Conover and Searing - Citizenship

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Southern Political Science Association

The Nature of Citizenship in the United States and Great Britain: Empirical Comments onTheoretical ThemesAuthor(s): Pamela Johnston Conover, Ivor M. Crewe, Donald D. SearingReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Politics, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Aug., 1991), pp. 800-832Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2131580 .Accessed: 14/03/2012 17:46

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TheNatureof Citizenshipn the UnitedStatesand GreatBritain:EmpiricalComments n TheoreticalThemes

PamelaJohnstonConoverUniversity of North Carolinaat Chapel HillIvor M. CreweUniversity of EssexDonald D. SearingUniversity of North Carolinaat Chapel Hill

This study examines citizens' conceptions of rights, duties, and civic identities in the UnitedStates and Great Britain. By combining an information processing approach with a method-ology-focus groups-that has seldom been used in political science, we have begun to exploreempirical claims in contemporary theoretical controversies about citizenship. We find that inthe minds of citizens citizenship is a complex matter, and that the roles constructed by citizensthemselves blend together liberal and communitarianelements in ways unanticipated by manypolitical theorists.

Citizen. 1. An inhabitant of a city or (often) of a town; esp. a freeman of the city; atownsman (1514);a civilian. 2. In U.S. a person, native or naturalized, who has the privi-lege of voting for public offices, and is entitled to protection in the exercise of privaterights TheShorterOxfordEnglishDictionary.)Concern about the quality of citizenship has become widespread in boththe United States and Great Britain. On the American side, liberal individu-

alism has been accused of creating a polity whose citizens are born alone,live alone, and die alone (Bellah et al. 1985). Educators lament the desicca-tion of civic education, and President Bush has called for a volunteer pro-gram of "a thousand points of light" to reinvolve people with one anotherand with their local communities. In Britain the topic is more politicallyThis paper builds upon theoretical foundationswhich were constructed in collaborationwithStephen T. Leonardwhose help we greatly appreciate. We also would like to thankMary Dietz,Stanley Feldman, Russell Hanson, and Geraint Parry for their comments on earlier versions ofthis paper. Of course, we absolve all these individuals of responsibility for any shortcomings in

our interpretations. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the SpencerFoundation in the collection of these data as well as the assistance of Matthew BurbankandJenifer MacGillvary.JOURNAL OF POLITICS, Vol. 53, No. 3, August 1991? 1991 by the University of TexasPress


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Nature of Citizenship 801controversial. Thus, Muslim separatism has been criticized by the homesecretary as a danger to the integrity of British citizenship. "Thatcherism"has been repeatedly accused of undermining community and Conservativeministers have responded by demanding that more British history be taughtin the schools. And, worried about the decline of citizenship, the speaker ofthe House of Commons has been organizing conferences of political theoriststo discuss these problems.The speaker has turned to the right people, for citizenship is now beingdebated vigorously among political theorists. Their debates are often char-acterized as controversies between proponents of liberalism and proponentsof communitarianism.1Moreover, this controversy among contemporary po-litical theorists focuses on two views of citizenship, the contractual and thecommunal, which are prominent throughout the history of political philoso-phy (see Portis 1985; Dagger 1981; Walzer 1989). Much is known, therefore,about what political philosophers think about the desirability of these twobasic approaches to citizenship. But much less is known about what ordinarycitizens think about such topics. The meaning of citizenship to citizens inmodern democracies is a subject of considerable importance to both politi-cians and philosophers who need to know what the present situation is be-fore they can decide what should be done about it. In fact, recent politicaland philosophical debates have an air of unreality about them, because theyare being conducted in what is virtually an empirical void.In order to begin gathering the necessary information, we have selectedfor in-depth study two strategicallydifferent cases: the United States, whichis often regarded as a polity with relatively contractual forms of citizenship,and Great Britain, which is often regarded as a polity with relatively com-munal forms of citizenship. However, before turning to our empirical find-ings we need to say something more about the theoretical issues involvedand about the United States and Great Britain.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES AND THE CROSs-NATIONAL CONTEXTContractual and communal visions of citizenship are difficult to character-ize concisely because they are not crystallized into two distinct positions.Hence, few representatives of either tradition would subscribe to all theclaims that have been associated with the contractual or the communal vi-sion. Nevertheless, it is possible to characterize broadly the central themesof each as follows.'Both the liberal and communitarian "schools" are quite diverse and even the "players"

sometimes change. Nonetheless, statements and descriptions of the major liberal themes canbe found in: Dworkin 1977; Gray 1986; Gutmann 1985; Hirsch 1986; Rawls 1971; Thigpen andDowning 1987. And the major communitarianthemes can be found in: Barber 1984; MacIntyre1984, 1988; and Sandel 1982, 1984. Walzer (1983) is categorized by some as a communitarianbut he does not fit clearly in either category.


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802 Pamela Johnston Conover et al.The contractual vision of citizenship, which forms the basis for contem-

porary liberal views, is rooted in the political philosophy of Locke andHobbes. It tends to be legalistic and has at its core a strong conception ofindividualism and individual rights (Conover, Leonard, and Searing 1989).Citizens are regarded as autonomous individuals who make choices, asindividuals who are bound together by a "social contract," rather thanas friends and neighbors united by common activity (see Rawls 1971; Wo-lin 1986). Within this contractual context, political participation becomesmainly instrumental and mainly serves private interests rather than a com-mon good. Hence, the liberal conception emphasizes the privileges of citi-zenship-in the language of liberalism, "rights"-and interprets them mostoften in terms of "negative freedoms," as protections for the individualagainst interference from government or society with his or her autonomy.Duties are usually relegated to the background because they constitute ob-ligations that restrict freedom.2 Although discussions of citizenship have,since the Enlightenment, concentrated on rights and duties, citizen identi-ties also are important to this discussion. Liberal citizen identities are "thin"and occupy only a small part of the self, for liberal citizens are autonomousindividuals who are neither rooted in nor encumbered by their public lives(Ackerman 1980; Dagger 1981; Sullivan 1986).

Liberalism has dominated modern discussions of citizenship, but its posi-tions have recently come under attack by communitarians who speak for anolder vision that originated in the "civic republicanism"of Aristotle and wasrecast by Medieval and Renaissance philosophers (Pocock 1975). Underlyingthis view, which is also frequently associated with Rousseau, is a conceptionof citizens who are not so much autonomous individuals making privatechoices, as social and political people whose lives are intertwined (Barber1984; Sandel 1984). Such "communal" citizens share with their neighborscommon traditions and understandings which form the basis for their publicpursuit of a common good. And this public engagement has much to do withtheir identities. Indeed, identities are as central to the communal vision asrights are to the contractual. Communal citizen identities are "thick"-suchcitizens not only have the right to participate in public affairsbut are ex-pected to do so actively for the community's sake and for their own (Dagger1981). Individual rights tend to drift to the background where they are re-garded as contextually defined. Duties, by contrast, are brought forwardbecause they involve responsibilities that are to be welcomed rather thanshunned (Barber 1984; Sandel 1982).

As we have argued in another paper with Stephen Leonard, these philo-sophical accounts of citizenship are often empirical as well as normative2But even liberal citizens are not free from all duties. Minimally, they have a responsibility

to respect the rights of others.


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Nature of Citizenship 803(Conover, Leonard, and Searing 1989, 6-8). Among their many empiricalassumptions, two stand out. The first is the claim that the discourse of lib-eralism is the dominant self-understanding of citizens in liberal-democraticsocieties like the United States and Great Britain. Liberal theorists celebratethis state of affairswhile communitarians criticize it. But both believe it tobe true. Both also suggest a second claim: that even in liberal-democraticsocieties some citizens continue to draw on communitarianself-understand-ings (see Neal and Paris 1990; and Walzer 1990). It seems to us that theseempirical claims, and many others like them, gloss over distinctions in theself-understandings of citizens that may require rethinking what is possibleand desirable for democratic citizenship. Yet, to address empirically suchclaims, we need to know much more than we do at present about how citi-zens actually understand their rights, duties, and identities.Of course, this is not to suggest that researchers have totally neglectedthe empirical study of citizenship. Over the years a variety of related topicshave been explored. Socialization studies, for example, have probed the de-velopment of a sense of civic duty and political efficacy (see for example,Jennings and Niemi 1974, 1981). A burgeoning number of researchers havestudied political tolerance through survey research (e.g. McClosky and Brill1983; McClosky and Zaller 1984; and Sullivan, Piereson, and Marcus 1982).And, in-depth methods have been used to probe how Americans think aboutjustice (e.g. Hochschild 1981) and about their own political identities (e.g.Lane 1962). Such research notwithstanding, the landmark empirical studyof citizenship still remains Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba's The CivicCulture (1963), now more than 25 years old. Yet, none of these studies, noteven The Civic Culture, provides us with sufficient information to addressthe empirical claims of contemporary political philosophers. This is truebecause most of them draw their intellectual inspiration more from socio-logical or psychological theory and public opinion studies than from politicalphilosophy. What is needed now is research that explores the actual self-understandings of citizens and directly addresses the contemporary debatesin political philosophy.Our research seeks to fill this void by focusing on two contemporary de-mocracies: the United States and Great Britain. Both are liberal-democraticsocieties with advanced capitalist economies, with similar electoral systemsand with a great deal of political freedom. These similarities will facilitateour comparative analysis by holding constant many variables (see Eckstein1975).

