The systems that are established for civic or especially voter education programmes are invariably ephemeral. They may have at their core a group of educators, or even one or two stable institutions, but many people and resources will have been mobilized for the programme. These people will return to other responsibilities and the resources will be redeployed or completely depleted.
While civic education programmes that are institutionalized will, by definition, have built in system learning, programmes that are of this more ephemeral and periodic nature require special procedures to be put in place to ensure that as little as possible is lost to the next programme. As education linked to elections and to other democratic events is likely to be the predominant nature of national campaigns or organizational programmes, this ephemeral aspect of civic and voter education is likely to remain dominant.
