ABSTRACT
Public policy in the United States and most other Western democracies always has been used to promote one or another vision of democratic citizenship and nationhood. When citizenship is conceived broadly to encompass the rights and opportunities people should be able to expect from the governance of their society as well as their obligations, then almost every public policy impinges on citizenship in ways either large or small, positive or negative. Citizenship, however, is not just about rights and opportunities, but also about identity and whether ones identity is fully embraced by the society. Public policy teaches powerful lessons about rights, opportunities, and identity-but it carries different messages for different people, and produces more than one kind of citizen. Policy analysts and political leaders are acutely aware that policy may encourage or thwart participation, increase knowledge or obfuscate citizen learning, include or marginalize different groups, and advantage some at the expense of others. There is nothing neutral about the relationship between public policy and democratic citizenship.
