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Democracy and Literacy: the role of culture in political life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Ingrid Creppell
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Extract

In the history of democracy, various criteria have been used to determine the size and nature of the electorate. We can, in a general way, divide these criteria into two types which we might label ascribed versus achieved characteristics of the person. Suffrage qualifications based upon age, sex, race and religion would fall under the first category; qualifications determined by education, military and criminal status, and property fall under the second. The distinction draws attention to the implicit notion that some characteristics are acquired by individual choice (‘achieved’) while others are given from the outside simply by nature of an automatic inclusion within certain groups (‘ascribed’). Such a categorization is certainly open to challenge from many angles. The point however is that it provides us with one way to begin understanding the changes which democracy has undergone. Of the ascribed qualities only age remains a legitimate basis for denying suffrage. Variations in suffrage rights based on achieved qualities still exist though there is less reliance on any of these as well. Overall, the development path seems to have run from the use of both types to the use of achieved criteria to using only age as a prerequisite. What are the driving forces of this transformation?

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , May 1989 , pp. 22 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1989

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