Citizenship is an important concept because it shapes how individuals understand their place and behave within society. For decades, political and social scientists have sought to broaden the concept of citizenship beyond legal-state definitions by examining citizenship as membership in national, territorial, or supranational communities. They argue that individuals' attachment to these communities shapes their understanding of what it means to be a good citizen, as well as their participation in politics and democratic society. Recent scholarship has called for a bottom-up understanding of citizenship by examining how citizens themselves understand and practise citizenship. However, these studies have remained largely qualitative and descriptive, limiting their scope and generalisability.
Drawing on citizenship norms research and Social Identity Theory, this study conceptualises citizenship as citizen identities based on membership in different collectives of citizens. It asks how self-identification with different citizen collectives (i.e., attachment to each citizen identity) is associated with citizenship norms and political participation. An original survey was conducted in Japan (N = 900) to examine these relationships. Regression analyses show that stronger attachment to the state-centred collective corresponds to greater endorsement of duty-based citizenship norms and a higher likelihood of voting. In contrast, respondents with stronger attachment to the participation-centred and public-minded collectives report greater support for engaged citizenship norms. Nevertheless, only attachment to the public-minded collective is positively associated with participation in demonstrations.
Overall, this study contributes to the growing literature on bottom-up understandings of citizenship by providing one of the first quantitative examinations of citizen identities and their relationships with citizenship norms and political participation. It lays the groundwork for comparative studies across democracies and offers an alternative analytical framework for examining which citizen identities are prioritised by governments, as well as the causes and potential consequences of such priorities.
