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This article offers a view of active citizenship in an administrative context. It argues that the classic features of active citizenship-authoritative action, public interest focus, practical wisdom, and community can be enacted in an agency setting, when community people join with professional administrators in exercising a measure of administrative discretion. Using a framework developed from the theories of Anthony Giddens, it is suggested that such interaction between lay citizens and administrators, constrained and enabled by bureaucratic rules and resources, constitutes a polis, a public space in which members act together in order to achieve limited ends and to lead a virtuous life. The federal Community Health Center program in the Bureau of Health Care Delivery and Assistance, U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, is offered as an illustration.
Camilla Stivers (Tue,) studied this question.