ENHANCING CIVIC LIFE IN MISSOURI: OPPORTUNITIES AND OBSTACLES
The state's programs to boost voter registration and turnout, foster volunteering, and support service–learning and civic education all are opportunities to enliven civic life and strengthen democracy in Missouri. Numerous faith–based groups, nonprofit organizations, and businesses across the state are rekindling the spirit of civic participation by encouraging service to others. The efforts of public and private organizations to rev up civic participation indeed are promising. However, several negative trends in the state may undermine those efforts and threaten the future civic health of Missouri.

Missouri has more of a “blue–collar” base for civic participation than other states. Unfortunately, economic restructuring and the long recession have hit Missouri's blue–collar workers hard. From 2000 to 2009, the Missouri economy shed nearly 79,000 jobs. 22 However, this net decline in total private and public employment masked signicant shifts in the types of jobs available to Missouri workers. The three traditional blue–collar sectors of construction, manufacturing, and trade, transportation, and utilities shrank by more than 186,000 jobs. This was partially offset by an increase of nearly 91,000 jobs in education and health services, and leisure and hospitality services. There are several problems associated with this restructuring of the state's economy. First, workers displaced from traditional blue–collar jobs need to be retrained or re–educated for employment in the growing service sectors. Otherwise, they will experience extended periods of joblessness, which may weaken their social capital, undermine their trust in private companies and public institutions, and dampen their enthusiasm for civic participation. Second, pay typically is lower in the growing service sectors than in the declining blue–collar areas. The average weekly earnings in 2009 of employees in construction and manufacturing were $990 and $941, respectively. The average weekly paychecks for employees in education and health services, and leisure and hospitality services were $649 and $310, respectively. With an average weekly pay rate of $912, professional and business services is the only category of service jobs that offers pay comparable to construction and manufacturing. Unfortunately, the state lost 3,000 jobs in that sector in the past decade.

Income and employment status by themselves do not determine a person's level of civic and political engagement. For example, unemployed Missourians have more time to work with others to x something in the neighborhood. However, the data above and other studies suggest that consistent employment and stable incomes are important economic foundations upon which people build other portions of their lives, including their participation in community affairs. If downturns in employment and earnings continue, then those economic trends may very well erode people's willingness and ability to be engaged in civic life.

A second red ag trend is dwindling state financial support for higher education. Higher education is one of the strongest factors related to leadership in groups and organizations and to people's overall level of civic engagement in Missouri. Like ofcials in most states across the country, Missouri government leaders have wrestled with how to distribute declining tax revenues to a wide range of important programs. In Missouri, this scal tug of war has left higher education with declining state financial support. After adjusting for ination (using the Midwest CPI–all urban consumers), state monies to fund colleges and universities shrank by 16% from scal year 2001 to scal year 2008. 23 Legislators and the governor used federal stimulus dollars to maintain at budgets for 2009 and 2010. Even with federal stimulus funds, in scal year 2009 Missouri still ranked 40th among states in per capita state financial support for higher education. Because enrollments rose, per student state financial support dropped in 2009 and 2010. The two–year federal stimulus monies end in 2011, so state funding for higher education is predicted to drop substantially. The end result is that working– and middle–class Missouri students and their families will struggle more than they have in decades to afford college educations. If nothing is done, this may weaken civic engagement in Missouri in the long run.

So far, the increasing costs of attending college are being absorbed through rising student debt (school loans and credit cards), and enrollments still are growing slightly in many universities in Missouri. However, this trend is not sustainable. At some point, the increasing costs will prevent students from attaining their educational goals. This may adversely affect their social capital, limit their economic productivity, and weaken their commitment to civic and political participation. Thus, the rising financial barriers to college attendance constitute a major threat to the future civic health of the state. As was noted in NCoC's Executive Summary of the National Civic Health Assessment 24 , “The best boost for our nation's civic health is to ensure all children graduate from high school and complete college, enhancing the likelihood that they will become active volunteers, joiners, givers, and participants in the lives of their communities, state, and nation.”

