with repeated infractions. A first-
time offender should be able to pay the price and then be completely
embraced by the community. Although penalties should start low, they
should rise steadily with repeated infractions. For both lawbreakers and
police, this principle is almost uniformly ignored in American criminal
justice.
4. The rules must be congruent with local physical, cultural, and institutional
conditions. This principle is violated in two major ways. First, although po-
lice jurisdictions are clear, they often fail to match demographic realities.
For example, at the time of Michael Brown’s killing, African Americans
constituted a narrow majority of the population of Ferguson, Missouri,
but there were no Black city councilors or other senior officials in the city.
According to the US Department of Justice, Ferguson’s entire criminal jus-
tice system was “focused on generating revenue” by collecting fines, pre-
dominantly from African Americans and frequently in violation of the US
Constitution.27 Given patterns of racial discrimination, plus the potential
to profit financially from discriminatory policing, it was a recipe for abuse
to place a Black community inside a small autonomous town dominated
by the white population.28 In this case, the location of borders contributed
to injustice. Second, the laws governing citizens and police alike are set by
state legislatures and Congress. Decisions made at these high levels are not
appropriate or just for many specific contexts. For example, criminalizing
drugs might have some benefits for reducing drug abuse, but it is harmful
in the neighborhoods where drugs are sold. More generally, it means that
the pattern seen in Ferguson is replicated at the state level, because African
Americans are a minority in every state. Devolving police control to actual
communities would reduce discrimination.
26 Fung 2009.
27 Civil Rights Division 2015.
28 My own visit to Ferguson on May 15, 2017, confirmed these observations, including the premise
that there is a Black community in the city that is notably separate from the White community.
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5. Participation. Most Americans have a vote and free speech. But we exer-
cise those forms of influence at inappropriate scales and within unhelpful

boundaries. A citizen of Ferguson gets a vote in Missouri statewide elec-
tions but is outvoted by suburban citizens. The police are more accountable
to the county and the state than to the specific communities where they
work.
6. Conflict-resolution mechanisms should be rapid and easy to use. In the con-
text of criminal justice, this would mean helping citizens to resolve disputes
without necessarily involving the police. It would also mean allowing citi-
zens to resolve their disputes with the police without filing federal lawsuits.
Both opportunities seem sorely lacking, despite important exceptions.
7. Smaller systems should be nested in larger systems, and the more powerful big
systems should recognize or at least tolerate the authority of the smaller ones.
We do the opposite. Mandates flow down from states to cities to neighbor-
hoods; and Congress influences the whole system without much account-
ability. In fact, community members are hardly involved at all in making
rules in the domain of criminal justice.
In short, criminal justice in the United States is a commons problem that we

manage in ways that conspicuously violate all but one principle for the manage-
ment of common resources.
The advice of the Bloomington School is very general. Its principles can be
applied without reference to racism or racial disparities. In contrast, Black Lives
Matter defines a collection of oppressive systems as the salient problem. But the
two perspectives are compatible because pervasive racism increases the need for
well-structured institutions. If we assume that the majority population is prone
to treat minorities unfairly, or even cruelly, that is an extra reason to design the
rules right. We should also work on reducing racial bias, but we would have to
be very optimistic about the malleability of mass psychology not to give atten-
tion to institutions. The Bloomington School’s design principles are particularly
important when we have good reason to mistrust key actors. Black Lives Matter
activists demonstrate their concern with institutional design when they advocate
reforms like Participatory Budgeting and campaign finance reform.
Another policy proposal that has been debated within the broader movement
(but not included in the Platform) is the abolition of police. Raising this idea has
the Habermasian advantage of making controversial a widely accepted premise,

a “taken-for-granted.” Why, after all, do we employ armed and uniformed par-
amilitary organizations to keep the domestic peace? The idea of abolishing po-
lice is worthy of debate. However, wholesale social transformation has a poor
record of success. The Black Lives Matter Platform starts instead with proposals
for redesigning the governance of police in ways that are congruent with the
Bloomington School.
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This approach also has the advantage of viewing public safety as the job of
many actors, of which the police are only one. There is growing evidence that
voluntary citizens’ efforts are important for reducing crime. Sharkey, Torrats-
Espinosa, and Takyar find that “every 10 additional organizations focusing on
crime and community life in a city with 100,000 residents leads to a 9 percent
reduction in the murder rate, a 6 percent reduction in the violent crime rate, and
a 4 percent reduction in the property crime rate.”29 That finding fits very nicely
with the Ostroms’ theory. Vincent Ostrom told Paul Aligica:
We do not think of “government” or “governance” as something provided

by states alone. Families, voluntary associations, villages, and other forms of
human association all involve some form of self-government. Rather than
looking only to states, we need to give much more attention to building the
kinds of basic institutional structures that enable people to find ways of relating
constructively to one another and of resolving problems in their daily lives.30
The problem with policing is that we have not built structures that allow people
to relate constructively across lines of race (and gender and class) in order to re-
solve the problems that they define as important.
This case illustrates how problems of collective action, of beliefs and values,
and of identity intersect, and how each type of problem creates openings for citi-
zens and their movements.
29 Sharkey, Torrats-Espinosa & Takyar, 2017.

30 V. Ostrom to P. Aligica, 2003, in Tarko 2017, 49.
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9
Moving to Large Scales
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 began with vignettes of people who exercised civic agency in
relatively small groups: managing a common resource, discussing a public issue,
or nonviolently confronting an opponent. At these limited scales, we cannot ad-
dress the world’s great problems. We can decide to conserve carbon ourselves,
but not to change how much carbon is consumed by human beings. We can join
groups that reflect our values, but not decide which values prevail in the society
as a whole.
Therefore, we must also consider civic agency at the scale of states, massive so-
cial networks and movements, markets, and the earth. In his popular 1973 man-
ifesto, Small Is Beautiful, E. F. Schumacher writes, “We need the freedom of lots
and lots of small, autonomous units, and, at the same time, the orderliness of
large-scale, possibly global, unity and coordination.” Small units are necessary to
enable “action”—real, tangible decisions with consequences. But when it comes
to major issues like peace and the environment, “we need to recognise the unity
of mankind and base our actions upon this recognition.”1
Schumacher suggests a choice when he writes that the values of large and
small entities are “incompatible” and “exclude each other.”2 I will propose a
fruitful combination that involves giving certain kinds of small group leverage
over large groups. But first, it is illuminating to consider forceful arguments for
and against bigness.
The case for the small: For Hannah Arendt, the core value in the civic repub-
lican tradition, to which she subscribes, is political action or civic agency: the
capacity to shape the world intentionally in concert with others. In a 1967 man-
uscript, Arendt writes:
The first elements of a political philosophy corresponding to this notion of

public freedom are spelled out in John Adams’s writings. His point of depar-
ture is the observation that “Wherever men, women, or children are to be
found, whether they be old or young, rich or poor, high or low . . . ignorant or
learned, every individual is seen to be strongly actuated by a desire to be seen,
heard, talked of, approved and respected by the people about him and within
1 Schumacher 1973, 61.

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197570494.003.0009
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his knowledge.” . . . It is the desire to excel which makes men love the company
of their peers and spurs them on into the public realm. This public freedom is a
tangible worldly reality, created by men to enjoy together in public—to be seen,
heard, known, and remembered by others. And this kind of freedom demands
equality, it is possible only amongst peers. Institutionally speaking, it is possible
only in a republic, which knows no subjects.3
For Arendt, public freedom requires speaking and performing well in public
discussions so as to attract the voluntary admiration of peers. As Schumacher
says, “action” is “a highly personal affair.”4 These assumptions drive Arendt to
favor small scales, face-to-face interactions, and radical proposals for decen-
tralization. For example, she endorses Jefferson’s proposal to divide the whole
country into “wards of such size as that every citizen can attend, when called
on, and act in person.” In Jefferson’s vision, these “ward republics” would share
power with larger units (counties, states, and the “general federal republic”),
using the principle that was later named “subsidiarity”: every decision should be
made at the smallest practicable scale. Jefferson concluded: “it is by division and
subdivision of duties alone, that all matters, great and small, can be managed to
perfection. And the whole is cemented by giving to every citizen, personally, a
part in the administration of the public affairs.”5
We do not have ward republics, but even in a society structured like ours, we
see “public freedom” emerge in smaller settings: classrooms devoted to reflec-
tion and service, meetings convened by community organizers, and efforts to
restore wetlands and woods. Individual actions count more tangibly when num-
bers are small. It makes a difference whether you take fish from the pond, raise
your hand to make an argument, or join a march. If you are not satisfied with
the collective outcome, you have the options of voice or exit. Both matter. In a
small group, your voice may be heard and may influence others. Your exit will
noticeably change the size and composition of the whole. But at larger scales,
individual influence becomes difficult to detect because millions or billions of
others are also at work and no one may notice if you speak or leave. As Arendt
said in a 1974 interview, “We don’t know the future but everybody acts into the
future. Nobody knows what he is doing because the future is being done, action
is being done by a ‘we’ and not an ‘I.’ Only if I were the only one acting could
I foretell the consequences of what I’m doing.”6 So long as the “we” is concrete
3 Arendt c. 1967/2017.
5 Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, June 12, 1816, text at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/
document/letter-to-samuel-kercheval/.
6 Arendt 1974.
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Moving to Large Scales 191
and tangible, the “I” is still meaningfully part of it. But once the “we” numbers
millions or billions, the link to each “I” stretches to a breaking point.

Besides, political acts tend to become cruder and less communicative as scales
increase. Consider voting, which is a characteristic way of making aggregate de-
cisions when numbers are large. Walter Lippmann wrote in 1925, “We go into
a polling booth and mark a cross on a piece of paper for one of two, or perhaps
three or four names. Have we expressed our thoughts on the public policy of
the United States? Presumably we have a number of thoughts on this and that
with many buts and ifs and ors. Surely the cross on a piece of paper does not ex-
press them. It would take hours to express our thoughts, and calling a vote the
expression of our mind is an empty fiction.”7 That seems to be true of voting in
a national election, but compare voting within the US Supreme Court. There,
not only does every vote matter a great deal (because there are only nine voters),
but it is easy to combine voting with negotiation, deliberation, and relationship-
building. Justices confer before they vote. They hear arguments and read briefs.
They not only vote for or against decisions but often vote on lengthy opinions
that come with rationales, exceptions, and other nuances. They give reasons for
their votes. In a group of nine, each member can work to build trust, obtain in-
fluence, and acknowledge others’ sacrifices and defeats. The core mechanism re-
mains majority rule, but the small number of justices allows voting to be just one
aspect of their interactions. Sometimes a Supreme Court opinion that is defeated
at the time of the vote becomes more influential than the majority’s opinion as
the minority view gradually changes minds. A dissent is, as Chief Justice Charles
Evans Hughes wrote, “an appeal . . . to the intelligence of a future day, when a later
decision may possibly correct the error into which the dissenting judge believes
the court to have been betrayed.”8 In small groups, such appeals can be effec-
tive because the content and reasons can be communicated. But in an election
involving 100 million people, each vote communicates nothing but the bare fact
of agreement or disagreement.
The case for large scales: Philip Pettit—drawing on Hamilton and Madison,
among others—offers arguments for expanding the scale of politics. Pettit
acknowledges a “recurrent, if not unfailing, emphasis on the importance of dem-
ocratic participation” in the civic republican tradition. But for him, participation
is not an end but a “means of furthering liberty.”9 Pettit even decries “the influ-
ence of a bad, populist history” that wrongly emphasizes “democratic participa-
tion and public activism” as ends in themselves rather than tools for promoting
liberty.10 He cites Arendt as an influential proponent of that mistaken view of
7 Lippmann 1925, 56.

