Enhancing Civic Engagement in America:

Advancing Community Action for Civic Innovation

Research Brief

November 2003

OVERVIEW
Civic engagement and its relationship to the health of democracy in America has received
nationwide attention during the last decade. While the very definition and scope of “civic
engagement” is still contested, policymakers, journalists, researchers, and community leaders
have bemoaned a decline in citizen engagement and questioned democracy’s capacity to solve
public problems at the community level. In the aftermath of the September 11th tragedy, initial
reports signaled a resurgence in civic engagement and a renewed faith in democracy, however,
the research provides mixed evidence regarding the net impact on citizenship and American
democratic institutions. Whether Americans are withdrawing from public life or participating in
different ways is still a matter of much scholarly contention. Although no consensus has been
reached regarding the level of civic engagement, the debate has broadened to include important
questions about the quality, equality, and sustainability of participation.

What are the key factors that foster, enhance, and sustain citizens’ civic engagement and build a
community’s capacities for reinvigorating democracy? The Democracy Collaborative at the
University of Maryland, in partnership with the Center for the Study of Voluntary Organizations
and Service at Georgetown University, has conducted a national-level assessment to examine
what works to strengthen civic engagement in the United States. Developing a comparative
framework to understand the main variables that enhance civic engagement and democratic
citizenship at the community-level, this research study draws on a growing knowledge base of
effective civic innovations and strategies of various communities around the United States. The
goal of this research effort is to help local policy makers, advocates, practitioners, and
foundation program officers set objectives and design strategies tailored to the realities of their
communities that strengthen civic engagement, community involvement, and, ultimately,
democratic citizenship.

