We construct here an argument for expanding the envelope of political psychology to encompass new topics for investigation and new methodologies with which to investigate them. The topics are associated with the civic side of citizenship. The methods are associated with contextual analysis. Because both citizenship and contextual analysis are so closely associated with other subfields of our discipline (political philosophy and comparative politics, respectively), their relevance has rarely been appreciated for the type of political psychology that is done within the research paradigm of political behavior. We have, however, become increasingly aware of their importance in the course of pursuing our current research program on the meaning of citizenship in modern liberal democratic states and, in particular, in the United States and Great Britain.

First, we shall review briefly the breadth and current political relevance of the topic of citizenship and the general conceptual framework that we have created for studying it. Then we shall discuss at greater length the utility of contextual methodologies for investigating this subject.

CITIZENSHIP: OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES

Throughout the world, intellectuals and politicians are asking, “What does it mean to be a citizen?” This perennial political question has been explored by philosophers from Aristotle to Rawls and debated by politicians from ancient Greece to contemporary Russia. Unfortunately, such discussions have never been properly informed by social scientific knowledge about the political psychology of citizenship, about what citizenship means to citizens – for such knowledge hardly exists.