DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA: PATHS TO RENEWAL
An evolving common ground of open-minded, web-savvy citizens is creating a renewed civic culture of dialogue across the United States. It needs support at the centre too.

It was the morning after election-day, and New Yorkers awoke to a sun-filled sky. Lilacs bloomed on Broadway, children, freshly-scrubbed, arrived at school on time, fear was banished from the public imagination, and Central Park flowed with milk and honey along its pathways. (Ruth Rosen's post-election contribution to openDemocracy has something of this flavour). America had rediscovered its faith in democracy, and banished corruption and extremism from politics at last. "Stop the gridlock, stop the nastiness, and get something done" as Nancy Boyda from Kansas put it to the New York Times, "people are tired of the excuses." Right on, Nancy.

Well, not quite. The New York sky was actually slate grey that morning and streaked with rain, a suitable metaphor for an election whose long-term outcomes are decidedly cloudy. Is this really a new beginning for American politics? The birth of a new consensus across society in favour of broad-based reforms and political accountability? A concrete signal that voters won't stand for scandal, incompetence, and deliberate polarisation, whoever it is that sits in the White House? Or will it be simply another turn in the game of revolving chairs between narrow political interests that ...

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