![Sample our Geography journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5937/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Geography.jpg"})
Abstract
Theories of participation and non-participation are largely unable to capture and distinguish anti-system behavior, which ranges from deliberate silence to political violence. To better understand and measure these diverse forms of citizen participation, and to distinguish these from forms of alienation and marginalization, this article builds a new model of anti-system behavior in a way that facilitates the development of empirically observable variables and hypotheses. To do so, I draw upon sociological approaches to alienation – which examine intensities of rebellion and contestation – and combine them with the standard political scientific approach – which examines intensities of engagement based on resources. The problem, I argue, is that each approach only partially explains the motivations behind aberrant political behavior in modern democratic systems; they are in fact two sides of the same coin. I consider three cases of apparent silent citizenship: Muslims in Western Europe, Roma in Eastern Europe, and white working-class people in North America and Europe.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The political system here refers to the overarching approach to governance, rather than the government tasked with its responsibilities – the procedures of deliberation and the exchange of rights and obligations, not the individuals or parties tasked to protect and enforce them.
2. Anti-system behavior has few antecedent definitions in political science and political sociology, particularly in studies of democracies. Most other works of scholarship use the term without definition, often in reference to deviant behavior. Perhaps the most significant use was by Muller, Jukam, and Seligson (Citation1982), in their article, ‘Diffuse Political Support and Antisystem Political Behavior’. In this paper, the authors define ‘antisystem behavior’ – like others – as exclusively active or aggressive in nature. It included: ‘(1) fights with police or other demonstrators, (2) a wildcat or unofficial strike, (3) a group who refused to pay taxes, (4) taking over factories, offices, or other buildings, and (5) a group which wanted to overthrow the government by violent means’. I argue that there is nothing anti-democratic about sit-ins, unofficial demonstrations, or civil disobedience in the form of tax evasion – even if they may be illegal. Historically, there have been many peaceful, democratic movements that have advocated a political position by using forms of disobedience – such as boycotts, sit-ins, strikes, protests, or non-compliance that do not infringe on others’ capacity to express themselves or employ forms of coercion. It is worth noting that, in defining ‘anti-system’ political parties, Capoccia (Citation2002) makes a distinction between ‘ideological anti-systemness’ and ‘relational anti-systemness’. He argues that ‘ideological anti-systemness’ regards a political party's opposition to the democratic system, while ‘relational anti-systemness’ regards the party's opposition to the values of the democratic system. This study is concerned with both forms of ‘anti-systemness’ as it is expressed in individual actors’ behavior. Sartori's theory of anti-system parties considers that an anti-system party (like the Partido Comunista Italiano) may ultimately become a component of the system, if accepted after the use of anti-system means. While the same issue lingers here, this article and its conceptualization of political behavior is concerned with means – unconditional on the normative question about whether ultimate incorporation justifies them.
3. The design of this diagram was aided by one created by Koff (Citation1973).
4. It is worth noting that the discussion of non-participation and passivity in the context of ‘political behavior’ complicates the way we conventionally conceive of ‘behavior’. Indeed, the term connotes an affirmative nature. However, I think it is reasonable to consider abstention, withdrawal, and rejection as behavioral, as more activist forms. Indeed, if actors must choose to participate, then they must also choose to abstain. Volition is still entailed.
5. Note that the distinction here is not about whether an individual accepts the public goods and provisions afforded by the political system, like health services, welfare, education, or housing. Consumption does not indicate support or participation as much as it suggests instrumentalism.
6. One might consider a member of a contemporary militia or the historic Ku Klux Klan, which maintained an active democratic role in the Southern United States by producing electoral candidates, sponsoring community- and church-based events (typically considered indications of high social capital). However, it ultimately pursued an exclusivist political agenda using violence and intimidation. This suggests that the actor possesses an underlying lack of confidence in their capacity to influence the system through conventionally democratic means.
7. This shiftiness across time means that behavior (and its causal factors) can be inquired at different moments, and movement between boxes can be traced. Indeed, it would be interesting to see trends of movement as they relate to changes in the measurement of independent variables and different social or political contexts.
8. Critics may contend that this approach to anti-system behavior is normative – that it authenticates democratic participation over other behavior. My response is twofold. First, this new approach is no more normative than resource-based models and others that seek to typologize political behavior and its impetuses (see Held Citation2006, 197, 251). Second, the approach to anti-system behavior quite objectively observes whether certain behavior is within the scope of democratic channels for advocacy and engagement without necessarily suggesting that anti-system behavior is anything other than circumventive.