THE DILEMMAS OF SOCIAL REFORM REVISITED: PUTTING CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IN THE PICTURE
Clarence N. Stone
University of Maryland
"The dilemma arises whenever the restoration of individual dignity is taken as a psychological problem, inherent in those who are demoralized, rather than as a moral problem, inherent in the society which humiliates them." (Peter Marris and Martin Rein)
For much of the past decade I have been puzzling over the politics of urban social reform. Increasingly I have come to believe that we view the change process in too constricted a manner. Accustomed to seeing politics as a contest between actors with fixed interests maneuvering and bargaining to advance their preferences, we think about reform in terms of the outcome of programmatic initiatives. Because reform programs are sometimes rejected in toto or adopted in a weakened form, we may believe that little change has occurred. Thus in the standard assessment, the Great Society's community action program failed. Though it helped launch the political careers of a number of African Americans, community action lost some key battles and was ultimately defunded. By some accounts it did more to change the racial balance of power than to alter the position of the poor in city politics( Marris and Rein 1973, p. 269; Moynihan 1969, pp. 129-130).
In the conventional view, reform often fails or falls short because there are opponents powerful enough to defeat or deflect would be reforms. For example, Moynihan opined: "Just possibly the philanthropists and socially concerned intellectuals never took seriously enough their talk about the 'power structure'" (1969, p. 135). As he saw it, "the tough power brokers" (meaning the business executives and top public officials who, in alliance, are often at the center of a city's decision process) could either override the efforts of social reformers or outwait them (1969, pp. 135-136). Indeed, once the smoke of community action battle cleared, radical insurgents, not exactly numerous in the first place, typically had given way to social welfare professionals or others less inclined to challenge settled arrangements. Reformers rarely achieved more than modest success. In the assessment of observers like Moynihan, the outcome of efforts at urban social reform was a kind of vector product determined by a power clash between contending agents, in which those on the social reform side had a weak resource base.
In many ways, this is a highly plausible account. The conflicts chronicled in various accounts of the community action program were certainly real, and outcomes consistently disappointed social reformers. But if we look through less rationalistic lenses, we may see a somewhat different power story. Reform may be a more diffuse process, a process in which preferences not only clash but also evolve. Reform activity is purposeful, but rarely has intended consequences, and goals may shift in a delayed or unobtrusive manner. Thus, the surface struggle between reformers and defenders of an established order may not be the full power story.
Reform In A Complex World
What, then, is the reform process like? Suppose we start with assumptions different from those underlying a scenario of contending actors bent upon advancing fixed preference. Let us take bounded rationality seriously and also assume a socially complex world. The following are offered as guideposts in reexamining the politics of urban social reform:
1. Many behaviors have a systemic foundation made up of a linked body of settled relationships, tacit understandings, and accustomed modes of interaction of which people are incompletely aware at any given time (cf. Jones 1994).
2. The systemic foundation sustains practices that come under disapproval, and reform activity builds around disapproval. Reform activity consists in part of statements and actions intended to change practices.
3. Though reformers may be somewhat cognizant of the systemic underpinnings of disapproved practices, they are selectively aware of them. Consequently, reform initiatives often call for changing practices without sufficient attention to relationships, understandings, and modes of interaction in which these practices are embedded.
4. Yet, as reform efforts are pushed, they may reach into these underpinnings, unsettle them, and generate unanticipated shifts in expectations and understandings.
5. Overall, then, reform involves two levels of activity: (a) action around a set of immediate prescriptions to change practices, and (b) a more diffuse reordering of understandings in which practices are embedded.
6. A score card based on level "a" adoptions of reform proposals may either overestimate the extent of reform (a reform proposal is adopted but doesn't reach deep enough into the systemic foundation to permanently alter practice) or underestimate the extent of reform (a reform proposal is rejected, but the raising of the issue shifts the understanding of what is legitimate or who is entitled to interact and on what terms, thereby laying a foundation for eventual change in practice).
If we let go of the assumption that reform must be highly programmatic, then we may also be able to see that change can occur without following the script of the initiators of change. Reforms may consist of something more diffuse than a struggle in which proponents of changed are seeking to gain significant programmatic victories over standpatters. Unforeseen adaptations may take place, and new understandings may take hold in forms that are largely uncontested and perhaps not fully understood at the time.