8 Quoted in Gaffney 1994, 583.
9 Pettit 2000, 27, 30.
10 Pettit 2000, 140.
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the republican heritage.11 According to Pettit, it is fortunate that republicanism

is about liberty rather than participation, because “a participatory ideal is not

feasible in the modern world.”12 One reason is that our societies have grown too
large for everyone to be involved in self-government. We can still be republicans,
however, because the heart of republicanism is liberty.
For Pettit, liberty means non-domination, freedom from any other person’s
arbitrary will.13 Non-domination is different from freedom in the sense of lim-
itations on personal choice. A person can be limited in ways that do not involve
arbitrary will: by fair laws, fairly designed and implemented. If you think that
arbitrariness (rather than constraint) is the main threat to liberty, then you can
favor strong democratic institutions, as Pettit does. But they cannot be simply
majoritarian. Instead, they must be designed to produce non-arbitrary deci-
sions: decisions that are justified by reasons, influenced by all opinions, and con-
sistent with rules.
From this perspective, scale is not an intrinsic problem. Madison and his
fellow Federalists argued that it was possible—perhaps even preferable—for a
republic to be “extended over a large region.” Such “auxiliary precautions” as con-
stitutional checks-and-balances can work well in nation-states.14 Expanding the
size of a republic can even reduce threats to liberty by making it more difficult for
any faction to dominate another. We might add that by putting distance among
citizens and forcing them to interact through impersonal media, such as votes,
we reduce the odds that any person will dominate another.15 In this version of
republicanism, the basic problem is one of collective action: how to design insti-
tutions so that they deliver public goods without infringing on the liberty of their
members. Many precautions are necessary, and one of them may be a deliberate
increase in scale. Making the republic too large for all its members to convene
can prevent authoritarianism (“those military establishments which have sub-
verted the liberties of the Old World”) and collective-action problems among the
people (“the diseases of faction”).16
It is also worth noting that increasing scale is not automatically problematic
for what Schumacher calls “freedom” and “action.” Small groups can be dysfunc-
tional—or functional for most of their members, yet unresponsive to a few—and
large groups can create spaces for civic agency. Members of the Catholic Church,
adherents of Sunni Islam, users of Facebook, users of the Internet as a whole, and
citizens of India and of the People’s Republic of China belong to groups larger
11 Pettit 2000, 8.
12 Pettit 2000, 81.
13 Cf. Shapiro 2016 for a more recent version that I find more pragmatic and empirically grounded.
14 Madison, Federalist 51.
15 Cf. Mansbridge 1980, 34.
16 Madison, Federalist 14.
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than one billion. I have chosen this list to display a variety of governance systems
and degrees of hierarchy. Such differences may matter, but even strongly central-
ized systems do not block agency completely: ordinary members are busy advo-
cating and acting on Facebook and in India.
Another example demonstrates that large groups can encompass a great deal
of horizontal, relational politics. Los Indignados, a movement composed of
15 million protesters in sixty Spanish cities, arose in 2011. Bennett and Segerberg
observe that Los Indignados excluded “political parties, unions, and other pow-
erful political organizations,” treating them “as part of the political problem.”
Instead, they built “richly layered digital and interpersonal communication net-
works centering around the media hub of Democracia real YA!”17 That was a case
in which Schumacher’s “small, autonomous units” achieved some of the “the or-
derliness of large-scale . . . unity and coordination.”18 We could even regard the
entire human species as linked through markets and through the (admittedly
weak) coordinating mechanisms of treaties and the United Nations.
Leverage: The Small Influencing the Big
Having canvassed some relevant arguments for and against scale, I would like to
focus on the link between small and large: leverage. Archimedes said, “Give me
a place to stand, and I shall move the world.” Of course, Archimedes did not im-
agine that he would reach out and push the globe. Instead, he would move a lever
that would pivot on a third object and thereby move the world. The third object is
what makes his thought-experiment a story about leverage.
Likewise, individuals and “small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens”
sometimes plan and execute actions that affect many other people.19 To succeed,
they must directly influence a person, a small group, or an institution that then
moves many other people. Sometimes a more extended series of such levers is
necessary.
For example, if you persuade the chair of a legislative committee to advance a
bill that becomes a law that the police enforce on a whole population, you have
used a series of levers to move millions. If you borrow money to start a firm that
employs a workforce and serves a market, you have used financial (instead of leg-
islative) leverage. And if you persuade a celebrity to raise public awareness of an
issue, your leverage is cultural.
17 Bennett & Segerberg 2012.

19 Cf. the quote attributed to Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, com-
mitted citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” This is an exaggeration,
and it’s not clear that Mead ever said it (Lutkehaus 2008, 261).
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In mass societies, we should use leverage. Otherwise, we will render ourselves

unnecessarily weak. This is another way of saying that we should be strategic

actors. In discussing what we should do, we should consider strategies that may
affect people far away and change larger systems. But we should address three
major drawbacks of leverage.
First, leverage bypasses the relational politics that people like Dewey and
Arendt have seen as part of the good life. Arendt writes that freedom requires
“the presence of others,” which implies “a place where people [can] come to-
gether—the agora, the market-place, or the polis, the political space proper.”20
Acts of leverage avoid such direct and reciprocal contact, thus missing some
of the richness of politics. Arendt wants citizens (quoting Adams) “to be seen,
heard, talked of, approved and respected.” She sees political engagement as a pos-
itive good, as a chance to manifest civic virtues that are part of the good life for
human beings.
Second, leverage tends to be one-directional. In the physical contexts envi-
sioned by Archimedes, leverage can go two ways: people can hold on to op-
posite sides of a lever and try to move each other simultaneously. But in social
contexts, some usually exercise leverage over others without much reciprocity.
For instance, the advocates who persuade legislators to pass a law are agents;
the population is their object. Those affected may have rights, including the
right to vote on the law or to challenge it in court. In such cases, I would not
regard the law as coercive; it is compatible with their liberty, in the sense that
they have not been dominated by anyone’s arbitrary will. The law might even
expand their liberty. Nevertheless, they are affected by someone else’s leveraged
influence. Someone has envisioned and executed a plan that confronts them as
something to accept or resist. In many cases, they will not know who is influen-
cing them, because chains of leverage are difficult to follow in a social context.
Or they may be able to detect the responsible parties but find that it’s too late to
respond, for social action unfolds over time and is difficult to reverse. Citizens
who have rights can resist a law but not necessarily affect the ones responsible
for passing it.
When I was an undergraduate, one of my friends developed a proposal that
our university should provide financial aid for summertime community service
in return for the students’ presenting their work at alumni clubs, which would
help the university’s fund-raising efforts. Along with several others, I helped to
persuade the university to enact this policy, which then lasted for decades. I am
proud of participating in this effort, in part because it reflected skillful leverage
by our small group. For years after we graduated, students who had never heard
20 Arendt 1963, 21.
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of us received financial aid because we had leveraged the financial resources of

the institution. We had changed these students’ circumstances. They could, in

turn, make changes of their own. They could reform or oppose the policy that we
had created (thus demonstrating voice) or cause it to die by not participating in
it (exit). But they could not persuade or otherwise affect us; we were gone. Our
agency was by its nature one-sided.
A third problem with leverage is that it gives full rein to our cognitive and eth-
ical limitations and biases. A person with leverage can use it to promote beliefs
or goals that he or she holds for bad reasons. If given power over others, we may
use it foolishly. Checks on leverage—such as laws, division of powers, finite re-
sources, and counter-leverage from other people—may prevent us from doing
much damage, but we cannot rely on such checks to help us do good. Madison
might counsel that we settle for not allowing too much harm in public life, while
allowing people to aim for excellence in private spaces. But critics like Arendt
want us to devolve power to small settings where people can relate to each other
directly so that they are forced to deliberate and negotiate with the fellow citi-
zens whom they affect. Each side will have to look its opponents in the eye. This
is an argument for the kind of decentralization that Jefferson proposed and that
Arendt endorsed.
I did not list inequality as a drawback of leverage, because the two are not in-
trinsically linked. Voting, for example, is a form of leverage because each voter
tries to influence who is selected as a leader (or whether a referendum is enacted
into law) with the objective of thereby influencing society as a whole. Everyone
can be guaranteed exactly one vote. Thus voting illustrates that leverage can be
used to enhance equity. And just as leverage can be equitably distributed—as in
fair voting systems—so situations without leverage can be highly unequal. That
happens, for example, when one person dominates another person directly in an
intimate setting like a family or a workplace.
I have explored three drawbacks of leverage: it is transactional rather than re-
lational; it is one-directional rather than reciprocal; and it leaves our biases alone.
These drawbacks make direct, relational politics seem preferable. However, we
do not actually have many robust spaces for republican self-rule. There are no
“ward republics.” We can envision revolutionary reforms that would decentralize
governments and create such spaces. But who would start such a revolution, and
why would it succeed? The Bolsheviks promised workers’ councils—soviets—
but quickly subverted them as they monopolized power for the state. Leverage
may be problematic, but a great deal of leverage would be required to create a
new society in which leverage became less influential.
Given the necessity and the drawbacks of leverage, I propose three maxims for
strategic actors:
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1. Don’t renounce leverage because it fails to put you in personal relationships

with the people you affect. You are obliged to be effective, and since we live
in large societies, that requires leverage. But . . .
2. Don’t use leverage on your own. Act strategically as part of groups that are
constituted to bring out the best in their members. And . . .
3. Use leverage to create better forms of politics for other people as well.
Even if we genuinely believe that our goals are good, we may be wrong. We
need the gift of other people’s perspectives. In themselves, acts of leverage usu-
ally do not give us such insights. We can vote on other people’s fates without
interacting with them. We can advocate for, or even enact, laws without knowing
the people whom they will constrain. However, before we vote, lobby, file suit,
donate money, advocate, run for office, legislate, or manage anything, we can
make sure to discuss the pending issues in forums that are collaborative and de-
liberative. This is idealistic advice but also practical and frequently followed by
responsible civic actors. It means asking “What should we do?” before deciding
how I will exercise my own leverage.
At one end of the lever should not stand Archimedes, deciding whether to pull
or not based on his personal beliefs and inclinations. Instead, leverage should
be exercised by a group that demands thoughtfulness and ethics from its mem-
bers. The group should encompass diverse perspectives, because a variety of
opinions challenges each member’s biases. The group should promote deliber-
ation and not hold any important questions as sacrosanct. Yet the group is not
a seminar or a debating society. It needs strong emotional glue of the right kind.
Unless its members trust and care for one another, they will be unlikely to over-
come collective-action problems and maintain their association as a political
force: that is a lesson from research on social capital. And unless the members
care for their peers, they will be unlikely to change their own beliefs and goals in
response to other people’s arguments and evidence. We are affective creatures,
not disembodied reasoners.
The group should persist over time, should be coherent, and should enable
its members to learn from experience and try again. This implies some cohe-
sion. At the same time, members should have the ability to quit, because exit
protects their individual rights and allows dissenters to vote with their feet,
which is an appropriate form of influence. By the same token, the group should
be reasonably porous so that outsiders can find a way in, and it should be rea-
sonably transparent so that people can critically assess it without having to join
it. Finally, members of the group should be connected to diverse others beyond
their common circle: both to powerful entities that offer resources and to the
kinds of people who may be most affected by their actions.
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An example is a group of workers who are deciding whether or not to strike.

