A thought-provoking, big-picture point of view....
The Decline of Citizenship in an Era of Globalization
By Richard Falk
Professor Princeton University, currently visitng professor in Hanoi
TFF adviser
I. Framing the Argument
The dominant modern idea of citizenship
The dominant modern idea of citizenship was definitely linked closely to the emergence of individuals endowed with entitlements or rights in relation to the governments of territorial sovereign states. Thus the history of citizenship could be traced from the entitlement associated with freedom from abuses of governmental authority, especially arbitrary exertions of coercion to freedoms to, that is, freedoms of a more affirmative character to participate directly or indirectly in the governing process, and finally, to a series of entitlements associated with social democracy or the welfare state (Marshall 1950).
Secular varieties of nationalism were not an invariable backdrop, but it was the most characteristic political form in which modern forms of citizenship flourished under conditions in which the state was the focal point of a juridically conceived nationalism, that is, a geographically bounded ideal of political community. This contrasts with an ethnically or religiously conceived nationalism whose borders are rarely coterminus with those of a sovereign state. As such, secular nationalism emphasizes the inclusiveness of carefully delimited and widely recognized international boundaries that specify, with dogmatic clarity, the distinction between the political community that is inside and the international anarchy that is outside (Hobbes 1991; Walker 1993).
Such a dichotomizing of political reality underscored the importance of full membership in a political community as opposed to the vulnerability of "the stateless person." Citizenship in one of its dimensions is a means of ensuring the full rights of membership, including engaging both the protective responsibilities of the state under international law and the duty of loyalty by the individual to a particular state.
Despite the external juridical equality of citizens/nationals of states themselves, internal discriminatory practices within states have made the struggle for equal participation by all citizens a momentous, unfinished struggle raising a myriad of subsidiary questions about gender, race, class, religion, region. Nevertheless, citizenship has often served as a focal point for individual rights and benefits, the latter especially with respect to social and economic concerns.
This highlighting of citizenship is an enduring tribute to the seminal importance of the French Revolution in defining the relationship between the individual and the government at the level of the sovereign state. More widely conceived, it was a direct outcome of the struggles in Europe against the absolutist claims made on behalf of royal and divine authority, a process that in various ways can be traced back at least as far as the Magna Carta. What emerged from this historical process was an assurance of formal equality under law independent of specific class, ethnic, and religious identities, which was a mean achievement if compared to the feudal hierarchies that preceded modernity.
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The full essay:
transnational.org
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