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Civic Innovation in America: Community Empowerment, Public Policy, and the Movement for Civic Renewal, by Carmen Sirianni and Lewis Friedland. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 385 pp. $50.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-520-22636-4. $19.95 paper. ISBN: 0-520-22637-2.
Civic Innovation in America reads like someone's parents trying to convince their pierced, tattooed, purple-haired children that the system is good. Those looking for a book about how citizen participation is being integrated into various policy venues will find a wealth of examples and much optimism. Those looking for a critical analysis will be disappointed. This book is about reasonableness, nonpartisanship, and getting along for an elite-defined common good. As such, it is rooted in functionalist ideas about common interests and cooperation regardless of oppressive class, sex, and race structures.
Between the introductory and concluding chapters, the book is organized into four 50page chapters focusing on community organizing and development, civic environmentalism, community health, and public journalism. Each tells stories of civic engagement. Intriguingly, while Sirianni and Friedland use an individual level of analysis in their social learning, policy learning, and participatory democracy framework, and while they emphasize the importance of individual citizen engagement, there are few individuals...