This Research Brief provides a summary of this project’s conceptual framework, including the
main goals for enhancing civic engagement, the fundamental factors that influence civic
engagement at the community level, the key measures to assess civic health, and the innovations
and strategies employed to achieve these goals. The Research Brief also highlights the
conditions necessary for civic engagement to thrive, priority areas for future efforts, and key
research gaps in the civic engagement literature. Most important, this Research Brief presents a
preliminary assessment of what works to enhance civic engagement at the community level based
on the findings of eight reports that reviewed over 700 scholarly articles (What Works Table on
pages 11-12).
ENHANCING CIVIC ENGAGEMENT &
DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP
Civic engagement means “active participation in
civic life.” This study focuses on those civic and
political activities that contribute to or enhance
democracy. Thus, this study presumes that the
ultimate goal of enhancing civic engagement is
to strengthen democracy. This overarching goal
involves four key measurable objectives, which
overlap with one another but are all prerequisites
for a healthy democracy. Specifically, civic
innovations and strategies should:
1. Increase the quantity of civic
engagement: This means increasing the
number of people involved or percentage of
the population engaged and increasing the
number of organizations and civic structures
(where appropriate).
2. Increase the quality of civic engagement:
This means improving existing opportunities
for volunteers or enhancing organizational
effectiveness and creating new more
meaningful opportunities to participate,
which would also contribute to the next
goal, increasing the equality of civic
engagement. This also includes increasing
the quality of citizens through skill-building
opportunities and civic education.
3. Increase the equality of civic engagement:
This involves identifying civic structures
and other factors that serve to include or
exclude, leveraging differences and
minimizing disparities in order to increase
participation, access, influence and
representation of underrepresented groups
by race, class, ethnicity, age, gender and
religion. This also includes elevating, where
appropriate “fringe involvement” to “center
stage” to help strengthen the links between
informal and formal networks (e.g.,
community leaders: gang leaders vs. elected
officials).
4. Increase the sustainability of civic
engagement: This involves strengthening
existing venues or opportunities for
participation and identifying and nurturing
emerging strategies and innovations that
seek to build citizenship and engagement at
the local level over the long-term.
Enhancing Civic Engagement in America: A Research Brief
Main Factors Affecting Civic Engagement
Civic engagement is a broad and complex topic.
What are the main factors that affect civic
engagement? To better understand the field, we
have reviewed the existing empirical literature
and identified the three main factors that shape
the possibilities for civic engagement and
healthy democratic communities.
Individual and Community Factors result
from individual experiences that are driven by
internal (such as personal values) and external
(such as familial and societal) forces. These
factors set the context or conditions both at the
individual and collective levels that either
facilitate or impede civic engagement and are
identified as:
• Civic Motivations and Values
• Civic Identity, Norms, Conditions
• Civic Differences and Disparities
Civic Tools and Resources are the primary
means in terms of strategies and practices, both
at the individual and collective levels, to enhance
the quality, quantity, equality, and sustainability
of civic engagement and are identified as:
• Civic Education and Knowledge
• Civic Skills and Capacities
The Modes and Infrastructure for
Participation are the main forms, venues, and
infrastructure though which people are or
become civically engaged. These are identified
broadly as Civic Participation and Civic
Structures and take four forms: community and
religious, economic, political, and electoral
participation and structures.
Together the inter-relationships among these
three main factors shape and affect the
possibilities for enhancing civic engagement
(i.e., quantity, quality, equality, and
sustainability), and thus shape the potential
outcomes for building healthy democratic
communities.
FOSTERING CIVIC INNOVATIONS AND
STRATEGIES
What leads people to engage civically in their
communities?
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First and foremost, people must have reason to
believe that, whatever the form of involvement,
their civic actions will positively affect their
communities. Political theorist Harry Boyte
argues that people are most likely to sustain
engagement when people see active citizenship
as “public work,” which is conceived as an
ongoing creative process whereby people find
efficacy in working in public ways and venues to
solve community problems collectively (Boyte,
1997, 2000; Boyte & Kari, 1996). Various
experiences in St. Paul, Philadelphia, Portland,
OR, and other cities suggest that, where people
find their voice matters, they are most likely to
act on some form of engagement in the broader
community (Berry, Portney & Thomson, 1993;
Boyte & Kari, 1996; Markus, 2002).
What conditions are necessary to foster and to
sustain civic engagement at the community
level?
A variety of organizations and institutions at the
local level play a critical role in facilitating and
shaping the possibilities for enhanced civic
engagement: Charitable and political
organizations, religious congregations, advocacy
