The immediate concerns of the coronavirus are clear: an unprecedented health crisis and economic devastation. But it isn’t just hospitals and businesses feeling the strain. Civic and governing institutions soon will be severely tested – and that could pose a huge challenge to the robustness of American society as a whole.
The delicate balance of civic institutions – everything from local school boards and voluntary organizations to the media and local governments – and social trust is the mortar of democracy. Even before the virus struck, the United States has been afflicted by a growing civic fragility reflected in, for example, growing political polarization and mass shootings.
Fragile states
We can see in developing countries, from sub-Saharan Africa to Asia, that when civic institutions do not function well, governance and economic life is tenuous and civic violence, motivated by political or ethnic tensions, can break out. If the United States does not nurture civic concerns – the cohesion of communities and active civic organizations – medical efforts and economic investment in this crisis will be undermined. We have already seen in this crisis that without active citizen involvement, through self-isolation and social distancing, public health efforts come undone.
In our research, together with other scholars, we developed a civic fragility index. Countries like Pakistan, Somalia and Afghanistan rate very high for civic fragility, while Scandinavian countries rate best for civically robust societies, followed by other Western countries. Latin American and Eastern European countries feature in the middle. The United States historically ranks fairly well, in the top 10% of civically robust countries.