Silent Citizenship

The Politics of Marginality in Unequal Democracies

Justin Gest, Sean Gray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781315458670
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What does silent citizenship mean in a democracy? With levels of economic and political inequality on the rise across the developed democracies, citizens are becoming more disengaged from their neighbourhoods and communities, more distrustful of politicians and political parties, more sceptical of government goods and services, and less interested in voicing their frustrations in public or at the ballot box. The result is a growing number of silent citizens who seem disconnected from democratic politics – who are unaware of political issues, lack knowledge about public affairs, do not debate, deliberate, or take action, and most fundamentally, do not vote. Yet, although silent citizenship can and does indicate deficits of democracy, research suggests that these deficits are not the only reason citizens may have for remaining silent in democratic life. Silence may also reflect an active and engaged response to politics under highly unequal conditions. What is missing is a full accounting of the problems and possibilities for democracy that silent citizenship represents. Bringing together leading scholars in political science and democratic theory, this book provides a valuable exploration of the changing nature and form of silent citizenship in developed democracies today. This title was previously published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

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

Sean W.D. Gray

Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

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.

Democratic citizenship ideally provides those who are affected by collective decisions with the standing to have a voice in making those decisions. Yet, by a host of relevant empirical measures, the average democratic citizen is steadily losing their voice at the decision-making table. Across the developed democracies, citizens today are less likely to vote, to volunteer in political campaigns, or to have contact with their political representatives (Franklin 2004; Norris 2011; Leighley and Nagler 2014). They are less capable of shaping the agenda of politicians and policymakers (Bartels 2008; Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2012). And, on those rare occasions when citizens do manage to be heard by government, it is only when their voices are echoed by those of wealthy elites and organized interest groups (Gilens and Page 2014). In short, contemporary democratic citizenship is increasingly becoming silent citizenship.

The aim of this article is to map the domain of silent citizenship in contemporary democratic theory and practice. Over the past two decades, democratic theorists have consistently linked the growth of silent citizenship in the developed democracies to growing deficits of voice in democratic decision-making (Coleman 2013; Keane 2009; Green 2010; Rosanvallon 2008; Urbinati 2014; Warren 1996). Though there is strong empirical evidence to suggest that silence is at least in part a symptom of citizen disengagement and disempowerment, we still do not systematically understand the range of possible motivations citizens may have for remaining silent in democratic politics. We lack conceptual tools for identifying the different attitudes that lie behind silent citizenship. And, we lack normative criteria for assessing the challenges and dangers to democracy posed by different degrees of silent citizenship. How, then, should we theorize and assess the silence of citizens in a democracy?

One particular answer is largely presupposed in contemporary democratic theory. Within most major contending theories of democracy – minimalism, pluralism, and expansionism – silence is primarily interpreted to be a private withdrawal from politics that contrasts with voice – a normative vacuum in which citizens are excluded from democratic political decision-making through lack of resources, opportunities, information, or articulateness. Democratic theorists routinely characterize as silent citizens those who are inattentive to public issues, who never weigh in on public affairs, who do not debate, deliberate, or take action, and most important of all, who do not exercise voice at the ballot box. While these characterizations are often accurate and compelling, I argue that they capture only part of the domain of silent citizenship. Because democratic theorists are predisposed to listen for those silences that reflect the failed or absent voices of citizens, they often miss a number of other motivations for silent citizenship, some of which are in fact active and politically engaged.