groups, unions, schools and universities,
community foundations, local government,
cooperatives, community development centers,
neighborhood associations, and local political
party chapters, just to name a few. Together,
these organizations help to establish strong social
networks, develop civic skills, and foster deep
roots for further participation and political
involvement.
Markus’s study (2002) of civic engagement in
fourteen major cities finds that the role of
community-based organizations in the form of
neighborhood associations, small church groups,
PTAs and other citizens’ groups is critical. These
local groups mobilize people to address the
problems of their communities, spanning various
issues, from health to housing, hunger, and
crime. To the extent that these organizations are
grounded in the communities with wide
representation, they have great potential to
generate citizen awareness, facilitate active civic
and political engagement, and foster leadership
development. For instance, the neighborhood
governance councils in West Chicago have
provided low-income people with an effective
forum that enables them to influence and shape
the policies for community policing and public
schools (Markus, 2002; Fung, 2001).
Enhancing Civic Engagement in America: A Research Brief
Collectively, these city-level studies point to a
number of key conditions necessary for
community-level civic engagement to thrive: 1) a
high level of organizational and economic
diversity, 2) responsive and participatory
governance structures, 3) successful mobilization
efforts of broad coalitions, 4) a focus on
leadership, and 5) access to resources and
education.
5 Key Conditions for Fostering Community-
level Civic Engagement
• A high level of organizational and economic
diversity: A diverse mix of organizations is
most likely to provide broader more
inclusive opportunities and responsive
means for people to participate meaningfully
in their communities than individual
community actors acting alone (e.g.,
community, church, labor union, and local
government or multi-sectoral partnerships)
(Norris, 2002a; Nelson, Craig, & Riker,
2003). The greater the level of economic
diversity in middle-income communities is
positively correlated with higher levels of
civic engagement by citizens, for instance,
as they seek to influence decisions about the
allocation and provision of public services
(Nembhard & Blasingame, 2003, 14; Oliver,
1999; Costa & Kahn, 2003). Those
communities that have a broader range of
community economic development
organizations (e.g., community development
corporations, cooperatives, community land
trusts, farmers’ markets) have generally
demonstrated higher levels of civic
engagement and economic stability
(Williamson, Imbroscio, & Alperovitz,
2002; Rusch, 2001).
• Responsive and participatory governance
structures: Community-based organizations
and neighborhood associations that enable
people to address their concerns through
participatory governance structures can
provide effective channels for voice,
representation and accountability, especially
for poor, minority, and disenfranchised
peoples (Portney & Berry, 2001; Markus,
2002; Cuoto & Guthrie, 1999; Fung &
Wright, 2002). When people are engaged in
the defining, deliberation, decision-making
and implementation of community priorities
and initiatives, the sustainability of civic
engagement is enhanced (Cortes, 1993;
3
 Potapchuk, 1996; Community Building
Institute & National Civic League, 2002;
Fung, 2002). In the economic sphere,
employees’ participation in the democratic
ownership and governance of economic
enterprises such as cooperatives or
employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)
enhances or facilitates positive civic
engagement and political participation
beyond the workplace (Nembhard &
Blasingame, 2003).
• Successful mobilization efforts of broad
coalitions: The building of broad-based
grassroots coalitions of community and
religious organizations offers an effective
means to enable people to influence political
institutions and to address economic
priorities in both rural and urban settings
(Cortes, 1993; Couto, 1998; Warren, 1998
2001). Broad inter-group coalitions have
successfully mobilized community-wide
participation to address vital issues ranging
from affordable housing to policing and
school reform. The organization of multi-
stakeholder coalitions that involve poor
people from multiple ethnic groups has, in
various instances, been successful in either
stopping or reorienting corporate-led
economic development plans, and in
mobilizing effective environmental justice
and living wage initiatives at the community
level (Nembhard & Blasingame, 2003).
• A focus on leadership: Civic leadership
development is critical for building and
sustaining the capacity for developing
effective and responsive organizational
channels and civic activities. Leaders sustain
organizations. Sustainable organizations
foster social change (Warren & Wood,
1998; Wood, 1998, 2001, 2002 & 2003;
Goldsmith, 2002). The emphasis should be
on broadening and diversifying an
organization’s leadership.
• Access to resources and education: One of
the greatest civic barriers is the lack of
access to the economic, educational, and
political resources necessary to engage
meaningfully in civic life. In the economic
sphere, the lack of access to economic
resources (e.g., wealth and income
inequality) can significantly limit a person’s
ability to participate in civic life and to
influence economic and political institutions
Enhancing Civic Engagement in America: A Research Brief
and processes (Nembhard & Blasingame,
2003, 24). Promoting targeted educational
and skills-training opportunities and interest-
group membership in a diverse range of
