Shaping Good Citizens through Public Policies: How does the State Contribute to Defining Citizenship?

Abstract

In various national contexts, researches on policy feedbacks show the capacity of public policies to influence citizens’ actions (Campbell, 2012 ; Pierson, 1993). More generally, States’ policies appear to shape citizens’ preferences (Busemeyer, 2014; Gilens, 2001), attitudes (Kumlin, 2002) and identities (Hayward, 2003). However, those features are seldom studied as part of « citizenship ». They are conceptualized more as « policy effects » than civic norms that define the « good » citizen. The latter is not natural but moving regarding social, historical and political contexts. Citizenship is shaped by a “framing” (Pyckett, Saward, Schaefer, 2010) where States’ action is historically essential (Schudson, 1998) according to its power of normalization of the populations (Foucault, 2004; Fassin, 2013). Following the dynamic of studying the State in action, it thus appears heuristic for political scientists to think about the relationships between State, public policies and citizenship. In the perspective of looking at “the consequences of public policy for democratic citizenship” (Mettler, Soss, 2004), this panel aims to investigate the theoretical and empirical question of how public polices can take part in the definition of the “good” citizen in different national contexts. It contributes to the questions “who is a (good) citizen” and “what is citizenship” from the point of view of the State in contemporary societies experiencing political, cultural and social transformations. Considering that citizenship should not be taken for granted, this approach is built on a twofold starting hypothesis. We firstly put forth that its definition is not a mere normative phenomenon, but the result of practical and cognitive actions where States’ interventions deserve to be put under scrutiny. Secondly, we hypothesize that studying how is it shaped by policies allows to locate the findings within the more general sociological process of the incorporation of State constraints (Bourdieu, 2012). One might indeed identify a very “civic teaching” inherent to public policies (Landy, 1993). They contribute to the “operational definition of citizenship” (Mead, 1986) and the process of “citizenization” of the people (Nordberg, Wrede, 2015). If citizens are not passive and afford to “resist” policies that claim to determine their behaviors (Scott, 1990; Barrault-Stella, Weill, 2018), it seems necessary to analyze the effects of public policies on the ways citizens act, think and see each others as members of the civic community. This panel is devoted to systematically thinking how public policies participate in shaping citizenship and sheds light not only on their indirect relationships but also on how public policies are intentionally designed in order to convey civic norms. It gathers papers focused on Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and United-Kingdom from the cases of health policies, education policies, welfare policies, migration policies and integration policies. With a multi-theoretical perspective – from political sociology, policy ethnography to socio-history –, looking at the process whereby public policies shape the model of the “good” citizen finally contributes to the heuristic stake of thinking together policies, polity and politics in present and future investigations of political scientists (King & Le Galès, 2017).