Global Practices of Building Civic Culture

Strong civic culture makes for inclusive, participatory, and adaptive democracies. Citizen University is a non-profit that engages with civic catalysts to build civic culture across the United States (US). Citizen University supports civic catalysts to work on five tried-and-tested strategies: deepening civic commitment, building civic skills and infrastructure, providing encouragement, reckoning and repairing, and strengthening community. This report explores the relevance of each of these strategies in a global context. The learning we present is based on appreciative inquiry with seven inspiring civic catalysts from seven countries – Brazil, Haiti, India, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Poland, and the United Kingdom – whom we, at IDS, have collaborated with and admired, often over many years. Their contexts share resonant societal and political similarities with the US: their peoples are diverse; their economies are changing rapidly; and polarisation between different groups in society threatens to undermine the growth of their democracies.

Drawing on the experiences of the seven catalysts, this report finds that the five strategies are key to civic culture in each of these different contexts, in one way or another. It goes on to add a sixth strategy that the inquirers felt was key to maintaining a strong and sustained civic culture even in the face of great challenges: civic catalysts help build a culture in which people building a democratic civic culture can channel emotions and recognise individual experiences. This sixth strategy leads the report to its conclusions. It calls on us to use the strategies now to support strong civic culture wherever we are, and it also reminds us that civic catalysts sustain their commitment over the long term in patterns that we should understand and appreciate.