The Teaching of Citizenship

The Teaching of CitizenshipAuthor(s): Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr.Source: PS, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Spring, 1984), pp. 211-215Published by: American Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/418782 .

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The Teaching of Citizenship Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr.* Harvard University

The teaching of citizenship might seem inappropriate for a political scientist. Such teaching is normative, it might be said, but political science is empirical. And, it might be added, citizenship is a parochial concern for the good of one's own country, whereas political science is based on a universal love of truth. These objections will have to be made more precise, even recast; but insofar as they suggest that good citizen and good political scientist may not be the same thing, they are perfectly reasonable. The distinction between empirical and normative, or fact and value (which cannot be explored theoretically here), means that a political scientist, as political scientist, cannot tell citizens whether citizenship is a good thing, or say that political science is a good thing and ought to be welcomed or tolerated by citizens. A political scientist might perhaps remark empirically, or half-empirically, that love of one's country animates the citizens as citizen and love of truth inspires the political scientist as political scientist. But instead of leading to conflict between citizens and political scientists and hence to a problem for political scientists, who must be both, this observation is made to yield a queer harmony between the two. It is thought that since political scientists cannot pronounce upon the worth of citizenship, they do not get in the way of citizens. Their work is neutral to that of citizens. Love of truth does not interfere with love of country because all loves, being "values," are incommen- surable. Thus, the methodology of the fact-value distinction provides a lefthanded endorsement of (at least democratic) citizenship. This conclusion might hold in practice, if not in theory, if loves were not accompanied by hatreds, and affirmations not assisted by rejections. But love of truth is accompanied by hatred of falsehood, and love of country issues in hatred of its enemies. The political scientist, with his love of truth, cannot help but disdain the parochial character of the citizen and the partisan enthusiasm of his loyalties. It is hardly likely that any particular citizens are living in the best society at its height, and yet this is what citizens ask observers to believe. If citizens do have complaints about their country, they will suppose that all its ills can be remedied by a revolution or even by an election that merely installs their party in power-again, hardly likely. Their admiration may reach to an heroic age in the past or the future, but this effort of imagination is enough, citizens believe; they are satisfied with a superior appreciation of better times, and take pride in that too. Political scientists cannot accept such unfounded complacency. However devoted to the fact-value distinction, they cannot share, and are driven to deplore, the "ethnocentrism" of citizens. Political scientists, then, despite their desire to remain empirical, must challenge the satisfied self-sufficiency of citizens. Yet they may find it sensible to begin from their own politics, restraining their indignation at its blindness, or covering their smile at its lack of sophistication, because there may be something to be learned from the way citizens boast of their own country. Though the claim of citizens that any particular

*Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. is professor of government at Harvard, where he teaches political philosophy. He is author of The Spirit of Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978) and is working now on constitutionalism.

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country contains everything good may be unacceptable to the political scientist, he cannot be indifferent to that claim in general. He has to worry, once he has put aside his own trust in the harmony ensured by the fact-value distinction, that the love of truth may not be at all compatible with the love of country and that a good political scientist will be, and will appear to be, a bad citizen of any country. If the political scientist cannot share the boastfulness of the citizen, he must, for his own good and his own edification, sympathize with the wish that underlies it. That wish, if examined in general, is the wish to make a consistent whole of human life so that the two loves of truth and country are found compatible and the two lives of political scientist and citizen can be lived in harmony. After this abstract beginning made necessary by the abstractness of contemporary political science, let us American political scientists look at American citizenship. Im- mediately we see not parochialism but universalism. Americans pride themselves on their devolution to "the rights of man" or human rights, especially to the right of consent to government which ensures all other rights. The American Constitution, it is said on the first page of The Federalist, is a kind of experiment to test the capacity not of Americans alone but of mankind to govern itself. This experiment would fail if it proved not to be valid for all peoples but only for Americans because of their particular circumstances or national superiority. Americans say to the world: you can have what we have, and we are superior only because we have shown this to you. Americans are not content with liberty merely for themselves, but they would be untrue to their principles, especially the right of consent, if they were to attempt to force their way of life on others as do most other revolutionaries. So they tout it or "sell" it to the world in a manner which often appears naive. Americans appear naive because of their universalism-because of their assurance that parochial differences among nations do not matter-not because of parochialism.