A society that includes powerful unions along with firms and governments (ide-
ally, governments that have multiple layers and centers of power) is more poly-
centric than one with only firms and governments. It offers more venues for
people to exercise civic agency, as well as more checks on anyone’s power.
Unions employ leverage. Specifically, they gain leverage by striking or threat-
ening to strike. Striking workers prevent other people from working—and cli-
ents from being served—by using such tactics as work stoppages, sit-ins, picket
lines, and moral suasion against “scabs.” These are forms of leverage, with cus-
tomers being used to put pressure on an employer. The result is often, but not in-
evitably, consistent with justice. In some cases, the costs that a strike imposes on
others are too high. Therefore, unions should be structured to increase the odds
of wise judgment. It helps if the workers who decide whether or not to strike
form a group that is cohesive, deliberative, permeable, and accountable to the
whole community.
No organization is perfect, but we should choose to be strategic political actors
in groups that meet these criteria as well as possible. We may then use our group’s
leverage to pursue ordinary political objectives: higher wages or lower prices,
more or less regulation, peace or conflict, tradition or change (as we choose).
As citizens, we are entitled to pursue such ends, and our willingness to do so in
groups that challenge and improve us may help us to choose better. The political
system as a whole should limit every group’s leverage, but its design is beyond
our immediate control. The best we can do is to limit ourselves by acting as part
of good groups.
Along with pursuing ordinary political objectives, we may also sometimes use
our leverage to create better political opportunities for other people. I would not
go so far as to argue that political reform should always be our main objective;
groups may reasonably conclude that other issues take priority. But, when pos-
sible and consistent with other valid objectives, we should strive to create spaces
where other people can deliberate, collaborate, and form civic relationships. This
makes us, in David Mathews’s phrase, “political environmentalists,” people con-
cerned with protecting and restoring the public’s capacity to govern.21 To that
end, we should encourage, recruit, and support people to participate (giving spe-
cial attention to disparities in participation). And we should help participatory
groups to exercise more leverage over larger systems.
Consider the example of the Citizens Initiative Review (CIR), introduced in

chapter 5. In several states, a randomly selected jury of citizens has on several
occasions deliberated for several days and issued advice to the voting public on
a pending initiative or referendum. Viewed from close up, this appears to be an
21 Mathews 2014, 19.
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example of responsible leverage. The small group affects the whole state by influ-
encing voters, who decide the fate of a law. Random selection guarantees that the
group is diverse and is linked to a wide range of external actors. It also assures
that everyone has an equal chance of being represented, thus countering bias in
participation. Experience shows that participants in CIR deliberate carefully and
form strong affective bonds.22
We should, however, view the CIR in a broader context. After all, the par-
ticipants did not constitute themselves; they were randomly selected by an
organizing team. They certainly did not create the CIR process, let alone the ref-
erendum question that they deliberated on—still less, the process of holding ref-
erenda, which originated with populist reformers more than a century ago. The
CIR participants may exercise leverage, but they are also the objects of leverage by
others. To name a few key actors: Healthy Democracy is an Oregon-based non-
profit that advocates CIR; legislators and their civil society allies in several states
have worked to institutionalize it; Penn State professor John Gastil has conducted
influential research on it; and the Democracy Fund is one source of private re-
sources for all those efforts. In turn, Pierre Omidyar created the Democracy
Fund using profits from a firm, eBay, that he had founded in 1995. As is typical,
success has many parents, and it is not easy to trace all the causal influences.
But one path of leverage goes from an entrepreneur (Omidyar), through a large
for-profit company (eBay), to a foundation (Democracy Fund), to a specialized
nonprofit (Healthy Democracy), to a set of legislators, to state laws enacting CIR,
to the CIR participants, to the voters in their states, to the referenda, to aspects of
these states’ whole economies and societies.
CIR demonstrates that small groups of people can exercise leverage to create
forums in which other people can exercise political agency better—with more
deliberation, more effective collaboration, more constructive emotion, and
more external leverage than they would otherwise have. This does not imply
that our main strategy should be to expand the CIR and similar reforms, such as
Participatory Budgeting. Whether enacting laws to create minipublics is a plau-
sible strategy for political transformation is debatable. In a complex, globally
connected, and inevitably polycentric world, our strategies should probably be
more diverse than that. Some strategies may focus on the circulation of ideas in
mass society, on social movements, or on basic political rights.
The ideal is a world in which many people, regardless of their backgrounds
and resources, are actively encouraged to participate in forums for discussion

and collaboration that also help them to learn and grow together. They then act
to change the larger world, sometimes by making public sacrifices. The venues
22 Knobloch, Gastil, Reedy & Walsh 2013.
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take myriad forms at many levels. A well-functioning national legislature that

actually deliberates, generates policies, and represents the diversity of its public is
an example. So is a small voluntary association that aims to address a problem at
the other side of the earth. These are spaces in which people practice the funda-
mental civic acts of: (1) collaboration or self-governance; (2) deliberation about
values; and (3) sacrifice. The ideal is that everyone acts in these ways and obtains
positive results and satisfaction from doing so.
None of us can make this ideal come true. The world is not like this, and we
cannot make it so by simply calling for a more civic politics. The central argu-
ment of this book is that citizens must focus on what they should do; they must
not let a call for a better overall system substitute for their own strategic action in
the actual world.
But societies already are polycentric, with many centers of discussion and
decision-making. People already participate in self-governance in these forums,
at various scales. It is valuable to view our societies as already partially “civic,”
meaning that deliberation, problem-solving, learning, the formation of social
capital, and social movement activism occur around us. Seeing ourselves as part
of an already civic world is an important step. It is an appropriate antidote to de-
spair about democracy’s condition in the twenty-first century.23 Despair erases
all the hard civic work that goes on around us every day and tends to alienate us
from our fellow citizens.
By one estimate, in 2017, just over one in four American citizens was an ac-
tive participant in at least one group that he or she believed was accountable to
its members and inclusive.24 It is unacceptable that most Americans do not—
or cannot—have such experiences; and it appears that the rate of participation
has fallen since ca. 1970 with the decline of labor unions, religious congrega-
tions, volunteer-driven political parties, and metropolitan daily newspapers, all
of which used to recruit more and more diverse Americans into discussion and
political action. Among the reasons that these institutions have declined may be
intentional efforts to curtail and subvert them, such as changes in labor laws and
campaign finance.
Still, one in four is much better than none. It means that individuals can seek
out opportunities to join groups that ask, “What should we do?” about serious
23 E.g., Masha Gessen 2018 writes, “No politics is possible here.” It is ambiguous whether “here”
means the United States or the specific situation she has been exploring (the involvement of Louis
Farrakhan in anti-Trump protest marches). But she ends with a description of the “disastrous state of
American politics. Before Trump, there lingered the illusion that the public sphere contained some-
thing more than black-and-white choices and disastrous moral threats. . . . The Trump Presidency has
trampled that political vestige. Now, when the Women’s March fights a Twitter war about Farrakhan,
it seems that this is all there is.” See also Wolin 2006, 601–2.
24 Atwell, Bridgeland & Levine 2017, 21.
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and tractable problems. It also means that we can take concrete steps to increase
the proportion of our fellow citizens who have such opportunities and expand
their influence over the society as a whole. I call that effort “civic renewal.” It is
the effort to make the civic politics of deliberation, collaboration, and nonviolent
sacrifice more prevalent, accessible, and influential.
The word “renewal” is not meant to imply that politics was better in the past.
It was clearly worse in some countries at some times—including in the United
States for most of our own history. Rather, all societies always need renewal, be-
cause generations are replaced inexorably and because entropy degrades even
the best institutions. Societies should renew themselves in ways that are “civic”—
built on direct experience with deliberation, learning, rule-making, problem-
solving, and social-movement activism.
In The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can
Do It Again, Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett trace parallel trends
in economic equality, political comity (a willingness to work together across
partisan differences), associational membership, and communitarian cultural
norms in the United States between 1895 and 2015.25 All of these trends rose
substantially and fairly smoothly until about 1960 and then declined in a sym-
metrical pattern until they had returned to their 1895 baselines by the twenty-
first century.
It is true and important that women and African Americans are better off
today than they were in 1960 (at the peak of Putnam’s and Garrett’s trend lines),
but the authors argue that the conditions for greater equality were already in
place by then. Blacks and women have mainly retained their relative gains—with
considerable difficulty—in the ensuing decades.
The downward trend since 1960 is consistent with the decline of civic life that
Putnam analyzed in his 2000 bestseller, Bowling Alone, although he and Garrett
have broadened their measures. For our purposes, the relevant question is why
these trends showed such substantial increases during the preceding sixty years.
Putnam and Barrett attribute this “upswing” to deliberate work in decentralized
reform networks. Quoting Walter Lippmann, they describe an “immense col-
laboration” that attracted many people in many sectors: some changing norms,
some building associations or unions, some developing public policies at all
scales. National politicians who advocated various forms of community, from
Teddy Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, did not cause the upswing but responded
to a “vast, pluralistic upsurge of cultural critique, impassioned agitation, and

citizen-led reform that began long before” them.26
25 Putnam & Garrett 2020.

26 Putnam & Garrett 2020, 317–18.
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To illustrate this pluralistic movement, the authors briefly sketch the biogra-
phies of Frances Perkins, the settlement house leader who became US secretary
of labor; Paul Harris, the founder of the Rotary Club; Ida B. Wells, the crusading
Black journalist; and Tom Johnson, a business tycoon turned reformist mayor
of Cleveland. These examples encompass considerable diversity, not only of
demographics but also of ideology and objectives; and one could add Christian
socialists, orthodox Marxists, agrarian populists, and chamber-of-commerce
businessmen in particular cities and states. These people would not necessarily
endorse any common label or project, yet they shared a general commitment to
building an appropriate “we” in a society too dominated by selfish individualism
and too unequal.
One specific example was the “high school revolution,” a decentralized
movement that raised the proportion of Americans who completed high
school from less than 10 percent to more than 70 percent over a few decades,
fueling economic growth and equity. No single law accomplished this revolu-
tion; no individual is especially associated with it. It was a “viral” movement
that, in turn, contributed to a much broader movement to strengthen American
communities.27 Again, various agendas converged to achieve the growth of high
schools, from local boosterism and immigrant assimilationism to ambitious
reform agendas, including socialism.
Putnam and Garrett frame their story in terms of an oscillation from “I” to
“we,” acknowledging that it is possible to submerge the individual too much in
the group, and that some of the retreat after 1960 was an appropriate recalibra-
tion after a period of excessive conformity. Putnam and Garrett also note that
“we” can take many forms.28 It can be an exclusive category: us versus them. It
can be purely affective, a positive feeling of belonging. I would add that it can
be agentic: the “we” of “What should we do?” All of these forms of “we-ness”
were implicated in the upswing that Putnam and Garrett describe, including ex-
clusive forms of community that they decry. However, their narrative includes
many examples of agentic groups: associations and networks devoted to deliber-
ation and collaboration. They also emphasize the importance of theorizing about
the “we” and they assign significant impact to early twentieth-century authors
like John Dewey and Mary Parker Follett who developed new ideas about how
people can and should work together. Their recipe for civic renewal is a combi-
nation of theory and practice, of “moral awakening”29 and pragmatism, all in a
polycentric, bottom-up movement.
27 Putnam & Garrett 2020, 29, 330.

