People who want to improve the world often encounter problems of collective action (how to get many individuals to act in concert), of discourse (how to talk and think productively about contentious matters), and of exclusion. To get things done, they must form or join and sustain functional groups, and through them, develop skills and virtues that help them to be effective and responsible civic actors.
Peter Levine, one of America's leading scholars and practitioners of civic engagement, identifies the general challenges that confront people who ask the citizens' question and explores solutions in his most recent book, What Should We Do? A Theory of Civic Life. Democracy Works host Chris Beem also thinks through these questions in his most recent book, The Seven Democratic Virtues: What You Can Do to Overcome Tribalism and Save Democracy. In this conversation, Levine and Beem discuss how their approaches differ and how individual and collective actions can't be separated from each other when it comes to civic engagement.
Levine is the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs in Tufts University's Jonathan Tisch College of Civic Life.
What Should We Do? A Theory of Civic Life
The Seven Democratic Virtues: What You Can Do to Overcome Tribalism and Save Our Democracy
Can the courts save civics education?
When religion and democracy collide
Sore losers are bad for democracy
On democracy's doomsayers
What does it take to sustain democracy?
Fannie Lou Hamer's fight continues today
Andrew Yang and Charlie Dent on the future of America's political parties
The soul of democracy
Jonathan Haidt on democracy's moral foundations [rebroadcast]
Why social media is so polarizing — and what we can do about it
What makes a campaign deplorable?
Fighting for democracy in the GOP
Tom Nichols on democracy's worst enemy
Independent commissions alone can't create fair maps
Voter suppression doesn't repeat, but it rhymes
A love letter to democratic institutions
How Amazon is disrupting democracy
Abortion is not always a clash of absolutes
Millennials' slow climb to political power
A summer of the individual vs. the common good
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
City Manager Unfiltered
Potencial Americano
The ASIC Podcast
The Chris Plante Show
Red Eye Radio