Citizenship

Identity, Institutions, and the Postmodern Challenge

Kalu Kalu, Kalu N. Kalu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781482223248
• eBook ISBN: 9781134968824
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In stark contrast to previous scholarship about citizenship as a construct, this groundbreaking book covers the full spectrum of literature on citizenship theory, including the state and structure of identity, the individual and the public, and the enduring issues of civic engagement and collective discourse. It examines some of the complex challenges faced by citizens and policy makers and explores the existing procedural and institutional mechanisms that undermine democratic political accountability as well as its legitimation.

Drawing from classical conceptions of citizenship in the early Greco-Roman eras to the more contemporary critical social theory and postmodernist contentions, the work casts a wide net that covers complex issues including rights and obligation, the doctrine of state sovereignty and authority, equality, the principle of majority rule, citizen participation in governance, public versus self-interest, ideas of justice, immigration and cultural identity, global citizenship, and the evolution of hybrid communities that challenge traditional notions of state-citizenship identity. With meticulous detail and powerful analysis, author Kalu N. Kalu unceasingly places citizenship as the central thesis of this project, illuminating its intellectual richness on the one hand, and demonstrating the ongoing challenges in both conceptualization and practice, on the other.

1 Epistemological Foundations of Citizenship Theory

The concept of citizenship has been going through a modern-day transformation for the past 40 years, and this, rather unfortunately, seems to have added to the continuing epistemological confusion about what the concept stands for and how we go about validating it. The further we explore, the deeper we delve into a long process of inquiry and discovery. What in the end is citizenship? Is it a matter of individual or collective happiness in the polis or of equality of rights and opportunity for all? How do we distribute collective rights and opportunities in such a way that no one feels disenfranchised as long as he or she maintains the entitlement to citizenship? The foregoing calls into question the twin issues of justice and fairness, because to be availed of the benefits of citizenship, the distributive mechanism associated with equal opportunity and access to public goods and services must be considered fair and just. In this context, citizenship offers a placeholder for the ideal of justice for all, but whose definition of justice?

As a construct, citizenship is like a fulcrum, holding together the spokes on a bicycle wheel as they each branch outwards, none too far removed from the other spokes so that, collectively, they all provide the support needed to keep the wheel revolving and in motion. For every energy and effort that is directed toward turning the wheel and directing it to its purpose—keeping it in motion—a stark reality emerges, and that is: There is an intrinsic logic between effort and motion that must be consistently sustained in order to maintain the activity. In its socio-political context, citizenship is a principle of constitutional reconstruction, in the sense that while citizens play an active role in it, the Constitution on the other hand seeks to foster citizenship among the people (van Gunsteren, 1998, p. 7). When the laws of a republic are made by the will of the people, and when they obey the principles and regulations that inform that law, they end up granting authority to the individuals who are charged with their implementation. So the citizens of a republic have a dual responsibility: They rule directly by consenting to the laws, but they also obey fellow citizens in their ruling authority as officeholders (van Gunsteren, 1998, p. 7). Both activities provide a nourishing environment for the growth and vitality of the republic as well as citizenship.

Competing Postulates in Contemporary Discourse: Whither Equality?

The contemporary conceptualization in citizenship theory suggests different strands that are oftentimes conflated with each other: “citizenship-as-legal-status, that is, as full membership in a particular political community; citizenship-as-desirable-activity, where the extent and quality of one’s citizenship is a function of one’s participation in that community” (Kymlicka and Norman, 1994, p. 353); and citizenship-as-obligation, where citizenship is considered as a function of having paid one’s dues by virtue of being a citizen. But by contrasting citizenship-as-activity with an alternate conception of citizenship-as-status, we prematurely limit the argument as to whether citizenship can be considered a matter of rights grounded in statehood or conferred by law.

As one of the early pioneers in citizenship theory, T.H. Marshall (1965, p. 117) cautioned that the preservation of economic inequalities has been made more difficult by the enrichment of the status of citizenship. “Instead of accepting citizenship as a political and social status, modern conservatives have sought to reassert the role of the market (wealth and wealth creation) and have rejected the idea that citizenship confers a status independent of economic standing” (Kymlicka and Norman, 1994, p. 357). At the heart of Marshall’s account of citizenship “lies the contradiction between the formal political equality of the franchise and the persistence of extensive social and economic inequality, ultimately rooted in the character of the capitalist market place and the existence of private property” (Turner, 1990, p. 191). Hence “through education in its relations with occupational structure, citizenship operates as an instrument of social stratification” (Marshall, 1965, p. 110). Marshall therefore sees citizenship as a shared identity that integrates previously excluded groups (especially in British society) and provides a source of national unity. He is particularly concerned with integrating the working classes, whose lack of education and economic resources excludes them from the ‘common culture’—that should have been a ‘common possession and heritage.’

