Which form of political participation is the most effective and why? Include a news article from the last four weeks that illustrates this form of participation in action and how effective it is. Also

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2 c h a Pt e r 1 hunter is to shoot a rabbit immediately before some other does and drives away all the other rabbits, let alone the stag. The individual thus settles for the sure acquisition of a smaller self-interest rather than cooperating with all the other individuals to obtain a much greater common good, stalking and surrounding the stag. A nd better to shoot a rabbit, before someone else does, thereby leav - ing the first individual with nothing at all—no rabbit, no stag. The individual is caught in a paradoxical system of participation in group action. Rousseau’s stag-hunt metaphor brilliantly foreshadows one of the central preoccupations of A merican social science during the last half century—the concern for dilemmas in gaining human cooperation, particularly in situations of imperfect communication. Cooperation dilemmas are frequently referred to as “prisoners’ dilemmas” after a game-theory model parallel to Rousseau’s stag hunt (A xelrod 2006). Two prisoners are held but separated, so they cannot communi - cate with each other. The jailors pressure each to confess and separately inform each prisoner of his situation. If both refuse to confess, both are set free. If both prisoners separately confess, each will get a moderate sentence. If one prisoner confesses, but the other refuses, the confessor will receive a light sentence, but the refuser will get a severe sentence. In this situation, one expects Rousseau’s outcome: In order to avoid the worst (no rabbit, no stag), each prisoner will confess (get a rabbit) and will not cooperate for the best outcome (the stag).

This is largely because each prisoner will expect the other prisoner to go for the rabbit; therefore, each prisoner will go for the rabbit rather than risk getting nothing at all (a severe sentence). A nd they cannot cooperate to get the best outcome. During the last half century, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and political scientists have built thousands of experiments and behavior models around the paradox of the prisoners’ dilemma. The late political economist Mancur Olson Jr. applied the idea of coopera - tion dilemmas to political behavior in The Logic of Collective Action (1965) .

Olson began with the basic economic concept of public goods, that is, goods that are jointly supplied and not appropriated by some agent (if one person in an area has the good, then all people have it). The basic example of a public good is clean air: If clean air is supplied to one person in an area, then all people in that area must have it. Olson’s key observation is that many public policies of government provide public goods: national defense, safety from crime, systems of public health, a common monetary system, and so forth. Then Olson applied another key observation to interest-group behavior. If an interest group seeks a public good, or merely even a collective benefit, for everyone within the group, McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 2 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 3 why should the individual contribute to the public action by the group if the individual will get the collective benefit regardless whether he participates ? Still another Olsonian observation was that this problem is most likely to crop up if the group comprises numerous individuals (say more than one hundred). It will then seem to the individual that his contribution to public action makes little difference, and if the public action succeeds, the individual will get the collective benefit any way. Of course it then follows that in such large group situations, it is not rational for any individual to contribute to the public action; hence, the public action will not occur, resulting in the lack of provision of some widely valued collective benefit. On the other hand, if just a few agencies, such as individuals or corporations, take interest in some public action, the few agents (say ten or fewer) are each likely to make their contribution because each contribution makes a difference, and each agent expects the few other agents to realize this; thus, all make the contribution to the public action, thereby providing the benefit to the small group. Then, however, the bottom line is that if we consider political participation to be the aggregation of interests by representative institutions, the few will defeat the many because this logic of collective action holds that the few will engage in public action while the many will not participate in public action.

Or in everyday language, the special interest will defeat the public interest.

Let us examine the situation of individuals caught within these paradoxical systems of action without communication: the stag hunt, the prisoner’s dilemma, the logic of collective action. In such dysfunctional systems, individuals may prefer to cooperate, but they cannot cooperate without being able to communicate.

In chasing the stag, the hunters are scattered through the forest. The prisoners are purposely held in separate cells. In the logic of collective action, the costs involved for one individual to communicate with hundreds or even thousands or millions are ordinarily too prohibitive for the individual to act. I refer to individuals caught in these dilemmas of cooperation without communication as “scattered.” A second aspect of the situation of the scattered individuals caught in these paradoxical systems of action is that they are frequently seeking to cooperate to attain a common good. The hunters seek to cooperate to surround and kill the stag. The isolated prisoners seek to be set free. The scattered individuals in Olson’s logic of collective action seek to gain a “collective benefit” or “public good.” In such situations, systems blocking communication frustrate individuals’ desire to cooperate to attain a common or public good. True, Olson’s collective-action paradox also applies to systems of organizing more than one hundred units that McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 3 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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4 c h a Pt e r 1 may be seeking a particular interest, as when hundreds of small businesses (say bakeries) seek to form a trade association to lobby for a given benefit. But Olson’s paradox applies most poignantly to democratic theory in situations in which the diffused interests of millions of scattered citizens cannot be organized, as in the case of millions damaged by pollution or suffering a monopolistic price increase. I refer to such individuals as seeking commonweal goals, in respect to the language of seventeenth-century A merican colonists and to avoid the greater moralistic shading of phases like “the common good” or “the public interest.” A third characteristic of these paradoxes blocking common action is that no established political institutions exist to coordinate cooperation among the scat - tered individuals seeking the commonweal. One could imagine in the stag-hunt example that there might be institutional coordination, as when all the hunters are soldiers under the command of a leader, to forewarn them against shoot - ing a rabbit. One could imagine that the prisoners, rather than being criminals rejecting the laws, could again be soldiers, each expecting the other to follow previous instructions given in training (e.g., do not confess). The perhaps mil - lions of scattered individuals caught in Olson’s logic of collective action cannot form an interest group to lobby the legislature for their collective benefit. In fact, the political philosophy of liberalism argues that the activities of the state must solve the paradoxes of seeking the commonweal. Such philosophical liberals (in the European sense) are critical of the need for an expansive state but grant the need for the state to act to coordinate cooperation when paradoxes of action block private individuals from acting to attain the commonweal. Nineteenth- century classical economics and its successors therefore grant the need for the state to provide “public goods” when they cannot be attained through private cooperation (Olson 1965, 102). Christian, Muslim, A ristotelian, Marxist, and other theories of the state normally do accept the need for established political institutions to act to coordinate cooperation for the commonweal but regard paradoxes of participation as arguments secondary to other ethical foundations for the state.

