Date: 25.10.

2012
Dnr: 074-12-00774-1

The Promise of Citizenship

Joel Ahlberg

1. Introduction
The following paper on citizenship will be presented and discussed in a seminar held at
Bilgi University, Istanbul on November 10, 2012 during the Freja Forum. 1 The papers
objective is to describe the concept of citizenship and to examine the key
characteristics and variations of the concept. The paper will also discuss the effect of
the current global financial crisis on citizenship.
Note: This paper is intended for discussion, and represents the views of the author but
not necessarily the Folke Bernadotte Academy.
2. Why study citizenship?
The study of citizenship can help in gaining an understanding of how societies are
constructed. Citizenship which is at the heart of a political community addresses
the contentious issue of where the borders of inclusion and exclusion within this
community are drawn.
3. The historical development of citizenship
The historical roots of citizenship can be traced back some 2,500 years to ancient
Greece. At that time, political communities were established in different towns. These
communities were governed by the male citizens who qualified to participate in the
administration of, and decision-making relating to, these towns. These citizens were
equal and free within their own group. An obligation to take part in public life came
with the privilege of holding citizenship. 2
Meanwhile, with the geographical expansion of the Roman Empire, Roman law was
extended to bind and administer a diverse realm. Citizenship was expressed as a legal
relationship between an individual and the rulers of the Roman Empire. Obeying
Roman law entitled a citizen to the protection of the state.3

Freja Forum is a platform for networking and co-operation within the non-profit sector for the Western Balkans, Turkey and the

European Union
2

Ulrich K. Preuss, The ambiguous meaning of citizenship, a paper presented at the University of Chicago Law
School on December 1, 2003
3
Ibid

The French Revolution of 1789 radically changed the way of conceptualizing a

political community. It paved the way for nation states that derive their legitimacy from
the people.
A key idea in The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (La
Dclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen) issued by the French revolutionaries
is the equality of citizens before the law and equal rights to take part in public life.
Indeed, the first article of the declaration claims All men are born free and equal in
rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the common good.4 Authority as
expressed in the third article of the declaration derives from the nation. Law is an
expression of the people and not of their rulers. Interestingly, The Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of the Citizen is still a legal document in France, and is endorsed in
the Preamble of the present Constitution of 1958.5
The 18th century saw the birth of a nation state governed by the people within the
defined borders of the nation. With this idea of people governing nations, it followed
that relations between people and the state as well as among the people themselves
gained central importance in the field of governance. Important questions were raised
in relation to the premises on which government should rule people, and by which
mechanisms people should rule governments. With industrialization, the modern nation
state grew in scope with the addition of new areas of responsibility. These additions
included the introduction of parliamentary systems, upholding a conscription army,
regulating trade, promoting education and so on. The nation state expanded, reaching
deeper into the lives of the people which created a pull effect of expanding
citizenship as a distribution mechanism of state resources to a larger group.
During the 19th century, the growing labour and womens movements addressed the
inequalities of society in terms of access to state resources and voting rights. These
movements were important factors contributing to the push effect towards the idea of
a universal type of citizenship that, in addition to property rights, entails specific social
rights.
4. Analyzing key characteristics of citizenship
The development of citizenship has evolved schematically around the following major
themes: political and legal community (which is of ancient Greek and Roman heritage);
nation state and membership in it (18th and 19th centuries); and equal participation in
the political community (20th century).
The Greek civilization created a political community, and the idea of determining a
political relationship between those who rule and those who are ruled. The Roman
Empire added the dimension of law and protection as a way of managing a diverse
political community spread across a large territory.
Equality:
From this, it can be said that citizenship is an essential and indivisible part of the notion
of a political community. The idea of equality between citizens (those who have
qualified to become citizens) has been key since the beginning. The historical
4