New relationships rather than the outcomes of programmatic issues may mark shifts in power. Here I am invoking the difference between power over (manifested in struggle over contested issues) and power to (manifested in the formation of relationships that produce a capacity to act). The thrust of my argument is that instead of thinking about urban social reform as a matter of imposing a programmatic blueprint as the foundation of a new set of practices, we should see reform as a more diffuse process of establishing an environment within which new relationships can take hold. In this light, the outcome of reform is less about batting averages for programmatic initiatives than about altering relationships in a hoped for direction.
Using a relational rather than programmatic framework, I want to revisit some key works on urban social reform, starting with Marris and Rein (1973). In a penetrating analysis, they made the argument early on that poverty problems had structural foundations and urban social reform needed to move on that level. Marris and Rein, however, saw the antipoverty movement through the lenses of power over and thought of the barriers to reform in those terms. Because they viewed American democracy as essentially adversarial, they could think of social reform only in terms of a capacity to wage group struggle. By contrast, later works suggest a more nuanced view of power and put the barriers to reform in a somewhat different light. From this perspective, the obstacles are not less formidable, just different.
In the discussion below I assess various treatments of urban social reform, and, taking a cue from Robert Halpern (1995), I conclude by asking considering the prospects of continuing social reform -- given a market-based society. Ultimately, for the politics of social reform, the central question concerns the extent to which relationships in a market-based society can be altered to expand the opportunities available to the urban poor. The answer, I argue, does not turn on the conventionally understood power struggle. It has less to do with challenging the control mechanisms of established elites than with the character of the conditions necessary for viable relationships. This is the issue posed by the current interest in civic engagement.
Marris and Rein: Class Imbalance In An Adversarial System
In examining the community action program, its foundation-funded predecessors, and related programs of the Great Society, Peter Marris and Martin Rein took the social reformers of the 1960s to task for neglecting to think structurally or, perhaps even more to the point, for failing to see that the problems of the poor were deeply embedded in the class character of American society. Indeed early backers of community action did not probe very deeply into the structure of society, and, despite a scattering of highly publicized community conflicts, they left the foundations of the social order unchallenged. Reform actions were even less venturesome than reform ideas. Most of the programs under community action "were concerned with individual change," not the reshaping of institutions, hence most were contracted to old-line agencies (Marris and Rein 1973, p. 258).
According to Marris and Rein, key proponents of community action believed that "urban society is essentially a benevolent anarchy," mainly in need of better information and greater coordination (1973, p. 52). Taking note of turf battles and crippling community controversies, they argued that warriors against poverty encountered unanticipated resistance because they failed to understand the class foundations of established practices. Reformers saw bureaucracy as a problem and didn't probe much further. But, where reformers were concerned about bureaucracy as an inflexible form of organization, Marris and Rein directed attention to a deeper issue:
Bureaucracy, as the instrument of power, can be taken to reflect the interest of the dominant classes. The apparent irrelevance of social services, judged by the needs of the poor, could have a harsher explanation than the devotion to the ritual of an organization then. It may suit the needs of the middle classes, whose well-being would be threatened by more generous and effective services to the poor. Those who pay for, control and staff the bureaucracies may well be reluctant to tax themselves more heavily, so that slum schools may compete with the suburbs for the best teachers, and their pupils for college places or the skilled jobs already decimated by automation. Contributors to the United Fund may not wish to see voluntary agencies deploy their services only to those who cannot afford to support them, anymore than agency staff enjoy working with clients of so little status (1973 p.45).
According to Marris and Rein, reformers erred in perceiving the problem "as lying within institutions rather than the structure as a whole" (1973, p. 278). By contrast, for Marris and Rein, the social and political context in which urban service agencies operate, more than bureaucracy itself, formed the core problem.
As Marris and Rein saw it, a fundamental characteristic of the American system is representation by adversarial means. For them, "the structure as a whole" consists of a set of class interests protected by power relationships which the poor are weakly positioned to contest. Thus Marris and Rein charged reformers with not seeing the "futility of new forms of planning, research, or democratic participation without a corresponding adjustment of power" (1973, p. 283). For their part, regarding politics as a matter of contested settlements among competing interests, Marris and Rein called for giving "poor people more power to contest their rights." But, while viewing litigation as useful leverage, they also believed that "redress and law will be self defeating without a sustained campaign to defend the rights to which it appeals" (1973, p. 294). Therein lies a dilemma. As Marris and Rein argue, the pursuit of rights assumes "autonomy of the law and universal access to it," but these are conditions "subject to political control" (p. 291). Litigation, then, is no panacea, especially for those in a politically weak position, for their rights claims are not easy to establish and sustain.
