Authors: Avi Green, Jamila Michener, and Shauna Shames
Contributing author: Jhumpa Bhattacharya
Introduction: Efforts to increase civic engagement and political participation are in full gear to help influence the upcoming 2018 elections. To maximize our effectiveness, we need a new framework and paradigm. Civic engagement and political participation cannot be “mobilized” by sporadic, election-oriented efforts. Instead we must develop strategies that take into account the outcome of historical processes and institutions that have incentivized and facilitated participation for some communities and not others.
Increasing amounts of money are being spent on voter mobilization across demographics and political ideologies, and numerous organizations are working hard to ensure voter disenfranchisement and suppression, which disproportionately affects Black and Brown communities, comes to an end. Nonetheless, there have been no dramatic increases in civic participation, particularly among those least likely to engage—very low income individuals and families, and Black and Brown communities who don’t see themselves or their needs represented in the current political system. 1Moreover, when these communities do participate, they often still end up with limited options among candidates, candidates who do not advocate or support public policies that truly address their most pressing needs – economic security and mobility, decriminalization of poverty, and policies that help establish dignity and a sense of worth.
The Cook Center for Social Equity at Duke University and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, among others, have been unpacking a better, more comprehensive picture of how the economy functions in the United States by focusing on racial wealth inequity. Stratification economics allows a better understanding of the ways economic inequality functions in the United States, revealing how individual decisions are far from the only factor at work, and demonstrating the powerful role of race, segregation, and public policy (Hamilton and Darity 2017; Hamilton et al. 2015; Hamilton et al. 2011). Political science in general, and our understanding of civic engagement in particular, could benefit from this analysis by drawing on some of the same key concepts with a decided focus on power, influence, and governance. Civic wealth provides a foundation for a structural analysis of political inequality.
From this perspective, we introduce the concept of “civic wealth” which offers a more holistic and complete picture of political engagement and disengagement. In this paper, we initiate an exploration of this concept in hopes of adding to a growing body of work aimed at increasing civic engagement among those most excluded, disenfranchised, and devalued by our current political system
Conclusions
- Civic wealth as a concept can help equip scholars, activists, and advocates with knowledge they can use to improve U.S. democratic practices. Once operationalized, we can leverage the concept to shed light on a number of crucial outcomes and processes.
- Those using the concept can pose and answer questions including:
- What is the relationship between civic wealth and economic wealth?
- How do civic wealth gaps vary across (geographic) communities?
- How do civic wealth gaps vary across demographic groups (race/gender) and at their intersections (race/ gender)?
- What material outcomes correlate with civic wealth gaps: do communities fare better when they are equipped with more civic wealth (ceteris paribus)?
- What political outcomes correlate with wealth gaps: do communities have their policy interests better represented when they have more civic wealth?
- How can policy reduce civic wealth gaps and promote greater political participation and leadership by women of color (Shames 2017)?
- What kind of governmental, NGO-led, grassroots or hybrid interventions can bring those with low civic wealth a fuller expression of their voice and power?
- In addition, the concept of “civic wealth” could be useful to non-academics, especially those working to combat systematic and ongoing recent attempts at strategic demobilization.
- Simply having new language to explain and describe effective political engagement can be immediately useful for those working in this field, even before more rigorous research begins in earnest.
