Publics in Action

Abstract What does it mean for something to be public? Are we using the same idea of “public” in public education, or public safety, or public works? And how should we think about who is a member of the public when we consider the mix of citizens and non-citizens who work and live together, or the people of the future, or in other countries but who are affected by the gases we pump into our atmosphere? This book looks at how people come together to create their public institutions and at the lessons we can learn from one another, both positive and negative. It argues that a healthy, dynamic public takes itself seriously as a subject, an agent, not just the object or beneficiary of a state institution. In an extended metaphor that structures the book, we should improvise: to listen to each other as we riff off shared standards and create something new, responsive to the scene and the moment. This book makes use of the author’s personal experience in public institutions, and in democracies around the world, with a particular focus on California, France, and Norway, each of which provides instructive models of healthy publics in action. A hybrid of political philosophy and comparative politics, this book will leave readers not only with an enlivened sense of the possibilities of public life but with a new idea of how to move beyond the vague exhortations of much academic philosophy to build the shared future we desperately need.