28 Putnam & Garrett 2020, 196–197.
29 Putnam & Garrett 2020, 321.
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Strategies for Civic Renewal

Concrete strategies for civic renewal will necessarily vary depending on the
circumstances. In a previous book, I argued for a particular approach to civic
renewal appropriate to the United States in the first decades of the twenty-first
century.30 That plan will not work in other times and places. However, I think we
can generalize usefully as long as we are cautious.
One general point is that directly advocating better politics will not suffice.
Ideas do not implement themselves. Elinor Ostrom painted a picture of poly-
centric, collaborative governance. She defended her vision in fairly prominent
venues, including a Nobel Prize lecture. But her advocacy did not reverse pow-
erful trends toward centralization, privatization, and dominance by experts.
Jürgen Habermas has used his distinguished reputation for more than a half
century to advocate deliberative democratic values, but he has not reversed the
degradation of the Public Sphere. Gandhi spoke and wrote tirelessly about non-
violent social movements but was assassinated as India devolved into mass sec-
tarian violence and then developed into a nuclear-armed nation-state with an
entrenched elite. Each of these figures theorized civic agency without achieving
it. Each used a measure of leverage to promote reforms but did not solve her or
his basic problem.
Simply communicating a vision of civic renewal cannot work because mil-
lions of other people are also using their voices for other purposes. Also, the
recipients of a message about civic renewal may lack opportunities to act effec-
tively. Ostrom advocated decentralizing certain kinds of public services in order
to enable more participation. But the people who read her work did not have the
capacity to decentralize actual public services. Even a state’s governor would not
be able to do that alone, especially if the governor also sought to achieve other
ends, such as a fair state budget or better schools. A politician devoted to the
single issue of decentralizing state services would probably lose re-election, and
deservedly so.
We need assets that can be leveraged for civic renewal and people whose inter-
ests and motivations align with that cause. In the final section of this book, I re-
view five strategies, each of which uses a different opportunity for leverage to
expand the quality, quantity, equity, and impact of civic work. I review both the
strengths and weaknesses of each strategy, presuming that they must be com-
bined in various proportions to accomplish significant change.
30 Levine 2013a.
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Revise Professionals’ Roles and Practices So That They Support

Rather than Frustrate Civic Politics
Albert Dzur argues that several well-placed professions have reasons to pro-
mote public deliberation and engagement. Journalists gain their distinctive
social roles (and their paychecks) by informing the public and provoking con-
versation. If they are unable to do so, or if they are compelled to perform other
functions, such as entertainment or partisan advocacy, they not only risk losing
their prerogatives but must lead less satisfying professional lives. Lawyers in
Anglo-American legal systems traditionally spent pivotal moments arguing
in front of juries. To the extent that jury trials are replaced by plea-bargaining,
lawyers not only lose their rationale for representing a learned profession, but
their everyday life is dominated by the drudgery of processing cases instead of
making arguments in public forums. School principals sometimes serve as con-
venors of valuable discussions of adults on the essential topic of what and how
the next generation should learn. To the extent that they become mid-level bur-
eaucrats administering tests and budgets, they lose not only their status but also
the pleasure of their work.
Dzur argues that professionals can be organized to promote civic values. (He
emphasizes the value of deliberation, but we could add self-governance and the
kinds of organized sacrifice that are integral to social movements.) An essential
start is to distinguish people’s professional roles from their positions within gov-
ernmental and market systems. For instance, journalists are both professionals
and salaried employees of for-profit media companies. Prosecutors are both
members of the legal profession and employees of state bureaucracies. Systems
prefer “technocratic and market-oriented modes of professionalism” because
those “fit neatly into the rationalized procedures and needs for predictability
and control found in modern economic and political organization.”31 But pro-
fessionals have reasons to resist just such “technocratic and market-oriented”
tendencies; and some are doing so, albeit without much explicit theory.32 They
practice what Dzur calls “democratic professionalism” by “sharing previously
professionalized tasks and encouraging lay participation in ways that enhance
and enable broader public engagement and deliberation about major social is-
sues inside and outside professional domains.”33 Concrete examples include
journalists who create or support forums for valuable discussion online, law-
enforcement officials who work with civilian groups to prevent crime, school
31 Dzur 2008, 131–32.

32 Dzur 2013.
33 Dzur 2008, 130.
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principals who encourage parents to be involved in schools, and scientists who

create opportunities for laypeople to deliberate about science-policy issues.34

One question for this strategy is: who is a professional? If we mean the edu-
cated middle class, then relying on professionals to renew civic life seems prob-
lematically elitist. But I would draw the boundary in a different place. A citizen
is anyone who considers how to make the whole community better, all things
considered, and who reasons about that question with others. In contrast, ef-
ficient Systems slot people into roles that have predetermined goals. To the
extent that individuals’ specialized job identities eclipse their identities as citi-
zens, it becomes impossible to have a community-wide dialogue about values.
Moreover, specialized job roles confer unequal standing. When a community
decides how to handle sewage, an engineer will have more authority (as well as
more resources) than a mail clerk. The advantages conferred by allocating tasks
to trained workers explain why both capitalist and socialist economies turn into
efficiency-seeking Systems. This is a feature of modernity rather than a result of
capitalism or any other specific political economy. But the cost is a shrunken and
distorted public sphere.
If this is right, then anyone who gains advantages from holding a demar-
cated role and applying specialized knowledge can be called a “professional.”
That category includes many people who have modest incomes and blue-collar
work cultures. For instance, uniformed police officers, transit workers, nurses,
and enlisted soldiers are professionals, in this sense. One test of whether a group
functions as a profession is whether its members see the people they serve as
“citizens,” “the public,” or “the community.” For instance, both scientists and po-
lice officers erect distinctions between their respective professions and “citizens,”
even though they are citizens themselves.
Harry Boyte and Blase Scarnati recall:
When the Center for Democracy and Citizenship (CDC) at Augsburg College
partnered with the City of Falcon Heights, Minnesota, to organize a moderated
“citizen town hall” meeting that explored citizen-based approaches to gun vio-
lence, the audience of twenty-five or so included the mayor, the police chief, the
city manager, teachers, a local principal, social agency workers, four students,
business entrepreneurs, and two elderly residents. The residents expressed re-
gret that “there are so few citizens” present. No one from any of the commu-
nity work sites questioned this choice of words. However, by noting that all the
participants actually were citizens, CDC staff prompted a lively conversation
about what the community would look like if work sites were understood as
34 Garlick & Levine 2017.
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citizenship sites, and how such an understanding might increase collective

power for action on issues like gun violence and community safety.35
One strategy for civic renewal is to change the professionals’ mentalities and eve-
ryday practices so that they participate in the public sphere with others, instead
of standing aside from it.
The potential of this strategy remains to be seen. So far, professionals who
work to enhance deliberation and self-governance have not coalesced into “a
typical social movement.” Dzur writes, “Rather than mobilizing fellow trav-
elers and putting pressure on government office holders to make new laws or
rules, . . . democratic professionals are making real-world changes in their do-
mains piece by piece, practice by practice.”36 Their everyday work is commend-
able but also limited. I would expect this strategy to work only as a complement
to the other strategies explored next.
Teach Civic Politics in Schools, Colleges, and Other

Educational Institutions
Almost all developed democracies already require civic education (sometimes

named with a different term, such as “citizenship education” or “democracy ed-
ucation”).37 In the United States, all fifty states have adopted standards—official
regulatory documents—that spell out in detail the civic education that students
must receive from kindergarten through high school.38 Young people are obliged
to attend schools where civic education is offered, and teachers are paid to teach
it. These are assets that can be used as leverage to strengthen civic life.
In most countries, and in all US states, civic education concentrates on under-
standing and appreciating the structure of the government, with some attention
given to the tools that citizens possess for influencing the state, such as voting
and litigating. A civic education consistent with the themes of this book would
be more about how to deliberate, self-govern in voluntary groups, and relate to
other citizens—with the government presented as just one venue among many.39
Both Dewey and Elinor Ostrom explicitly advocated shifting civic education in
that way. Ostrom concluded her presidential address to the American Political
Science Association with a call for a new kind of civic education:
35 Boyte & Scarnati, 2014, 79.

36 Dzur 2013.
37 Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald & Schulz 2001.
38 Levine 2013b.
39 Levine 2012, 37–56.
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All too many of our textbooks focus exclusively on leaders and, worse, only
national-level leaders. Students completing an introductory course on

American government, or political science more generally, will not learn that
they play an essential role in sustaining democracy. Citizen participation is
presented as contacting leaders, organizing interest group and parties, and
voting. That citizens need additional skills and knowledge to resolve the so-
cial dilemmas they face is left unaddressed. Their moral decisions are not
discussed. . . . It is ordinary persons and citizens who craft and sustain the
workability of the institutions of everyday life. We owe an obligation to the next
generation to carry forward the best of our knowledge about how individuals
solve the multiplicity of social dilemmas—large and small—that they face.40
American schools do offer student governments, service programs, student

media, and deliberative classrooms that provide experience with self-govern-
ance. But this aspect of civic education needs support and expansion. It faces
resistance from people who don’t recognize the importance of deliberative self-
rule or who actually oppose allowing a wide range of citizens to participate in
politics, broadly defined.
Another obstacle is the way that education is managed. Schools are strongly
shaped by testing and other forms of external measurement and accountability.
Thus we must either learn to measure and assess students’ ability to deliberate,
self-govern, and relate to others, or else somehow shrink the influence of testing
on the curriculum as a whole. These are challenging tasks, and the great unan-
swered question is whether students who learn civic skills and motivations in
school or college will continue to act civically decades later. It is unclear to what
degree individuals can maintain values and habits of civic engagement if institu-
tions remain unfavorable. Again, this strategy seems to need others to comple-
ment it.
Persuade or Compel Policymakers to Enact Policies

That Encourage Civic Politics
A third strategy is to enact policies that create opportunities for adult citizens
to deliberate and self-govern. The 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution,
enacted in 1992, requires every village to allocate resources in open public meet-
ings. As a result, each year, two million Indians make consequential decisions
in village meetings. Analyzing these mandatory gram sabhas or village democ-
racies, Vijayendra Rao and Paromita Sanyal call them the “largest deliberative
40 E. Ostrom 1998a, 18.
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institution in human history.”41 Their value depends on how well they are imple-
mented, but certainly they have the potential to expand civic agency on a subcon-
tinental scale. They can be traced to Gandhi’s advocacy of village self-governance
and a specific constitutional provision that he championed (against Ambedkar),
which said that “the State shall take steps to organize village Panchayats and
endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them
to function as units of self-government.”42 But it was not until 1992 that the
Indian Constitution gained an enforceable clause creating village democracies.
Why the amendment passed when it did and how well it is being implemented
are complex questions beyond the scope of this book, but the general lesson is
clear and applicable in other countries. It is possible to use laws to compel the ex-
pansion of deliberation and self-governance, but it is not enough to call for such
reforms, as Gandhi already did in the 1930s. Despite his huge following and his
revered place in Indian public life, the idea took another six decades to find a
secure place in law. The question is not whether a regime should enact local de-
mocracy but rather what we can do to make such reforms happen. What leverage
do we have, given the concrete groups to which we belong?
One answer may be to persuade politically powerful leaders that civic re-
newal is good for them. After the Brazilian dictatorship crumbled, in the city
of Porto Alegre, a Popular Front led by the Workers’ Party invented the first
Participatory Budgeting (PB) process to share responsibility for allocating scarce
public resources with citizens. Cynics would suspect these politicians were just
trying to co-opt critics, but PB created genuine opportunities for deliberation,
relationship-building, learning, and practical problem-solving that have en-
gaged thousands of Porto Alegrians.43 When the Workers’ Party lost office in a
later election, the conservative opposition retained PB because it had become
popular, and it has since spread to more than one thousand cities around the
world. Proponents of PB now advocate it as a civic innovation that is good for
leaders as well as citizens.44
Similar strategies may also work for other innovations that are not deliberative
forums. For example, it has been argued that encouraging teenagers to address
problems in their schools and communities motivates them to succeed in school,
41 Rao & Sanyal 2009.