community economic development
organizations (e.g., coops, credit unions) can
enhance people’s access to resources and
their level of civic engagement. In addition,
well-designed civic education, media
training, and non-partisan public
information initiatives targeted to specific
audiences (e.g., youths and adults) can
enhance citizens’ civic knowledge and
engagement (Torney-Purta, 2003) as well as
mobilize them to register and to vote in
elections (Wilcox, 2003).
Acknowledging the key contributing factors that
enhance or inhibit civic engagement and the
conditions necessary for community-level civic
engagement to occur, what strategies or
innovations have been tried and what priority
areas have been identified to increase the
quantity, quality or equality of civic
engagement?
Civic Strategies & Innovations for Enhancing
Civic Engagement: Recommendations
By reviewing the recommendations that emerge
from the literature and surveying the innovative
approaches that community-based organizations
and institutions have employed to enhance civic
engagement, this analysis provides the initial
basis for lessons, strategies, and effective
practices that can be applied at the local level.
However, a primary objective of this research
was to highlight evidence on the extent to which
different strategies or innovations produce
measurable outcomes and outputs. What works?
What doesn’t? And what might? How should we
measure the effectiveness of a particular
innovation or strategy? And how can
communities assess their own progress toward
local civic engagement goals? Moreover, how
do you take a social innovation or strategy that
has worked in one community and “take it to
scale,” or take it to another community?
In an earlier study commissioned by the Russell
Sage Foundation, Hollister and Hill (1995)
identify several definitional and methodological
challenges inherent in the evaluation of
community-wide initiatives. This study
highlighted specific problems with developing
consistent reliable outcome measures, using
4
community as the unit of analysis and
comparison, measuring community-level
variables such as social networks and
formal/informal institutions, and linking short-
term measures with long-term outcomes.
Acknowledging these issues, The Center for the
Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at
Duke University is attempting to answer this
question and is in the early stages of creating a
matrix of strategic options for scaling out to
assist with “the geographic spread of social
innovation.”
While we attempted to organize and synthesize
what is known about the performance of various
approaches in civic engagement, unfortunately,
perhaps the most prominent research gaps
identified in the literature review underlined in
many of the dimension reports, describe the lack
of longitudinal data in evaluating the state of
civic engagement in any form or through any
vehicle or venue. The lack of such
comprehensive data fundamentally limits the
study of civic engagement to areas where there is
the most information – such as voter
participation, registration, and so forth.
Moreover, a lack of longitudinal data precludes
the necessary development of program
evaluation and program intervention to
understand what practices are working over time.
Nevertheless, existing research does point to a
number of areas where obvious gains can be
made in every mode of engagement.
Specifically, the research encompasses four
broad priority areas for pursuing effective civic
strategies and innovations that enhance civic
engagement at the community level:
1. Strengthening civic infrastructure;
2. Addressing economic inequalities and
fostering community economic stability;
3. Developing youth with a focus on education;
and
4. Strengthening the electoral process.
A critical first step is to strengthen a
community’s civic infrastructure to foster civic
engagement. Developing a civic ecology of
community capacities that identifies key actors,
strengthens their skills and capacities, and fosters
supportive relationships among them for shared
purposes provides the essential building blocks
at the community level for public problem-
solving (Friedland & Sirianni, 2003). This
means fostering effective multi-stakeholder
collaborations that include business, nonprofit
Enhancing Civic Engagement in America: A Research Brief
and political actors at the community level to
solve public problems (Nelson, Craig & Riker,
2003). Civic journalism represents a promising
area for developing a community’s civic
capacity, where local newspapers and other
media (i.e., television and radio) can play a
catalytic role in highlighting key issues facing a
community, stimulating broad community-level
deliberations, and creating an agenda for action
on pressing public issues (Friedland, 1996, 2001;
Sirianni & Friedland, 2001).
A second priority area is to address economic
inequality and to strengthen community
economic stability. A key finding of this project
is that explicitly addressing social and economic
inequalities is critical to reducing civic
disparities and enhancing civic engagement of
those lacking access, opportunities, and
resources (Frasure & Williams, 2003; Nembhard
& Blasingame, 2003). In the case of economic
participation, there are several promising areas
for enhancing civic engagement, such as
supporting economic interest group membership,
increasing socio-economic diversity, and
promoting greater wealth equality. Fostering a
democratic workplace and participatory
governance of economic enterprises where
workers develop essential skills has a positive
impact on civic engagement (Nembhard &
Blasingame, 2003). There are new emerging
strategies for curbing the economic power of
corporations through different forms of advocacy
