European Citizenship Practice

Building Institutions Of A Non-state

Antje Wiener

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367315573
• eBook ISBN: 9780429980336
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Although great efforts have been made to understand citizenship, it has remained a contested concept, largely because of the problem of the changing relationship between citizens and their community of membership or belonging. The European Union poses the most recent and dramatic change to this definition of citizenship. Arguing that citizenship must be explored from a perspective that takes this continual change into account, Antje Wiener develops the concept of citizenship practice; the process of policymaking and/or political participation which contributes to creating the terms of citizenship. The approach draws on both comparative social, historical literature on the state and the new historical institutionalism in European integration theories. "European" Citizenship Practice advances a discursive analysis of citizenship practice based on these related bodies of literature, which lie at the heart of this important contribution to citizenship studies.

Part One
Theory and Methodology

1
Citizenship in a Non-State

While the notion of citizenship continues to provide a normative basis for the defence of the welfare state, certain crucial changes in the organisation of global systems have rendered some aspects of the notion of citizenship redundant and obsolete. The contemporary world is structured by two contradictory social processes. On the one hand, there are powerful pressures towards regional autonomy and localism and, on the other, there is a stronger notion of globalism and global political responsibilities. The concept of citizenship is therefore still in a process of change and development. We do not possess the conceptual apparatus to express the idea of global membership, and in this context a specifically national identity appears anachronistic.

—Turner (1990, 212)

It is that a new kind of citizenship is emerging that is neither national nor cosmopolitan but that is multiple in the sense that the identities, rights and obligations, associated with citizenship, are expressed through institutions, states, national and transnational voluntary associations, regions and alliances of regions.

—Meehan (1993, 1)

The Paradox

Citizenship means different things in different contexts. The concept has remained a much contested one, particularly today, and a “complete or elaborate theory of citizenship” does not exist (Turner 1993, viii; Tilly 1995). For some, the most basic aspect of citizenship includes the notion of membership in a community or in a nation-state (Barbalet 1988, 2; Brubaker 1989, 3; Vogel 1991, 62; Kymlicka and Norman 1994, 352). For others, citizenship comprises an understanding of intersubjectively shared practices that contribute to democratic changes of and within a community (Habermas 1994; Kratochwil 1994). Taking conceptual and historical approaches to citizenship into account, two general statements about citizenship can be made, however, despite conceptual differences. First, it is possible to state that citizenship is about rights, access, and belonging, wherein rights include Marshall’s triad of civil, political, and social rights; access indicates the conditions of access to political participation; and belonging means rootedness in a community.¹ Second, most scholars agree both from a conceptual and a historical perspective that analyses of citizenship are in one way or another linked to the state or the nation-state respectively. That is, talking about citizenship invariably involves a notion of stateness (Barbalet 1988, 109; Turner 1990, 193).

These common understandings of citizenship were dramatically challenged when citizenship was established within a supranational context in the Treaty of European Union (TEU) in 1993. The union is not a nation-state. Nonetheless citizenship policy making has been part of European Community and now Union (EC/EU)² politics for over 20 years and “citizenship of the Union” has been defined in the TEU according to Article 8 EC Treaty.³ Since the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in November 1993, citizens of the union enjoy a series of rights, such as the right of residence and the right to free movement (Article 8a EC Treaty), the right to vote and stand as a candidate at municipal elections in the member state of residence (Article 8b(l)), the right to vote and stand as a candidate in elections to the European Parliament in the Member State of residence (Article 8b(2)), diplomatic protection while in third countries (Article 8c), and the right to petition (Article 8d; Article 138d). Achieving the status of citizen of the union is the exclusive right of “every person holding the nationality of a Member State” (Article 8).

This newly institutionalized link between the citizens of the union and the EU as a polity differs in many ways from the familiar citizen-polity relation as it has been established in nation-states over the past two centuries. The Euro-polity is a political arena without fixed boundaries or a centralized political structure, instead it has been characterized as a multi-level polity with a weak core (Caporaso 1996; Marks et al. 1996; Hooghe and Marks 1997) which cannot claim the legitimate monopoly of force over a population within a bounded territory.⁴ For any study of the citizen-polity relation in this context, it is important to consider that this developing relation is placed within the context of a “new practice of governance beyond the state” (Jachtenfuchs 1995a, 115). This context is characterized by a political arena which is not fixed but in a continuous state of construction. Its incremental character is specified in the TEU which establishes the determination of its twelve signatories “to maintain the acquis communautaire and build on it” and to “create an ever closer union among peoples of Europe”.⁵ While comprising a supranational bureaucratic apparatus and a highly sophisticated system of economic integration, no familiar concept of governance applies to the EU (Meehan 1993, xi; Sbragia 1993, 24; Scharpf 1994, 227; Streeck, 1995). Even though the EU is now considerably more than an international regime, it is still less than a fully fledged polity (H. Wallace 1996). Despite a growing consensus among students of European integration that this entity will not develop into a state, its political structure, function and organization still facilitate more debates than satisfactory explanations as to what the “nature of the beast” might be (Risse-Kappen 1996).

