Transwiki:Civics

Civics is the study of the theoretical, political and practical aspects of citizenship, as well as its rights and duties; the duties of citizens to each other as members of a political body and to the government. It includes the study of civil law and civil code, and the study of government with attention to the role of citizens―as opposed to external factors―in the operation and oversight of government.

Within a given political or ethical tradition, civics can refer to educating the citizens. The history of civics dates back to the earliest theories of civics by Confucius in ancient China and by Plato in ancient Greece. In China also along with Confucianism developed the tradition of Legalism. These traditions in the East and in the West developed to an extent differently, therefore, with bringing in the past different concepts of citizens' rights and the application of justice, together with different ethics in public life. This was mainly valid before the translation of the Western legal tradition to Chinese which started in 1839, after which influence by Western tradition was brought to China, with periods of restoration of traditional Chinese law and influence by Soviet law; specific is the common ordinary language used in Chinese laws which has a significant educational role.

Voting
Voting is an important component of civics. Voting is a great power of citizens of every society. Voting involves studying candidates on the ballot to understand each candidate's position and qualification. Voting also includes understanding the propositions that are on the ballot. Voting directly affects how government functions by selecting the candidate to work in the government.

Taxation
Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society, reportedly said by Holmes in a speech in 1904. Money provided by taxation has been used by states and their functional equivalents throughout history to carry out many functions. Some of these include expenditures on war, the enforcement of law and public order, protection of property, economic infrastructure (roads, legal tender, enforcement of contracts, etc.), public works, subsidies, and the operation of government itself.

Governments use taxes to fund welfare and public services. These services can include education systems, health care systems, pensions for the elderly, unemployment benefits, and public transportation. Energy, water and waste management systems are also common public utilities.

Governments use different kinds of taxes and vary the tax rates. A nation's tax system is often a reflection of its communal values and/or the values of those in power. To create a system of taxation, a nation must make choices regarding the distribution of the tax burden—who will pay taxes and how much they will pay—and how the taxes collected will be spent. In democratic nations where the public elects those in charge of establishing the tax system, these choices reflect the type of community that the public wishes to create. In countries where the public does not have a significant amount of influence over the system of taxation, that system may be more of a reflection on the values of those in power. Wikipedia entry of taxes

Jury duty
Jury duty is a responsibility of a citizen to participate in the legal process. Usually given people to people once a year after a drivers license is issued.

Townhall meeting
The Townhall meeting is another example of civics. Townhall meetings allow government representatives and members of civil society in specific voting districts meet face to face to review issues and show support or opposition to initiatives. Meetings are publicly announced and attendance is open unless otherwise stipulated.

Government
Of special concern are the choice of a form of government and (if this is any form of democracy) the design of an electoral system and ongoing electoral reform. This involves explicitly comparing voting systems, wealth distribution and the decentralization of political and legal power, control of legal systems and adoption of legal codes, and even political privacy — all seen as important to avoid social (civil) dystrophy or a lapse into some undesirable state of totalitarianism or theocracy. Each of these concerns tends to make the process of governance different, as variations in these norms tend to produce a quite different kind of state. Civics was often simply concerned with the balance of power between say an aristocracy and monarchy—a concern echoed to this day in the struggles for power between different levels of rulers—say of the weaker nation-states to establish a binding international law that will have an effect even on the stronger ones. Thus world government is itself properly a civic problem. Also, it is the study of duties and rights of citizenship and right to an ID.

On smaller scales, modern human development theory attempts to unify ethics and small-scale politics with the urban and rural economies of sustainable development. Notable theorists including Jane Jacobs and Carol Moore argue that political secession of either cities or distinct bio regions and cultures is an essential pre-requisite to applying any widely shared ethics, as the ethical views of urban and rural people, different cultures or those engaged in different types of agriculture, are irreconcilably different. This extreme advocacy of decentralization is hardly uncommon, and leads to the minimal theory of civics – anarchism.

Civics refers not to the ethical or moral or political basis by which a ruler acquires power, but only to the processes and procedures they follow in actually exercising it.

Recently, the concept of global civics has also been suggested as a way of applying civics in the highly interdependent and globalized world of the 21st century. Many people feel that increasing knowledge and awareness of individual citizen's rights can enhance global political and economic understanding. Nations such as the United States have been criticized for minimizing public civics education opportunities in the past several years.

Examples of different types
Most civic theories are more trusting of public institutions, and can be characterizing on a scale from least (mob rule) to most (the totalitarian) degree of trust placed in the government. At the risk of extreme oversimplification, an historical view of civic theory in action suggests that the theories be ranked as follows: