The Little Republics of American Democracy:

Why the Public Needs to Act

By David Mathews

Communities occupy a prominent place in the American conception of democracy. It is no wonder that Kettering’s research on how democracy can work as it should includes studying how communities might work as they must. This issue reports on investigations of why they are, or are not, able to govern themselves effectively.

Our research is practical — it is about what is currently happening, or not happening. Yet it is grounded in history. Here is some of what we are learning about the intimate relationship between community and democracy since our country was founded; our conclusions are, of course, still tentative.

American democracy is based on Thomas Jefferson’s premise that the big republic — the nation and the federal government — rests on a foundation of little republics — communities and local governments. The reasoning is straightforward: If democracy isn’t practiced where Americans live, we can’t expect it to be practiced in Washington.

We’ve all wondered why some communities are reasonably effective at making needed changes while others, apparently not that different, aren’t. Or, why a given community is sometimes able to manage its problems and sometimes not. Communities of every size and type face similar problems. The only difference is that some are able to exercise a degree of control over those problems, whereas others become dysfunctional under the stress of their difficulties.

Simply put, some communities come together; others come apart. The foundation’s task is to offer some plausible explanations and find out what makes for a high-achieving community.

We have noticed communities that have acted effectively to gain greater control over their futures have usually made fundamental changes in their politics. They haven’t just solved problems; they have changed themselves by changing the way they go about their collective business. The key to that change has been to build a stronger public life, or civil society.

Said more plainly, these communities have put the public back into the public’s business.

Why is a public necessary? Because, to use an overworked expression, it takes a village to solve our most serious problems, the ones that don’t seem to go away — racism or deeply entrenched poverty, for example. These “wicked” problems are neither discrete nor easily defined. They are as tricky as they are aggressive and vicious. Their causes are so intertwined that it is difficult to arrive at a diagnosis. Each problem is a symptom of another, in a never-ending chain.

While bridges are built and diseases eradicated, wicked problems persist. Success in dealing with them can’t be determined in the same way as the reliability of an engineered structure or the curative power of a laboratory-developed drug. No single institution, agency, or segment of a community is able to solve the problem on its own.

When faced with wicked problems, reaching a shared understanding of the approximate nature of what people are contending with is more important than deciding on a “solution,” which may prove misguided. In fact, scholars have argued that dealing with wicked problems depends on not reaching a fixed decision early on about what type of solution is best.

The ability of citizens to exercise good judgment and experiment in the face of uncertainty is more important than the often-illusory certainty of experts.

If the public is dynamic, it will be found in activities, in the things people do, in their practices.

Kettering has compiled these practices, and our community politics research deals with all of them — how people become involved, how they determine what they have to do, how they make collective decisions, how they implement those decisions, how they act as a public, how they evaluate their actions, how they maintain political momentum.

David Mathews is president of the Kettering Foundation.

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The Little Republics of American Democracy:

Why the Public Needs to Act