Finding the Voice of the People: Declining Municipal-Level Political Participation in the 21st Century USA

In 2015 the Durham city government updated its strategic plan to include a “citizen participation plan” guided by the principle that the successful implementation of the strategic plan as a whole “will require the ongoing involvement and participation of partner agencies and the entire community.” Specifically, a section of the strategic plan titled “Citizen Participation Outreach” states that they encouraged citizens to 1) provide recommendations and feedback on the strategic plan at one of their public hearings and 2) respond to a citizens’ needs assessment survey. The city has taken commendable steps towards generating this community involvement, including the creation of a Citizen Advisory Committee. However, these efforts have yielded low participation and response rates. The city government is relying on passive outreach efforts that place a high burden on participants and only offer incentives for participation based on an appeal to civic duty and nebulous, long-term policy promises. This approach has been relatively successful in the past, but is not well suited to the demands of this fast-paced, digitally connected but physically isolating era. The board will not be able to reach its goal of generating “ongoing community involvement,” unless it shifts its approach from inviting people to participate, to meeting people where they are (including in the very literal sense of going to the places where they already spend their time), and providing tangible, short-term incentives for them to reciprocate the effort.

The low participation rate for the Durham Citizen Advisory committee’s outreach events must be read in the context of a trend towards political disengagement that is both national in scale and specific to Durham.

Voter turnout in Durham’s two municipal elections since 2015 averaged only 14.5%. In surveys conducted in several states across the nation, citizens have reported that their top two reasons for not voting are (1) they are too busy and (2) they simply aren’t interested. Scholars and practitioners argue that the rise of this political apathy is the result of some combination of people feeling busier than they have in the past, increased mobility and digital entertainment breaking eroding face-to-face community building, and declining faith in government officials ability or willingness to serve one’s interests. Taken together, these trends have resulted in people being less motivated to overcome the inevitable time, resource, and information barriers to participating in local government and politics. If this city planning commission is serious about generating engagement, they must confront the following limitations of their current outreach tactics:

(1) The strategic planning commission has not established trust with Durham citizens.

Citizen trust in government has been on the decline across the United States since the late 1960’s. This means that if a government commission aspires to engage with citizens, the burden is on that agency to establish trust. Based on a series of interviews I conducted in the summer of 2017, many Durham citizens do not trust the city government because they believe public officials are more interested in attracting developers than serving their needs. This belief seems to be largely based on several high profile cases in which the city government displaced entire neighborhoods to make way for a highway. Instances in which some citizen’s interests seem to be sacrificed for the sake of others are to some degree inevitable in local government. However, this does not mean that the city can assume it has the citizen’s confidence that it will always make the best decisions. Therefore, if the city commission wants citizen’s buy-in and participation, they must be intentional about building trust.

(2) The strategic planning commission has not offered compelling incentives for participation in the strategic planning process.

Political participation always requires an investment of time and resources on the part of citizens. Up until the 1970’s, many people demonstrated a willingness to make this investment simply because they believed it to be their civic duty. People also seemed satisfied with the promise that participating in a forum or voting for a candidate would have a significant, if somewhat ambiguous, positive pay-off down the line. However, as a former civic innovation advisor to President Obama notes, ambiguous long-term promises don’t seem to resonate with modern citizens who are both overburdened and accustomed to instant gratification (we can order almost anything from Amazon and receive it in two days). Therefore, entreating people to attend a strategic planning session because this will help “build a better Durham” does not make for a strong enough case.

(3) The strategic planning commission has not made use of the resources, social networks and credibility of existing community organizations.

Despite the general trend towards disengagement, there are a number of organizations in Durham with large and diverse memberships. These groups have already established trust with their constituencies, usually because they provide them with something they want or need. In the strategic plan report, the Citizen Advisory Committee notes that it has only hosted two public hearings,  neither of which were advertised or co-hosted with any other organization. While the organizations themselves would still have to be somehow incentivized to participate, they offer networks and spaces where people are already gathered and can more easily spread both information and collective motivation.