An Introduction to Civic Studies: Theories for a Better World

Overview: “Civic studies” is a nascent discipline that looks at social problems from the perspective of a citizen and asks tough questions about what we should do, taking into account values (ethics), facts (empirical evidence), and strategies. It originated with a joint statement written by a distinguished group of scholars in 2008. Since then, it has produced a special issue of a journal, an annual conference, a book, and–most importantly–the annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies at Tufts. The Summer Institute has drawn about 100 graduate students, leaders, and professors from Bhutan, Singapore, China, Mexico, South Africa, and numerous other countries and backgrounds. This course will be the first-ever undergraduate version of the Summer Institute. We will contribute to building “civic studies.”

Thursday, 1/16 Oriqentation and Inspirations

Introductions, overview of the syllabus and purpose of the course.

• Read aloud and discuss Seamus Heaney’s “In the Republic of Conscience”

Special homework: do an initial “map” of your own moral worldview (See “assignments” for instructions). Results due via email before class on 1/21.

Tuesday 1/21 Theorist #1: Jürgen Habermas (citizen as deliberator)

Readings

• James Finlayson, Habermas: A Very Short Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, 4 (pp. 1-27, 47-61)
• Jürgen Habermas, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article,” New German Critique, 3 (1974), pp. 49-55
• First mapping exercise is due.

Thursday 1/23 application: experiencing a practical deliberation

Special homework: In addition to the reading, watch the very short video from the National Issues Forums.

Reading:

• The National Issues Forum issue book, “Shaping Our Future: How Should Higher Education Help Us Create the Society We Want?”

In-class deliberation using this issue guide

Tuesday, 1/28 application: do Americans deliberate?

Reading:

• Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics, pp. 1-22

Discussion of the students’ moral maps.

Thursday, 1/30 Application: designing practical deliberations

Reading:

• Archon Fung, “Recipes for Public Spheres: Eight Institutional Design Choices and Their Consequences” in Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 11, No. 3. (September 2003), pp. 338-67.

Tuesday, 2/4 Theorist #2: Elinor Ostrom (the citizen as a manager of public goods)

Readings: Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons, pp. 1-102

Play a “Tragedy of the Commons” game in class. Discuss it.

Thursday, 2/6 Theorist #2: Elinor Ostrom (continued)

Reading:

• Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize Lecture (text or video–your choice).

Tuesday, 2/11 application: designing and managing large-scale commons

Readings:

• James Madison, The Federalist, number 10
• Peter Barnes, Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons. Pp. ix-xvi, 3-11.

Thursday, 2/13 Theorist #3: Robert Putnam (the citizen as a group member)

Reading:

• Robert D. Putnam, “Community-Based Social Capital and Educational Performance,” in Ravitch and Viteritti, eds., Making Good Citizens, pp. 58-95;

(In class, also discuss Sean Safford’s argument, not assigned.)

Tuesday, 2/18 Theorist #3: Robert Putnam (continued)

Reading:

• Jean L. Cohen, “American Civil Society Talk,” in Robert K. Fullinwider, ed., Civil Society, Democracy, and Civic Renewal, pp. 55-85

Special homework: do a revised “map” of your own moral worldview. Results due by 2/25

Thursday, 2/20 – No class, Monday schedule

Tuesday, 2/25 Theorist # 4: Saul Alinksy (the citizen as an organizer)

Reading:

• Saul Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 1946 (1969 edition), pp. 76-81; 85-88; 92-100, 132-5, 155-158.

In class: do one-on-ones

Second mapping exercise is due.

Thursday, 2/27 Application: modern community organizing

Reading:

• Mark Warren, Dry Bones Rattling (pp. 1-70)

Tuesday, 3/4 Theorist #5: Harry Boyte (the citizen as a public worker)

Reading:

• Harry C. Boyte, “Constructive Politics as Public Work: Organizing the Literature,” Political Theory, 2011

Thursday, 3/6 application: democratic professionalism

Reading:

• Albert Dzur, Democratic Professionalism, pp. 35-51, 105-134, 173-206

Tuesday, 3/11 Theorist #6: John Dewey (the citizen as co-learner?)

Reading:

• John Dewey, The Public and its Problems, Chapter 5, “Search for the Great Community.”