42 Singh 1994.
43 Baiocchi 2001 (44–46) emphasizes pressure for decentralization from civil society, although he
also notes that PB “served the Workers Party . . . well, permitting three uninterrupted terms at munic-
ipal government.” Navarro 2004, 180–83, mentions the economic motives for implementing PB but
also notes an ideological rationale. Novy & Leubolt 2005, 2027, emphasize that Popular Front may-
oral candidate Olívio Dutra “demanded democratisation” along with new economic priorities while
he campaigned. The new administration launched PB and then “the government’s inexperience in
controlling an administrative apparatus led to severe financial problems” that prevented the PB from
working well. In turn, public pressure led to improvements.
44 Lerner 2014; Nabatchi & Leighninger 2015.
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thus helping governments to meet their goals for education. When people are
more active in grassroots civil society, their communities seem to perform better
economically, so advocates argue that municipal governments should fund and
expand civic associations as a way of meeting economic targets.45 These strate-
gies imply a need to marshal evidence, to communicate it effectively to pivotal
decision makers, and to run practical experiments that can serve as models for
policymakers to adopt.
This approach requires genuine responsiveness from incumbent political
elites. There is always a danger that politicians will reject the advice or imple-
ment superficial versions that block deeper change. For example, China is
implementing local deliberative processes at a large scale while also maintaining
a one-party state under an increasingly authoritarian national leader. The
Chinese Communist Party may view local deliberations as a means of blunting
criticism and improving satisfaction with its regime.46 Meanwhile, Caroline
W. Lee has argued that organized deliberations co-opt resistance in the United
States.47 These examples suggest that persuading leaders of the advantages of
participation and deliberation may just give them ideas for entrenching their
own power.
An alternative is to accumulate power and use it to expand other people’s
agency. A teacher can make his classroom into a space for collaboration and
deliberation and can address conflicts of identity among his own students. His
standing as a teacher gives him that power. But a principal can influence all the
classrooms in her school; and so on up the ranks of district superintendents,
mayors, governors, and US secretaries of education. Proponents of civic renewal
should consider not only persuading powerful people to implement civic ap-
proaches but also becoming powerful leaders themselves.
However, with increasing scale comes decreasing ability to make a deep im-
pact. A principal may affect more classrooms than each teacher does, but each
teacher shapes his own classroom much more. Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg and
I find that students who experience deliberation in school become more knowl-
edgeable and engaged, but state policies relevant to civic education have no effects
(either positive or negative) on what students experience in schools.48 It might
seem that a legislature has more authority than a teacher has, because the gov-
ernment can require courses, tests, and standards. However, students are much
more deeply affected by the discretionary choices of their teachers. In a more
hierarchical and centralized system, the law might matter more, and the teacher
less. But this would not necessarily be desirable, nor does any central authority
45 Lee & Levine 2016.

46 He & Warren 2017.
47 Lee 2015.
48 Kawashima-Ginsberg and Levine 2014b.
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ever govern without the active support of many local leaders. (That is true even of
totalitarian systems.) Thus, at best, the quest to obtain more positional authority
creates trade-offs between breadth and depth—and that is only for the few who
actually ascend to power and retain their commitment to sharing it.
In sum, civic renewal needs support from laws and from public officials, but
those assets are unlikely to suffice without other strategies.
Encourage Social Movements to Be Relatively

Pluralist, Deliberative, and Porous
In chapter 6, I assembled evidence that social movements are more likely to reach
their objectives if they accumulate SPUD: scale, pluralism, unity, and depth. In
turn, to accumulate SPUD requires bringing relatively heterogeneous people to-
gether to discuss means and ends. Heterogeneous people must also coordinate
their voluntary behaviors to accomplish shared goals, such as boycotting prod-
ucts or putting bodies on the streets. And although any movement confronts
opponents, it is more likely to achieve lasting success if it relates to its oppon-
ents in ways that preserve their security and dignity. Thus effective social move-
ments create spaces for deliberation and self-governance, they teach civic skills,
they give participants heady experiences with coordination, they challenge the
broader society to consider issues that belong on the public agenda, and they re-
late in nonviolent ways to outsiders. In all these ways, they have collateral bene-
fits for civic life.
However, social movements also have a tendency to homogeneity.49
Disagreement is usually uncomfortable, and never more so than under polit-
ical pressure. It is tempting to sort ourselves into like-minded groups, and social
movements can provide opportunities to sort narrowly. Social movements value
displays of sacrifice, and when participants are diverse, their degrees of sacrifice
are likely to be unequal. Participants who personally face grave and sustained
injustices may resent would-be “allies” and “saviors” who join their movement
from positions of greater privilege and who feel free to exit.50 Disagreements
about strategies, goals, the composition of the movement, and its very definition
can become contentious. Many movements either fall apart as a result of such
disagreements or marginalize some of their members and potential members,
thus becoming unified at the expense of plurality.
49 See, e.g., Doerr 2018, 54.

50 Chinitz 2018, 11: “At Standing Rock [the location of major protests in 2016–2018], for example,
due to massive social media exposure a number of non-Native people from around the country
showed up for the mobilization when their presence was not wanted or helpful, and when they re-
sisted taking direction from local Native Leadership.”
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A strategy for civic renewal takes advantage of these twin facts: (1) modern
societies constantly generate powerful social movements, and (2) these move-
ments are more likely to win when they build SPUD. Proponents of civic values
can intervene by encouraging or pressing social movements to develop SPUD by
welcoming diversity and using deliberative methods to achieve unity. They can
also encourage movements to use good design principles to manage their own
assets and to relate to outsiders nonviolently, where “nonviolence” means more
than the mere rejection of physical force.
These are idealistic goals, but not overly idealistic—they will generally in-
crease a movement’s odds of success. But they must combat powerful tendencies
to homogeneity within movements and polarization in the society as a whole.
It will help if the other strategies considered here happen concurrently—for ex-
ample, if the professionals who join a social movement are already used to civic
methods from their work; if most citizens have learned deliberation, collabora-
tion, and nonviolence in school; and if formal institutions have enacted at least
some policies favorable to civic work.
Organize the Substantial Number of People Who Are

Already Committed to Civic Politics to Be More Effective
Advocates for It
Elinor Ostrom proposes design principles that enable people to govern

common-pool resources. Jürgen Habermas argues for public deliberation about
both means and ends. Gandhi and King urge their followers to sacrifice in ways
that accomplish change without disgracing their opponents.
It is completely understandable that most people do not know most of
these authors or their detailed arguments. But many people are committed to
common-pool resource management, public deliberation, and/or nonviolent
social movements. I have been involved in several efforts to estimate the pro-
portion of Americans who are deeply involved in these forms of civic work.51
People who meet this standard do not merely follow rules that coordinate pri-
vate behavior (such as recycling one’s own garbage), but design, alter, and enforce
such rules and norms. They do not merely attend meetings but also organize dis-
cussions (online or face-to-face) and ensure that others attend. And they do not
merely show up for a rally but help to lead a campaign of nonviolent protests.
Estimates vary for how many people meet these criteria, but it is clear that at least
one million Americans qualify. There is no reason to believe that the rate is lower
in comparable countries. And one million Americans is a sufficient nucleus for a
51 Summarized in Levine 2013a, 173–77. See also Levine & Liu 2015.
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highly effective movement that would push for more collaboration, deliberation,
and nonviolence. These could be the people who press professionals to engage
their publics better, schools to teach civic skills and values, governments to create
spaces for deliberative self-rule, and social movements to embrace plurality.
The obstacle is mainly that these civic leaders lack a common cause. They are
mostly involved in specific issues in specific communities. They may manage
an environmental asset in a given place because they care about nature or their
community; they may organize meetings on crime and violence to improve
public safety in their own neighborhood; or they may be moved to protest the
government’s stance on immigration because it strikes them as an injustice. But
they do not see themselves as part of one effort to expand and protect the civic
values of collaboration, deliberation, and nonviolence in the society as whole.
Indeed, expanding civic values is an abstract formulation of their mission,
and I would never expect it to replace their specific goals. But we can make their
common framework more concrete and compelling if we explore the impor-
tance of civic values and the powerful—sometimes insidious—forces that work
against such values. That has been the purpose of this book and the authors
I have explored. We can also ask people not only to organize their own groups,
discussions, and protests but to work together to make self-governance, delib-
eration, and nonviolence more prevalent. They can ask whether these values are
practiced by professionals, taught in schools, enshrined in laws, and honored by
social movements.52
Conclusion
The core tasks for citizens are to form and manage functional groups, to deliberate
about ends and means, and to relate appropriately to outsiders. (Nonviolence, in
its broadest and most demanding sense, captures what it means to relate appro-
priately.) These tasks are closely related, not discrete. They all involve addressing
human cognitive and ethical limitations by discussing and learning from expe-
rience. They all require sacrifice—from the everyday sacrifice of time to attend
a meeting to the dramatic sacrifice of a hunger strike. They all pose the question
whether to use one’s voice in order to improve a group or to exit it. They all in-
volve preserving and enhancing public goods, from the intangible good of social
capital to such highly concrete goods as watersheds and buildings. They are all
threatened by such endemic aspects of modernity as scale and specialization.
52 This recommendation was picked up by the Commission on the Practice of Democratic
Citizenship: see American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2020, 49–50.
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Civic activities are not merely the price of living well together but are re-
warding aspects of human life. We deepen and complicate our inner lives as we
help build a better society. In fact, we can only know what a good society is by
continuously deliberating, acting together, renouncing things that we may value,
and reflecting on the results. Our human limitations prevent us from seeing a
clear path all the way to a just society, but we can organize ourselves into groups
that bring out the best in us. In such groups, we can continuously learn what jus-
tice is and how to obtain it.
If you are not involved in these civic tasks of collaboration, deliberation,
and social-movement activism, then you should find ways to be so involved.
They are good for you and for society. If you already act in these ways, then you
should consider joining with others who are committed to the same civic values.
Together, you should push for their wider application in the society as a whole.
That means determining what leverage you have over larger systems to make
them more collaborative, deliberative, and nonviolent. It means asking what we
should do to make it possible for everyone to ask that question for themselves.
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Index
For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion,
appear on only one of those pages.
Tables and figures are indicated by t and f following the page number
Abernathy, Ralph, 14 implicit bias, 31–32

