Summary Of Tocqueville's Footsteps Of The Good Citizen

Introduction

In the chapter 8 named In Tocqueville’s Footsteps of The Good Citizen, Russell Dalton (2008) strengthens his argument about changing citizenship norms in the United States by comparing with other advanced democratic nations. Dalton (2008, 139) emphasizes how crucial cross-national comparisons are in a national political analysis by quoting the well-known saying of Seymour Martin Lipset, an expert in contemporary chronicler of American society and politics, as “those who know only one country, know no country”. By comparing nineteen advanced industrial democracies with the America, Dalton (2008, 142) determines that there are many similarities as well as differences of norms changes in the United States and in those democratic

The WVS provides statistics about how much German people are interested in politics (Figure 1). The percentages of German people who are interested in politics in both 2006 (61 percent) and 2012 (63 percent) are quite high but still less than percentage of American people who are interested in politics in 2000 (66 percent) . Besides that, there is a slight increase in interests in politics among German people however the rise is statistically insignificant. Generally, political participation rate in Germany is high and stable over the time from 2006 to

The first point is that Dalton (2008, 139) recognizes Germany as an advanced industrial democracy which was included in his cross-national comparisons in chapter 8 of The Good Citizen. By sharing common features of an advanced democratic country, applying Dalton’s theory to explain German politics may face fewer obstacles in dealing with incomparable factors than to illustrate other different types of political system. The second point is that percentage of German people who are involved in any act of protest is increasing in any age group from 2006 to 2012 (Figure 3). This feature of the German politics is similar to the American politics to the extent that people engage more in assertive political actions but different in the way that all age groups of German people simultaneously become more engaged while this norm change slowly occurs in the United States and strongly correlate with generation shift. The last point is that both America and Germany have the healthy democracy which is supported by stable interest level in politics (explained in the Political Participation in Germany of this report) and optimistic opinions of people believing in their democratic political system (Figure 4). Even though differences between American politics and German politics appear more as this analysis becomes deeper, German politics still shares fundamental features related to Dalton’s