Civil society is increasingly signalling virtue over earning it through engagement and action

Every day, we see individuals and organisations in civil society publicly declaring what they stand for, signalling what their purpose – their reason for existence – is. Social justice. Climate change. Gender equality. Democracy.

But this raises a key question: Does simply stating what we stand for actually make us virtuous in the civic sense?

The rise of signalling

Civil society today speaks the language of virtue more fluently than ever before. Organisations and individuals alike publicly align themselves with political and social justice causes, projecting firm moral positions and commitments. Yet, in many contexts, this proliferation of civil society engagement in moral and political causes has not translated into deeper trust, legitimacy or meaningful societal transformation. This raises a more difficult question: whether what is being cultivated is civic virtue itself, or merely its performance?

Proclamations in support of political and social justice causes are more often than not a complex form of identity signalling. It may signal which political group, community or orientation one belongs to. It may signal which religion or religious community one belongs to, or a mindset – whether alternative, new age, old-school, new school – within which one’s identity is located. It may signal the culture or class one stems from or locates oneself within. It may signal gender or sexual orientation, or positions one adopts on them. It may also reveal the deep – or shallow – belief structures that one inhabits in respect of any of these.

In simpler terms, what is often being signalled is status and virtue. By status, I mean the standing one claims in relation to others, and by virtue I mean the moral worth or goodness one attributes to oneself. This signalling can be performed by both individuals and organisations alike.

At a personal level, identities are multi-level and relational. Depending on whom we are interacting with we adopt different roles; parent-child, leader-subordinate, friend-foe, frenemy, and the like. Our identities change with these interactions.

Curiously, the same is true of organisations. The identities they signal, which are communicated through their statements of purpose, differ depending on which audience they are interacting with. As far back as 1965, Charles Warriner noted that organisations’ espoused purposes are “essentially inconsistent with… the actual goals of an organization… fictions produced by an organization to account for, explain, or rationalize its existence to particular audiences”.

My assertion is that this is not just the case with businesses in the private sector, as might be expected, but it is also the case with civil society itself. That is, what they claim to be – what identity they assert – through their statements of purpose, are variable and contingent. They depend on which audience they are interacting with, and the reason they are interacting with that audience.

These statements of purpose are expressed through the causes and political positions civil society organisations support and adopt. They signal organisational identity and the virtues that undergird it. This grants them status, which is maintained by metrics and visibility. In turn, this projection of identity, status and virtue – supported by metrics and visibility – is key to how civil society organisations secure funding.

What civic virtue actually is — and what it isn’t

Civic virtue, however, is something entirely different. Civic virtue is not about what you signal about yourself – i.e. to maintain your identity or idea about yourself – it is what others attribute to you by observing your actions and engaging with you. It is relational and not individual. This is true of individuals and organisations.

At an individual level, the narratives and stories one tells about oneself often differ from the stories others tell about you. Similarly, the narratives and stories civil society organisations convey about themselves often differ from the stories that others tell about them. Common beneficiary feedback on civil society organisations and their activities is revealing.

One of the phrases that comes to mind – which I’ve heard repeatedly over the years – is that workshop participants are experiencing “workshop fatigue”. That communities and the various contexts (e.g. organisations, sectors) that civil society organisations are working in have grown tired of endlessly participating in workshops, while experiencing little tangible transformative action on the ground, which is their primary concern and reason for attending.

Another phrase I’ve often heard is that civil society organisations “parachute in” to their communities and organisational contexts, run a project for a short period – typically two to three years – before moving on to the next intervention site, often leaving behind little continuity. Their initiatives often fizzle out as a result and beneficiaries are left wondering why their hopes for transformation of their material conditions are insufficiently met at best – or left dashed at worst.

Yet another often used phrase – which I’ve heard in various forms – can be captured in the phrase that refers to civil society interventions as “plug-and-play”. This describes civil society “solutions” that are dislocated from contextual realities and their particularities. These solutions are typically prepared by “experts” in boardrooms far afield, with the expectation that they will work across different local, socio-cultural and geographic contexts without the need for adaptation.

