Citizenship Teaching & Learning - Volume 8, Issue 2, 2013

Each human group and each society is a complex system of cooperative and competitive relationships. These two relations are intertwined, however, it is not indifferent in what way and to what extent. The present research has aimed at revealing the requirements of cooperative competition which is a competitive process with a high degree of cooperation among the competing parties. The Critical Incident Technique was applied. This procedure is based on the direct observation of human behaviour and was elaborated in order to examine complex interpersonal phenomena and to provide ecological validity. Altogether 483 critical incidents were described by teachers and university students of education. They were instructed to recall competitive relationships that have certain characteristics (e.g. high degree of cooperation among the parties vs no cooperation among the parties; high degree of trust among the parties vs high degree of distrust among the parties, etc.) After the free description of the incident, the participants had to characterize the competitive event along different dimensions on a Likert-scale, for instance intense/not intense competition; rules kept or violated. Applying principal component analysis, four different scales were constructed: the Cooperation Scale (i.e. the relationship among the competitors, cooperation, trust and communication), the Motivation Scale (i.e. motivation, the importance of the goal, development and learning), the Fairness Scale (i.e. rule keeping, no aggression and no manipulation) and the Enjoyment Scale (i.e. enjoyment and positive stress). The correlation analysis of the interrelations among the scales and individual variables has indicated that the high degree of cooperation among the competitors was positively related to fairness, the clarity of rules of competition, enjoyment and motivation. Less cooperation among the competitors was related to higher level stress and more intensive competition among them. If competitive processes are characterized by high degree of cooperation, i.e. they are cooperative competitions that have no detrimental but only beneficial effects, then they combine the constructive aspects of both cooperation and competition.

Good citizenship includes fair competitive strategies. Dishonest competitive behaviour – such as fraud – can reflect the absence of one main characteristic of good citizenship as mindfulness of laws and social rules. This article investigates the social representation of competition and fraud with two samples of students from business schools in France and in Hungary. Two complementary studies were carried out with P. Vergès’ associative method and C. Flament and M. L. Rouquette’s tools. The purpose of the first study (NFrench=104, NHungarian=107) was to characterize the central core of the respondents’ representation of both competition and fraud. On the basis of different cultural, historical and economic backgrounds, it was expected that the concepts of fraud and competition would overlap more extensively among Hungarian students than among French students. Results from the first study suggest only slight differences regarding the content of the representations; moreover, in both samples the representations of competition and fraud lacked significant overlap. Hungarian representations of competition and fraud are characterized by a lower level of coherence. Furthermore, academic cheating is mentioned more frequently by Hungarian students than by French students. Following the methodological guidelines of social representations, in order to confirm the results of the first study, a second investigation was carried out (NFrench=115, NHungarian=127) with an alternative associative method. These results confirmed the first study in terms of the content of the social representations and differences regarding coherence. Finally, in the case of Hungarian students a higher prevalence of reference to academic cheating, and links between fraud and competition were found. Hungarians’ competitive result orientation, linked social representations of competition and fraud via a higher prevalence of academic cheating; this refers to the weaker inclination of Hungarians in terms of rule keeping behaviours. which is one of the hallmarks of a good citizen. In fact, our results indicate that, Hungarian students do not seem to consider academic cheating as problematic as French students do.

One of the mandatory responsibilities of each citizen is paying taxes. Even though it is a legal requirement to do it, citizens have the possibility to adjust their payments and cheat on it. Thus, the paying of taxes can be seen as cooperative act between the state and its citizens. Based on the group engagement model of cooperation, this study (N=474) demonstrates the interplay of perceived justice, national identification, motivational postures and tax compliance. Extending the justice dimensions of the original group engagement model by retributive justice, a positive relationship of all three forms of perceived justice (i.e. procedural justice, resource judgements, and justice of punishment) with national identification was achieved. Furthermore, while national identification was positively associated with deference, its negative association with defiance could not be shown. Tax compliance was high in case of strong attitudes of deference and weak attitudes of defiance. Results indicate partial mediation of justice judgments and deference through national identification. Judging justice is not an easy task and thus, citizens should be taught about the rationale behind tax law. Understanding the reasons for the law facilitates making up one’s mind regarding the fairness of tax distribution, tax procedures and retribution for cheating on taxes that influences tax compliance in the long run.

France does not have a classical withholding tax system; taxes are calculated on the basis of the previous year declaration of income. Moreover, France is, in terms of corruption (Transparency index, Corruption Perceptions Index, 2011), in the 25th row, behind many of the European countries, which indicates a very high perception of corruption in France, compared to the other European countries. In this article, the focus is on the psychological effect of this system and its consequences in terms of tax compliance versus tax evasion, which can be seen in terms of cooperation versus competition. This study, in line with E. Kirchler’s research on tax evasion, investigates the links between powers of authorities, trust in authorities, and tax compliance in the French context. Moreover, along with Kirchler et al.’s (2008) work, our goal was to test the ‘slippery slope’ framework on tax compliance with a sample of French citizens. In order to test it, trust in authorities and power of authorities were manipulated with four different scenarios (high trust/high power; high trust/low power; low trust/high power; low trust/low power). French university students in economics (320) were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions, in which they read one of the scenarios and had to answer a questionnaire composed of 24 items. In this article, tax compliance is approached in terms of cooperation versus competition; for this, we examined: if citizens comply in a cooperative way; if they have a competitive attitude towards tax authorities, indicating that they try to evade taxes as much as possible, thus go against the collective goal because they have self-oriented motivations; or if they have a competitive attitude towards authorities because they do not consent government’s policies. This study, which had two main facets, enabled identifying tax compliance in terms of trust in authorities and power of authorities, and allowed identifying cases in which conformity is voluntary, which implies cooperation; or forced, which implies that authorities impose compliance. Based on our results, the article concludes that both an increase of trust in the authorities and an increase of power of the authorities create an increase of tax compliance, which tends to show that, based on distrust, fraud is non-cooperative, and can be sometimes considered as competitive, as it is placing self-interest into the foreground instead of public interest.

