Citizenship in Hard Times
How Ordinary People Respond to Democratic Threat

A comparative study of how citizens define their civic duty in response to current threats to advanced democracies.

Sara Wallace Goodman (Author)

9781009061049, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 January 2022

234 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.36 kg

'Goodman's … book is a fantastic and worthwhile read. It forces scholars to recognize that the meaning of citizenship is context contingent, and it means different things to different people.' Ryan Dawkins, The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics

What do citizens do in response to threats to democracy? This book examines the mass politics of civic obligation in the US, UK, and Germany. Exploring threats like foreign interference in elections and polarization, Sara Wallace Goodman shows that citizens respond to threats to democracy as partisans, interpreting civic obligation through a partisan lens that is shaped by their country's political institutions. This divided, partisan citizenship makes democratic problems worse by eroding the national unity required for democratic stability. Employing novel survey experiments in a cross-national research design, Citizenship in Hard Times presents the first comprehensive and comparative analysis of citizenship norms in the face of democratic threat. In showing partisan citizens are not a reliable bulwark against democratic backsliding, Goodman identifies a key vulnerability in the mass politics of democratic order. In times of democratic crisis, defenders of democracy must work to fortify the shared foundations of democratic citizenship.

1. Introduction
2. Citizenship and Democratic Instability
3. Measuring Citizenship Norms: Behavior, Belief, and Belonging
4. Patterns of Partisan Citizenship
5. Polarization
6. Foreign Interference in Elections
7. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Political structures: democracy [JPHV], Comparative politics [JPB]