The point is that the way a person or organisation sees themselves can often differ substantially from the way others do. This brings us back to the question of civic virtue. Civic virtue is a virtue that Aristotle identified as key to ensuring that democratic spaces of political deliberation and action – which the ancient Greeks called the “polis” – function effectively in service of the public good. It is the virtue that the members of the polis grant to an actor within the polis who possesses “practical wisdom”.

This is not just the knowledge of the world and the ability to do things in the world – it is the ability to discern what is just and in the greater interests of the public and general good. The ancient Greeks called this kind of knowledge “phronesis”.

Civic virtue entails both: (1) embodying one’s own morality and virtues when engaging in the polis and daily life, and (2) being able to constructively navigate differences in moral and political positions within the polis. It requires navigating the complexities of these inherent tensions in a manner that advances the general and public good by mobilising practical wisdom.

When this is achieved in a manner that is visibly acknowledged and experienced by one’s peers in the political space of action, civic virtue accrues to you. Civic virtue is hence not something that can be declared or signalled, but something that must be earned relationally through action within the public realm. It is foundational to democratic leadership.

Liberalism, morality and civic virtue

In his book and series of lectures on Justice, Michael Sandel demonstrates how liberal moral philosophers – with good intentions – made great efforts to move beyond this Aristotelian perspective, arguing that personal morality should not be deliberated upon within the polis.

This is why liberal democracy has – over the past decades – come to prize and emphasise secularity, eschewing the imposition of religious beliefs and views, for example, in the political and public realms. They viewed these as irreconcilable positions that would only polarise the polis and damage the pluralism that it requires to function in service of the public good.

In the liberal view, we should occupy the political realm as purely abstract equals occupying a level playing field and deliberate from that basis – devoid of class, morality or social position – so that we make decisions that are truly in the public interest and good. In this conception nobody can escape the consequences of their decision-making because they are all equal, albeit in the abstract.

Sandel, however, takes a different view. He invokes Alasdair MacIntyre’s work in After Virtue, which emphasises that we are storytelling beings and as such are socially and relationally situated and cannot enter the public realm as beings divorced from our own morality.

Morality is bound up with what makes us communal beings, located within community, having a sense of belonging within it, and possessing a narrative arc of our lives – our personal story. Morality cannot be excised from us, because our sense of communal belonging and personal story is bound up with it. In this conception, we cannot – in reality – abstract ourselves into neutral arbiters of the public good as the liberal perspective requires.

Sandel convincingly argues that acquiring civic virtue requires holding space for both our own personal morality and that of others, and sincerely and respectfully helping determine what works best for the public good. More than that, he states that failing to do so might prove dangerous when politics avoids “substantive moral engagement”, because it impoverishes civic life and opens the door to “narrow, intolerant moralisms” that reside at the extremes.

This perspective is about attending to both one’s own morality and that of others in a spirit that recognises the inherent value of plurality between moral positions, and even beyond moral positions. A greater diversity of perspectives also means a greater capacity for ideation and innovation, enabling more creativity in how we respond to our collective challenges.

This in turn requires us to ask deep questions about how we mobilise our personal morality in the space of action. Do we mobilise it in a complex manner, listening sincerely to the moral positions of others, putting ourselves in their shoes and balancing our own morality with that of whom we are engaging with? Or do we impose our own morality unconditionally and unequivocally?

Acting with — or acting over?

Remaining open to the exchange of ideas and moral positions of those whom you are organising with – sincerely and not performatively – is key to acquiring civic virtue. Put another way, civic virtue lies at the heart of whether you are recognised as fit to lead within the polis. This form of leadership is about leading with, not leading over.

This critique of liberal reluctance to engage in moral plurality can also be brought to bear on civil society organisations.

At its core, this is a question of modes of engagement and organising. By this, I mean the ways in which civil society actors relate to communities and structure their interventions – whether they position themselves as participants working with others in the space of public action, or as external actors acting over them.