Creative Political Participation Sometimes scattered individuals seeking public action toward a commonweal goal but, lacking established political institutions to pursue that goal, must engage in creative political participation. The scattered individuals must then McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 4 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 5 create some new vehicle for cooperation to undo the system of scattering—the logic of collective action or the various barriers to communication causing di - lemmas of cooperation. Native A merican hunters coordinated the pursuit by communicating through animal cries; A merican military prisoners held by the North Vietnamese communicated through a system of tapping on cell walls; environmentalists and corruption opponents overcame the logic of collective action around 1970 by devising systems of entrepreneurial organization employ - ing direct-mail technology. Subsequently, through the 1970s and 1980s, direct- mail-based public-interest groups established themselves as a new institution for political participation among scattered citizens seeking commonweal goals (Bosso 2005; McFarland 1984). Other types of creative participation for commonweal goals include the formation of transnational advocacy networks, transcending the established boundaries of national organizations, and engaging in boycotts and other actions against current policies of major business corporations (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Micheletti 2003). Scholars need to pay additional attention to creative participation as civic innovation. This parallels the difference between Olson’s collective benefits and the traditional economics concept of public goods. As noted, a rather large group of scattered agents (individuals or businesses) will have difficulty mobilizing its collectivity into a lobby to pursue a common group interest or collective benefit.

However, that benefit may be a special interest, such as organizing sugar grow - ers to get import quotas that increase the price of sugar. On the other hand, there are public goods or collective benefits that benefit almost everyone within some defined area. The most famous public good is clean air, one of many such environmental public goods. I use the phrase “civic innovation” to refer to creative participation to orga - nize new modes of cooperation to obtain a public good, a benefit for everyone within some civic boundary. From the standpoint of the planet as a whole, civic innovation includes initiating new forms of public action transcending national boundaries and seeking the commonweal of the entire planet. Some people at least part of the time regard civitas as pertaining to the entire world.

The concept of political participation resembles that of representation as presented by political philosopher Hanna Fenichel Pitkin (1967) in a work that has met consensual acceptance by political scientists. Pitkin pointed out that there are several separable uses of “representation”; for instance, when George I of Hanover was imported to be the British monarch, one might say that he was not “descriptively representative” of the British because he was German and did McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 5 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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6 c h a Pt e r 1 not speak English. On the other hand, upon becoming the monarch, George I was “symbolically representative” of the British as the wearer of the crown and a descendant of William the Conqueror and the Tudor Henry V II. A fter dif - ferentiating several concepts of representation, Pitkin showed that they should not be confused with one another but might adhere together in some political situation. A similar observation can be made about the concept of political par - ticipation as illustrated below.

Different Concepts of Political Participation I refer to the situations of the stag hunt, the prisoners’ dilemma, and the logic of collective actions as paradoxes of political participation because we have in mind other situations in which there are few such dilemmas for cooperation in public action. The first such traditional form of action and political idea is the political forum or the agora (the marketplace). The classical civilizations of Athens and Rome valued political participation by the entire citizenry (a restricted group) in the central forum or marketplace to discuss jointly political issues affecting the citizenry with the goal of establishing common action, coordinated by lead - ers representing the citizenry. This is the forum model of political participation (A rendt 1998; Pateman 1970). It has played a central role in the humanities since the Renaissance. In the United States, the forum model was joined by the similar town-meeting model in which the farmers and merchants of a New England township would meet together, discuss issues, and elect the board of selectmen.

In both academic and everyday political heritage, we regard the political forum as an institution furthering political participation (Mansbridge 1983). A second model of political participation I term the interests-and-institutions (I&I) model. This form of political activity, and the modeling of it, is most f amiliar to the A merican citizen. This is the political participation referenced by classical liberal political theory. Citizens are seen as individuals who act in politics to express and further their own interests. The political system incorporates a set of institutions that register and aggregate the individual interests as they are expressed in action within the context of the aggregative institutions. There are four basic forms of political participation within the I&I model (Verba and Nie 1972; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995, added movement protest). The first is expression of interest in the institution of elections through voting. The sec- ond is expression of interest through campaigning for representatives in the McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 6 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 7 system of elections. The third is expression of individual interest through joining or contributing to an interest group and lobbying or petitioning government institutions on behalf of its individual interests. Olson, of course, said that such participation was ineffective in representing the interests of large groups. Finally, within the I&I model, the individual citizen may directly contact a governmental official to express an interest and get that official to act to consummate it. Unlike the forum model, the I&I model in its basic form does not concern itself with the value of widespread public discussion of issues. This I&I model is excellently expressed in Dahl’s 1961 classic Who Governs?

