Citizen Speak: The Democratic Imagination in American Life (review)

The value of citizen talk has become an article of faith among democratic theorists, and increasingly, politicians. Giving people opportunities to discuss matters of public concern is believed to produce better policies as well as citizens who are more informed, engaged and invested in their political institutions. But what kind of talk does those things? As Andrew Perrin points out in Citizen Speak, political talk can discourage civic engagement rather than foster it. When aspirations for change are routinely denigrated, logics of self-interest trump those of collective good, or practical options are conceived in fantastical terms, quiescence is the likely result. What matters, then, is the democratic imagination that is reflected in (and advanced by) political talk.

To assess the democratic imagination of 21st century Americans, Perrin used a novel strategy. Because citizens' capacities to envisage political action are honed in the everyday associations of civil society, Perrin reasoned, it made sense to study how people evaluate political options not alone in a room with a researcher but with the people with whom they actually might take action. So he invited current members of Presbyterian and Catholic church groups, sports groups, labor unions and business groups – 20 groups in total – to discuss a series of hypothetical political scenarios with him. In one of the scenarios, a police chief defended his use of racial profiling; in another, a nearby airport doubled the number of flights and attendant noise; in a third, a chemical company violated EPA ozone regulations; and in a fourth, a senator switched positions after receiving campaign contributions.

Perrin documents patterns in talk across the groups – an "American" democratic imagination – and differences among them. Democratic imaginations, he shows, are rooted in institutional cultures. Unions, supposedly organizational embodiments of collective action, somehow foster in their members a preference for private methods over public ones. What would you do if the number of planes flying over your home suddenly doubled? Move away. Members of sports groups, including a bowling league, are three times as likely as members of any other group to be generally skeptical of political action. So much for bowling together.

With respect to the democratic imagination running through the groups, Perrin's findings are equally sobering. His citizen speakers aren't very, well, imaginative. Asked what they would do about a social injustice, participants trot out a litany of familiar steps: sign a petition, vote the corrupt official out of office, boycott a product. They rarely talk about organizing such actions themselves. One group member would sign a petition, she cautions, but wouldn't start one. Much more commonly, they complain about the inefficacy of political action. You need big bucks to change the system and if you've got big bucks, then you become just like them. It's easier to take individual action – to move away from the noisy airport – and easy to blame those who fail to do so. In those rare moments when Perrin's subjects express confidence in the possibility of change, they are unrealistic, invoking figures such as Erin Brockovitch (referring to her as the "Julia Roberts character") to vouch for the feasibility of action. Their models, in other words, are heroic pseudo-fictional characters. To persuade others of their views, they tell personal stories, which admit little in the way of questioning or rebuttal. To argue against other people's views, they express a broad-brush skepticism of all evidence.

Findings like these throw cold water on deliberative democrats' happy faith in the power of public talk to spur citizen action. But Perrin is not altogether pessimistic. People's repertoires of politics limit what they can do politically. But those repertoires are not fixed. By bringing diverse experiences and frameworks to bear on common problems, people can innovate, with real political consequence. Unfortunately, these imaginative processes were not much in evidence in Perrin's groups.

I'm actually less glum than Perrin, mainly because I interpreted some of what people said differently. Perrin...