These two points remain fundamental to American citizenship: American citizens vote but do not rule directly, and they are diverse rather than homogeneous in interests and ethnic origins.

What is the source of the universalism that is the most prominent feature in the character of the American citizen? According to The Federalist, our most authoritative witness to the principles of the Constitution, the American experiment of the capacity of mankind for self-government received crucial assistance from political science. Self-government in America was of a new kind. All previous popular government had failed, when the majority of the people behaved tyrannically as a faction adverse to the rights of others or to the interest of the community. Two new remedies for this general failure were found, The Federalist says, in modern political science. These were the principle of representation, by which government is delegated to a small number elected by the rest, and the idea of an extensive republic, in which the imperial size that had previously been thought fatal to a republic is deliberately embraced as a means of its salvation. These two points remain fundamental to American citizenship: American citizens vote but do not rule directly, and they are diverse rather than homogeneous in interests and ethnic origins. In both regards American citizens are in- debted to "modern political science" for teaching them, through the Founders, not only the principles but also the methods of self-government. Thus, when the political scientist looks at the American citizen, he sees something of himself. The American citizen is not an alien creature to him; the citizen is, as it were, his student-a former student of average capacity who has forgotten the grade he received in the course. The diversity of the American citizen is something to be respected; his representative capacity is teachable. As citizen through representation, the American citizen, to

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repeat, votes but does not rule directly. This behavior is a judicious mean between the two extremes of apathy (not voting) and ruling directly. What is curious is that the teaching of citizenship by political science has passed from an attempt to persuade citizens not to rule directly to an attempt to rouse them out of apathy. Whereas in The Federalist the chief fear was an overbearing majority faction, today we worry about the opposite phenomenon, and "Be a good citizen!" usually means no more than "Get out and vote!" This change must be considered if we are to assess the teaching of citizenship in our day by political scientists. Aristotle defined citizens as rulers and saw that rulers were partisans. One does not, therefore, have to teach citizens to want to rule; this they have in their nature as political animals. (One can, for example, manipulate the pay of a democratic assembly so as to affect who attends it.) Citizens are such partisans that they define themselves and do so against one another--typically, democrats against oligarchs. To define citizenship, the political scientist can simply follow out the definitions he finds in politics, while correcting their partisan inadequacies. Thus, as the political scientist defines citizenship, he teaches citizens how to improve themselves, and the general character of our teaching is to redirect the partisanship of citizens from unthinking neglect or aggressive dislike of their opponents toward a mixed regime, or perhaps a best regime, in which all worthy claims are recognized. In this effort the teacher makes the student aware of his dominant tendency and, therewith, cognizant of its defects. The teacher of democratic citizens makes them students of comparative government and shows them the defects as well as the virtues of democracy. In The Federalist, however, the teacher's task is different. The American Constitution is presented as "wholly popular," since all its parts are derived from the people, but at the same time wholly representative, since in none of its parts do the people rule directly. It is assumed that the republican genius of the American people will prevail, and that any American government must be popular. But precisely because this is so, the danger within a democracy from majority faction is the one to be feared, and to provide a remedy, The Federalist takes on the burden of getting the American people to consent to their "total exclusion ... in their collective capacity" from government. As citizens, they are not to rule but to elect others to rule for them.

Whereas in The Federalist the chief fear was an overbearing majority faction, today we worry about the opposite phenomenon, and "Be a good citizen!" usually means no more than "Get out and vote!"

Within government, the principal danger is legislative usurpation, because the legislature is closest to the people and most faithfully reflects their desire to rule. To prevent legislative usurpation, the Constitution provides two other innovations besides the two announced in The Federalist 9 and 10. These are a strong executive and judicial review, and though they are vigorously defended as aids to popular government, they are too undemocratic to boast of in their own right. Energy in the executive is needed to supply an administration or direction of affairs which will make popular government resistant to "every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient im- pulse" of the people. A strong executive needs to exercise his strength first against the people, and second against their legislature. Similarly, judicial review over acts of the legislature is introduced to secure "the intention of the people" from a "momen- tary inclination" of the majority and is given to a judiciary with permanent tenure so as to contain the "disposition to consult popularity." And besides these unheralded innovations in popular government, the legislature is divided into a House of Represen- tatives, whose function is resolutely described as deliberation rather than mere trans- mission of the popular will, and a Senate whose advantage to popular government is to possess the firmness and knowledge that will prevent public instability.

