When I listen to political discussions on television and podcasts, I often hear “agency” used to mean a person’s or organization’s ability to make decisions and act independently. I had previously associated the word with nonprofit and government organizations, not individuals. This broader meaning gives me a way to think about our power and responsibility as citizens: what we can decide for ourselves, and how we act on those decisions. Maybe it is a handy new buzzword, but the question it raises is worth discussing: how do we exercise our agency as citizens?
- Who has agency in American society?
- Do some people have more of it than others?
In our civics classes in public schools years ago, we never talked about citizenship as agency. Citizenship had responsibilities and duties. Citizenship was a right and it came with duties. One of them was to vote. And we learned the rules. In any election, each citizen had one vote and the candidate or proposition with the most votes won the day.
In a democratic society, a person’s vote is one atom in the whole body of social will. Each of us asserts agency through voting, as well as in other ways. But the vote is our most fundamental power. One vote is equal to any other person’s vote in a democracy when everyone votes.
But voting in most democracies is voluntary. Twenty-two democracies make voting compulsory. The United States is one of the voluntary voting nations. Here in the U.S. You are free to not vote.
Not voting increases the agency of every person who does vote. Within the smaller group of voters each voter has proportionally more power than any non-voter in determining a jurisdiction’s will with respect to candidates and ballot propositions. And candidates interpret the size of their majority as a mandate to achieve campaign promises.
Voting is not the only way we exercise agency. We can also express our views more directly to the legislators we elected to represent us. Even when we were in the minority in an election or disagree with a legislator on an issue, our opinions still deserve to be heard. By writing or calling our representatives, we remind them that we are still here and that we will hold them accountable at the next election. That works even when we talk to an assistant or leave a recorded message.
Our agency is more than our vote. The freedoms of expression, assembly and the press expand our agency even more. They provide other ways of gaining information and expressing our opinions in ways that can move the legislative needle and perhaps build new majorities.
Summing up, our agency as citizens in a democracy is an asset we should treasure and use. Authoritarian governments place agency fully in the hands of a single leader or group of oligarchs. The agency of individual citizens is mostly limited to the collective action of large groups protesting in the streets. And that often becomes deadly.
We have risen above that kind of government in the United States. Please help us keep it by using your agency and going to the polls to vote in this midterm election.
