Social and Political Citizenship in European Public Opinion: An Empirical Analysis of T.H. Marshall’s Concept of Social Rights

Abstract

Normative democratic theory assumes that political systems should ensure civil, political and social rights, and this claim has become more salient since the economic crisis that began in 2008. This conception of citizenship was developed most prominently by T.H. Marshall (1950), and it has been further elaborated by numerous other authors, resulting in a clear division between procedural/electoral democracy concepts and authors emphasizing egalitarian concepts of democracy. We use latent class analysis to assess democratic ideals among European citizens as reported in the 2012 European Social Survey. The findings demonstrate that a majority of Europeans consider political and social rights as equally important, while some citizens predominantly emphasize either political or social rights. Furthermore, the focus on social rights is not limited to those with left-leaning ideologies. Considering current manifestations of discontent about the politics of austerity, we discuss the implications of social citizenship concepts for democratic legitimacy in Europe.

Does inequality erode political trust?

“…Although this might be a rather strong assumption, one should bear in mind that European citizens have been described as "inequality-averse" (Delhey and Dragolov, 2014). Support for this argument comes from survey-based measures of democracy, which show that large parts of the public across European countries believe it is "essential for democracy" that the government takes measures to reduce income inequality and to protect citizens from poverty (Hooghe and Oser, 2018;Quaranta, 2018).…”

Protest as One Political Act in Individuals’ Participation Repertoires: Latent Class Analysis and Political Participant Types

“…Social science researchers have used LCA to analyze a wide variety of topics, including tolerance (McCutcheon, 1985; Sniderman et al, 1989), party support (Breen, 2000), opinion-changing behavior (Hill & Kriesi, 2001), citizenship norms (Hooghe et al, 2016; Hooghe & Oser, 2015; Oser & Hooghe, 2013; Sampermans et al, 2020); revolutionary groups (Beissinger, 2013), technocratic attitudes (Bertsou & Caramani, 2020), nationalist sentiment (Bonikowski & DiMaggio, 2016), democratic ideals (Hooghe et al, 2017; Hooghe & Oser, 2018; Oser & Hooghe, 2018a, 2018b), and political donor types (Rhodes et al, 2018). Although LCA is not yet widely used for the study of political participation repertoires, a handful of recent studies have used the technique to identify distinct types of political participants (e.g., Alvarez et al, 2017; Johann et al, 2020; Keating & Melis, 2017; Oser, 2017; Oser et al, 2013; Oser et al, 2014; Steenvoorden, 2018).…”

Understandings of Democracy: New Norms and Participation in Changing Democracies

“…However, citizens have different understandings of democracy, political participation and norms of citizenship. Decades of research have highlighted the variation in views that exist among individuals and across countries on what the roles of the state, civil society, the private sector, and of individual citizens themselves are considered to be in a democratic society (Almond and Verba 1996;Hooghe and Oser 2018;Kim et al 2013;North 1990;Pickel and Pickel 2006;Webb 2013). These attitudes concern the distribution of power among the various actors in society as well as the dissemination of duties and responsibilities between them.…”