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Original Articles

Civic Engagement and National Belonging

Pages 595-613 | Published online: 08 May 2007

REFERENCES

  • 1. Schambra, William A. All Community Is Local: The Key to America's Civic Renewal. In Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America; Dionne, E. J., Ed.; Brookings Institution Press: Washington, D.C., 1998; p. 49. Such critiques most often are associated with the right in America, but for a discussion of leftist community organizations' longstanding “suspicion” of “collaboration across groups and levels of governance,” see Weir, M.; Ganz, M. Reconnecting People and Politics. In The New Majority; Greenberg, S. B.; Skocpol, T., Eds.; Yale University Press: New Haven, 1997, pp. 161–162. A useful overview of scholarship hostile to pretensions of national community is in Gilbert, P. A. The Concept of a National Community. Philosophical Forum 1997, 28, 152–155.
  • For sustained commentary on this point see Kersh, R . 2001 . Dreams of a More Perfect Union , Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press .
  • Greenfeld , Liah . 1992 . Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity , 487 – 488 . Cambridge : Harvard University Press .
  • Putnam , R. 2000 . Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community , New York : Simon & Schuster . See, esp.
  • 5. Putnam, Bowling Alone, pp. 111–113. Wolfe, A. One Nation, After All; Penguin Books: New York, 1998, p. 233.
  • 6. Bradley, B. America's Challenge: Revitalizing Our National Community. In Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America; Dionne, E. J., Jr., Ed.; Brookings Institution Press: Washington, D.C., 1998, p. 110. The civic-republican view of America's past is succinctly summarized by Rodgers, D. Republicanism: The Career of a Concept. Journal of American History 1992, 79(1), 11–38.
  • 7. Putnam, Bowling Alone, p. 345. Book-length studies of civic engagement in U.S. history include Schudson M. The Good Citizen: A History; Martin Kessler Books: New York, 1998 and Sandel, M. Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy; Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1996.
  • Wiebe , Robert H. , ed. 1975 . “ Island communities ” . In The Segmented Society: An Introduction to the Meaning of America , New York : Oxford University Press . was coined by
  • 9. Thomas Bender variously dates historians' separate claims about the “breakdown of local community” in the United States to “the 1650s, 1690s, 1740s, 1820s, 1850s, 1880s, and 1920s.” Idem., Community and Social Change in America; Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, 1978, pp. 50–51. Michael Sandel's account places the shift more recently still, during the 1970s: see Democracy's Discontent, pp. 294–297.
  • Skowronek , S. 1982 . Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 , 23 New York : Cambridge University Press .
  • Smith , R. M. 1997 . Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History , 15 New Haven : Yale University Press .
  • Altschuler , G. C. and Blumin , S. M. 2001 . Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century , Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press . See, esp.
  • Kaufman , J. A. 1999 . Three Views of Associationalism in Nineteenth-Century America: An Empirical Examination . American Journal of Sociology , 104 ( 5 ) : 1296 – 1345 .
  • 14. Skocpol, T. A Partnership with American Families. In The New Majority; Greenberg, S. B.; Skocpol, T., Eds.; Yale University Press: New Haven, 1997, p. 114. Madison in Rossiter, C. Ed.; The Federalist Papers; Penguin: New York, 1961, p. 325.
  • 15. Nelson, H. L. The Growth of the Federal Power; Harper's New Monthly Magazine 1892, 85(506), 241. Foner, E. The Story of American Freedom; W.W. Norton: New York, 1998, p. 54.
  • Berman , S. 1997 . Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic . World Politics , 49 ( 3 ) : 401 – 429 . 424–425.
  • Sandel . Democracy's Discontent , 347
