Much was said, of course, of the voters' perceived rejection of Bush Administration policies—particularly in Iraq, but also budget management (e.g., the deficit), governmental administration (e.g., Katrina), and ethics (e.g., Foley and Abramoff). "We lost our way and the voters made us pay for it," said the Isakowitz ruefully.

Lewan agreed, observing that most local races were "nationalized" this year. "This was a year people were much more concerned about policy problems than they were about pork-barrel politics," he said. "Republicans just could not make the case that they were problem-solvers in Washington."

But Lewan offered another important factor in the Democratic triumph: mobilizing voters. Learning from their Republican counterparts in previous election cycles, Democratic leadership focused tactically on maximizing voter turnout. The party chairman's emphasis on long-term local organizing apparently worked, Lewan said, and election-eve blitz-style strategies for rallying voters paid off.

"Democrats were able to identify, through very sophisticated means, the kinds of voters—not only Democrats, but independents, unaffiliated voters—who were likely, if they showed up at the polls, to cast a vote against the Republicans because of their disgust at what they'd seen in Washington," Lewan concluded. Dissatisfaction with the Republican establishment provided favorable conditions for the Democrats, but victory depended, ultimately, on getting registered voters to the polls.

To that end, both parties apparently did a fine job. Voter turnout was up this year, compared with recent midterm congressional elections. A few contentious, local elections elicited turnout rates of 60-70 percent. Nationally, turnout was a more-modest 41 percent, according to the Associated Press—still significantly higher than in 2002. (For the first time since 1990, more Democrats than Republicans were lured to the polls.)

Is this a watershed moment in American politics, part of a larger trend of citizen re-engagement; or an anomaly, driven by passionate but passing concerns? In a later conversation, Lewan described voter engagement as cyclic, ebbing and flowing with the hot public issues. "Right now, I think the voters are angry, and that anger is causing them to vote," he said.

Political scientists and other close observers sometimes do worry, however, that voter engagement and (especially) civic engagement—the willingness to serve on community boards, run for public office, and even volunteer—are in general, long-term decline. Maxwell faculty members pay keen attention to this sprawling topic in its many manifestations, applying the historic arc of citizenship to such specific, contemporary phenomena as Internet politics, immigration, and economic inequality.

While their prognoses vary, Maxwell faculty members agree that democratic governance faces new challenges in the sociopolitical changes of the early 21st century.

A Sense of Obligation

ohn F. Kennedy's famous exhortation, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country," was made almost half a century ago. Robert McClure was an undergraduate at DePauw University at that time. Today he is one of the Maxwell School's senior faculty members, recently named to the Chapple Family Professorship in Citizenship and Democracy. His scholarly legacy in democratic institutions and leadership is complemented by his role as the director of the MAX courses—two highly interdisciplinary undergraduate courses that draw an annual enrollment of about 700 students eager to contemplate their roles in a democratic society.

The courses emphasize the basic prerequisites of good citizenship. They're designed to help tomorrow's citizens consider "their obligations and responsibilities, as well as their rights," McClure says, ". . . also to understand the complexities of citizenship in modern America and the larger world." To McClure, the question of "complexity" is key. If good citizenship is sometimes messy and perplexing, that's about right, in his estimation. It was never meant to be easy. Moreover, in a tougher, faster, technologically complex world, the duties of citizenship only become more difficult. The MAX courses are designed "to inculcate the empathy needed to act as an honorable, thoughtful democratic citizen," McClure says. Partisan issues come and go, but good citizenship depends on respect and communication—basic values of human interaction. Accordingly, he adds, the courses do not emphasize "democratic action—voting, community organizing, forging political alliances—so much as thoughtfulness and judgment and obligation to fellow citizens."

This treatment for 700 Syracuse University undergraduates each year is roughly what McClure would prescribe for the average American citizen. He worries that the spirit of obligation has faded—that the fundamental ethos of citizens sharing in their own governance is eroding. "Certainly, over the long run, citizenship has come to mean more and more rights in the American mind and fewer and fewer obligations and responsibilities," says McClure. In fact, the country was founded on the principles of a rights-based society; it's just that, over time, the emphasis on personal rights has increased. "And in doing that, we almost inevitably and sometimes unconsciously diminish the sense we have of the obligations and responsibilities of citizenship."