In an adversarial system with diffuse power, change is readily vetoed. Gains tend to go only to those who are mobilized, enjoy significant allies, and can sustain a bargaining position over time. These are traits the poor lack. As Marris and Rein argued, the political leverage of the poor is extremely limited -- "to be poor is not itself a status which defines a common political interest. It is rather a humiliating condition which most people are ashamed to acknowledge" (1973 pp. 185-186).
For Marris and Rein, a dilemma of social reform was that structural change is needed to make a difference, but the present structure puts the poor at a severe disadvantage in pressing for reform of this scope. Structural change, as they saw it, requires enabling the poor to achieve a political presence and contest middle-class domination of a wide range of institutional practices. Yet it is not clear how such enablement can occur, given the ease with which advantaged groups can block change. How to side-step adversarialism long enough to make the system more equitable for marginal groups is a mystery never solved by Marris and Rein. Because the civil rights movement had a significant middle class base, it was not necessarily an instructive parallel.
In emphasizing the class character of American society, Marris and Rein viewed power in terms of overt struggle. They saw the key to social reform as a matter of enhancing the capacity of the poor to press their claims against a resisting middle class. Though they recognized that the anti-poverty movement implanted a body of ideas that took hold (cf. Jackson 1995), they downplayed the achievement. Yet, Marris and Rein observed: "Once made, the promise of participation proved hard to withdraw" (1973, p.270). They also acknowledged that reform produced "a more open process" (p. 296), but emphasized that the structural disadvantage of the poor in a predominantly middle-class society had not altered. For them, the fundamental fact of the social reform process was that "the power of veto outweighed the power to act" (1973, p. 275).
Power and the Move Toward Citizen Engagement
Certainly Marris and Rein were right to highlight the political weakness of the poor and their greater likelihood of engendering opposition rather than support from the middle-class. Subsequent events have borne them out. In an adversarial system, the most recognizable forms of power involve the give and take between contending groups, each trying to exact an advantage from others. In the 1960's the poor neither altered the adversarial character of the American system nor positioned themselves to gain an ongoing series of concessions from the middle class.
But what happened at the substratum level of relationships, understandings, and modes of interaction? We should not underestimate some significant changes. Marris and Rein did acknowledge that community action gave political leverage to leaders within the African-American community, and provided a channel through which they could launch political careers, question established white authorities, and provide a constituency for reform (1973, p. 269). Though Marris and Rein rightly pointed out that a racial foundation for social reform was too narrow to make a structural change in the position of the poor, they may have underplayed a fundamental shift. In particular, the relationship between urban service agencies and the poor has changed in a way that seems irreversible.
Let me offer a couple of instances. First, the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) is an example of how the participation principle altered the expectations and interactions surrounding a neighborhood revitalization effort (Medoff and Sklar 1994). Though community action was defunded as a national program, the principle of participation it embodied still serves as point around which lower-income neighborhoods can mobilize and enjoy political recognition. A second example is Hampton, Virginia, a council-manager city of medium size with a reputation for being highly innovative. I am in the early stages of research on Hampton, exploring the interaction between professional managers and planners on the one side and citizen participants on the other, in the areas of neighborhood improvement, school reform, and youth development.
Using these two illustrations, if we contrast pre-1960's practices with current ones, we can see that the role of professionals in social policy has altered in a fundamental way. Two cases, of course, don't constitute a revolution; much past practice remains intact. But consider the way today's public rhetoric is filled with references to neighborhood participation, parent involvement, citizen engagement, community policing and related terms.
In some cases the rhetoric is just talk, but my examples suggest that in other instances there is more. Many professionals now recognize that citizens have knowledge professionals don't possess, and this in itself means that the scope of professional expertise operates in a more limited sphere than in an earlier period. While it may be the case that business executives have always had a substantial sphere of legitimacy in relation to professional planners and other policy experts (Clark, 1969), ordinary citizens, especially those with lower incomes, have not had such a sphere until recent times.