The language and metrics of the broader civil society apparatus is very revealing in this respect.

Both funders and civil society organisations place great emphasis on words such as “beneficiaries”, “impact”, “business sustainability”, “theory of change”, “footprint”, “scale-ability” and “institution-building” activities such as civic education and awareness programmes.

The use of such terminology reveals what Sandel would call a deeper implication that goes undetected in the widespread deployment of such language. It positions the objects of the work of civil society organisations not as stakeholders to be acting with, but rather as beneficiaries to be acting over.

Selection of causes and misalignment with the civics

Well-intentioned as the frameworks that rely on the deployment of this terminology may be, they are inherently misdirected because they do not broker civic virtue. Instead, they establish and maintain a relationship that treats the acting agency as separate from the communities and society on whose behalf they are acting.

In this arrangement, civil society organisations are simply the intermediaries through which material benefits and advocacy services are delivered – top-down – to society. Civil society organisations become a mechanism for “trickling down” billionaire-funded material relief and advocacy support to the dispossessed, marginal, needy and neglected in society.

Alternatively, they advocate for global change causes such as conservation, climate change and sustainable development – or social causes such as misogyny, public health, child poverty, nutrition and so forth.

These are causes that they themselves decide to prioritise as critical to the general good. Their choices are typically either based on research – or they are causes tied to funding streams that reflect the philanthropic preferences of their donors and foundations.

There is nothing inherently problematic with these causes being championed for and supported in this manner. That is; where the civil society apparatus and the organisations that constitute it are the benefactors and society and communities are the beneficiaries of it.

However, by adopting this mode of engagement and organising civil society organisations cease to be engaged in a meaningful way with the cultivation of the civics – which requires deliberating and debating ideas and navigating moral pluralism in service of the public good – and which in turn is central to enabling the expression of collective will and power.

They do not engage in modes that cultivate their own civic virtue and – through that – earn their leadership positions within the spaces of civic deliberation and action. Instead, their position in these spaces is granted to them by virtue of being funded to be there.

Funder selection, metrics and misalignment with the civics

How funders identify people and organisations they will fund is rarely based on earned civic virtue. Instead, it is based on how they present themselves. This is primarily based on the stories they tell about themselves, the narratives they put out in their media and communications, and the metrics they present to funders to demonstrate relevance.

The metrics imposed by the civil society apparatus – which civil society organisations must adhere to if they desire to be funded by the major conduits of funding in this apparatus – further reinforce this dislocation of civil society from the space of action. Civil society organisations spend an inordinate amount of time and money justifying their existence through these metrics. There is also a fair amount of “gaming” these metrics, as civil society organisations find themselves in a competitive, survivalist terrain determined by metrics.

In their desperation to demonstrate impact, footprint, beneficiary-reach and institution-building they convene countless stakeholder workshops, which in turn leads to “workshop fatigue”.

For the very same reason they will develop replicable – “plug-and-play” – solutions that they believe can demonstrate that they can achieve scale. These become projects that are “parachuted in” to communities and societies, often withering away after funding cycles end.

Instead of designing their projects to be responsive to the specific contextual and situational needs of the communities and societies they work in, they chase impact metrics and don’t do the hard work of acquiring civic virtue as organisations whose mandates emerge from being embedded within the communities and societies they work in.

The dominant modes of the broader civil society apparatus – of acting over, cause selection, funder selection and the metrics that drive it – and the status acquired through such modes, does not broker civic virtue.

It is more of an individualist than a collectivist approach towards organising within the public realm. It is typically more about oneself – whether we speak of an individual or an organisation – than it is about one’s broader role as situated in community and the public realm. It asserts identity and projects status rather than pursuing belonging and genuine civic virtue.

There are notable exceptions of course – in SA, organisations that broker grassroots support by emerging from grassroots communities (e.g. Abahlahi BaseMjondolo), or broker support through genuine acquisition of civic virtue (e.g. Shack Dwellers International, or Organisation for Undoing Tax Abuse) – but by and large the dominant mode and logics by which civil society writ large operates, is devoid of this kind of societal legitimacy.