In this observation, he has company in Ralph Ketcham, a member of the faculty for more than 50 years who, as a professor emeritus of history, public affairs, and political science, brings a particularly broad perspective to questions of citizenship. He dates a decline in citizenship to the late 19th century, when the idealism of Lincoln began to erode. By the start of the Progressive Era, popular notions of democracy had been irrevocably redefined, becoming less and less a matter of shared common good, but rather "a matter of recording the will of the majority and various interests in the country."

"I don't think [the problem] is apathy or denial so much as a degradation in the nature of a political system that doesn't ask us to be public-spirited citizens anymore," Ketcham said. "It seems only to ask us to be special-interest advocates."

"If you want to compare Abraham Lincoln and Karl Rove," he quips, "you'll get some idea of what we're talking about."

Ketcham believes that a steady decline springs from several shifts in societal, political, and commercial values: a poor community preparation of Americans as responsible citizens; the rise of politicians who pander to special-interest groups; and modern media, "who mishandle public affairs by making elections into horse races." It has resulted in a winners-and-losers understanding of democracy, rather than a government devoted to mutual interests.

Others point to a perception that government offers less to the common citizen than it once did. When American soldiers returned from World War II, for example, the government rolled out programs that helped them return to school, learn a trade, and rebuild their civilian lives and careers. It was no coincidence that this era witnessed the greatest level of public engagement in civic and political life, says Suzanne Mettler, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, whose widely honored recent book, Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation, documents this phenomenon.

According to Mettler, that positive synthesis of government support and civic engagement began to flag in the early 1970s, concomitant with growing rancor toward diminishing levels of government-maintained social service programs. At the same time, the middle-class and poor began retreating from joining such organizations as the Elks or the PTA, traditional community rites of passage and common stepping stones to political involvement. It was during this era that the number of voting Americans began its gradual but deliberate decline. Over the course of three decades, participation rates slid from 70 percent to a current average of 50 percent for presidential elections.

"Government really hasn't been there for people the way it was for an earlier generation of Americans," Mettler says. ". . . There's less education and less opportunity to better yourself, so there's less involvement in citizenship."

In fact, there is less government support available for nonelderly citizens today than at any time since the New Deal, she says. As social policy, of course, that approach has its advocates; many on the right believe that government-supported social welfare has contrary effects or is, at best, unaffordable. Be that as it may, Mettler says, tangible partnerships between government and the populace, if they achieve nothing else, at least create better citizenship.

The Price of Economic Inequality

ccording to Robert McClure, American democracy depends on the strength of the middle class. The Founding Fathers believed the vitality of the middle class is "essential to the good health of operating a democratic government," since, McClure says, "one of the great challenges of democracy is mobilizing the poor without allowing the rich to dominate."

By virtually any measure, however, the middle class is being squeezed out. The class system in America falls toward the extremes—the very rich and the economically disadvantaged. A recent study from the University of California-Berkeley, for example, found that, "In 2004, the richest one percent of households—719,910 of them, with an average annual income of $326,720—had 19.8 percent of the entire nation's pretax income." Evaluating these findings, McClatchy Newspapers reporter Kevin G. Hall wrote: "Experts disagree on the causes, but they're in near agreement that this trend threatens to erode a fundamental American belief about fairness."

Whether the gap affects citizenship, though, depends not on the actual dollars and cents, but the attitudes. Have the poor disengaged? To properly assess the social and political implications of perceived inequality, the Maxwell School introduced, in 2004, an ambitious survey of public opinion known as the Maxwell Poll. Its third cycle was completed a little more than a month ago.

The poll is conducted on behalf of Maxwell's Campbell Institute of Public Affairs and spearheaded by Jeffrey Stonecash, Maxwell Professor of Political Science and a well-known pollster. His upcoming book, due in 2007 from CQ Press, is titled Split: Class and Cultural Divisions in American Politics.

"I was very interested in knowing whether people are better off or whether, over time, their income level is deteriorating," Stonecash says. Surveys on this topic have been conducted before, he says, but what sets the Maxwell Poll apart is that it also collects the reactions and perceptions that citizens hold regarding inequality throughout society. The poll explores these larger queries:

a) Does the public believe that inequality is a problem that exists in America?

b) Do they think the government should do more to brook inequities that might exist?

c) Do they see government programs as effective in treating these inequities?