The study explored young people’s tendency for cooperation in different social conditions and explanations of behaviour given by them. Cooperation seems to be an important part of citizenship behaviour. Here, it is defined as a tendency to maximize common payoff. According to the Homo economicus theory, people are egoistic entities and should make rational decisions based on maximizing personal payoffs. According to the conception of Homo reciprocans, people tend to be cooperative only if their perceive partners’ behaviour as fair. In the context of contemporary research, both of these theories over-simplify behaviour, since tendency to cooperate depends on differences in culture and economic development, as well as on situational rules. In the present study, the Ultimatum Game was conducted to explore students’ cooperative behaviour (accepting proposals) as a response to Selfish, Equal or Altruistic offers in three conditions – ‘face to face’, ‘town to town’ (long distance, with a partner from another town) or ‘country to country’ (with a partner from another country). This modification of standard experiment procedure was unique and allowed to examine the role of situational context. Altogether 1013 students (aged 9–19) from Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom participated in the game as acceptors. Their cooperative behaviour depended on offers made by partners. However, the patterns were moderated by game conditions: young people tended to cooperate mostly in response to equal offers and in the ‘face-to-face’ condition and to punish (not cooperate) partners with the same nationality (‘face-to-face’ or ‘town-to-town’ condition) for Selfish offers and foreigners (‘country to country’ condition) for Altruistic offers.

Among skills and aptitudes commonly highlighted in the list of essential elements to be reached by pupils through citizenship education are the ability to cooperate and to consider and appreciate the perspective of others in the society. Understanding the complexity of social life with its demands for cooperation requires thorough analysis of the contingencies between one’s own needs, others’ needs and the structural features of the social context. Hence the concept of citizenship relates to the ability of an individual to make a choice, articulate and then negotiate his or her needs to other participants of social life. Self-awareness, understood as taking the stance of the observer of the self, activates the framework of co-dependence, reminding one of the existing social norms thus leading to more cooperative behaviour. The following article explores the ways in which fostering one’s self-awareness could be helpful in creating the environment well suited for cooperative citizenship. Three studies presented in this article allowed us to obtain results that shed light on the role of self-awareness in helping to incite and maintain the cooperative behaviour of the participants. The participants were Polish university students. In the first study (N=623), those participants whose distinctiveness was primed had less automatic and less stereotypical judgements of others. This creates a path towards more individual and less biased information processing in a situation of conflict. In Study 2 (N=93), students made a choice between four possible reactions to difficult social situations causing embarrassment. Being aware of one’s distinctiveness led to a reduction of ignoring others’ perspectives in communication. In Study 3 (N=49), self-awareness resulted in being more cooperative in a prisoner’s type game. Our conclusions highlight the importance of reinforcement of self-awareness among pupils and students in the process of socialization and education. Thus the state of being distinct from one’s own group of reference should be fostered in the process of education to help individuals exercise their cooperative citizenship more actively.

This article makes a contribution to the debate on the ‘cooperative, competitive citizen’ by detailing the outcomes of a recent study on the theory, policy and practices of participatory citizenship in Europe, commissioned by the European Commission (EC). It underlines the discussion of how to balance citizen collaboration and competition needs to include the concept of participatory citizenship along with a European dimension. It provides strong evidence that the current economic crisis is distorting the interrelationship between participatory citizenship, social cohesion and economic competitiveness in policy-making in EU member states with increasing emphasis on the latter (the competitive citizen) at the expense of the former (the collaborative citizen). It details how the impact of this policy shift is already clearly visible through evidence of major funding cuts on projects and programmes that promote participatory citizenship. It also provides evidence that the current economic crisis has shaken the trust and confidence of citizens across Europe, including young people, in politicians and political institutions. Though people continue to have a strong belief in the principle of democracy and in the values that underpin participatory citizenship, they increasingly lack trust in current politicians and political institutions. However, it also highlights a number of strategies, based on evidence, for strengthening policy, practices and citizen engagement in participatory citizenship in Europe and also evidence of the value of promoting participatory citizenship in society. It shows how the key role of learning and education in building civic competence among people, particularly young people, and also that involvement with volunteering enhances political engagement. Finally, in the context of a growth strategy (such as EU 2020) to alleviate the economic crisis, the Study also highlights that participatory citizenship, economic competitiveness and social cohesion are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. Thus, countries with characteristics of being highly competitive also tend to be highly participatory with high levels of social cohesion, for example, the Nordic countries.

TRUE COMPETITION: A GUIDE TO PURSUING EXCELLENCE IN SPORT AND SOCIETY, DAVID LIGHT SHIELDS AND BRENDA LIGHT BREDEMEIER (2009) Champaign: Human Kinetics, 239 pp., ISBN: 978-0-7360-7429-2, p/bk, £ 18.95

INTERNATIONAL SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY: CONFLICT, COMPETITION AND COOPERATION, ANN DENIS AND DEVORAH KALEKIN-FISHMAN (EDS) (2009) London: Sage Publications Ltd, ISBN 978-1-4129-3463-3, 504 pages, £103 Hardcover, ebook £123.60.