A shift toward greater citizen engagements rests, however, on a foundation broader than a search for experiential knowledge. Current rhetoric about asset-building points to a realization that citizens play a contributing part in policy itself (Medoff and Sklar 1994). Hampton, for example, has launched an initiative to enlist neighborhoods as partners with the school system in an effort to raise student test scores. Significantly program professionals see lower-income neighborhoods as more fertile ground than upper-income areas for civic engagement; the less affluent communities have greater needs and therefore stronger incentives to take on a new relationship with the schools and the city's Neighborhood Office.
In the civic-engagement paradigm, policy is not something public agencies deliver to citizens but rather a matter of joint or co-production. Policy is at least partly a matter of what citizens do or don't do as willing participants in various activities. Hence problem-solving effectiveness rests on the extent to which and the ways in which policy professionals and citizens blend their efforts. In power terms, this is a different matter from a relationship in which citizen groups are seeking to exact concessions from public agencies. The one is power to, the other power over. Significantly, Hampton represents a conscious effort by city officials to shift from a relationship in which citizens fight city hall to one in which citizens are invited to form partnerships with city hall (and others). This does not mean that all is smooth sailing for the partnership approach. Hampton's school superintendent is quoted as observing, shrewdly, "collaboration is an unnatural act."
Adversarial methods may be more "natural," but their yield may nevertheless be quite limited. Historian Robert Halpern offers the assessment that: "within the framework of an adversarial democracy public policy seems as often to have conspired to maintain the balance between the strong and the vulnerable as to alter it" (1995, p. 229). Certainly the 1960's community action record left the poor disadvantaged in many ways. Unmet expectations, unrelenting problems of poverty, and a widely held sentiment that reform failed are all part of the 1960s legacy. The immediate fruits were quite meager. Yet conflict is often about more than gaining immediate concessions; the point often is to challenge existing practices in a way that lays a foundation for new relationships. Significantly a great deal of community-level activity continues, and change may have taken deeper root than we have recognized. The levers of consequential social reform may not be as unreachable as we once regarded them.
Civic Engagement: The Potential
Marris and Rein framed urban social reform as a move to expand the rights of the poor in order to exact concessions from institutions dominated by the middle-class (cf. Halpern 1995, p. 171). They embraced and even refined a conflict perspective on poverty, putting a strong class spin on it. This is hardly surprising. Adversarial thinking runs deep in American social analysis as well as in political practice. If a scholar does not embrace the notion that clashing interests are the very foundation of our political being, then s/he risks the ultimate put-down of being labeled as un-Madisonian, which is to say, not a realist.
Still there are clear instances in which collaboration, unnatural or not, is productive. Marris and Rein saw a fundamental tension between participation by the poor and the use of professional expertise. Though this tension is genuine, it is not necessarily the entire story. By bringing that tension out into the open, the community action program may have laid a foundation on which social policy professionals could construct a new role for themselves, based on a different way of relating to citizens -- especially those who are nonaffluent.
Whereas one theme that emerged in the 1960s was that, for the poor, professional expertise is largely an insensitive imposition on an indigenous order (see, for example, Ryan 1971), recent work, such as that by Bryk and others (1998) on school reform in Chicago, highlights the possibility of constructive partnerships. And in her recent book Lisbeth Schorr calls attention to "a new form of professional practice" (1997, p. 12; see as well Handler 1996). The rhetoric of collaboration and partnership undoubtedly exceeds the practice, but the shift in rhetoric from the pre-1960s period is profound. And there is evidence that it shapes practice. Today a widespread concern is to promote civic engagement and build civic capacity for social problem-solving. It is particularly evident in much of the literature on school reform (Goodlad 1983; Comer 1993; Waddock 1995; Comer and others 1996). In this vein, a recent study of Chicago argues that: repairing the social fabric of the school community is critical. If local school professionals do not reform their relationship with parents and community members to build a stronger foundation of trust, it is hard to envision how the schools can improve fundamentally, or how communities can better support the education of their children (Bryk and others 1998, p. 255).
No one claims that a wholesale shift has occurred, and much of the energy of school reform continues to be focused on a fairly narrow form of accountability. Still there are significant instances, such as Hampton, Virginia, where school accountability is intertwined with a broad effort to build synergy between school improvement and community building.
