Comprehensive Review: Citizenship, Ideology, and Democratic Theory

The Citizen’s Fundamental Question (Levine)

  • Community and Identity

    • A citizen is defined as someone who belongs to one or more communities (from city blocks to the whole earth) with the goal of improving them.

    • The core desire is to be a "co-creator of the human world."

  • The Plural Shift

    • While individuals ask "What should I do?", citizens ask "What should we do?"

    • Reasons for the plural: Collaboration is necessary for accomplishment; reasoning together checks biases and self-interest.

  • Action and Agency

    • The question focuses on action verbs. Policy theory often asks "How should things be?" which Levine calls "empty" if the group lacks the power (agency) to execute the solution (e.g., individuals cannot implement a global carbon tax).

    • "We" must refer to a group where collective agency is tangible.

  • Moral Improvement and Evidence

    • "Should" implies a struggle for the best ends and means, requiring mental effort and the willingness to be wrong (intellectual humility).

    • "What" requires empirical information: costs, risks, and probable outcomes.

  • The Three Categories of Group Problems

    1. Collective Action Problems: Struggling to coordinate separate interests for a common goal everyone agrees is worthy (e.g., carbon reduction).

    2. Discourse Problems: Disagreement on values or facts, or discussions that go poorly due to pressure from collective-action interests.

    3. Identity/Boundary Problems: Lack of a shared "we," characterized by "us vs. them" dynamics or identity-based exclusion.

The Nature of Groups: Ethics to Politics

  • Complicity and Responsibility

    • Membership creates moral connections. Levine uses the firebombing of Dresden (World War II) as an example. 35,000 civilians died; 1,000 planes participated. Even if plane (n=1,000) did not change the outcome compared to plane (n=999), the crew remains complicit.

    • Kutz’s Principles:

      1. Accountable for intentional participation in wrong.

      2. Accountable for harm done together, independent of individual impact.

  • Organization and Sacrifice

    • W.E.B. Du Bois stated, "Organization is sacrifice." One cannot be a "free lance" and belong to an organization; individual will is sacrificed for the good of the whole.

  • Ontology of the "We"

    • Linguistic Communities: Individuals do not precede groups; thinking occurs within language inherited from a community.

    • Non-Human Grounds: Facts about groups (e.g., Starbucks or the Supreme Court) are not just sums of people but include physical assets, legal systems, and even natural phenomena (the movement of the sun grounding the "day" the court is in session).

The Tragedy of the Commons (Hardin)

  • No Technical Solution Problems

    • Hardin defines a technical solution as one requiring a change only in natural sciences, with little change in human values.

    • Examples of failures: The arms race and the "population problem."

  • The Logic of the Commons

    • Herdsmen in a shared pasture calculate utility:

      • Positive utility: Adding one animal yields approximately +1 in proceeds.

      • Negative utility: Overgrazing cost is shared among all, yielding only a fraction of -1.

    • Rational conclusion: To add animals without limit, leading to total ruin.

  • Pollution and Morality

    • Pollution is the "reverse" commons; it is cheaper to release waste into a public stream than to treat it.

    • Morality is "system-sensitive": What is acceptable in a low-density frontier (killing a bison for its tongue) is criminal in a crowded metropolis.

  • Mutual Coercion

    • Hardin argues for "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" (e.g., taxes, parking meters).

    • Relinquishing the "freedom to breed" is necessary to protect other, more fundamental liberties.

The State of Nature (Hobbes)

  • Natural Equality

    • Men are roughly equal in strength and mind. The weakest can kill the strongest through "secret machination" or "confederacy."

  • The Causes of Quarrel

    1. Competition: Invasion for gain (mastery of persons and goods).

    2. Diffidence: Invasion for safety (defense against potential threats).

    3. Glory: Invasion for reputation (trifles like a different opinion).

  • War of All Against All

    • Without a common power, men live in a state of War. Life is "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."

    • There is no industry, culture, arts, or letters because the fruit thereof is uncertain.

    • In this state, nothing is "unjust": "Force and Fraud are in warre the two Cardinall vertues."

The Social Contract (Rousseau)

  • The Fundamental Problem

    • Finding a form of association that protects the person and goods of each associate while ensuring each individual "may still obey himself alone."

  • Total Alienation

    • Each associate gives themselves and all their rights to the whole community. Because everyone does this, the condition is equal for all, and none have an interest in making it burdensome.

