Many observers believe that political institutions in the United States are in acute decline due to polarization, gridlock, and poor governance (Barber and McCarty Reference Barber, McCarty, Mansbridge and Martin2013; Lieberman et al. Reference Lieberman2019). Civil society can serve as an important counter-force to institutional rot, but this requires a healthy civic culture (Acemoglu Reference Acemoglu2017). Is U.S. civic culture today up to the task presented by this moment? To answer this question, we must first be able to properly assess the status of our civic culture. But most scholars proceed as if there is a single civic culture, despite important variation by race, ethnicity, class, etc. So talk of “the” civic culture tends to erase non-dominant groups precisely when such erasure is being recognized as part of the current crisis. Thus, without a framework to account for group variation, we cannot assess decline, nor specify for whom, nor offer paths out of the current crisis. Today especially, we need a multicultural theory of civic culture.
Moreover, scholars of democracy nominate several features of civic culture believed to foster healthy political life. The lengthy list includes: patterns of citizen participation in the political system (Almond and Verba Reference Almond and Verba1963), diverse social networks and the political trust this engenders (Putnam Reference Putnam2000), respect for the electoral process and the governments they produce (Przeworski Reference Przeworski, Shapiro and Hacker-Cordón1999), support for democratic principles (Norris Reference Norris2011), political tolerance despite disagreements (Mouffe Reference Mouffe2000), a robust ecosystem for political discussion (Mansbridge Reference Mansbridge and Macedo1999; Neblo Reference Neblo2015), citizens being capable of properly evaluating government performance (Achen and Bartels Reference Achen and Bartels2016), and politicians exercising restraint in using their institutional prerogatives and respecting political opponents (Levitsky and Ziblatt Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt2018; Schumpeter Reference Schumpeter1942). And all of these further dimensions of civic culture further vary by race, ethnicity, and other group characteristics. So the problem in speaking of “the” civic culture is compounded.
Political scientists and political theorists have produced a large volume of research on each of these features. And frequently they examine them to make evaluative claims about the state of democracy. For example, Achen and Bartels (Reference Achen and Bartels2016, 313) write, “the relationship between constituents’ opinions and their representatives’ policy choices is correlation, not causation. And in any case, as Miller and Stokes (Reference Miller and Stokes1963) discovered long ago, the correlations are often quite modest—much smaller than those one would expect from the folk theory of democracy.” Thus, they conclude, the folk theory of democracy should be set aside for more realistic goals.
We note two analytical problems these types of evaluative claims of civic culture often contain. First, while the list of purported democracy-enhancing political behaviors and attitudes is long (and contested), many scholars make evaluative claims about civic culture based on only one or a small subset of features. Achen and Bartels, for example, assess the health of democracy based upon the degree to which the policy preferences of constituents influence legislative behavior and government performance influences citizens' voting choices. They are explicit in disregarding “the variety of meanings of democracy around the world” (2), thus disregarding many features of the civic culture thought necessary for political flourishing. Civic culture, then, is best thought of as a collection of civic cultures organized by evaluative criteria crossed with social groups—e.g., a culture of White participation, a culture of deliberation in the Black public sphere, a culture of Latinx protest, a culture of elite forbearance among the Quebecois, etc.
Instead, many scholars examine aggregate patterns of political behavior cross-nationally and evaluate civic culture on that basis (e.g., Almond and Verba Reference Almond and Verba1963; Norris Reference Norris2011). But we need a theory of civic multiculturalism to more accurately assess the state of democracy. Pateman (Reference Pateman, Almond and Verba1989), for example, criticizes Almond and Verba's conclusion that the civic cultures in the United States and Great Britain properly balance participation and deference to government authority because they neglect variation in who participates by groups organized by characteristics such as race, class, education, and sex. For Pateman and many others, inequality in participation is cause for a more negative assessment of these civic cultures than Almond and Verba allow for.
