Public Rights, Public Rules

Constituting Citizens in the World Polity and National Policy

Connie L. McNeely

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138984271
• eBook ISBN: 9781135598297
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The dramatic changes that have occurred in modern nation-states have engendered a renewed and increasing interest in issues of citizenship and rights. The original essays in this collection describe the formation and transformation of citizenship and rights, considering issues such as legal culture, sovereignty, jurisdiction, diversity, welfare, and related state norms, structures, practices, and resources. Employing a variety of theoretical frameworks and sociological orientations, the contributors explore the creation of public boundaries, along with changes in the rules defining citizenship roles, identities, and rights.

PART I

INTRODUCTION

1 CONSTITUTING CITIZENS

RIGHTS AND RULES

Connie L. McNeely

The dramatic changes that have occurred throughout the modern nationstate system, especially since the end of World War II and more recently, have engendered a renewed and increasing interest in issues of citizenship and rights. Public rights and responsibilities, rules and constraints, in terms of citizenship, national identity, and resources, are being renegotiated and recast everywhere in response to world-level pressures and local developments. Indeed, interest in these concepts as political and cultural formations, in their institutional and organizational determinants and effects, and in related transnational processes have brought into question the fundamental nature of nation, state, polity, and individual membership in the broadest sense. More to the point, changing notions of citizenship and rights have again been placed squarely on the sociological agenda, leading to explorations of related forms, legitimacy, jurisdiction, and practice in the contemporary world.

A central problem that cuts across much of this renewed interest in citizenship and polity membership, and related rights and rules, is the shifting nature of these social constructs in various settings and periods. Another emerging concern questions the usefulness of the concept of “citizen” itself, in light of its definition in relation to the nation-state and debates on the transformation of the nation-state and challenges to its authority—indeed, challenges to its very existence. In addition, the idea that citizenship and membership can be analyzed in terms of fixed homogeneous, stable social groupings and national polities is being soundly rejected as increasing numbers of studies and current events demonstrate the implausibility of such views. Such considerations suggest that traditional concepts of citizenship might themselves be problematic, and even inadequate in the face of new questions raised in recognition of global processes and effects in national arenas, and vice versa. What is at stake in these new debates surrounding membership and rights is the need for approaches that take into consideration the interplay of international and domestic sociopolitical, economic, and cultural contexts. Thus, it seems clear that we must engage an overall comparative and historical perspective to address these concerns in light of changing national and international interactions, conditions, and relations.

In adopting such a perspective, we must consider new developments and insights in theoretical and empirical research on this highly important issue of rights and rules in the public sphere, broadly defined, and affecting individuals and groups in a variety of settings. In other words, bringing together theoretical and empirical research on global and comparative issues, as well as investigations from local and national contexts of interest, can help us gain a more comprehensive understanding of the interplay of global and local forces in the conceptualization of citizenship, as they contribute to the extension of both rights and rules in the public sphere. This means addressing several prominent questions and themes in political sociology and related disciplines, including race, class, gender, and other forms of social diversity and stratification; institutional sites, processes, and resources; and relationships between public and private definitions, concepts, structures, and practices.

It also means understanding and forging links between micro and macro processes, and between more focused studies and larger problems of theory, ideology, and societal relations and discourses. While drawing upon unique contributions and sets of concerns, we can also address and probe complementary issues through overlapping questions about citizenship and membership, and about sociopolitical, legal, and cultural structures, practices, and transformations. Thus, the point is to achieve a balance between diversity and thematic continuity, specificity and generality, and empirical study and theoretical reflection.

Here, while introducing the basic notion of public rights, rules, and citizenship in terms of a changing international system, I consider the broad implications of recent scholarly research that has addressed related issues from various theoretical and empirical perspectives. Delineating fundamental issues and questions that are raised in this arena, I discuss the various aspects of citizenship that form the core of related debates. I also specify an overall, comprehensive approach for exploring conceptual schemes and the construction of public boundaries, reflecting changes in the rules defining citizenship roles, identities, and rights in different polity contexts. The task of describing and explaining the formation and transformation of citizenship involves consideration of such complex issues as sovereignty, jurisdiction, legal culture, diversity, welfare, and related state norms, structures, practices, and resources. More to the point, it means addressing basic questions of citizenship in light of contemporary events and historical antecedents and consequences.