A third form of social and political participation is civic engagement (Putnam 2000). This concept emphasizes the importance of face-to-face social interac - tion in building the trust necessary for humans to cooperate in social institu - tions. The extent of trust is referred to as “social capital,” a well-iterated term in recent social science. Individuals are viewed as engaged in social and civic interaction and thereby contributing to the social capital necessary to maintain the group structure of society. A lexis de Tocqueville, a classic author familiar to undergraduate political science and sociology majors for the last two genera - tions, famously put forth this perspective in the 1830s. Robert Putnam (2000), author of the famous “bowling alone” analogy and criticism of social trends in A merica, recently sharpened and refined Tocqueville’s social theory. In the widely known analogy, Putnam stated that in the 1950s, A merican bowlers participated in a face-to-face manner in community wide bowling leagues; by the 1990s such leagues had largely disappeared, leaving bowlers to participate only in small groups of immediate family and friends. In general, Putnam chronicled the decline of neighborhood interactive groups, replaced by solitary activities such as watching television at home or longer and longer commutes to work.

Putnam expressed concern for the effects of such trends on the quality of social interaction, particularly on the quality of social trust and of democracy built upon it. Civic engagement in Putnam’s sense refers to face-to-face participation in social groups in general, including lodges, sports associations, political-party gatherings, parent-teacher associations, and so forth. Political participation in face-to-face groups is thus one type of the general social-participation concept, but it is a particularly important type of social participation within the work of civic-engagement theorists. A fourth type of political and social participation is participation within social movements. The political sociology of social movements has advanced greatly since the 1970s, even though there is no agreement on the precise definition of McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 7 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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8 c h a Pt e r 1 “social movement” (McAdam 1999). A central tendency in delineating social movements is the use of noninstitutional tactics in the pursuit of movement goals.

Such tactics might include nonviolent demonstrations, strikes, threats or the use of violence, consciousness-raising groups, disruption of transportation and com - merce, and so forth. In the United States, social movements often simultaneously employ institutional tactics, such as litigation and lobbying of legislative bodies.

Social movements are usually contrasted to other forms of collective behavior, ephemeral in nature, such as crowd behavior or social fashions and fads (Orum 2001, 225–226). Adherents to a social movement are defined as advocating a major change in social institutions, often accompanied by a redefinition of per - sonal and group identity for the movement adherents. Creative participation by definition springs from the lack of established politi - cal institutions; social-movement behavior by definition employs noninstitutional tactics and may itself create new institutions in opposition to the established institutions. In the creation of institutions, the two forms of participation overlap. While it is not explicitly accepted in the writings of all social-movement scholars, most seem to accede to A lberto Melucci’s (1996) concept of a social movement as behavior based on “critical codes,” thus fundamentally critical of one or more social institutions. As indicated below, creative participation may include political behavior that consciously defends the status quo of legitimate institutions, some of which are seen as having been hijacked by special-interest coalitions. In such cases, creative participation is supportive, rather than critical, of existing institutions. A n example is environmental lobbies working to enforce existing environmental legislation passed by Congress. Political movements may be seen as proceeding from the organization of coop - eration among scattered participants, as occurs in creative participation. However, most political movements constitute a statement of redefinition of group and personal identity. This is not the case with creative participation, which focuses instead on cooperating in pursuit of commonweal goals. However, some political movements, such as environmentalism, pursue more than the interests of a single group and, as such, their activities overlap with the concept of creative participa - tion. In local instances, we might be reluctant to speak of political-movement par - ticipation, as when, for instance, dozens of local governments in the Los A ngeles basin cooperate to maintain the water in an aquifer (Ostrom 1990, ch. 4). In this chapter, I refer to political , not social, movements, as a few social movements are not especially political, such as the A merican Protestant evangelism of the 1930s and 1940s, which eschewed political activity (Wilcox 1992, 7–8). McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 8 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 9 Thus, I regard creative participation as a fifth form of participation supple - menting the previous discussions of the forum, I&I, civic engagement, and social movements. My sense is that creative participation is not as frequent a phenomenon as the others, excepting the forum. However, it may be that with globalization phenomena, creative participation is becoming more frequent, as individuals come to care more about the environmental and human rights poli - cies of countries other than that of their own residence. Creative participation also derives significance in that it is rooted in universal dilemmas of human co - operation, as symbolized by the stag hunt, the prisoners’ dilemma, and Olson’s logic of collective action. One virtue of delineating separate forms of political participation is the avoid - ance of needless scholarly controversy. As an analogy to Pitkin’s work, there is no point to arguing that “true” representation is that of the principle and his agent, or the symbolic representation of the monarch or the president, or the descrip - tive representation of the organizational board that must contain 50 percent women. Similarly, there is no point to arguing that “true” participation is one or the other of the five forms just described. Dahl did regard I&I as participa - tion in Who Governs? and was met with famous criticism from Carole Pateman (1970), who argued that political participation also includes discussion of issues presented to a group. By now most scholars recognize both as different types of participation, which some hope to bring together in a theory of “deliberative democracy” (Fishkin 1992). Since 1995, there has been enormous interest in the theory of civic engagement, and now the issue is whether civic-engagement writers might downgrade and refuse to discuss creative participation that does not include face-to-face interaction. Civic-engagement theorists should not eliminate public-interest lobbies, transnational advocacy networks, and consumer boycotts from the realm of significant public action. Table 1.1 contrasts the five types of political participation. As stated, creative participation sometimes appears in contexts in which scattered individuals, seek - ing commonweal goals, lack established political institutions to engage in public action toward these goals. Scattering refers to a lack of communication impeding cooperation or to Olson’s point about the difficulties of organizing a large number of individuals to form a lobby to attain a collective benefit or commonweal goal.