To a degree, urban social reform strategy has moved from one centered on power over (exacting concessions) toward one centered on power to (building capacity). The Oakland Urban Strategies Council illustrates a switch from making demands on government to forming partnerships between citizens and policy professionals. For Angela Glover Blackwell, as for earlier anti-poverty warriors, litigation had served as her principal strategy in trying to alleviate poverty -- that is, until she experienced her "epiphany." A public interest lawyer who frequently took public agencies to court on behalf of poor clients, Blackwell recounts that one day, "I saw that most of these agency people were basically good people who wanted to do the right thing for their clients, but they truly didn't know how" (quoted in Walsh 1997, p. 20). In shifting the approach and establishing the Oakland Urban Strategies Council, Blackwell embraced an alternative to litigation:
What if a local organization devoted the formidable research and advocacy skills that typically go into lawsuits into helping public agencies better serve low-income communities? What if isolated bureaucrats found themselves sitting at a table with service providers, business people, advocates and neighborhood residents, trying to craft new solutions to the problems of urban poverty that they couldn't solve alone? (quoted in Walsh 1997, p. 20)
The Industrial Areas Foundation also represents a significant shift, though, again, the shift in practice may be less than the shift in rhetoric. Saul Alinsky's penchant for "rubbing raw the sores of discontent" (Horwitt 1989, p. 458) has given way to Ernesto Cortes' talk about relational power and social capital -- about forming "a relationship that builds long-term trust through collaborative action" (1993, p. 301).
Educationist Dennis Shirley examines civic engagement in Texas cities organized for school reform by IAF (1997). Taking his cue from IAF, Shirley employs "a problem-solving frame of reference." As Shirley sees it, many older non-affluent neighborhoods have fragile families and numerous social problems, indicating a special need for increased attention to children and youth. Yet, without some conscious effort to build civic capacity, these neighborhoods are caught up in a vicious circle of civic disengagement. Reinforced by past frustrations and disappointments, they have little inclination to work with public officials or perhaps even with representatives of the philanthropic and non-profit worlds. Political alienation is high and manifests itself in suspicion toward most outsiders. Within the neighborhood, forms of social capital are weak (cf. Furstenburg 1993). With resources and opportunities scarce, many residents display "survival-oriented patterns of coping and relating" (Halpern 1995, p. 13 8) and are concerned with short-term advantages and self protection (hence the wariness about "outsiders"). Following Putnam (1993), Shirley calls this "the vicious circle of disengagement" (p. 158).
Unlike Putnam, however, Shirley sees civic disengagement as a condition that is subject to short-term change. Shirley uses the phrase "capacity building" to identify the weaving of cooperative relationships within poorer communities, the heightening of their organizational and self-help skills, and the strengthening of their ability to negotiate with external actors (See also Aspen Institute 1997; Walsh 1997; Bryk and others 1998). Of course, no one argues that civic engagement can be created instantly. The Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) affiliates in Texas examined by Shirley make use of a strategy of organizing that proceeds with an elaborate series of steps. DSNI in Boston followed much the same strategy. For IAF, this approach often starts with personal contact, that is one-on-one meetings between organizers and residents in the community. It moves on to house meetings that bring small groups together. This process surfaces concrete, "winnable" issues.
Once a community has organizing momentum and an issue agenda, additional moves follow. One is to contact various external actors -- for example, the school board, business leaders, and local foundations. This is a move toward changing expectations, both within the neighborhood and about the neighborhood within the larger community. In Chicago, Bryk and others found evidence of "an emerging awareness that the school could be different, and local participants could make it happen" (1998, p. 230). In Texas, to further school reform, IAF affiliates inaugurated "neighborhood walks" that included parents, teachers, students, and various community leaders. They also sponsored special events such as "recognition days" to highlight academic achievements by students. Public assemblies served to bring major players together with neighborhood residents. "Action teams" undertook sundry tasks, such as household to household surveys. These were followed by campaigns to launch after-school programs, alter traffic patterns around schools, and meet public-safety needs.
