Tampa Prep 2009-2010 Impact Defense File
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- Ext 1 – Civic Engagement Fails
AT: Civic Engagement1. No connection between civic engagement, social networks, and democracy—Weimar Germany proves Ariel Armony (assistant professor of government at Colby College) 2004: The Dubious Link: Civic Engagement and Democratization, pp. 98-9) Undemocratic civic engagement can take different forms. In this chap- ter I have analyzed patterns of associational activity whose effect was inimical to democracy by looking at the intersections between social cleavages, political conditions, and their link to civic engagement. Events in Weimar Germany challenge the assumption that civil society necessarily leads to democracy. As Max Weber argued in the late nine- teenth century: "The quantitative spread of organizational life does not always go hand in hand with its qualitative significance" (quoted in Koshar 1986a: 4). Active involvement in social clubs and other volun- tary associations, work-based networks, religious organizations, and informal social connections may be linked to the production of social capital, but there is nothing inherent in these dimensions of civic en- gagement that connects them to democratic outcomes. In the Weimar Republic, Nazi voters and supporters (outside of the party's activist core) were not ideological zealots. The growth of the Nazi project was facilitated, using Putnam's (2000) terminology, by both machers and schmoozers (pp. 93-95). "In Yiddish," Putnam explains, "men and women who invest lots of time in formal organizations are often termed machers—that is, people who make things happen in the com- munity. By contrast, those who spend many hours in informal conver- sation and communion are termed schmoozers" (p. 93). Weimar citizens organized at an unprecedented rate, leadership skills became available to wider sectors of the public, and membership in voluntary organiza- tions increased dramatically, but German machers and schmoozers con- veyed antipolitical beliefs and antidemocratic ideas (see Koshar 1986a: 161, 276). German civic activists built networks of reciprocity and so- ciability, but these networks did not produce democratic results. The analysis of civic engagement requires that we understand not only political processes at the level of the state, but also social processes pertaining to the unmaking (and remaking) of collective identities and social boundaries (across class and other social cleavages) (Koshar 1986a: 282). Berman (1997b), for example, has argued that one "factor to examine in determining when civil society activity will bolster or weaken a democratic regime ... is the political context within which that activity unfolds" (p. 567). Emphasizing the importance of strong political institutions for successful governance, Berman focused on in- stitutional variables in her assessment of the impact of context on civil society activity. However, the political sphere (e.g., political institution- alization) does not account for the interaction between conflicts in soci- ety and the characteristics of the political regime, which in turn influ- ences patterns of civic engagement. As the case of Germany illustrates, the intersections of class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and age—analyzed in light of the broader political context—are critical to understanding participation in civil society. This is a case in which civil society con- tributed to corroding democracy to the point of its breakdown in a con- text of fragile political institutionalization, heightened social polariza- tion, and severe economic dislocations. By contributing to (rather than breaking) a "vicious circle," civil society offered a venue for disaffected citizens and this participation in turn deepened their dissatisfaction with political institutions, hardened their grievances, and made them more willing to support antisystem solutions. 2. Civil society will inevitably disengage from the state Ariel Armony (assistant professor of government at Colby College) 2004: The Dubious Link: Civic Engagement and Democratization, pp. 149 Table 4.3 summarizes the most significant dimensions in the rela- tionship between civil society and the state.16 First, in a pattern of con- frontation, the civil society-state relationship tends to be reduced to a zero-sum conflict.17 For some groups, human rights could only be pro- moted in opposition to the state. In their view, the state was only capa- ble of violating such rights. Second, in setting their strategic priorities, civic groups consider their objectives to be inherently opposite to those of the state and thus assume no common ground for cooperation. For instance, some organizations in my study employed polar categories (democratic / authoritarian) to define themselves in relation to a specific state agency (e.g., the Interior Ministry) and rejected any possible (for- mal or informal) links with that agency. Third, the perception of the state held by participants in civil society organizations is important be- cause it shapes the type of relationship that a group seeks with state agencies. Several organizations in my study depicted the state as inher- ently authoritarian and corrupt, perceiving the state apparatus as a monolithic entity, which convinced them that it was in their best inter- est not to cooperate with government officials.
