Civic republicanism and active citizenship

This leads to the third text of this half-learned sermon. The French writer Benjamin Constant in an essay, written in 1820, on The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to that of the Moderns:

The aim of the ancients was the sharing of social power among citizens of the same fatherland: this is what they called liberty. The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment of liberty in private pleasures; and they call liberty the guarantees accorded by institutions to these pleasures.

Well now in 1820 we have reached the present day rather early. The concept and the critique of “the consumer society” arose long before we named this somewhat degrading and somewhat pleasing cultural change. Since Constant, all Western societies and many others have gained a democratic franchise. But what has been done with it: or what have new elites done to the new peoples? After the mass emancipatory movements too many of the beneficiaries have lapsed back into the condition that Constant described as modern liberty: happy just to enjoy the guarantee that the state gives to personal safety and private pleasures.

Scholars call this the liberal theory of the state. And yet key indicators suggest that people are not entirely happy with this social contract or apolitical new deal; so it is hardly surprising that those surveys tell us that most politicians are more distrusted than even estate agents and journalists.

We have to rebuild from the bottom up. Membership of political parties is important but more important are the practical schools of political skills and confidence: local government and community groups, civil society itself. And is not education, starting at school, important? So my fourth text is the 1998 English report, Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools:

We aim at no less than a change in the political culture of this country both nationally and locally: for people to think of themselves as active citizens, willing, able and equipped to have an influence in public life and with the critical capacities to weigh evidence before speaking and acting.

The advisory committee were not told by their chairman and principle draftsman (myself) that they had signed up to civic republicanism and, in effect, repudiated the strict individualistic liberal theory of the state. I didn’t want to provoke them.

The practices of active citizenship can be learnt in schools in many practical, participative activities done both at school and in the community. Discussion of real issues should be promoted as a way of arousing interest in what may otherwise seem to be remote and boring institutions.

Teachers should not just teach rights. The civic republic tradition always saw rights and duties as reciprocal. Certainly people should have legal rights even if they have no sense of civic duty. But there is a moral imperative that rights should inspire duties, just as we have a duty to respect the rights of others.

So liberal theory can be seen as demanding “good citizenship”, invoking “the rule of law”, good behaviour, individual rights and at its best moral virtues of care and concern for others, beginning with neighbours and hopefully reaching out to strangers. But it may stop short of demanding “active citizenship” or civic republicanism”, when we combine together effectively, whether locally, nationally or globally, to change or resist change. Such is true citizenship.