At the same time, there is good reason to expect the United States to besubstantially more contractual than Britain, and therefore good reason toexpect that a close look at the nature of citizenship in these two democracieswill illuminate the theoretical debate. The United States has a written con-stitution, a prominent Bill of Rights, and a strongconstitutional traditionthat


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804 Pamela Johnston Conover et al.provides checks and balances and many opportunities to vote representa-tives in and to vote them out. Britain has many fewer contractual frame-works. Its constitution is unwritten and "organic."And the notion of a Brit-ish bill of rights has always been controversial.If anything, the British frameworks seem, by comparison, communal.They begin with the assumption (an assumption that has worn thin in recentyears) that the community's politicians will usually pursue the community'scommon good (Beer 1965). And they provide a monarch whose principalduty is to promote solidarity. Moreover, the United States is a large mega-democracy, heterogeneous in its ethnic and religious traditions and charac-terized by a striking pluralism and geographic mobility. Britain, by contrast,is an island the size of Idaho whose population has for centuries been morehomogeneous than the American and much less geographically mobile. Ithas also been molded more by social class. At the same time, the existenceof the British welfare state is said both to reflect a sense of communal citi-zenship and to strengthen it (Titmuss 1970), in contrast to the politicalculture of the United States which is said to accent competition andindividualism.

FRAMEWORK AND METHOD OF ANALYSISThe present study, which is part of a larger study of citizenship and civiceducation, focuses on rights, duties, and citizen identities. Although thesetopics constitute only one segment of conceptions of citizenship in theUnited States and Great Britain, they lie at the core of these conceptionsand therefore deserve special attention.An essential part of understanding what citizens think about their rights,duties, and identities is understanding how they think about these matters.And an effective frameworkfor understanding how citizens think about suchmatters can be found in recent work in cognitive psychology. Thus, we shalladopt an information-processing approach that emphasizes the role of cog-nitive structures and stored affective reactions. This suggests two lines ofinquiry. First, we shall assume that people's thinking about rights and dutiescan be characterized in schematic terms.3 Most people develop cognitivestructures or schemata to organize their knowledge about rights and duties.We will explore the content of these schemata in terms of both the particularrights and duties that they encompass as well as in terms of the more generalunderstanding of rights and duties that they suggest.The second line of inquiry concerns how people think of themselves as3A schema is a cognitive structure of "organized priorknowledge, abstracted from experiencewith specific instances" that guides "the processing of new information and the retrieval of

stored information" Fiske and Linville 1980, 543; for further discussion of political schemata,see Conover and Feldman 1984).


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Nature of Citizenship 805citizens. We shall assume that citizenship is a fundamental identity thathelps situate the individual in society. The development of an identity canbe described in terms of the evolution of a self-schema, a cognitive structurecontaining informationabout oneself (Conover 1984; Fiske and Taylor1984).To say that people think of themselves as citizens is to suggest that they haveself-schemata which intricately link their senses of self to their notions ofwhat it means to be a citizen. Accordingly, because communitarianand lib-eral treatments of citizenship embody different conceptions of citizenship,they necessarily suggest different sorts of citizen identities. From a commu-nitarian perspective, one's identity as a citizen entails identification with acommunity of people, and a sense of collective consciousness about themeaning of that identity. Such an identity creates an encumbered sense ofself. By contrast, liberal approaches to citizenship suggest identification notwith a community of people but instead with the abstract category "legalcitizen," the bearer of rights.We have employed a method seldom used in political science: focusgroups. Focus group discussions are planned group conversations that aretape recorded and sometimes videotaped as well (Krueger 1988). Focusgroups offer several advantages for researchers interested in discovering thecommonplace meanings of political terms. Though carefully planned ques-tions are used to stimulate conversation, the discussions themselves are notclosely controlled. This encourages people to respond in terms of the lan-guage and categories they actually use in their own thinking and conversa-tions (Krueger 1988). The same result is also promoted by the group char-acter of the discussion: participants talk to one another in their ownlanguage, rather than simply reacting to the questions and language of aninterviewer in a one-to-one situation. Finally, because individual partici-pants may be influenced by one another, the focus groups mirrorthe groupor social context within which many people actually experience citizenship.

There are, of course, drawbacksto this kind of qualitative research. Theparticipantsare not representative of any particularpopulation, and thus theresults are not generalizable in a statistical sense. Because of both groupinfluence and our substantive focus on citizenship, there may also be socialdesirability effects. And, the discursive nature of the discussions makes cod-ing and analysis difficult. Nonetheless, if we are to understand how peoplein liberal polities think about citizenship, we must begin by listening to howthey talkabout it and by analyzing the language that they use. Only afterwehave allowed them to articulate their own schemata in their own words doesit become meaningful to contemplate more quantitative methods of study.Thus, we regardour analysis as a critical first step toward understanding howpeople think about citizenship.In this essay, we shall analyze the results of our discussions with eightfocus groups, four in the United States and four in Britain. In the United


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806 PamelaJohnston Conover et al.States, two focus groups consisted of citizens of Chapel Hill, NC, a univer-sity community, and two of citizens from Pittsboro, a small ruralcommunitysouth of Chapel Hill. These four groups were stratified according to urban/ruralresidence and familiarityof the participantswith one another. The fourBritish groups were stratified by the same factors and also by social class.They were selected from four communities in East Anglia: a socially mixeddistrict of Peterborough, which is a medium-sized new town with a sizablemigrant and ethnic minority population; a middle-class suburb of Cam-bridge, which is a prosperous high-tech university city; Halesworth, a so-cially mixed small town in rural Suffolk;and the Chantry Estate of Ipswich,a large working-class council house estate. Previous research suggests thaturban/rural residence as well as two of its correlates, community size andlevel of social integration, are likely to shape the nature of citizenship (seeBarber 1984; Dagger 1981; Kasarda and Janowitz 1974). By stratifying ac-cording to residence and, in Britain, social class, we sought to increase thevariety in responses to our questions.4 By stratifying according to whetherthe subjects were strangers or acquaintances, we sought to vary the impactof group influences over individual responses. These focus groups containedboth men and women and ranged in size from 7 to 11 participants, includingthe interviewer who led the discussions.

Each group was asked 13 basic questions, most of which were accompa-nied by specific probes (see appendix A). Seven of these questions presentedhypothetical dilemmas to be solved, while the remainder were more abstractinquiries about citizenship. The questions were identical in the UnitedStates and Britain, except for very minor differences of vocabulary.The dis-cussions in the United States lasted two hours with a short break in themiddle, and in Britain one and three-quarter hours without a break.5 Theyeach produced on average between 40 and 45 pages of transcribed text.These transcripts were analyzed in three stages.6 First, they were readthrough in order to identify descriptive and inferential codes for classifyingthe respondent's statements. Thus, the respondents' discussions more thanthe analyst'spreconceptions were given the lead in developing the codingscheme. Next, the transcriptswere reread to code each statement accordingto the scheme developed on the basis of the first reading. Finally, these

'The stratificationby urban/ruralresidence in the American groups constitutes an indirectstratification according to social class.5st is possible that the pattern of discussion in the two countries was influenced by the differ-

ent formats. Because they were not given a break, the British discussants may have grown moreweary toward the end of the session. However, there were no significant cross-national differ-ences in the length of the discussion for the last half of the questions. Nor have we identifiedany other substantive differences that might be attributable to this structural difference in thetwo sets of focus groups.6Adetailed description of the coding categories is available from the authors upon request.


