Dialog with Harry C. Boyte
In August, 2021 Harry C. Boyte posted the following on Academia.edu and asked for feedback. Our exchange follows:
Background paper for “Tomorrow’s City Manager,” a session at the 2021 ICMA conference, October 3-6, 2021
Beyond the Vending Machine
Citizen professionals as agents and architects of a productive democracy
Harry C. Boyte, Institute for Public Life and Work, Augsburg University
Revitalizing the legacy of public work
The recently released United Nations report on climate, which UN Secretary-General António Guterres calls a “code red for humanity,” is a signature for the epoch. Climate change joins with Covid, polarization, rising inequality, intensifying bigotries, loneliness, and other vastly complex problems. No government can fix these by itself. Even to ameliorate them requires tapping energies and talents of diverse groups and generating widespread civic activation and civic responsibility.
To meet such challenges, we need what my colleagues and I call “public work,” effort by a diverse mix of people who work across lines of differences – partisan, racial, economic, religious and other -- to solve public problems and create our commonwealth. Here, the public work of the New Deal era is especially instructive.[1]
In the 1930s, as the nation faced the huge challenges of the Great Depression, government created infrastructures of support for large scale public work such as with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). As President Franklin D. Roosevelt explained upon its launch in 1933, the CCC comprised federally funded, locally organized units devoted to “forestry, the prevention of soil erosion, flood control, and similar projects”— projects which visibly added to the American commonwealth. Such work, said Roosevelt, would “pay dividends to the present and future generations” of communities and the nation generally. “More important” than its “material” products would be “the moral and spiritual value of such work” to those who performed it—for themselves, their families, and society. More than three million young men worked for the CCC between 1933 and 1942, mainly poor and unemployed young people from rural areas and small towns. They undertook public projects ranging from planting forests to building roads, dams, bridges, and national parks, used by millions of Americans. Many of which are used today. The CCC’s legacy of concrete public works was astonishing. As historian Melissa Bass concludes, the program’s most important legacy was the “civic generation” of Americans it shaped.
The CCC was one example. In other cases, the federal government created sites where state and local communities could creatively experiment. The Works Progress Administration (WPA), for instance, gave local communities and the formerly jobless wide latitude to choose and direct the work to be done. Thousands of communities nationwide still use the schools, libraries, post offices, theaters, plazas and other public spaces and amenities created by public work of the WPA. To meet the enormous challenges we face, we need parallels. This requires a different view of democracy, local government, and the role and identity of city and county managers.
The public seems aware of this. According to “Renewing Democracy,” by USA Today and Public Agenda, “Fifty nine percent say that it’s our responsibility as Americans to help find solutions” to common problems. “It’s not enough to just vote and pay taxes.” Government has a role. “More people want government to work with communities rather than want it to get out of the way.” But the nature of the relationship between government and people needs to change. “Americans say they would be more likely to get involved in public affairs if they could exercise real power, build common ground, and if decision-making processes were user-friendly.”
This history and public sentiments point to a “with the people” approach, advocated by Kettering Foundation president David Mathews and others: In this, government and other groups support productive civic energies. But the idea of “with the people” government goes against the grain of dominant views of democracy today. Consumer democracy has replaced producer democracy. The dynamic must be reversed.
To tap and develop productive civic energies of the people, to build a democracy of civic producers, requires “citizen professionals,” who work in empowering ways with people, not simply for them. This “with” approach includes not only professionals in local government but also in schools, businesses, congregations, health centers, nonprofits and others. It will take large change but there are examples to build on.
Barn raising democracy against the customer tsunami
In 1996, Frank Benest, city manager of Brea, California, wrote an essay, “Serving Customers or Engaging Citizens: What is the future of Local Government?” for PM, the publication of the International City/County Managers Association (ICMA). Though he didn’t make an explicit contrast, he was challenging the “Reinventing Government” movement sweeping the federal government, embodying the New Public Management philosophy of Margaret Thatcher’s administration in Great Britain. Reinventing Government defined citizens as customers. Its advocates established customer service centers across federal agencies. It represented not only the influence of marketplace ways of thinking but also technocratic approaches. As the historian Thomas Bender observed in Intellectuals and Public Life, “In [the] largely successful quest for order, purity, and authority, intellectuals severed intellectual life from place.” The result of this, translated into professional formation, was a shift over decades from “civic” professionals to “disciplinary professionals.”
