Silent Citizenship Research Articles

Citizenship, Religion, and the Politics of Belonging: A Case Study of Shaheen Bagh

Shaheen Bagh is no longer merely the name of a Muslim locality in South Delhi (India). It has, in fact, now become an iconic symbol of resistance in defense of the Constitution. Based on participant observation, as well as semi-structured interviews with the protestors, this article engages with women and men transitioning from a state of silent citizenship to insurgent citizenship by putting up an extraordinary resistance to the political regime in the wake of the enactment of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019. It also argues that the routinized public performances at Shaheen Bagh aided to internalize an identity of insurgent citizen—based on a sense of being wronged, and in opposition to the current political dispensation. Furthermore, the performative politics at the site helped women to subvert the scripted narrative of docility and subordination that is usually attached to them.

Towards a Democratic Theory of Silence

Contemporary democratic theory is focused on empowering the voices of citizens in collective decision-making. The opposite of voice is silence. Increasingly, citizens are remaining silent rather than vocally participating in politics. Among democratic theorists, silent citizenship is equated to civic disengagement and disempowerment. I expand this view by theorizing the conditions under which silence is also a political expression. My analysis identifies four types of silence that can politically communicate. The resulting framework draws out the communicative dimension of silence, providing new tools to assess the unique interpretative challenges and dangers that silent citizenship presents for a democratic system.

Silent citizenship: choices, tactics and claims-making among sexual citizens

ABSTRACT The pluralities of silence speak to political undercurrents otherwise neglected or unheard. Questioning how and why people remain silent debunks assumptions that silence is passive or apolitical. In the context of sexual citizenship, this study explores how silence reveals forms of contestations and claims-making that are not always captured within voices privileged as ‘political’. Through interviews with non-heterosexuals in Singapore, this article draws attention to what being silent means as a matter of situated choice and form of self-expression, its agency found within the very subtlety of its manifestations. The wherewithal of silence also emerges in how state laws and policies that otherwise limit the access of citizenship rights and privileges for non-heterosexual Singaporean citizens are overcome through economic position and privilege. The quiet rejection of heteronormative ways of being a Singaporean citizen reveals political positions opposed to the status quo, a recognition of unequal citizenship and a desire for change. At the same time, these narratives are buoyed by claims to citizenship through articulations of national belonging, home and the desire for equal citizenship. These agentic practices demonstrate the political dimension of silence and the strategies and claims that belie it.

Mapping silent citizenship: how democratic theory hears citizens' silence and why it matters

Democratic theory hears silent citizenship as disengagement or disempowerment. Normatively, silent citizenship evokes the specter of civic passivity – of democratic citizens variably characterized by apathy, disaffection, selfishness, or a lack of political knowledge. Empirically, silent citizenship is linked to deficits of democracy – including voter turnout rates, the quality of political representation, and overall government responsiveness. One problem with these conclusions, however, is that we lack any systematic conceptualization of the range of different attitudes democratic citizens might hold in silence. This article seeks to fill in this conceptual gap by mapping the range of possible motivations for citizens to remain silent in developed liberal democratic systems. The key to doing so, I argue, is to distinguish between two measures of democratic citizenship: empowerment and communication. Separating these two measures reveals an entire spectrum of motivations for silence, which I organize into five distinct degrees of silent citizenship.

Silent citizenship among Asian Americans and Latinos: opting out or left out?

In his classic study, Who Governs?, Robert Dahl interpreted the patterns of political assimilation of ‘white ethnic’ immigrants and their children during the mid-twentieth century as a hopeful sign of the potential of democratic pluralism in the USA. While acknowledging that immigrant groups faced discrimination and structural barriers that might lead them to be silent, Dahl predicted that social mobility and assimilation would eventually erase these deficits in political participation among immigrants. Building from Dahl's analysis, we investigate the extent to which pluralism in the USA can and does work the same way for immigrants who are also racial minorities. We highlight factors that can lead these groups to become silent citizens, including lack of legal status, lower levels of political mobilization by institutions, and discrimination as structural impediments to minority participation. Our findings suggest that both resources as well as structural impediments structure the political behavior of Asian Americans and Latinos, determining whether they are vocal citizens or silent citizens.

Domination, global harms, and the problem of silent citizenship: toward a republican theory of global justice

Many citizens across the globe suffer domination and injustice in silence. It is not a silence of apathy or approval, but is another sort of silent citizenship born of deep inequality. This article attempts to come to terms with the global scope of silent citizenship as a form of domination that has become increasingly common among the worst-off in society. I argue that identifying problems of silent citizenship requires us to give priority to injustice over justice in future efforts to promote global justice. To illustrate how this might be done, I broaden the scope of republican theories of nondomination to consider how they might be applied to silent citizenship from a global perspective.