In short, when assessing civic culture, we should examine all attitudes and behavior thought necessary for democratic flourishing and examine group differences in these attitudes and behaviors. Doing so will give us a more complete basis to evaluate civic cultures both within a given country and comparatively around the globe. Yet, this poses a serious challenge in that it requires a great deal of careful analysis, and thus far there is no adequate framework for understanding how these different elements of the civic culture fit together.
We introduce a theory of civic culture as a system of norms that integrates the main approaches to measuring civic culture and does so in a way that leads to a principled approach to understanding within-country group variation. This framework organizes features of civic culture thought necessary for good democratic functioning into four broad categories, based on whether citizens or politicians are acting and whether citizens or politicians are enforcing a given norm. This framework lays the groundwork for a research agenda on civic multiculturalism.
Elements of Democratic Civic Culture
Most, but not all, theories of democracy make room for the informal norms and practices that support formal political institutions. Most obviously, this includes participatory visions of democracy, in which ordinary people's active participation in the public sphere is thought to be necessary. For participatory scholars, the quality of a civic culture might be measured by observing the extent to which people vote and participate in political campaigns (Almond and Verba Reference Almond and Verba1963; Rosenstone and Hansen Reference Rosenstone and Mark Hansen1993), make collective decisions in their workplace (Pateman Reference Pateman1970) or as members of broad-based membership groups (Skocpol Reference Skocpol2013), and build social capital within a diverse social network (Putnam Reference Putnam2000).
Deliberative theories also typically emphasize ordinary people's active participation in the public sphere, but these theories focus on aspects of the ecosystem of political talk, between ordinary people in the course of everyday life (Mansbridge Reference Mansbridge and Macedo1999), between ordinary people and their elected representatives (Neblo Reference Neblo2015; Neblo, Esterling, and Lazer Reference Neblo, Esterling and Lazer2018), and among political elites (Bessette Reference Bessette1997). For deliberative scholars, we might begin measuring the quality of a civic culture by observing how frequently people talk about politics and with whom (Eliasoph Reference Eliasoph1998; Huckfeldt, Johnson, and Sprague Reference Huckfeldt, Johnson and Sprague2004; Minozzi et al. Reference Minozzi2020; Mutz Reference Mutz2006), as well as the character of political talk when it happens (Cramer Walsh Reference Cramer Walsh2004). Deliberative culture might also be assessed by measuring the quality of discourse on a topic (Goold et al. Reference Goold, Neblo, Kim, Vries, Rowe and Muhlberger2012; Steenbergen et al. Reference Steenbergen, Bächtiger, Spörndli and Steiner2003), how well people understand arguments of people with different political affiliations (Mutz Reference Mutz2006; Price, Cappella, and Nir Reference Price, Cappella and Nir2002), or people's knowledge on an issue after talking about it (Esterling, Neblo, and Lazer Reference Esterling, Neblo and Lazer2011; Fishkin Reference Fishkin2018).
Although participatory and deliberative theories emphasize citizen participation in their accounts of a properly functioning democracy, “thinner” theories also use features of the civic culture to assess democratic well-being. Scholars rooted in the tradition of systems support (Easton Reference Easton1965, Reference Easton1975; Przeworski Reference Przeworski, Shapiro and Hacker-Cordón1999) frequently measure citizens' support for democratic principles (Carey et al. Reference Carey, Helmke, Nyhan, Sanders and Stokes2019; Inglehart Reference Inglehart2003; McClosky Reference McClosky1964; Norris Reference Norris2011) and their trust in the regime (Norris Reference Norris2011; Putnam Reference Putnam2000) as indicators of a well-functioning democracy. Liberal thinkers emphasize the importance of political tolerance (Mill Reference Mill and Ryan1859), even for those with whom we disagree with on matters of public policy (Mouffe Reference Mouffe2000) and especially for those marginalized in society (Stouffer Reference Stouffer1955). And proponents of the economic theory of democracy (Downs Reference Downs1957) frequently examine whether citizens make voting choices according to their preferences (Lau and Redlawsk Reference Lau and Redlawsk1997) or are responsive to government performance (Achen and Bartels Reference Achen and Bartels2016; Riker Reference Riker1982). Several scholars examine the political culture of elites, believing that politicians adhering to informal norms are key to maintaining democratic stability (Levitsky and Ziblatt Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt2018; Lieberman et al. Reference Lieberman2019; Schumpeter Reference Schumpeter1942). Although quite different from other elements of civic culture, including elite behavior is important because it requires politicians to follow norms, rather than relying on institutional arrangements or formal rules to ensure democratic stability.