Thursday, 3/13: midterm in class

Tuesday, 3/18 and Thursday, 3/20 – No class, spring break

Tuesday, 3/25 application: civic education

Readings:

• Myles Horton and Paulo Freire, We Make the Road by Walking, pp. 115-138
• Joel Westheimer and Joseph E. Kahne, “Educating the ‘Good Citizen’: Political Choices and Pedagogical Goals,” PS Online

Thursday, 3/27 application: civic media

Reading:

• Knight Foundation, “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age”

Tuesday, 4/1,Theorist #6: Mohandas K. Gandhi (the citizen as a bearer of soul-force)

Readings:

• Bikhu Parekh, Gandhi, Chapter 4 (“Satyagraha”)
• Wikipedia entry on “Satyagraha”

Thursday, 4/3 – application: nonviolent social movements

Readings:

• Charles Tilly, Social Movements, 1768-2004
• Marshall Ganz, “Why David Sometimes Wins: Strategic Capacity in Social Movements,” in Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning, and Emotion (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) pp.177-98.
• Timothy Garton Ash, “Velvet Revolution: The Prospects,” New York Review of Books, December 3, 2009

Tuesday, 4/8 – Session on Power

Readings:

• John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness, pp. 1-32
• Bent Flyvbjerg, Social Science that Matters and Making Organization Research Matter

In class, look at the Power Cube

Thursday, 4/10 Theorist #7: James Madison (the citizen as designer or preserver of a republic)

Readings:

• Stephen Elkin, Reconstructing the Commercial Republic, pp. 107-111 (the parable of the shipbuilders)
• James Madison The Federalist, numbers 9, 10, 51

Tuesday, 4/15 application: revising the American republic

Reading:

• Stephen Elkin, Reconstructing the Commercial Republic, pp. 51-72

During class, in small groups, design constitutional reforms that would serve Madison’s purposes in the modern republic

Homework: paper due

Thursday, 4/17 Theorist #8: Roberto Mangabeira Unger (the citizen as radical experimentalist)

Reading:

• Roberto Unger, False Necessity, Chapter 1 (pp. 1-40)

Special homework: revise the moral network map again. Results due by 4/22.

Tuesday, 4/22 application: radical democratic experiments (and some cautionary notes)

Readings:

• Roberto Unger, Democracy Realized, “A Manifesto” (pp. 263-77)
• James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Introduction (pp. 1-8), Chapter 3 “Authoritarian High Modernism”, Chapter 9 “Thin Simplification and practical Knowledge: Metis” (pp.309-41)

Final mapping exercise is due.

Thursday, 4/24 summing up and thinking ahead

Reading:

• The Framing Statement of the Summer Institute

discuss the final network maps

The post syllabus of an undergraduate course on civic studies appeared first on Peter Levine.

Last semester, as part of Tufts’ Water Diplomacy program, we discussed with MIT professor Larry Susskind a paper in which he advocated for “involving stakeholders before [important] decisions are made.”* In the ensuing discussion, I wrote down the following nouns that were used to describe the individuals who might participate in making these decisions, along with experts and policymakers: “the population,” “the public,” “publics,” “stakeholders,” “groups,” “interests,” “citizens,” “representatives,” “negotiators,” “people” and “everybody” (as in, “You have to get everybody at the table.”) These words may have overlapping referents, but they are not synonyms. They imply different strategies and different core values. To pick up a few:

Stakeholders may include organizations and agencies as well as individuals. They are defined by having an identifiable “stake” in the matter. It is possible to define stakes very broadly so that, for instance, we all have a stake in the sustainability of the globe. (Then everyone is a stakeholder.) But defining people in terms of their “stakes” attaches each person to some particular priority. You are a farmer, an environmentalist, or a government official. That encourages negotiation but not deliberation–if deliberation implies an openness to changing one’s values and priorities.

Citizens must be individual people, although in practice, actual participants in deliberations and negotiations are often representatives of organized citizen groups. The word “citizen” has varied resonances. It can mean a legal member of some defined political community (distinguishing them from aliens). It can mean a person who is not an official, for sometimes we hear about “citizens meeting policymakers,” as if the latter were not also citizens. It can mean individuals who are accountable only to themselves or to their consciences. In that case, it encourages high-minded deliberation rather than negotiation.

The public can mean the great mass of people minus representatives of a relevant in-group, such as the government, the university, or the legal profession. That usage makes the public a relative concept: I am in the public with relation to the US government but outside the public when Tufts University engages its local communities. Sometimes people use a plural form of the word to talk about “issue publics” or “mobilized publics.” Then I think the word means large communities that promote discussion.