Benest’s essay was a powerful alternative voice that showed the continuing power of place-making in local government. He argued that good services are important. But he believed that the complex challenges facing local government at the threshold of the third millennium made service delivery radically insufficient. Using the metaphor of “vending machine” to describe the customer service model of government, he argued that it has large flaws: it undermines allegiance to local government. It contributes to passive consumerism in which people focus on their own needs and pay little attention to others. It rests on a deficit model which assumes something is wrong with people and the role of government is to fix it. It fails to address complex problems which call for many talents and a diverse array of stakeholders. It erodes strong citizenship.
He used barn-raising as an arresting alternative metaphor. “In an agrarian society, no one family can raise a barn so they call on their neighbors,” he wrote. “Someone hammers, another holds the ladder, and someone else brings the food. Everyone has his or her contribution to make.” Crucially, he said, barn-raising cultivates civic initiative and civic responsibility rather than passivity. When facing a problem, the vending machine approach raises the question, “What is government going to do for us?” In barn-raising, the question is, “What are we going to do?” Benest said that barn-raising requires what can be called an ecological approach, with government forging partnership with other groups and institutions and drawing on their assets. “Schools, religious organizations, and many other…groups can mediate between government and the people. Given this potential mediating role, it makes sense for local government agencies to form partnerships…”
For more than a decade the barn-raising metaphor was widely used in local government. On Benest’s list of practices for managers were to educate, create a new mission, convene stakeholders, stimulate discussion on values, aspirations and fears beyond technical solutions, identify particular resources government can bring, forge collective action, and build confidence. The 2004 ICMA document “Principles of the Effective Local Government Manager” showed the impact. It highlighted local democracy and citizen participation. In 2010, the ICMA issued Connected Communities: Local Governments as a Partner in Citizen Engagement and Community Building. A sketch of a barn-raising was on the cover.
In the last decade barn-raising government disappeared like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderful. Customer service has taken over. The 2021 ICMA document, “Practices for Effective Local Government Leadership,” leaves out mention of local democracy, civic engagement, community building, and citizenship. Local government purposes have narrowed to Community and Resident Service and Service Delivery.
A return to productive democracy
In the 2021 conference of ICMA, one session recalls the barn-raising metaphor of democracy: “Tomorrow’s City Manager: Creating Public Spaces for Civic Learning and Citizen-Centered Problem Solving.” The session is organized by Mike Huggins, retired city manager from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a citizen professional who catalyzed a city-wide movement called Clear Vision Eau Claire. I am honored to be doing the session with Mike, a long time colleague, and others who continue the barn-raising tradition. Doug Linkhart, a former politician in Colorado, is now president of the venerable National Civic League. The League has a juried selection each year of “All American Cities” with civic engagement elements. An outstanding example is Rancho Cucamonga. Another participant, Valerie Lemmie, was city manager of Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio, past board chair of the National Academy of Public Administration. She now directs Exploratory Research at the Kettering Foundation and her learning partners in the US and abroad all focus on building local democracy.
Finally, our own democratic experiments through the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, and now the Institute for Public Life and Work at Augsburg University, build on deliberative public work traditions and their translation to citizen professionalism. We know that civic change is possible in government agencies, colleges, congregations, nonprofits, businesses and elsewhere when professionals take on a different leadership approach, one that is empowering, relational, and deeply connected to community life. The work is slow and often difficult. But stories like Clear Vision-Eau Claire illustrate the possibilities.
Clear Vision has created what Huggins calls an “umbrella” for civic change in many institutions across the city. The story began in 2007, when cuts in state funding and higher fuel, energy and health-care costs led to larger classes in schools and also less revenue. Huggins saw the need to tap the assets and talents of the whole community. Convinced that government needed a ”21st-century vision for local democracy and public problem solving centered on citizens,” he embodied Benest’s ecological vision of local government as partner with any others in a place. He brought together civic and political leaders including the Chamber of Commerce, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, faith communities, United Way, trade-union activists and low-income residents and groups often excluded from public policy and discussion including Hmong and African-Americans.
Over a decade, the group worked with the Center for Democracy and Citizenship to build civic capacity. In all more than 1500 citizens learned what we call public work skills centered on concepts and practices such as power as the capacity to act, public relationships, diversity, and self-interests, different than selfishness. Harvard University’s Innovations in American Government Awards awarded Clear Vision $10,000 as a finalist for the Ash Award noting Clear Vision’s distinctive civic capacity building approach.
In Clear Vision, teams contribute to productive local democracy by tackling issues of community and public concern. Some have struggled; others have had considerable success, spinning off projects such as the Sojourner House homeless shelter created by a team project on preventing recidivism which included ex-convicts as leaders in the effort. Clear Vision has created community gardens, generated a public art movement across the city, and organized an initiative to make public services widely known to low-income communities. It has been the driving force behind the Confluence Project, a $45 million performing arts center connected to a $35 million commercial and residential development project in downtown Eau Claire.
