With or Without You : Ideas of Citizenship Driving or Deactivating Participation in Czech Collective Action
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the role of value orientations regarding democratic participation in the process of mobilizing citizens in political activism. In agreement with extant literature, we have assumed that the engagement of citizens in collective action is determined by the readiness and inclusiveness of the mobilizing agency, and have focused on the concepts of citizenship these organizations share.
We differentiate four modes of activism and four corresponding concepts of citizenship. Building on the information from our organizational survey on the extent and intensity of citizens' involvement by political activists, and connecting this typology with the extent of citizens' engagement at Czech protest events between 1990 and 2017, we capture four activist types and illustrated their narratives of citizenships with available justification stories.
These types are labelled Shareholder, Expert, Multitude, and Avant garde. While two of them count on citizen engagement (with varying commitment), the other two can manage without the engagement of citizens.