Engaged citizens against policy

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the disagreement between the Amsterdam social-democrats and a group of citizens about the future environment of a train station in Amsterdam.

It is just one example of citizens who turn themselves against policy. This is a phenomenon that occurs very often: citizens are against new roads, have different ideas than politicians about new suburbs, want other retirement policies et cetera. It is almost impossible to count all these examples. Suddenly, groups of citizens get angry and mobilize themselves.

Imrat Verhoeven wrote a book about this phenomenon. He asked what the main backgrounds of citizens against policy are. How do citizens participate in these cases, why do they become active and what are the roles of politicians, societal organizations and the media in this? It lead to a beautiful book devoted to one case of citizens against policy: the battle about the municipal reorganization of the city of The Hague. The book offers three important lessons about angry citizens.

Lesson 1. Citizens are often against policies, but they do not automatically mobilize themselves. They need to be activated and mobilized by others. This means that they need to be convinced that they should become active. Media and societal organizations play a large role in this process: citizens will remain passive when media and societal organizations do not make citizens aware of their possibilities to become active and when they do not try to engage these citizens.

Lesson 2. Citizens are very individualistic when the participate in the political realm. Citizens prefer political actions that can be carried out individually. They do not want to go to public meetings or become member of a political party. They prefer signing petitions, paste a poster at their window, vote in a referendum, sign for collective actions or raise an individual objection against a government plan.

Lesson 3. Citizens will become active when they feel moral indignation. This is a very important factor to explain why citizens become active in some cases and not in others. Media and societal organizations are important here, because they can make citizens aware that there actually is a moral problem or dilemma. Only when citizens really feel angry about this moral problem, they will become active. 

This book shows that citizens are not as passive as they are often presented. Citizens should not be evaluated on their lack of party membership. Under specific circumstances, citizens become active at an individual level, but they need to be tempted to do so: they should be made angry. Verhoeven is right when he concludes that policitians should be more open to these emotional outbursts. Participation is not so rational as it is often presented.

Chris Aalberts*
Amsterdam, Nederlands

Read more in:
Verhoeven, I. (2009): Burgers tegen beleid: een analyse van dynamiek in politieke betrokkenheid [Citizens against policy: an analysis of dynamics in political involvement]. Amsterdam: Aksant. 

* Chris Aalberts is lecturer and researcher in political communication. Visit his blog: http://www.chrisaalberts.nl/ - This paper is also accessible in Dutch: http://www.newropeans-magazine.org/content/category/6/193/323/