In all three annual editions of the poll, a majority of respondents reported a decline in their personal economic situations, a rise in financial hardships and, significantly, a stalling in the great American phenomenon of upward mobility. In the 2006 Poll results, the number of respondents reporting that they suffer from inequality was higher than in the previous two Polls; similarly, more respondents said they think the government should do something, and more see government programs as ineffective.

In response to the poll question "Are we becoming a society of haves and have-nots?" a majority of both low-income and high-income people answered in the affirmative. "We've got a real dilemma there," Stonecash says.

The percentage of respondents who see the income gap as a serious problem went from 41 in 2004 to 47 in 2005 to more than half—52 percent—this year. Fewer respondents were optimistic. The number who anticipate a rosier future slid from 62 percent to 51 percent in just three years.

"This [financial decline] could be cyclic," Stonecash said, "but it is puzzling that as the economy grows and the stock market sets records, you don't have the same optimism among the mass public."

Suzanne Mettler has worked with Stonecash to help interpret the Maxwell Poll results. "The question for us in Maxwell is, What difference does this gap make for political equality?" she says.

Mettler and Stonecash's research reveals that people who receive public policy benefits, like Social Security and the GI Bill, are more likely to vote; whereas those who receive means-tested benefits, like welfare assistance, are less likely to vote. This result (which holds true regardless of the age of people in the cohort) is consistent with Mettler's perception that social inequities cause the poor to check out. "They don't see much point in investing the precious little time and resources they have in political mobilization," she says. "It doesn't seem very worthwhile."

The methods of the Maxwell Poll do not allow Mettler to explain exactly why this correlation arises. But the circumstantial evidence fits prevalent hypotheses. "Scholars have long theorized that means-tested programs are stigmatizing and fail to include beneficiaries as full members of the political community," Mettler says, "whereas non-means-tested policies bestow dignity and respect on beneficiaries and thus may foster greater civic involvement." Other scholars have demonstrated, for example, that welfare programs actually undermine the beneficiaries' sense that government is responsive to people like them. One net effect is depressed voter turnout in this cohort.

An October 2006 USA Today article also found that among Generation Y adults, for example, there is a correlation between economic class and political involvement. Those who are more politically involved tend to be upper middle class. Lower-class young adults have withdrawn from the process, often receiving no encouragement from parents already long disengaged.

This suggests that flagging citizenship is partly a product of economic inequality; civic engagement is becoming more and more a provenance of the privileged. If these are the only voices reaching politicians, Mettler says, then government becomes "more responsive to more advantaged people over time and less responsive to the less-active citizens who happen to be less well off."

"The more education you have, the more you tend to participate in politics, because your resources are conducive to participation," Mettler said. Fifty years ago, lower-income people had a chance to better their fortunes and rise to a higher class. These people became the middle class, the cornerstone of American citizenry. But these days, someone born into poverty is far less likely to transcend their situation. "With enough of that," Mettler says, "we move away from a democracy and move toward something that's more like oligarchy."

According to McClure, it was once the charge of the political parties to mobilize the poor and middle class, but that has faded. "There are many forces depressing participation and meaningful working-class involvement in American democracy," he says. "But, in my view, the dismantling and weakening of the political parties as the primary agents of democratic involvement is the most important factor." As the parties have declined in importance, so has turnout slipped and the gap between the rich and the poor widened, he adds. "Strong, robust parties are the great equalizers in democracies."

Immigrants: The New Citizens

ccording to an August 15, 2006, New York Times article (based on recent Census Bureau data), the total number of immigrants living in America today is nearly 36 million, roughly five million of whom have arrived just since the turn of the century. That's on top of another 11 million who arrived during the 1990s. "The blazing pace of immigration seen throughout the 1990s has continued into the first half of this decade," concluded the Times.

Among those experts who wring their hands over dwindling citizen engagement, there's guarded hope for this populace of new Americans. The speed of transition from outsider to citizen may differ among nationalities, but as they join American society many will prove to be strong, involved citizens.

How strong? That's a tough question to answer. According to Elizabeth Cohen, an assistant professor of political science who specializes in immigration issues, the process of identifying legal immigrants and their political ideologies has begun among scholars. But political parties have been less swift, she says, to engage and understand immigrants. As with the poor, political parties once played a key rallying and organizing role for immigrants. But, for whatever reason, they no longer do and, as a result, "nobody is entirely sure yet what immigrant civic participation will really yield," Cohen says.

