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 mobilised 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 institutionalised 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 organisational programmes, this ephemeral aspect of civic and
voter education is likely to remain dominant.
