Steve Smith strikes again: running in circles

After a jaunt over to the campus libraries and hanging out in the JA and JK stacks, I am now armed with five books that have Something to Say.

2) Macedo, S., et al. "Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation and What We Can Do About It" Brookings Institution Press, 2005.
The American Political Science Association (APSA) formed a task group that created this text. Here are the high points, vis-a-vis creation of a policy website:

• Steve Smith, my former professor and the first faculty member I talked to about this idea, contributed to this book (okay, probably not a high point, but interesting for me to see who is active in these fields)
• "Civic engagement is any activity, individual or collective, devoted to influencing the collective life of the polity." (e.g, voting, campaigning, protesting, lobbying, volunteering, educating)
• Today "there is a crisis of [quantity/quality/equality of] civic engagement"
• "Political activity is increasingly uninformed, fragmented, and polarized"
• Maximizing civic engagement is not necessarily good, but given the current state, the U.S. could use more/better/more equal participation
• Equality of political knowledge: Carpini and Keete showed that there are gaps between groups: men+ women-, white+ black-, higher income+ lower income-, older+ younger-.
  
• Concept of "healthy partisan competition" (that spurs engagement, esp. if at a local level) vs "destructive polarization." Question: what would the website need to contain to encourage the former instead of the latter? Maybe by its nature of presenting multiple perspectives and an interactive interface
• Note to self: see the Minnesota E-Democracy website
  
• The increasing stratification and polarization associated with residential segregation may be partially addressed online (my conclusion, not the authors')
• The website might be a useful resource or tool for local community groups or non-profits trying to directly increase deliberative dialogues (again, my own thought as I'm reading the book)
• The website might also be a useful tool to increase accountability and governance, if it achieves a high profile (my own thought)
• Citizen participation should be less costly and more interesting (i.e., don't have unrealistic assumptions about increasing the burden on citizens). My conclusion would be that a website needs to be integrated with other efforts, rather than out there as a separate effort that dilutes the field even further.

I'm not convinced by the book's arguments that my proposed website's focus on increasing political knowledge will make a difference in civic engagement. Sure, increased political knowledge is associated with increased participation, but that doesn't imply a direct, one-way causal relationship. That gets me thinking to the ultimate goal of the website: just to increase political knowledge and interest, or to go beyond that? How could you measure the difference before and after the website goes live?

Beyond that, what is the market that I'm trying to reach? If I'm trying to get to those with less existing knowledge, then the profile of the typical internet user (white male) doesn't bode well for success on the equality front.

Finally, what if the website increases political knowledge or interest for groups of people that are more likely to use the information to "win" debates rather than to broaden political discussions. Bringing this website online might only empower the most active, partisan people who are interested enough to go to the website (and drive away those more representative of or underrepresented in the general population).