ABSTRACT
The school department official was not unique in asserting that he is not “political” in order to communicate something important to his audience. Throughout our research, we heard very different civic groups and engaged individuals make similar statements, proclaiming their distrust of and disconnection from political processes, politicians, and government, in order to say something about their own identities as citizens. “People need to get over their expectations that the government is going to fix their problems. It’s not. . . . At its worst, government is a barrier. At its best, an enabler. That’s as far as it goes.” These statements from a leader of Open Source, a civic innovator group, are emblematic of the deep skepticism of government efficacy that we frequently observed in our work. “We can’t complain about what schools and government are not doing. . . . It’s up to us to do it ourselves,” was another refrain we heard echoed in various ways. Mistrusting the government’s ability to solve problems
often went hand in hand with the notions that citizen engagement would improve government, and that people can and should “fix it themselves.”