In most postwar political theory, “the fundamental normative concepts were democracy (for evaluating procedures) and justice (for evaluating outcomes). Citizenship was usually seen as a derivative of democracy and justice—that is, a citizen is someone who has democratic rights and claims of justice” (Kymlicka and Norman, 1994, p. 369). For Marshall, the fullest expression of citizenship requires a liberal democratic welfare state that can guarantee basic civil, political and social rights. “Where any of these rights is withheld or violated, people will be marginalized and unable to participate” (Marshall, 1965, p. 78). This is often called “passive” or “private” citizenship “because of its emphasis on passive entitlements and the absence of any obligation to participate in public life” (Kymlicka and Norman, 1994, p. 354). Hence, “the challenge of contemporary advocates of citizenship theory is how to reconcile the passive acceptance of citizenship rights with the active exercise of citizenship responsibilities and virtues, including economic self-reliance, political participation, and even civility” (Kymlicka and Norman, 1994, p. 355).

In further exploring the active-passive trajectory of citizenship theory, I draw from a modified view of Richard Flathman’s (1981) citizenship typology. In this regard, “high citizenship” suggests that citizens are free, equal and engaged with one another in pursuing matters of high and distinctive human import. As a distinctly human activity, citizenship thus becomes the most important feature of political society. Under conditions of “low citizenship,” the ideal of “high citizenship” is unachievable and hence would be irrelevant to political life and practice in the modern state. Nonetheless, the continuous, intense, morally uplifting interactions, which the ideal presumes, can be obtained, if at all, only among sub-groups within the large, complex and impersonal societies of the modern world. Hence, as some argue, “citizenship is unlikely to be the primary identity or the consuming passion of men and women living in complex and highly differentiated societies, where politics competes for time and attention with class, ethnicity, religion, and family, and where these latter four do not draw people together but rather separate and divide them” (Walzer, 1989, p. 218). The simple fact is that where and “when the scale of political organization changes, unity and trust collapse and a different understanding of citizenship may be required” (Walzer, 1989, p. 214).

This brings us back to the issue of political participation as a central part of the ideal of civic republicanism. We know that Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy stands as a case study in civic Republican politics. To the extent that it encourages political participation (without the exclusionary clauses), it represents a wholesome expression of positive liberalism. Civic republicanism sees political participation as instrumental in bringing about political liberty; hence, to the extent that it is a good indication of virtue, people can discover themselves through participation in politics. The unanswered question remains, however, especially from the perspective of cultural pluralists who advocate a kind of differentiated citizenship that caters to the unique realities and experiences of each group. It therefore still begs the question: How can I discover myself through political participation when the institutional context for participation is not structured to reflect what I consider to be the isolated circumstance of my own existence?

The Exercise of Private and Public Rights

The rights and privileges acquired as an entitlement of citizenship serve two complementary purposes: that of the individual in the isolation of his or her private life and that of the individual in his or her inclusiveness as part of the political community to which he or she belongs. But for the purpose of citizenship, the exercise of rights in one or the other cannot be mutually exclusive except in situations where the exercise of a specific right must of necessity come into conflict with other competing rights claims in the larger community. This is reinforced by the fact that the calculation of rights and the degree to which they complement or diverge from similar rights claims of others is a matter of qualitative judgment that can, oftentimes, be quite subjective. Because very few rights claims, particularly those related to issues of justice and fairness, are amenable to concrete analysis or discrete evidence, we are nonetheless forced to rely on mundane and everyday practices and cultural narratives to make determinations about the validity and circumstances in which specific rights will or will not prevail.