Achen, Christopher, 32 Ostrom and, 187
activism, 116–20 policing and, 64–65
Adams, John, 189–90, 194 positivity bias, 30–31
Adorno, Theodor, 89, 104, 107 social sciences and, 48
affected interests theory, 123, 124 Biko, Steve, 28
agency. See civic agency Black Lives Matter
Aligica, Paul Dragos, 43, 70, 188 backlash to, 181–82
Allen, Danielle, 6, 125–26, 133–34, 160 biases and, 187
Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji, 161–63 civil rights movement and, 177, 179–80
Arendt, Hannah, 37–38, 158–60, 189–92, Habermas and, 181–82
194, 195 history of, 177, 181
Aristotle, 8, 38–39, 40, 124 intersectionality and, 177–78
Ash, Timothy Garton, 141, 146–47 Iron Law of Oligarchy and, 180
attribution bias, 31 nonviolent movements and, 178
authoritarianism, 54, 103–7, 192 Ostrom and, 184–87
The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, overview of, 177
Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, Sanford), policing and, 185–87
104, 105, 106 policy goals of, 64–65, 177–80, 184, 187–88
Awad, Mubarak, 145 polycentric governance and, 178–80
Azad, Maulana, 45 Public Square and, 181–82
social capital and, 180
Bacon, Francis, 30–31 White people and, 181–84
Baierle, Sérgio, 119 Black Power, 22, 128
Baker, Ella, 21, 23 Bloomington School
Bartels, Larry, 32 Frankfurt School and, 34–35
Beck, Ulrich, 130 future directions for, 80–85
Beggs, Donald, 8 overview of, 34
Benjamin, Walter, 19n.16, 87 practical implications of, 77–80
Bennett, L. Roy, 14–15, 22 tragedy of the commons and, 61, 62–
Bennett, W. Lance, 193 64, 66–67
Between Facts & Norms (Habermas), 90 See also common-pool resources;
Bhagavad Gita, 35, 150, 156 Ostrom, Elinor
biases Bloom, Paul, 109–10

attribution bias, 31 Bode, Leticia, 110
Black Lives Matter and, 187 Bose, Nirmal Kumar, 144
civic agency and, 196 boundary problems, 22–23, 27, 29–30, 78–
collective action problems and, 30–31 79, 80–83
confirmation bias, 30–31 Bowling Alone (Putnam), 72, 200
deliberative democracy and, 117–19, 121 Boyte, Harry C., 61–62, 164, 204–5
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232 Index
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 12–13, 14, leverage and, 193–201, 212
137, 143, 179, 180 Ostrom and, 70, 76, 83–84, 168–70
Brown, Michael, 186 overview of, 189–90, 211–12
bus boycott. See Montgomery Bus Boycott polycentric governance and, 198–99
relational politics and, 194
California Farm Worker Movement, 163 sacrifices and, 198–99, 211
Capabilities Approach, 38, 51, 75 self-governance and, 198–99
Capitalism as Freedom (Friedman), 51 small scales and, 70, 189–91
Carmichael, Stokely (Kwame Ture), 22 strategic action and, 199
central planning, 60, 70 civic education
Chenoweth, Erica, 139–41, 163, 165 civic renewal and, 205–6
Chinese Communist Party, 70–71, 208 curriculum standards for, 54, 55–56, 55f, 205
Cinner, Joshua E., 84 deliberation and, 205, 208–9
citizenship Ostrom and, 74, 80, 205–6
agenda for research on, 54–56 polycentric governance and, 205
common-pool resources and, 4, 113–14 self-governance and, 74, 80
complexity of, 33 civic life. See citizenship
definition of, 3 civic professionalism, 55–56, 74–75, 203–5
deliberation and, 1–2, 168–69, 172 civic renewal
empirical research and, 3, 46, 49 civic agency and, 199–200, 201, 208
friendship and, 39 civic education and, 205–6
fundamental question of, 1–2, 4, 5–9, definition of, 199–200
50, 114–15 deliberation and, 207–8
global citizenship, 124–25 Gandhi and, 206–7
justice and, 50–51 Habermas and, 202, 210
lack of emphasis on, 46–53 leverage and, 202, 205, 207, 212
legal citizenship, 3–4 necessity of, 200–1
leverage and, 196 organizing precommitted in, 210–11
loyalty and, 172–74 Ostrom and, 210
means and ends and, 172 overview of, 211–12
model of, 54–56, 55f pluralism and, 200–1, 209–10
nation states and, 3–4, 124–25 policymakers and, 206–9
normative considerations and, 39, 100 polycentric governance and, 202
other starting places for, 36–40 professionalism and, 203–5
overview of, 1–5 sacrifices and, 209
phronesis and, 39–40 self-governance and, 206–7
polycentric governance and, 3–4 social movements and, 209–10
risks and, 133–34 strategies for, 202–11
sacrifices and, 159 civic republicanism, 4–5, 37–38, 50–51, 103–4,
social movements and, 2–3 107, 122–23, 124, 189–90
See also synthesis of approaches Civil Rights Act (1964), 170
Citizens Initiative Review (CIR), 99–100, civil rights movement
111, 197–98 Black churches in, 13
civic agency Black Lives Matter and, 177, 179–80
biases and, 196 collective action problems and, 19–23
civic participation and, 199–200 discourse problems and, 23–25

civic renewal and, 199–200, 201, 208 empirical research and, 13
definition of, 36–37 free-riders and, 20
deliberation and, 198–99, 211–12 identity-based problems and, 25–30
human cognitive limitations and, ideology and, 24
195, 211–12 Iron Law of Oligarchy and, 21
ideal of, 198–99 leadership of, 21, 23
importance of, 211–12 nonviolent approach of, 18, 139
large scales and, 191–93 organization efforts prior to, 12–13
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Index 233
path dependence and, 20 Combahee River Collective, 177–78

pluralism and, 143 Committee for Equal Justice, 13

polarization and, 24–25 common-pool resources
principle/agent conflicts and, 23 citizenship and, 4, 113–14
propaganda and, 24 collective action problems and, 58–60, 172
sacrifices and, 158–59 deliberative democracy and, 113
unity and, 143 design principles and, 54, 55–56, 77–78, 168,
white supremacy and, 12–13 185–87, 210
women’s participation in, 21 knowledge and, 65, 113–14, 115
Clark, Jim, 135 means and ends and, 45
Clark, Septima, 13 nonviolent movements and, 143–44, 153
climate change, 10–11, 29–30, 32, 84, 113 policing and, 64–65, 185–87
Clinton, Hillary, 182–84 scale of application and, 68, 70
Coalition of Immokalee Workers, 124 successful cases of, 65–66, 68
Coase, Ronald, 180 synthesis and, 171
coercion, 58, 64, 91, 168 types of goods and, 63–71, 63t, 75–76
cognitive limitations. See human cognitive white supremacy and, 64–65
limitations commons. See tragedy of the commons
Cohen, Jean, 121 communicative action, 90–91, 100, 108–11, 134
Coleman, James S., 72 complicity, 5–6, 8, 172–74
collective action problems confirmation bias, 30–31
biases and, 30–31 Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), 13
boundary problems, 22–23, 27, 29–30, 78– Constant, Benjamin, 4n.9, 122–23, 124
79, 80–83 Cullors, Patrisse, 181
civil rights movement and, 19–23 Cushman, Fiery, 109n.63
climate change and, 29–30
coercion and, 58, 64 Dahl, Robert A., 3n.7, 5n.10
common-pool resources and, 58–60, 172 Dalits, 41–42, 161–62
definition of, 10 decision rules, problematic, 21–22, 23, 78–79
discourse problems, 10–11, 23–25, 35, 127 deliberation
game theory and, 29 citizenship and, 1–2, 168–69, 172
human cognitive limitations and, 30–32, 41 civic agency and, 198–99, 211–12
Iron Law of Oligarchy and, 21, 23, 78–79, 180 civic education and, 205, 208–9
justice and, 40–41 civic renewal and, 207–8
means and ends and, 40–46 deliberative systems and, 102
Montgomery Bus Boycott and, 152 free-riders and, 168
nonviolent movements and, 151–54 Habermas and, 35, 102–3
overview of, 19–23 minipublics and, 101–2
path dependence and, 20, 78–79 nonviolent movements and, 143–44, 162–65
principle/agent problems, 23, 59, 78–79 Ostrom and, 168, 169
prisoner’s dilemma and, 20, 74, 78–79 political philosophy and, 53
privatization and, 58–60 synthesis and, 168–69
problematic decision rules and, 21–22, See also means and ends
23, 78–79 deliberative democracy
social capital and, 72 activism and, 116–20
state control and, 58–60 authoritarianism and, 103–7

synthesis and, 169 biases and, 117–19, 121
white supremacy and, 19 challenges of, 111, 112–14
See also free-riders climate change and, 113
Collins-Dexter, Brandi, 178 common-pool resources and, 113
colonization of Lifeworld by System, 92, 94–97, criticisms of, 103–8, 112–14, 120–21
129, 134 empirical research and, 105–7, 110,
Color Revolutions, 35, 146–47 117, 120–21
Colvin, Claudette, 15 Habermas and, 97–103
CINCINNATI
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234 Index
deliberative democracy (cont.) criticism of, 97

homogeneity and, 120–21 discourses and, 87–89

justice and, 119 distinguishing among regimes and, 88
mistrust of science and, 112–13 first generation of, 87–89
nation states and, 124–25 Habermas’s role in, 89–97
nondeliberative means and, 118–20 history of, 86–87
Ostrom and, 127 knowledge and, 89
pluralism and, 121–25 limitations of, 88–89, 134
self-governance and, 103–8 Marxism and, 87–88, 103–4
social movements and, 118–21 overview of, 34–35
status quo and, 120–21 political power and, 89
as theory/practice tradition, 97–103 prophetic mode and, 165–66
Democracia real YA!, 193 social consciousness and, 87–88
democratic theory, 3n.5, 5, 6–7, 160, 176 Fraser, Nancy, 122–23
Derrida, Jacques, 98 free-riders
Deus da Silva, Maria Leonice de, 118 civil rights movement and, 20
Dewey, John deliberation and, 168
civic agency and, 36 Montgomery bus boycott and, 20
civic education and, 36–37, 205 nonviolent movements and, 151–52
community and, 36 Ostrom and, 78–79, 80
criticisms of, 37 overview of, 20
deliberation and, 112 synthesis and, 168, 174
democratic theory and, 36–37, 176 Freud, Sigmund, 87
leverage and, 194 Friedland, Lewis A., 118
relational politics and, 194 Friedman, Milton, 33n.1, 51, 53
discourse problems, 10–11, 23–25, 35, 127 Friedman, Rose, 33n.1
distance problems, 26 friendship, 39, 125–26, 132–34
Doerr, Nicole, 21n.20, 96–97 Fromm, Erich, 104–5, 106, 107
Douglass, Frederick, 25, 28 Fung, Archon, 100–1, 119–20, 123, 124
Dryzek, John, 116n.85
Du Bois, W. E. B., 6–7 Gaiser, Adam, 29
Durr, Virginia, 13, 14 Galland, Anna, 141–42
Dzur, Albert, 127, 203–5 game theory, 20, 29, 30, 57–58
Gandhi, Mohandas
Eco, Umberto, 98 Ambedkar and, 161–63
education. See civic education civic renewal and, 206–7
Eliasoph, Nina, 95–96 Dalits and, 41–42, 161–62
Elkin, Stephen, 44 friendship and, 125–26
Ellison, Ralph, 160 human cognitive limitations and, 148–
Epstein, Brian, 8–9 50, 153
Evans, Charles, 191 identity-based problems and, 11, 44–
Evans, Sara, 164 45, 125–26
Everyday Democracy, 99, 142 influences on, 35
justice and, 40–43, 161–62
feminism, 38, 88, 94, 101, 132–33, 177, 178 khadi campaign of, 42–43, 61–62, 144–
Fishkin, James, 99 45, 154