Leaders in Clear Vision observe ripple effects. These include development of those we call citizen professionals. One is Catherine Emmanuelle, who began as a member of the first initiating committee of Clear Vision. She continued as a board member who was young and a single mother on public assistance. Her experiences gave her tools and confidence that were transformative. “One of the biggest things that it taught me was building my civic muscles.” She remembers, “I was on Food Share and other kinds of public assistance. I thought that people who influence the community are people with titles or money. I discovered I didn’t need any of that to make a difference.” Emmanuelle used public work skills in many settings in Clear Vision and in her current work as an Extension educator. She created a popular Latino leadership course in nearby Trempealeau County in which civic capacity building were at the heart. “I’d go door to door, speaking Spanish. I’d tell people my great grandmother came here from Mexico and we’d like to invest with you to have more power,” she says. “We translated the Clear Vision Tool Kit based on public work into Spanish. We taught people to do one on ones, how to do power mapping.” She also found the practices of public evaluation highly valuable. “That helps me say my piece and also everyone else can have a say.” Emmanuelle became regional director of three counties for the Wisconsin Extension service, with a staff of 21. She teaches public work practices to all her colleagues and they use them in many different projects. She contrasts this model with the “town meetings” model where government asks for input. “There is a function of having a public hearing but there is also a value of sitting around a table and figuring things out. They’re different.” She gives the example of a controversy about public drinking in a neighborhood near the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire campus. Her process brought all the voices to the table, and the city council unanimously approved the change. “Now the city is hosting meetings with the bar owner and the police and the students and the neighbors at the same table, talking about what are the facts, what is motivating us, why we are here, what we are going to do.” She sees the civic organizing process itself as crucial because it creates ownership and civic empowerment.
Another citizen professional is Vicki Hoehn. When she became vice president of the first Clear Vision board, Hoehn was already a highly respected business leader, vice president of marketing for the Royal Credit Union, with 2.3 billion dollars in assets, branches in 42 counties and two states, 28 credit unions, and more than 180,000 members. In Hoehn’s view, Clear Vision generated a framework shift in the community. “At the time we began, our community blamed government. People said nothing happened because the government was too slow.” She believes that Clear Vision “opened a lot of eyes.” Many came to see themselves as citizens. “It’s not about relying on or blaming government. It’s about taking responsibility and ownership ourselves as citizens.” The collaborative approach impacted decision-making in the Credit Union. When Royal acquired land for a new large office building, their plan was to build it directly on the river. “We started talking to neighborhoods and people said, ‘if you build there we aren’t going to be able to get to the river.’ So we put a street and a park in front of the building. This never would have happened if we hadn’t met with the neighborhoods, talked with the city, and found a solution.” When she later served as Vice President for Community Engagement at Royal Credit Union, she made it a point to get to know communities when Royal opened a branch.
Implications
Clear implications can be drawn from Clear Vision and others’ experiences (see www.iplw.org ). Here are three:
· Place matters. Professionals who work in a place need a deep grounding in its culture, history, politics, controversies, its assets as well as its problems. They need to become citizens of the place.
· Power reconsidered. Public managers need to learn power as the capacity to act, power “to” not power “over.” William (Bill) Doherty, one of the world’s leading family therapists and citizen professionals who created the Citizen Professional Center at the University of Minnesota, designed the process for the launch of Braver Angels, the leading depolarization group. He sees a different approach to power as at the heart of citizen professionalism. “The public work model argues for a new role for professionals in a democracy: catalyzing the efforts of ordinary citizens with expertise ‘on tap, not on top.’”
· Democracy grows. The democratic imagination needs to expand dramatically from simply elections and government to include the work of the people.
These elements are countercultural. Yet there are multiplying examples.
For instance, in March, 2020, as Covid spread across the nation the Centers for Disease Control commissioned a task force on recovery and resilience. Its findings reflect years of innovation in public health theory and practice amounting to a paradigm shift in public health from technocratic interventions. As explained in the group’s July 2020 report, Thriving Together, sustainable public health and healthy communities depend not on experts fixing community deficits but on “belonging” and “civic muscle” that others with power and resources can help them build. The importance of belonging and of civic muscle is now widely recognized by thousands of professionals across sectors, including Surgeons General from both Republican and Democratic administrations and an intergovernmental task force is seeking how to implement the new approach across federal health agencies.
