Can Partisanship Save Citizenship?

In the 1990s, reformers and academics worried about how to improve civic life. But they didn't foresee that technology combined with party politics would renew civic engagement and even elect one of their own.

Henry Farrell | December 31, 2008

Public intellectuals don't agree on much. However, in recent years they seemed to nearly unanimously believe that American public life was in terrible shape. Political scientists debated whether voter turnout in national elections was merely stagnant or was actively declining. Sociologists suggested that television, overwork, and a breakdown in communal ties were undermining participation in both public and social life. There was chronic hand-wringing about the state of political debate, with civic activists proposing that America needed more deliberative dialogue among people with different points of view.

These worries blossomed in the 1990s and continued to grow in the Bush years but now seem badly off target. Voter turnout in 2004 and 2008 was higher than it has been since the 1960s. The Obama campaign mobilized unprecedented numbers of volunteers. A thriving, if contentious public sphere has emerged on the Internet. Young people who a decade ago were volunteering in direct-service organizations but were otherwise disconnected from public life and electoral politics are now fully engaged and activated, not just as voters but as activists.