These various issue campaigns were not ad hoc efforts, unconnected to one another. Shirley talks about a "chain of change" (1997, p. 185). And that is precisely the kind of process sought (admittedly with mixed success) in various foundation efforts, such as the New Futures initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. An effective response to one problem engenders expectations about meeting other needs. Thus, in Boston, "as DSNI's organizational capacity grew, so did the demands on that capacity" (Medoff and Sklar 1994, p. 268). In Chicago, Bryk and others identified a strategy pursued by reform-minded professionals of "We can do more" (1998, p. 230).
If an organizing process gains momentum, Shirley maintains, it can address major social needs. And, as Bryk and others argue, "repairing the social fabric of the school community is critical" (1998, p. 255; cf. Cortes 1993). Organizing can thus provide protection against dysfunctional tendencies in modern society -- for example, by bringing "increased adult attention" to children and youth (1997, 208). In this way, not only is a social need met, but organizing to respond to the problem gives neighborhood residents experience with and confidence in dealing with officials (including public school staff) and other community leaders. It also has the potential of moving nonaffluent residents to a different way of seeing themselves in relation to the people around them. As one Dudley Street resident expressed it, "Hey, if we stick together we might be able to get things done here" (Medoff and Sklar 1994, p. 86). Another talked about the need to realize that "we all had to become invested in some general community concerns, and that we didn't live in isolation" (Medoff and Sklar 1994, p. 171).
In this way, a narrow view of self interest can give way to concerns seen in relation to others on a community level. Shirley does not confine the process to neighborhood residents. For example, he sees shared interests between parents and school staff, and argues that their mutual concerns are greater than their points of conflict, and he provides examples in eight schools across five Texas cities. Bryk and others (1998) identify a similar pattern among Chicago neighborhoods. From sundry examples, it is clear that a replicable form of civic engagement can occur. But what are its foundation, its potential, and its limitations? Responding to these questions brings us, as it did Marris and Rein in their inquiry, to the issue of power.
Blackwell's "epiphany" and IAF's shift in strategy both treat power as power to. Instead of seeing the poor in an antagonistic relationship to local government and asking how the poor could put pressure on (power over) public agencies to gain concessions, practitioners of a "power to" strategy look for ways in which the two sides can be brought together. The poor and their advocates, service-providing agencies, and allies who can be attracted to their cause represent a considerable body of sources and civic energy if mobilized constructively instead of being dissipated in actions of contention and withdrawal.
Part of the shift toward a partnership approach rests on an appreciation that lower-income neighborhoods, even with their many problems, nevertheless possess significant assets that can be directed into constructive actions (Medoff and Sklar 1994, pp. 254-255; Walsh N.D., pp. 8-9). Much the same could be said about public agencies themselves. They represent substantial resources, important skills, and a potentially valuable partnership to neighborhood residents, but it is a potential that can be undercut by withdrawal into a defensive posture.
Some of the major philanthropic foundations also address the strategy of civic engagement, and employ community-building as a term of choice. Foundation officers also talk about asset-building. To them, the process starts with strengths in lower-income neighborhoods, and they give special attention to the role of technical assistance and the development of these indigenous assets. As in the Hampton, Virginia experience, the role of service agencies is not that of delivering a professionally designed service but of engaging the people in the neighborhood to combine their resources and capacities (See also Handler 1996). A problem-solving potential thus lies in an alliance between the public sector and civil society. As exemplified in the Texas schools studied by Shirley (1997), a special responsibility falls on the public sector to reach out and be open to community participation (cf. Dauber and Epstein 1993), but there is also a strong need for the community to be organized so that the citizen's role is one of active engagement.
IAF thinkers like Ernesto Cortes believe that civic engagement is sustainable and that the experience of constructively taking on neighborhood problems and improving the community is personally rewarding to participants. Teachers, administrators, and other public-sector staff can find fulfillment in professional achievement and they are capable of openly acknowledging, as one principal said to a community gathering, "I need help!" (Shirley 1997, p. 104). IAF places special emphasis on leadership development, and heightening neighborhood skill in working with actors from the larger community is part of the capacity-building goal. For his part, Cortes calls for expanding "the capability, vision, and political acumen of the community's residents" (Cortes, 1993, p. 301).