Hence, how we construct a theory of citizenship is therefore a matter of how we adjudicate rights claims in the private and public space and the consistency that is evident in the execution of their substantive and procedural requirements. The liberal-individualist approach sees rights as a matter of individual prerogative in which choice is defined by citizens’ calculations of their own rights within the limits of their respect for the rights of others. However, the problem remains as to how to know where and when the limits of individual choice have been reached and how individuals acting in their own rational self-interest can be relied upon to make the right decisions and choices all of the time. The alternative communitarian argument holds that being a citizen involves belonging to a historically developed community; therefore, whatever the individual has is derived and circumscribed by the customs, tradition and practices of the community (van Gunsteren, 1998, p. 19). While this may seem logical, it does not help to explain the character of the existing communal life or the processes that shape collective deliberations and cultural development within it. It does not fully explain the dynamics by which individual moral agency transcends the collective agency necessary for individual and community well-being.

But as is the case in many liberal democracies, it is very difficult to achieve universal consensus on critical communal issues. Even where agreements on central issues are achieved by way of the principle of majority rule, minorities who may have superior and evidence-based disagreements on the merits of the customs, traditions and practices of the community are still circumscribed to live under conditions they disagree with. While acceptance of communitarian values can help to facilitate collective action in addressing community problems, agreement on the basis of and justification for those values is also necessary. Because of this, communitarians need to develop a more comprehensive framework for resolving disagreements within community-based value structures, as well as individual differences when issues of private and public good come into conflict.

In line with the Aristotelian thesis of political participation in the interest of the polis as a form of active citizenship, the republican theory of citizenship places the public community (the state or polis) at the center of political life. While recognizing individuality, “individuals can mark their place in history by serving the public community, and through this, they can find fulfillment and happiness” (van Gunsteren, 1998, p. 21). In a similar vein, Bryan Turner (1990, p. 193) argues that a theory of citizenship must also produce a theory of the state. He points out that the state provides the principal element in the maintenance and development of social rights, as it is the political instrument through which political movements seek to redress their circumstances through the legitimization of their claims against society.

While the idea of claims implies an expression of rights, the issue that Aristotle’s republicanism raises is how these rights become legitimate or authentic, that is, granted some fundamental entitlements backed by law. In an Aristotelian world, the criteria for guaranteeing citizenship rights include wealth, property and participation. The state exists solely for noble actions: “Those who do noble deeds are contributing to the quality of political association, and those who contribute most are entitled to a larger share than those who, though they may be equal or even superior in birth and family, but are inferior in noble deeds and so in the essential goodness they bring to the polis/community” (Aristotle, 1962, p. 121). Hence “citizenship as a social value seeks to motivate individuals toward civic virtue, patriotism, and volunteerism” (Halisi, 1998, p. 340).

Of Differentiated and Multicultural Citizenship and Their Ends

Some of the more central arguments in citizenship theory revolve around the four basic constructs of equality, obligation, rights and entitlements. Because the state and its institutions serve as the primary anchor upon which each of these could be realized, the content and form of each would essentially be shaped according to the interests of the state. Hence “citizenship rights reflect the societies in which they are created” (Janoski and Gran, 2002, p. 25). On the premise that nature endows, but endows differently, the temporal world in which we live is a world of differences with regard to each individual life’s burden as well as its benefits. While it is one thing to preach equality as a universal norm, it is another to attempt to achieve a common denominator to which everyone would agree as a reflection of equality both in treatment and in access. So when we speak of equality-in-practice, we are actually talking about relative equality as opposed to absolute equality.

Both Plato and Aristotle recognize that the idea of equality is untenable and that nature itself did not seek to create all human beings as equals: not necessarily with respect to their humanness but to the fact that nature grants each and every person different gifts or talents ranging from intuition, physique, oratory, gamesmanship, mathematics, music and other qualities too numerous to mention. Differences and inequalities occur as a result of the fact that nature accords each and every individual with different attributes. A good society therefore would be one that recognizes and, in fact, applies these inequalities in the arrangement of the social structure and in the allocation of individual functions and rewards in society.

