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Does the Performance of Institutions Explain the Civic Gap?

Tale of Two Cities: Civic Health in Miami and Minneapolis-St. Paul

January 24, 2011

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Previous research ﬁnds that public institutions work better and are more popular and trusted in communities where civic engagement is stronger.14 That relationship could arise because effective and trustworthy public institutions make residents want to engage, because engaged citizens make institutions work better, or perhaps for other reasons (such as underlying cultural or economic factors). The Knight Foundation’s Soul of the Community survey tested attitudes toward government and community institutions generally in St. Paul, Palm Beach, and Miami.15 Levels of trust and satisfaction were much higher in St. Paul than in Miami, with Palm Beach in between (Minneapolis was not surveyed in the Knight study). For example, 42% of St. Paul citizens generally trusted the local government, compared with just 24% of Miamians. Thirty-two percent of St. Paul citizens felt the leaders of their community represented their interests, compared with just 18% of Miamians. Satisfaction with police, schools, and parks was much higher in St. Paul than in either of the South Florida cities, and St. Paul citizens were more satisﬁed with their fellow residents’ sociability and caring for one another (see Table 2).

If we juxtapose these results with the CPS data on civic engagement discussed above, we see that St. Paul has more engaged citizens and more popular and trusted public institutions than Miami and Palm Beach. These surveys cannot reveal whether these results are related, but other clues help to complete the picture.

First, public institutions in the Twin Cities do not always perform better than those in South Florida. For example, the graduation rate in St. Paul high schools (Ramsey County, Minnesota) is 65.6%, and in Minneapolis it is 62.7%: virtually the same as the rate in Miami-Dade County (65.4%) and lower than that in Palm Beach (73.6%). Nevertheless, St. Paul residents rate their schools much higher than Miamians do.

Further, Twin Cities residents scored much better on two questions about civic knowledge that were included in the CPS.16 Perhaps schools do not perform much better on standard measures in Minneapolis and St. Paul than they do in the Miami metro area, but education in Minnesota is more “civic.” In other words, the Twin Cities’ schools engage adult citizens in ways that build their satisfaction and trust, the schools collaborate more with other educative institutions, and institutions do a better job of teaching speciﬁcally civic knowledge.

Likewise, neighborhood planning and public services such as police and parks may or may not be better in the Twin Cities than in South Florida, but clearly government and public ofﬁcials in Minneapolis and St. Paul have shared power more with their citizens. St. Paul has one of the oldest and best developed systems of neighborhood governance in the United States, dating to the War on Poverty.17 More recently, Minneapolis pioneered an ambitious governance reform that devolved power to neighborhood associations whose boards must be elected in neighborhood-wide votes.18 Such reforms could have contributed to citizens’ higher level of trust in their leaders and the greater satisfaction with their neighborhoods that is reﬂected in the Knight study.

Finally, IRS data reveal that the infrastructure of not-for-proﬁt institutions is much more extensive and better resourced in Minneapolis-St. Paul than it is in the Miami area. There are almost twice as many active nonproﬁts per capita in the Twin Cities than in the Miami area, and those in the Twin Cities have accumulated almost ﬁve times more ﬁnancial assets, on a per capita basis (see Table 3). A strong nonproﬁt sector probably reﬂects generations of previous civic engagement and also encourages and supports current civic engagement.

In short, we hypothesize Minneapolis-St. Paul civil servants, public ofﬁcials, and citizens have traditions and policies of collaboration that enhance people’s satisfaction with public institutions, leaders, and other citizens, and sustain a spirit of creativity and inclusion. That virtuous cycle is much less evident in the Miami area. Because this hypothesis is qualitative (involving the style and purpose of engagement and not just its quantity), and because it concerns long-term traditions rather than simply the contemporary situation, the CPS and Knight survey data cannot conﬁrm it. Instead, in the next section, we offer an interpretive, historical look at civic traditions in the Twin Cities.

Does Demography Explain the Civic Gap? • A Different Explanation: A Spirit of Adventurous Experiment: Civic Life in the Twin Cities

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