Placing citizenship in a supranational context instantly provoked debates over its political and conceptual implications (Closa 1995; Preuss 1995s, 1995b; Schmitter 1996b; Habermas 1994a; Bellamy et al. 1996; Rosas and Antola 1995; O’Keeffe and Twomey 1993; Hobe 1993; Shaw 1997, forthcoming; La Torre 1997, forthcoming). If such a political entity, which is best defined as a polity in-the-making offers citizenship rights despite the fact that a national state is not the final goal, then the questions at hand are What does union citizenship⁶ entail? How have union citizenship rights been established? and, Is the EU proposing rights, access and belonging as national states do? As the story told by this book demonstrates, this innovation has an impact on the two interrelated discussions over citizenship and the character of the emergent Euro-polity. The questions which lie at the center of these discussions are first, whether or not citizenship remains a valid concept at a time when multiple issues of governance are practiced beyond state level and an awareness of difference contributes to push for new ways of representing a multiplicity of identities (Young 1989; Turner 1990; Held 1991; Meehan 1993; Soysal 1994; Linklater 1996; Archibugi and Held 1995; Kymlicka 1995; Tully 1995). That is, can citizenship be meaningfully applied as an organizing principle which institutionalizes the relation between citizens and the polity/community in a democratic way, providing both just and equal access to participation for the citizen and setting the terms for legitimate governance? Secondly, does the unprecedented establishment of citizenship within a supranational framework indicate a qualitative leap forward towards a notion of statehood in the EU (Hobe 1993; König and Pechstein 1995)?

Together these queries pose a tremendous challenge to familiar understandings of both citizenship and statehood. After all, if citizenship has a meaning as a component in the process of modern state-building, then its application in a non-state context suggests the notion of European supranational statehood. However if, what seems to be more likely at this stage, the Euro-polity is not going to develop the institutional characteristics of a modern state despite the introduction of union citizenship, then we need to shed light on the paradox of citizenship in a non-state and ask what is the meaning of union citizenship?⁷ This question lies at the heart of this book. Given the insufficient support from traditional categories, one major task of the following case study is to “situate” the emergence of EC/EU citizenship within its context of emergence. This is done by focusing on the what and the how. What is considered part of citizenship policy and how it has been established? Through the collection of various policies which are part of EC/EU citizenship policy making and the reconstruction of their links we may be able to begin to understand the meaning of this new ‘European’ citizenship⁸.

The Argument

Identity is the element traditionally considered on apar with rights as a basic element of citizenship, but postnational citizenship, or specifically the developing practice of ‘European’ citizenship causes potential problems with that identity. In other words and with a long-term perspective in view, it brings the question of belonging to the fore. So far, citizenship identity has commonly been deduced from a concept of nationality on the basis of a politically or ideologically defined community (Brubaker 1992; Soysal 1994, 1996; Kaplan 1992; Turner 1990). The modern nation-state was assumed to be the community of belonging.

Indeed, citizenship has rarely been discussed in contexts other than the nation-state and has not been considered as part of supranational organizations thus far. Instead it has proved to be a crucial element for state formation in modern western Europe and elsewhere (Tilly 1975; Bendix 1964; Brubaker 1992; Marshall 1950; Hammar 1990; Rokkan 1975; Jenson 1991; Jenson and Phillips 1996). If citizenship as it is known to students of the social sciences has always been related to a state (city-state, nation-state), then how can its construction within a non-state such as the EU be understood? The EU obviously does not conform to these conditions. Investigating the EU’s developing practice of citizenship offers an analysis which differs from traditional analyses in that it does not refer to the nation-state or to the citizen in the first instance. It concentrates on two aspects of belonging which characterize what I call “citizenship practice”, that is, the dynamic citizen-polity relation. The first aspect refers to the political link between citizen and community, that is, it is about political rights of participation and representation i.e. legalized belonging or “formal citizenship” (Brubaker, 1996, 43). The second aspect refers to an identity-based link between citizen and polity/community. It is constructed around a feeling of belonging which results from day-to-day experiences of participation i.e. emotional belonging.⁹ The case study of ‘European’ citizenship practice in the EC/EU highlights the process that contributes to the construction of both legal and identity-based belonging as central aspects of citizenship in a non-state.