Other signs suggest the return of community building and productive citizenship. Travelling across the country James and Deborah Fallows found examples of community revitalization all over, invisible in the toxic polarization of national and state politics. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in its report of 2019, Our Common Purpose, builds on the focus on place and agency, adopting a far larger view of democracy than elections and government. The authors note “stories of surging participation and innovation, of communities working to build new connections across long-standing divides, and of individual citizens suddenly awakening to the potential of their democratic responsibilities.” Important questions emerge from such examples:
· How can local public managers learn to lead and manage with a view of power as the capacity to act with others?
· How can managers build organizational and community capacities for citizens as producers and co-creators full of assets, not simply as customers?
· What can managers do to reinforce local democracy as a way of life grounded in local communities?
The meaning of democracy was expressed by Walt Whitman, a great poet of democracy. “We have frequently printed the word Democracy,” he wrote in Democratic Vistas. “Yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened. It is a great word, whose history remains unwritten.” It is time for public managers – and all of us -- to recall the greatness of democracy. And help in its reawakening.
[1] This discussion is adapted from Harry Boyte and Trygve Throntveit, “Putting the Public Back in Public Works,” Democracy Journal, May 27, 2021.
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Wade Lee Hudson:
This paper affirms some key values, but it contains some serious weaknesses and fails to address some critical underlying issues. The meritocracy’s conditioning is deep, widespread, and pernicious. Undoing that conditioning requires confronting it directly.
Barn raisers are not professionals. Their mutual aid is not their main paid occupation. Likewise, the most promising examples of productive citizenship and community revitalization are bottom-up, largely spontaneous efforts that are struggling to form new, democratic structures consistent with the emerging egalitarian culture.
The vision of “citizen professionals” presented in this paper, on the other hand, is too top-down, paternalistic, and disabling. The focus is on professional managers, including former clients, who “educate, create a new mission, convene stakeholders, stimulate discussion on values, aspirations and fears beyond technical solutions, identify particular resources government can bring, forge collective action, and build confidence.”
The example of sitting around the table to engage in collaborative problem-solving is valuable, but if paid professionals do the organizing and facilitating, the potential benefits may be minimized. Being available to offer support is a different stance than managers who “help them build,... lead and manage,... (and) build capacities.” The paper touches on building confidence and overcoming selfishness. These issues need more attention, as does the imperative to nurture deep respect for others’ essential equality and the ability to form partnerships.
The meritocracy encourages everyone to climb social ladders and look down on and dominate those below — or submit to those above. These tendencies are deeply engrained. To control or overcome these habits requires honest self-examination and a commitment to acknowledge mistakes. This process involves a dedication to holistic democracy, which Philip Woods describes as:
a way of working together which encourages individuals to grow and learn as whole people and facilitates co-responsibility, mutual empowerment, and fair participation of all in co-creating their social and organisational environment.
Four dimensions of practice are at its core:
holistic meaning: aspiring to as true an understanding as possible not only of technical and scientific matters but also the ‘big’ questions of enduring values, meaning and purpose, through development of all our human capabilities — from the intellectual to the spiritual
power sharing: inclusive participation in shaping organisational operations, policy, direction and values, and autonomy to exercise initiative within the parameters of agreed values and responsibilities
transforming dialogue: a climate where exchange of views and open debate are possible, and people co-operatively seek to enhance mutual understanding and reach beyond narrow perspectives and interests
holistic well-being: a sense of belonging, deep connectedness, inner knowing, feelings of empowerment, self-esteem, and independent-mindedness through democratic participation.
The community revitalization considered in this paper also requires what Elizabeth Anderson calls “democratic equality.” Anderson’s primary concern is social equality — equality not just in politics and economics but also equality in social relations throughout society — how to treat each other as equals, without trying to dominate or being willing to submit. Her analysis includes an incisive critique of paternalism, as in this passage:
Moreover, the starting-gate theory offers aid that is deeply disrespectful of those to whom the aid is directed. [It provides aid to the needy] only at the cost of paternalism [which] makes the basis for citizens' claims on one another the fact that some are inferior to others in the worth of their lives, talents, and personal qualities.
The development of holistic democracy and democratic equality will require a clear, explicit commitment to self-reform, which calls for intentional mutual support. Otherwise, divisive internal power struggles will continue to limit prospects for the growth of urgently needed massive, compassionate, united, national grassroots movements. With some modifications, the local efforts discussed in this paper can offer helpful models and otherwise contribute to this transformation.