Consequences: the vacuum

These dominant modes, now deeply embedded within civil society since the 1990s, have converged with devastating impact upon public life itself. Two key vectors through which this occurs have been identified here.

First, civil society does not directly engage with societal moral plurality. Instead, it bypasses it by pre-selecting causes and themes in a top-down manner

Second, the language, metrics, and norms around cause and project selection shape organisational behaviour in ways that undermine the ability of civil society organisations to earn civic virtue and the moral legitimacy that accompanies it.

Taken together, this results in a vacuum of: (1) moral engagement and (2) modes of engagement and organising that resemble the spirit of acting with. Civil society has receded from direct, meaningful engagement within the space of public deliberation and action because it is not focused on earning civic virtue.

Consequently, that space has been captured by moral absolutists and extremists of all persuasions – political, ultra-nationalist, religious, cultural, economic, racial, ethnic or cultural. They offer simplistic, black-and-white representations of moral challenges, polarising society and social reality itself. These individuals (typically political leaders) and organisations mobilise grievance, weakening societal bonds and capacity for collective action.

Here, civic virtue is not earned, but gained by default. This occurs because there is no willingness to engage with moral plurality and produce productive outcomes from that engagement.

Pluralism and difference are essential to generating creative new avenues for action that arise spontaneously out of debate and discussion. Action-based agendas that emerge in this way often host vast potential for disruption and real transformative change. They are essential for brokering collective action and exerting collective power that brings about structurally disruptive change.

The vacuum in the space of public action is a direct result of the failure of political leadership and civil society. They have both failed to prioritise earning civic virtue through doing the hard work of engaging with the plurality, heterogeneity and diversity of moral and ideological positions, perspectives and interests that democratic societies inherently possess, and require trusted leadership to successfully navigate.

This vacuum has been created and reinforced by the retreat of liberal and left-wing civil society organisations from engaging in modes of organising that broker power with communities and societies. In practice, their differences have blurred, as both have converged around modes of engagement that distance them from meaningful participation in spaces of public deliberation and action.

What needs to change

Pointing to the future, a serious rethinking and recasting of dominant modes of engagement and organising, and prevailing metrics, is required.

This in turn will require deeper reflection within civil society itself, specifically – on its positionality within the space of public deliberation and action. Does it see itself as embedded within the civics of a locality or country – or as an external actor separate from it, acting in parallel to it?

It is in this spirit that this critique of the status of the current day civil society apparatus and the organisations that constitute it is offered.

The harsh truth is that the prevailing civil society apparatus has broken the space of public action by assuming that the hard-earned civic virtue, inherited from age-old historical activist engagement in the polis, could be taken for granted instead of requiring continuous renewal.

What this points to is not simply a failure of strategy or design within civil society, but a deeper failure to cultivate civic virtue itself. We have come to believe that virtue can be declared, signalled and measured – rather than earned through the difficult work of engaging others in the shared space of public life.

The consequences of this are already visible. Where civic virtue is not earned, a vacuum emerges. And that vacuum does not remain empty for long. It is filled by those who claim certainty, who simplify complexity, and who mobilise division rather than hold space for difference.

If we are serious about renewing public life, then more of the same will not suffice. What is required is a fundamental rethinking of how we act: a shift from acting over to acting with, from projecting virtue to earning it, from occupying the space of public action to being recognised within it.

Civic virtue is not something we inherit from our intentions, our histories, or our affiliations. It is something that must be continually earned – through practice, through engagement, and through recognition by a diversity of others.

We did not lose this space overnight, and we will not reclaim it easily. But if we are to recover a public life capable of sustaining pluralism, difference, and collective action, then the task before us is clear: not to assert our virtue, but to prove it – together, in the only place it can be known – within the shared space of public deliberation and action.

We broke it, and we must fix it – because it is why we exist. It’s as simple as that. DM