Civility assists a frictionless society but works best without coercive force

When Rudolf Giuliani was mayor of New York in the 1990s, he introduced "Quality of Life" initiatives designed to instil a sense of civility in the city. As Mayor Giuliani put it: "A decent society is a society of civility". The initiative targetted petty property crimes like vandalism (arrests went up ten-fold) and graffiti spraying (over 20 million square feet of graffiti were removed from public spaces), as well as things like noise, litter, jaywalking, service standards of taxi drivers and the zoning of anti-social businesses like sex shops (Times Square, for example, was purged of its seamy side).

The New York initiative was an explicit attempt to put into practice what is known as the "Broken Windows" theory of crime. The basic insight of this theory is that neglect of minor incivilities in a neighbourhood tends to encourage more serious forms of antisocial behaviour. To tackle the big problems like crime, it is necessary to pay attention to the little issues. To its supporters the theory appears to have worked in New York with a reduction of serious crime of over 60 per cent since 1993 (pdf file, 81Kb).

Whether or not the "Broken Windows" theory explains Giuliani's success in reducing crime in New York (which some criminologists dispute), we can all presumably agree with the Mayor that the quality of social life depends on the strength of a culture of civility.

But what is civility really all about? From our review of an extensive academic literature, and from talking with ordinary Australians in focus groups, we suggest that civility should be understood as being made up of three elements.

The first is that civility involves a demonstration of respect for others. At the age of 16, George Washington set down his "110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation". His first rule was: 'Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present'. This emphasis on respecting others is still central to the idea of civility today. Yale Professor of Law Stephen Carter, for example, defines civility as "An attitude of respect, even love, for our fellow citizens", and Calhoun argues that civility involves communicating an attitude of respect towards others.

The second element is that civility relates to public behaviour in that it governs relations between people who may not know each other. As philosophy professor Michael Meyer notes, "Civility is primarily a stance taken towards strangers". And, Carter says it "equips us for everyday life with strangers ... we need neither love them nor hate them in order to be civil towards them".

It is the fact that civility requires us to show respect for people we do not know that invests it with a strong moral quality. Consideration shown to friends and family may derive from empathy or affection, and it is likely to be reinforced by the knowledge that we shall have to interact with them again in the future. Civility towards strangers, however, requires that we behave in certain ways towards people who may mean nothing to us, and whom we are unlikely ever to encounter again. This Good Samaritan ethic means that civility does not rest upon a concern or sympathy towards specific others but is rather the product of a generalised empathy which we feel we owe to all who share society with us.

The third element of civility is what Carter calls "sacrifice", or what might less dramatically be referred to as self-regulation. Civility involves holding back in the pursuit of one's own immediate self-interest - we desist from doing what would be most pleasing to us for the sake of harmonious relations with strangers. Civility means doing the right thing. As George Washington noted in the last of his 110 rules of civility, "Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience".

These three elements of civility - respect, relations with strangers, and self-regulation - together lead us to a definition of what it is we are talking about. Civility is behaviour in public that demonstrates respect for others and which entails curtailing one's own immediate self-interest when appropriate.

Defined in this way, civility is clearly a demanding public virtue. To be prepared to sacrifice one's own self-interest out of respect for people one has never met is a big ask.

But why does civility really matter? Our concern with such things as manners and etiquette might be thought rather quaint or archaic in this post-modern age, so why does the issue of civility warrant our attention?

Edward Shils notes that civility is important because "there is not enough good nature or temperamental amiability in any society to permit it to dispense with good manners ... Good manners repress the expression of ill nature". In other words, we need people to be civil to each other if social life is to function efficiently and with a minimum of unnecessary conflict and disruption.

Another way of expressing this idea is to say that civility has a significant role to play in lowering "transaction costs". Economist Wolfgang Kasper explains that transaction costs are "the petty frictions in the humdrum business of daily life, the efforts and risks of learning and co-ordinating daily pursuits".

Civility facilitates exchanges between individuals, particularly strangers, because it creates a clear set of rules of interaction between them and therefore establishes a high degree of predictability. This reduces friction and potential conflict, and expands "social capital". A spirit of mutual cooperation and "give-and-take" enables us to get more done more efficiently than when people have to be monitored, regulated or coerced.

Civility is what stands between us and the increasing use of coercion by the state. John Rawls argues that if "liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another". This is true by definition, for different individuals will always want and desire different and incompatible things and their unfettered pursuit of their own objectives will inevitably bring them into conflict.

The question, therefore, is how (as well as how far) individual liberties are to be restricted or restrained. In the end, this will either be done by external political agencies of the state, or it will be achieved through enlightened self-regulation of individuals. As Edmund Burke recognised back in 1791: "Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their own disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites".

In liberal-democratic capitalist societies, individuals may pursue their own self-interest through two spheres of power: the market economy and the political system. Both offer ways of aggregating individual interests into collectively-binding outcomes but, as Friedrich Hayek explained, the market is in principle much more flexible and responsive than even the most democratic and participatory of governments. This is because markets transmit and register millions of people's changing preferences every minute of every day through shifting price signals.

For a market system to work, the pursuit of naked self-interest has to be limited. All players must respect the rules, and all need to act respectfully towards each other and to recognise the obligations they incur to one another. As the wave of corporate collapses and stockmarket losses following the disclosure of the Enron fraud in the US demonstrated, unrestrained use of market power can lead to levels of fraud and exploitation that can threaten the prosperity and functioning of the whole capitalist system. Francis Fukuyama argues this is why trust is important for the functioning of markets. As traders on the London Stock Exchange used to claim with pride, "My word is my bond".

The market system is of course subject to formal controls and regulation, but markets work best when regulation is internalised. Each time some new abuse of power occurs, formal controls are increased and external regulations are tightened. Over time, individual autonomy is eaten away and the scope for enterprise and innovation gets whittled down as bureaucratic power extends to cover ever-increasing areas of activity.

The same applies in other aspects of life as well. For example, in June 2002 the Victorian Government acted to curb what the press has begun to call "Ugly Parent Syndrome" - the increasing use of bad language and even physical aggression displayed by parents watching their children participating in junior sporting events. The state government announced that it was introducing an official code of practice, which parents would be required to endorse as a condition of their children taking part in sporting events in the state. On one level, we might wish to applaud the Victorian Premier for taking action to maintain public standards of civility - but there is clear cause for concern when norms of civility erode to a point where formal rules have to be imposed by governmental authority.

Liberals have always been skeptical about the use of government control and regulation to resolve social problems. But the ever-rising tide of legislation and regulation in both economy and society can only be stemmed if individuals recognise and understand the need to restrain their own behaviour. The decline of civility does not only mean that life becomes less pleasant and more boorish; it also means that individual liberties themselves get threatened as the shadow of state power falls over an ever-wider range of public activities.