THE PUZZLE OF CIVIC DUTY

The way that democracy works relies a great deal on widespread civic duty in both ordinary and extraordinary times. What explains this sense of moral obligation to contribute to one’s democracy? Why do some individuals feel it, but not others? I show that the answer lies not in some endowed aspect of culture or character, as commonly assumed, but in the national identity politics within a given democracy. National stories and the relational linkages they draw between a national people and the state in which they live powerfully shape the boundaries of civic obligation. 

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When the Asian Financial Crisis hit South Korea in 1997, thousands of citizens lined up in the bitter January cold to donate personal gold—wedding rings, family heirlooms—to help their bankrupt democracy. Such spectacular show of sacrificial commitment could only be described as an act of civic duty. Indeed, as one participant explained her decision: “It was the only right thing to do…It’s what we have always done for Korea.”
 
Civic duty—the sense of moral obligation to be a good citizen—certainly benefits democratic life. But its crucial importance has manifested as many democracies struggle to sustain citizen compliance through extreme divisions and populist backlash, the stakes heightened by a global pandemic. When performance and institutional checks fail, authoritarian states can fall back on coercion to force citizens to comply. In democracies, the last bastion against breakdown often falls on the moral tenacity of citizens—their sense of duty to do what it takes for their democracies, even at a cost. What explains such civic duty? Why do some people feel it toward their democracies, while others do not? The book sets out to answer these questions.
 
Civic duty has long been seen as a part of a “democratic culture,” something that comes with democratic maturity or having the right cultural “fit” with democratic values. But the impressive display of civic duty during the South Korean gold drives defies such explanations. South Korea, still a young democracy at the time, was far from having a democratic culture: it was steeped in Confucian legacies and a strong ethnic nationalism that were seen as antithetical to liberal democratic values. Something important was missing from our understanding of civic duty.
 
This book takes seriously what citizens themselves say: “It’s what we’ve always done for Korea.” I argue that for many, a sense of civic duty actually lies in the very thing that has long been seen as an impediment to democracy: nationalism. But this is not a vague story about the blinding passions of nationalism, nor is it a particularistic story about the special properties of Asian nationalist cultures. The argument is a political one. In order to understand variations in civic duty, both across individuals and democracies, the book suggests that we need to turn our attention to the national identity politics within a given democracy and the national stories they produce.

Nations are made real through stories: stories about how the nation was born, when and by whom it was oppressed, and how it survived. National stories are not just definitional, but relational. They clarify the nature of linkage between a national people and other entities, including the state. Depending on the nature of this linkage, national stories offer a blueprint for how one should behave toward the state as a member of a particular nation. Nations are special communities that, for many, instill an intrinsic obligation to care for “my” national people. When national stories frame the democratic state in which one lives as standing for “my” nation, that sense of national obligation extends toward the democracy, driving a civic duty to engage, contribute, and even sacrifice on its behalf. In contrast, when national stories frame the democratic state as standing for a national “other” or threatening to the national people, an obligation to “my” nation can drive a kind of anti-civic duty—a duty to reject or resist the demands of that democracy. The moral boundaries drawn by national stories powerfully explain why citizens are willing to make sacrifices, big and small, for the sake of their democracies.
 
The book’s empirical backbone is a comparison of civic duty in South Korea and Taiwan, which make an excellent “most similar” pairing. The two democracies have nearly identical historical, cultural, geopolitical, demographic, and democratization experiences. Yet they starkly contrast in the nation-state linkage embedded in their national stories. In South Korea, a racial reimagination of the nation in response to Japanese colonialism produced national stories that tied nation and state as one body through democratization. In Taiwan, aggressive re-Sinicization efforts by the ruling Chinese Kuomintang backfired and bore a Taiwanese national consciousness based on stories of state predation and persecution, fracturing nation-state linkage for many islanders. Through a multi-method analysis including narrative citizen interviews, surveys, and experiments, I show evidence of a strong national pull toward civic duty in South Korea, whereas in the otherwise similar democracy of Taiwan, nationalism does little to motivate civic duty. The book then extends the theory to Germany, where I explain the national roots of an enduring civic duty gap between East and West Germans, before expanding to a cross-national test of the national effect on the sense of civic duty of more than 27,000 democratic citizens across the world.
 
The evidence in the book calls for breaking down the barrier between nationalism and liberal democracy. Nationalisms of certain kinds, put in the wrong hands, can certainly threaten democracies. But my findings suggest that it would be a big mistake for liberal democracies to do away with nationalism for this reason. The destructive manifestations of nationalism are often products of specific kinds of national stories, where a national people have long seen themselves to be excluded or victimized by their democratic state. Other kinds of national stories that closely link a national people with their democratic state can instrumentally benefit democracies, by motivating civic duty and responsible citizenship. These differences have little to do with having a “better” kind of nationalism or cultural advantage for liberal democracy, and more to do with the national identity politics within a given democracy. An important implication is that civic duty is something that can be grown through conscious nation-building efforts to strengthen or repair national linkages to the state. For all democracies, but particularly for those in East Asia long seen as burdened by their cultural or ethnic legacies, the book offers a rare ray of optimism.
 
The 21st century has been dubbed the “Asian century,” as China continues to pull the gravitational center of world politics eastward. The big question is what form that new regional axis will take. Will it mark the beginnings of authoritarian hegemony over the liberal world order? Or will the East Asian democracies survive as pivotal regional checks? Much of that discussion has focused on the external threats from China’s surveillance or North Korea’s nuclear weapons, but this book points to East Asia’s evolving nationalist landscape as the most significant democratic challenge. Dramatic declines in birth rates are ushering in a new era of regional migration. As this unprecedented influx of newcomers changes the national demography, East Asian democracies stand at a critical juncture to reimagine their national stories. How they choose to respond to their internal identity pressures, I argue, will enduringly shape their capacities for civic duty going forward, and in turn, the democratic future of the region.