As is clear from this review, there are many elements of civic culture thought to promote thriving or decay in democracies. There is, of course, disagreement among scholars within and across the “camps” presented here. We note, however, that much of this disagreement is a matter of emphasis; most scholars agree that democracy functions better when more people participate, talk politics, support democratic principles, tolerate difference, respond to government performance, and when elites observe informal norms such as forbearance.
Evaluating Civic Cultures
If we accept that all of these features of civic culture are likely to improve democratic functioning, then assessing various cases will require a tremendous amount of research. If we evaluate civic culture based upon only a limited sampling of its constituent parts, we are almost guaranteed to make biased inferences. Yet this happens often. For example, in Democracy for Realists (Achen and Bartels Reference Achen and Bartels2016) the authors' central claim is that the folk theory of democracy (in which people vote for politicians who most closely match and deliver on their preferences) is unrealistic because citizens of the United States mostly make decisions based on their ties to social groups and are incapable of judging government performance. Based on citizens being unequipped to meet the demands of the folk theory, Achen and Bartels claim we should hope for something much more modest. What they miss, however, is that there are already many alternative criteria beyond those prescribed in the folk theory. They simply do not assess how citizens perform vis-a-vis those alternatives.
In Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative vs. Participatory Democracy, Mutz (Reference Mutz2006) does a better job of evaluating multiple components of civic culture, explicitly measuring facets thought important by deliberative and participatory scholars. Doing so moves us in the right direction, but it still falls far short of painting a complete picture of civic culture in the United States. The main three dependent variables in her analysis are (1) voting and participating in campaigns; (2) understanding the reasons behind beliefs on the other side; and (3) tolerance for the other side. Even within the realm of deliberative and participatory democratic theory, this is missing some important elements, such as political participation outside of elections, the quality of discourse, and how much citizens have an opportunity to interact with their representatives. Moreover, if we aim to evaluate a broader notion of civic culture, instead of just the deliberative and participatory parts of it, we would also want to measure a host of other criteria.
Thus far, we are aware of no research that makes evaluations of civic culture based upon the whole set of features reviewed above. We believe this is a serious problem in getting a clear sense of the state of civic cultures around the world. However, even if scholars were to gather high-quality data for all variables needed to assess civic culture in a country, and they somehow combined these variables into a valid aggregate measure,Footnote 1 this would still fall short of offering an appropriate summary measure of the quality of civic culture. The reason for this is that aggregate patterns of attitudes and behavior often belie a great deal of heterogeneity within a given country.
Pateman (Reference Pateman, Almond and Verba1989) sharply criticized the conclusions of The Civic Culture on the grounds that Almond and Verba did not pay enough attention to heterogeneity. For Almond and Verba (Reference Almond and Verba1963), a democratic civic culture would entail many citizens participating in the political system but would also mean a good amount of deference to government authority. They claim that the United States and Great Britain achieve this balance the best out of the five countries in their analysis, based on aggregate levels of participation and deference in those countries. Yet, she points out that there is a difference in who participates and defers. Specifically, she finds that participation is more likely among men, among those with higher education levels, and among those with more money. Pateman argues persuasively that inequalities in political participation should count against the health of civic culture, as political equality is central to a properly functioning democracy (De Tocqueville Reference De Tocqueville and Lawrence2006 [1835, 1840]; Young Reference Young1990).
