Citizenship and political identity.
This paper seeks to review approaches to political identity and aims at discussion how we should understand what is termed political identity.
We live in an age where the range of possible identities and the number of identities offered to individuals increases, which is also the case for political identities. Considering this fact an important question is therefore why identities are adopted? Identities are first and foremost adopted to serve basic needs such as autonomy and manage relations (Ryan & Deci, 2003). Some identities are forced upon us, which even may be the case where voting is compulsory a purely external definition of the role. More voluntarily people adopt identities to fit in, acquire roles, beliefs, attitudes and to maintain and secure their connectedness to the social and political world. Identity also involves the process of defining us, typically in opposition to them.