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Nature of Citizenship 807coded statements were subjected to a pattern analysis to identify commonthemes in the understanding of particular concepts (see Miles and Huber-man 1984 for a discussion of the development of coding schemes for quali-tative data analysis).

EMPIRICALANALYSISOF CITIZENSHIPThe focus group transcripts were analyzed with three key concepts inmind: rights, duties, and citizen identities. As we have seen, liberal andcommunitarianaccounts of citizenship provide different perspectives on thenature of these concepts and the relationships among them. And, as we shallnow see, our focus group participants also differ in this regard although not

always in ways so easily categorized as "liberal"or "communitarian."The Rights of Citizens

T. H. Marshall(1977), a political theorist, has suggested a three-fold clas-sification of the rights of citizens: civil rights, political rights, and socialrights. But, when our respondents were asked to think about their ownrights, they certainly did not devote equal attention to all three types. More-over, the varying emphasis given to each of the three types differed mark-edly between our American and British respondents. All four of the Ameri-can groups focused overwhelmingly on civil rights: freedom of speech,freedom of religion, freedom of movement. In the British groups, by con-trast, the emphasis was equally clearly on social rights: what one discussantgraphically described as "the basic rights that all human beings shouldhave-a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, clothes on their backs,and an education for their children."We do not wish to overdraw the differences between our American andBritish citizens, nor to exaggerate the predominance of the civil rights focusamong the formeror the social rights focus among the latter. Certainly someof our American respondents recognized the existence of political and socialrights. But, they mentioned them far less frequently-civil rights were re-ferred to 10 times more frequently than political rights-and, in the case ofsocial rights, with considerably more ambivalence. Only one American re-spondent suggested that people have a right to "the basic necessities . . . aplace to live, food to eat, . . . health care." Others went out of their way, inresponse to the hypothetical situations, to reject or at least express ambiva-lence toward the idea that people have a right to expect that their basicneeds will be met by the community. Thus, the assumption of many politicaltheorists that "welfare rights are integral to the contemporary sense of citi-zenship" (King and Waldron 1988, 417) may be much more convincing as aportraitof the British than the American public.Similarly, some of our British citizens acknowledged the existence of po-


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808 Pamela Johnston Conover et al.litical and civil rights. But in three of the four focus groups, they did so onlyafter fairly heavy prompting by the moderator. Spontaneous mentions ofcivil rights were particularly rare, and then couched in indirect and negativeterms quite different from those adopted by the Americans: "the right not tobe murdered," "the right not to be molested," "the right to expect others tobe law-abiding."Moreover, when asked directly, "Whatare the most impor-tant rights?"the majorityof our British citizens had no hesitation in accord-ing primacy to social rights: "Ifyou were starving you wouldn't give a damnwhether you had the vote or not. It's got to be the basics hasn't it?"And thebasics, as we have seen, are the rights to a minimum standard of living, tomedical care, to a job, and to education. One dissenter did object, in thecourse of his group's discussion about the "right"of every school child toequal educational opportunities, that "it'sselling the concept of rights a bitshort to say you have the right to a computer in every classroom . . . theright to protection against unjust arrest seems to me much more important."But his was a lone voice.What accounts for these apparent differences in the content of the rightsschemata of our American and British discussants? Two complementary ex-planations seem plausible. On the one hand, different political environmentsin the two countries may cue different aspects of our discussants' schematathereby makingthe cross-national differences appear greater than they reallyare.7 Thus, our British respondents do recognize the existence of civil andpolitical rights when prompted to do so by our questions. But, in the every-day course of events such rights are simply not uppermost on their mentalagenda perhaps because they are not on Britain'spolitical agenda, playingonly a minor role in civic education and popular discourse.On the other hand, there is also good reason to think that some of thecross-national variation may reflect very real differences. In general, ourunderstandingof political concepts is shaped by politics itself (andvice versa)(Farr1989). Thus, the understanding citizens have of a political concept suchas rights reflects the particularhistorical context in which they are situated.The history of rights in the United States and Great Britain is quite different.It is to be expected, therefore, that citizens in the two countries will havedifferent understandings of the concept.Thus, for our American citizens the existence of a bill of rights appearscrucial. It is much more than a political symbol; its listing of civil rightsactuallydefines the very substance of how Americans think about rights (e. g.,the content of their schemata). Accordingly, when Americans are asked"What are your rights as a citizen?" they think about the rights that are

7In psychological terms, environmental stimuli can repeatedly cue a particular schema sothat it is more readily accessible in a person's memory, and consequently may be used morereadily in discussion.


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Nature of Citizenship 809necessary for the preservation of their private lives, the rights that are es-sential for the maintenance of independence and individualism, the rightsthat are central to a liberal account of citizenship. In contrast, when Britishcitizens are asked "What are your rights as a citizen?" they immediatelymention the rights that are necessary for the preservation of everybody'sbasic standard of living and for protecting people from economic misfor-tune.8 It is not a bill of rights, but instead an equally impressive legislativeachievement, the welfare state, that seems to define the rights schemata ofBritish citizens.The apparent influence of the historical context is further suggested byboth the language people use to discuss rights as well as the actual meaningsassociatedwith the concept. Once again, the differences between the Ameri-can and British citizens were revealing, albeit not always straightforward.And, once again, the differences seem to reflect the particular histories ofthe two countries-the prominent role of the Bill of Rights in the UnitedStates and the gradual development of political and social rights in GreatBritain. Underlying the dominant focus on civil rights among our Americancitizens was an understanding of rights as legal guarantees: "rightsis a strongword . . . it gets legal" . . . "rights are things legally guaranteed by a docu-ment." Specifically, there was a sense that rights are guarantees that ensurepeople's choices against interference by other people as well as the govern-ment; they prevent people from doing things that "may impact negativelyon someone else." Thus, Americans tend to have a legalistic, negative viewof the nature of rights, a view in keeping with liberal politics.The fact that our American discussants thought of rights as legal protec-tions makes their ambivalence over social rights more understandable. Manyfound it difficult even to talk about whether their fellow citizens have a rightto expect help in a disaster or a right to the basic necessities of life. It simplyoffended their liberal sensibilities to describe such actions as rights. As onewoman protested, "It's not kosher to talk about people having a right tohelp"; or, as another noted with frustration, "Youdon't say, 'Do people havea right to love?' or 'Do people have a right to be nurtured?' . . . there'scertain innate things that I don'teven associate as being a right." Most of theAmerican discussants expressed genuine compassion for the homeless andfor the victims of disasters-but they nonetheless balked at the idea thatsuch people have a right to be helped.Their objections to the idea of social rights stemmed from two related

81ndeed, it was notable that, with one exception, the British discussants never referred toindividual rights but always to the rights of a group or category to which an individual mightbelong. The exception occurred when one person asked her fellow discussants, "Has anybodyactually ever said, 'I've got my rights'?"The question produced peels of laughter. The discuss-ants, even though relatively well-educated and affluent, could not imagine themselves saying itand evidently regarded the kind of person who did as something of an "oddduck."


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810 PamelaJohnston Conover et al.sources. First, as forcefully explained by members of the rural focus groups,the idea of social rights rubs up against individualism and the work ethic andthus offends the liberal spirit. To say someone has a right to food, shelter, orhelp is "like saying you owe me"; and, as one citizen angrily added: "I'msorry but there are no free lunches. Nobody owes you anything anymore."Secondly, some people felt very strongly that talking about helping othercitizens and meeting their basic needs as a matter of rights diminishes themoralworth of these acts and renders them passionless. The notion of rights,they said, "leaves out the moral issue of citizenship." Most discussants feltthat it was farpreferable to provide food or shelter to a needy person becauseone is virtuous rather than because one is coldly and legally compelled to doso by some social right. This ambivalence about the existence of social rightsreflects the influence of liberalism on American political language and onAmericans' understanding of rights as legal guarantees rather than as moralclaims.The emphasis given by British respondents to social rights suggested adifferent understanding of the term, an understanding that reflects the evo-lutionary development of social rights in Britain. Two themes ran throughtheir thinking. First, rights were neither legal guarantees nor moral claimsbut instead benefits to which British people were entitled as financial con-tributors to the social funds from which the benefits were drawn. Education,medical care, and other social rights were seen not so much as a citizen'sbasic right, nor as an entitlement that accompanied a legal status, but as ataxpayers'due return. The language of exchange rather than legal guaranteeswas frequently invoked: "[A right is] anything where you are involved inpaying high taxes when part of those taxes are for education, hospitals,etc. ... you have a right to use those facilities because you have paid forthem." . . . "When you pay the rates [local property tax] you have the rightto have your bin [trash can] emptied and the road swept." Thus, unlike theirAmerican counterparts, our British discussants did not associate social rightswith "free lunches." They did not think of social provision as free, or cost-less, because they considered they were paying for it.The second theme depicted social rights as a form of equality-equality ofopportunity. When challenged about where the limits to social rights shouldbe drawn, British discussants were careful to distinguish social rights fromunlimited handouts. The "right to work" did not mean that jobs "should behanded to people on a plate"; the unemployed were expected to make aneffort to find a job. It meant "the right to the opportunity to work." The"right to higher education" did not mean that every school-leaver, howeveridle or unable, was entitled to a place in college; students were expected towork hard to pass their examinations. It meant the "right to the opportunityto enter higher education:" the able should not be denied the chance to goto college simply because they could not afford the fees. In other words,


