The Civic Bond: Friendship as Democracy’s Essential Thread

With over two decades of experience in the nonprofit sector, Venu Gupta has learned that key to building a strong democracy is strong connections—and, more specifically, strong friendships. Gathering in Support of Democracy is a recurring column exploring the essential connections between gathering, community, and democracy building.

Democracy encompasses more than voting, but sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what “more” is. We often use civic engagement to describe what we mean, but where does that begin or end?

For me, civic engagement begins with friendship. The Survey Center on American Life wrote that “the shrinking of our friend groups is not an individual tragedy, but a collective one,” following a 2021 survey that showed a steep decline in close friendships for those surveyed. That is because friendship is, among other things, a vital aspect of civic life—our democracy rests on our capacity to build and sustain relationships across big and small differences.

Here we’ll explore how friendship, which we often think of as entirely personal, actually serves as the essential thread that holds our democratic fabric together.

Learning from Aristotle and Hannah Arendt

The idea that friendship has political significance goes back thousands of years. Aristotle identified three types of friendships: those based on utility, those based on pleasure, and those based on virtue or excellence. He considered the last type most important for civic life.

For Aristotle, a healthy political community couldn’t exist without philia—a type of civic friendship.

Hannah Arendt, a German American historian and philosopher who fled Nazi Germany, also thought deeply about what makes democracy possible. A key part of Arendt’s thinking on this, as described in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, was that “the only truly political ties are those of civic friendship and solidarity, since they make political demands and preserve reference to the world.”

Democracy needs us to maintain relationships with people who think differently—not to abandon our values, but to keep our thinking grounded in a complex reality that none of us can fully see alone.

Democracy is about the quality of relationships people have with each other. However, many of us don’t tend to think of ourselves as connected to the rest of the people in the country by bonds of friendship. Especially not now—and especially not in the United States.

But is this, in fact, the problem?

We may recognize some special obligations to our broader community, but rarely in the frame of friendship. That may be what we’re missing—our political community is fundamentally relational, not just procedural. And that relationality, Arendt saw, is strongest when friendship depends on difference, not sameness. She discussed allowing “one’s imagination to go visiting,” to put oneself in the place of another and see the world from a different standpoint.

It’s easy to see why totalitarian governments would want to destroy the ability of people to see things from different perspectives and come up with a shared reality. Totalitarian governments want us to believe that there is only “one” truth: theirs. Agreement on a different kind of shared reality threatens this.

According to Arendt, democracy needs us to maintain relationships with people who think differently—not to abandon our values, but to keep our thinking grounded in a complex reality that none of us can fully see alone.

Bowling Alone and Missing Middle Rings

Most of us know instinctively that having friends who aren’t exactly like us is important. Despite this, civic friendships have become rarer. Why has this happened?

Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community points to two things: the decline of social capital and missing “middle-ring relationships”—connections beyond our immediate family (inner ring) and close friends but closer than complete strangers (outer ring).

The most prosperous communities are those that have invested in shared public goods—libraries, parks, schools—that bring diverse people together regularly.

For Putnam, social capital—a network of relationships built on trust, particular norms, and civic engagement—is a critical part of a functioning society. In a more modern sense, social capital consists of the benefits an individual or group can gain through their connections.

When it comes to social capital, Putnam uses the metaphor of decreasing bowling league participation to illustrate that in-person socializing has been on the decline since the 1950s. And since the 1970s, he contends, the sharp decrease in social capital has primarily been caused by generational change: the rise of television, suburban sprawl, and growing financial pressures. As younger generations with different social habits and values have been increasingly influenced by private entertainment rather than community participation, highly civically engaged generations have slowly been replaced.

Putnam’s bowling metaphor still makes sense to me and is even more true post-Facebook and post-COVID-19 pandemic. Often, we don’t even do things near each other anymore. I see this in my 14-year-old son and his friends who, when given the opportunity to do things in person and together, opt to “hang out” via screens or online instead.

Aside from declining social capital, what’s most damaged in our civic landscape is what Putnam calls the “middle-ring relationships.” Without the middle ring, there is a real imbalance that has led to economic and political imbalance. As Putnam wrote, the middle ring used to be “the glue of American democracy—the PTA [Parent Teacher Association] meeting, the coffee shop, the church, and the bowling league.”

Bonding Versus Bridging

Think about your own social circles. Most of us have “bonding” relationships with people who are similar to us. It’s the “bridging” relationships across difference that are harder to create and maintain—at least for me.

Since the 1970s…the sharp decrease in social capital has primarily been caused by generational change: the rise of television, suburban sprawl, and growing financial pressures.

Both kinds of relationships are necessary, but bridging—making connections across different groups—is especially important for democracy. In fact, I sometimes wonder if all the time I spend organizing and protesting would be more effectively spent building bridging relationships.

Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together provides compelling evidence for why bridging relationships matter economically, as well as democratically. She documents how “zero-sum thinking”—the belief that progress for one group comes at the expense of another—has led to policies that ultimately harm everyone, and how segregation undermines the physical spaces necessary for democratic friendship. When communities shut down public goods (like swimming pools, as exemplified in McGhee’s book), rather than share them across racial lines, everyone loses access to these vital gathering spaces that foster civic friendships.

Spaces for Democratic Friendship

One of the most powerful aspects of friendship is that it naturally resists authoritarianism. True friendships emerge horizontally between people who recognize each other as equals. When we build genuine friendships, especially across differences, we create relationships that inherently oppose hierarchical power.

So, how do we rebuild these essential connections in our current environment?

As McGhee points out, the most prosperous communities are those that have invested in shared public goods—libraries, parks, schools—that bring diverse people together regularly.

Not surprisingly, democratic friendship emerges when people gather while honoring differences. This requires intention and practice and flourishes when people feel both that they belong and that they are challenged.

When I’m calling around to see who I can persuade to go to a protest with me on a Saturday, when it’s supposed to rain, I’m reminded that democracy becomes real in these personal connections. The path forward requires making democracy personal again—by recognizing that democratic life begins with how we relate to each other.

It grows when we understand that my wellbeing connects to yours, that we need shared public goods, and that friendship across differences strengthens—rather than threatens—us all.

I’d love to hear from you. Do you have the opportunity to create democratic friendships? And, more importantly, do you have the emotional energy to forge friendships around differences?

In future columns, we’ll explore different dimensions of gathering and democratic practice—from community organizing techniques to institutional transformation. But it all begins here, with friendships as both a means and an outcome of democratic life.