In Publics in Action, Christopher Kutz looks at how people should and do come together to create their shared institutions, and the lessons we can learn from one another. He argues that a healthy, dynamic public takes itself seriously as a subject of action, not just the passive beneficiary of a state institution. Kutz builds the book around an extended metaphor: we should understand ourselves as a public that improvises: listening to each other as we riff off shared standards and so creating something new, responsive to the scene and the moment.

Publics in Action makes use of the author's extensive personal experience in public institutions, and in democracies around the world, with a particular focus on the US, represented primarily by California — arguably the world's most successful multi-cultural democracy — as well as France, and Norway, each of which provides instructive models of healthy publics in action (and some examples of dysfunction). 

The author was a Townsend Fellow in 2019-20.