Scattered individuals are not in engaged in face-to-face interaction. In the context of the forum model of participation, there is no scattering; citizens meet in a specific place. The citizens are concerned with commonweal goals and discussing issues affecting them jointly; the meeting is an established McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 9 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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10 c h a Pt e r 1 political institution. In the context of I&I, expressed in one form by Who Gov- erns? , scattering is medium; citizens do not meet face-to-face in voting, the most important participatory institution; they do meet face-to-face in campaign and interest-group meetings. Commonweal goals are low/medium, indicating that in strict liberal models (in the European sense) of I&I, individuals are seen to be pursuing their own interests. However, as applied in empirical political science, the I&I model includes citizens making sincere commonweal claims in advocat - ing policies, such as urban renewal in Who Governs? , seen to be good for the city as a whole (although not for those individuals who were removed). The model by definition treats political participation as a matter of citizens expressing individual interests within a system of political institutions that represents and aggregates. The civic-engagement model of participation by definition emphasizes face-to- face interaction. While engagement focuses on the development of commonality among individuals, this commonality usually entails a particular group acting in cooperation rather than for a community as a whole. Nevertheless, participation can sometimes be for a commonweal goal of a community (usually a locality).

By definition, individuals are civically engaged in established institutions. The political-movement model of participation ordinarily sees individuals as scattered, then mobilized into a movement in which they cooperate toward a goal. Nor - mally political movements concern group identity, group rights in a society, and possibly economic position. However, a few political movements concern com - monweal goals, such as environmentalism. In this case, the political-movement model overlaps with the creative-participation model. By definition, political movements reject at least some established political institutions. The political forum, I&I, civic engagement, and political movements are all established, significant models (or perhaps categories) for political analysis. They are separate but frequently linked in political analysis. Civic engagement provides Table 1.1 Types of Political Participation I nterests & C ivic Soc ial C reative F orum I nstitutions Engagement M ovements P articipation Scattered people L ow M edium L ow L ow H igh Commonweal goals H igh L ow/medium M edium L ow H igh Established institutions H igh H igh H igh L ow/medium L ow McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 10 1/17/13 9:12 AMMcFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 11 a basis for the forum and for some of the institutions in pluralist mechanisms.

Especially in the United States, some political-movement participants organize lobbying groups that become institutionalized. Similarly, creative participation is sometimes linked to political behaviors reflecting the other models. In particular, new modes of expressing commonweal goals may become institutionalized as lobbies or even political parties (green parties). As noted, creative participation is sometimes closely linked to, or overlaps with, political-movement participa - tion, especially in the case of environmentally concerned individuals acting in new ways to further commonweal goals. To explore further the meaning of creative participation and civic innovation, in the remainder of this chapter we look at five important arenas of action for this type of political participation: diffused interests and the logic of collective action, implementation of public policies, opposition to political corruption, political consumerism, and transnational advocacy networks. These areas caught my at - tention as exhibiting creative participation while I conducted previous writing and research. In this book I aim simply to persuade the reader that something like creative participation exists in politics. I do not have the intention of scien - tifically delineating the “universe” of creative participation.

Diffused Interests and the Logic of Collective Action The logic of collective action means that public policies are public goods—if one citizen receives a benefit, such as an improvement in the environment, then all citizens also benefit by the very nature of the public good. However, individu - als are modeled as self-interested, mostly in respect to material goods, although sometimes in regard to solidary (friendship) benefits. It follows that self-interested individuals do not contribute to political efforts to gain a public policy that pro - duces a public good because they will receive the same good even if they do not contribute. This is the famous concept of the free rider. A small group of agents, corporations, professional associations, or entrepreneurs, however, will find it in their particular interest to fund a lobby since the benefits to each outweigh the costs. Accordingly, special-interest lobbies will organize, but public-interest lobbies will not due to the costs of cooperation. The result is a serious limitation upon the possibilities of democratic government (Olson 1965). Of course, I have assumed that some citizens, some of the time, exhibit civic virtue and desire to act, not out of self-interest but out of a desire to attain the McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 11 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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12 c h a Pt e r 1 commonweal for the entire citizenry in some area of public action. This is a way of explaining why so many lobbies exist despite the logic of collective action.

Nevertheless, most social scientists would agree that self-interest is nonetheless an extremely widespread motivation and that consequently joint public action in the pursuit of public goods is frequently very difficult. Hence, minority interests tend to rule, and democratic governance is limited.

