Literature Review 1000 words

Political Behavior, Vol. 15, No. 4, 1993

CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

Elizabeth Theiss-Morse

Theorists have variously defined what it means to be a good citizen. But how do citizens themselves views their responsibilities? And is there any relationship between a person's view of citizenship and his or her political participation? This paper uses a combination of methods to explore these issues. A Q method study reveals four citizenship perspectives that provide evidence for striking differences in how people define the participatory re- sponsibilities of a good citizen. An exploratory survey analysis finds that the four citizen- ship perspectives are significantly related to political behavior, even when socioeconomic status and attitudinal variables related to participation are controlled. While adding to our understanding of participation, these findings also underscore the importance of in- vestigating the conceptualizations of citizens to gain more complete understandings of how political systems work.

Most studies of good citizenship fall into two categories: pedagogical works on the best means of teaching good citizenship 1 and theoretical works on its meaning. There are few empirical studies that deal even tan- gentially with good citizenship, and these usually begin with an idealized view of "the good citizen" and find that citizens fall far short of this stan- dard.2 Largely neglected are citizens' own conceptualizations of good citi- zenship; that is, what do people themselves think it means to be a good citizen?

This paper attempts to answer "What is good citizenship?" from the per- spective of citizens, and then tests whether citizenship conceptualizations are related to participatory behavior. I begin with a brief overview of the few studies that examine citizens' conceptualizations of good citizenship. Then I discuss at some length the combination of methods used in this

Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE

68588-0328. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American

Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 1989.

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0190-9.320/93/1200-035.5$07.00/0 © 199.3 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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study. Finally, I present the results: (I) a discussion of the four citizenship perspectives that emerge from a Q data analysis: and (2) an exploratory analysis of the relationship between these perspectives and political behav- ior using survey data. The paper concludes with a general discussion of how the results affect our understanding of good citizenship and the study of political participation.

AN OVERVIEW OF EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP

Political theorists have examined in depth the qualities of good citizen- ship.3 Unfortunately, empirical political scientists have produced only a handful of studies analyzing the public's understandings of the concept. Three studies stand out as exemplars: Almond and Verba's The Civic Cul­ ture (1963), Lane's (1965) study of citizenship and patriotism, and Conover, Crewe, and Searing's (1991) analysis of U.S. and British citizens' under- standings of good citizenship.

As part of a longer survey, Almond and Verba (1963) asked respondents in five nations what obligations people owe their country.' They inter- preted these responses in terms of three citizenship orientations: parochial, subject, and participant. The parochial orientation does not acknowledge specialized political roles (that is, the political leader may also be the reli- gious or social leader) and expects nothing from the political system. The subject orientation emphasizes that people are affectively oriented toward the political system and have expectations about what the government should provide, but they are deferential to political elites and mainly react to what the government does. The participant orientation stresses an activ- ist relationship with the government: people are concerned with both the inputs and outputs of the system and perceive part of their role as making demands on the government. Almond and Verba found that the participant orientation is dominant in the U.S., although people generally hold a com- bination of the three.

Rather than defining a priori the qualities of a good citizen, Lane (1965) simply talked to 15 men in depth about their views of what good citizen- ship entails. Their responses varied a great deal, with emphases ranging from extensive participation to obedience to laws to private morality and self- control. Lane demonstrated that the meaning of good citizenship is ambiguous and open to interpretation by the public.

Conover, Crewe, and Searing's (1991) recent study investigated U.S. and British citizens' beliefs concerning the rights, duties, and identities of citi- zens. Using focus groups in both countries, the authors found that in general British citizens are more likely to hold communitarian and U.S. citizens liberal self-understandings. Importantly, however, views of citizenship are

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much more complex than this generalization implies: citizens in both coun- tries draw on a mix of both traditions in their self-understandings.

These three studies provide important insights into people's conceptual- izations, yet each has shortcomings. First, the studies by Almond and Verba and Conover, Crewe, and Searing are comparative analyses, and they indeed find differences in citizenship conceptualizations among citi- zens of different countries. But these broad differences tend to overshadow the variations among U.S. citizens. Lane provides evidence supporting the likelihood that U.S. citizens hold diverse conceptualizations.

Second, problems arise when citizenship conceptualizations are defined a priori or when they are left completely open to respondent definition. By defining orientations a priori, Almond and Verba may have misinterpreted the beliefs people hold by not accurately categorizing their beliefs or by missing other orientations altogether. Lane, on the other hand, demonstrated that a researcher who refrains from predefining the qualities of good citizenship may discover wide variation in people's conceptualizations. But Lane did not determine whether these wide-ranging conceptualizations cluster around central foci; that is, whether basic understandings of citizen- ship exist within diverse views. Conover et al. take the middle road in this regard: they approach their data gathering with theoretically based views of citizenship but allow respondents to move beyond these predefined views by asserting their own understandings of citizenship.

Third, these studies are primarily concerned with people's understandings of good citizenship, and to some extent how these understandings orient them to the political system. But do people's citizenship conceptualizations have broader impacts, especially in relation to political behavior? None of these studies directly investigates the relationship between citizenship conceptualizations and political behavior, yet people may act within a political system the way they think good citizens ought to act. This relationship needs to be explored.

More empirical work is needed on individuals' understandings of good citizenship, especially if we agree with Conover et al. (1991, p. 805) that "citizenship is a fundamental identity that helps situate the individual in society." Using an innovative research design, I analyze people's "citizen- ship perspectives" on the participatory duties of a good citizen, a major definitional element of good citizenship.

METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN

This study uses a combination of methods to discover and measure peo- ple's citizenship perspectives and to relate these to political behavior. The two components of the methodology are Q methodology and survey re- 358 THEISS-MORSE