Revisiting norms of citizenship in times of democratic change
| Published date | 01 August 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02633957211031799 |
| Author | Christian Schnaudt,Jan W van Deth,Carolin Zorell,Yannis Theocharis |
| Date | 01 August 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957211031799
Politics
2024, Vol. 44(3) 352 –369
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/02633957211031799
journals.sagepub.com/home/pol
Revisiting norms of citizenship
in times of democratic change
Christian Schnaudt and Jan W van Deth
University of Mannheim, Germany
Carolin Zorell
Örebro University, Sweden
Yannis Theocharis
Technical University of Munich, Germany
Abstract
Over the last two decades, scholars have investigated norms of citizenship by focussing primarily on
‘dutiful’ and ‘engaged’ norms. In the meantime, contemporary democracies have witnessed growing
demands for more sustainable styles of living and increasing public support for authoritarian and populist
ideas. These developments point to both a change and an expansion of conventional understandings
and conceptions of what a ‘good citizen’ in a democratic polity ought to do. Specifically, they raise
questions about whether demands for more sustainability and increasing support for populist ideas
establish new facets of democratic citizenship, and if so, how they can be meaningfully incorporated
into existing images of citizenship. This study provides a re-conceptualization of citizenship norms
and empirically tests a new measurement instrument using original data collected in Germany in
2019. The empirical application of an expanded set of items demonstrates the existence of more
variegated facets of norms of citizenship, including norms to safeguard a sustainable future and
distinct populist facets emphasizing the relevance of trust in authorities and experts as well as reliance
on feelings and emotions. Contemporary conceptions of citizenship thus go beyond conventional
distinctions between dutiful and engaged norms of citizenship.
Keywords
conceptualization, democracy, norms of citizenship, populism, sustainability
Received: 16th November 2020; Revised version received: 4th May 2021; Accepted: 23rd June 2021
Introduction
What are desirable characteristics and behaviours of a ‘good citizen’ in a polity? While
this question has occupied political philosophers and theorists throughout the centuries, it
Corresponding author:
Christian Schnaudt, University of Mannheim, 68131 Mannheim, Germany.
Email: schnaudt@uni-mannheim.de
1031799POL0010.1177/02633957211031799PoliticsSchnaudt et al.
research-article2021
Article
Schnaudt et al. 353
continues to be of utmost importance today. Growing and recurring concerns about an
alleged disengagement from politics and civic life among the citizens of contemporary
democracies have fuelled renewed debates about the role and relevance of democratic
citizenship. As some observers have diagnosed, we witness an era of declining participa-
tion in which citizens increasingly feel detached from political processes and refrain from
civic behaviours indispensable for democratic citizenship. The subliminal fear underlying
most of these diagnoses is that such ‘an erosion of the activities and capacities of citizen-
ship’ (Macedo, 2005: 1) will do nothing less than putting the long-term functioning and
viability of democracy itself at risk.
In light of such far-reaching ramifications, the number of empirical investigations into
democratic citizenship has grown steadily. Studies relying on comparative large-scale
surveys have tried to provide a thorough and encompassing empirical picture about citi-
zens’ perceptions and images of democratic citizenship across a broad range of contem-
porary democracies. Most of these investigations focus on citizens’ support for so-called
‘norms of citizenship’, that is, they deal with norms as ‘rules or expectations that deter-
mine and regulate appropriate behavior’ of citizens (Bell, 2013). In empirical political
science, the normative perspective is usually emphasized by introducing a hypothetical
‘good citizen’ and exploring how important certain characteristics and behaviours of a
‘good citizen’ in a democratic polity are considered to be (Bolzendahl and Coffé, 2013;
Copeland and Feezell, 2017; Dalton, 2008). Many studies rely on a distinction between
‘dutiful’ citizenship norms, on one hand, and ‘engaged’ (Dalton, 2008) or ‘actualizing’
(Bennett, 2008) norms, on the other. These two dimensions reflect an emphasis on social
order, allegiance to the state, and participation through traditional democratic channels as
desirable traits of the ‘good citizen’ (dutiful norms); or they focus on greater independ-
ence, social solidarity, and political activity in civic and non-traditional arenas (engaged/
actualizing norms). This distinction seems to be generally accepted as a valid conceptual-
ization of norms of citizenship and has been regularly applied in empirical studies to date
(e.g. Bolzendahl and Coffé, 2013; Dalton, 2008; Oser and Hooghe, 2013). However, the
continuous reliance on the same narrow set of items means that important, more recent
understandings of citizenship norms may not have been sufficiently considered.
Research on ecological citizenship and sustainability highlights the increasing norma-
tive importance citizens place on the civic duty of sustainable living (Jagers et al., 2014).
In virtually all advanced democracies, growing demands for more sustainable lifestyles
and the protection of the environment and its resources have become highly salient and
contested issues. An illustrative recent example for this development is the ‘Fridays for
Future’ movement. It was able to draw on a vast number of citizens across the world shar-
ing a normative conception that living in a ‘sustainable’ way, raising awareness for and
mobilizing political action against climate change is something a ‘good’ citizen ought to
do.1
In addition, research on populism has advanced important arguments about the rise of
new citizenship norms. These norms relate to the emergence of authoritarian populists
with stark anti-media rhetoric, aimed to accentuate in- and out-group characteristics
(Schulz et al., 2020) and emphasizing authoritarian positions in policy trade-offs (Zanotti
and Rama, 2020: 3). They reflect citizens’ disappointment with how democracy functions
in practice and an increasing anger and anxiety of rapid societal changes eroding long-
standing cultural customs and habits (Rico et al., 2017). Taken together, such arguments
suggest that the rise of populism emanates from, and triggers further, changes in the pub-
lic’s perception of what a ‘good’ citizen ought to look like, including a greater emphasis
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