Beyond the task of describing the emergence of EC/EU citizenship — this book promotes a systematic approach to reconstruct the policy in this supranational context. The second objective of this book is then a contribution to the study of citizenship policy as institution building in a supranational context. It is assumed that citizenship did not emerge out of the blue on the agenda of the Maastricht Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) which negotiated the TEU in 1990–91. Indeed, it is possible to identify agenda-setting steps in earlier stages of the policy process. Accordingly it is argued that a historically contingent perspective on citizenship brings the policy, which led to the “history-making decision” (Peterson 1995) at Maastricht to the fore. These policy steps contributed to the changing substance of EU/EU citizenship policy.

Thus far, studies of community citizenship have focused on a variety of aspects of citizenship policy. For example, they explore legal problems or political aspects based on legal innovations that mostly became apparent in the pre- and post-Maastricht debates. In turn, analyses of citizenship often comprise a perspective on the integrative function of citizenship within a federation.¹⁰ More recently, definitions of an ideal European citizenship have been developed.¹¹ While research often includes partial aspects and/or consequences of citizenship policy such as migration, labor, health, education, and family policy, the constructive force of this citizenship has rarely been explored.¹² If it is true that the definition of citizenship of the Union is a “radical innovation”, going beyond purely “socio-economic goals” and introducing political rights (Closa 1995, 494), it is worthwhile exploring its character.¹³ While union citizenship may be distinguished from national citizenship with reference to rights¹⁴, the reference to rights alone does not say enough about the character of this new supranational citizenship.¹⁵ Given that citizenship politics in modern times has made contributions to state-and/or nation-building (Tilly 1975; Marshall 1950; Bendix 1964) one might similarly ask whether citizenship in the EC/EU will make such contributions.

This book draws attention to the fact that citizenship when it first appeared on the EC’s policy agenda in the early 1970s, had been strategized precisely on the conceptual and normative grounds of modern citizenship. In fact the book shows that policy makers drew on the idea of citizenship as an identity generating concept in the 1970s and subsequently sought to establish citizenship based on “special rights” and “passport” policy. It is argued that the early interest in the creation of a “European citizenship” was embedded first and foremost in the notion of citizenship as a state-building component. It was this function of citizenship that struck policy makers as persuasive at a time when uncertainty about the EC’s perception as an actor within the international arena was a continuous obstacle to the EC’s external relations policy. That is, when citizenship first appeared on the EC’s policy agenda in the early 1970s, it was introduced with the idea of modern citizenship in mind.

The Methodology

The methodology of this book is most appropriately described as “socio-historical institutionalist”. It agrees with crucial assumptions of socially constructivist work in international relations theory¹⁶ such as the assumption of (1) “contested concepts”,¹⁷ (2) an understanding of concepts as entailing constitutive elements which are in turn (3) defined by sets of practices. And it also shares the (4) method of discursive analysis. While the motivation underlying the case study of this book is more pragmatic than radically conceptual, the policy analysis builds on and contributes to a critical rethinking of citizenship. The innovative element of the socio-historical institutionalist approach advanced in this book is the distinction made between constitutive elements and historical elements of citizenship. As the following chapter will elaborate, the concept of citizenship is defined as entailing the three constitutive elements: (1) the polity/community, (2) the citizen, and (3) what I call “citizenship practice” (the relation between polity/community and citizen). While the first two elements are shared components of any citizenship theory, ideal or historical, the third relational element seeks to bring in a distinctive historical perspective of citizenship. Taking citizenship practice into consideration then implies a recognition of citizenship as contextualized. Its historical variability is empirically identified according to the realization of rights and the representation of identity expressed through struggle over access to full membership. Rights, access and belonging are therefore termed the three historical elements of citizenship.

This book thus disembarks from the familiar conceptual approach to citizenship based on the dualism of identity and rights (Shaw, 1997 forthcoming) and takes a broader historical perspective on citizenship as a relational and historically contingent practice. The broader interest underlying the case study is focused on institution-building as an evolutionary process. Understood in a socio-historical sense the proc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgments
• PART ONE THEORY AND METHODOLOGY
• PART TWO PARIS
• PART THREE FONTAINEBLEAU
• PART FOUR MAASTRICHT
• References
• Appendix
• Index