Who are a Community’s Citizens?

As adapted from the Preface of Results That Matter:

We use the word citizens here in half of the ancient Greek sense, as people who exercise their responsibility to take part in the public life and decisions of their community. We do not mean the exclusive half of the Athenian definition that recognized only men of significant status as citizens. Similarly, we do not mean the legal definitions of citizens of modern countries. For effective governance, both documented and undocumented “aliens” in a country can be “community citizens” so long as they want to participate in improving their community. The National Civic League’s view that “citizen refers to any community resident who participates in voluntary community enhancing efforts”* is consistent with our view. But we go further: All people who want to participate in results-based governance of the community they live in, work in, or have a significant interest in (for example, go to school in the community, own a business there, have family there) are community citizens for purposes of effective governance, regardless of their legal status, or whether they have voting rights for that community's elections.

When needed, substitute other words for "citizen."

We respect the preference of many community organizations and practitioners to explicitly avoid the word citizen and instead use words such as resident or stakeholder to make it clear that immigrants or others who are not citizens in the legal sense are welcome to participate in community and organizational processes. Many of our community examples use resident and stakeholder (often along with citizen) if those are prevalent terms used by the organizations involved.

In considering citizen roles, however, "resident" is just one type of stakeholder, and "stakeholder" is only one of five major citizen roles. So "citizens" is a better word to use to convey how people participate in their communities in many roles. However, actually improving governance is more important than semantic accuracy. The Effective Community Governance Model and related ideas still work if terms such as "resident," "stakeholder," or "community member" are substituted for "citizen," and practitioners should make that substitution if it will make it easier to use the model in their communities.

• Go to Citizen Engagement Roles for the five main citizen roles in effective community governance, variations on several of those roles, and 14 ways to support citizens in playing these roles.
• View a Los Angeles presentation where we mostly substituted "community member" and other terms for citizen, at the request of our host.

*See The Civic Index: Measuring Your Community’s Civic Health, 2nd edition. (Denver: National Civic League, 1999), p. 41.