Citizenship Norms in Context: Considering the Role of Institutional and Cultural Factors

In times of rapid societal changes in which established democracies face important challenges, the question what society expects from a ‘good citizen’ is essential. Still we know very little about these citizenship norms in Western democracies. We contribute to this knowledge by studying them from a contextual perspective. Thus, we explore whether certain institutional arrangements and cultural settings are able to foster certain norms of good citizenship in a society. Applying Dalton’s (2007) conception of engaged and duty-based citizenship norms, we study whether the way society is organized and functions is related to citizen’s image of a ‘good citizen’. We consider factors that capture the degree of power-sharing and competition in politics as well as the role of emancipative values and religion. Empirically, we make use of data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 2014 and context data from various sources and apply hierarchical regression analysis.