But a new study by Edward Miguel and his colleagues, as he reports in Foreign Affairs, suggests just the opposite; critical citizens are the foundation of democratic government.
Miguel was trying to figure out what might be the connection between education and levels of democracy in developing nations. (Even though there's a correlation between the two, no one agrees if what the causal link is between the two - if any.) His research team set up a randomized study, giving education incentives to one a set of girls schools in Kenya, leaving another set with no incentives. After a number of years and a clear increase in test scores at the first set of schools, they went in to see how the young women's political attitudes may have differed. Most of the obvious assumptions didn't pan out: the better educated girls were not more pro-democratic and neither were they more likely to vote or be involved in civic organizations. There was one difference: they were more critical of their government.
The study of course didn't find (or even search for) evidence to demonstrate the other half of the causal link - that is, that more critical citizens are more likely to bolster democracy - but it makes intuitive sense and is fodder for more research. At a very basic level, citizens who don't question their government aren't going to push for any change, let alone democratic change. Of course, more than dissatisfaction is needed to propel people to become politically active (usually those characteristics are bundled together into what social thinkers call "political capital"). And, of course again, too much dissatisfaction can lead to complete disaffection (of the Ted Kazcinski or couch-potato variety). But Miguel's experiment is a good reminder to us in old, creaking democracies that a critical citizenry should never be wished away.
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