such as shareholder resolutions, boycotts, and
buycotts. Broad-based, multi-stakeholder
coalitions involved in environmental justice and
living wage initiatives offer positive examples
where communities have made progress in
addressing corporate power and reducing
economic and social inequalities (Nembhard &
Blasingame, 2003). Diversifying the range and
scope of community economic development
organizations (e.g., community development
corporations, cooperatives, community land
trusts, farmers’ markets) enhances civic
engagement and community economic stability
(Williamson, Imbroscio, & Alperovitz, 2002).
Third, there is a continuing need to focus on
youth development and education. Civic
identity, values, and adult patterns of
participation find their roots in youth
participation (Youniss & Hart, 2003). Based on
this finding, Youniss and Hart advocate greater
investment in targeted youth programs that
encourage community and civic involvement,
5
with a particular emphasis on bridging the
resource gap in inner cities to level the playing
field for disadvantaged youth.
In addition to community-based programs to
engage youth, school-based curricular and extra-
curricular initiatives are critical to developing the
appropriate content knowledge to ensure that
civic skills and the propensity to participate are
grounded and informed (Torney-Purta, 2003).
Fostering meaningful civic knowledge requires
enhancing the content and skills for enabling
participation through a combination of school-
based civic education, media education, and
parental engagement in a youth’s civic
development (CIRCLE & Carnegie Corporation
of New York, 2003). School-based strategies
that have a significant impact in enhancing the
civic engagement of youth are curricular
offerings with high civic content, an open
classroom climate that allows for respectful
discussion of issues, and a school environment
that empowers students. Participation in student
council, other forms of extracurricular activity
and in community service have a strong positive
influence on a student’s civic engagement. In
order to encourage a student’s potential political
and electoral participation, there should be an
explicit focus in the curriculum about the
importance of voting and elections in school
(Torney-Purta, 2003). Investing in media
training and education with an explicit civic
content is an effective strategy. Civic education
is enhanced by exposure to local, national, and
international news in the media and by active
discussion and connection of the news to civic
and political practices. Students who regularly
read a newspaper and/or regularly watch
television news achieve a higher civic education
knowledge score. Home literacy resources and
the active involvement of parents in discussion
of civic and political affairs have a positive
reinforcing impact on the civic education of
youth (Torney-Purta, 2003).
Fourth, a timely priority area is to strengthen
electoral infrastructure and opportunities for
electoral participation. The controversies
surrounding campaign finance reform and the
2000 Presidential election put pressure on FEC
officials to tighten controls on election
monitoring and step up structural reform,
regarding the relationship between money and
politics. A review of the literature also indicated
that several civic barriers to electoral
participation remain, especially for marginalized
Enhancing Civic Engagement in America: A Research Brief
groups (e.g., minorities, immigrants, and former
convicted felons). Because of the lack of
resources and skills necessary to participate,
minorities are less frequently mobilized than
whites and marginalized by organized politics,
which further depresses their level of civic
engagement (Uslaner, 2003; Rogers, 2000;
Frymer 1999; Jones-Correa, 1998; Huckfeldt &
Sprague, 1995). Williams and Frasure (2003)
suggest the following strategies to address civic
disparities in electoral participation: 1) move
towards proportional representation, 2) make
naturalization simpler and easier, 3) support
efforts to diversify the candidate pool and ensure
that elections are competitive, and 4) enfranchise
voters including felons and perhaps resident
aliens. Many scholars and political activists also
recommend strategies to lower the social and
economic costs of participation for everyone.
Specifically, to make voting and voter
registration easier and more accessible for
everyone, they advocate multi-day balloting,
same day registration, and keeping the polls open
longer on election day (Wilcox, 2003). There is
also evidence that citizen mobilization efforts
should be stepped up to include more rigorous
door-to-door efforts, to leverage political work
through houses of worship and to expand reach
to marginalized groups through the political
party system (Uslaner, 2003).
When considered as a whole, these four
priority areas provide the basis for the
following recommendations on page 7 below
for strengthening civic engagement.
ENHANCING CIVIC ENGAGEMENT:
RECOMMENDED INITIATIVES
There is an urgent need to develop tools that can
be used for top-down and bottom-up evaluation
of various ways to foster civic engagement. Such
tools – focusing on what works, what has been
shown to work, and what might work – should
prove particularly helpful for community leaders,
nonprofit organizations, policy-makers and
foundations seeking to enhance the quantity,
quality, and equality of civic engagement and
sustain its impact for enhancing democracy in
their communities. The What Works Table on
pages 11-12 below provides a preliminary
assessment of effective civic innovations and
strategies that enhance civic engagement at the
community level.
6
Main Recommendations for Strengthening Civic Engagement

