What Is Happening to American democracy? Scholars, public commentators, and thoughtful citizens alike are puzzling about the health of civic life in the United States. High-level commissions have issued reports with dire diagnoses and recommendations for amelioration, even as scholars publish articles and books by the dozens. This ferment responds to a dizzying array of contradictory changes in recent decades, some of which have clearly enhanced democracy while others undercut our shared public life. For democracy in America, this may be, at once, the best and most worrisome of times.
The Civil Rights movement triumphed in the 1960s, ensuring that the promise of equality built into the Constitution was, by law, finally made good for everyone. African Americans struggled for and won basic rights, including the ability to register and vote in all parts of the country. In the wake of the momentous Civil Rights Movement, other formerly marginalized groups--feminists, the poor, homosexuals, the disabled--also raised their voices. More than ever before, the world's first mass democracy for white men became a nation where citizens of all colors and both genders could take part, where formerly excluded groups could speak up.
The tenor of national politics has also changed. "Public interest" groups have proliferated, not only groups advocating the rights of the formerly marginalized, but also groups speaking for broad causes such as environmentalism and other understandings of what is good for society as a whole. Many observers find such transformations heartening. In their view, the United States has moved away from a politics of narrow interest group maneuvers toward a more inclusive and pluralist debate about the public good. Civil society, the network of ties and groups through which people connect to one another and get drawn into community and political affairs, may simply be "reinventing" itself.............
