Civic Duty
Civic duty refers to the responsibility of citizens to actively participate in the functioning of their community and society. This can include activities such as voting, obeying laws, serving on juries, and engaging in public service. Fulfilling one's civic duty is seen as essential for maintaining a healthy and functioning democratic society.
6 Key excerpts on "Civic Duty"
eBook - ePubCivic Engagement Across the Curriculum
A Resource Book for Service - Learning Faculty in All Disciplines
- Richard M. Battistoni(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Campus Compact(Publisher)
...The “good citizen” is one who knows and upholds the laws and the basic political institutions of the society, understanding that internalizing certain rules and standards of public behavior is useful in providing for the orderly accommodation of private wishes in the public realm. Beyond knowing and obeying the Constitution and the laws, good citizenship involves political participation to the extent necessary to provide for the individuals’ particular interests: voting for public officials who will represent them in public affairs and joining interest groups or lobbying for legislation that accords with their interests and values. But participation in the public realm does not define the role of the citizen under this conceptual model. Political participation is not a self-fulfilling or even a necessary activity; as long as one’s private interests are represented one need not act any further in the public realm—in fact, such additional activity is foolish (see Madison, 1961: 315; Rawls, 1971: 227–28; Lippmann, 1922: 195–97). The Harwood Group report College Students Talk Politics complained that the students they interviewed largely held this “narrow” view of politics and citizenship (Harwood Group, 1993: 42). Nevertheless, service-learning is certainly consistent with this approach to citizenship. Community service becomes the actions of individuals building a strong civil society that takes care of the rights and interests of all, volunteer activity that provides what government cannot. For faculty, reflection on service can bring out conversations about public and private, voluntary action versus public policy making. Communitarianism Where the focus of constitutional citizenship is on individual rights and interests, the focus of communitarian citizenship is the “social dimension of human existence” (Etzioni, 1994: 253)...
eBook - ePub- Antonino Palumbo, Richard Bellamy, Richard Bellamy(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...This public service relates to what it is necessary for citizens to do in order to define, establish, and sustain a political community of fellow-citizens. The community, or the republic, must be defended against those who would threaten it; hence, military service is one of the duties of citizenship. The community must ensure its intergenerational continuity; hence, the rearing of the young in appropriate ways is one of the duties of citizenship. The community must define its other short- and long-term purposes and ends, and act to achieve them; hence, deliberation on these matters, and action to secure them, are among the duties of citizenship. It is action in these spheres which is both constitutive of citizenship, and constitutive and sustaining of the community of which the citizen is a member. Central to civic republicanism is a conception of individuals rather different from that of liberal individualism. First of all, individuals are not thought of as being logically prior to society. They receive their very names in a social context, and as they grow they become aware of, are educated into, and sometimes, perhaps, choose a variety of roles which are socially defined, roles which have duties attached to them, one being that of citizen. Secondly, and consequently, individuals have no sovereign or overriding moral priority. Claims may legitimately be made on their time, their resources, and sometimes even on their lives, for it is only if the community is sustained in being that the practice of citizenship is ensured continuity in time, and the identity of individuals as citizens is preserved. These claims are not part of a contract. They are not obligations which the citizen enters into, to be terminated upon fulfilment...
eBook - ePubEthnocentric Political Theory
The Pursuit of Flawed Universals
- Bhikhu Parekh(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...Rather, since political obligation is collective and shared, some may be exempted from discharging it if it is being discharged by others. This is somewhat like reporting an accident. We all have a duty to report it but need not if one of us has done so already. Radical advocates of political participation often overlook this shared and cooperative dimension of political obligation. As a result, they are led to advocate the politically impractical and morally dubious idea that those failing to turn up at every public meeting are failing to be good citizens. Every citizen has a political obligation to take an active interest in the conduct of public affairs and in the quality of collective life, but that is very different from saying that they should all be politically active all the time. Besides, their active engagement can take different forms. Some express it through their political poetry, some others through their art, yet others through political action. There is no good reason why political obligation must be discharged in a uniform manner. Thirdly, unlike civil obligation, political obligation has an elitist dimension in the sense that although all citizens have political obligations, some have them to a greater degree than others. Political life requires organizational, rhetorical and other skills, the ability to articulate and grasp complex issues, the capacity to form judgement, and so forth. All citizens do not have these in equal measure. It is also generally the case that some men and women in every society command greater respect and influence than others because of their social standing, political acumen or long record of public service. The greater a person’s moral authority in the community or the greater their politically relevant skills, the greater is that person’s obligation to intervene in political life...