Allen (Reference Allen2004) cites the racially coded modes of citizenship expected of White and Black Americans as damaging to U.S. democracy, an argument which has received renewed and sustained attention in the broader public sphere in recent years (e.g., Hannah-Jones Reference Hannah-Jones2019; Quarcoo Reference Quarcoo2020). And though there might be disagreement about the extent to which racial inequalities damage democracy, there is widespread agreement in the scholarly community with Allen's claim that racial political inequalities make democracy worse. We argue that our evaluations of civic culture should include these key differences instead of using aggregate levels to make assessments.
While structural barriers prevent many Americans from fully participating in the political system because they diminish the supply of important resources such as time, money, and civic skills (Verba et al. Reference Verba, Schlozman and Brady1995), there is also variation in how people participate in the political system. For example, Mutz (Reference Mutz2006) shows that people who identify with a political party tend to vote at higher rates than non-partisans, but that non-partisans tend to have greater tolerance of people with whom they disagree. And recent data show that while voting propensity is higher for White people, for people with higher education levels, for people with higher incomes, and for older people in the United States (MIT Election, Data, and Science Lab 2020), people of color and younger people are much more likely to participate in protests (Barroso and Minkin Reference Barroso and Minkin2020). And at the elite level, several scholars argue that Republicans have respected traditional informal norms far less than Democrats in recent history (Fishkin and Pozen Reference Fishkin and Pozen2018; Levitsky and Ziblatt Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt2018; Mann and Ornstein Reference Mann and Ornstein2012).
To make more accurate assessments of civic culture, we not only need to analyze the complete list of features thought to be important for democratic functioning, but for each of these features, we need to examine group differences. The reason we need to do this is because equality and reciprocity are central for democracy. So when there are inequalities in voting propensity along the lines of race or differences in the extent to which Democratic and Republican politicians follow norms, this should change our assessment of civic culture. We want high aggregate levels, but also equality on these metrics.
Recognizing the importance of reciprocity to democratic success especially highlights the problem of elite cue taking for developing a healthy civic culture. Recent research shows that when co-racial (Buyuker Reference Buyuker2018) and co-partisan (Graham and Svolik Reference Graham and Svolik2020) elites violate informal democratic norms, ordinary people frequently follow along, effectively choosing power for their own group over support for basic constitutional principles. This decrease in support for democratic principles is made more dramatic the more people dislike the racial (Buyuker Reference Buyuker2018) or partisan (Kingzette et al. Reference Kingzette, Druckman, Klar, Krupnikov, Levendusky and Ryan2020) out-group, demonstrating that group attitudes should also be a key component of assessing civic culture.
This emphasis on group attitudes puts us in conversation with (Pérez, Reference Pérezforthcoming, 13–14), who argues for a shift away from theories pertaining to specific racial and ethnic groups and toward “broader, more unified theories that capture the complex field of race relations.” We agree with Pérez that such a shift is necessary because it will help us understand intergroup political dynamics. Given our own analysis above, we would only add that an additional benefit of this shift is that research on intergroup politics promises to give us a richer understanding of the civic culture, writ large.
Moreover, the role of cue taking in driving mass attitudes shows how some aspects of civic culture interact with each other; we cannot assess elite culture and mass culture separately. Nor can we assess constituent parts of elite culture or mass culture separately, as there may be connections between them, such as protesting and participation in elections (Schram and Fording, Reference Schram and Fordingforthcoming).
But all this presents a major analytical challenge for examining civic culture even in a single country, not to mention making cross-national comparisons. So far, there is not even a framework for how these aspects of civic culture fit together. In the next section, we outline a framework for examining civic culture which we believe is useful for examining the complexities of civic culture and how different aspects interact with each other.
