Valuing Politics: Explaining Citizen’s Normative Conceptions of Citizenship

Abstract

Civic duty is a critical feature of explanations of political participation, but why do individuals differ in their propensity to adopt particular civic duty norms? We argue that norms are likely to be adopted when congruent with underlying values and support this contention using evidence from the European Social Survey. We show that individuals who prioritize self-transcendence values (which capture altruistic goals) place much greater emphasis on norms positively related to participation while individuals who prioritize conservation values (which capture goals related to social stability) place much less emphasis on these norms. The substantive influence of personal values in explaining norm adoption is greater than that of education, age, and interpersonal trust. Our results thus provide new insights into how citizens form their normative conceptions of citizenship and also highlight the substantive role played by value orientations in conformity to social norms more generally.