ABSTRACT

Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel's experience is exemplary for the problems experienced by citizens who want to serve their republic by holding public office. This chapter focuses on the special opportunities and problems of combining general citizenship with a particular public office. Citizenship should appear and work not only against but also in public office. If citizenship entails being ruled by cocitizens, then the way they exercise public authority is of central importance: Citizen competence must reveal itself there, if anywhere. The chapter shows that citizenship is at stake in the fulfillment of public office, and in what ways. It addresses the problematic relations between the demands of citizenship and those of a particular office that occupants of those offices and citizens who have to deal with them show and learn what citizenship in the republic entails. It is there, among other places, that citizens are formed and citizenship is constituted.