Interest groups are usually defined as sectors of the population that can be well represented by formal organizations with mission statements and explicit objectives. Their objectives need not be self-interested; for instance, environmentalists and human rights activists can represent interest groups. The key point is that they can be counted on to pursue a particular objective, and therefore, as long as an organization successfully promotes that objective, it represents them. Interest groups may be organized democratically so that their members have a say in the organizations’ strategies, but that seems optional and it has pros and cons. (It favors voice over exit as a way of determining strategy.)

A community (in this context) seems to be a group of people who may be highly diverse in terms of identities, goals, and interests, but they interact with one another either directly or through intermediaries. So Somerville, MA, is a community to the extent that its very diverse residents interact on matters of common concern. It may also be a community in an aspirational sense: since its residents live in the same city, they should interact.

An interest group is different from a community because membership in an interest group requires support for the interest. A good member of a community seems to owe the other members some concern and loyalty but is not obliged to agree with them. You can belong to a community and seek to change its prevailing goals and values. In contrast, if you disagree with the core goals of an interest group, you do not belong to it at all.

*Susskind, “Water and democracy: new roles for civil society in water governance,” International Journal of Water Resources Development, 2013
Vol. 29, No. 4, 666–677

The post citizens, stakeholders, publics, interest groups? appeared first on Peter Levine.

The sixth annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies will be an intensive, two-week, interdisciplinary seminar that considers civic theories and civic practices as part of an effort to develop the new field of civic studies. To date, more than 100 practitioners, advanced graduate students, and faculty from diverse fields of study have participated. The Institute is organized by Peter Levine of Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College and Karol Soltan of the University of Maryland.

WHAT IS CIVIC STUDIES?

The idea of a field of “civic studies” was proposed in 2007 in a joint statement by Harry Boyte, University of Minnesota; Stephen Elkin, University of Maryland; Peter Levine, Tufts University; Jane Mansbridge, Harvard University; Elinor Ostrom, Indiana University; Karol Soltan, University of Maryland; and Rogers Smith, University of Pennsylvania.

The field can be seen as the intellectual component of the emerging movement for civic renewal.

Civic studies aims to develop ideas and ways of thinking helpful to citizens, understood as co-creators of their worlds. The field does not consider “citizens” as official members of political jurisdictions, nor does it invoke the word “democracy.” One can be a co-creator in many settings, ranging from loose social networks, local communities, and religious congregations to the globe. Not all of these venues are, or could be, democracies.

Civic studies asks, “What should we do?” It explores ethics (what is right and good?), facts (what is actually going on?), strategies (what would work?), and the institutions that we co-create. Good strategies may take many forms and use many instruments, but if a strategy addresses the question “What should we do?”, then it must guide our own actions–it cannot simply be about how other people ought to act.

Civic studies is not civic education. Nor is it the study of civic education. However, when more fully developed, it should influence how citizenship is taught in schools and colleges.

For more on civic studies, see:

• The new book edited by Peter Levine and Karol Edward Soltan: Civic Studies: Approaches to the Emerging Field (American Association of Colleges and Universities, 2014) 
  
• The Good Society Symposium on Civic Studies, written and edited teachers and alumni of the Summer Institute
  
• The syllabus for the fourth annual seminar (in 2013). (The 2014 syllabus will be modified but will largely follow this outline.)

PRACTICAL DETAILS FOR THE 2014 SUMMER INSTITUTE OF CIVIC STUDIES

Sessions will take place weekdays from July 7-17, 2014, at the Tufts campus in Medford, MA. The seminar will be followed by a public conference—“Frontiers of Democracy 2014” that will conclude on July 18 at 6 pm. Participants in the Institute are expected to stay for “Frontiers” as well.

Tuition for the Institute is free, but students are responsible for their own housing and transportation. A Tufts University dormitory room can be rented for about $230-$280/week. Credit is not automatically offered, but special arrangements for graduate credit may be possible.

TO APPLY

Please email your resume, an electronic copy of your graduate transcript (if applicable), and a cover email about your interests to Peter Levine at Peter.Levine@Tufts.edu. For best consideration, apply no later than March 15, 2014.  You may also sign up for occasional announcements even if you are not sure that you wish to apply.

Please circulate to practitioners, scholars and students who would be interested in participating.

The post Calling applicants for the Sixth Annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies at Tufts University’s Tisch College (July 7 through July 18, 2014) appeared first on Peter Levine.