Rethinking the role of civil society: A public sociology framework was presented in the opening section of this report. This model conceptualizes society as having three major institutional structures: the state, the market, and civil society. Each of these institutional structures works with a distinct form of capital, generates a specic type of social relation, and promotes unique roles. The central feature of this tripartite institutional structure is that the market, state and civil society are functionally interdependent, which requires that the different forms of capital be coordinated and balanced. The interrelationship of the spheres (and their accompanying forms of capital, social relationships, and roles) has important policy implications about how society allocates its resources to support democracy.

In this model, “private capital” refers to anything that enhances a person's ability to perform economically useful work. In the conventional wisdom of economics, “capital” refers to those things that increase the ability to produce goods and services sold in markets. “Private” means that the owner of capital has rights to control capital and access to it. Access is determined by market forces of supply, demand, and price created by actors competing in the production, buying, and selling of goods. The market has developed into an effective institutional structure for organizing the production and distribution of private goods, and it is a major pillar of modern societies.

One important function of the state is to represent the public interest by providing goods and services that everyone needs but that markets won't provide in adequate quantities. It works with public capital from tax revenues to provide public goods, such as safety and education, and infrastructural necessities, such as bridges and roads. What the state provides is accessible to everyone.

Missouri and states across the nation face a multitude of very serious challenges, including but not limited to economic restructuring and problems in education. As the authors of the national report on civic health point out, to understand and meet those challenges “we must recongure the way we think and talk about engaging Americans.” Recognizing the tripartite nature of society is one way to recongure the way we think about, discuss, and form government policies, community programs, and business initiatives to meet the challenges to the future civic health of the state and of the nation.

A growing body of evidence suggests that the balance among the three institutional spheres has been thrown off. We have been neglecting civil society, and the market and state spheres may be suffering as a result. A September 2010 poll conducted by The Associated Press and the National Constitution Center showed that only 6% of American adults are very condent or extremely condent in the people who run banks and major financial institutions, and 8% have high confidence in leaders of major companies. 25 Politicians fared only slightly better, with just 10% of people expressing strong trust in federal and state political leaders, and 14% having a great deal of confidence in local government ofcials. This declining trust in society's major institutions indicates a weakening of the social capital that holds communities together, and it poses a threat to civic participation in Missouri and throughout the nation.

Scholars have argued that one factor that is contributing to the erosion of trust in large businesses and government is widening income gaps in the United States. People who live in states with low levels of income inequality have greater trust in others than residents of states with high levels of income inequality. Cross–national studies show that the quality of social relations is highest in countries with the least income inequality. 26

In its current infrastructure report card, The American Society of Civil Engineers gives a grade of “D” for roads and transit systems, levees and dams, drinking water and wastewater facilities, schools, and public parks and recreation areas. 27 The society estimates that $2.2 trillion would need to be invested over a ve–year period to bring America's physical and social infrastructure up to passing level. This trend indicates a weakening of public capital in the nation that, if left unaddressed, could also have negative implications for civic participation.

The evidence is mounting that the tripartite institutional structure is badly tilted. Society needs integration and balance among the three spheres, and it requires all three forms of capital to operate smoothly and to produce the diversity of private and public goods and services that people need. There needs to be balance between private, public, and social capital; between civil society, the market, and the state. Private capital would have a hard time producing and distributing its commodities without the existence of public capital in the form of roads, bridges, canals, and ports. Similarly, public capital couldn't produce its goods without the tax revenues generated by the exchange of private goods. A parallel relationship exists between the state and civil society. Civil society needs the safety provided by public servants, such as reghters and police ofcers, while the state needs social capital for political participation, and it depends on civic groups like the PTA for the successful operation of public schools. Finally, the market needs social capital to reduce transaction and informational costs, and civil society needs many of the commodities provided by private capital.

It is important to acknowledge that recessionary economic conditions, education problems, eroding trust, insufcient investments in physical and social infrastructure, and growing economic inequality present substantial challenges to the civic health of Missouri and the nation. However, there are positive trends. Many schools, faith–based organizations, and private companies are encouraging their members to make a difference in their communities through volunteering. State and federal government leaders are crafting policies to enhance political engagement. The impact of these efforts to revitalize civic life will be strengthened if leaders craft policies that invest in the civic infrastructure of communities while simultaneously considering the bigger institutional picture, and working to restore a sustainable balance among the private, public, and state spheres of society.