  • 18. Specifics appear in Kersh, Dreams of a More Perfect Union, chaps. 2–5. On past cooperative efforts between U.S. national government agencies and officials, on one hand, and voluntary associations on the other., see Skocpol, Partnership with American Families, pp. 109–115; Crowley, J. E.; Skocpol, T. The Rush to Organize: Explaining Associational Formation in the U.S., 1860s–1920s. American Journal of Political Science 2001, 45, 813–829, pp. 814–816.
  • 19. Rossiter, ed., Federalist Papers, p. 38.
  • 20. Skocpol, Partnership with American Families, p. 109. Recent research by Tomas Koontz demonstrates that national government officials are more likely to encourage citizen participation in agency decisions than are their counterparts at state and local levels. Idem., Administrators and Citizens: Measuring Agency Officials' Efforts to Foster and Use Public Input in Forest Policy. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 1999, 9.
  • Alexis de Tocqueville . 1969 . “ Democracy in America ” . Edited by: Mayer , J. P. Vol. II , 19 Garden City, NY : Anchor Books .
  • Kramnick , I. and Moore , L. 1996 . The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness , New York : Norton . See, e.g.,
  • 23. For specific details see Kersh, Dreams of a More Perfect Union, chaps. 2, pp. 4–6.
  • 24. McPherson, J. M. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War;Oxford University Press: New York, 1997, pp. 117–131. On Lincoln's views, see Smith, Civic Ideals, pp. 249–251.
  • 25. Wolfe, One Nation, p. 5. Wolfe's own surprise at these findings is chronicled at ibid., pp. 58–61.
  • 26. Weir and Ganz, Reconnecting People and Politics, p. 167 (emphasis in original).
  • Gellner , E. 1983 . Nations and Nationalism , Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press . See, e.g.,
  • Kai , Nielsen . 1997 . Cultural Nationalism, Neither Ethnic nor Civic . Philosophical Forum , 28 : 43 – 52 .
  • Yael , Tamir . 1993 . Liberal Nationalism , Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press . See esp.
  • 30. Nielsen, “Cultural Nationalism,” p. 49. No less a liberal thinker than J.S. Mill saw a version of cultural nationalism as integral to a well-constituted polity: see idem., Considerations on Representative Government; Prometheus Books: Amherst, NY, 1991, pp. 310–318. My short discussion here gives inadequate space to the well-chronicled tension between nationalism or patriotism and other cherished values. Perhaps it will suffice to say here that concerns about nationalist excesses are well founded, but that tension always requires keeping constituent elements in rough balance. This task, given overwhelming contemporary attention to localism as well as such other forms of pluralism as diversity and group rights, demands more inquiry into encouraging national sentiment—not less.
  • 31. The term “mature patriotism” is defined and substantiated in Wolfe, One Nation, pp. 133–179. See also Erica Benner's discussion of a “democratic” national doctrine, in Is there a Core National Doctrine? Nations and Nationalism 2001, 7(2), 155–174.
  • Kersh , R. 1999 . Liberty and Union: A Madisonian View . Journal of Political Philosophy , 7 : 247 – 260 .
  • Rosencrance , R. 1996 . The Rise of the Virtual State . Foreign Affairs , 75 : 45 – 54 .
  • 34. See, e.g., the following national issue polls: CBS/NY Times, conducted 11/20–24, 2002, released 11/25; Gallup, conducted 3/4–7, 2002, released 4/22; ABC/Washington Post, conducted 1/24–27, 2002, released 1/28 (all reports in possession of author). Quote from Yishai, Y. Civil Society in Transition: Interest Politics in Israel. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 1998, 555, 147–162.
  • 35. Madison in Farrand M., Ed. Records of the Federal Convention of 1787; Yale University Press: New Haven, 1937; Vol. II, p. 203. Rodriguez, Gregory. A Look at Immigrants and Assimilation. Washington Post 1999, Jul 4, B3. Miller, David. Social Equality. In Equality; Franklin, Jane, Ed.; Institute for Public Policy Research: London, 1996, p. 181.
