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This chapter discusses how the ideal of equal status connects to democratic aspirations, and why people should take that ideal seriously. Equality of status constitutes, and is constituted by, relations of an egalitarian kind. When people mutually recognize one another's equal status, they put themselves in an egalitarian relation. However, there are further connections between status equality and egalitarian relations, in that the recognition of equal status in various respects helps promote relationships among citizens free of hierarchy, domination, servility, and the like. These further connections are contingent, depending upon truths of empirical sociology and psychology—about how, in fact, humans tend to respond to certain social conditions, like material or political inequality. A similar structure holds for the ideal of political equality. The shared status of “democratic citizen” is constituted by a range of expectations that regulate institutions and individual practices. That status is properly recognized when institutions and practices meet those expectations. When citizens mutually recognize one another's status, they thereby engage in, and promote, valuable egalitarian political relations.

This chapter examines the different models of citizenship associated with republicanism and argues in favor of a hybrid and composite notion of republican citizenship. It views citizenship as a means to participate in political procedures but contends that such participation does not exhaust the rights and legal status that come with citizenship. More specifically, it considers three legal modes of democratic citizens in relation to freedom, civil association, the common good and equal participation: ‘citizen agents’, ‘citizen managers’ and ‘citizen leaders’. It also proposes a rethinking of the rule of law through a republican lens to address the problematic of democratic citizenship today.

This chapter argues that the various attempts to distance the past became the condition of Hungary for its return in the form of nostalgia for socialist mass and popular culture. It discusses the remains of socialism from anachronistic monuments and devalued historical narratives to the detritus of an everyday life now on the brink of vanishing, such as candy bars and soda pop. Despite appearances, this nostalgia did not represent a wistful desire to return to the previous era nor simply to the gleeful impulse to laugh at state socialist kitsch found years earlier. The chapter explains the detachment of fond communal memories of certain objects from the political system that produced them. It points out the ironic invocation of the international discourse of cultural heritage that legitimate the trash of the previous era and enabled Hungarians to redefine themselves as both savvy capitalist consumers and cultured democratic citizens.

This chapter draws on work by Progressive era thinkers who understood the education of democratic citizens to be closely connected to the development of public space. It argues that public space is a necessary condition for prompting the privileged to question their unexamined beliefs and perceptions and for augmenting the power of the oppressed. Properly designed public space can enable the difficult work of democratic political engagement across difference. Progressives envisioned public space as a site of both social order and freedom, transformation and integration. Public spaces could be sites of empowerment for the disenfranchised and they could promote acculturation into the dominant society. Additionally, public spaces could foster sympathy and mutual understanding between members of different social classes.