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The purpose of this plain talk about popular government, which no politician now would dare imitate, is clearly stated in The Federalist No. 51 as enabling the government to control the people as well as the people to control the government. This control of the people by the government remains popular government because it sets the reason of the public over its passions (The Federalist No. 49). In governing the passions, the reason of the public must summon to its support certain passions not ordinarily found or prized in popular government: the habit of obedience, veneration of the laws, and reverence for the Constitution. But because all government is derived from the people, the reason of the public is not merely the good of the public as dis- cerned by some few. On the whole The Federalist teaches American citizens to moderate their democracy as does Aristotle but not in his spirit or manner. Whereas Aristotle attempts to elevate democracy to something better, The Federalist is satisfied to elicit and protect the best in democracy.

The teacher of democratic citizens makes them students of comparative government and shows them the defects as well as the virtues of democracy.

Since the time of the Constitution, American democracy has, we know, been democ- ratized contrary to the advice of Aristotle and The Federalist. The power of the majority has become more and more pervasive so that very few outside government, much less within it, are willing to stand against popular opinion and taste even temporarily. Rather than stand against the people the elites attempt to lead the people, and the result is a competition that makes the people judge of everything that might educate them. And yet the people do not have the sense of being in charge, and our problem does not seem to be that of an active, triumphant tyranny of the majority. Rather, a mild, soft despotism seems to have settled over the people, startlingly like the "in- dividualism" Tocqueville feared, in which no authority remains but that of "the people" though each individual in "the people" feels powerless. Individuals withdraw from public life to family and soon from family to the self, forgetting their citizenship and satisfying their public spirit with a lazy moralism. All belief that could be the basis of action is doubted, and the only thing left to do is watch television. This picture is not yet fact but it cannot be dismissed as fiction. Political scientists have considered it in two ways. Some have in effect endorsed apathy on the grounds that democracy means pluralism, and pluralism requires that citizens not get too excited. Excited citizens will fight one another and destroy the consensus of indif- ference that is necessary if different kinds of people are to live together in the same society. Besides, one cannot prove that it is rational to vote. So relax! This attitude rests on confidence that pluralism is a self-adjusting system, and it is therefore quite comfortable with the process of democratization over time, which it regards as the working, not the weakening, of democracy. Since this process requires exercise of the vote, then on second thought it is good that people vote instead of fight. But in this view democracy is not so much voting as getting or letting out the vote. Other political scientists have asserted that democracy is not itself unless it is pas- sionate. They are disgusted with apathy in the people and want participation for them. Participation in what? They do not want participation in rule, so as to make citizens into rulers. Citizens should be let free to frolic together and to express themselves and their selves in a release of passion. Both viewpoints take democracy for granted and are oblivious to its faults. They cannot properly be called "teachings" of citizenship because they see no reason to teach and nothing to be taught but are content, on the one side, to let the process proceed, and on the other, to let passions come forth. Indeed, nothing is more remarkable about present-day political scientists than their democratism. They have become cheer-

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leaders for democracy, more democratic than democrats: for democratic citizens today often prefer voting to participating, and when they vote, believe they are electing better people than themselves. Why is it right to question American democracy and never American democracy? Typically, when political scientists criticize America, they offer the in-house criticism that America is not democratic enough. This criticism from professionals is more com- placent than ignorant satisfaction in citizens. It is time for political scientists to make themselves aware once again of the defects of democracy, so that they can resume the useful office of teachers of citizenship. In their own self-interest political scientists cannot forget that they whose love and duty is to question are dubious citizens any- where. They need a democracy with a place for political science just as democracy needs to learn of its faults. Political scientists who see no difficulty in living under a democracy should examine their political science for signs of uncritical and therefore unhelpful accommodation to the dominant opinion of our time.

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The Teaching of Citizenship