A major theoretical argument and empirical finding in public-policy studies is that the costs of organizing collective action by the many lead to control by the few particularistic coalitions of interest groups, legislators, and enforcement agencies controlling a public-policy area in which they have a stake. In the vernacular, this is known as the power of “iron triangles” or “special-interest” rule. Many political scientists have argued that this produces a major limitation on democratic governance, as noted in such famous works as E. E. Schattsch - neider ’s The Semisovereign People (1960), Grant McConnell’s Private Power and American Democracy (1966), and Theodore Lowi’s The End of Liberalism (1979). The solutions each proposed to enhance democratic government in the United States are familiar: national political parties with clear and differing issue platforms able to implement these platforms in Congress (Schattschneider); the New Deal image of a strong president and Supreme Court, backed by a national political party, advocating the interests of the popular majority (McConnell); a Congress enacting legislation giving clear administrative direction with a Supreme Court insisting that Congress not delegate decisions to administra - tors controlled by interest groups (Lowi). However, recent events indicate that such political institutional changes may work more to the interests of business than those of a general public. A fter the Gingrich election of 1994 up to the 2006 elections, the national Republican Party had a distinctively pro-business agenda and, by attaining majorities in both houses of Congress or by executive orders, was able to enact much of that agenda, which was increasingly backed by the Supreme Court and other federal courts. Environmental, consumer, and government reform interests were set back in the institutional logic of stronger political parties, a centralized executive branch under the president, and decisive enactments by federal courts. However, civic innovation has been powerful in the arenas of the collective- action paradox. Described by both Putnam and Skocpol as not a manifestation of civic engagement (Putnam 2000, 152–161; Skocpol 2004), environmental, consumer, and good-government lobbies formed by direct-mail solicitation, later supplemented by e-mail, have resulted in the exercise of a significant degree of McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 12 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 13 countervailing power to special-interest coalitions. A considerable amount of research has demonstrated this (Walker 1991; Rothenberg 1992; Berry 1999; McFarland 2004; Bosso 2005). The new public-interest lobbies are not participa - tory to any great extent—one normally expects only 3 to 5 percent of contributors to do anything more than write a check. Such groups also often do not have local chapters, or if they do, they embody only a small fraction of contributors. Such public-interest lobbies are based on the idea of efficient representation through contributions to professional representatives, either lobbyists or public-relations professionals (Bosso 2005). But it is not in the nature of ordinary language to argue that contributions to political representatives are not participation—this is merely a form of participa - tion different from face-to-face social engagement, public discussion of common issues, or self-interested action through existing institutions. Instead, innovative participants have created public-interest lobbies to deal with the political situa - tion of a widespread concern to rectif y social injustice in some area, when such a concern is shared by many citizens scattered about with no immediate institu - tional recourse. The logic of collective action points to a significant limitation upon democratic governance, but participation in civic innovation has helped to counter the marked imbalances in the process of interest mobilization. Policy theorist Hugh Heclo noted that influential elites in separate issue areas form “issue networks,” separable by particular policy areas. The issue network is the observable communications network of those actively attempting to influence policy in some area, although some academics and journalists limit themselves to framing issues and analyzing policy alternatives. A n issue network comprises individuals from all sorts of interest groups, including public-interest groups, concerned with policy in an area, as well as politicians, legislative staff, executive branch officials, state and local government personnel, academic researchers, journalists, celebrities, and individual active concerned citizens. Issue-area par - ticipants communicate through public-relations statements, legislative hearings, periodicals, media reports, specialized media regarding the particular issue area, and telephone and e-mail communications among themselves. Issues regarding common policy for the entire citizenry are often discussed, not as in the forum model but sequentially among varying clusters of issue-network participants.

Issue-area participants will sometimes meet face-to-face at professional confer - ences regarding their particular issue (Heclo 1978). Participation in issue networks is a form of creative participation, or a type of participation close to that. Issue networks embody scattered participants McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 13 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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14 c h a Pt e r 1 who generally communicate through media, now particularly electronic media, especially e-mail. Participation in issue networks is normally not face-to-face, although subgroups of individuals within the network do have annual conven - tions. Many participants within an issue network seek to advance their own interests, and this is not creative participation. For instance, within the issue network concerning regulation of air pollution, electric utilities will seek to slow or redefine regulations to maintain business profits. On the other hand, many participants within the issue network seek the commonweal, such as scientists, environmental advocates, and public health professionals participating within the air-pollution-regulation network. This is a type of creative participation, as normally such individuals engage not in face-to-face discussion but in com - munication through electronic media. It is stretching the idea of “institution” to refer to an issue network as one, since an issue network does not have stable borders or constant participation by the same individuals who may come and go, as their participatory motives change over periods of several years. Issue-network participation is an elite phenomenon, although participants may in some sense represent constituencies, such as an interest group. Heclo originally stated the issue-network concept as providing a major check upon the unbridled power of issue-area oligopolies, which might be considered unchecked due to the logic of collective action. As the site of framing of public issues eventu - ally discussed by legislatures, issue networks have power over the agenda. They sometimes form the basis for the organization of ad hoc lobbying coalitions, some of which seek to represent widespread interests to counter oligopolistic coalitions. Such communication processes are not civic engagement in that they are restricted to a small number of people. On the other hand, the innovative creation of issue networks, along with the organization of public-interest lobbies, has proven a significant limitation to the concept of the few necessarily defeating the many in the control of policy issues.

Implementation Policies As a study, policy implementation gets less than its share of intellectual respect.