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Nature of Citizenship 811social rights were regarded as a way of ensuring that everybody had a fairchance of "getting on," of "makingsomething of themselves."

Not surprisingly, therefore, our British respondents had less difficulty ac-cepting the notion that their fellow citizens had a right to expect help in adisaster. Some, like their Americancounterparts, did consider it inappropri-ate for a disaster victim to claimna right to help. But few denied that thevictim had such a right. Makingthe claim might be inappropriate, but thatwas because it might reflect "the wrong attitude." Their vague uneasiness(none were bristling with indignation) stemmed from a suspicion of the char-acter and motives of someone actually claiming the right, when help waslikely to be forthcoming. Again, the language of exchange intrudes: someoneclaiminga right to help was "the sort of person that you would expect to takebut not to give" . . . "the type of person without insurance, a person who isalways ready for a handout."The understandings that underpin our British citizens' emphasis on socialrights suggest that it would be simplistic to identify social "rights,"as mighteasily be done, with a communitarian conception of citizenship. The sub-stance of social rights, especially universal and "noncontributory" rightssuch as the health service, education, and basic income support, might becommunitarianin their form and consequences. But the communitarian ar-guments frequently adopted by social and political theorists (e.g., Goodin1985) in defense of social rights-the protection of the vulnerable, the un-predictability of misfortune, the strong helping the weak-found few echoesin the thinking of our British discussants. On the contrary, they used a lan-guage of exchange that, though relatively less contractual than the languageof legal guarantees, is still basically contractual, individualistic, and closer toa liberal than a communitarianvision of citizenship.Finally, both our American and British discussants offered relatively so-phisticated accounts of the origins of rights, accounts that have a strikinglycommunitarianflavorto them. Nearly everybody on both sides of the Atlan-tic was skeptical about the existence of naturalrights. "You'redefinitely notborn with rights just by virtue of the fact that you are a human being," ourAmerican discussants argued. Similarly, with regard to animal rights, "they[the animals]are not born with them [rights] any more than we are. We giveeach other rights."In keeping with both the legacy of the Bill of Rights and their legalisticinterpretations of the nature of rights, our American citizens understoodrights as something guaranteed by law and "given"by government. More-over, although they may refer to their "inalienable rights," their discussionof these rights clearly suggested that they viewed them as "alienable."Justas the government could "give us a right," so the government "can take itaway.In contrast, our Britishdiscussants gave a more historicaland evolutionary


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812 PamelaJohnston Conover et al.account of the creation of rights, reflecting a consciousness of British tradi-tion and continuity. The prevailing view was that rights had to be fought for."Nobodybestows them [rights], do they? Rights have to be won." They werenot given by government or a group of founding fathers but extracted piece-meal from government by the suffragettes, trade unions, and other cam-paigning movements.These subtly different accounts of how rights are created led discussantsin both countries to agree nonetheless that rights are not universal but in-stead depend on the country and the historical period in which one lives.Rights are "relative to where you happen to be born." Rights are "away ofsociety constructing itself," one of our Cambridge discussants argued. Anunemployment benefit is not a natural right but "acertain right within thisparticular form of society." At the same time, there was this persistent rec-ognition, absent in the United States, that today's rights had evolved overthe centuries: "Weare going back to the rights of every century when peoplehave fought and died to give us our rights in this century." Rights are createdby historical communities, which pass their heritage from generation to gen-eration. To our British respondents, rights seem "inalienable" not becausethey are "entrenched"in a bill of rights but because they have stood the testof time.

In summary, our focus group discussions reveal that many citizens sharecommon schemata that organize their understanding of the content, nature,and origins of rights. But, not surprisingly, American and British citizensoperate with somewhat different schemata that reflect the particularhistoryand political traditions of their country. Thus, the Bill of Rights dominatesour American discussants' understanding of rights. When they think aboutrights, they most naturallythink about civil rights. Underlying this commonfocus is a legalistic, basically negative understanding of the nature of rights,an understanding that fits easily with the existence of civil rights but thatrenders problematic the existence of social rights. When British citizensthink about their rights they most naturallythink about social rights. Under-lying their common perspective is a less contractual, albeit still contractual,conception of rights, accompanied by a sense that these rights have graduallyaccumulated over the centuries in the course of popular campaigns andstruggles. Both the Americans' legalistic interpretation and the British dis-cussants' evolutionary interpretation leads to an understanding of rights asalienable and contextual in origin.Thus, as anticipated in the introduction, in both countries our discussantspresent a complex mixture of liberal and communitarian notions. Liberalconceptions predominate in the United States, whereas some communi-tarianconceptions can more easily be seen in Britain; yet there are impor-tant elements of both in each country and, moreover, discussants oftencombine both types of conceptions in their understanding of rights. Our


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Nature of Citizenship 813American discussants' list of rights was a liberal list; their understanding ofrights a liberal understanding; their language of rights a liberal language.But, their views about the origins of rights and the importance of historicalcontext in the creation of rights was decidedly more communitarian. OurBritish discussants' account of the creation of rights was perhaps even morecommunitarian;their list of rights focused on the "positive" social rights thatcommunitarians might be expected to endorse. But, their understanding ofrights revealed a contractual and individualistic ethic that was more akin toliberal than communitarianmodels of citizenship.The Duties of Citizens

"What are the duties or responsibilities of citizens?" As with rights, ourfour groups of American discussants shared a common schema, which theyarticulated in response to this question, as did our four groups of Britishdiscussants. Once again, the American and British schemata differ in waysthat reflect the comparatively stronger tradition of liberal thinking in theUnited States and of communitarian thinking in Britain. But we were againstruck by the danger of caricaturing these differences. For one thing, thecross-national differences are less marked than they were with rights. Foranother, they are still more subtle. In both countries, but especially in Brit-ain, many discussants adopted coherent but mixed schemata of citizen du-ties, combining the language and reasoning of one tradition with the con-cepts of the other.Among our American discussants, the question about citizens' duties im-mediately brought political responsibilities to mind. The "duty to paytaxes," the "duty to defend the country" and the "duty to vote" were men-tioned repeatedly. Once again, the core of the common schema that ourAmerican discussants share is basically liberal in character (see Galston1988).The citizen duties schema shared by our British discussants containedrelatively more communitarian elements. As in the United States, badcitizenship was defined almost wholly in terms of lawbreaking and trouble-making rather than as a failure to make a positive contribution to the com-munity good. And, in defining the good citizen, very few British discussantsspontaneously mentioned any nonobligatory and positive action (such asmaking a citizen's arrest or protesting against bad laws) as a basic duty. In-stead, duties such as jury service, voting, paying taxes, and serving one'scountry in warwere mentioned though less frequently than by the Americandiscussants. But, far and away the most commonly cited British duty wasobedience to the law, and this was combined with a more general emphasison civility, and on obedience to community norms ("workingwithin the sys-tem," "accepting the majority situation").At first glance, then, the British


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814 PamelaJohnston Conover et al.schema concerning duties appears more limited and clearly more passivethan its American counterpart. However, the discussion of our British res-pondents belies this simple interpretation and suggests one more commu-nitarian in tone. Their strong emphasis on civility as a citizen duty does notalways result in passive behavior. Instead, such a commitment may some-times necessitate active behavior in order to maintain a civil community.Moreover, the British schema of citizen duties is understandable whenthe historical context is remembered. Britain is an "elitist" democracy inwhich citizens have traditionally thought of themselves as "subjects." Insuch a context, it may seem natural to place a strong emphasis on civilityand the preservation of community norms while downplaying the impor-tance of those political duties which involve considerable political partici-pation.

