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Active and responsible citizens form or join and sustain functional groups in which they ask the fundamental civic question: What should we do? In these groups, they characteristically face problems of collective action (such as free-riding), of discourse (e.g., propaganda and ideology), and of exclusion. Elinor Ostrom and the Bloomington School of political economy demonstrate that collective-action problems can be solved and suggest "design principles" that increase the odds of success. Jrgen Habermas argues that people can deliberate; experiments with deliberative democracy offer insights about what makes these conversations go well. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. offer models of nonviolent social movements that indicate how to address problems of exclusion. Good civic action requires insights from these three traditions of theory and practice.

Introduction: The Problem of Defense Management -- Finding a Targeted Solution to the Right Set of Problems -- Getting the Initiative Approved -- Getting the Initiative Implemented on a Lasting Basis -- The Case Studies -- Chapter 1 Civilian Personnel Reform at the Department of Defense -- The Civil Service Demonstration Projects -- The Enactment of NSPS Legislation -- The Implementation of NSPS -- The NSPS Pay-for-Performance System -- Labor Relations and the Collapse of the NSPS -- The Road Forward -- Chapter 2 Lessons from the Never-Ending Search for Acquisition Reform -- The Need for Acquisition Reform -- 1982: The Carlucci Initiatives -- 1985: The Era of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse -- FM S7612-Levine Page 5 of -- 1992: The Packard Commission -- 2004: Reinventing Government -- 2014: The WSARA Era -- Assessment -- The Road Forward -- Chapter 3 Auditing the Pentagon -- The Road to the CFO Act and the Goal of a Clean Audit -- The 1990s: The Bush I and Clinton Administrations -- The 2000s: The Bush II and Obama Administrations -- Assessment -- Afterword.

"In September 2011, two leading civic engagement advocacy organizations headed, respectively, by Robert Putnam and Peter Levine released a joint report showing that a region's level of civic engagement was a strong predictor of its ability to recover from the Great Recession. This finding confirms what advocates of civic engagement have long hypothesized: that strengthening the networks between government and civil society and increasing citizen participation results in better government and better community outcomes. However, citizens concerned about the economic crisis need more than just deliberation or community organizing alone to achieve these outcomes. What they need, according to Peter Levine, is a movement devoted to civic renewal. Deliberative democracy-the idea that true democratic legitimacy derives from open, inclusive discussion and dialogue rather than simple voting-has become an extremely influential concept in the last two decades. In We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, Peter Levine contends that effective deliberative democracy depends upon effective community advocacy. Deliberation, he shows, is most valuable when talk and debate are integrated into a community's everyday life. To illustrate how it works, Levine draws lessons from both community organizing and developmental psychology, and uses examples of successful efforts from communities across America as well as fledgling democracies in Africa and Eastern Europe. By engaging in this type of civic work, American citizens can meaningfully contribute to civic renewal, which, in turn, will address serious social problems that cannot be fixed in any other way"--

A century ago, Americans launched a period of civic renewal and political reform. Today, amid deep dissatisfaction with our major institutions, there are signs that a new movement may revive the spirit of the original Progressive Era. Peter Levine draws inspiration from the great Progressive leader Robert M. La Follete, Sr., and his circle, which included John Dewey, Jane Addams, and Louis Brandeis. He discusses the shortcomings of this group as well as their successes, but he argues that their ideal of a fair and deliberative democracy is right for our time

Abstract
Controversies about speech on college campuses attract intense popular attention. Three recent books analyze campus speech as one of the ways that academia affects American democracy. In The Channels of Student Activism, Amy J. Binder and Jeffrey L. Kidder argue that college-student activists respond to incentives. Progressive students have opportunities to engage closely with their universities but often end up frustrated, while conservative students get support from national organizations to work off-campus and endorse conservative visiting speakers as a way of influencing their own institutions. Among other recommendations, Binder and Kidder suggest that universities should promote democratic values by adopting more persuasive positions about controversial speech. In Cancel Wars, Sigal-Ben Porath defends one such position: universities should avoid censorship and punitive responses to speech while actively ensuring that all members of their community are valued. In What Universities Owe Democracy, Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels argues that higher education affects democracy in many ways beyond explicit political speech, and he presents recommendations that involve admissions, curricular reform, and research. Levine finds many helpful insights and suggestions in these books but adds reasons to doubt the democratic potential of prestigious colleges and universities. He advocates serious public investment in democratic education for children and for adults who are not students.

After being overlooked in major education debates and policy initiatives for decades, civic education has recently become the topic of highly polarized debates and legislative battles over what and how we should be teaching our young people about the nation's history. How should racial injustice be discussed in schools? Are schools indoctrinating students? In a robust democracy, controversy about what students should learn is appropriate and desirable, but some of the rhetoric that has dominated the recent discussions violates the deliberative norms that schools should help students to develop. At a time when the public should be carefully deliberating how to educate students, civic education is instead being used instrumentally to win political contests. I present one approach to facing this challenge—the Educating for American Democracy project. This project is not the conclusive answer to the question, "What should we teach?" but rather an attempt to model deliberative values, and I show that it offers important lessons for people and institutions who are attempting to address matters of curricular content.

The COVID-19 pandemic raises questions about the future of democracy and civil society. Some recent predictions seem to use the suffering to score points in ongoing political arguments. As a better example of how to describe the future during a crisis, I cite the prophetic voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. King does not merely predict: he calls for action, joins the action, and makes himself responsible for its success or failure. With these cautions about prediction in mind, I venture two that may guide immediate responses. First, communities may erect or strengthen unjustifiable barriers to outsiders, because boundaries enhance collective action. Second, although the pandemic may not directly change civic behavior, an economic recession will bankrupt some organizations through which people engage.

To expand opportunities for discussion and reflection about public issues, we should look beyond the organizations that intentionally convene deliberations and also enlist organizations that preserve common resources, volunteer service groups, civics classes, grassroots public media efforts, and partisan, ideological, and faith-based movements that have some interest in discussion. Many of these groups are not politically neutral; more are adversarial. But they have a common interest in confronting the forces and decisions that have sidelined active citizens in countries like the US. They are all threatened by the rising signs of oligarchy in the United States. Collectively, they have considerable resources with which to fight back. It is time for us to begin to stir and organize--not for deliberation, but for democracy.

Authoritarianism is gaining around the world. Statistics show that deliberation shrinks when authoritarianism grows. In the face of authoritarian repression, directly promoting and organizing deliberation is likely to fail. However, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan (2011) find that nonviolent campaigns have a strong record of success against authoritarian states. Although nonviolent campaigns are not themselves deliberative or aimed at building deliberative democracy, I argue that some of the reasons that make them successful also stand to benefit public deliberation. Thus the most promising strategy for expanding deliberation in an increasingly authoritarian world is to support nonviolent campaigns and to reinforce strategies of nonviolent confrontation that also yield deliberation. Jürgen Habermas anticipated this argument in his defense of social movements. Revisiting that aspect of Habermas' thought challenges interpretations that treat him as a theorist of calm, rational discourse.

In Political Translation: How Social Movement Democracies Survive, Nicole Doerr uncovers the role of translators as a "third voice within deliberation," neither participants nor facilitators but advocates for specific individuals to be heard and understood. Her empirical research on translation of various types and in various settings also raises broader theoretical issues about direct versus representative democracy.