What happens after a bill becomes a law? Does anything much happen at all? As used in the A merican political science profession, “policy implementation” refers to much of public administration but, by convention, focuses on administrative action while relegating the social science study of organizations, bureaucracy, McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 14 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 15 and government personnel to examination under other categories. Even so, policy-implementation studies are important to understanding what in fact ac - tually happens in public action beyond the realm of law-setting discourse. The term first came into broad use in political science to refer to studies of why the domestic policies of the Lyndon Johnson administration largely failed to achieve their intended effects. Within political science, policy-implementation studies for the first time received major attention between 1970 and 1985; thereafter they received less attention as researchers concluded that the main variables in implementation behavior are understood (Pressman and Wildavsky 1973; Mazmanian and Sabatier 1989). Students of political participation seldom refer to policy implementation as a realm for public action. But, to reiterate its significance, implementation is not just a study of what went wrong in the administration of Great Society programs. Implementation concerns also apply to the policies of Republican administrations as illustrated by two examples. The Ronald Reagan adminis - tration’s immigration bill of 1986 had a major impact in legalizing perhaps 2.7 million illegal immigrants—a policy effectively implemented. But the bill had virtually no impact in its attempt to control illegal immigration through the regulation of hiring by private employers. Due to the complexity of undertaking such regulation and the political resistance by employers, such hiring regulation was conducted only at a token level. In effect, half of this major bill was repealed during the implementation process. A second example is the G. W. Bush regime’s “No Child Left Behind” education policy, which has undergone great difficulty during the implementation process; it remains to be seen whether this major legislation will have significant impact upon the conduct of public education.

Actually, during the 1960s political elites understood there was an issue about poverty programs being effectively implemented to aid the poor, as opposed to being redefined by government welfare bureaucracies (Piven and Cloward 1977). Accordingly, clauses stipulating “maximum feasible participation” were inserted into federal urban community–development measures, but the result - ing participation in policy implementation was widely regarded as ineffective (Moynihan 1969; Lowi 1979). Implementation participation may be in the category of civic-innovative participation if there is widespread but scattered concern that implementation is unjust in not following the original legislative intent. No established institutions may exist to facilitate the protest of such concerns about injustice. Consequently, innovative participation may involve issue networks, advocacy coalitions, and McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 15 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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16 c h a Pt e r 1 public-interest lobbies. Many participant communicators in a policy network may be concerned about unjust policy implementation. They might only contact legislators or executive officials, a standard type of participation (Verba, Schloz - man, and Brady 1995). But they might also form communications links among themselves to form an issue or advocacy coalition. A n issue coalition is defined as a relatively short-lived (say two years or less) political coalition to influence change in some policy area, including to enforce policy implementation as in - tended by the original legislation. The concept of advocacy coalition (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993) refers to a wide coalition among political elites, lasting for a substantial length of time (say ten years). The efforts of such a coalition are likely to include political and legal efforts to implement legislation as the coali- tion prefers; for example, a clean-air coalition might monitor the policies of the Environmental Protection Agency. Most participants in an advocacy coalition also participate in an issue network, which acts as a communication network for recruitment to advocacy coalitions. Of course, a general issue network may include within itself both pro and anti advocacy coalitions regarding a specific issue. Public-interest lobbies, examples of civic innovation, often spend much of their time monitoring policy implementation and seeking to shape it via litigation and getting critical messages to the media. Environmental issues provide many such examples. Common Cause will monitor policies of the Federal Elections Commission regarding campaign-finance legislation. Implementation policy in general overlaps with collective-action issues, although it obviously does not encompass all such issues. As expressed in issue networks, advocacy coalitions, and public-interest groups, implementation politics is another arena for innova - tive participation.

Political Corruption A third domain for civic-innovative participation is action against political cor - ruption. Corruption has been defined generally as “the misuse of public power for private gain” by R asma Karklins, a leading scholar of the subject, who notes, “When talking about corruption, people often think only of bribery, but it ex - ists in many other forms, such as extortion, profiteering from procurement, and institutional capture. These often involve the accessory acts of fraud, dereliction of duty, and the violation of multiple laws. Corrupt privatization or procure - ment deals tend to include collusion or blackmail and the corruption of others, McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 16 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 17 including legislators or journalists” (2005, 5, 19). Political corruption is a major factor impeding democratic governance and economic development, particularly in the Third World and formerly Communist nation-states.

Whether in contemporary China, Russia, or Nigeria or in the Los A ngeles water and power district of the film Chinatown , individuals opposing corruption are often scattered, experience a concern about civic injustice more than one for personal self-interest, and face a lack of established political institutions to express their desire for justice, especially as the corrupted individuals themselves quite possibly control the established political institutions. This, then, is the situation of civic innovation. The major issue about political corruption is systemic corruption—the situ - ation in which everyone converts the public into the private, expects everyone else to take bribes for government service and contracts, and so forth (Karklins 2005). Honest citizens, stuck in such a system and wishing to change it, are subject to the cooperation dilemma of the logic of collective action. Such honest citizens may be isolated and alone. Where are the other honest citizens, each may wonder. Here, any form of action is civic-innovative participation, even the decision to follow the law within a system of action in which lawbreaking is the norm. Other forms of participation do not apply: There is no public forum of debate because the public forum is broken into parts that are then controlled by individuals. Established mechanisms of interests/institutions are themselves the source of injustice. Civic engagement when the system is corrupt is engagement in corruption; individuals learn to trust one another to be lawbreakers in com - mon. Today, this systemic corruption is a common problem in post-Communist societies. I do not imply that forming something like a public-interest lobby is the only means to fight corruption. Karklins states, “The three cornerstones of corrup - tion containment are creating institutional checks and balances, assuring that the mechanisms of accountability actually work, and mobilizing the citizenry to participate in enhancing the public good” (2005, 163). Elections can bring to power a new government with anticorruption goals; this has been demonstrated in Turkey and Palestine, where secular governments, widely viewed as corrupt, were replaced in elections by Islamic leaders, seen to be more honest. On the other hand, fighting corruption sometimes involves the innovative participation of forming a public-interest group and enhancing it with an advocacy coalition, as Karklins reports happened once in Latvia: “In spring 2002 Transparency International–Latvia led a grassroots campaign against a suspect effort to privatize McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 17 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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18 c h a Pt e r 1 a youth sports and recreation facility. . . . T he breakthrough came when TI–Latvia garnered the support of fifty-eight other nongovernmental groups and thousands of individuals who signed appeals” (2005, 159). Views of corruption obviously vary with social norms, as in the famous state- ment attributed to an Irish A merican Tammany politician: “I seen my opportuni - ties and I took ’em” (R iordan 1963, 3). In the United States, Common Cause and other such groups oppose practices for which the term “corruption” seems a bit strong: private interests legally pouring money into political campaigns, legislators being paid for additional work by nongovernmental sources, closed meetings by government officials, and so forth. However, such practices do have the potential to become the vehicles for corrupt practices. Political corruption produces a disintegration of democratic governance.