1) Focus on strengthening the civic infrastructure

a) Strengthen local institutions: community-level institutions provide initial opportunities to engage.

b) Support multi-sectoral partnerships: government and foundation initiatives should work with colleges and
universities to promote university’s civic role.
c) Acknowledge power of community-based organizing for leadership development and social justice change.
d) Develop a civic ecology of civic capacities that identifies key actors, fosters supportive relationships, and
provides the building blocks at the community level for public problem-solving.
e) Foster effective multi-stakeholder collaborations that include business, nonprofit and political actors at the
community level to solve public problems.
f) Promote civic journalism that fosters and facilitates community dialogue, deliberations, and agenda setting about
pressing problems and priorities.

2) Address economic inequalities and foster community economic stability

a) Support economic interest group membership.

b) Increase socio-economic diversity.
c) Promote greater wealth equality.
d) Increase restrictions on corporate political power.
e) Encourage workplace democracy and democratic economic governance.
f). Strengthen and diversify the range of community economic development organizations.

3) Focus on youth development and education

a) Incorporate trends of civic engagement in designated courses and across the curriculum.
b) Connect civic and political practices outside of the classroom.
c) Allow different opinions to be expressed in the classroom: empower students to look beyond adults’ perspective
for solutions.
d) Expect students to reason about the support for their own positions and reflect about the experience in and
outside the classroom.
e) Invest in youth programs that encourage civic involvement.
f) Help bridge the resource gap in inner cities to provide mentors and additional support for inner city youth.
g) Focus on strengthening educational opportunities for under-privileged youth.
h) Target age groups differently.

4) Strengthen the electoral process

a) Advocate for increased election monitoring and structural reform.

b) Move towards proportional representation.
c) Make naturalization simpler and easier.
d) Support efforts to diversify the candidate pool.
e) Ensure that elections are competitive.
f) Lessen costs of voting: multi-day balloting, same day registration, polls open longer.
g) Enfranchise voters including felons and perhaps resident aliens.
h) Provide citizens with ample ways to become informed about campaigns and issues.
i) Mobilize citizens: civic voter mobilization campaigns, door-to-door efforts.
j) Mobilize potential voters through political parties and houses of worship.