Published today, Civic Studies: Approaches to the Emerging Field is a volume co-edited by me and Karol Edward Soltan and published by Bringing Theory to Practice and the American Association of Colleges and Universities as the third in their Civic Series. It is available for free download (pdf) or for purchase at $10 for the volume. Contents:

• Part 1: Overview
  • “The Case for Civic Studies” by Peter Levine
  • “The Emerging Field of a New Civics” by Karol Edward Soltan
• Part 2: The Art and Science of Association: The Indiana Workshop
  • “Artisans of the Common Life: Building a Public Science of Civics,” by Filippo Sabetti
  • “Citizenship, Political Competence, and Civic Studies: The Ostromian Perspective,” by Paul Dragos Aligica
• Part 3: Deliberative Participation
  • “Deliberative Civic Engagement: Connecting Public Voices to Public Governance,” by Tina Nabatchi and Greg Munno
  • “The Challenge of Promoting Civic Participation in Poor Countries” by Ghazala Mansuri and Vijayendra Rao
• Part 4: Public Work
  • “Transforming Higher Education in a Larger Context: The Civic Politics of Public Work,” by Harry C. Boyte and Blase Scarnatti
  • “Citizen-Centered Research for Civic Studies: Bottom Up, Problem Driven, Mixed Methods, Interdisciplinary,” by Sanford Schram
  • “Public Sociology, Civic Education, and Engaged Research,” by Philip Nyden

The post new book–Civic Studies: Approaches to the Emerging Field appeared first on Peter Levine.

(New Orleans) I am here for a daylong symposium on “Civic Studies” at the Southern Political Science Association. It starts with an author-meets-critics session about my book, which is offered as one example of civic studies, along with Paul Dragos Aligica’s new book, Institutional Diversity and Political Economy: The Ostroms and Beyond.

According to our latest definition:

1. Civic studies is the intellectual component of civic renewal, which is the movement to improve societies by engaging their citizens.
2. The goal of civic studies is to develop ideas and ways of thinking helpful to citizens, understood as co-creators of their worlds. We do not define “citizens” as official members of nation-states or other political jurisdictions. Nor does this formula invoke the word “democracy.” One can be a co-creator in many settings, ranging from loose social networks and religious congregations to the globe. Not all of these venues are, or could be, democracies.
3. Civic studies asks “What should we do?” It is thus inevitably about ethics (what is right and good?), about facts (what is actually going on?), about strategies (what would work?), and about the institutions that we co-create. Good strategies may take many forms and use many instruments, but if a strategy addresses the question “What should we do?”, then it must guide our own actions–it cannot simply be about how other people ought to act.

The phrase “civic studies” was coined in 2007 in a joint statement by Harry Boyte, University of Minnesota; Stephen Elkin, University of Maryland; Peter Levine, Tufts University; Jane Mansbridge, Harvard University; Elinor Ostrom, Indiana University; Karol Soltan, University of Maryland; and Rogers Smith, University of Pennsylvania.

Civic studies is not civic education. Nor is it the study of civic education. However, once it is fully developed, it will influence how citizenship is taught in schools and colleges.

The post a symposium on civic studies appeared first on Peter Levine.

The new issue of The Good Society (vol. 22, no. 2) includes a symposium on The Summer Institute of Civic Studies at Tufts University. The symposium articles are free and open on JSTOR. They are:

• “The Summer Institute of Civic Studies: An Introduction” by Karol Soltan and me
• “Civic Studies: Fundamental Questions, Interdisciplinary Methods,” by Alison K. Cohen, J. Ruth Dawley-Carr, Liza Pappas, and Alison Staudinger
• “What Should You and I Do?: Lessons for Civic Studies from Deliberative Politics in the New Deal” by Timothy J. Shaffer
• “Living Well Together: Citizenship, Education, and Moral Formation” by Elizabeth Gish and Paul Markham
• “Civic Studies: Bringing Theory to Practice” by Katherine Kravetz
• “The Civic Institute Relocated: Designing a Syllabus for Undergraduate Students at a Public University” by Susan Orr; and
• “Deliberation and Civic Studies” by Matt Chick

As Karol Soltan and I write at the beginning of our introductory essay, the Summer Institute of Civic Studies is intended as a step in the development of a new discipline, by which we mean an intellectual community (a group of thinkers who learn from each other) that is institutionalized, with an association, a journal or journals, educational institutions, a recognized place in universities, conferences, and so on.

