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 ...