Enhancing Civic Engagement in America: A Research Brief 7

Out of this analysis, we have also identified
important areas and questions for further
research, experimentation, and exchange about
the key factors that affect civic engagement at
the community level. To improve our collective
understanding of the civic challenges facing
communities with different institutional contexts,
future research and practitioner efforts to
enhance community-level civic engagement
must continue to be informed by the constructive
collaboration among scholars and feedback from
community practitioners.
To date, we have learned concretely about the
many challenges inherent in accomplishing the
project’s fundamental goals: identifying effective
strategies and practices and developing relevant
tools for enhancing civic engagement at the
community level based on a comprehensive
assessment of the academic literature. The real
test will be how to connect research and practice
effectively to present our findings in a way that
best informs and enables community
practitioners to apply these innovative strategies
and best practices to enhance the civic
engagement of citizens in the specific contexts of
their communities. The challenge remains to
develop appropriate tools and to identify relevant
practices that can be adopted at the community
level and be tailored to their specific community
context.
KEY AREAS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
The research presented in this report crosses the
gamut of civic engagement, utilizing information
from both academics and practitioners. A great
deal is known about ways to immediately
influence community and national engagement
patterns, ranging from electoral reforms such as
same-day voter registration to societal reforms
such as youth leadership campaigns. However,
in measuring the unique and overlapping
contributions for each category of civic
engagement, a number of questions remain
unanswered. Perhaps the most prominent
research gap identified is the lack of longitudinal
data, which limits the ability to assess fully the
performance of civic strategies and innovations
over time. In addition, civic engagement
encompasses wide-ranging fields of academic
knowledge, thus, gaps necessarily exist between
disciplines or areas of study and with
practitioners.
Enhancing Civic Engagement in America: A Research Brief
Another key research gap relates to group
differences or the study of the engagement
patterns across race, religion, class, and gender
within the U.S. Minority populations often
develop tight community bonds and express their
specific societal, political, and economic
engagement in unique ways. The unique
contribution of specific groups remains
unclarified. To date, research has focused on
lumping groups into broad categories,
eliminating the possibility of understanding the
discrete contribution of specific nationalities.
This grouping based on race rather than national
origin reveals nothing about potential
engagement differences between nationalities,
blurring existing engagement patterns into a
racial average. Likewise, similar problems can
be seen in measuring the religious involvement
of ethnic groups. While new research projects
are underway (e.g., The Pew Forum on Religion
and Public Life’s Pluralism Project and
Immigrant Initiative Programs), key knowledge
gaps still remain in the area of non-Christian
religions’ civic participation. Religious
involvement related to engagement has primarily
dealt only with Judeo-Christian groups and belief
systems. Yet, the influx of many new religious
groups in the past thirty years requires an
additional perspective. Any civic engagement
related to Buddhist, Hindu, or even Muslim
churches remains largely unconsidered.
Moreover, while recent research has focused on
the relationship between gender and civic
engagement patterns, the interaction of
socioeconomic and gender transformations
requires further study. Skocpol’s review of civic
transformations and inequalities predicts that:
“Since women were traditionally
central to many voluntary membership
federations that stressed cross-class
fellowship and non-market-oriented
public values, it will be fascinating to
learn how all this changed during the
recent era, as class inequalities have
increased and gender differences have
attenuated” (2002, 38).
While research gaps exist both within and across
the modes of civic engagement, many areas
require further consideration. The mode of
economic engagement receives limited attention
as an outlet for civic engagement when
compared to electoral or social engagement.
Much of the data for economic engagement
8
remains anecdotal, and non-systematic. Few
studies have sought to understand what specific
skills and attitudes can be transferred from
economic governance to civic and political
participation.
The research field also lacks analysis that
explores the characteristics of local organizations
and how these characteristics affect individual
and group participation for any given purpose.
Efforts are needed to improve the means for
assessing organizational capacity in facilitating
civic engagement. Such research could impart
not only valuable lessons for all community
organizations attempting to develop civic
engagement, but also would differentiate
between participation rates and success/failure of
institutions over time. While much is known
about the participation patterns over time of
larger membership organizations and elite-class
associations, much less is known about advocacy
groups or cross-class associations (Skocpol,
2002, 38).
An even more prominent critique of research in
the field of civic engagement involves the
“disconnect” between civic engagement as a
means to a desired outcome and civic
engagement as an end or desired outcome itself.
Societal engagement because of social capital
could be high in a community; however, this
specific reality does not predetermine that a
community will be successful in terms of
accomplishing any particular end. Thus,
research should not only seek to measure civic
engagement nationally and locally, but should
also measure what such engagement produces in
terms of national and local results.
REFERENCES
Bellah, R.N., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W.M., Swidler, A. &
Tipton, S. (1985). Habits of the heart: Individualism and
commitment in American life. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
Berry, J., Portney, K. & Thomson, K. (1993). The rebirth of
urban democracy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Bobo, L. & Gilliam, F. D., Jr. (1990). Race, sociopolitical
participation, and Black empowerment. American Political
Science Review, 84: 377-393.
Boyte, H.C. (1997). The meaning of citizenship. Kettering
Review, Winter, 55-62.
Enhancing Civic Engagement in America: A Research Brief
Greater analysis is also required of the
institutional infrastructure and social context that
affect the quantity, quality, equality, and the
sustainability of community-based civic
participation. Further study should examine both
the positive and negative roles civic structures
play at the community level. This type of
analysis could help determine when and how
civic structures serve as bridges facilitating
greater participation as well as when and how
they serve as exclusionary barriers to equal
participation.
This Research Brief is based on a longer
synthesis report on “What Works to
Strengthen Civic Engagement in America: A
Guide to Local Action and Civic Innovation”
(2003) prepared for the John S. and James L.
Knight Foundation. The full report, along
with eight Civic Engagement Working
Papers, is available from The Democracy
Collaborative’s web site.
The Democracy Collaborative at the
University of Maryland gratefully
acknowledges the support of the John S. and
James L. Knight Foundation for this project.
For more information, please contact:
The Democracy Collaborative
University of Maryland
1228 Tawes Hall
College Park, MD 20742-7255
Phone: 301-405-9266
Fax: 301-314-2533
www.democracycollaborative.org
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373-389.
9
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References continued on page 12
10
 WHAT WORKS TABLE: A Review of Civic Innovations & Strategies to Enhance
Civic Engagement