The aim of this symposium is to introduce the Summer Institute, mostly through the work of past participants. … Every year, it draws about 20 advanced graduate students, faculty, civic practitioners, and community leaders for two weeks of intensive discussions. Individuals have come from Bhutan, Singapore, Mexico, South Africa, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Israel, and all corners of the United States to participate.

Like any healthy intellectual community, civic studies is a field of debate; participants do not sing in unison. But they do have common premises and purposes that, among other things, draw 20 of them to Tufts each July. Those premises could be formulated in several overlapping ways:

1. The goal of civic studies is to develop ideas and ways of thinking helpful to citizens, understood as co-creators of their worlds. Note that we do not define “citizens” as official members of nation-states or other political jurisdictions. Nor does this formula invoke the word “democracy.” One can be a co-creator in many settings, ranging from loose social networks and religious congregations, to the globe. Not all of these venues are, or could be, democracies.

2. Civic studies asks Shaffer’s question: “What should we do?” It is thus inevitably about ethics (what is right and good?), about facts (what is actually going on?) and about strategies (what would work?). Good strategies may take many forms and use many instruments, but if a strategy addresses the question “What should we do?”, then it must guide our own actions. For many of us, institutions and institution-making are crucial to this enterprise. They embody ideals and values. They can also be seen as crucial resources.

3. At the very beginning of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton asks whether “societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are f orever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” Civic studies suggests that we can govern by reflection and choice. But more importantly, it looks for ways to make that happen. In other words, we are not especially concerned with an assessment of how much agency we actually have as reasoning citizens; we are concerned with enhancing our political or civic agency.

4. As co-founder of the Summer Institute and retiring editor of this journal Stephen Elkin reminds us elsewhere in this issue, [the Good Society's] motto  is Walter Lippman’s statement that “the art of governing well has to be learned.” That is another way of formulating the task of civic studies.

Civic studies is an intellectual community in the making, based on an empirical observation that there are many thinkers, networks of thinkers (some overlapping), and traditions of thinking in a number of disciplines that share the goals listed above.

The post The Good Society symposium on Civic Studies appeared first on Peter Levine.

In Sunday’s New York Times, Katrin Benhold describes how the current UK Government has embraced “behavioral economics.” The Cameron Government has been influenced by Richard H. Thaler’s and Cass R. Sunstein’s book Nudge to adopt policies like telling people who are late with their taxes how many of their neighbors have already paid. A government can improve your behavior (citizen) by showing that it knows what you are doing, by sharing that knowledge with your fellow citizens, and by demonstrating your similarity or divergence from the norm.

Another example is Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on huge sodas. You can still buy as much soda as you want in New York, but limiting the individual portions to 16-ounces confronts you with an explicit choice if you decide you want to drink more than that. Proponents say the government can get better results with less force by using such techniques, and they call it “libertarian paternalism.”

Real libertarians are not happy. Sean Collins writes in the libertarian magazine Spiked:

This paternalistic approach changes the relationship between government and citizens. Instead of government representing us, working for us, government now works on us, trying to change our interests. It would be one thing if government sought to convince the public in open debate, but those who would nudge or ban do not want to have open debate or discussions. As the term ‘paternalism’ implies, citizens are essentially treated like children who do not speak; they are only spoken to.

Followers of Michel Foucault are not libertarians, but they should be equally concerned. They should recall Foucault’s discussion of the “panopticon,” Jeremy Bentham’s scheme for a prison designed so that each prisoner can be observed at all times but cannot tell whether he is being watched:

“So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations. Bentham was surprised that panoptic institutions could be so light: there were no more bars, no more chains, no more heavy locks ….

The Panopticon was also a laboratory; it could be used as a machine to carry out experiments, to alter behaviour, to train or correct individuals. To experiment with medicines and monitor their effects. To try out different punishments on prisoners, according to their crimes and character, and to seek the most effective ones. To teach different techniques simultaneously to the workers, to decide which is the best. ….

Although it arranges power, although it is intended to make it more economic and more effective, it does so not for power itself, nor for the immediate salvation of a threatened society: its aim is to strengthen the social forces – to increase production, to develop the economy, spread education, raise the level of public morality; to increase and multiply.” (Foucault, Discipline & Punish)

In defense of the “nudge” idea, I would say that governments have always influenced how choices are presented. It makes sense to be deliberate about the design of choices. I am fine with making you decide to buy soda 16-oz at a time.

