Critical Citizens Revisited: Chapter 110/22/2018 2:30 AM
Chapter 1
The puzzling phenomenon of critical citizens
The third wave of democratization represents a remarkable historical eraduring the late twentieth century. Human rights strengthened in all parts of the globe. Freedom Houseestimatethat the number of liberal democracies doubledfrom the early 1970s until 2000.[1]In subsequent years, however,progressslowed to a sluggish and uncertain pace.[2]It is premature and unduly pessimistic to predict that a ‘reverse’ wave or ‘democratic recession’ is occurring, as some observers suggest.[3]Yetsigns suggest that the world faces serious challenges.The multiple problems facing the process of democratization, always difficult, have been compounded in recent years by the global financial crisis generating worsening economic conditions, falling employment and wages, and the largest decline in world trade for eighty years.[4] Even before this downturn occurred, the U.N. documented enduring and deeply-entrenched poverty for the bottom billion in the least developed nations, raising doubts about whether the world can achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, as planned.[5] Moreover in many parts of the world, the challenges of reducing conflict, building sustainable peace, and strengthening the capacity of democratic governments, especially in fragile or post-crisis states, cannot be underestimated.[6]In this complex and difficult environment, it would be naïve to assume that the third wave era of democratization continues to advance at a steady pace. It has become even more vital to understand the conditions which underpin regime change, as well as the underlying processes leading towards the advance and consolidation of democratic governance.
An important issue arising from these contemporary developments concerns the state of public support for the principles and practices of democratic governance, where diversemarkerssuggest that all is not well. Admittedly, interpretations need to be cautious, avoidingunduly alarmist and ‘chicken little’ predictions ofdemocratic crisis. Indicators of this phenomenon from cross-national surveys are far from consistent, linear, or uniform; insteadlongitudinal trends in public opinion often fluctuate downwards erratically, like a drunken sailor stumbling downhill. Neverthelessan accumulating body of survey evidence suggeststhat over the yearscitizens in many established democracies have grown more distrustful of politicians, skeptical about governance institutions, and disillusioned with leaders in the public and private sectors, although simultaneously expressing strong support for democratic ideals.[7]A burgeoning body of cross-national dataelsewhere -- in Latin America as well as Post-Communist states, in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as Asia and the Middle East –suggests that around the globe many citizens share similar sentiments. This phenomenon can be understood as the rise of ‘critical citizens’, defined as those expressing considerable faith in democracy as the ideal form of government but skepticalabout the way that democratic governance works in practice. These tensions can be regarded positively for the health of democratic regimes, if the spread of democratic principles and aspirations around the world will eventually diffuse to greater public confidence and generalized trust in the workings of core representative institutions in democratic states.Critical citizens who aspire to democracy may also be a force for reform in the world, demanding that states with poor human rights records come to resemble democratic principles more fully. These tensions are more commonly regarded as dangerous, however, triggering alarm bells that prolonged and deep disenchantment with the performance of particular political leaders, lack of confidence with specific parties in government, and disillusionment and loss of trust in core representative institutions will eventually spread upwards to corrode faith in democracy itself, like dry rotfrom below, with the capacity toundermine support forfragile democratic states.
Diagnosingthe causes and consequences ofthe rise of critical citizensis important for many reasons. Ever since Almond and Verba, an extensive body of evidence has demonstrated how cultural attitudes influencedemocratic behavior, with the civic culture shapingwhy and how citizens choose to engage in public affairs.[8] Deeper reservoirs of political trust, feelings of political efficacy, and confidence in parties and legislatures are predicted to strengthenconventional activism, expressed typically through voting participation, party membership, and belonging to voluntary associations. Alternatively, disenchantment with political institutions and alienation with the regime is commonly expected to encouragemass protest: fostering contentious politics such as demonstrations and political strikes, support for reform movements, and even occasional outbreaks of radical violence.[9]The growth of critical citizens could also have manysignificant consequences forthe state’s capacity to govern effectively; Easton theorized that political trust affected the ability of the state to raise revenues, to gain public consent for public policies, to implement decisions, and to ensure voluntary compliance with its laws.[10] Good governance may also be undermined.[11] People may be more willing to engage in illegal acts, to cheat on their taxes, or to use bribery and corruption, and thus to undermine rule of law in fragile states, if they have little confidence in the integrity and legitimacy of their government and public officials.[12]
Ultimately, and perhaps most importantly,the growth of critical citizens may also potentially havesignificant consequences for democratic legitimacy, for political reform, and for regimestability. The trust and consent of citizens is essential forregime legitimacy, understood, in Seymour Martin Lipset words, as "the capacity of a political system to engender and maintain the belief that existing political institutions are the most appropriate and proper ones for the society."[13] Lack of legitimacy is likely to contribute towards pressures for either institutional reform or more radical social change. Any consequences for regime instability will probably be greatest in fragile multicultural communities, where secessionist movements and armed militia are challenging the nation-state in struggles for independence and self-governance. Congruence theory, developed by Eckstein,emphasizes that sustainable regimes,which outlast famine as well as feast, need to be founded upon people’s beliefs in legitimate authority.[14]Where the attitudes of citizens are congruent with the type of regime,then Eckstein claims that the conditions exist for durable and long-lasting institutions. Hence autocracies are thought to be more stable wheremost citizens accept the legitimacy of this form of rule. Democratic regimes are also regarded as sustainable where the public expresses general confidence in the core institutions of representative governance, including parties, parliaments and executives, where they participate through conventional channels, and where there is strong belief in the principles of democratic governance. Other theorists also argue that newer democratic regimes are founded upon unstable quicksand in places where public confidence in government is lacking;Nancy Bermeo suggests that if ordinary people are not willing to stand up and defend representative institutions when these are under threat, thenfragile democracies can be undermined.[15]Breakdown can occurfor diverse reasons, whetherdue to a military coup (such as in Thailand), the heady appeal of populist parties and the reassertion of executive power (as in Venezuela), thuggery, intimidation, and strong-man rule (as in Zimbabwe), or the more gradual erosion of human rights through a series of one-party manipulated electoral contests (as in Russia). For all these reasons, understanding issues of trust and confidence in governmentand support for democracy has been a perennial issue in political science, as well as a popular topic of concern among policymakers.
