Self-empowered citizens are one of five major forces affecting community life in new ways, report Peter Plastrik and Theodore Staton in this excerpt from Chapter 2, "The Disruption of Community Life," of the book they are releasing on the nuPOLIS site.

Nearly everyone agrees now that our model for democratic participation—elections, public hearings, lobbying, and so on—fails to engage the energy and imagination of far too many citizens.  Disillusionment with American democracy began while the new Republic was still in the cradle.  In the decades that passed after the Founding Fathers established a nation with a large-scale system of political representation, notes historian Gordon Wood, “All the major revolutionary leaders died less than happy with the results of the Revolution… They found it difficult to accept the democratic fact that their fate now rested on the opinions and votes of small-souled and largely unreflective ordinary people.”

Some 200 years later, the verdict remains the same.  “What ails us is felt throughout the land,” Richard Harwood, founder of the nonprofit Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, wrote in his 2005 book Hope Unraveled, “and strikes to the very core of our most cherished values… Americans have been retreating from politics and public life into close-knit circles of families and friends.”

When citizens believe they can’t make much difference in their representative government’s decisions or that government can’t perform its functions, many elect to empower themselves.  Some turn to “direct democracy” mechanisms—petition drives, referendums, recalls—to “let the people speak.”