CONCEPTUAL ISSUES AND DEBATES

The first and most basic questions that arise here pertain to the general concept and meaning of citizenship itself: How has citizenship been defined? What are the origins, nature, and destiny of citizenship? What are the limits, similarities, and differences of respective citizenship definitions and concepts?

Citizenship is typically described as a relationship between an individual and a nation-state involving the individual’s full political membership in the nation-state and permanent allegiance to it; the status of citizen is official recognition of the individual’s integration into the political system.¹ Indeed, citizenship is a legal status, regulated and defensible by law, bestowing upon individuals equal rights and duties, liberties and constraints, powers and responsibilities (Marshall 1973:84). In the pure sense, the citizen enjoys certain rights and privileges—certain protections and guarantees that cannot be overridden—underwritten by the state; protection of person and property is the prime function of the state on behalf of its citizens. In other words, the notion of citizenship and rights encompasses responsibilities of the state to “the people,” to its citizens.

However, in return, citizens have certain duties and obligations to the state. Historically, the development of citizenship, along with modern democracy, is linked to the notion and expansion of nation-state sovereignty and the growth and extension of administrative power from the sixteenth century (Kaspersen, chapter 6, this volume). This development was made possible largely by the extension of the state’s capacity for surveillance, that is, the collection and storing of information about members of society and the related ability to supervise subject populations (Giddens 1981; Held 1989:196). The relationship between the duties of citizenship and the preservation of rights is the key issue here. Although legal requirements of citizenship have varied according to context, both temporally and spatially, four basic duties have been commonly delineated (Heater 1990): (1) participation in the political process; (2) involvement in the administration of law; (3) enrollment in military service; and (4) the payment of taxes.²

This idea of citizenship is based on the assumption of the capacity of a population to be self-organized and self-recognized as a polity, that is, as a people in a fully functioning community and in relation to a state, as a condition or result of that state. It is also based on the idea of citizen loyalty and identification with the state (Kaspersen, chapter 6). This means, of course, that we are faced with fundamental questions about the meaning of citizenship and polity in different settings: In what ways has the concept of citizenship changed over time? Do models of citizenship vary according to context? In addition, this means that, in order to understand citizenship as a basic relationship of polity and state, we must also consider the alternative: the existence of an organized society that is not identical with or defined by the state. The association of a society, or its lack thereof, with its official political organization—the state—is clearly an issue of polity and polity formation. In fact, the argument that the realm of civil society is constituted as that of citizenship is a point which, in and of itself, has constituted a contested terrain.³

However, for our purposes here, rather than adopting one model or theory, I follow Somers (1995:241–242) and refer to citizenship in terms of more fundamental common attributes shared by those attempting to provide accounts of the conditions for both public and private rights, for both individual protection by the state and individual freedom from the state. Here, the term citizenship encompasses the somewhat generic problem of the freedoms, rights, duties, and rules between “the people” of a territorially bounded polity, and of that polity’s institutions of rule. The dichotomy of state and society becomes blurred in this instance to the extent that they are not mutually exclusive categories; rather, they are mutually dependent.

As Held (1989:199) points out, throughout history, from the ancient world to the present day, all forms of citizenship have had certain common attributes: citizenship entails membership in a community, and membership implies social participation. This follows Marshall’s (1963, 1973:70) classic treatment in which citizenship refers to “full membership of a community,” where membership involves participation by individuals in determining the conditions of their association. In general, citizenship has meant a certain reciprocity of rights against, and duties towards, the community. It has entailed membership in the community in which one lives one’s life, with membership involving degrees of participation in that community. Fundamental to that notion is the question of who should or may participate and at what level, distinguishing between those who are members and those who are “others.” In other words, what are the determinants and defining features of community membership and participation? What defining characteristics are applied in the recognition of citizens, as opposed to “others”?

