2 - Citizenship and Democratic Instability

Summary

Chapter 2 develops the core theoretical arguments of the book. First, citizenship is a foundation for democratic stability. It binds together deep differences inherent to plural societies to establish a baseline of shared liberal democratic goals and, with those goals in mind, conveys legitimacy to a regime to govern. Second, the division of this national unity is a source of instability as citizens respond to democratic threat not as citizens but as partisans, interpreting good citizenship norms by what benefits their “side.” A citizen-centered approach focuses on how individuals use partisanship as an informational heuristic in hard times, relying on party cues to determine whether responding to threat is “in their interest.” These interests are determined by positional incentives of their side, that is, whether their party is in or out of power and institutional design features, which either encourage costly, zero-(majoritarian) or positive-(consensus) sum responses.