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Harry C. Boyte:
I think the power framework of broad based (and other) organizing neglects the nature of power in knowledge environments, where power is increased for all --including professionals -- by multiplying actors and epistemic agents. I argued this in my first Dewey lecture here (in short form) http://web.augsburg.edu/sabo/BoyteADifferentKindofPolitics.pdf I still subscribe to this argument though it is usefully expanded by later work on public work, co-creation, and citizen professionalism. There are many papers on these themes on my academia site. Eager to get feedback and debate!
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Wade Lee Hudson:
I completely agree with http://web.augsburg.edu/sabo/BoyteADifferentKindofPolitics.pdf “A Different Kind of Politics.” Thanks for the reference. I particularly appreciate the affirmations of horizontal relationships and personal transformation — “reworking” ourselves.
However, its worldview contrasts with your “Beyond the Vending Machine,” which, as you said in your comment, proposes an approach “where power is increased for all — including professionals — by multiplying actors and epistemic agents.” But the key issue is relative power — horizontal partnerships — not absolute power.
Democratic public managers don’t “learn to lead and manage…” They follow. Then maybe they can assist and collaborate, as partners.
Managers and “others with power and resources” cannot empower. People empower themselves.
But Benest, not “low-income residents and groups” (who were last on the list of invitees), convened the reported problem-solving. This language makes “Beyond the Vending Machine” paternalistic.
I encourage you to return to the values expressed in “A Different Kind of Politics.”
As I said in my earlier comment, “being available to offer support is a different stance.” That approach opens the door to possible co-equal partnerships. Not many professionals, including former consumers, are able and willing to adopt this stance. Their identity is too rooted in a sense of superiority.
Political organizations need to make a clear, explicit, intentional commitment to facilitating mutual support for self-development — so their members can help each other undo society’s conditioning, which encourages everyone to dominate or submit. The widespread, obsessive quest for status, power, and recognition is deadly. How to control or overcome this impulse is not easy. There are no silver bullets. But the first step is a commitment to honest self-examination and a willingness to acknowledge mistakes. Until habitual domination and submission dissolve, broad unity and real democracy will be impossible.
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Harry C. Boyte:
Wade, Good to hear your views. A debate on all these questions of how people's collective agency and confidence develops is crucial.
I was shaped by the civil rights movement, where there were "citizen professionals" all around, creating free spaces, centers of popular power and public life n beauty parlors, Black congregations, schools, , certainly - regardless of credentials (beauticians were often the leading examples, and intentionally organized by Septima Clark and others to be educators in citizenship schools).
Public Achievement is a good case in point of the importance of professionals who develop a different view of power and a different identity -- "on tap not on top."
It's easy for people to be inspired by young people in PA, especially stigmatized and marginalized kids like "special education" who develop power, confidence, and commitment to better their worlds. It was widely touted -- here's the video some Humphrey students made of Fridley, where the "Breakout from Level 3 EBD" was like a freedom movement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaRimtavig8
But what we've seen is that it takes politically savvy "citizen teachers" who can sustain free spaces for this kind of learning, against the enormous pressures of meritocratic and high stakes testing these days. Such teachers are exemplary citizen professionals, using their authority to open spaces where people (in this case children) develop agency. Good to hear you views on all this, Wade
Harry
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Harry, I like “on tap not on top.” That gets at what I was referring to when I spoke about “support.”
I envision the following. Non-profit service-delivery managers say to their clients, We want to know what you think about how we should deliver our services. If you let us know as individuals, or as informal groups, we’ll consider what you say. However, if you organize a democratic community that’s open to all clients, debate issues in an orderly manner, and make deliberate decisions, we’ll give much greater consideration to your input and will implement your recommendations when feasible. We also encourage you to organize your own, independent activities.
If you request it, we’ll provide neutral assistance. You may, for example, want our staff to secure a location and a sound system for your meetings, take minutes and reproduce them, reproduce proposed written agendas, and distribute them. You may also want us to provide translation services.
For us to give the greatest weight to your input, you’ll need to operate deliberately and democratically with methods such as these. All clients are invited to participate. Members elect the leadership with secret ballots, which a membership committee openly counts. Members speak at meetings only when recognized. Proposed agendas and major proposed actions are circulated in advance of meetings, with the understanding that last-minute and minor decisions can still be made. Members adopt the agenda at the start of each meeting.
BTW, after having been a foot soldier in the civil rights and anti-war movements, I've been engaged in organizing supportive communities that integrate the personal and the political, sometimes as paid staff, sometimes as a volunteer. Currently, I edit Systemopedia.org. My contributions here are rooted in that experience.
Harry, what do you think of the need for explicit, intentional commitments to mutual support for self-development so members can help each other undo divisive conditioning?
Wade