While citizenship has been defined in broad categorical terms, referring to people who are included in a state’s circle of full political participation (Lipset 1963), we also know that, over time, there have been dramatic shifts in the boundaries—and barriers—that are drawn around that “full” participation. At various points in history, there have been attempts to restrict the extension of citizenship along various lines to various categories and groups of people: “among others, owners of property, white men, educated men, men, those with particular skills and occupations, adults,” etc. People have been barred from citizenship on grounds of gender, race, class, age, religion, and a variety of other factors.⁴ The construction of a national citizenry represents an uneven and gradual process over time, with incorporation and accordance of rights and privileges taking longer for some groups than others (Marshall 1964), raising an additional question: How and through what process have citizenship rules and principles emerged from specific historical contexts?

While the French Revolution is typically recognized as instituting national citizenship as the modern mode of polity membership, full citizenship and membership—that is, participation of the “masses”—has come about (and is still doing so) through incremental, step-by-step abolishment of restrictive qualifications, such as property ownership, race, literacy, gender, and so forth. Many western “developed” countries, for example, had not granted full rights to women even well into the twentieth century. As Berkovitch’s (chapter 4) description and analysis of the global discourse surrounding women and women’s rights from the turn of the century to the present reveal, it was only in the later period, in the mid-twentieth century, that there was even a change in the related discourse, and women were “granted” rights as individuals and citizens. This gendered process has taken place on an international level, and has had major consequences for our understanding of the dynamics affecting the rights of women and of other socially defined groups in various national contexts (Orloff, chapter 9; Hobson, chapter 10; also see Ramirez and Meyer, chapter 3).

Citizen Identity: Specifying National Membership

The quintessential form of national membership in the modern period is that of citizenship. Yet, as mentioned above, citizenship and all its associated rights and meanings cannot be assumed by all specified populations at all times in a nation-state. Different groups display different types and degrees of incorporation into the institutionalized social order of the broader society and nation. Indeed, the concept of the nation is based on the construction of social boundaries that serve to designate societal membership for some groups as opposed to “others,” and includes the notion that this designation is primary and fundamental to social identity itself.

Moreover, citizenship, membership, and incorporation in a national society key components and goals of nation-building, reflecting the identity of the modern nation-state. Indeed, usage of the term “nation” itself often encompasses both ethno-cultural and politico-legal meanings. On the one hand, it can refer to membership in a distinct cultural community with shared values and behavioral customs; on the other hand, it can refer to political membership, denoting a legally and normatively defined community with mutual rights and responsibilities (Gellner 1983). It is these different aspects of nation and community membership that allow conception of a single national polity that is composed of different ethno-cultural groups—and of citizens as constituting a nation. Accordingly, another question arises: What identities are appropriate for and appropriated by various politics and political action in determining and enacting citizenship? In short, how do citizen identity formation and public rights, rules, and obligations relate to the conceptualization of the nation-state?

While for some purposes we might also posit cultural similarity of the members of a political community, stress is placed here on the idea of a nation in terms of common citizenship in a specific state. Thus, the identity of the nation is found, not in ethno-cultural commonalties, but in political (democratic) procedures, discourse, and decision making (Habermas 1992). In this sense, the nation-state and citizenship are disengaged from more “primordial” definitions and requirements of common ethno-cultural descent. A similar issue is raised in Brubaker’s (1992) comparison of nineteenth century German emphasis on descent as a qualification for citizenship and of French openness to naturalization for “permanent” residents, demonstrating the distinction between descent (jus sanguinis) and residence (jus solis) as defining principles of citizenship.

Moreover, citizenship as we know it would have no meaning without the existence of the state; the key structural change that allows the conception of the nation as unitary is the rise of the modern state (Giddens 1985), with states imposing pressures for various forms of cultural loyalty and participation. Again, the focus here is on what constitutes a political community, reflected in institutions and networks that operate across lines of diver...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD
• CONTRIBUTORS
• PART I INTRODUCTION
• PART II THE WORLD POLITY: GLOBAL PROCESSES AND TRANSNATIONAL EFFECTS
• PART III NATIONAL POLICY: RIGHTS, RESOURCES, AND IDENTITIES
• PART IV CONCLUSION
• INDEX