In systems of corruption, honest citizens must engage in civic-innovative participation.

Transnational Political Activism Individuals may be scattered, without established institutions to engage in ac - tion regarding perceived injustices within foreign countries. Before processes of innovative participation are initiated, the citizens’ government may have no interest at all in some foreign injustice, or at first transnational advocacy networks may not be organized to facilitate public action (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Public policy making can be described as a matter of the politics of attention and what gets priority attention from governments (Jones and Baumgartner 2005); at first a government may have no concern about such questions as human rights violations in Darfur or the shrinking of the Brazilian rain forest. To reiterate, here I am concerned with participation in matters regarding events in foreign countries, not the institutionalized participation occurring as citizens attempt to influence the foreign policy of their own governments. A lthough one suspects that the processes of globalization increase the concern of individuals for events in foreign countries, we must note that transnational participation is not a new phenomenon. A n international abolitionist movement existed in regard to slavery every where, including the British Empire; especially before World War I, socialists proclaimed their international identification with, and concern for, the working class in all modern countries; in 1936 to 1939 leftists without regard to their own governments’ policies participated in McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 18 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 19 Republican resistance to Franco in the Spanish Civil War. In the last generation, however, the number of transnational political organizations has increased. So - ciologist Jackie G. Smith counted an increase in nongovernmental international social-change organizations from 183 in 1973 to 631 in 1993, with an amazing increase in international environmental organizations from 10 in 1973 to 90 in 1993 (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 11). The overall trend has continued since 1993, subsequently enhanced by the availability of cheap e-mail communication for international coordination. Apparently most of this activity parallels that of domestic A merican public-interest lobbies; the transnational groups frequently consist of multinational staffs who appeal to a transnational constituency, of - ten using the Internet, for financial contributions and various other types of support, such as signing petitions or contacting domestic legislators. This is not civic engagement, debating issues in a forum, or, at least initially, activism within established political institutions. Nevertheless, creative participation in transnational advocacy networks can be linked to the other forms of participation in some significant instances. In recent years, the most famous instance was the impact of transnational advocacy networks upon domestic political organiza - tions concerning apartheid in South A frica before 1989. National legislatures in the United States, United K ingdom, and France, among others, took up the antiapartheid cause by supporting boycotts of South A frican products. Creative participation in this case had a major effect on institutional foreign policy (K lotz 1995). A nother form of creative participation in the international arena is the organization of “social forums,” international meetings of thousands of antiglo - balization activists, complete with panels and speakers for the presentation and discussion of international issues. Such forums, however, are partially organized through the artifices of innovative participation, particularly the coordination of the meetings by ad hoc committees using the Internet. It is hard to link civic engagement to transnational advocacy networks, but the social forums do pro- vide a limited means for what might be termed “transnational engagement,” the building of trust among citizens of various countries (della Porta 2007, 60 – 61, 171–172, 223 –224) . Participants in transnational advocacy networks often work together, but they also separately try to influence their own civic process to get various foreign ministries, agencies of the United Nations, or other international organizations to influence some third country to stop some practice seen as unjust, perhaps in the human rights or environmental areas. Scholars Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (1998, 12–13) have termed this the boomerang effect, as political action McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 19 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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2 0 c h a Pt e r 1 moves in a first direction, to one’s own government, then moves in a second direction, from that government to another government whose policies are the actual object of concern. Participation in such international “boomerang politics” is apparently different from participation in discussion, mobilization of interests, or civic engagement related to domestic public policy making.

Transnational advocacy networks are a form of civic-innovative participation, even when they are immediately oriented to correction of unjust treatment of some group, such as women or sweatshop workers, in a foreign country as op - posed to unjust civil rights violations or unjust depredations upon everyone’s environment. In transnational situations, citizens of one country see as unjust the lack of established institutions to protest injustice in another country (Young 2006). The international framework of bounded nations itself seems unjust. In this situation, civic innovators have created new advocacy networks to influence their own and other governments. Some observers might prefer to classif y most transnational activism as a form of social-movement activity, but this would be a specific subtype of social move - ment, those not accepting preexisting national boundaries as the arenas framing the issues of protest.

Political Consumerism Consumer purchasing decisions can be another form of innovative participation.