Civic Culture and Democratic Norms
Following Kingzette (Reference Kingzette2020), we organize the different facets—the different cultures—in terms of democratic norms. Such norms are patterns of action in a polity that rely on expectations about what actions other people are willing to sanction or reward. For example, take the “I Voted” stickers often handed out at polling places. Their value bespeaks a democratic norm of voting—people want others to know that they have fulfilled their duty according to that norm. In the same way, the gap between reported and validated voting indicates that many people do not want others to know that they have violated that norm.
Three traditions have dominated the study of civic culture heretofore. The first focuses on the participation of citizens who enforce participatory norms among themselves (e.g., voting norms as described above). The second focuses on the performance of elected officials who are chastened by the vigilance of citizens holding their elected officials accountable for both policy and their adherence to democratic norms (e.g., retrospective voting and respecting election outcomes). The third focuses on elites observing and enforcing norms among themselves (e.g., until recently, majoritarian deference to the Senate filibuster in the United States). See Table 1 for a visual representation of civic culture as a system of democratic norms.
Traditions of civic culture as a system of democratic norms
To be clear, democratic norms may exist which work to erode rather than improve democratic functioning. For example, some people's online networks may be structured such that they are encouraged to share misinformation because they expect their network to react positively to it. And norms of civility and politeness may prevent others from correcting that misinformation when they see it. This would be an example of deleterious norms operating in the participatory culture.
Thinking of these three traditions in terms of norms (who acts and who enforces) highlights the possibility for a fourth, so far underappreciated, set of phenomena—i.e., political elites enforcing norms on citizens. The importance of this fourth pattern of normative enforcement is not as marginal or fanciful as it might first seem. For example, President George H. W. Bush rebuked and resigned his membership in the National Rifle Association when their spokesman referred to federal agents as “jack booted thugs.” And political leaders routinely praise and elevate civil society groups or private citizens for their exemplary performance of democratic norms—e.g., by being invited to attend and be recognized at the state of the union address. This fourth type of norm is perhaps most noticeable, however, when elites fail to properly enforce norms, or even encourage bad behavior. For example, it was troubling when President Trump failed to sanction white nationalists in Charlottesville, VA, instead saying that there were “good people on both sides.” Indeed, one important facet of good democratic leadership is helping to sustain social expectations that encourage good civic behavior and discourage those that are damaging to political culture. While the importance of elite cues on influencing social expectations has been demonstrated in the context of race and partisanship, discussed in the previous section, such cues have heretofore not been integrated into theories of civic culture.
Conceiving of dimensions of civic culture in these terms helps us address the analytical challenges of evaluating the informal aspects of democratic performance. This framework subsumes the extant theoretical traditions, relating the constituent parts of the larger phenomenon in a principled way. Moreover, it points toward a fourth pattern of normative interaction ripe for theoretical elaboration and empirical investigation. Thinking about civic cultures in terms of norms also helps explain why group differences emerge, since group cultures are partially defined in terms of their varying normative expectations—e.g., Black versus White attitudes toward interacting with the police in their communities (Neblo Reference Neblo2009). In turn, such group dynamics can also help explain temporal dynamics—people's social expectations change, and oftentimes in ways that are not uniform across society—e.g., recently increasing awareness among Whites of why there are racial differences in norms about interacting with the police. In short, this conception provides a new way for REP scholars studying group norms and attitudes to frame their work as an integral part of civic culture, and by extension, democratic functioning.
The advantages of this norms approach, moreover, are not only conceptual. Understanding norms requires innovations in measurement since in addition to aspects of a given individual's own behavior we also need to know her propensity to reward and sanction others according to prevailing norms in the community. And this sensitivity to community means that the norms approach is well suited to examining the kind of civic multiculturalism that we have advocated for above. Such an empirical research agenda, in turn, can inform potential policy responses or civil society initiatives to shore up any erosion in civic culture revealed through analyses conducted through the norm centered lens. Even the best designed institutions will amount to little if they are embedded in civic cultures that do not support the democratic values they are designed to realize.
