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At 4:15 this coming Thursday afternoon, in a conference room somewhere in the bowels of Toronto's downtown convention centre, a session of the American Political Science Association will convene to discuss a new book by the U.S. political scientist Peter Alexander Meyers. The session is listed in the APSA online catalogue as: Author Meets Critics: Peter A. Meyers, CIVIC WAR AND THE CORRUPTION OF THE CITIZEN, University of Chicago Press, 2008 (3-29 Normative Political Theory). To give you some idea of the size and scope of this convention, Normative Political Theory is one of 49 divisions. The discussion of Meyers's book is one of 33 sessions devoted to that division alone. And don't get me started on theme panels. Other divisions include International Political Economy, International Collaboration, International Security, and for nostalgia buffs, The Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries. Canadian Politics is listed 49th among 49 divisions. It has only eight sessions, two of which are devoted to Canada-U.S. relations. Nuff said.

While it's obviously not the only thing on anybody's mind at this conference, the Meyers panel includes at least one very heavy hitter, Benjamin Barber, whose book Jihad vs. McWorld is one of the break-out hits of the globalization genre. Meyers (who teaches at the Sorbonne and is currently at Princeton) is in the midst of publishing a trilogy, of which Civic War is the first of what will amount to nothing less than a comprehensive theory of politics. To even begin to address the complexities of this stuff in a blog post is nuts, but one thing that I really like about the book and that points to huge problem in our politics is Meyers's insistence on the importance of civic engagement and the role of the citizen. To wit:

The hope and flaw of democracy is that it boils down, not to the will of the people, but to the judgment of the Citizen, which is to say the capacity of each person to size up a situation and pitch his or her energies one way or another. The list of impediments and constraints in this practice is as long as a lifetime. This book in its own eccentric way, urges engagement in your own life; lived as it is, this is almost bound to bring you to the position of the Citizen. For every day is something new. Thresholds for action are constantly shifting ground. In the weave of lives lived together with others, the power of the Citizen is as simple as it is unpredictable: Shall I let this pass or shall I stand against it? Is this abuse, this lie, this outrage, the one that will bring me into the streets or will I avert my eyes, my ears again, and close my door.

Michael Ignatieff ought to take this passage and pin it over his desk. To date, his leadership has been marked by a decided aversion to treating voters as Citizens. When he says that if he brings the government down it will be on a matter of principle not polls you've got to wonder what principle is he talking about. Since the last election, having been burned once by Stéphane Dion's green gobbledygook, the Grits haven't said word one as to how their approach to government would be a fundamental alternative to the Tories. They want you to vote for them because they are more competent, the party of Pearson, Trudeau, and Chrétien. And that's not going to do it. Voters long to be treated as Citizens, not subjects; Barack Obama proved that. This could be Ig's time. But the time it is a wastin'.