She cites Cuban-American immigrants, the majority based in Florida, as the most politically effective of all national origin groups. Already, this group, dominated by conservative Republicans, has successfully solicited governmental policies that specifically benefit it. Catholic Hispanics vote conservatively on social issues, but their larger political profile is still in flux. Similarly, Asians are being wooed by evangelical churches seeking to boost the power of that voting bloc, but Cohen says there is no evidence yet whether these new recruits will fall into lockstep with the churches' conservative voting patterns, "or whether, in fact, new immigrants are going to change the political face of evangelical churches they join."

The massive immigration-rights marches that occurred on and around May 1, which attracted millions and paralyzed several cities, seemed at the time a seismic shift in civic engagement by and on behalf of immigrants. But its long-term significance remains debatable. Cohen acknowledges the protest was "an extremely important moment for immigrant mobilization" but pointed out that an autumn attempt to repeat the feat failed to draw impressive numbers. A better political infrastructure among immigrants remains to be built through grass-roots organizing.

Kristi Andersen is a professor of political science who studies how American institutions either welcome immigrants or keep them at arm's length. (She and Cohen co-wrote the chapter, "Political Institutions and Incorporation of Immigrants," for an upcoming book on the politics of democratic inclusion, from Temple University Press.) Andersen has been examining newly emerging immigrant populations in cities as disparate as Lansing and East Lansing, Michigan; Waco, Texas; Chico, California; Fort Collins, Colorado; Spokane, Washington, and Syracuse. She asks whether existing political and civic groups reach out to or ignore immigrants whose assimilation is still embryonic.

In cities with modest immigrant numbers who hold negligible political clout, "politicians just don't want to reach out," Andersen observes. In fact, improved technology has allowed politicians to steer clear of this demographic by de-emphasizing the door-to-door canvassing tactics of 30 years ago which would have included immigrant families. In this environment, many immigrants are less likely to seek civic engagement, Andersen observes. "Most of these people, coming to a new place, with limited resources, are primarily concerned with survival and establishing themselves," she says. "Participating in politics strikes a lot of them, I'm sure, as something they just don't have time for."

On the other hand, in cities where established immigrant communities have surmounted their economic hardship and gained status, there is tangible involvement. In the course of her research, Andersen met a Vietnamese city council member in Chico and the Hispanic mayor of Lansing. In those cities and others where they have had the chance to establish themselves economically, immigrants have a growing involvement in non-elected community commissions, committees, and volunteer agencies. "ItΥs a way for immigrants to get representation, in an area of civic involvement that is overlooked," Andersen says.

Andersen and Cohen are fairly optimistic about civic engagement from immigrants. These people have come to the United States expressly for political freedom and/or economic improvement, and will gravitate toward political process as a route toward betterment.

"Once they discover that a lot of things are working against them, immigrants have got incentive to participate," Cohen says. "A lot of civic engagement comes after a recognition that there are a lot of structural impediments to achieving the American dream."

The Role of the Internet

f there is another encouraging cohort of emerging new citizens, it is the young—the Gen Y voters who, within a decade, will represent a third of the electorate. The 2004 elections saw high turnout among the young, and, according to Reuters, the 2006 election was possibly a record-breaker. (Comparable statistics only go back 20 years.) Roughly 24 percent of Americans under the age of 30, or at least 10 million young voters, cast ballots in 2006Ρup four percentage points from the mid-term elections in 2002.

The increasing level of youth involvement may spring from idealism but it has been nurtured by the Internet, which has restimulated civic and democratic engagement via "virtual" town meetings in cyberspace. Grant Reeher, an associate professor of political science for whom online politics has become a central emphasis, co-wrote one of the first scholarly books on the topic, Click on Democracy: The Internet's Power to Change Political Apathy into Civic Action, published by Westview Press.

For the 2004 elections, political parties and fringe activists alike employed the Internet at an unprecedented level—using it to recruit volunteers, raise funds, and rally supporters to the polls. Reeher documented a fourfold increase in the number of small donations from Americans from 2000 to 2004. "The Internet played an enormous role in that," he says.

