20th Century Accounts of American Citizenship

Abstract

Accounts of citizenship by Presidents of the American Political Science Association (APSA) are examined through Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge. We use Marshall as a platform to reconceptualise the dynamics of Mannheim’s three incommensurable ‘thought styles’: one liberal; one conservative; and one dialectically social. We suggest on this basis that American political citizenship in the twentieth century entails three incompatible but concurrent ‘thought styles’, that involve a triple helix of political rationalities (see White and Donoghue 2003).

The model is tested in a longitudinal study of ‘citizenship and democracy’ in regular social scientific usage. The empirical material comprises the presidential addresses to the American Political Science Association (APSA) published in the American Political Science Review (APSR) from 1906 to 1997. The findings suggest that the addresses by the presidents of the Political Science Association of America invoke intertwining rationalities that relate twentieth century citizenship to classical political discourses.