{"title":"Civil Society, Realized: Equipping the Mass Public to Express Choice and Negotiate Power","authors":"Hahrie Han, Jae Yeon Kim","doi":"10.1177/00027162221077471","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We examine the ways in which change in civil society has contributed to the erosion of democracy in the United States. Democracy demands that people commit to pluralistic self-determination, which means that people must be willing to seek power and also share it. We argue that civil society plays two important roles in sustaining people’s willingness to do both: first, civil society cultivates a capacity for expressing choice; and second, it teaches capacities and provides opportunities for people to negotiate power. We show that in recent decades, civil society’s emphasis has moved more toward expressing choice and away from the creation of venues for negotiating power. We conclude with recommendations for researchers, civil society leaders, funders, and policy-makers who are interested in committing to forms of civil society that take power seriously.","PeriodicalId":48352,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.8000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"6","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162221077471","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 6
Abstract
We examine the ways in which change in civil society has contributed to the erosion of democracy in the United States. Democracy demands that people commit to pluralistic self-determination, which means that people must be willing to seek power and also share it. We argue that civil society plays two important roles in sustaining people’s willingness to do both: first, civil society cultivates a capacity for expressing choice; and second, it teaches capacities and provides opportunities for people to negotiate power. We show that in recent decades, civil society’s emphasis has moved more toward expressing choice and away from the creation of venues for negotiating power. We conclude with recommendations for researchers, civil society leaders, funders, and policy-makers who are interested in committing to forms of civil society that take power seriously.
期刊介绍:
The AAPSS seeks to promote the progress of the social sciences and the use of social science knowledge in the enrichment of public understanding and in the development of public policy. It does so by fostering multidisciplinary understanding of important questions among those who create, disseminate, and apply the social sciences, and by encouraging and celebrating talented people who produce and use research to enhance public understanding of important social problems.