Some consumers, at least some of the time, in addition to economic criteria use political criteria in buying goods and services. The universe of such decisions can be termed “political consumerism” (M icheletti 2003; M icheletti, Follesdal, and Stolle 2004). Here I focus more especially on situations in which scattered con - sumers, also acting as citizens, are concerned with some injustice to all citizens, or at least about some interests other than their own; they do not, however, act to express this concern through established political institutions but adapt their behavior in consumer purchasing. Such economic behavior is also political and may be a form of innovative participation. Consumer boycotts of British tea and other goods preceded the A merican Revolution. Mahatma Gandhi’s boycott of British salt and textiles was a high point in twentieth-century political history. The U.S. civil rights movement featured scores of local boycotts by blacks against segregated businesses; this was political consumerism, as well as arguably both a social movement and civic innovation, McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 20 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 21 in the sense that it improved the quality of democracy for the entire community as segregation laws were no longer enforced. One might hypothesize that with the increasing globalization of commerce and the possibilities of the Internet as an organizational communication device, political consumerism as innovative participation will become more widespread throughout the world.

Political consumerism as civic-innovative participation can be a solitary act, a citizen’s refusal to buy a product that he believes is manufactured by an unjust producer. If in some case such beliefs become widespread, there is the possibility of organizing a boycott, sometimes a practice of labor unions in contemporary A merica. On the other hand, some consumers may react positively and buy from a producer or merchandiser seen to favor a just cause, for instance, those who shop at Trader Joe’s for fair-trade coffee. A n important tactic of political con - sumerism is product labeling, for instance, in indicating a union-made product, which can be defined as an indicator of just versus exploitative wages. Recently the fair-trade label on coffee has been treated as a symbol of just treatment of Third World coffee growers and the stewardship of the tropical environment.

Other labels are a facet of political consumerism but may be seen as an indicator of self-interest, such as the consumption of organic foods for one’s health or avoiding high-calorie foods (Micheletti 2003, 149–154; Vogel 2005, 51–56; Holzer 2007; Wilkinson 2007). Political consumerism often overlaps with transnational participation. The Nestlé boycott, for instance, was a consumerist action taken against a Swiss mul - tinational corporation for the sake of the health of babies in the Third World.

Recent actions have included boycotts of Nike and other shoe manufactures for paying low wages in Third World manufacturing and of Starbucks for not featuring fair-trade coffee. If an international boycott is an instrument of the foreign policy of nation-states, such as the A merican government’s boycott of mainland China before 1972 or the 1950s A rab League boycott of companies doing business with Israel, it is not a category of individual participation. Boycotts, buying campaigns, and labeling to express political goals are not examples of forum participation, mobilization of interest through established institutions (at least not at first), or civic engagement, as consumer decisions are conducted individually. However, political consumerism, as creative participation, is linked to these other forms of participation in that consumerism may increase civic engagement to a small degree (participating in boycott groups if such ex - ist), and widespread consumerist sentiments may be organized and reinforced by labor unions and political parties. McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 21 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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2 2 c h a Pt e r 1 Political consumerism can be a form of expressing a view of the good society.

A consumer might refuse to shop at Walmart and prefer to shop at small stores because he or she believes in a society of Jeffersonian commerce. The shopper- citizen knows that his or her individual shopping decisions have little effect but nonetheless derives satisfaction from taking independent action to express a social opinion, even at some cost to economic self-interest. Conclusion One aspect of the human condition entails the paradoxes of participation. In a number of political situations, individuals are isolated from one another, and the structure of the situation prevents cooperative action to achieve a common benefit.

Such paradoxical situations occur when numerous scattered individuals seek a commonweal goal, but no established political institution provides a means for joint action to achieve it. Political action in common can occur in this situation if individuals engage in creative participation and civic innovation by inventing new modes of public action. Creative participation is one of a set of five types of participation, none of which should be regarded as “true” participation. Creative participation may occur in combination with one of the other four types. The nature of creative participation can be explored in the contexts of representing the diffused interests in Olson’s logic of collective action, in public action regarding policy implementation, in action to combat governmental corruption, in politi - cal consumerism, and in transnational advocacy. Social scientists and political philosophers have commented less about creative participation than they have about other forms of participation. I do not maintain, however, that civic innovation is always progressive and ma - joritarian. For instance, according to a colleague interviewing anti-immigration protestors, some see illegal immigration as unjust, lacking action from established institutions, and go about establishing their own border patrols and websites. A lthough not always morally unblemished, civic innovation deser ves attention simply for the reason that it is innovative. New modes of action are of interest to scholars and the general public. In addition, I suspect that public-interest lob - bies, Internet-based communication and participation, transnational advocacy networks, and political consumerism are expanding their influence on politics. A final conclusion is that scholars and public participants should investigate the balances among types of participation. The five types often bear some i mportant McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 22 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 23 relationship to one another. Civic engagement can provide the basis for civic concerns, beyond self-interest, to enhance political consumerism, which in turn, in some cases, might enhance civic engagement. Consumerism might sometimes lead to the creation of new public-interest lobbies, which, while not increasing civic engagement, would become established institutions to lobby government.

Consumerism can provide new items for discussion of joint action on public policy, although unfortunately this is likely to be limited to elites participating in issue networks. Viewing the links among civic innovation and other forms of participation will enhance the understanding of the processes of public policy. McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 23 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group.

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