But so farwe have only touched the core of our discussants'understandingof citizens' duties-what a British discussant called "the bottom-line duties."Once we move beyond this core, we find considerable disagreement aboutwhat further responsibilities, if any, citizens should fulfill. Most of this dis-agreement concerns public involvement and social needs: political partici-pation beyond voting, community service, helping those in need, educatingchildren (both one's own and those of strangers), protecting the vulnerable,and preserving the environment. Evidence regarding the status of these ac-tivities as citizen duties comes from two sets of questions.The first question explicitly asked whether people who engage in volun-teer work and participate in the community are "extra good citizens orsimply behaving as all citizens should?"There was much discussion and dis-agreement here. Less than a quarter of our citizens, on both sides of theAtlantic, answered it using a language of duty or responsibility.9Those whodid so expressed their feelings strongly: "We all have a moral obligation tohelp in any disaster," an American discussant argued. "People have an obli-gation to help out and do things in the community," asserted another. Farmore common, however, were those who struggled awhile with the samequestion, and then eventually answered it using a language of virtue. Thatis, they had a sense that such activities are clearly desirable, and that thosewho perform them are probably virtuous, indeed admirable; but such be-

90ur distinction between a "languageof duty" and a "languageof virtue" was based on morethan simply the presence or absence of a particular verb, though the verbs employed wereoften valuable clues. ("Duty" responses often used verbs such as "must" and "obligated";"vir-tue" responses more typically used verbs such as "should"and "ought".)Rather, the interpre-tation of language was made on the basis of entire phrases and responses to questions. Welabelled as "duty"responses those suggesting that citizens performed certain behaviors becausethey were compelled to do so by a legal or moral obligation. "Virtue"responses, in contrast,were those suggesting that the performance of particular behaviors by average citizens wasoptional or a matter of choice.


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Nature of Citizenship 815haviors are nevertheless voluntary activities that definitely go beyond theobligations of citizens in a liberal polity (see Galston 1988). As one noted,"I think all citizens ought to do things like that, but .. . those of us who dogo out and contribute . . . are extra good because . . . to get out and to itis . . . a little bit more."Our discussants gave three reasons why voluntary work and other formsof active participation in the community should not necessarily be regardedas a citizen's duty, all of which challenge the identification of activism withgood citizenship that is often drawn by communitarian theorists. First, sev-eral made the practical point that not everyone has the resources or theopportunity to be an active participant. "I think you should make some kindof contribution, but I don't think everybody can necessarily get involved inworkingfor a political movement," said an Americandiscussant. "Youcan bean elderly housebound person who can't actually go out and do much andstill be a good citizen," a British discussant pointed out. Secondly, respon-dents in both the United States and Britain wondered exactly how virtuouscommunity activists actually are: "It's not all giving," the Americans said,"They'rereceiving some things back or they wouldn't be doing it"-a com-mon and striking example of individualistic skepticism about the motives ofthe public-spirited.10

The third objection to the identification of active participationwith citizenduty followed from the second. It was confined to British participants andwas frequently voiced, thereby providing an important clue about the dis-tinctive nature of citizen duties in Britain. Although on balance our Britishdiscussants respected the people who served on parent-teacher associationsor provided meals on wheels for the elderly, good citizenship, they argued,was not only, or even primarily, a matter of "sitting on committees" and"creating miracles" in the community. Being a good citizen did not neces-sarilyinvolve public roles, constant activity, or communalparticipation. "Youcan be a good citizen really just by looking after your own family, your ownpatch." Bringing one's children up "to do right," doing one's job to a highstandard, being professionally competent and conscientious, caring perhapsforjust one other person ("butproperly and genuinely")-all were identifiedas equally valuable elements of good citizenship. In effect, our British dis-cussants recognize that any one person'sability to lead "agood life" is depen-dent on the civility and good performance of others, thus they place a highpremium on such behavior. It is tempting to characterize this quietist viewas decidedly liberal in its rejection of activism and formalparticipationin thewider community as the standard of good citizenship. Yet, our British dis-

loMembersin one of the Pittsboro groups engaged in a lengthy discussion of whether one canjudge an act virtuous without considering the underlying motives: "In order to classify someoneas good-good citizen, good person-you've got to look at their motives." Another said, inresponse: "But if the end result is good, then what difference does it make?"


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816 Pamela Johnston Conover et al.cussants clearly saw such behavior as a critical, positive contribution to thecommunity.For some, the hesitancy to extend their understanding of citizen dutiesbeyond voting and obeying the law eased when they were presented with aseries of hypothetical dilemmas. Responding to the dilemma of a youngmother being hassled by teenage boys as she waits in an airport line, theyassure us that they would intervene, because "We really have a responsi-bility to protect the vulnerable and to help people in distress." Or, "I feelit's my duty that women should be treated in a proper way ... I would feelthat very strongly." Similarly, when asked what to do about a small boy whois destroying public property, they say, "People have a responsibility to tryand educate the young about what is appropriate behavior . .. Somebody'sgot to teach this child." Thus, citizens who abhor the notion of duty in theabstract nevertheless sometimes adopt the language of duty when con-fronted with specific situations that force them to consider the practice ofcitizenship in context.These two sets of questions suggest that once we move beyond the com-monly agreed core duties of citizenship, there are several patterns of think-ing found among our British and American discussants. First, significantminorities in both countries extend their communitarian schema of citizen-ship duties to encompass active engagement in community and politicalactivities. For them, community service is as much a responsibility of citi-zens as is voting. Moreover, contrary to a liberal perspective, their under-standing of citizen duties even goes so far as to encompass the recognitionthat sometimes they may be required to place the community's interest-the common good-above private interests. Consequently, in some contextsthey are willing to curb individual rights to further the good of the com-munity. So, for example, immigrants may be required to speak English be-cause we "need a common language to run the country";or gardeners maybe compelled to curtail their use of water, despite great inconvenience andcost, because "the community is dependent on it"; or smokers may be pre-vented from smoking in public in order to preserve "the clean air" of thecommunity.

Second, a majorityin both countries seems to have a different and funda-mentally liberal understanding of citizen responsibilities which leads themto restrict their listing to the core set of activities described earlier. At thesame time, however, they have obviously developed a second schema ofvirtuous behaviors that the "extra good" citizen engages in as a matter ofchoice, or that the "ordinarily good" citizen adopts as a matter of habitualpractice. Moreover, for at least some people, the boundaries between thesetwo schemata are fluid; when confronted with specific situations, what theyhad previously regarded as merely virtuous behaviors sometimes seem tothem to become responsibilities.


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Nature of Citizenship 817These different schemata and their languages suggest two basic under-standings of duty or responsibility. Those discussants who limit their notion

of citizen duties to core responsibilities tend to have an individualistic and,especially in the United States, legalistic understanding of duties, an under-standing that parallels their legalistic interpretation of rights. From this per-spective, duties are a threat to personal autonomy, the opposite of choiceand freedom, things "you sort of have to do," things one is "compelled tokeep by the laws of the land." Moreover, duties are also viewed negatively.They are the "things they can get you on"; or, as one American discussantobserved, "duty is a four-letter word." Moreover, such duties are seen assterile activities bereft of normalhuman emotions and goodwill. People whounderstand citizen duties in this individualistic, legalistic, and negative fash-ion prefer a world with relatively few of them, a polity where people engagein virtuous behavior because they "want to do it," because of a "sense ofhumanity," because "it's the Christian thing to do"-but definitely not be-cause they are compelled to do so by a legalistic commitment or pressuredto do so by the authorities. "I would do it (help in a disaster)," one Britishwoman said, "ifI wanted to do it and it was a human response; but if some-one just came along and said it was your duty, I would say, 'Naffoff."' Thatis, they prefer a polity where they can choose freely as autonomous indivi-duals (rather than obey dutifully as citizens) whether or not to engage indesirable civic behaviors.A second, minority, view of the concept of citizen duties stands in clearcontrast to this first understanding. Here people see duties positively, lessas legal requirements than as moral obligations. They do not find it easy toexpress. They try with phrases such as "They (duties) aren'twritten; they'rejust there." "Youknow that as a person that's what you do." For them, theresponsibilities of citizenship seem a natural, unquestioned part of life-apositive, emotional experience. When fulfilling one's commitments towardthe community, one naturally feels "sympathyand passion for others." "It'snot a question of 'Youhave a duty,"' said a British discussant in a mock-sternvoice, "it'sbecause you are caring." In effect, these people are comfortablewith a language of duty and a world where people engage in virtuous behav-iors out of a sense of duty, because "they must," because they "have a re-sponsibility," because it is the "naturalthing to do." Such people tend toview duties in a positive sense, in a way that is alien to how liberals thinkabout these matters.These differences in perspective are further illustrated by considering theorigins of duties. Not surprisingly, those who have a negative understandingof duties explain such origins in utilitarian and legalistic terms. As ourAmerican discussants put it, citizens have legal responsibilities "in order tokeep society and government running." By virtue of being a "legal residentyou have certain responsibilities." In contrast, those who see citizen duties


