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First tests rival models of voting turnout using data drawn from the 2001 BES pre- and post-election surveys. Analyses reveal that the general incentives model performs best. Crucial individual-level influences on electoral turnout are calculations of efficacy-discounted benefits and costs of participation, sense of civic duty, and age. A model of the aggregate-level dynamics of turnout between 1945 and 2001 indicate a substantial portion of the sharp decline in turnout that occurred in the 1997 and 2001 general elections was caused by the one-sided nature of the contests, coupled with the perception that the two major parties did not offer a distinctive menu of policy choices. Analyses suggest that the strong relationship between age and civic duty has a sizeable generational component.

This chapter details the spread of republican religion. The concept of civil religion spread within republican cities' culture and customs through the treatises on government. But even more effective were the images that embodied those concepts. Whereas the concepts expounded in the treatises spoke first and foremost to reason, paintings struck the eyes, and from the eyes touched the passions. The rulers of republics were aware of the images' strength, especially when they were accompanied by clear words, written in large, legible characters, preferably in the vernacular. For this reason, rulers commissioned skilled artists to produce a great number of works explaining the principles of republican good government to the magistrates and citizens. The message conveyed by the walls of the city government's most important halls was at once political and religious. That is, their imagery taught people to view civic duties as if they were real religious duties—God's and Christ's commandments, not just human advice.

This chapter considers elaborations of republican religion in Quattrocento political thought. Politicians, prophets, historians, and philosophers explained that the men who serve the common good render themselves godlike. Salutati, for instance, stated several times that a good Christian has a duty to serve his fatherland with all his energies. He also noted that charity toward the fatherland must comprise as well as surpass any other affection, bond, and interest. Bruni, who served as chancellor of the republic from 1410 to 1411, and again from 1427 until his death in 1444, also thought that the good Christian should be a good citizen, ready to serve his fatherland, because Christ's word does not conflict with a love of country.

Chapter 6 asks, to whatever degree responsiveness motivation compels people to change their party identity, what is the root of this motivation? Do partisans change their identity because they wish to identify with the party that offers them the most policy benefits, or do people update their identity in order to conform to norms of civic duty? In other words, is partisan updating instrumental to the attainment of policy benefits, or does partisan updating result from the need to appear unbiased? Theory and results from analysis of data from the 2005 General Social Survey and a national experiment both suggest the latter. Norms of civic duty entailing pragmatism and open-mindedness motivate partisans to change their identity to reflect disagreements. On the other hand, consideration of the policy stakes has no such effect.

This chapter develops a third argument for why Americans should care about poverty: active involvement and concern for those experiencing misfortune is an important (but often neglected) aspect of citizenship. As members of communities larger than simply themselves as individuals, Americans share an obligation and responsibility to alleviate grievous ills, such as poverty, that befall other members of their community. This position is based on the assertion that the concept of citizenship necessitates a sense of shared responsibility and stewardship. Such obligations become particularly binding when it can be demonstrated that a specific problem is largely the product of structural inequities. Part of Americans' civic responsibility lies in addressing such inequities. In addition, by alleviating the blight of poverty, Americans are exerting wise stewardship over their communities. Such stewardship is also an essential component of the concept of citizenship.

This chapter focuses on Awolowo's participation in military and civilian politics after his release from prison. After Awolowo failed to win the elections at the national level despite growing political support for his redistributive rhetoric, he turned increasingly towards the assertion of self-reliance and civic duty outside the realm of the state government. This included the fostering and support of development associations in Remo, whose activities reflected both a growing local disillusionment with the state and an attempt to pull the region up through institutionalised self-help and communal solidarity.

This chapter focuses on Young Europe, which has attracted far less attention than Young Italy, Mazzini's other and better-known association from the early days of his political exile. With the founding of Young Europe in 1834, Mazzini defined the distinctive political and social creed associated with his name. Based on his personal view of the role of religion in private and public life, he called on individuals to regard the fulfilment of civic duties as a social obligation, commit themselves to a world of free and equal nationalities, and work for the attainment of social justice across national and class lines. Young Europe was meant to promote this project through education, propaganda, and revolution.

The claim to be a victim of crime, rather than simply the victim of wrongdoing or misfortune, gets part of its sense from being located within a particular institution. Law, of which criminal law is a part, is a political institution, through which political communities express the decisions of the community regarding the way people should behave. This chapter concerns the victim’s institutional role and, drawing on an account of crimes as ‘public wrongs’, argues that victims have role-based duties—owed to their fellow citizens including those who have committed the criminal wrongs against them. The chapter argues that these duties are grounded in a civic duty to bear witness to wrongdoing, and that it is at least arguable that such duties should have the force of law.