II: The idea of a civic culture
At least since Aristotle, political theorists have long been interested in understandingsystematic variations in political cultures among different societies. The empirical foundation for this body of comparative literaturewas created inThe Civic Culture by Almond and Verba (1963).[16]Previously a few other cross-national attitudinal surveys had been deployed, notably William Buchanan and Hadley Cantril’s 9-country How Nations See Each Other (1953), sponsored by UNESCO, sociological surveys of social stratification, and USIA surveys of attitudes towards international affairs.[17] The civic culture survey, conducted in 1959/60, laid the groundwork for the comparative study of public opinion and subsequent cross-national survey research as a distinctive sub-field in political science open to empirical investigation. This ground-breaking study presented an ambitious theory of cognitive and affective orientations among the mass population, developing concepts which remain central in contemporary political science.During the late-1950s and early-1960s, the theoretical impetusfor this work reflected contemporary concern to understand the underlying causes of regime instability, reflected in the historic rise of Nazi Germany and Italian fascism, and the collapse of democratic institutions in many newly independent African states emerging from colonial rule.[18]The central message emerging from The Civic Culture emphasized that political stability required congruence between culture and structure. The democratic public needed to be finely balanced in equilibriumbetween the dangers of either an excessively deferential, apathetic and disengaged citizenry, on the one hand, or an overly-agitated, disenchanted, and heated engagement, on the other. There was thus believed to be an optimal culture for stable democratic states, where active citizens checked the powerful, without succumbing to the destabilizing forces of either excessive deference or else excessive disaffection (see Figure 1.1).
[Figure 1.1 about here]
The idea that societies differed in their political culture was hardly novel; indeed it had been the subject of philosophical speculation for centuries, in classic works from Montesquieu to de Tocqueville. But one of the more radical aspects of the civic culture study was the way that support for the theory was derived from a path-breaking cross-national opinion survey, demonstrating that citizen’s orientations could be examined empirically. The studyanalyzed the mass publics in Mexico, the United States, Italy, Britain, and Germanyduring the late-1950s.Almond and Verba concluded that the United States (and to a lesser extent, Britain)exemplified the civic culture: “Respondents in the United States, compared with those in the other four nations, are very frequently exposed to politics. They report political discussion and involvement in political affairs, a sense of obligation to take an active part in the community, and a sense of competence to influence the government. They are frequently active members of voluntary associations. Furthermore, they tend to be affectively involved in the political system: they report emotional involvement during election campaigns, and they have a high degree of pride in the political system. And their attachment to the political system includes both generalized system affect as well as satisfaction with specific government performance.” [19] By contrast, Italy (and to a lesser extent, Mexico) exemplified an alienated political culture: “The picture of Italian political culture that has emerged from our data is one of relatively unrelieved political alienation and distrust. The Italians are particularly low in national pride, in moderate and open partisanship, in the acknowledgment of the obligation to take an active part in local community affairs, in the sense of competence to join with others in situations of political stress, in their choice of social forms of leisure activity, and in their confidence in the social environment.”[20] The question arising from contemporary developments is whether many political cultures have gradually edged closer to the Italian model during the half century since the original study was conducted, or whether democraticorientations remain alive and well in many parts of the world.