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818 PamelaJohnston Conover et al.in a more positive light understand them as natural elements of communallife. British discussants, in particular, prefaced their accounts by saying "It'snatural,""It's nstinctive," "Youknow as a person that'swhat you do." Dutiesgrow naturallyout of the attachments that people feel for one another, andout of the sense of community and tradition that develops over time. Theyare taught from generation to generation as an almost unconscious part ofthe socialization process.Again, one must be careful not to exaggerate the communitarianperspec-tives or the cross-national differences. Among our British discussants, easilythe most common account of the origins of duties invoked reciprocity in theform of a homespun version of Christ's "Do unto others . . .":"Iwould wantthem to help me if I was in the same position," or, as was said repeatedly,"There but for the grace of God go I." This does not necessarily involvecalculation, or even utilitarian motives. It is not so much a matter of calcu-lating, "IfI help them this time, they will help me next time," as a matter ofregarding empathy ("How would I feel?") as the most comfortable terms inwhich to think about virtuous behavior toward others. Communitarianfeel-ings about citizenship are in these ways blended into what are essentiallyliberal conceptions of how duties evolve.In summary, our focus groups in both countries share a common under-standing of the core responsibilities of citizenship. Central to this basic un-derstanding are the fundamental duties that are necessary for the preserva-tion of civil life (e.g., obedience to the law, respect for the rights of others)and for the preservation of the political system (e.g., paying taxes, servingon juries, voting). This is not to suggest that there are no cross-nationaldifferences concerning the core responsibilities of citizenship; the Britishlisting, in fact, does tend to be more passive reflecting a "subject"orienta-tion. But, the most obvious cross-national differences involve not so muchthe content of the core as they do an appreciation for the routine perfor-mance of the core duties. Specifically, our British discussants seemed farmore sensitive to the value of civility and the reliable performance of otherbasic duties than did our American discussants.

Setting aside the core duties, in both countries people differ sharply overother forms of citizen behavior such as public service, aid to the needy, andpolitical participation beyond voting. Most argue that these are not so muchresponsibilities of citizenship as they are virtuous behaviors that individualsmight or might not choose to do. Underlying this assessment is a liberalperspective: a basically negative view of duties as legal requirementsstripped of emotions, as unavoidable byproducts of legal citizenship. At thesame time, a sizeable minority of the discussants incorporate such citizenbehaviors into their conceptions of the duties of a citizen. Underlying theirinterpretation is a more communitarianperspective: a basically positive viewthat characterizes duties as moral obligations infused with a sense of care


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Nature of Citizenship 819and concern, as naturalmanifestationsof a shared life; and a view that allowsfor the possibility that one's duty to the community may in some instancesoverride one's rights as an individual.Thus, our focus groups suggest that the discourse of liberalism is indeeddominant in America and, to a lesser extent, in Britain. They suggest furtherthat in Britainand, to a lesser extent, in America, citizens nonetheless havesignificantcommunitarianself-understandings-and that all these beliefs arefar more complex and subtly interwoven than anyone had anticipated. Theyare also deeply embedded in citizen identities, to which we now turn.Citizen Identities

We shall begin by considering how our American discussants think ofthemselves as citizens and as Americans and how our British discussantsthink of themselves as citizens and British. We shall then explore the cen-trality of these political identities to their self-conceptions.Commentators from Tocqueville (1969) to Huntington (1981) have notedthat abstract ideals of the "AmericanCreed" like freedom, individualism,constitutionalism, democracy, and social egalitarianismplay a central role indefining the American identity. But in many other countries, including Brit-ain, national identity is characterized as more "organic,"as rooted in a loveof the land, a common culture, or cherished traditions.So, when asked, "What does it mean to be an American?" and "Whatmakes you feel like an American?," all four American focus groups offeredthe same response: freedom. "Being an American is to be free, to speak upfor yourself, to fight for your freedom." Being an American is to be an indi-vidual with choices, to be "in control of your own destiny." Being an Ameri-can is to savorthe fruitsof individual choice: "economic achievement," "Yan-kee ingenuity," "self-expression."Similarly, when asked, "When do you feelmost American?,"our discussants cited emotional events that involved pow-erful symbols of freedom and individualism: the Iranianhostages returningto freedom; the playing of the national anthem; young American olympianswho have become the best that they can be. At the core of our discussants'identities as Americans is a fundamental sense of having important rightsthat ensure freedom and encourage the development of the individual. "Asan American you're born with rights." In essence, to be an American means"'you'vegot rights."" Constitutionalism, egalitarianism, and even democ-racy were seldom mentioned. Thus, Americans forge their identities bydrawing on those elements of the American creed that are relevant to the11 ow Americansthink about rights is central to understandinghow they think of themselvesas Americans. Their rights schemata are incorporated into their self-schemata, or identities, asAmericans. From the perspective of the individual, what it means for "an abstract person"tohave rights becomes what it means for "me" to have rights.


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820 PamelaJohnston Conover et al.conduct of their private lives and less on those elements that mold the natureof public life.

When our British discussants were asked the same questions, a very dif-ferent set of responses resulted. For one thing, they encountered more dif-ficulty in articulating their Britishness. Despite the country's cultural ho-mogeneity, no common or dominant theme emerged, and certainly nopolitical equivalent of the American Creed. Across the four focus groups,only a single discussant defined Britishness in constitutional or politicalterms. For the rest, their sense of being British was, indeed, "organic."Afew found it in an attachment to the physical land: "I feel proud of the coun-tryside . . . I feel intense pleasure at being able to live in England." A fewfound it in a variety of supposedly distinctive characteristics:being Britishmeant "eccentricity and tolerance of eccentrics"; "queuing"; "putting upwith things and not complaining." But the majorityunderstood "Britishness"in cultural terms. It was "a matter of attitude," "a feeling," "a sense of be-longing." Where did this feeling and sense of belonging come from? Cer-tainly not from a legal document. It could only be acquired slowly and "natu-rally,"as a legacy of values handed down by one's parents and grandparents;as a result of living in Britain for a very long time; by "fitting in" with therest of the community. It was a heritage: being British was to take pride inpast national triumphs, especially military ones against the odds: the Ar-mada, Trafalgar,Waterloo, World War II (the most often cited), and theFalklands.'2Moreover, it was a shared heritage: to feel British was to sub-merge one's sense of individuality into a collective identity and not, as in theAmerican case, to accentuate it.How do our discussants' identities as Americans or British fit with theirsense of themselves as citizens? More generally, "What does it take to be acitizen? What makes someone a citizen?" As Walzer (1989, 216) notes, therehave been two main responses to these questions in the history of politicalphilosophy, one basically communitarian, the other basically liberal: "Thefirst describes citizenship as an office, a responsibility, a burden proudlyassumed; the second describes citizenship as a status, an entitlement, a rightor set of rights passively enjoyed. The first makes citizenship the core of ourlife, the second makes it its outer frame. The first assumes a closely knitbody of citizens, its members committed to one another; the second assumesa diverse and loosely connected body, its members (mostly) committedelsewhere."

'2Awoman discussant said: "Iwas proud to be British when I was in America. I wouldn'tgiveup British citizenship . .. I just felt I didn't want to be an American citizen . .. even though Ireally liked it. I wanted to retain being British." Interviewer: "When you say that you wantedto go on being British, what did you associate being British with?" Discussant: "'Cause of theRoyal Family, I think. The traditions. You look back and you think-'cause America is differentto us-They haven'tgot a royal family . .. so it's different."


