terms: either one is a citizen of a certain polity or one is not. From the ethical perspective,
however, one can be more or less of a citizen – a ‘real’ citizen, a citizen ‘in name only’, or something in between. Mill’s insight is that real citizenship can be cultivated by encouraging those who are citizens in name only to join in public life. From modest beginnings in occasional activities that require one to ‘weigh interests not his own’ and to look beyond ‘his private partialities’, political participation can transform the nominal citizen into one who, ‘made to feel himself one of the public’, is moved to act by the desire to promote the common good. Participation in public life thus seems to be a pathway to, as well as a defining feature of, republican citizenship.