Paper presented to the Political Studies Association Conference 2008 Swansea, 1 st – 3rd April Reinvigorating the Civic: Searching for a Rationale for our Research Programme Sarah Cotterill 1 , Liz Richardson 1 Gerry Stoker 2 , Corinne Wales 2 1 Institute for Political and Economic Governance, University of Manchester 2 Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, University of Southampton Comments welcome. Please address to Liz Richardson liz.richardson@manchester.ac.uk Copyright PSA 2008