Yet there are good reasons to be skeptical about behavioral economics as a tool of governance. Your overall reaction will depend on what most deeply concerns you. You may think that our main problem is unhealthy or immoral personal behavior–people failing to pay their taxes, for example, or drinking 32 ounces of sugary soda at a time. You may, furthermore, believe that to change their behavior by banning or taxing it is often too costly in terms of individual freedom, burdens on the state, or sheer cash. Then it will be appealing to use behavioral economics to influence citizens’ choices, just as it was very tempting to build state prisons according to the principles of Bentham’s panopticon. One guard, very few beatings and executions, yet everyone behaves.

A different stance begins with the idea that modernity poses a threat to the human being as an end-in-herself. Modern rationality is means/ends rationality: we constantly develop and refine tools for getting other people to do what we want, whether those tools are laws and surveillance, bureaucratic files, surveys, advertisements of all kinds, payments and rewards, or taxes and penalties. Each of those devices whittles away at people’s capacity to decide for themselves how to live. From that perspective, manipulation is a fundamental problem, worse than obesity or tax-evasion, and behavioral economics is just the latest and most sophisticated version of it.

Benhold uses the verb “manipulate” in her basic description of the British behavioral economic policies:

Manipulating behavior is old hat in the private sector, where advertisers and companies have been nudging consumers for decades. Just think of strategically placed chocolate bars at the checkout counter. But in public policy, nudge proponents study human behavior to try to figure out why people sometimes make choices that they themselves would consider poor. Then they test small changes in how those choices are presented, to see whether people can be steered toward better decisions — like putting apples, not chocolate bars, at eye level in school cafeterias.

It is better to eat apples than chocolate bars. And it is appropriate for a school to shape students’ behavior. But the classical republican ideal is that no one may influence your thoughts and actions without giving you an explicit justification, and you must have the right to respond if you don’t agree. No one can say, “Do this because I say so.” Your response to being coerced may be as modest as voting against the people who are trying to regulate you, but the exchange of reasons (on their part) and actions (on yours) respects your dignity. Moreover, to the greatest extent possible, the citizens of a republican regime must decide how to constrain and improve themselves and create their own norms. Each is accountable to the others, and nobody manipulates us.

In We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For (pp. 60-2), I discuss more democratic ways to change our behavior:

Human beings are distinctive because we can have ordinary desires plus desires concerning our desires. For example, I may want to put down a difficult scholarly book that I am reading so that I can watch a trivial television show, and at the same time want not to have that desire. … If I turn myself into someone who enjoys scholarly books more and trivial TV shows less, I am not only entitled to believe that I have done the right thing with my time, but that I have also improved myself. In that way, the self (personal identity) is connected to second-order volitions.

I introduce this concept here because we are capable of assessing and altering our own second-order volitions in ways that produce conscious development, not just random change. In the words of the Port Huron Statement that inaugurated the New Left in America, we “have unrealized potential for self-cultivation, self-direction, self-understanding, and creativity.” The Statement proceeds to note that this process of self-cultivation is not individualistic, on the model of a Romantic artist developing his or her own genius. “This kind of independence does not mean egoistic individualism—the object is not to have one’s way so much as it is to have a way that is one’s own. . . . Human interdependence is contemporary fact.”

Indeed, most of the effective techniques for improving our second-order volitions are “relational” and collaborative. Religious congregations, Study Circles and other deliberative forums, internally democratic associations, and participatory social movements convene people to decide on what they should want and then to hold one another accountable for changing their identities by changing what they want. …

Meanwhile, as a whole country, we have both desires and second-order volitions. We want to drive our big SUVs to work, and we want to be the kind of country that does not want to do that. Whereas individual consumer choices elicit our ordinary desires, civic acts such as making arguments in public and voting make us think about our second-order volitions. A good law is not a reflection of what we want but of what we think we should want.

Again, I do not rule out the possibility that a democratically elected government might put apples on the lower shelves of school cafeterias, ban 32-oz sodas, or even inform tax scofflaws how many of their neighbors have paid on time. But each of these acts is a potential threat to the dignity of the persons being regulated, and so it requires explicit public discussion and careful review.

I realize, by the way, that I have combined allusions to libertarianism, civic republicanism, and Foucault in this post, even though they represent very different perspectives. But their differences emerge mostly in what they say about how we should govern. Presented with “libertarian paternalism,” I think they would converge on the same hostile response.

(See also “the new manipulative politics: behavioral economics, microtargeting, and the choice confronting Organizing for Action” and “qualms about a bond market for philanthropy” for similar concerns about another popular idea, social investing.)

The post qualms about Behavioral Economics appeared first on Peter Levine.