Do-It-Yourself Democracy

We are witnessing a civic renaissance in the U.S. today. Facebook campaigns, cellphone polling, and web-linked citizen summits have replaced the public hearings and face-to-face club meetings of an earlier era, giving everyday people a chance to connect with each other and share their opinions. Local governments and public agencies now go far beyond mandatory public meetings to involve citizens in deliberation over complex issues like stem cell research and municipal budgeting. In The Civic Engagement Industry, Caroline Lee examines how participatory innovations have reshaped American civic life through an examination of the public engagement industry that emerged in the last two decades to serve an ever-growing list of government, corporate, and non-profit clients. Lee describes the major providers of these services, who pays for them, and the size of the industry. While new technologies and deliberative practices have democratized the ways in which major institutions operate, Lee argues that they have also been marketed and sold as tools to facilitate cost-cutting, labor control, profitability, retrenchment, and other management goals. The deepest democratic processes-those that have received the most enthusiasm from scholars and practitioners-are used for the places hardest hit by the economic crisis, where out-of-work and out-of-luck publics are asked to sacrifice more, to tax businesses less, and to use fewer services in the name of civic pride. Unsparing and provocative, The Civic Engagement Industry reveals the promise and frustrating reality of participation and deliberation in America today.