In this paper, the author provides a buffet of ideas to make a coherent case for a democracy in which citizens can be truly sovereign by becoming the agents of their own destiny. He traces the history of various trends which threaten the development of civic agency: technocracy, specialism, and a consumer-view of the citizen, among others. He also draws on his experience in the Obama campaign to explain how even organizations that have benefited from grassroots civic agency have a tendency to relapse into the habit of simply mobilizing the troops to push predetermined issue agendas. But he also identifies signs of a new civic movement already impacting the fields of development, public health, resource management, climate change, and education reform. He concludes by presenting a modular, visual comparison of three frameworks for civic engagement: distributive justice, communitarian, and civic agency. (Contains 41 endnotes.)