I propose here a more comprehensive approach to mapping the domain of silent citizenship. The basic idea grounding this approach is that the different attitudes motivating silent citizenship can be graduated, all the way from passive disaffection with the democratic system in general to principled opposition to specific democratic decisions or policies. I argue that if we conceptualize silent citizenship based on the attitudes citizens might hold in silence, we can define at least five distinct degrees of silent citizenship. These degrees of silent citizenship vary in their level of disengagement from politics, ranging from what I call an active decision to gradually more removed attitudes of awareness, ambivalence, aversion, and disaffection. Silent citizenship reflects a decision when citizens actively choose silence from among their available political options, instead of voice. Such active decisions for silence might be targeted and specific, as when citizens refuse to lend their voices to a specific political cause or action, or they might be broader, as when citizens signal their dissatisfaction with their electoral options by refusing to vote at all. Awareness occurs when citizens are still conscious of their political options, but fall into silence because they have neither the time nor inclination to make a decision. Such silent citizens may lack interest in current issues, feel that nothing of importance is at stake, or be generally satisfied and trust the judgments of elected representatives. With ambivalence, the attitudes that underlie the silence of citizens slide from awareness to reflect deeper uncertainties about democratic decision-making, either because citizens are ignorant or uninformed, harbor conflicting and constantly changing opinions, or are not exposed to politics enough to be aware of what the issues are. By contrast, with aversion the previously limited or negative exposure that silent citizens have to the democratic process solidifies into antipolitical attitudes of distrust and suspicion towards politics in general. Finally, disaffection reflects the silence of citizens who completely reject the political norms, goals, and institutions of society, leading to alienation and self-exclusion from the democratic system. Not one of these five degrees of silent citizenship meets the ideal normative standards of citizenship commonly embraced by contemporary democratic theorists. Yet, conceiving of silent citizenship as a spectrum, we might say that the closer citizens’ motives for silence come to reflecting active decisions about politics, the more politically engaged these silences are likely to be. How we hear silent citizenship in a democracy thus matters a great deal.

The article unfolds in four sections as follows. In the first section, I explain how democratic theorists currently hear the silence of citizens under the conditions of modern mass democracy. Most contemporary democratic theorists implicitly subscribe to what I shall here call a vocal ideal of democratic citizenship. They focus, in one way or another, on empowering the voices of citizens in collective political decision-making. The aim of this vocal ideal is certainly not ‘wrong,’ but I argue here that it predisposes democratic theorists to hear the silence of citizens as indicative of disengagement or disempowerment. As a result, the domain of silent citizenship has been left largely unexplored within contemporary democratic theory. In the second section, I illustrate the influence of the vocal ideal of democratic citizenship within three major theories of democracy: minimalism, pluralism, and expansionism. Despite theoretical differences, I argue that minimalist, pluralist, and expansionist theories of democracy all associate voice with empowerment, and thus vocal citizenship with empowered citizenship. In the third section, I suggest the equation of voice to empowerment within these major theories of democracy makes it easy for theorists to conflate what are in fact two distinct measures of democratic citizenship: the empowerments through which citizens gain standing to influence collective decisions; and, the mode through which citizens communicate their preferences and judgments in collective decision-making. Separating these measures of democratic citizenship, I argue, reveals an entire spectrum of motivations for silence, not all of which reflect disengagement or disempowerment. In the fourth and final section, I map the different possible attitudes that underlie the silence of democratic citizens, identifying five degrees of silent citizenship: decision, awareness, ambivalence, aversion, and disaffection. Mapping the domain of silent citizenship, I conclude, will make it easier for democratic theorists to distinguish the different attitudes that underlie silent citizenship in practice, and may help political scientists to explain why citizens are turning to silence across the developed democracies.

The vocal ideal of democratic citizenship

The domain of silent citizenship has been left largely unexplored in contemporary democratic theory and practice. The key reason for this neglect has to do with how silent citizenship has come to be interpreted by contemporary democratic theorists. Most democratic theorists adopt, sometimes explicitly but more often implicitly, what I call a vocal ideal of democratic citizenship. Democratic citizenship, according to this ideal, is a means of empowering those who are affected by collective decisions with the standing to have a voice in making those decisions (Green 2010, Chap. 1; Habermas 1996, Chap. 8; Przeworski 2010, Chap. 5; Shapiro 2003, 52–53). Silence is thought to have little to do with the ideals of democratic citizenship, not least because silent citizens forgo having a voice in collective decision-making through their silence. Dahl (1998), for example, states: ‘Silent citizens may be perfect subjects for an authoritarian ruler; they would be a disaster for democracy’ (97).

