Citizenship and Civic Life in the 21^st Century

What is citizenship?

Writing exercise 1

What did you write about? How did you define citizenship?

Citizenship as a codified but evolving SET OF RELATIONSHIPS mediating between people and states, state-like entities

enumerating the rights and duties of each

a relation between a “STATE” and a CIVIL SOCIETY

CIVIL SOCIETY

The non-state realm, it’s where you live!

Voluntary with some formally organized aspects, entities

Like what?

Churches, voluntary groups, civic organizations, interest groups

Social movement organizations, unions

Flatbush Unity Gardens

Source: http://scurvytunes.blogspot.com/2012/11/lilley-et-al-on-catastrophism.html - http://scurvytunes.blogspot.com/2012/11/lilley-et-al-on-catastrophism.html

So, back to citizenship…

What are some of the things you mentioned in your answer to the writing exercise?

Citizenship is complex, multi-faceted

It is BOTH a legal category/status

AND

A set of PRACTICES, HABITS, BEHAVIORS, DISPOSITIONS

e.g., “active citizenship”

Who belongs? What rights, privileges, duties come with citizenship?

This has evolved over time

In relation to ideas about the proper form of government authority

state power

participation

representation

This Week’s Reading

David Held

Held, David. 1995. “Stories of Democracies Old and New.” Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Democracy

American tend to equate Democracy with

“Liberal representative democracy”

coupled with a capitalist economic system**

“The end of history” (Hegel, Fukayama)

i.e., the only workable system long-term, the one that all societies are working towards, would choose if they had the chance

BUT

1. Democracy, even liberal democracy, is not a singular, unitary phenomenon

There are “distinctive liberal traditions which embody quite different conceptions from each other of the individual agent, of autonomy, of the rights and duties of subjects, and of the proper nature and form of community” (4, ¶1).

2. “celebratory” notions of democracy do not take the tensions between

“the liberal preoccupation (emphasis added) with INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS and ‘frontiers of FREEDOM’…

and

the DEMOCRATIC concern with the REGULATION of INDIVIDUAL and COLLECTIVE ACTION, that is, for PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY” (4,¶1)

3. also need to consider international (and historic) context

how forms of “liberal democracy” have

“crystallized at the intersection of national and international forces which have profoundly affected their nature and efficacy”

“meaning of democracy in the context of the progressive enmeshment of states and societies in regional and global networks” (4, ¶1)

Models of Democracy

1. Classical democracy

especially in Ancient Greece

Mode: face-to-face discussion and direct participation in decision-making

Today, theorists often call this

“Civic Republicanism”

Also note commonalities with:

direct democracy (e.g. Switzerland)

deliberative democracy (Jane Mansbridge, Jurgen Habermas)

participative democracy

As Held points out most theorists see this mode as dependent upon a few conditions

a. scale

size of republic

can only practically function at level of community, city-state

b. exclusion

The fact is that Ancient Greece allowed only “citizens” - educated, privileged men to participate and their participation was made possible by the subjugation of others

large slave population, manual laborers, and women

these groups had no role whatsoever in the governance of the polity

c. the cultivation of “civic virtue”

Citizens were educated and socialized to seek the common good, to subjugate their own interest to the greater good of the republic

2. Modern representative democracy

Mode: elected representatives “represent” and “aggregate” interests

Interests (factions) “compete” and the “common good” is attained through this competition

a. self interest is elevated to a “virtue”

with competition and representation providing the mechanisms through which this virtue is channeled

3. Marxist democracy

Marx and Engels criticize liberal “representative” democracy

They called this “bourgeois” democracy because of its relation to the economic system of capitalism;

Capitalism creates such vast economic inequality that political equality is impossible;

Only the interests of the ownership class are represented in “representative democracies”

Mode:

Representation at the lowest level of community where participation is open to all

They elect delegates to represent them at higher and higher levels

Pyramid structure

Source: Wisconsin Conservation Congress

Lenin

need vanguard, leadership class to attain democratic representation of the proletariat

Democratic Centralism

Political party also has pyramid structure to govern

Translate the wishes of the proletariat (the majority? all?) into public policy

Now what? Discussion Questions

Think about:

the conditions that gave rise to/supported civic republicanism in Ancient Greece

and liberal representative democracy in the US

How are the conditions we face as citizens today different from Ancient Greece?

The Founding Era of the US?

***What kind of democracy should we aspire to given the conditions we face today?