Citizenship

Citizenship is the specifically modern form of political association. It is a juridically codified reality whose exercise reconstitutes individuals into citizens. It typically involves a connection between individuals and [Page 167]the nation-state in purely secular terms. Citizens are social selves whose conduct is motivated by norms and interests. They are the bearers of rights whose origins, scope, and consequences are the object of political contestation. Depending on concrete historical and geographical conditions, individuals qua citizens have specific sets of rights and duties. This involves a process of self-rule in which, as Quentin Skinner observes, “the sole power of making laws remains with the people or their accredited representatives, and in which all individual members of the body politic—rulers and citizens alike—remain equally subject to whatever laws they choose to impose on themselves” (1998, 74).

Besides this juridical-political dimension, citizenship involves a sense of belonging to a political community: political identities are formed as citizens, through diverse forms of political socialization, come to see themselves as members of a common political body, with a shared past and future, according to Amy Gutmann. These individual senses of belonging coalesce into collective understandings of what citizenship ideally entails, which Russell J. Dalton designates as “norms of citizenship.” There are several such norms of citizenship, the origins of which can be partially traced to the founding, constituent moments of each polity. At least two normative axes can be distinguished. The first has a socioeconomic basis: consider the rise of postmaterialist values, with a strong individualist emphasis, during the ascent of the neoliberal model of state. The other normative axis refers to the distinction between ethnic-based (“thick”) versus bureaucratic-legal (“thin”) norms of citizenship. There are also several different models of citizenship as norms and interests that are historically articulated in different ways in distinct contexts. These aspects of modern citizenship shape current debates over citizenship. Citizenship, however, has been a topic of concern for social scientists ever since the inception of professional social sciences.