To Empower People: From State
to Civil Society
Peter L. Berger and Richard John
Neuhaus
Central Problem
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Desire for government services
Strong dislike of government and bureaucracy
Societal Conceptions
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Megastructures
Private Life
Mediating Structures
Examples of Megastructures
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The State
Corporations, Big Business
Educational Bureaucracy
Organized Professions
Problems with the Megastructures
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Alienating to individuals.
Not helpful in providing meaning, fulfillment,
or identity to the individual.
Viewed as unreal or malignant
Problems with Private Life
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Isolating
Cannot be relied upon – unstable
Examples of Mediating Structures
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Neighborhood
Family
Church
Voluntary Association
Value of Mediating Structures
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Bridge gap between private life and
megastructures
Give stability to private life
Provide meaning and value to megastructures;
If meaning is lost, democracy suffers.
Provide moral basis to political order, so order
is secured through consent not coercion
Liberalism
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Tends to be blind to the functions of mediating
structures
Greater concern for the individual and a just
public order
Defends private rights from the mediating
structures (hostile to the idea that religion has
public rights and public functions)
Conservatism
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Held mediating structures in high regard
before the 18th century
Now has a tendency to revoke modernity
Sensitive to the alienations of big government,
but blind to the same effects of big business
Proposition 1
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Mediating structures are essential for a vital
democracy
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If mediating structures didn’t generate and
maintain values, the State would. When values are
determined top-down, the government is
authoritarian, not democratic.
Proposition 2
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Public policy should protect and foster
mediating structures.
Proposition 3
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Public policy should utilize mediating
structures for the realization of social
purposes.
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Risk of government cooption of mediating
structures
Goal is to expand government services without
increasing government oppressiveness
Empowerment
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Feeling of powerlessness caused by faceless
controlling institutions with different values
than the individual
Easier for the affluent to resist the
encroachment of the megastructures
Policy based on the mediating structures aims
to empower poor people to do the things the
more affluent can already do
Neighborhood
Good Neighborhoods
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Safe
Sanitary
Chosen freely
Have varying degrees of social cohesion.
Bad Neighborhoods
Bad neighborhoods can be:
 Ignored
 Dismantled and redistributed
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Threatening to non-poor
Doesn’t make poor less poor, just moves them around
May make the poor feel worse, since their poverty will
show in starker contrast by new proximity to non-poor
Transformed
Policy Goals
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Sustain diversity of neighborhoods.
Counter destruction of neighborhoods caused
by court judgments that treat all communities
alike
Challenges
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Neighborhoods empowered to impose their
values on individuals can be coercive and cruel
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Government intervention necessary to protect
elementary human rights (race).
Conflict between individual and communal
rights due to the unjust extension of policies
deriving from racial dilemma.
Racism as community characteristic
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Focus public policy on neighborhood-defined
neighborhood development to bring up poor
communities.
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As they achieve middle class goals, racism will be reduced
or separated from other discrimination and will be more
easily prosecuted.
Achievement of individuals doesn’t necessarily mean
they’ll move out of poor neighborhoods.
Media, churches, schools, government, etc. must continue
and intensify efforts to educate against racial bias.
Specific Recommendations
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Return tax money in non-categorical ways to be spent as neighborhoods
deem necessary
Since we can’t force private financial institutions to make money available
to poor neighborhoods,
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Strengthen neighborhoods by giving them more responsibility for law
enforcement.
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We need a new version of the Federal Housing Administration
Property tax regulations should be changed to encourage home improvement.
Funding for part-time employment of parents to police schools and public
places.
Open up unused airwaves to regional, ethnic, and elective groups to fight
media homogenization
Taxation policies and postal regulations should support neighborhood
newspapers
Family
Redefined, but not in decline
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High divorce rate, but also high remarriage
rate
Includes foster parents, lesbian and gay
parents, etc.
Policy Goal 1
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Recognize family as an institution
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Society has a vested interest in how values are
transmitted to the next generation.
Weak families produce uprooted individuals,
which make for ideal recruits for authoritarian
movements.
Policy Goal 2
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Oppose policies that expose the child directly
to state authority without the mediation of the
family
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Experts have relevant and helpful expertise
Experts do not love or have long-term open ended
commitment to individual children
Policy Goal 3
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Restore some control of education and
economics that has been stripped away by
modernization
Education
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State has a coercive monopoly on education.
Low-income parents have the least say about what
happens to their kids in school.
Personnel of the education establishment are upper
middle class.
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They teach their upper middle class values.
Disparage the ways of life of the poor
Teach contempt for the parents and self-contempt.
Best way to break up the monopoly is to allow choice