Civic Innovations and Strategies

Areas for Targeted What Works What Doesn’t Mixed Reviews “Best Bets”
Intervention Work

INDIVIDUAL &
COMMUNITY
FACTORS
Civic Infrastructure -Developing a civic ecology -Urging people to get -Leveraging television and -Developing electronic
of civic capacities: inventory involved Internet for civic journalism or community networks
*Government for local context -Unresponsive civic education purposes -Strengthening citizen
*Business -Promoting multi-stakeholder government and civic deliberative forums
*Community-based collaborations: strengthen structures -Community-University
Organizations organizational diversity and partnerships for community
multi-sectoral partnerships leadership development and
*Foundations -Supporting participatory problem-solving
*Unions and responsive governance
*Universities & structures
Colleges -Leveraging locally-based
and locally-owned media to
*Schools shape the community
*Unions dialogue process
* Media
* Alternative Spaces
(technology)

Economic Inequalities -Strengthening educational
and training opportunities
-Mobilizing at the grassroots
Socioeconomic level to reach out to
conditions and marginalized groups (e.g.,
diversity faith-based community
organizing)
-Leveraging alternative
venues for skill building and
leadership development (e.g.,
churches, unions,
cooperatives)
-Homogenization of -Empowering grassroots groups -Promoting diversity in
economic development to leverage group consciousness/ community economic
-Limited opportunities identity politics development organizations
for local control of -Mobilizing through political -Supporting efforts to
economic development parties and houses of worship democratize the workplace
priorities (e.g., ESOPs)
-Socio-economic -Supporting interest group
isolation and socio- membership
economic segregation -Mobilizing citizens through
campaigns (e.g., living wage,
environmental justice)

CIVIC TOOLS &

RESOURCES
Youth Development -Strengthening school-based
leadership development
and Education programs
-Targeting classroom and
curricular strategies for both
process and content
-Incorporating civic
participation in the
curriculum
-Creating an open and
supportive classroom
-Connecting civic practices
outside the classroom
-Closed and rigid -Expanding service learning -Supporting service learning
classroom learning initiatives (without reflection and community service
environment and learning components) activities that enable formal
-Stand alone courses in and informal opportunities for
Civics are insufficient reflection and learning
-Targeting media education
on civic and public issues
toward students and youths
-Strengthening community-
based youth leadership and
service programs (e.g., City
Year, AmeriCorps)

-Strengthening membership
Community-based and skills training in
Initiatives community-based
organizations
-Encouraging youth
voluntarism that strengthens
their sense of self-efficacy

Enhancing Civic Engagement in America: A Research Brief 11

Areas for Targeted What Works What Doesn’t Mixed Reviews “Best Bets”
Intervention Work

MODES FOR
PARTICIPATION
Electoral & Political -Reducing barriers to voting
and voter registration: multi-
Processes day balloting, same day
registration, extended polling
hours
-Mobilizing citizens through
civic, faith-based, and
neighborhood organizations
and specific issue campaigns
(e.g., living wage)
-Increasing election
monitoring and clean election
reforms
-Negative issue ads and -Phone and direct mail
campaigning appeals
-Uncontested and -The role of the Internet in
uncompetitive elections mobilizing participation
-Supporting efforts to
diversify the candidate pool
-Face-to-face voter mobilization
and civic education efforts
-Ensuring elections are
competitive by providing public
funding, subsidies, and access to
public media
-Moving toward proportional
representation
-Making naturalization simpler
and easier
-Enfranchising former felons
and resident aliens

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