Jennifer Mercieca

Associate Professor

Department of Communication

Texas A&M University

Apathy, Disengagement,

Civic Withdrawal

• Aristotle, “The good citizen must have

the knowledge and ability both to be

ruled and to rule”; the state is a “kind

of partnership” in which citizens

promote “the security of their

community,” defend “the constitution,”

and work for the “common

advantage.” (Politics, 3: 1276b-79a)

• Citizens are officers of the

government, not mere members of a

political community.

• Citizens have responsibilities and

obligations, but what can citizens do?

The Rights & Freedoms of

Citizenship• Freedom of Speech

• Freedom of Assembly

• Freedom of the Press

• Right to Petition

• Right to Vote?

Amendments: Fourteenth (Equal

Protection), Fifteenth (Race),

Nineteenth (Gender), Twenty-sixth

(Age) & the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

• We do not have the right to vote for

president, that right is retained by the

states—the Electors of the Electoral

College are technically the only ones

who vote for president.

Voter Turn Out• Between 1945 and 2000 the United

States had an average voter turn out

of 48.3%, which ranked us 114th

out of the 140 nations in the world

that hold free elections.

(Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance

http://www.idea.int/vt/survey/voter_turnout_pop2-

2.cfm)

• 2008 Election: 58.2% turn out,

which would rank us # 99, right

behind Tunisia. Even with all of the

excitement about Barack

Obama,18-24 year olds were still

the least likely of all age groups to

vote: 44.3% turned out in 2008. If

they were a nation, 18-24 year olds

would rank 125th—equal to El

Salvador—in turnout.

Table 1. Reported Voting and Registration, by Sex and

Single Years of Age: November 2008:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/socdemo/voting/

publications/p20/2008/tables.html

Other Indicators of Civic

Engagement:

Photo Credit: http://republicforwhichitstands.blogspot.com/2009/03/everett-

tax-day-tea-party.html, March 25, 2009

Founding Fictions’ Research

Questions:

• How have we imagined a government

based upon the will of the people?

• How have we imagined American

citizens?

• What do our historical debates about

the role of the citizen tell us about

how citizens can act in the

government today?

Rhetorical History

Founding Fictions is a “meta-rhetorical

history” that examines how the

structural elements within texts—the

arguments, tropes, and figures—

contributed to building the political

fictions that permeated and

dominated the contexts of which they

were a part.

I studied political theory, American

history, the biographies of the major

figures and their friends and

colleagues; I also studied the authors

that the Founders were known to have

read, the Founders‟ published and

unpublished papers, newspapers,

public and private correspondence,

literature, journals, public

deliberations and the pronouncements

of deliberative bodies. I moved back

and forth from texts to contexts and

back again—all with the goal of

understanding the constitutive

discourses of American citizenship.

Political Fictions

• Founding Fictions’ goal is to take

political theory out of the realm of

unquestionable elite discourse and re-

place it in the realm of the public.

• Political theory is a simulacrum of

dialectic: it is a rhetorical fiction that

appears faithfully to describe political

reality while it is also used to create

political realities.

• Political fictions are “narratives that

political communities tell themselves

about their government; like formal

constitutions, they have a constitutive

role in political discourse.”

• We find political fictions in just about

any textual artifact that describes or is

premised upon that nation‟s view of

its government.

• There could be a monarchic fiction,

oligarchic fiction, aristocratic fiction,

theocratic fiction, republican fiction,

or a democratic fiction.

Differences between

Democratic & Republican

Political Theories

• It is easy to confuse democratic and

republican forms of government

because in both “the people” are

sovereign.

• The difference between them is in

answering the question “who rules”

and how those who rule “administer”

or make decisions in the government.

• In pure democracy offices are drawn

by lot—not awarded by election—

and every citizen makes binding policy

decisions on all questions of

government— “the government of all

over all.”

• In republics decision making power

ranges from assenting to the original

constitution and then taking no

further part in government, to giving

binding policy decisions to

representatives who must faithfully

mirror their constituents‟ views.

• In democracies all citizens are equal;

republics are hierarchical.

Republican Political Fiction

• Plato described a democracy as, “a

state in which the poor, gaining the

upper hand, kill some and banish

others, and then divide the offices

among the remaining citizens, usually

by lot.” (Republic, Book VIII, 557a)

• Likewise, in the United States

“democracy” connoted turbulence,

chaos, leveling of the hierarchy, and

mob rule.

• For the first generation of Americans

“democracy” meant:

• The rule of “a rude insulting mob”—

Letters in Answer to the Farmer

• “Turbulence and contention”—James

Madison, Federalist 10.

• “The government of the worst”—

George Cabot, 1804.

• Perhaps prudently, the Founders

created a republic, not a democracy.

The US has embraced more inclusive

practices of citizenship over its

history, but it has never achieved

equality or ever permitted “the

government of all over all.”

Citizens as Romantic Heroes

• Despite this negative view of

democracy, the Founders of the

Revolutionary era imagined citizens as

romantic heroes.

• According to Hayden White, romantic

narratives are a “drama of self-

identification symbolized by the hero‟s

transcendence of the world of

experience…it is a drama of the

triumph of good over evil, of virtue

over vice, of light over darkness, and

of the ultimate transcendence of man

over the world.” (Metahistory, 8-9)

• Romantic citizenship: a citizen was

imagined to believe that he or she was

a hero who would conquer

adversity—whether the “adversity”

was the gun of a British regular, the

corruption of luxurious British goods,

or the tyranny of Parliament and the

King—and act in the republic‟s best

interest to ensure a safe, happy, and

prosperous America.

• Romantic citizens were enabled to act

for the common good.