Flyvbjerg, Bent, 39–40 means and ends and, 44–45
Follett, Mary Parker, 201 Muslim community outreach of, 42, 44–45,
Foucault, Michael, 76 125–26, 161
Frankfurt School nonviolent movements and, 139, 139n.8,
authoritarianism and, 103–7 144–45, 148–50, 157
Bloomington School and, 34–35 organizing approach of, 40–43, 44–
critical theory and, 88, 88n.2 45, 153–54
CINCINNATI
Account: s8335684
Index 235
overview of, 3, 173 New Social Movements, 102, 118–20,

religious views of, 151 121, 127–34

sacrifices and, 155, 156, 157–58, 161–63 normative considerations and, 89–91
self-governance and, 206–7 overview of, 35, 173
swaraj and, 41, 42, 44–45, 46n.36, 144 pluralism and, 121–25
village democracies and, 207 political engagement of, 97–99, 202
Ganz, Marshall, 163–64 Public Sphere and, 92, 93–94, 95–96, 102,
Garret, Shaylin Romney, 200, 201 111, 114–20, 121–25, 181–82, 202
Garza, Alicia, 177–78, 181 relational politics and, 131–34
Gastil, John, 99, 198 self-governance and, 93–94, 107–8
Gaventa, John, 28 self-interest and, 114–16
Gilbert, Kenyatta R., 165, 167 strategies based on thought of, 115
Goetz, Rebecca Anne, 26–27 Systems and, 92, 93, 94–97, 129, 134
Gorenberg, Gershom, 145 Haidt, Jonathan, 104–5, 106
governance. See polycentric governance Hardin, Garrett, 57–60, 61, 64, 68, 74–75n.46,
Grey, Fred, 14, 17 75–76, 83
group-based problems. See identity-based Harris, Fredrick, 179
problems Harvey, David, 69–70
Grünberg, Carl, 87 Havel, Václav, 130–31
Hayek, Friedrich, 70, 71
Habermas (Specter), 97–98 Healthy Democracy, 99, 198
Habermas, Jürgen Hecht, Jonathan, 99
activism and, 116–20 Hibbing, John, 104–5
affected interests theory and, 123, 124 Hirschman, Albert, 21n.20, 174
authoritarianism and, 103–7 Horkheimer, Max, 89, 104
Black Lives Matter and, 181–82 huertas system, 61, 77, 79, 169
change in views over time of, 90 Hughes, Charles Evans, 191
civic renewal and, 202, 210 Hughes, Langston, 27–28
colonization of Lifeworld by System and, 92, human cognitive limitations
94–97, 129, 134 civic agency and, 195, 211–12
communicative action and, 90–91, 100, collective action problems and, 30–32, 41
108–11, 134 Gandhi and, 148–50, 153
criticism of, 95, 97, 103, 108–11, 114– Habermas and, 111, 112–13
20, 121–27 justice and, 41
deliberation and, 35, 102–3 King and, 148, 150
deliberative democracy and, 97–103 nonviolent movements and, 148–51
discourse problems and, 11, 35 overview of, 30–32
Frankfurt School role of, 89–97
friendship and, 125–26 ideal speech situations, 91–92, 99–100, 101,
human cognitive limitations and, 127, 168, 169
111, 112–13 The Idea of Justice (Sen), 51
ideal speech situations and, 91–92, 99–100, identity-based problems
101, 127, 168, 169 boundary problems and, 27
influence of, 89, 103 changes to identity and, 27–28, 29
instrumental action and, 90, 91–92, 100, choice of identity and, 29
108–11, 129 civil rights movement and, 25–30

justice and, 42, 161–62 definition of, 11, 25–26
leverage and, 132, 133 discourse problems and, 29–30
Lifeworld and, 92–98, 102, 129–32, 134, distance problems and, 26
149, 181 examples of, 25–30
means and ends and, 45, 210 Gandhi and, 11, 44–45, 125–26
minipublics and, 98–102, 110 importance of, 25
motivation and, 125–27 intersectionality and, 177–78
CINCINNATI
Account: s8335684
236 Index
identity-based problems (cont.) khadi campaign, 42–43, 61–62, 144–45, 154

justice and, 26–28 King, Martin Luther, Jr.

King and, 11 agape and, 151
nonviolent movements and, 35 human cognitive limitations and,
normative considerations and, 29 148, 150
quiescence and, 28–30 identity-based problems and, 11
synthesis and, 169–70 influences on, 165
identity politics, 128 Montgomery Bus Boycott role of, 12, 14, 15,
ideology, 24, 34–35, 60, 88–90, 106 16, 17, 18
“I Have a Dream” (King), 19, 165 nonviolent movements and, 141, 150–51
Indian independence movement, 41, 42, 44–45, organizing approach of, 18, 23–24
46n.36, 144, 206–7 overview of, 3
inequality, 25, 26, 69–70, 121, 195 prophetic mode and, 165–67
Institute for Social Research. See sacrifices and, 155–56
Frankfurt School worthiness and, 181
instrumental action, 90, 91–92, 100, 108– knowledge, 24, 65, 72, 89, 113–14, 115, 206
11, 129 Kushner, Tony, 43–44
Interdenominational Ministerial Kutz, Christopher, 5–6
Alliance, 14–15
intersectionality, 177–78 Lafont, Christina, 101
Intifada, 141, 145–46 League of Women Voters, 13
Iranian Revolution of 1979, 164 Lebron, Christopher, 25
Iron Law of Oligarchy, 21, 23, 78–79, 180 Lee, Caroline, 98–99, 101, 208
Lelyveld, Joseph, 161
Jackson, Jimmie Lee, 135 Leubolt, Bernhard, 207n.43
Jefferson, Thomas, 37–38, 190, 195 leverage
Jinnah, Ali Muhammad, 44–45, 46n.36, 162 citizenship and, 196
Johnson, James, 57n.3 civic agency and, 193–201, 212
Johnson, Lyndon, 135, 200 civic renewal and, 202, 205, 207, 212
Jones, Julius, 182–84 Habermas and, 132, 133
Judt, Tony, 98 overview of, 193–201
justice policing and, 185
citizenship and, 50–51 Lewis, John, 135–36, 147
collective action problems and, 40–41 libertarianism, 33n.1, 34, 51, 53, 58–59, 164
deliberative democracy and, 119 Lieres, Bettina von, 117–18
Gandhi and, 40–43, 161–62 Lifeworld, 92–98, 102, 129–32, 134, 149, 181
Habermas and, 161–62 Lincoln (2012), 43–70
human cognitive limitations and, 41 Lincoln, Abraham, 37, 43–44, 157
ideal theory and, 50 Lippmann, Walter, 103, 112, 191, 200
identity-based problems and, 26–28 Lorde, Audre, 177, 183
just aim selection and, 160–65 Los Indignados, 193
libertarianism and, 51, 53 loyalty, 6–7, 83, 172–76
means and ends and, 40–43, 44–45 Luban, David, 132
nonviolent movements and, 160–65 Luther, Martin, 153
Ostrom and, 43, 71
polycentric governance and, 51, 71 Madison, James, 114, 191–92, 195

Rawlsian liberalism and, 50–51 Mann, Horace, 33–34
social justice and, 26, 71, 117, 119, 172 Mansbridge, Jane, 131, 132–33
social reform and, 51–52 Mantena, Karuna, 40, 41, 154n.49
Marxism, 35, 87–88, 103–4
Kahneman, Daniel, 31 Marx, Karl, 87–88
Karales, James, 135 Massachusetts Citizens Initiative
Kawashima-Ginsberg, Kei, 121, 208–9 Review, 99–100
Keohane, Robert O., 68 McCoy, Martha, 142
CINCINNATI
Account: s8335684
Index 237
means and ends Nixon, E. D., 14

citizenship and, 172 nonviolent movements

collective action problems and, 40–46 Black Lives Matter and, 178
Gandhi and, 44–45 challenges for, 151–65
Habermas and, 45, 210 collective action problems and, 151–54
justice and, 40–43, 44–45 common-pool resources and, 143–44, 153
nonviolent movements and, 138, 174 conditions following conflicts and, 143–45
Ostrom and, 45 deliberation and, 143–44, 162–65
overview of, 40–43 direct action in, 163
See also deliberation effectiveness of, 35, 139–43
Merkel, Angela, 107 empirical research and, 139–40
MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association), free-riders and, 151–52
14–15, 17–18, 21–22 Gandhi and, 139, 139n.8, 144–45, 148–
Michels, Robert, 21, 180 50, 157
Michnik, Adam, 130–31 human cognitive limitations and, 148–51
Mill, John Stuart, 158 identity-based problems and, 35
minipublics, 98–102, 110, 143–44, 198 justice and, 160–65
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956) King and, 141, 150–51
background of, 12–14 minipublics and, 143–44
Black church and, 13 overview of, 35
collective action problems and, 152 pluralism and, 140–43
free-riders and, 20 prophetic mode and, 165–67
King’s role in, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 reasons for, 139–51
overview of, 12–19 sacrifices and, 154–60
path dependence and, 20 scale of application and, 140, 142–43
planning of, 12–14 self-limitation in, 145–47
social capital and, 180 social capital and, 152
strategy of, 15–19 SPUD framework and, 141–43, 142f,
targets of, 17 163, 209–10
white supremacy and, 15–16, 19, 20 synthesis of, 168–76, 178
Moral Foundations theory, 104–5, 106 tradeoffs in, 141–43, 142f
Morris, Aldon, 13, 154 See also synthesis of approaches
Moss, Jessica, 38n.14, 40n.20 normative considerations
Movement for Black Lives, 177–78 citizenship and, 39, 48, 49, 100
MoveOn, 141–42 empirical research and, 48
Mumford, Lewis, 37 Habermas and, 89–91
Muslim community, 42, 44–45, 125–26, 161 identity-based problems and, 29
Mutz, Diana, 120 Ostrom and, 34–35, 73–77, 81
polycentric governance and, 124
NAACP (National Association for the Novy, Andreas, 207n.43
Advancement of Colored People), 13, 16– Nussbaum, Martha, 36, 51
17, 143, 179, 180 Nyerere, Julius, 60
Navarro, Zander, 207n.43 Nyhan, Brendan, 110
Neblo, Michael, 105–6, 105n.55, 107
Nehemiah, Book of, 81–83 Offe, Claus, 128, 129–30
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 41n.21 Olson, Mancur, 68

neoliberalism, 24, 34, 69–70 oppression, 36, 76, 124, 146, 177–78, 181
Nepali farmers, 66–68, 72, 73–74, 83–84 Ostrom, Elinor
Nespolo, Nelsa Fabian, 118 biases and, 187
New Social Movements, 102, 118–20, Black Lives Matter and, 184–87
121, 127–34 boundary problems and, 80–83
Nichomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 38, 39 change in views over time of, 90n.5
Niebuhr, Reinhold, 37, 150 civic agency and, 70, 76, 83–84, 168–70
Nierras, Rose Marie, 117, 118–19, 122 civic education and, 74, 80, 205–6
CINCINNATI
Account: s8335684
238 Index
Ostrom, Elinor (cont.) biases and, 64–65

civic renewal and, 210 Black Lives Matter and, 185–87

crafts and, 80 common-pool resources and, 64–65,
criticism of, 69–70 185–87
deliberation and, 168, 169 empirical research and, 26n.32
deliberative democracy and, 127 Ostrom and, 80, 83–84, 184–87
design principles of, 54, 55–56, 77–78, 168, self-governance and, 188
185–87, 210 tragedy of the commons and, 64–65
drama of the commons and, 61–63, 89–90, 152 white supremacy and, 64–65
empirical research and, 34, 79, 185 policy analysis, 47–49, 47f
free-riders and, 78–79, 80 political philosophy, 1–2, 40, 52–53, 189–90
huertas system and, 61, 77, 79, 169 polycentric governance
justice and, 43, 71 affected interests theory and, 124
limitations of, 80–85 Black Lives Matter and, 178–80
means and ends and, 45 central planning contrasted with, 70–71
neoliberalism and, 69–70 citizenship and, 3–4
normative considerations and, 34–35, civic agency and, 198–99
73–77, 81 civic education and, 205
organizing approach of, 73–77, 79–80 civic renewal and, 202
overview of, 34, 173 complexity of, 69, 71
path dependence and, 78–79 definition of, 3–4, 51, 69
phronesis and, 39–40, 78 justice and, 51, 71
policing and, 80, 83–84, 184–87 normative considerations and, 124
polycentric governance and, 69–71, 74– Ostrom and, 69–71, 74–75, 76–77
75, 76–77 political theory implied by, 70–71
principle/agent dilemmas and, 78–79 social choice tradition and, 71
problematic decision rules and, 78–79 tyranny prevented by, 70–71
prophetic mode and, 165 Poona Pact, 161–62
scale of application and, 68–70 positivism, 91, 165
self-governance and, 80, 82–83 pragmatism, 36–37, 201
social capital and, 72, 78, 175 principle/agent problems, 23, 59, 78–79
technology and, 66–68 prisoner’s dilemma, 20, 74, 78–79
tragedy of the commons and, 61, 62–64, 66–67 privatization, 58–60, 62, 66, 184, 202
Ostrom, Vincent, 34, 40, 68–69, 74, 188 problematic decision rules, 21–22, 23, 78–79
propaganda, 24, 34–35, 88
Parek, Bhikhu, 149 prophetic mode
Parks, Rosa, 12, 13–14, 15, 18 Frankfurt School and, 165–66
Participatory Budgeting (PB), 99, 101, 118, 184, King and, 165–67
187, 198, 207, 207n.43 nonviolent movements and, 165–67
path dependence, 20, 78–79 Ostrom and, 165
Pettit, Philip, 50–51, 52, 191–92 public freedom, 37–38, 189–91
phronesis, 38–40, 78 public schooling, 33–34, 36, 43
PICO (community-organizing Public Sphere, 92, 93–94, 95–96, 102, 111, 114–
network), 141–42 20, 121–25, 181–82, 202
pluralism Putnam, Robert D., 72–73, 200–1
civic renewal and, 200–1, 209–10 Putnam, Ruth Anna, 49

