A colleague recently suggested an analogy between music and civic engagement, emphasizing that both have been transformed by technological/economic changes, and there is no going back to the old days. We used to get music from recording companies and participate in public life thanks to daily newspapers, unions, grassroots political parties, and durable civic associations. The traditional institutions for both music and citizenship have been replaced by loose networks and individual choice.

We could extend the analogy by noting that civic engagement, like music, can bring satisfaction to the participants. Neither activity is a mere chore to be done to achieve an outcome. In both cases, people may be enthusiastic to participate (or not–their interest varies). Both activities are heavily collaborative. And in both cases, we should welcome a wide range of excellence. The one-in-a-million talent is admirable in politics, as in music, but we also need average people to sing and to express their political views. In both cases, people appreciate excellence better if they also contribute at their own level.

The differences are also worth noting. For one thing, civic engagement has a strong ethical aspect. Mussolini was active and skillful, but he made the world worse. We must able to evaluate civic engagement ethically with attention to means and ends. I would, for example, build into the definition of good engagement a strong desire to understand alternative views. The most ethically demanding aspects of citizenship do not come naturally. Neither does good musicianship, but I think that the ethical demands of citizenship are more onerous than the preconditions of making music.

Also, certain forms of civic engagement are rivalrous or competitive. More engagement by Tea Partiers means less success for liberals, and vice-versa.

Everyone has a right to be heard in the political domain. Although no one is obligated to listen to me sing (an unpleasant experience), my fellow citizens must give me equal time in a public meeting, just because I am a member of their community.

Finally, it is healthy in both civic life and music for people to form smaller communities of interest with diverse styles. However, as long as important decisions are made by governments, the people of each political jurisdiction must sometimes form a single political community to discuss and act on their common fate. In contrast, we never have to bring all the choirs, bands, and orchestras together to make one stream of music.

The differences between music and citizenship mostly point to the need for intervention in the civic domain. I think music will thrive in a world of digital files, free choice, and loose voluntary networks. Civic engagement needs help.

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Vista típica de la Huerta de Valencia.

(Near Tarrytown, NY) The huertas of Valencia, Spain, represent a magnificent example of human cooperation, but I am told they are now doomed. The reasons are endemic to modernity and require serious consideration.

Water is a scarce resource, essential for life. If you can take water for your own crops, basic economic theory says you will take lots of it even if others downstream don’t get enough. The rain and the river can’t be privatized in simple ways. The state can police water-use, but it’s hard and rare to build states that are smart, responsive, virtuous, and just enough to accomplish tasks like efficient and fair water-management.

But, contrary to a simplistic economic model, farmers in Valencia, Spain, have been distributing very scarce water consistently since before 1238. The rules and tools they developed are summarized here. Their tribunals and other processes were already in place during the Muslim period and may have predated the Islamic conquest. They continued more or less smoothly despite the Christian Reconquista, the unification of Spain, its economic decline, Civil War, and fascism.

But, as I am told by Francisco Arenas-Dolz (a distinguished Spanish academic whose own family used to farm in the huerta system), it is now disappearing. Former farmers are moving to high-rises in the city, and suburban sprawl is swallowing up agricultural land.

One cannot blame people for “exiting.” I would not want to be a farm-worker in an arid climate (or anywhere). I suspect that, despite the radical shifts in Valencia’s political and religious regimes over a millennium, one thing remained constant: peasants couldn’t leave the land. Now they can leave, and they are leaving, and I don’t lament that.

But we can lament two outcomes. First, the huertas have aesthetic, cultural, and environmental value that individual participants (as well as outsiders) prize. The individuals’ exit benefits them but destroys something that they love. They would all be better off if somehow the huertas could be preserved. The agricultural landscape could perhaps have evolved into something new and better, an economy that offered higher-skilled and more profitable jobs to a few people still in touch with their traditions. Instead, it is just vanishing.

Second, the heurtas taught ethics, skills, habits, and techniques for solving collective-action problems. Even if we give up on small-scale agriculture in Valencia, we still face inescapable problems at a bigger scale. Climate change is only the most dire example. If everyone exits the huertas and that model vanishes, how will we learn to address bigger Tragedies of the Commons?

(See also “Why Engineers Should Study Elinor Ostrom,” my obituary of Ostrom, and “Albert O. Hirschman on Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.”)

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