Romantic Citizenship

• “Ought not the people therefore to

watch? To observe facts? To search into

causes? To investigate designs? And

have they not a right of JUDGING

from the evidence before them, on no

slighter points than their liberty and

happiness?” John Dickinson, 1767,

Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, VI,

37)

• King George was the “chief officer of the

people, appointed by the laws, and

circumscribed with definite powers, to

assist in working the great machine of

government, erected for their use, and

consequently subject to their

superintendence …While those bodies are

in existence to whom the people have

delegated the powers of legislation, they

alone possess and may exercise those

powers; but when they are dissolved by the

lopping off of one or more of their

branches, the power reverts to the people,

who may exercise it to unlimited extent,

either assembling in person, sending

deputies, or in any other way they may

think proper.” Thomas Jefferson, Summary

View of the Rights of British Americans, 1774

Citizens as Tragic Victims

• Rebellions after 1783 proved that the

Articles of Confederation were

woefully unsuitable for the needs of

the 13 states, leaders assembled in

Philadelphia in the hope of providing

stability in government, even at the

expense of citizen control over the

government.

• Citizens had turned from romantic

heroes to tragic victims.

• According to Hayden White, tragic

narratives reflect the “resignations of

men to the conditions under which

they must labor in the world…man

cannot change them but must work

within them.” (Metahistory, 9)

• Tragic Citizenship: political

corruption is eternal, citizens are not

the patriot heroes who will act for the

common good, but rather complicit

victims of corruption. The only

solution is to give more power to the

system, which will provide stability.

Tragic Citizenship

• The insurrections “exhibit a

melancholy proof…that mankind

when left to themselves are unfit for

their own Government.” (George

Washington to Henry Lee, October

31, 1786)

• “The general object was to provide a

cure for the evils under which the US

labored; that in tracing these evils to

their origin every man had found it in

the turbulence and follies of

democracy and some check therefore

was to be sought for against this

tendency in our Governments.”

Edmund Randolph, 1787.

• “The people immediately should have

as little to do as may be about the

government, they want information

and are constantly liable to be misled.”

Roger Sherman, 1787.

• “My idea of the sovereignty of the

people is, that the people can change

the constitution if they please; but

while the constitution exists, they

must conform themselves to its

dictates.” James Madison, Debate

Over the First Amendment, 1789.

Democratic Political Fiction

• Americans began to call their

government a democracy rather than

a republic in the 1820s, but the

constitution was never changed from a

republic to a democracy. What we

think of as the “rise of Jacksonian

democracy” can be more profitably

understood as the “rise of the

democratic fiction.”

• 1816—Compensation Act and the shift

from republican to democratic

representation.

• 1824— “corrupt bargain” and the shift from

republican to democratic campaigning.

• 1828—Andrew Jackson wins the grudge

match election and consolidates power in

the Executive Branch while extolling the

virtues of the “common man.”

• 1840—Whigs use the Democrats‟

democratic fiction to get their “Man of

Hard Cider & Log Cabins” elected, even

though William Henry Harrison was a

member of a family that had ruled in

America since well before the Revolution,

which meant that he was no man of the

people.

Citizens as Ironic Partisans

• Political leaders used the democratic fiction

ironically, as a legerdemain; the people used

the democratic fiction earnestly, to demand

the power that they knew was theirs.

• One effect of the democratic fiction was to

change the locus of controversy from

political theory to political organization—it

was no longer possible to openly debate

political theory.

• A second effect of the democratic fiction

was to turn citizens into partisans, thus

adding another layer of stability between

the people and their dangerous opinions

and the administrative power of the

government.

• “We hold it a principle that every man

should sacrifice his own private

opinions and feelings to the good of

his party and the man who will not do

it is unworthy to be supported by a

party, for any post of honor or profit.”

Martin Van Buren‟s Albany Argus, 1824.

What do Americans do to

Critique the Government?

Stability vs. Participation

• “There is a “practical absurdity” in the

contradiction between our claims to

popular sovereignty and our

commonplace judgments of the

popular will, who would say that the

„King‟ is sovereign, but in the next

breath deny the „King‟s‟ ability to

resist sophists, accuse him of such

ignorance that he cannot tell his own

interests, and then top the argument

with the claim that public ethics force

officers of state, who owe their power

to the „King‟ to pay not attention to

him.” Michael Calvin McGee, 1978

• Do America‟s political fictions enable

the people to control the government?

No, they do not.

• Popular governments are profoundly

unstable, because when the people

rule there can be no settled question,

no unquestioned rule, no ruling

power, and no powerless citizen.

America‟s political leaders have simply

dismissed public opinion as irrational,

ill-informed, and the product of

demagogues because it provides

justification to protect stability.

Why Are Citizens Apathetic?

• “Why am I so interested in politics? But if I

were to answer you very simply, I would say

this: why shouldn‟t I be interested? That is

to say, what blindness, what deafness, what

density of ideology would have to weigh me

down to prevent me from being interested

in what is probably the most crucial subject

to our existence, that is to say the society in

which we live, the economic relations

within which it functions, and the system of

power which defines the regular forms and

the regular permissions and prohibitions of

our conduct…So instead of asking me, you

should ask someone who is not interested

in politics and then your question would be

well-founded, and you would have the right

to say “Why, damn it, are you not

interested?” Michel Foucault, 1971.

• I have argued that Foucault‟s “density

of ideology” can be thought of as

America‟s founding fictions.

• Why are citizens apathetic and

disengaged? Because the

Constitution‟s tragic republicanism

was designed to prevent citizen action

and while we call our government a

democracy, we treat citizens as tragic

victims and as ironic partisans rather

than as romantic heroes.

What Can We Do About It?

What do you think?