Using findings from the Maxwell Poll, Reeher attempts to create a snapshot of the role of the Internet in motivating citizens. He tried to correlate levels of Internet activity with levels of political activity, and he found different trends operating at the middle and extremes of the spectrum. At the high end, one finds that relentless Internet surfers tend to be less political than occasional users. And, at the other extreme, the complete non-user of the Internet also claims low political interest—in fact, the lowest offline political activity of all.

But in the middle of the spectrum—occasional and frequent Internet users—Reeher found that a greater frequency of Internet use has a correlation with greater political activity; offline political activities increase as Internet use rises.

This year's Maxwell Poll respondents were also asked to opine on the Internet's potential for sparking greater civic engagement, and the perceived impact, at least, is strong. Of all respondents, 66 percent think that the Internet has greatly or somewhat increased the political influence of the average citizen and 18 percent say that it has greatly increased it. Furthermore, 33 percent of respondents say that the Internet has greatly or somewhat increased their own level of political activity. Reeher characterizes those as "pretty significant percentages for a national sample."

Unfortunately, regarding the Internet and youth mobilization, class issues again insinuate themselves. Reeher acknowledges that Internet access overall is tethered to issues of economic inequality; a computer with high-speed Internet access is not a mainstay in lower-income U.S. homes. "That's a real concern, and not to be taken lightly," he says. Young voters are better educated on average and have college degrees. Voter turnout among those with less education has not improved, according to Reeher, despite efforts from all parties—Democratic, Republican, and Green—to mobilize youth.

But overall the Internet has facilitated an increase in American political involvement far outstripping corresponding developments in the "offline world," he says. "The Internet has opened politics up, and has the potential to open it up further, dramatically."

Heart of a Citizen

obert McClure has cause for optimism. A few years ago, he spent his sabbatical traveling across America in a pickup truck and meeting many people. While a number appeared "flummoxed" by current political and economic challenges, most demonstrated a renewed sense of purpose.

"On the evidence that I've seen and the people that I've encountered," he says, "I'm unwilling to give up on the American people's capacity, inclination, and desire to try to be good citizens."

The frantic pace of modern American life, of course, makes that quest for engagement increasingly difficult. "The practice of American democratic citizenship at a high level seems to require some opportunity to be contemplative and thoughtful," McClure says. Thomas Jefferson envisioned a working democracy populated by farmers who "would have some time to think hard." Conversely, the 21st century "forces us all to move faster, to think in the midst of constant chatter. It's a noisy world, full of more and more competing demands."

He also cites the decline in secondary educational standards as a co-factor and suggests that today's students receive specific education on writing and verbal communication to improve their status as tomorrow's citizens. The verbal stylings of the current President and many of his aides reflect a pervasive problem that impedes proper citizenship, says McClure. "That the Bush folks speak in a fog I would not deny," he says. "But so do most lawyers, so do most doctors today."

"I think it's harder to be a democratic citizen today than it might have been . . . a hundred or two hundred years ago," McClure adds. He acknowledges the particular problems of the day —craven, winner-take-all political tactics; alienation of the economically weak; and cynicism about the potential for government to do good. But he also dismisses the notion of a steady decline in citizenship or any suggestion that "people are willfully giving up their democratic birthright." He says, "I don't believe that for a moment."

Suzanne Mettler does, however, believe there is growing crisis regarding civic engagement and its attendant implications for the republic. She thinks our political leaders could do more to fight it. She's surprised that the phenomenon of fading civic engagement "is not a big political issue," she says, "despite the fact that it's been a really important trend over 30 years."

There is an effective solution to that decline, she says—one that is consistently overlooked. "If people are asked to participate," she continues, "they usually say yes, and they do. But often we don't ask."

And Ralph Ketcham believes we need to stop telling people to get involved for their own welfare. Rather, the welfare of all should be the incentive for civic engagement.

"Every time we tell somebody, for example, that they ought to participate in public affairs—by voting or joining a party or advocacy group or whatever it is—in order to pursue some special interest of theirs, we really aren't telling them anything about citizenship," he says.

"It is a partial, very weak citizenship," says McClure, "if all I think as a citizen I am obliged to do is to advance my self-interest."

After all, elected officials are expected to enact legislation for the greater good, not simply for personal advancement. "If we hold the holders of public office to a particular standard of judgment," he concludes, "we ought to hold ourselves to that standard of judgment, as well."