What does it mean to be a British citizen in the early part of the twenty-first century? The authors of Citizenship in Britain address this question through the lens of the Citizen Audit, comprehensive surveys carried out as part of the Economic and Social Research Council's democracy and participation program. The Citizen Audit had three components: “wave 1” face-to-face interviews of 3,145 respondents (62.2% response rate) conducted between September and December 2000, “mail-back survey” questionnaires with 9,023 respondents (37.5% response rate) between January and May 2001, and follow-up “wave 2” face-to-face interviews with a subset of the original interviewees (809 respondents; 67% response rate) between September and December 2001. The wave 1 interviews consisted of 62 questions, while the mail-back surveys and wave 2 interviews included a subset. The authors weighted the raw data by age, sex, and employment status to make them consistent with census data to compensate for nonresponse.
Before examining their data, the authors note that citizenship has become a central concern not only of academics but also of politicians and policymakers. This is true, they argue, for five reasons. First, citizenship has always raised basic questions about the relationship between the individual and the state, leading normative theorists to reexamine it whenever there are transformations in that relationship, as are now occurring. Second, real or perceived changes in the values, attitudes, and forms of participation that underpin civil society provoke interest because democracy cannot function effectively without participation. The paradoxical decline in electoral participation accompanying the spread of democracy around the world implies that “there is something happening to contemporary citizenship” that causes declining voter turnout (p. 3). Third, changes in the welfare state raise the specter of flimsy rather than robust citizenship, weakening the social contract and rendering governments unable to deliver on their promises. Fourth, the growth in immigration and multiculturalism leading to heterogeneous identities will, the authors argue, make more difficult the task of building a social contract on the basis of shared citizenship. Finally, the weakening of state power brought about by globalization and, for Britain, the consolidation of policymaking in the European Union, creates a democratic deficit and problems of accountability.
The authors argue the Citizen Audit surveys were needed because “many of the contemporary philosophical debates about the nature of citizenship have lost touch with the political reality of societies and governments trying to grapple with these problems” (p. 4). This leads the authors to propose their own definition: “Citizenship is a set of norms, values and practices designed to solve collective action problems which involve the recognition by individuals that they have rights and obligations to each other if they wish to solve such problems” (p. 22).
Turning to the survey results, Chapters 2–4 explore the extent to which civic attitudes vary according to demographic characteristics. The surveys demonstrate that attitudes toward the rights and obligations of citizenship vary according to respondents' age, gender, occupational status, extent of religious commitment, income, education, ethnic background, and place of residence. Overall, respondents were quite aware of their rights and obligations, feeling both a shared British identity and an obligation to contribute to the common good. Yet only 1 in 3 respondents were satisfied with British democracy, and their sense of their own collective political impact was low. Younger respondents were less likely to be “good citizens” than older respondents. Respect for the law was highest among the religious, women, and the elderly. Somewhat surprisingly, education appeared to reduce commitment to the state: those who remained in full-time education until the age of 19 or beyond were far less likely than those who left at the age of 15 to respect the law (p. 66).
Chapters 5 and 6 consider political behavior. In terms of “macro” behavior—a list of seventeen actions intended to influence rules, laws, or policies—the authors find that the most popular actions were donating money to an organization, voting in a local government election, signing a petition, and boycotting certain products. Against worries about apathy, the Citizen Audit revealed that citizens were engaged in many political activities, but that these activities were dominated by the most highly educated, the rich, and those from the top occupational echelons. In terms of “micro” political behavior—actions to influence the quality of schooling, health care, or working environment—respondents felt they had influence over their teacher, doctor, or employer and were generally satisfied with how they were treated.
Following this discussion of the survey results, the book changes direction to explore five theories or models of civic engagement. The authors conclude that citizenship is not stable but rather is “malleable as individuals make choices about their participation and their perceptions of rights and obligations” (p. 184). Citizens' relationships with the state are subject to continuing negotiation, changing in response to shifting incentives or circumstances.
In a section inspired by the social capital analyses of Robert Putnam and his colleagues, the book explores the extent to which citizens' attitudes and behavior influence policy outcomes. The authors find that good citizenship matters: the more active local people are in politics and in associational life, the more trusting they feel, and the more affluent they are, the better their lives are. (Of course, the direction of causation is open to interpretation.) Also consistent with Putnam, the authors find that television has deleterious effects on civic participation: frequent TV watchers did not get involved. The authors reach the “cautiously optimistic” conclusion that citizenship in Britain is not in deep crisis but rather is quite healthy in some respects (p. 283). Yet they acknowledge that the decline in the sense of civic duty and in collectivist forms of political participation bodes ill for the future. Indeed, perhaps the audit's finding that only 1 in 3 respondents were satisfied with the workings of British democracy should preclude any optimism about the state of citizenship in Britain. Yet this is an important book about an important subject, and it provides much fodder for discussion.