The vocal ideal of democratic citizenship is best identified as part of a series of normative intuitions most democratic theorists today now share about democracy – specifically, about how we ought to judge the institutions and practices of democracy. The first norm has to do with autonomy and it arises from concerns about domination: citizens in a democracy should not be subject to relations of power that arbitrarily deny them the ability to self-determine (Pettit 2012; Richardson 2002, 28–36). Autonomy requires nondomination: that citizens have sufficient resources and empowerments – economically, socially, and politically – to exercise control over the political duties and obligations collective life imposes on them.

The second norm is about equality. For collectivities to also be self-determining, all members must have equal influence over collective decision-making processes (Beitz 1989; Przeworski 2010, Chap. 4). Equality is about capacity and opportunity: ensuring that citizens are given the resources necessary to decide what they want, and have similar chances to initiate actions, raise concerns, debate, deliberate, demonstrate, and ultimately, influence the outcome of collective decisions and actions.

Finally, in addition to norms of autonomy and equality, many democratic theorists also embrace a third intuition about inclusion. For individuals and collectivities to be equally self-determining, all of those affected by collective decisions should be included in the making of those decisions (Bohman 2007, 45–50; Fung 2013; Goodin 2007; cf. Fraser 2008, 65–67). While the nature and scope of this norm are much debated, for our purposes it is sufficient to note that this norm of inclusion is about establishing who has legitimate claim to influence collective decision-making (Näsström 2011).

In practice, each of these three norms also embodies an important intuition about how democratic citizens should ideally relate to each other: not just as subjects, but instead as autonomous agents who share a common fate, who all agree to fair terms of cooperation, and who all enjoy equal abilities to influence collective decisions – especially equal abilities to communicate choices, preferences, and values to others. Although never perfectly realized, these intuitions find resonance in the familiar sets of rights and institutional empowerments that underwrite important measures of democratic citizenship, including the rule of law, representative government, competitive elections, political rights and civil liberties, as well as social entitlements such as education, healthcare, and welfare.

Why is voice so central to realizing these normative aspirations of democratic citizenship? The short answer is that the vocal ideal of democratic citizenship is one strategy for organizing norms of autonomy, equality, and inclusion into society (Warren 2011, 687). Voice is a medium through which individuals can be included and equally empowered as citizens to exercise control over the collective decisions that impact their lives. Voice enables individual citizens to be heard within collectivities through arguments, debates, bargaining, and deliberation, or through acts that almost immediately translate into voice, such as lobbying, petitions, and votes (Dowding and John 2012, 9–10; Hirschman 1970). Voice also enables the collective actions necessary for organized resistance, pressure, and protest that amplify the force of the citizens’ message in contexts of money and power (Mansbridge et al. 2012). When voices are heard and channels of communication are effective, it is possible for judgments and preferences of citizens to figure into collective decision-making directly: citizens can disclose their needs, concerns, and values, voice these as preferences, and translate voice into substantive outcomes through public opinion formation and electoral representation.

If voice is associated with empowered democratic citizenship, then the opposite is true of silence, which is often interpreted as an absence or failure of voice in politics – as listless and devoid of content, intention, meaning, or imagination (see Gray 2014). Silence is a form of quiet inaction that, for democratic theorists, evokes the specter of civic passivity – of a disengaged and disempowered citizenry, variably characterized by attitudes of selfishness, apathy, inattention, ignorance, and neglect. Silent citizens are politically undemanding: those who are silent either prefer...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Silent citizenship: the politics of marginality in unequal democracies
• 1. Mapping silent citizenship: how democratic theory hears citizens’ silence and why it matters
• 2. Solace for the Frustrations of Silent Citizenship: the Case of Epicureanism
• 3. Silent citizens: reflections on community, habit, and the silent majority in political life
• 4. Domination, global harms, and the problem of silent citizenship: toward a republican theory of global justice
• 5. Pro- and anti-system behavior: a complementary approach to voice and silence in studies of political behavior
• 6. American women of color and rational non-candidacy: when silent citizenship makes politics look like old white men shouting
• 7. Silent citizenship among Asian Americans and Latinos: opting out or left out?
• Index