In short, civil society in poorer neighborhoods and the public sector are aligned interdependently so that what can be accomplished in alliance with one another is different from -- and more than -- what each can accomplish separately. This is partly a matter of what each can contribute to an aligned effort, and how each can strengthen the other, but the process of contributing itself rests on an ability to see that the possibilities stemming from alignment are greater and more attractive than those from pursuing separate paths. The report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation makes the point that "systems reform is about changing relationships" (Walsh, n.d., p. 8). In short, constructive engagement rests on an appreciation that power can derive from relationships. By differentiating between "unilateral power" and "relational power," present-day IAF leaders make a distinction akin to the one between social control and social production (Stone 1989, 219-33). According to this line of argument, no one is locked into a fixed understanding of their interests. As citizens participate in organizing their neighborhoods and engage others in discussion, Shirley explains, they see their interests in a fresh way and earlier views give way to new ones (1997, 85). In other words, preferences form and re-form through the experience of working with others; and the ability to solve problems depends on being able first to see the possibility of enlarged alliances and then being able to act through such alliances. In this way, lower-income people can be a part of and contributors to an enlarged power to act on the problems in their communities.
Civic Engagement: Some Possible Limitations
For IAF organizers and others, civic engagement is a positive-sum game that is satisfying at the personal level as well as a source of social improvement. In Putnam's (1993) terms, a civic engagement equilibrium is possible because bringing people into a cooperative relationship generates experiences that perpetuate the process. Putnam views civic engagement as a product of and a producer of social capital. Once it is in operation, it does not deplete itself but actually gains strength through continued use.
But what about sources of friction? Are there countervailing forces at work that make neighborhood social capital something less than the perpetual-motion machine Putnam suggests? Though there are enough examples of civic regeneration to suggest that the process is replicable, unguarded optimism is not in order. Three potential problems cast significant shadows.
First there is a resource question. By itself, civic engagement may not command enough resources to get underway, especially in communities with large concentrations of poverty (Halpern 1995, p. 193). Even in Hampton, Virginia, which is not a community of concentrated poverty, a sizable federal grant was instrumental in launching the city's youth development initiative. In Chicago, discretionary financial resources and ample external supports "were key" in furthering school reform (Bryk and others 1998, p. 243). In Boston's Dudley Street neighborhood, a grant from the Riley Foundation provided the initial impetus for organizing the community collaboratively.
Beyond the issue of how to jump start civic renewal in lower-income neighborhoods, there is the issue of whether civic engagement itself generates sufficient resources to expand significantly the opportunities available to members of the lower class. Even in partnership with public agencies, civil society may not control adequate resources to have a strong impact independent of the business sector. The Director of the New Futures Initiative in Savannah, Georgia reported that one of his biggest disappointments was "the failure of the business community to help us much in the way of jobs": "There was a belief that if we tackled the problems of kids, families, and neighborhoods, we would find employers ready to hire our residents. And that hasn't proved to be true" (Walsh n.d., p. 33). A summer jobs program with the Chamber of Commerce yielded only 11 placements, despite a major effort of working with young people. Without access to jobs, the civic effort could have only limited impact. And the ability of the New Futures initiative in Savannah to build momentum was limited thereby.
A second problem area involves volunteerism. Civic engagement requires substantial voluntary effort. Though service activity can be personally fulfilling, it nevertheless must compete with other demands on the time of potential volunteers. Can neighborhood service activity be sustained in a world in which not only are time demands numerous, but also in which society increasingly relies on market means to meet such family needs as those for pre-school child care, after-school activities, and youth camps of various kinds -- a society as well in which the affluent particularly rely on private measures to provide added home and neighborhood security. In short, is civic engagement too much against the grain of contemporary society to be sustained?
The third problem area concerns the status of the poor in a society which judges merit by the rewards garnered in a market system. According to Halpern, a major barrier to efforts to bring about social improvements lies "in the primacy of the marketplace in defining people's worth and entitlement" (1995, p. 228). By definition, the poor are losers in a market system. Halpern is worth quoting at length:
Neighborhood-based services -- through no fault of their own -- do not address the core issues facing inner-city communities and their residents. Friendly, responsive services cannot help devalued, excluded people feel valued and included. The notion of rebuilding a sense of community through networks of neighborhood-based services can only be taken so far when the majority of poor children and families are geographically and socially isolated from the rest of society (1995, p. 194).