The Civic Culture served as the inspiration for a long series of cross-national public opinion surveys. Systematic surveys of social and political attitudesbased on representative samples of the general public originated in the late-1950s in the United States and Western Europe. Following trends in globalization, the spread of democracy, and the expansion of market research, the geographic scope of these surveys grew considerably inthe early-1980s and 1990s to covercitizens living in a wide range of states worldwide.[21] The seriesof datasets available to document time-series trends and cross-national comparisons includes the Euro-barometer and related EU surveys (which started in 1970), the European Election Study (1979), the European Values Survey and the World Values Survey (1981), the International Social Survey Programme (1985), the Global Barometers (1990 and various), the Comparative National Elections Project (1990), the European Voter and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (1995), the European Social Survey (2002), the Transatlantic Trends survey (2002), the Pew Global Attitudes project (2002), and the Gallup World Poll (2005). Many datasets are also available for detailed case-studies of trends in public opinion within particular countries, including the long series of academic national election studies and commercial public opinion polls.As the earliest academic voting studies,the American National Election Surveys are commonly regarded as canonical, not least because they now facilitate analysis of more than a half-century of public opinion trends.
Over the years, these survey resources have generated a substantial empirical research literature and extensive popular commentary examining the dynamics of public opinion over time, and allowing cross-national comparisons of cultures under diverse types of regimes and world regions. Despite the expansion in the research literature, there is little consensus about the most appropriate normative and empirical interpretation of theevidence, and even less agreement about the causes and consequences of any disaffection with politics. Commentators continue to debatewhetherthe availablesurvey indicators of public opinion reflect a relatively superficial and healthy skepticism about the performance of specific public sector agencies and the normal ups and downs in political popularity expected of any government, or alternatively whether they suggest more deep-rooted loss of trust in public officials,lack of faith aboutcore government institutions, and more fundamental doubts about democratic principles. Moreover it has not been established whether the rise of critical citizens in recent decades is due primarily to social developmentschanging the cultural values, social trust and civil skills of individual citizens (on the demand-side), coverage of public affairs by the news media (as the key intermediary agency), or a growing failure of government performance (on the supply-side).
To address these issues, a decade ago, I edited a volume, Critical Citizens.[22] This brought together a network of international scholars to consider the global state of public support for democratic governance in the late-twentieth century. David Easton’s seminal insightsprovided the classic starting point for the conceptual framework.[23]Drawing uponthese ideas,the book understood the concept of ‘political support’ broadly as a multidimensional phenomenon ranging from the most diffuse to the most specific levels. Hence thisnotion includes:
(i)The most general and fundamental feelings of citizens towards the national community, exemplified by feelings of national pride and identity;
(ii)Support for general regime principles, including approval of democratic values and ideals in democratic states;
(iii)Evaluations of the overall performance of the regime, exemplified by satisfaction with government;
(iv)Confidence in more specific types of political institutions, notably parties, parliaments and the courts; and
(v)Trust in particular government leaders, elected office-holders, and public officials, such as legislators, prime ministers, and presidents.
A wide range of survey indicators were scrutinized for evidence on each of these dimensions, including global, regional and national comparisons of public opinion from the 1960s until the mid-1990s. The collaborative volume concluded that citizens in many countries proved increasingly skeptical about the actual workings of the core institutions of representative democracy, notably political parties, parliaments, and governments. At the same time, however,national identities and public aspirations towards democratic ideals remained strong and universal.This complex syndrome, reflecting support for democratic principles but skeptical evaluations about democratic practices,was interpreted in the book as the rise of ‘critical citizens’, a phenomenon others have understood as ‘dissatisfied’ or ‘disenchanted’ democrats.[24] Themost common theoretical frameworksseek to explain this syndrome by emphasizing cultural shiftsamong citizens, whether changes in social capital (Putnam), the expansion in cognitive and civic skills associated with rising educational levels and societal modernization (Dalton), and/or generational shifts towards self-expression valuesin post-industrial societies(Inglehart and Welzel).[25]Neverthelessstrong challenges to these argumentshave emerged from a range of ‘supply-side’ theories, emphasizing the declining probity and standards of public life, the performance of the state, and the role of institutional structures.[26] It has proved far more difficult to arrive at an accepted consensus about the causes of this phenomenon, still less a clear understanding of potential consequences.It is thus timely to revisit some of the original questions raised by the earlier volume.
The theoretical framework
The first issue to be considered in this bookremainsdiagnostic: A decade later, and now with even broader coverage of the world, does updated survey evidence confirm the persistence of the critical citizen phenomenon in many countries? Have democratic aspirations remained strong and widespread, and has there been a significant erosion of public support for the performance of representative democracy? The second concern is analytical: how do we explain the critical citizen syndrome and thus the widespread popularity of democratic ideals and yet the growing skepticism about the performance of democratic institutions and officials? The lastquestion is aboutimpact: what are the systematic consequences of this phenomenon for political behavior, for the contemporary challenges of governance, and for regime stability? The conclusion summarizes the major findings about critical citizens and considers their broader meaning and implications.