Silent citizenship: the politics of marginality in unequal democracies

Silent citizenship: the politics of marginality in unequal democracies

American women of color and rational non-candidacy: when silent citizenship makes politics look like old white men shouting

Candidate emergence research emphasizes the importance of political ambition in determining who runs and, therefore, who governs. Political scientists tend to assume that there is a sufficient quantity of people of sufficient quality and diversity to form good, representative governments. Yet my research finds strong ‘candidate deterrent effects’ for women of color – effectively silencing people who would be strong candidates and representatives. I draw on data from an original survey and interviews with a unique group of young eligible candidates. These data suggest that women of color lack faith in politics’ ability to solve problems and perceive it as a discriminatory space. Their aversion to running is fully rational, based on perceptions of high costs and low rewards involved in candidacies. But their rational decisions lead to a system-level irrationality of continuing unrepresentative government that silences the ‘different voice’ emerging from race and gender diversity.

Pro- and anti-system behavior: a complementary approach to voice and silence in studies of political behavior

Theories of participation and non-participation are largely unable to capture and distinguish anti-system behavior, which ranges from deliberate silence to political violence. To better understand and measure these diverse forms of citizen participation, and to distinguish these from forms of alienation and marginalization, this article builds a new model of anti-system behavior in a way that facilitates the development of empirically observable variables and hypotheses. To do so, I draw upon sociological approaches to alienation – which examine intensities of rebellion and contestation – and combine them with the standard political scientific approach – which examines intensities of engagement based on resources. The problem, I argue, is that each approach only partially explains the motivations behind aberrant political behavior in modern democratic systems; they are in fact two sides of the same coin. I consider three cases of apparent silent citizenship: Muslims in Western Europe, Roma in Eastern Europe, and white working-class people in North America and Europe.

Solace for the Frustrations of Silent Citizenship: the Case of Epicureanism

Insofar as no democratic society can fully realize norms of free and equal citizenship, citizens in such regimes are likely to experience some degree of discontent with their political lives. This raises a second purpose for democratic theory beyond the usual focus on improving democratic institutions: the psychological issue of how ordinary citizens might find solace in the face of disappointment. Democratic theory is capable of providing solace because egalitarian commitments – equality, free speech, solidarity, and self-sufficiency – have a double potential: they not only ground efforts to democratize institutions, but when sublimated in apolitical form also have the capacity to generate a transcendence of the political form itself. In this essay, I pursue both ideas – the need for solace and egalitarianism's ability to provide it – through analysis of the way Epicureanism may have functioned for the ordinary, plebeian citizens in late Republican Rome.

Silent Citizenship in Democratic Theory and Practice: The Problems and Power of Silence in Democracy

Many theorists believe humans’ ability to speak gives them access to democratic life. I take up a neglected question: What does silence mean for democratic theory and practice? The answer usually given is that silence indicates a deficiency, a normative vacuum in which citizens are excluded from public life through a lack of opportunity, confidence, information, or articulateness. I depart from this view. Silence is more than negative – it can also communicate in ways that democratic theory should be attuned and democratic institutions might empower. Building on pragmatic accounts of language I develop a typology able to capture silence’s multiple meanings in democratic life: not only as a symptom of exclusion (which it often is), but also as a ubiquitous form of expression citizens use affect, demonstrate, regulate, and facilitate their interactions, non-verbally, for better or worse. I end by considering how this typology can help theorists rethink problems of coercion within two generic components of democratic decision-making: aggregation and representation. For those concerned by issues of inclusion, the typology helps determine when to empower speech and when to be receptive to silences. For those studying democratic institutions, such a typology shows us ways to mitigate exclusionary silences while empowering expressive ones.

‘Silent Citizenship Educators’ in Dutch Catholic Schools: Exploring Teachers’ Moral Beliefs About Citizenship in Relation to Their Conduct of Citizenship Education

Abstract In this article we adopt a virtue ethical approach to study teachers’ moral beliefs about citizenship and their relation to two kinds of teacher behaviour in citizenship education: (1) teachers’ modelling behaviour, and (2) the way they arrange moral classroom discussions. We believe that a virtue ethical approach would appeal especially to religious schools, which is why we conducted our study in Catholic primary schools. Two hunderd and three teachers at 20 Catholic schools were involved. Teachers’ beliefs and behaviours were defined and operationalised from a community-centred perspective, because we expected that perspective to fit the context of a Catholic school. We found that these teachers indeed hold community-centred views on citizenship, the more so if they frequently attend church. Another important finding is that teachers do not necessarily show and share their beliefs about citizenship with their students. From a virtue ethical point of view, however, they should not be afraid to do so. As moral educators, especially in a religious school, teachers are allowed, even obliged, to name, explain and defend their beliefs and values.