How Civic is the Civic Culture? Explaining Community Participation Using the 2005 English Citizenship Survey
| Date | 01 June 2011 |
| Published date | 01 June 2011 |
| Author | Hanhua Liu,Edward Fieldhouse,Peter John |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00891.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
How Civic is the Civic Culture? Explaining
Community Participation Using the 2005 English
Citizenship Surveypost_891230..252
Peter John, Edward Fieldhouse and Hanhua Liu
University of Manchester
Governments increasingly seek to involve citizens in public policy and management, often appealing to their civic
virtue. But why do people participate in civic and community-based actions? Drawing on theories of interpersonal
behaviour, the article sets out four categories of citizen orientation that might influence participation: trust in
government institutions, moral motivations, neighbourhood social norms and neighbourhood affect.Using the core
sample component of the Home Office Citizenship Survey 2005, the analysis applies structural equation models
(SEMs) to identify and explain four types of citizen act: influencing institutions individually, collective civic,citizen
governance and community voluntarism. The results show that neighbourhood affect – havingpositive feelings about
the neighbourhood – has a positive effect on civic behaviour. Citizens with lowlevels of political trust are more likely
than others to engage in civic behaviour. Taking into account a range of socio-economic and other factors, there is
no significant effect of neighbourhood social norms and moral motivations on civic behaviour.
Keywords: political participation; community action; political trust
In spite of worries that citizen engagement is in terminal decline, large numbers of people
spend their leisure time carrying out a wide range of civic acts (Pattie et al., 2004). One
recent study calculated that about 9 per cent of the adult population of England participate
in a community forum or in a related aspect of citizen governance (John, 2009).In addition,
citizens frequently get involved in self-help initiatives to seek to make a difference in their
local communities (see Brannan et al., 2006; Richardson, 2008). All these activities have
increased in the unpropitious context of growing population mobility, longer working
hours, greater commuting times and a more nationally based mass media.
The potential for citizen mobilisation has not been lost on policy makers, both in the UK
and elsewhere (Fung, 2006). Official reports have recommended more active citizenship,
such as the Speaker’s Commission on Citizenship (1990) and, more recently, Lord
Goldsmith’s Citizenship Review (DCA, 2008). Politicians have promoted the notion of civic
virtue and have stressed the importance of moral values, with the work of Amitai Etzioni
(1993) being cited by Tony Blair (Blair, 1998). Governments have advocated more citizen
participation, proposing incentives such as a lottery ticket for turning out to vote in one
proposal (CLG, 2007) or simply asking citizens to do more (Lowndes et al., 2006). The
Conservative party’s 2010 Election Manifesto titled ‘Invitation to Join the Government of
Britain’ set out a vision for the‘Big Society’ where citizens have more power, which became
an important part of the Coalition Agreement (HM Government, 2010, p. 8).
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00891.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2011 VOL 59, 230–252
© 2011The Authors. Political Studies © 2011 Political StudiesAssociation
Given the demands for citizens to be more civic and the high costs of doing so, what
motivates them to get involved? In spite of decades of research on citizen attitudes and
behaviour, not enough is known about what encourages citizens to engage, cooperate and
self-govern so as to improve key outcomes for wider society. This article seeks to address
this by examining different types of motivation (trust,nor ms, affect and morals) on different
aspects of civic behaviour.
The structure of the article is as follows. The first section defines civic behaviour and
generates a typology applicable to community-based action. The second reviews the
academic literature on the drivers of political participation and community involvement.
The third sets out the methods and form of analysis. The final section discusses the results
and draws general implications.
Civic Behaviour in the Neighbourhood
Partly as a result of current policy initiatives, the menu of options open to the citizen has
expanded. As well as political acts, there are opportunities for citizen cooperation over the
environment and other bottom-up and neighbourhood-based efforts to provide collective
goods.When taking the full range of options open to the citizen, we identify four types of
civic behaviour (see Figure 1): (a) influence institutions individually, understood as when
citizens attempt to influence rules, laws or policies through their individual actions, such as
contacting a politician or bureaucrat (see Pattie et al.,2004); (b) collective civic, which are acts
of citizen cooperation also designed to influence rules, laws and policies, like signing
petitions and going on demonstrations; (c) citizen governance, which may take place in
informal and semi-formal fora, such as a tenants’ group; and (d) community voluntarism,
which is a form of ethical self-governance that emerges when an individual is aware of the
public benefit in their actions, such as leading a committee and befr iending or mentoring
people. Because the focus is on the civic rather than the party political, we leave out voting,
campaigning for parties and contributing to campaigns.
The Determinants of Civic Behaviour
Early influential work predicts political participation from the socio-economic status of the
participants (e.g. Verba and Nie, 1972). Later, Verba et al. (1995) also have socio-economic
Figure 1: Types of Civic Behaviour
Civic Behaviour
CB4 (community voluntarism)
CB3 (citizen governance)
CB2 (collective civic)
CB1 (influence institutions individually)
HOW CIVIC IS THE CIVIC CULTURE? 231
© 2011The Authors. Political Studies © 2011 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2011, 59(2)
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