The politics of other citizens

Abstract

In all kinds of political action, citizens are confronted with the performances of other citizens. An important guide to political behaviour is therefore likely to be the assumptions people make concerning how others can be expected to behave. This article explores common sense ideas about other citizens as potential political participants, drawing on a series of group interviews conducted with taxi-drivers in Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic. I argue the expectations voiced of other citizens tend to be pessimistic in nature, casting them as ill-informed, apathetic, passive and unduly self-interested, notwithstanding the appearance of a more optimistic view which holds they can be expected to follow the lead of those who ‘take a stand’. These empirical observations lead to a discussion of the theoretical issues they raise, notably where to locate the origins of such views, and how to appraise their implications for democracy.

Keywords:

• citizenship
• identity
• political sociology

Acknowledgements

An early draft of this article was presented at the 2007 ECPR General Conference in Pisa, where participants of the political psychology section – Paul Dekker in particular – made very useful suggestions. The manuscript was later improved with comments from Claudia Schrag, Lea Ypi and several anonymous referees.

Notes

1. The focus may also be distinguished from the study of trust in political leaders and confidence in political institutions, matters extensively studied in the literature on political cynicism and distrust: e.g. Dalton (2004).

2. The interviews were loosely structured, with approximately the first 20 minutes of each discussion devoted to an exercise based on thematic index cards. This was followed by an open discussion led principally by the participants themselves and focused on the political issues they considered to be most urgent. The material below is drawn from these open sections of the discussions. For further details see White (2009, 2010), where some of the main findings of the project are discussed, notably regarding patterns of problem definition, comparison, and perceptions of political agency.

3. In Britain and Germany the rates were €60–70 per head; in the Czech Republic around €40. These rates were somewhat above what a driver could reasonably expect to earn in the time devoted to the interviews, but not radically so. Each discussion was facilitated by the author in the local language.

4. This is a slogan the newspaper has used in advertising campaigns.

5. The arguments for emphasising discursive rather than mental phenomena laid out in (Potter and Wetherell 1987) are of particular relevance here.

6. Importantly, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse make a twofold distinction between ‘process preferences’ and ‘policy preferences’, and stress the importance of the former at the expense of the latter. It may be necessary, however, to distinguish within the second category between people's depth of concern about what particular policies are adopted (on which indifference may be expressed) and their depth of concern about the substantive problem itself which needs to be addressed (on which stronger views may be voiced).

7. Arguably democracy requires that those disaffected with ‘the system’ still retain the hope that actors can emerge from civil society able to change it. The significance of such views seems to be underplayed by scholars of political cynicism and disaffection who focus purely on attitudes towards elite actors: cf. Dalton (2004, p.191), who looks at ‘public confidence and trust in, and support for, politicians, political parties, and political institutions’. Note that a further issue of relevance is how far substantive problems are assumed susceptible to remedy by governmental intervention – a matter examined in White (2010).