civil rights movement and, 143
deliberative democracy and, 121–25 racism. See white supremacy
Habermas and, 121–25 Ransby, Barbara, 178–79
nonviolent movements and, 140–43 Rao, Vijayendra, 206–7
Polanyi, Michael, 69, 71n.37 Rawls, John, 50–51, 116n.85
polarization, 24–25, 101, 112–13, 210 Reed, Scott, 141–42
policing relational politics, 131–34, 194, 195
abolition of, 187 renewal. See civic renewal
CINCINNATI
Account: s8335684
Index 239
republicanism, 4–5, 37–38, 50–51, 103–4, 107, collective action problems and, 72
122–23, 124, 189–90 definition of, 72

resources in common. See common-pool empirical research and, 72–73
resources Montgomery Bus Boycott and, 180
Roberts, Adam, 141 nonviolent movements and, 152
Robinson, Jo Ann, 14–15 Ostrom and, 72, 78, 175
Rocamora, Joel, 117–18 overview of, 72–73
Rorty, Richard, 98 trust and, 73
Rustin, Bayard, 21 social choice theory, 71
social consciousness, 87–88
sacrifices social justice, 26, 71, 117, 119, 172
citizenship and, 159 social movements
civic agency and, 198–99, 211 citizenship and, 2–3
civic renewal and, 209 civic renewal and, 209–10
civil rights movement and, 158–59 definition of, 136–39
Gandhi and, 155, 156, 157–58, 161–63 deliberative democracy and, 118–21
King and, 155–56 elements of, 136–38
nonviolent movements and, 154–60 history of, 136–37
Sampson, Robert, 72–73 New Social Movements, 102, 118–20,
Samuelson, Paul, 76 121, 127–34
Sanders, Lynn M., 117 overview of, 135–36
Sanyal, Paromita, 206–7 target authorities and, 2–3
satyagraha (nonviolence), 139, 139n.8, 144–45, See also civil rights movement; nonviolent
148–50, 157 movements
scales of application, 68–70, 140, 142– social sciences, 47–49, 47f
43, 189–93 Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Scarnati, Blase, 204–5 (SCLC), 21, 143, 179
Schumacher, E. F., 189–90, 192–93 sovereignty theory, 124
Schumpeter, Joseph, 103, 110 SPUD framework, 141–43, 142f, 163
SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Stanley, Jason, 24
Conference), 21, 143, 179 status quo, 4, 22, 120–21, 136
Scott, James C., 60 Stealth Democracy (Hibbing and Theiss-
Segerberg, Alexandra, 193 Morse), 104–5
self-governance Stephan, Maria, 139–41, 163, 165
civic agency and, 198–99 Stride toward Freedom (King), 18, 154, 156
civic education and, 74, 80 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
civic renewal and, 206–7 (SNCC), 21, 24–25, 143
deliberative democracy and, 103–8 swaraj (independence), 41, 42, 44–45,
Gandhi and, 206–7 46n.36, 144
Habermas and, 93–94, 107–8 Swift, Adam, 50n.47
Ostrom and, 80, 82–83 synthesis of approaches
policing and, 188 civic work in a variety of settings and,
self-interest, 1, 91, 94, 114–16, 131 170–72
Selma to Montgomery marches, 135, 138 collective action problems and, 169
Sharkey, Patrick, 188 common-pool resources and, 171
Small is Beautiful (Schumacher), 189 complicity and, 172–76

Smith, Kevin, 106 deliberation and, 168–69
Smith, Rogers, 3n.6, 106 free-riders and, 168, 174
Smolar, Aleksander, 130–31 identity-based problems and, 169–70
SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating loyalty and, 172–76
Committee), 21, 24–25, 143 non-deliberative discourses and, 169
social capital Public Sphere and, 174
benefits of, 72–73 See also nonviolent movements
Black Lives Matter and, 180 Systems, 92, 93, 94–97, 129, 134
CINCINNATI
Account: s8335684
240 Index
TaKaDu Ltd., 66–67 voting, 5, 91, 180, 191, 195

Takyar, Delaram, 188 Voting Rights Act (1965), 135, 137

Talisse, Robert, 119 Vraga, Emily, 110
Tarko, Vlad, 29n.47
Taylor, Recy, 13 Wallace, George, 135
Theiss-Morse, Elizabeth, 104–5 Wan Runnan, 170–71
The Theory of Communicative Action ward republics, 190–91, 195
(Habermas), 90, 103, 126 Warren, Robert, 51, 69
A Theory of Justice (Rawls), 50 Washington, George, 146, 171
Tiebout, Charles, 51, 69 Weber, Max, 87
Tilly, Charles, 135, 136–37, 138, 141, 163, 181 West, Cornel, 37
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 74, 80 what should we do. See citizenship
Tometi, Opal, 181 Whitaker, Gordon P., 185
Torrats-Espinosa, Gerard, 188 white supremacy
tragedy of the commons civil rights movement and, 12–13
community ownership and, 61–63 collective action problems and, 19
drama of the commons and, 61–63, 89–90, 152 common-pool resources and, 64–65
inevitability and, 61 discourse problems and, 23–24
Nepali farmers and, 66–68, 72, 73–74, 83–84 Montgomery Bus Boycott and, 15–16,
Ostrom and, 61, 62–64, 66–67 19, 20
overview of, 57–60 policing and, 64–65
policing and, 64–65 white privilege and, 64–65
privatization and, 58–60 Why We Can’t Wait (King), 141
state control and, 58–60 Wilkerson, Isabel, 15–16
Trump, Donald J., 103–4, 107, 164–65 Williams, Hosea, 135
trust, 65, 72–73, 86, 125, 133–34 Winship, Christopher, 43
Tversky, Amos, 31 women, 13, 21, 38
Workshop in Political Theory, 34, 74
unions, 70, 197, 199, 200
The Upswing (Putnam and Romney Young, Iris Marion, 116, 117, 118–19
Garrett), 200 Youniss, James, 126
Urban League, 179 Yusuf, Fatma, 122
CINCINNATI
Account: s8335684

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1

The Citizen’s Fundamental Question

an aspect of a good life. Although we should encourage—​and sometimes even

4 M. L. King 1966/​1991, 58. Also discussed in Mantena 2018, 91.

From Ethics to Politics

ground-​support person could rightly say, “I made no difference, and I had no

11 See Kutz 2000, 115–​21.

For someone as fiercely principled and intellectually independent as Du Bois,

tween maximizing and universalizing.

The “I” and the “We”

17 Beggs 2003, 468.

members.” Brian Epstein criticizes an assumption that is implicit in these state-

actually involves a limited number of people who stand in complex relationships

Three Categories of Problems for Groups

and human activity significantly contributes to climate change.”23 Considering

23 Senate Amendment 58 to Senate Amendment 2, 114th Congress (2015–​2016), via Congress.gov.

The three categories of problems introduced in ­chapter 1—​collective action,

4 Branch 1988, 128–​133; Garrow 1986, 12–​18.

encouraged Southern authorities to moderate their racist policies to some extent

10 Wilkerson 2010, 527.

13 M.L. King 1955.

Collective Action Problems

In general, it is difficult for people to coordinate their individual actions to accom-

17 It is plausible that an arms race is a prisoner’s dilemma (Plous 1993, 163).

24 Baker n.d., 351

26Stanley 2015, 223.

Examples of Problems of Injustice Based on Identity

An identity is an answer to the question: “Who am I?” (Or, “Who is he/​she/​

that facilitation can address the problem.

interest, an opinion, an identity, or more than one of these. Disagreements about

identity differences do not reflect objective differences in behavior or values.

35 Goetz 2012; cf. T. Allen 1994.

human interactions. Besides, creating or redefining an identity can be an achieve-

Each of these problems has a practical dimension: we need effective means to

42 Bickford 1997, 124.

Human Cognitive Limitations

Complicating all of these separate problems are pervasive human cognitive

50Bacon 1620/​1863, xlvi.

53 Pew Research Center 2008.

universal public schooling originated with an argument that combined values

2 For the history of the label, see Aligica 2014, xii.

Other Starting Places

In focusing on the Bloomington School, the second generation of the Frankfurt

4 “Democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of

conjoint communal experience.” Dewey 1916/​1985, 93.

7 Dewey 1927, 146.

11Dews 2005, 51.

phronesis but from a kind of imagination or visualization of good outcomes.

19Flyvbjerg 2010, 141–​65.

every shade of opinion may have no difficulty in joining” the independence

At an abstract level, Gandhi was arguing that it would be a mistake to iden-

23Mantena 2012b, 9–​12.

317. I owe the reference to Mantena 2012b, 9.

28 Aligica 2014, 28.

31 Elkin 2007, 107–​8.

independence must involve close collaborations among Hindus, Muslims, and

32 Gandhi 1999, vol. 28, 310.

Why the Civic Perspective Is Often Missing

To call an intellectual development a “Copernican turn” is a cliché, but it hap-

an aspect of a good life. Although we should encourage—and sometimes even

4 M. L. King 1966/1991, 58. Also discussed in Mantena 2018, 91.

ground-support person could rightly say, “I made no difference, and I had no

11 See Kutz 2000, 115–21.

23 Senate Amendment 58 to Senate Amendment 2, 114th Congress (2015–2016), via Congress.gov.

The three categories of problems introduced in chapter 1—collective action,

4 Branch 1988, 128–133; Garrow 1986, 12–18.

An identity is an answer to the question: “Who am I?” (Or, “Who is he/she/

50Bacon 1620/1863, xlvi.

conjoint communal experience.” Dewey 1916/1985, 93.

19Flyvbjerg 2010, 141–65.

23Mantena 2012b, 9–12.

31 Elkin 2007, 107–8.

41 Cf. Latour 2004, e.g., 98–101.

6 Hardin 1968, 1245–46 (quoting Juvenal).

9 Dietz et al. 2002, 3–26; E. Ostrom 2004.

Subtractable Ordinary private goods such as Common-pool resources such as wild

16 Sharkey, Torrats-Espinosa & Takyar 2017; Sampson 2012.

Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. A medieval

common-pool resource management. If a community can hire engineers or

for a common-pool resource almost always depends on how the community is

a large-scale solution to a collective-action problem. Vincent Ostrom originally

Ostrom’s statements about “higher-order decision-making” are relatively empty,

38 E. Ostrom 2000c, 176–177.

The study of Nepali water distribution— very typical of the Bloomington

1 Marx 1859/1977, Preface.

4 Adorno 1951/2012, aphorism 6.