Drawing on the perspective of democratic theory, this chapter argues that the prospect of Scottish independence provides a realistic opportunity for radical political innovation. It insists that the hoped-for levels of civic engagement, delivering the fourth principle of power sharing with the people, have not been achieved in Scotland. It also pursues the ideas of popular sovereignty and democratic participation found in the writings of John Stuart Mill and developed by modern theorists of deliberative democracy. The chapter proposes a form of direct political decision-making by citizens akin to that derived from classical Athenian democracy. It also suggests various ways in which bills, after parliamentary deliberation and vote, might be put to randomly selected juries of 10,000 or 20,000 for ‘popular assent’ or rejection. The central idea is that when citizens act as jurors they are trusted to exercise real power on behalf of their fellow citizens; arguably they act above and beyond sectional, party or local interests. In this role, civic duty carries a collective responsibility which transcends partiality and particular identity.

Chapter 1 lays out the book’s dual motivations theory. This theory posits that two competing psychological forces shape party identification—partisan motivation and responsiveness motivation. On one hand, partisans are driven to maintain party loyalty, but on the other hand, they are motivated to be responsive to their political environment. Because each voter only has a single vote to cast, voting behavior has essentially zero impact on the policy benefits the voter receives. This means that there are essentially no policy benefits to be gained from adjusting one’s party identity to reflect one’s disagreements. Therefore, responsiveness motivation is thought to be primarily driven the by the desire to see oneself as a good citizen and not merely a biased partisan. To reconcile their competing motives, partisans must find ways to justify their party identity when disagreements arise. Party identification change occurs when a justification cannot be manufactured or when responsiveness motivation is sufficient to outweigh partisan motivation.

This chapter assesses the motives behind charity. In seventeenth-century Amsterdam, a well-to-do Portuguese community shouldered the organization of poor relief in many ways and discharged its responsibility for receiving and assisting the poor and for maintaining peace and order. Portuguese Jews supported poor relief as a civic duty and because they felt responsible for their neighbours, as well as for reasons of prestige. In addition, they often made charitable gifts, either in the normal course of life or as they neared death, for religious motives. By the end of the seventeenth century, Portuguese religiosity was tapering off and Portuguese Jews were also becoming less and less involved in the life of their community. Their charity, however, did not decline as a result; on the contrary, it grew. Charitable grants still had religious connotations, but rising poverty, even among the better-off families of the community, called for a collective effort not only through the official channels but also, and to an ever greater extent, by the private sector. Individual Portuguese increasingly took the reins in their own hands, not least in the attempt to maintain their prestige and to gain a hold over the administrative machinery by which charity was disbursed.

Turning to the ideological component of the pre-1952 Egyptian state's modernization project, this chapter shows how nationalist pedagogues employed education to cultivate a consciousness of civic duty and Egyptian greatness based on particular interpretations of Egypt's ancient and contemporary history. Key historiographical claims about an elite-focused and ideologically unconcerned state, or the 1930s–40s evolution of nationalist reorientations to the East and Islam, remain untested in a central arena for mass socialization. Yet pedagogical inquiry demonstrates that the state was indeed concerned about reaching the masses, utilizing conscious ideological communication to provide present-relevant lessons from a history which throughout the 1920s–52 period focused most of its curricular time on the pharaonic era and reign of Muhammad 'Ali, the latter serving as the continuator of meta-historic Egyptian glory and whose traits young Egyptians were expected to emulate.

Two months into 1885, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was leading a new life. The most potent change was putting down roots. This was important for the benefits of domesticity and relief from wandering. It marked the onset of his civic duty, supporting enterprises still threatened by Nikolay Grigorievich Rubinstein's death. As the leading Russian composer of his time, he decided now to promote his music by conducting, while Pyotr Ivanovich Jurgenson formalized licensing agreements for Tchaikovsky's works in Paris and Hamburg. He also took advantage of imperial favor, requesting that the emperor build a new opera house in Tiflis and engaging Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich in correspondence. No less important was the mentorship of Ivan Alexandrovich Vsevolozhsky, the Director of the Imperial Theaters, who had shown interest in Tchaikovsky's work since coming to the post in 1881 and whose advocacy would rival that of Nikolay Grigorievich Rubinstein.

This chapter describes the religious festivals and competitions that reward and encourage Islamic performance as an act of civic duty and patriotism. It argues that with the stamp of national authority superimposed upon a religious system which encompasses aesthetics, ideology, and praxis, agencies of the government and institutions for religious education participate in producing Muslim information and experience, thus legislating, to some extent, both the logos and the pathos of Islam.

This chapter discusses the arrival of the West India Royal Commission and how it was anxiously awaited in the island. It was only the second time in forty-one years that a commission had been appointed by the imperial government to investigate conditions in the Caribbean colonies. The members of the ten-person commission were excited by the prospect of traveling to the West Indies to do their civic duty. As six members of the commission prepared to depart on October 13, 1938, by boat train from Euston Station in London for Liverpool, where a ship awaited them, no one was bothered by the fearsome reputation of the number 13. “I have no qualms about the number 13 and I don't think any of my colleagues have either,” declared one member. “I don't suppose that the voyage—or for that matter—our mission to the West Indies would be any less eventful if it started on any other day of the month.”