  • The General Will

    • Society is governed by the supreme direction of the general will, creating a collective body (the Republic or Body Politic).

Ideology: Cultural Maps and Tribes

  • Ideology as a Map (Blakely)

    • Ideologies are "maps of problematic social reality." They are cultural stories that orient us.

    • Disorientation occurs when we mistake the map (cartography) for the actual land (geography).

    • Ideologies are "liquid" (Michael Freeden): They mix and hybridize rather than staying in rigid left-right beads.

  • Essentialist vs. Social Theories (Lewis & Lewis)

    • Essentialist Theory: Distinct issues cluster because they grow from a "master issue" (e.g., attitude toward change).

    • Social Theory: People anchor into a "tribe" first (due to family or a single issue) and then adopt the tribe’s bundled positions as a matter of conformism.

    • Evidence favors Social Theory: Most people change their positions to fit the candidate they support, not vice versa.

  • Alliance Theory (Pinsof et al.)

    • Belief systems derive from ever-shifting political alliances/rivalries, not abstract values.

    • Propagandistic Biases:

      1. Perpetrator Biases: Allies downplay their own transgressions.

      2. Victim Biases: People embellish the grievances of their allies to mobilize support.

      3. Attributional Biases: Advantages of allies are attributed to talent; disadvantages to misfortune.

Analytical Democracy (Farrell et al.)

  • Interactionist Psychology

    • Individual-level biases (like "myside bias") are not devastating if the group structure is right.

    • Epistemic Vigilance: People evaluate expertise and plausibility rather than just conforming to numbers.

  • Success Conditions for Group Problem Solving

    • Trade-offs between group size and diversity.

    • Benefits of ground-level agreement vs. background dissent.

Education for Democracy (Nussbaum)

  • The Growth Paradigm vs. Human Development

    • Old Model: Economic growth (GNP) is the only measure. This leads to "docility and group-think," sacrificing the humanities for technical elitism.

    • Human Development Paradigm: Focuses on "capabilities" (health, liberty, education).

  • Crucial Citizens' Abilities

    • Thinking critically about political issues without deferring to authority.

    • Seeing other citizens as "ends" and not just tools for profit.

    • The capacity for "positional thinking" (empathy).

The Moral Emotions (Rousseau & Gandhi)

  • Infantile Omnipotence and Shame

    • Infants experience a clash between competence and helplessness. Shame over vulnerability can turn into a desire to dominate others as "slaves."

  • Projective Disgust

    • Humans often project their own "animality" (smell, mortality) onto subordinate groups (racial or religious minorities) to feel transcendent. This creates social hierarchy.

Jefferson and Tocqueville on American Instruction

  • Jefferson to Peter Carr (1787)

    • Moral Philosophy: Contends that morality is a "part of man as his leg or arm" and requires little reason—just common sense.

    • Religion: Fixes reason "firmly in her seat" to judge even the existence of a God and the evidence of miracles (e.g., the sun standing still in the Book of Joshua).

  • Tocqueville on Practical Knowledge

    • Americans are superficially instructed but not ignorant. Public opinion circulates with "incredible rapidity."

    • Americans learn to govern by governing; practical experience is more serviceable than book-learning for maintaining a republic.

This document functions as a comprehensive study guide covering several major readings in political philosophy, ethics, and civic theory. It synthesizes core arguments from the following authors and topics:

  • Peter Levine: Focuses on the "citizen's question" ("What should we do?") and the types of group problems (Collective Action, Discourse, Identity).
  • Garrett Hardin: Explores the "Tragedy of the Commons" and the necessity of mutual coercion to solve problems like overpopulation and pollution.
  • Thomas Hobbes & Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Contrasts the "State of Nature" (where life is "nasty, brutish, and short") with the "Social Contract" and the "General Will."
  • Ideology & Sociology: Discusses how ideologies act as maps (Blakely) and the debate between Essentialist vs. Social theories of group belief.
  • Martha Nussbaum: Critiques the economic growth paradigm in favor of a human development model that prioritizes critical thinking and empathy in education.
  • Historical Perspectives: Includes insights from W.E.B. Du Bois on organization, and Jefferson and Tocqueville on American moral philosophy and practical governance.

While it covers a broad range of foundational texts, you should verify if these match the specific reading list provided in your syllabus.