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Nature of Citizenship 821Both understandings of citizenship are found among our American andBritish discussants. The majority in both countries view citizenship strictly

as a legal entitlement. From this perspective, citizenship "is simply a con-dition recognized by law which entitles you to protection by passports . . .to pay your taxes . . . Don't ask me for the precise list. There's a sequenceof legal rights." Citizenship "is a question of legality really. You were bornhere and you were registered here-that's as far as it goes." Moreover, thenotion that obligations might be associated with this citizenship is almostalways regarded as troubling. For example, a British discussant objected thathe "didn't see how you can earn citizenship when you're planted here bybirth." Yet, other discussants clearly saw citizenship as much more than alegal entitlement. While "technically" people might become citizens by vir-tue of the circumstances of their birth, they argued that there is a morefundamental sense in which people become citizens "by being involved inwhat's going on, a part of the community." "A citizen means someone whorepresents their community . . . They are involved in whatever small way.""Legally you're a citizen if you have a passport," they acknowledged. "But,you have to earn it to really deserve the title." This was the minority view,especially in Britain.Because the nature of national identity differs so markedly between Brit-ain and the United States, the relationship between our discussants' senseof identity and sense of citizenship also differed considerably. Let us con-sider the Americans first. Many of them merge their sense of identity asAmericans with their sense of identity as citizens into a single identity orself-schema. What it means to be a citizen in America is simply what itmeans to be an American:a person with rights. And these are precisely thesame people who defined their citizen duties very narrowly, legally, andnegatively. For them, rights far outweigh duties in defining their sense ofcitizenship. Furthermore, they lack a sense of citizenship beyond that de-fined by their national identities. When asked what it meant to be a citizenin their local communities, they replied: "I don't think the term citizen isused that way";and "When you talk about citizenship, I don'treally think ofthe local, I think more of the national." By focusing on the national level,such discussants are able to live in their local communities as private indi-viduals unencumbered by the demands of a public identity. For theseAmericans, citizenship is simply not a central aspect of their identities. Theyseem to experience citizenship largely as liberal theorists would have themexperience it.

This ability to "wear"their citizenship lightly is reflected in their relativelack of interest in discussions about the traditions and history of their coun-try. And when they do talk about such topics, they speak cognitively andabstractly rather than emotionally and concretely because they do not feelrooted in their communities. Similarly, compared with their community-


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822 Pamela Johnston Conover et al.oriented neighbors, they display fewer signs of "civic wisdom," by which wemean a capacity to envisage a common good and take this into account intheir discussions. Thus, even when they act in ways that benefit the com-munity, they give these acts a liberal interpretation, devoid of notions ofcommon good. For example, when they explain why they would interveneto prevent a child from destroying property in a public playground, they sayit is because "my taxes are paying for the playground"; or "if it's a publicpark, it's my property too."By contrast, a minority of our American discussants describe their senseof identity as Americans and their sense of identity as citizens as comple-mentary but not blended, not as one and the same. In psychological terms,their two self-schemata remain somewhat distant. Being an American is tobe a person with rights. But being a citizen in America is to be a person withrights and duties. This understanding of citizenship is based on a broaderconception of duties as positive moral obligations toward one's fellow citi-zens. And the roots of this identity naturally extend below the national levelto experiences within the local communities where people live their every-day lives and develop their connections with one another. To be a citizen isin this sense to be encumbered, desirably encumbered. "It's ust what I amto be involved in what's going on in my community, in my children'slives,in my family's ives, in my neighbors' lives." Citizenship for these discussantsis a central aspect of their identities. They seem to experience citizenshiplargely as communitariantheorists would have them experience it.The encumbered character of their lives is revealed by the fact that theytalk about their country'shistory and traditions much more than their moreliberal neighbors do; and their "rootedness" comes through in their con-cerns. They are disturbed that the beaches where they once played as chil-dren are now spoiled by "beer cans, soda cans and dirty water." And theyare concerned that "Ifyou don'tstudy those things [their country'shistoryl, "and understand them, "you become like those people who think that beingan American has to do with being able to go to a McDonald's on every cor-ner." Finally, our communitarian citizens express signs of some of the "civicwisdom" that their liberal counterparts appeared to lack. When explainingwhy they engage dutifully in activities that benefit the community, they aremore likely to suggest a vision of the common good. They, too, would stopthe destructive child in the playground, but they would do so because "it'sour property, community property."National identity and sense of citizenship stand in a quite different rela-tionship to each other among our British discussants. In Britain, unlike theUnited States, the individual'ssense of identity as British and sense of iden-tity as a citizen are certainly not blended nor even complementary. As wehave seen, most of our British discussants adopted comparatively commu-nitarian schemata of national identity but comparatively liberal schemata of


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Nature of Citizenship 823citizenship. As a result, their conceptions of national identity and citizenshipwere quite distinct and, in some cases, opposed. The large majority re-garded "Britishness" as a cultural and communal heritage that was not nec-essarily a birthright and could not be easily or automatically obtained. Bycontrast, they viewed "citizenship"as a technical term that defined the legalentitlement and duties of people who were either born or lived in Brit-ain-as a formal status that did not have to be earned.The distinction between these two schemata was underlined in discus-sions about the relationship between nationality, citizenship, birthplace, andresidence. There was general, although not universal, agreement thatpeople born in Britain should automatically be entitled to British citizen-ship. But by no means could all British citizens be considered truly British:"Sikhs and Hindus and Muslims, they are born here, their children go toschools. And what I find very hard to understand is why they are living insuch close-knit communities . . . in a separate part of town to everyone else. . . as though they are living in Pakistan or India or whatever. I can under-stand them not saying that they feel British even though they are born here."Equally, to have neither lived nor been born in Britain did not precludepeople from being "British" if they had a sense of being British throughfeelings for or connections with Britain, as for example the people of theFalklands and Gibraltar appeared to do. One British discussant drew thedistinction between her identity as British and her identity as a citizen evenfurther:

I sent off my passport a little while ago. That said that I was a citizen-and I didn'tparticularlywant to be a citizen, I wanted to be a subject.Interviewer: Why would you ratherbe a subject than a citizen?

Discussant: Because I think if I am a subject, then that means that me and my familygo back a long way in this country. But if I am a citizen, that means that anybody couldcome over here and after they have been accepted they can be a citizen-and they arenot the same as I am.

It is clear from this and many other remarks that most discussants attachedfar more importance and value to their sense of Britishness than to theirsense of citizenship. In stark contrast to some of their American counter-parts, their sense of citizenship played only a peripheral part in their selfconceptions, whereas being British was central to these identities. Indeed,a minority possessed such a decidedly cultural concept of Britishness thatthey wished to restrict citizenship to those who were not only born in Britainbut were, in addition, obviously "British." 3 Contrary to the assumptions of

'3The following exchange in one focus group is illustrative. Interviewer: "Do you think ofeveryone born here as being a British citizen?" First discussant: "I'd like to think that, but Idon't think I do. I'd like to think that all colors and creeds are British citizens. But I think thatin reality . . . I might say they are not. They come from another culture . . . I think that I havea slight antifeeling toward them if I am truly honest, in that I feel they are invading our coun-


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824 Pamela Johnston Conover et al.some communitarians, a strongly communal sense of national identity neednot translate itself into a communitarian concept of citizenship, and when itdoes, it may produce exclusionary attitudes of a kind they would abhor, asliberals have warned.

CONCLUSIONAlthough the liberal-communitariandebates have been mainly concernedwith normative ideals of citizenship, they have put forward important em-pirical claims which we have used to focus our cross-national investigation.