He elaborates (at one point, echoing the quote from Marris and Rein):
One can argue that, of all the constraints on neighborhood initiative, it has been residents' sense of exclusion that has been the most difficult to address. The "difference dilemma" of figuring out what to do in the face of one's exclusion and depredation, has become if anything more profound than historically. What little common life -- in beliefs, norms, identity, aspirations, physical contact -- once existed between residents of inner-city communities and the larger society around them is gone. The bridges back and forth have almost disappeared. No strategy tried by excluded Americans has worked to resolve this dilemma: neither integration, separate development, self-help, legal action, direct action, militancy, education, social services, community development, collective violence. That is because at heart the dilemma is about the denial of social membership, the humanity of the excluded, and of the interdependence of the majority and minority. We cannot continue to ask the excluded to be largely or solely responsible for resolving the difference dilemma, for finding a way to be included. They cannot do so on their own, nor should they be asked to; from a moral perspective it is largely the responsibility of those who do the excluding to take some initiative (1995, pp. 230-231).
One can observe significant local efforts to make "devalued, excluded people" feel valued and included through initiatives such as the Young Architects and Planners Project in the Dudley Street neighborhood and through Hampton's Youth Commission, but local efforts cannot be totally insulated from the issue of membership of the larger society. Robert Reich's (1991) concerns about "the secession of the successful" are well founded.
All in all, civic regeneration does not have an obstacle-free track on which to run. It remains to be seen how much can be done and how long efforts can be sustained without some boosting from state and local governments or without significant cooperation from the business sector. And there is the less tangible but no less telling factor of social inclusion.
Conclusion
Urban social reform continues to attract significant activity. Despite disappointments from the era of the 1960's, initiatives persist. In at least some places, strategy has shifted from heavy reliance on advocacy to greater attention to community building and civic engagement. Particularly noteworthy is increased acknowledgement that the poor can contribute to civic regeneration. In retrospect, community action of the 1960s may not have been the failed experiment it was once considered to be, but rather the first stage of restructuring the place of lower-income people in the civic life of urban communities. Some policy professionals and service providers have now moved in the direction of recognizing the part that the poor can play solving social problems. Still a sunny outlook for urban social reform must contend with the shadows cast by the large place of the market in American society. It affects relationships in so many ways, both tangible and intangible.
Even so, if we think about reform in terms of relationships, the experience with community action and related programs of the 1960's can be seen in a different light. Though the federal program was ended, new expectations and understandings took shape. The poor gained footing for participation in community-based initiatives, and the way opened to forms of civic engagement in which lower-income citizens and service-providing agencies could join forces.
The test of reform impact involves the viability of these new forms of civic engagement. Are they able to address significant poverty problems, expand opportunities for the poor, and provide a lasting basis for cooperation? Or, will the weakness of the poor under a market system ultimately erode these cooperative relationships, either because the poor become discouraged over a continuing scarcity of opportunity or because civic partnerships don't have the depth of capacity to make working in them satisfying for able policy professionals and staff in service-providing agencies? These are questions that need to command our attention as we try to understand the politics of urban social reform. The answers are less likely to lie in dramatic showdowns over reform initiatives than in extended but low visibility tests of durability.
Partnership relationships are complex. They are, as Robert Halpern cautions, potentially shaped by such matters as tacit signs of inclusion and feelings of alienation. Civic engagement is one way of addressing inclusion, and it may be that the acuteness and immediacy of that experience can override societal signals of devaluation to those of less income in a market-based system. We know that relationships of civic engagement do develop and provide a capacity for ameliorating social problems. We don't know much about the conditions under which they form or what gives them durability. Expanding our knowledge of these matters should be a central part of our research agenda in examining the politics of urban social reform.
As we consider the issue of civic engagement for lower-income people, we need to be open to possibilities. Obstacles to change are perhaps all too familiar to us. We know a great deal about the nondecision process and the ways in which established beliefs can be invoked to hamper reformers (Bachrach and Baratz 1970; Gaventa 1980). We know less about how new ways of operating -- or what Sewell (1992) calls schemas -- take hold. In this paper I have suggested that forms of civic engagement that bring poor people and service-providing agencies together in joint efforts are potentially viable. Though we should not ignore barriers to their workability, neither should we fail to explore the conditions that may be conducive to sustainable partnerships.
Notes
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