Active citizenship from below yields higher quality democracy than passive

Evidence

Passive citizenship is developed from above by the state, which grants rights to the citizens. The latter are expected merely to exercise their rights. They are, for instance, supposed to cast their vote. On the contrary, active citizenship is developed from below through citizens’ mobilization in various types of social and political movements. The citizens are not simply users of rights but active social and political agents who use their rights to claim new and/or better ones. The quality of democracy seems higher in the second case than in the first. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 819

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Democratic legitimacy depends on citizens’ internalized commitment that imposed systems cannot replace — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 74; Participation without control over parameters is not democracy but its evisceration — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 247; Legitimacy, built through contestatory democracy, generates civic virtue. (+3 more)