ABSTRACT
Silent citizenship is for many a problematic condition in contemporary liberal
democracies. It refers to the fact that most citizens usually have only a spectatorial
engagement with politics and that, even when ordinary citizens do participate more
actively (in elections, protest movements, and public opinion polls), they do so in a
communicatively constrained manner (i.e. in a manner that falls short of the articulate
speaking and giving of judgments associated with political action in its fullest, most
authentic form). Democratic thinkers and activists have addressed the problem of silent
citizenship in two main ways. On the one hand, the usual response has been to emphasize
how the gap between spectator and actor might be closed, whether by having the spectators
control the decisions of leaders (through the function of elections and public opinion) or
making it easier for spectators to take up the position of actors. On the other hand, recent
work in political thought has emphasized how there might be ways to empower ordinary
citizens in their very status as nonacting spectators: that leaders, for example, be made to
undergo special burdens as they appear on the public stage so as to recompense the public
for their never-fully-legitimate authority (Green 2010).
