Mapping silent citizenship: how democratic theory hears citizens' silence and why it matters

Abstract

Democratic theory hears silent citizenship as disengagement or disempowerment. Normatively, silent citizenship evokes the specter of civic passivity – of democratic citizens variably characterized by apathy, disaffection, selfishness, or a lack of political knowledge. Empirically, silent citizenship is linked to deficits of democracy – including voter turnout rates, the quality of political representation, and overall government responsiveness. One problem with these conclusions, however, is that we lack any systematic conceptualization of the range of different attitudes democratic citizens might hold in silence. This article seeks to fill in this conceptual gap by mapping the range of possible motivations for citizens to remain silent in developed liberal democratic systems. The key to doing so, I argue, is to distinguish between two measures of democratic citizenship: empowerment and communication. Separating these two measures reveals an entire spectrum of motivations for silence, which I organize into five distinct degrees of silent citizenship.

Keywords::

• silent citizenship
• silence
• voice
• empowerment
• communication
• democratic theory
• democratic citizenship

Acknowledgements

Portions of this article were presented at the 2012 Annual Meetings of the Western Political Science Association and the Canadian Political Science Association. The article has benefitted enormously from these audiences, and from discussions with James Bohman, Aubin Calvert, Archon Fung, Laura Janara, Jean-Marc Leclerc, Jonathan Tomm, and especially Mark Warren, as well as comments from two anonymous reviewers for this journal. I also acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fulbright Foundation of Canada.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.