What is the Civic Health Index? For the Living Together Institute, Civic Health is one of the key ingredients in the Ecology of Democracy. The Civic Health index is a tool developed by the National Conference on Citizenship, an organization dedicated to the strengthening of Civic Life in the USA. They define civic health as “the way that communities are organized and define and address public problems”. The Civic Health Index is designed as a tool to “better understand an array of civic health indicators that are measurable and movable”. As with many other social and community issues that are evident across the globe, such as an increase in “food deserts” or “health deserts” , there is a world wide increase in both “civic deserts” and the related increase in communities mobilizing for change. The Civic Health Index can be a starting point for increased understanding and conversation, it can be a tool for community based research and actions which helps identify and address the state of Civic Health, its decline in many places and the growing appetite for change. In order words, it can be a tool, and offer a result, to help engage the crises in democracy from and for, grassroots-citizen led collective actions. of Living Together Institute believes that the Civic Health Index can be a tool that helps develop the dynamic, evolving and interactive relationship between communities mobilizing for their development and advancement and the processes and institutions of governance.
Another way to think about the Civic Health Index is as a community research tool and result/ product that can help identify the What, of what are the issues to be addressed, the HOW in how to address shared community problems and the Why of why Civic Health and social comity, matter. It can help identify the “fault lines” in civic health and the existing or needed resources and capabilities needed to address those fault lines, locally and regionally.
An example of this is an interesting finding from the NCCC, The study highlighted responses to COVID policies. It highlights a critical area in the Ecology of Democracy, the participation of people, as citizens with agency, in shaping and re-shaping their social-political-economic and cultural environments. In an international study on responses to COVID policies Americans were more likely to say they followed COVID rules “ not very closely or not at all”, the USA ranked 5 out of 6 other developed countries in this. Simultaneously, the respondents from the USA said that during the epidemic people’s concerns for others worsened and they felt disappointed in the response of the country’s handling of the epidemic.
A closer look at this exposes a gap between how people view their own actions, (the degree to which they followed guidelines or not) the distance people feel from their government such that they did not see their role in shaping and following the policies and the impact their own actions would have, such as the decrease in the care for others and disappointment in the response. One can see a disconnect between how they acted in the epidemic, their own participation and the impact of that on their communities and the efficacy of the response. This blind spot to the impact of one’s own actions on communities and policies is one of the issues that the Civic Health Index seeks to investigate, understand better and activate: how to harness the motivation to participate in civic life and the impact of that participation on the Ecology of Democracy.
Why a Civic Health Index? The Southern African context is at a similar inflection point as many other counties and regions, with a social and political environment filled with conflict and contradictions. Around the world we see lower levels of voter participation, corruption in electoral process and other areas of life, state sponsored violence against citizens, censorship of the media, rising authoritarianism of ruling parties and majority youth populations that have limited educational or economic opportunities and have not yet experienced free and fair elections in their lifetimes yet have experienced the growing gap between the rich and the poor. This is true in West Africa, North Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, the USA, Brazil, Indonesia, Central America and more.
While each country in the SADC region has its unique history, challenges and resources specific to their countries they also share, in addition to borders, a broader and powerful historic-cultural and economic context of the region, a legacy of both colonialism and the struggle for independence. This shared context can foster new understandings, resources, alliances and solidarity which can then help inform new advocacy strategies across national borders to address the deepening crises in democracy, citizen participation and advocacy, community well being and over all civic health and a regional civic health.
The Civic Health Index can be a tool that through its implementation increases community engagement and dialogue about the lived experiences, aspirations and resources of citizens on a range of issues critical to Civic Health. The dialogues that help produce the research as well as the process of gathering information and interrogating it can help address the “fault lines” while also learning more about the state of Civic Health and the shared challenges of the region ( xenophobia, rising authoritarianism, increasing inequality, failing state institutions, civic unrest and increasing violence and especially gender based violence)
What is the CHI measuring? While each country will design its own index to capture the specifics of the country, some of the shared indices will be geared toward measuring:
Trust in Government (trust in governance, electoral parties, local municipalities, public goods such as schools, police, health care and safety and security, news and media)
Trust in fellow citizens/neighbours/residents
Volunteering or community building activities
Electoral and political engagement
Group affiliations (religious, union/work, community, cultural or political organizations)
Social Comity: ( levels of tribalism, relationships with neighbours, social isolation, sense of belonging and being valued socially)
Media and news consumption patterns
Quality of the social environment (levels of fear, either from government or neighbours or others, confidence ones/family’s needs will be met, level of agency in impacting ones immediate environment)
How will implementation of CHI happen? The LTI , with its local and regional partners, will develop the CHI as an action based research tool and will develop the plan for distributing the survey and gathering the information as an integral part of its commitment to developing the democratic capacity of citizens to engage in shaping their social environments and communities and in developing solidarity across borders for the strengthening of the Ecology Of Democracy in the region. We see the CHI project as one that can both be instrumental in promoting citizen engagement, participation and development at the same time that it is measuring Civic Health locally and regionally and contributing to the development of collective action that promotes and strengthens an Ecology of Democracy regionally.