  • Ackerman , B. and Alstott , A. 1999 . The Stakeholder Society , 184 – 185 . New Haven : Yale University Press .
  • 37. See, e.g., the extensive study of U.S. national infrastructure underway at the Bush School, as detailed at http://bush.tamu.edu/Research/ISTPP/research/infra.stm (accessed Dec. 2002).
  • 38. Hutchinson, W. T.; Rachal, W. M., Eds. Papers of James Madison; University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville, VA, 1979, vol. XIV, pp. 138–139. See also Madison's speech in Congress on binding the western territories to the whole by “a common affection” (ibid., XII, at 377); or ibid., vol. XVII, pp. 307–308, 347–350.
  • 39. Wuthnow, R. Acts of Compassion; Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1991, p. 300. AmeriCorps goals are summarized in Perry, J. L.; Thomson, A. M.; Tschirhart, M.; Mesch, D.; Lee, G., Eds. Inside a Swiss Army Knife: An Assessment of AmeriCorps. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 1999, 9, 225–250.
  • Smith , T. J. and Jucovy , L. Z. 1995 . Launching AmeriCorps , Philadelphia : Public-Private Ventures Press . chap. 3.
  • 41. Perry et al., Assessment of AmeriCorps, p. 237.
  • Waldman , S. , ed. 1995 . “ On original program design, see ” . In The Bill , New York : Penguin Books .
  • Oliver , J. E. 1999 . The Effects of Metropolitan Economic Segregation on Local Civic Participation . American Journal of Political Science , 43 : 186 – 212 .
  • Skocpol , T. 1997 . The Tocqueville Problem: Civic Engagement in American Democracy . Social Science History , 21 : 457 – 477 .
  • 45. Weir and Ganz, Reconnecting People and Politics, p. 160.
  • Davis , S. , Elin , L. and Reeher , G. 2002 . Click on Democracy: The Internet's Power to Change Political Apathy into Civic Action , Boulder, CO : Westview Press .
  • 1998 . Robert Hefner points out that “[a]n often-heard argument in recent years is that horizontal or lateral social ties are the key to a healthy civil polity; vertical linkages, by contrast, are undemocratic.” Idem., Civil Society: Cultural Possibility of a Modern Ideal . Society , 35 ( 3 ) : 16 – 27 .
  • 48. One recent Brecht invocation comes from former Senator Bill Bradley (America's Challenge, p. 14). Empirical evidence of mistrust of national leaders is analyzed in Hibbing, J. R.; Theiss-Morse, E. Stealth Democracy: Americans' Beliefs about How Government Should Work; Cambridge University Press: New York, 2002.
  • Wiltse , C. and Berolzheimer , A. R. , eds. 1988 . Papers of Daniel Webster: Speeches and Formal Writings , Vol. II, pp , 284 – 285 . Hanover, NH : University Press of New England .
  • 50. Ericson, D. F. Presidential Inaugural Addresses and American Political Culture. Presidential Studies Quarterly 1997, 27, p. 730. On the connection between Reagan's rhetoric of national unity and “a flowering of patriotism” in the early 1980s, see Turner, F. C.; Ladd, E. C. Nationalism, Leadership, and the American Creed. Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 1986, 13, 185–198.
  • 51. On beneficiaries and belonging: see, e.g., Marmor, T. R.; Mashaw, J. L.; Harvey, P. L. America's Misunderstood Welfare State: Persistent Myths, Enduring Realities; Basic Books: New York, 1990, pp. 4–7, 47–49. Quote from Faux, J. Your Are not Alone. In The New Majority; Greenberg, S. B.; Skocpol, T., Eds.; Yale University Press: New Haven, 1997, p. 29.
  • 52. Ackerman and Alstott, Stakeholder Society, pp. 190–191.
  • 53. See, e.g., Faux, You Are not Alone, pp. 37–39 (advocating “global policies with a national purpose”; my emphasis).
  • 54. Franck, Thomas M. Clan and Superclan. American Journal of International Law 1996, 90, 359. On the decline of nation-states, see Omae, Kenichi. The End of the Nation State; Free Press: New York, 1995.
  • David , Miller . 1995 . On Nationality , 15 New York : Oxford University Press .

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