Ariel Armony (assistant professor of government at Colby College) 2004: The Dubious Link: Civic Engagement and Democratization, pp. 34-5 One of the main tasks of studies on civil society, some argue, is to ex- amine the processes of communication in civil society and how debates in the public sphere enter the sphere of the state (Cohen 1999: 71). For instance, as some studies have shown, the connection between civil so- ciety and parliaments played a fundamental role in the development of prodemocratic civil societies in nineteenth-century Europe (Bermeo 2000: 244-46). Associational life may contribute to "public opinion and public judgement," as Mark Warren (2001) said, "especially by provid- ing the social infrastructure of public spheres that develop agendas, test ideas, embody deliberations, and provide voice" (p. 61). This function, which he refers to as "public sphere effects," has the potential to "gener- ate the 'force' of persuasion, as distinct from the forces of coercion and money" (pp. 34, 61, 77-82). As explained, the public sphere is a fundamental locus for delibera- tion over political and social issues. However, it is important to qualify the idea of the public sphere as an arena of discursive debate among peers (Habermas 1989: 36). Indeed, given the unequal distribution of so- cial resources in all societies, the public sphere cannot stand as an arena where people produce a consensus about an all-encompassing "com- mon good" (Fraser 1993: 4; Cohen 1999: 58). Societal actors in the pub- lic sphere cannot "deliberate as if they were social peers" because the "discursive arenas" in which they interact are placed "in a larger socie- tal context that is pervaded by structural relations of dominance and subordination" (Fraser 1993: 12). Understanding the implications of this idea requires attention to two issues. First, we cannot ignore the role of inequality, social exclusion, and attacks on people's dignity (discrimination, racism, and so on) in the analysis of the processes of interaction in civil society (Uvin 1999: 50-54. See the section "Civil Society and Context," below). The struc- tural position of individual and collective actors in society is a funda- mental element of relations within civil society. Second, any analysis of the public sphere should examine how organized actors in society es- tablish alliances with sectors of the state in order to ensure that their in- terests "emerge on top and that the requirements rooted in these special interests get taken as society's requirements" (Oilman 1992: 1015). In- deed, certain groups may exert a dominant influence within civil soci- ety (and the public sphere in particular), which they may utilize to le- gitimize a monopoly of authority in the broader society (Lomax 1997: 61; Sparrow 1992: 1013). Civil society can’t translate views into policy outcomes Ariel Armony (assistant professor of government at Colby College) 2004: The Dubious Link: Civic Engagement and Democratization, pp. 170-1 Figure 4.1 includes all bills rated as “democratic” (N = 95) according to the coding criteria explained above. The figure shows a pattern of reactive congressional activity to variations in the level of police violence. The number of bills introduced in Congress followed almost identically the variations in the measure of police violence (with only one major difference in 1995). This pattern suggests that congressional activity to democratize the police was a response to police violence, especially because an increase in the level of police violence resonated in the media and thus influenced public opinion. If legislators submitted bills as an immediate response to peaks of police violence, it follows that most legislative proposals were geared to appease public opinion and probably resulted from a superficial analysis of the problems of law enforcement and citizen security. Few legislators could attest to having a consistent and informed approach to police reform and the problem of citizen security. As interviews with congressional aides and civil society activists revealed, congressional commissions seldom sought the expertise of civil society groups, and there were no formal channels for introducing input from civil society. Indeed, input from some sectors of civil society was incorporated into the legislative debate only in se- lected cases that received a high level of media attention. As civic ac- tivists told me, the reactive nature of congressional activity made it vir- tually impossible for them to establish sustained, effective cooperation with legislators in matters of police reform. The interest of Congress in the question of police brutality was limited to responses to specific crises—as the data in Figure 4.1 show.
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