One is that the discourse of liberalism is the dominant self-understanding ofcitizens in liberal democratic polities, a claim we have explored in relativelycommunitarian Britain where, presumably, it is less likely to be so than inrelatively contractualAmerica. The second is that some citizens nonethelesscontinue to draw on communitarian self-understandings, a claim we haveexplored in America'shighly mobile and culturally plural society where, pre-sumably, it is less likely to be true than in Britain'scomparatively stable andhomogenous environments. With regard to the topics of rights, duties andidentities, our empirical data suggest that both claims are essentially correct.But they also suggest that the meaning of citizenship is far more complexand ambiguous than the generalities in these debates imply.The dominance of the discourse of liberalism can best be seen in the com-mon-yet nationally distinct-schema that nearly all our respondents shareabout rights. In the American case, liberal assumptions underpin both thecontent and language of rights. In the British case, the content of rights maybe more social, but the language ofjustification is again liberal. More diversesegments of the public may hold different rights schemata which we havenot yet seen. But we are impressed by the extent to which a single under-standing of rights, a liberal understanding, has shaped the conversations inall of our focus groups.Thus, our American discussants nearly all conceive of rights as legalisticprotections against interference with their individual choices-protectionsagainst interference from government, society or other individuals. In theirdiscussions, they concentrate on the. rights that are necessary for maintain-ing their independence and individualism: civil rights such as freedom ofspeech, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, freedom to becomewhatever one wants to become. British discussants, on the other hand, giveprimacy to social rights which place responsibility for basic provision in thehands of the community and reallocate resources on the basis of need. Yetthese rights -arejustified in a liberal language of exchange and individual

try." Second discussant: "Don't you feel that might change? If they are born here . . . and growup here, they (would) be more accepted as citizens?" First discussant: "Yes, well obviously theybecome more and more English-oriented with each generation."


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Nature of Citizenship 825opportunity-not in a more communitarianlanguage of "protecting the vul-nerable" (Goodin 1985). This Anglo-American difference in the listing ofrights seems to reflect historical differences in the evolution of rights. Andit calls into question the assumption that a sense of community is a prereq-uisite for ensuring ajust distribution of basic goods (Walzer 1983). It was themost communitarian Americans who were most suspicious of social rights,and the most contractually minded British who took then most for granted.The most liberal of our discussants are mainly concerned with rights,though they accept that citizens have a set of core duties (obeying the law,paying taxes, voting, and defending the country). They part company withtheir more communitarian neighbors over the nature of responsibilities to-ward public involvement and community service. The most liberal citizenssee such activities as virtuous but not as obligatory. Their view of citizenduties tends to be negative, legalistic, and utilitarian;albeit when discussingparticular situations some of them, almost despite themselves, lapse into thelanguage of duty. By contrast, those citizens with the most communitariansentiments place a much greater emphasis on citizen duties, particularly onpublic involvement, and community service. They regard such activities asmoral obligations that are grounded in membership in the community andare positive, pleasurable experiences. And in some instances, they are evenwilling to curtail individual rights in order to further the good of the com-munity. It is striking that most citizens with strong communitarian predis-positions come from the small rural communities of Pittsboro, NC andHalesworth in Suffolk, although there were also more in Cambridge than inChapel Hill. This is consistent with the notion that communitarian forms ofcitizenship flourish more among people who regard themselves as friendsand neighbors rather than as strangers.

Judged by their conception of citizen duties, there were more citizenswith communitarianleanings in Britain than in the United States, as we hadexpected, although they constituted a minority in both countries. It is per-haps not surprising that citizenship in America, or even in Britain, is pre-dominantly liberal in character. Nor is it surprising that within this liberalcontext some communitarian orientations can be plainly seen. What is sur-prising, however, is the many different ways in which our discussants com-bined liberal and communitarian themes. In both countries, we found mixedtypes whose self-reported conduct seemed to reflect one tradition but whosediscourse seemed to reflect another. This was particularly true of Britainwhere communitarian behavior was often explained from a liberal perspec-tive. For example, just as British citizens justify social rights in'individual-istic terms, so, too, do they explain their communitarian views of citizenduties more by reference to self than by reference to community. Pace somecommunitarian theorists, a strong sense of community may not always benecessary for citizens to learn civic virtues effectively.An adequate theory of democratic citizenship in modern polities must


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826 Pamela Johnston Conover et al.address the different ways in which liberal and communitarian themes canbe and are combined, for the most intriguing finding of our work thus far isnot so much that there are two types of citizens, as that these types are verybroad "umbrella"types each of which covers a range of mixed types thatcontain important elements from the other side. We need to know muchmore than we do at present about the nature of these empirical types and tounderstand how citizens blend together elements into a mix that many lib-eral and communitarian theorists regard as improbable. For example, themost liberal citizens in our study are most liberal with regard to their citi-zenship in the nation. When they focus on the local community, they beginto behave and speak more like communitarians, although not like commu-nitarian citizens. That is, they participate in community and political activi-ties, but they participate mainly for individualistic reasons rather than forcivic motives.From this perspective, surely the most important implication of our re-search for a theory of democratic citizenship is that it is possible to havesome of the benefits of communitarianism in a basically liberal polity. It isnot true, as liberal theorists sometimes claim, that communal citizenship isonly feasible in very small and very homogeneous communities and there-fore cannot be achieved in modern societies (Hirsch 1986, 441). Perhaps itis most likely to flourish in relatively small and homogeneous communities,and perhaps it cannot be fully achieved in a modern liberal democraticpolity. But even huge, pluralistic societies like the United States encompassclose-knit local communities. 14In a society of strangers, it makes sense to cast one's role as a citizenin liberal terms. In a community of friends, it makes sense to pursue com-munitarian ideals. Yet modern liberal-democratic polities are neither soci-eties of strangers nor communities of friends. Instead they are both-andour citizens seem to have accommodated themselves to this fact by devel-oping modes of citizenship that encompass both liberal and communitarianthemes.Manuscript submitted 14 November 1989Final manuscript received 29 November 1990

APPENDIX AFocus GROUP QUESTIONS

Listed below are the basic focus group questions and the first set ofplanned probes. For each question there were additional planned probesthat were used depending upon responses to the first set of probes. How-ever, in the interest of space, we do not present those here.

'4Indeed, in light of modern transport and telecommunications, even the assumption thatmeaningfulcommunities must be territoriallybased should perhaps be questioned.


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Nature of Citizenship 8271. Suppose there was a major disaster-such as a flood or fire-that hit a

part of your community, but not your own home. Would you be willing todo something to help those people out?If "YES:"What would you do? Why would you help? Would you still bewilling to help if the disaster was in another town? Another state? An-other country?If "NO:" Why wouldn't you do something to help those people? Wouldyou do something if there were specific directions about what neededto be done? . .. For example, if the Red Cross announced that itneeded clothes or food left at a specific place? What if the disaster af-fected your neighbors right down the street? Would you help then?Ask of All Discussants: In circumstances like these, do people have a rightto expect that other members of the community will help them out?Ask of All Discussants: In circumstances like these, do members of thecommunity have a duty to help out those affected by the disaster?2. Think back through American history. What are the tales and legendsthat you remember best? Which of those tales make you feel most proudto be an American?What is it about "event named"that makes you proud?What are the tales and events that make you ashamed to be an American?3. What makes you feel like an American? That is, what are the events orexperiences that make you feel most like an American? What ideas orcharacteristicsmake you feel like an American?4. When people say they are "citizens" of a nation what do you think theymean? That is, what makes someone a citizen of a nation?If Because They "Live" There: What is it about living somewhere thatmakes people citizens? Does the fact that an immigrant-that is some-one born in another country that comes to this country-lives in a placeentitle him or her to say that he or she is a citizen?If Because They Are "Born" There: Do you mean that citizenship is abirthright?If Discussants are Unsure: Does citizenship have to be earned or are wejust entitled to it by virtue of our birth or residence?Ask of All Discussants: What about when people say they are "citizens" ofa local community, do they mean the same thing as when they say theyare citizens of a nation?

5. It is often said that citizens have certain duties. What do you think theseduties are? Any others? What would you say are the most important du-ties? Which are the least important?What duties would a very good citi-zen undertake? What duties would a particularly bad citizen ignore?Where do duties come from? That is, when people say they have dutiesas citizens on what grounds do they base their claims? We have beentalking about duties now for several minutes, so let me ask one last ques-tion about duties. What exactly do you mean when you say that citizenshave certain duties? Do you mean that they have certain legal obligations


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828 Pamela Johnston Conover et al.or do you mean that there are certain things that people must do if theyare citizens even if it is not their legal responsibility?

6. It is often said that citizens have certain rights. What do you think theserights are? Any others? What would you say are the most importantrights? Which are the least important?Where do rights come from?Thatis, when people say they have rights as citizens on what grounds do theybase their claims? Only If Necessary Probe: Are people born with rightsor are they granted rights by their communities and nation? Do peoplehave certain natural rights just by virtue of the fact that they are humanbeings?7. Think about those people who give blood, or do volunteer work in thecommunity. Do you think such people are "extra good" citizen

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