The Western democracies nowadays face various pressures. The challenges such as mediatization, technocratization, disenchantment, radicalization, populism, securitization, digitalisation and others directly feed into the tensions in democratic citizenship and the contemporary citizens need to navigate these in practice. One important aspect in building responsible democratic citizen agency in this context is making sense of the various ideations and normative perspectives embedded in democratic citizenship and developing integrity, reflectiveness and resilience vis a vis these different expectations. The paper will discuss the different perspectives on democracy and citizenship as sources of both tensions and opportunities and outline linkages to contemporary political, governing and educational practices that could strengthen responsible democratic citizenship.
