For next set of national campaign issues, think locally

• Family-driven schools - In many places, school administrators are giving citizens a greater role in the school system, mobilizing them to grapple with budget and redistricting decisions, address issues of race, and help teachers ensure that no child is being left behind. As parents gain a greater foothold in the classroom, arguments about how students should be tested, or how much funding schools should receive, lead to a larger question: How can citizens and educators work together?

Candidates may capitalize on this shift, and push it even further, by arguing for "family-driven" or "parent-directed schools." They may promise voters a more permanent, official role in school decision-making, and accuse their opponents of supporting the status quo.

The hopes and fears people have about their neighborhoods and schools may seem very distant from Washington. But smart candidates speak to what people care about, and these three issues suggest new ways of appealing to voters and new possibilities for federal policy. Furthermore, concerns about land use, budgets, and education are most evident in the demographic that both major parties are desperate to reach: middle-class homeowners with children. There is also a common theme to all three: more powerful public roles for ordinary people. Power may shift even more toward citizens as candidates find that public engagement efforts will help them get elected. On the other hand, some candidates may only pay lip service to these ideas, using them to demonize developers, superintendents, and lobbyists without actually adopting new ways of governing. And making these issues 'political' may also make it harder to mobilize citizens across party lines.

For better or worse, public officials have to deal with the changing relationship between citizens and government, both in government and on the campaign trail.

"When you get down to it, what we're really talking about is whether the current form of representative government is obsolete," says Steve Burkholder, mayor of Lakewood, Colo. "We seem to be moving toward a different kind of system, in which working directly with citizens may be just as important as representing their interests."

Though Burkholder's claim seems futuristic, the impulses behind these trends are not new. People have always cared about what their neighborhoods look like, where their tax contributions are going, and how their children are being educated. The change is simply that citizens have much greater opportunities to exert influence in these areas, and they are jumping in with both feet. The next generation of campaign issues may emerge from these new ways of giving people what they want.

• Matt Leighninger, a senior associate for the Study Circles Resource Center, has spent a decade working to help US communities involve citizens in discussions on public issues.

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