Plato’s ideal state requires the division of society into three, comprising the rulers (who possess the natural or God-given qualities of intuition and virtue and hence should become the rulers and decision makers for the polis); the guardians (who have been gifted with strength and physique and hence should be assigned to become soldiers for the defense of the state); and the laborers (who have neither the intelligence of the rulers nor the strength of the guardians and are therefore assigned to roles that mainly enable them to facilitate the nobler activities of the rulers and the guardians). On his own account, Aristotle divides society into two broad themes of the wealthy and the poor: the wealthy being those who have money and property and are able to pay taxes for the maintenance of the state and hence should be considered true citizens and would be desiring of holding public office. However, in an Aristotelian state, the poor and the super-annuated should not be considered citizens because in their own special circumstances they are less likely or able to contribute to the maintenance and defense of the state. This form of social stratification has historically shaped how we conceive of citizenship as membership, community, entitlement or right and obligation even in contemporary society.

The sociologist Karl Marx classified social organization and work into the two classes of the bourgeoisie (owners of the factors of production) and the proletarians (the workers whose exploitation helps to create the surplus value critical to capitalist wealth accumulation). While both classes play differentiated roles in society, they also share differentiated benefits: the former enormous wealth, profits and power and the latter ‘wretchedness’ and subsistence living. In all societies, there are categories of differences such as rich and poor, male and female, white-collar and blue-collar workers, upper-income and lower-income, young and old, liberal and conservative, white, black or brown, and several others.

However, while each may share a similar and common understanding on such normative issues as justice, equality, fairness and due process, and to the extent that each may experience different levels of effect or experience regarding the social application of these norms and values, citizenship rights may seek to recognize the different circumstances and experiences of each of the categories within the more encompassing rights and privileges of all. The state’s attempt to construct a civic public premised on equality of treatment and access regarding these normative values can thus be broadened to accommodate these differences. Hence the republican quest for the common good is capable of accommodating the interests of those who stand in social locations different from that of the more privileged who are in a better position to determine the nature and character of the common good.

Differentiated Citizenship

In contemporary citizenship studies, one of the most influential theorists of what is known as “cultural pluralism” (differentiated citizenship) is Iris Marion Young. According to Young (1989), the attempt to create a universal conception of citizenship, which transcends group differences, is fundamentally unjust because it oppresses historically excluded groups. Hence, culturally excluded groups often have distinctive needs that can be met only through group-differentiated policies. The general premise is that genuine equality requires us to affirm rather than ignore group differences. The view of citizenship as generality presupposes that “whatever the social or group differences among citizens, whatever their inequalities of wealth, status, and power in the everyday activities of civil society, citizenship gives everyone the same status as peers in the political public” (Young, 1998, p. 263). However, she criticizes this point, arguing instead that defining citizenship as generality avoids and obscures the requirement that all experiences, needs and perspectives on social events have a voice and should be respected. She states that, “even though all citizens have the right to participate in the decision-making process, the experience and perspectives of some groups tend to be silenced for many reasons” (Young, 1998, p. 271).

“Group differences involve not only different needs, interests, and goals, but also different social locations and experiences from which social facts and policies are understood” (Young, 1998, p. 277); hence, no one can claim to speak for the public interest. The “only ground for a claim that a policy or decision is just is that it has been arrived at by a public that has truly promoted free expression of all needs and points of view; group representation is the best means to promote just outcomes to democratic decision-making processes” (Young, 1998, p. 276). The kind of differentiated citizenship that she professes is one that offers considerations, benefits and opportunities based on the unique realities and circumstances of social groups.

While this view poses the challenge of how we go about creating a human community with a unified sense of purpose and mutual interest, it suggests that citizenship as a group construct is relative. If we reduce it to a moral imperative, then it becomes an entitlement that can be awarded on the basis of our differences rather than our commonalities. In this regard, citizenship would be yet another force for disunity, rather than a way of cultivating unity in the face of increasing social diversity (Kymlicka, 1995a, p. 175). “The homogeneity required for collective deliberation on the common good no longer...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• About the Author
• 1 Epistemological Foundations of Citizenship Theory
• 2 Classical Orthodoxy: Greco-Roman Heritage
• 3 Citizenship in the Liberal State: How Benign?
• 4 Postmodern Citizenship: Logic and Praxis in State and Identity
• 5 Stateness, Identity and Leadership: A Discourse
• 6 Citizenship as Culture: The Individual and the Public
• 7 Citizenship, Administrative Responsibility and Participation in Governance: One More Look
• 8 Migration, Labor and Capital: Regulatory Challenges of Identity and Hybrid Communities
• 9 Citizenship Beyond Borders: Quo Vadis?
• Credits
• Bibliography
• Index