ABSTRACT

This chapter identifies the various ways that balance and stability are maintained while citizens are engaging in political activities. It provides the appropriate theoretical framework for understanding civic indifference and participation and balance and stability in contemporary American politics, and also to show relevant connections to the New Citizenship. The response to Daniel Shays's Rebellion illustrates how perceived threats to system stability influenced the framers as they prepared for the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. James Madison and the other framers recognized that for the republic to survive, the increasing political pressure generated by small propertied interests would have to be controlled. The framers understood that the republican principle would grant legitimacy and stability to their newly created political system. Political socialization is the process by which citizens acquire their attitudes and beliefs about the political system in which they live and their roles within that system.