From Neighborhood to Nation: The Democratic Foundations of Civil Society. By Kenneth Thomson. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001. 195p. $50.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Extract

It was New York Governor Al Smith's famous dictum that the ills of democracy could be solved with more democracy. Many agree with him some 75 years later. The shelves of political science overflow with books lamenting the decline of intermediary institutions that once plugged the hearts and minds of citizens into government and civic life. Democracy scaled down to the town and neighborhood allows people to address problems that are experienced in the routine of everyday life. Stripped of abstraction, politics loses its mystery and the sense of alienation that accompanies it. But Americans no longer gather at the political club, the town meeting, the church, and the union hall. Citizens are plugged into television, the family, or perhaps the job, interested in private concerns. In response, pundits, professors, and politicians call for a revival of local political and civic life. President George W. Bush's “Faith-Based Initiative,” which would use federal funds to support church social service programs, can be viewed as a response to the national mood of a people adrift. While many have forwarded tiresome critiques of what ails us, Kenneth Thomson does the nitty-gritty empirical work that should mark social science's unique contribution to this debate.