eBook - ePubThe Future of Democracy
Developing the Next Generation of American Citizens
- Peter Levine(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- University Press of New England(Publisher)
...Such behavior includes direct, personal involvement in the government itself (for example, running for and holding an elected office, serving as a juror, serving on an official board, and working as a civil servant). Political participation also includes efforts to influence the state by, for example, voting, organizing or persuading other people to vote, petitioning or lobbying the government, and suing for changes in policy. Finally, political participation includes open-ended efforts to influence the state by, for example, organizing public deliberations or educating young people to be effective participants. Some measures of political engagement are percentages of the whole population who engage in desirable behaviors. For example, the turnout rate tells us what proportion of the people vote. Other forms of political engagement cannot be measured that way. We do not necessarily want to see more people serve on juries, nor is a society more civically engaged if the number of civil servants increases. More appropriate are measures of interest, responsibility, and awareness. For instance, the percentage of citizens who say they would be willing to serve on a jury is a civic indicator. Political participation requires skills. Even the act of voting is fairly complicated and intimidates some novices; winning a change of policy is more complex still. Political participation also requires virtues, even when one participates largely in one’s self-interest. Any effective participation requires discipline and patience; altruistic participation also requires a concern for others’ interests. Voting is by no means that alpha and omega of political engagement. It is rarely an effective way to influence voluntary associations, which are essential to democracy. It is not a form of deliberation. It does not give people much scope for creativity and learning...
eBook - ePub- James Daley(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Dover Publications(Publisher)
...It is just the same way with politics. It makes one feel half angry and half amused, and wholly contemptuous, to find men of high business or social standing in the community saying that they really have not got time to go to ward meetings, to organize political clubs, and to take a personal share in all the important details of practical politics; men who further urge against their going the fact that they think the condition of political morality low, and are afraid that they may be required to do what is not right if they go into politics. The first duty of an American citizen, then, is that he shall work in politics; his second duty is that he shall do that work in a practical manner; and his third is that it shall be done in accord with the highest principles of honor and justice. Of course, it is not possible to define rigidly just the way in which the work shall be made practical. Each man’s individual temper and convictions must be taken into account. To a certain extent his work must be done in accordance with his individual beliefs and theories of right and wrong. To a yet greater extent it must be done in combination with others, he yielding or modifying certain of his own theories and beliefs so as to enable him to stand on a common ground with his fellows, who have likewise yielded or modified certain of their theories and beliefs. There is no need of dogmatizing about independence on the one hand or party allegiance on the other. There are occasions when it may be the highest duty of any man to act outside of parties and against the one with which he has himself been hitherto identified; and there may be many more occasions when his highest duty is to sacrifice some of his own cherished opinions for the sake of the success of the party which he on the whole believes to be right...
eBook - ePubMental Illness, Discrimination and the Law
Fighting for Social Justice
- Felicity Callard, Norman Sartorius, Julio Arboleda-Flórez, Peter Bartlett, Hanfried Helmchen, Heather Stuart, José Taborda, Graham Thornicroft(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...CHAPTER 3 Civil and Political Participation ‘Civil and political participation’ refers to an individual's ability to participate freely and without negative consequences at all levels and in all domains of public and political life and decision-making. Voting is an important example of a political right and is available in democratic nations to all adults with a limited number of exceptions (Klein and Grossman, 1971). Civil and political rights are guaranteed by a government by law – restrictions to such rights both diminish a person's democratic participation and reduce their social status (Thompson and Hall, 1974). Civil and political rights may be withdrawn from people with mental health problems or people who have a history of psychiatric treatment. Often civil rights are lost as a package. In Lithuania (and in many other countries in central and eastern Europe), many people with a long-term mental illness are placed in residential care homes called ‘internats’. About a quarter of such residents have been classified by psychiatrists as being incompetent, and these people lose their right to vote, to stand for elected office, to own property or to sign legal contracts. There are well-substantiated accounts that the designation of ‘incompetence’ is applied inconsistently, may sometimes be used on behalf of families seeking to take possession of a resident's property, and that once the ‘incompetent’ label is applied, it is rarely removed. Similarly, in Russia, being ‘legally incapacitated’ means losing rights to manage property, choose where to live, sign contracts, rent an apartment, be employed, vote in elections, marry, or seek any remedy through the courts (MDAC, 2005). The systematic withdrawal of such fundamental rights can be considered a type of ‘civil death’ (Burton, 1990). 3.1 Voting The loss of this vital political right can be seen as an expression of social exclusion (Nash, 2002)...