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp
http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionnel/english/constitution/constitution-of-4-october1958.25742.html
5

movement to enlarge this community of equals has been a major theme and battle line
in the history of society since then. Arguably, citizens equality movements such as
the French Revolution and the labour and womens movements have accelerated the
development of modern welfare states. One reason for this is that the more equal
people are, the more valuable equality becomes, and the more people treasure it. It is
on this basic premise that the rules of law and effective institutions come into being.
According to the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, the political community comes
from acting and speaking together. Equality creates a need to communicate and
collective planning becomes a necessity. Human pluralism, as she explains it, is the
foundation for this need, because without it there would be no need to speak or act
together. Hence becoming a citizen is acting and practicing it. 6 The British historian
Tony Judt wrote that trust and cooperation were crucial building blocks for the
modern state7
The modern application of citizenship coincides with the rise of the nation state. The
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from 1789 declared the nation the
supreme bearer of sovereignty. A citizen would serve the nation. In this capacity a
citizen would enjoy the rights to vote, take public office and so on. Women and those
who did not meet property and income requirements would enjoy human rights, albeit
no political rights. With time, this idea of separating human and political rights became
incompatible with the expansion of the nation state. The present French Constitution,
from 1958, states that National sovereignty shall vest in the people 8 People, or
more precisely, French people are the holders of Frances sovereignty. Some 169 years
earlier, during the French Revolution, the nation itself was the bearer of sovereignty.
Nation state:
The heritage of the nation state is to couple citizenship with national identity, as
exemplified by the French Constitution. The Preamble of the Turkish Constitution of
1982 refers to the absolute supremacy of the will of the nation 9 However,
matters become more complicated when there is more than one identity in a country,
but only one that is recognized. According to article 66 of the Turkish Constitution,
only Turks are entitled to citizenship: Everyone bound to the Turkish state through
bonds of citizenship is a Turk.10
According to a law dating from 1913, German citizenship could be passed on only
through German descent on the paternal line. It is an example of what in legal language
is called jus sanguinis (right of blood). The law was revised in 1999, enabling large
migrant groups who had stayed legally in the country for at least eight years to take on
German citizenship. 11

Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 175

Tony Judt, Ill fares the land, p. 70
8
http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionnel/english/constitution/constitution-of-4-october1958.25742.html#TitleI
9
http://www.anayasa.gov.tr/images/loaded/pdf_dosyalari/THE_CONSTITUTION_OF_THE_REPUBLIC_OF_T
URKEY.pdf
10
Ibid
11
John French and Annika Hinze. From inside out: citizenship and democracy in multinational states Studies
in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2010
7

During the Indian independence movement, in the 1920s particular attention was paid
to citizenship when the outlines of a future independent state were being prepared. This
is understandable in view of the fact that Indias great religious and ethnic diversity
could be a potential source of conflict. The committee headed by Jawaharlal Nehru that
was tasked to outline a constitution identified in a famous report from 1928, concluded
that a citizen is anyone who was born on the territory of India, which also became in
exact wording the definition of the constitution. 12 The very concise preamble of the
Indian Constitution states that the aim is to provide justice, liberty and equality to all its
citizens. In legal language, the principle of determining citizenship according to
birthplace is called jus soli (right of the soil/land). Citizenship based on a persons
place of birth avoided the contentious issue of defining national and religious identities
in the Constitution. This is also applied in US laws, in which anyone born on US soil is
a US citizen. This explains the tactics of hard-line opponents to President Obama who
try to disqualify him from office by claiming (falsely) that he was not born on US
territory.
EU dimension of citizenship:
An innovative model of citizenship appeared in the Maastricht Treaty (formerly the
Treaty on European Union), which was signed in 1992, stipulating that any citizen of a
member state is also a citizen of the union. Thus citizenship becomes two-layered,
which has important consequences. In some legal cases, for example, the individual
citizen can appeal national decisions in courts administered by the union. The Preamble
of the Maastricht Treaty states that in addition to promoting a common market, an
economic and monetary union and non-inflationary growth, there is great emphasis on
promoting high-level employment and social protection. This is in line with the social
dimensions of understanding citizenship. Uniquely, it also determines the course of
economic policy for all members.
The Arab Spring:
Citizenship (understood to be a bond between the state and its people in a political
community) has been very weak in the Middle East. States in the region, including
Israel, were the creations of colonial powers rather than the people living there. Most
Middle Eastern rulers who have claimed to govern on behalf of the people have more
often than not come to power as a result of various coups dtat. The state institutions
have been the instruments of the ruling elite, often belonging to a single family. This
has alienated the state from the people and the rights of people have been distributed
according to their proximity to the rulers. The inequality of people in the Arab
countries has been a major driving force behind the civil demonstration movement. The
call for equal citizenship was a major theme in the civil demonstration movement as it
started to spread in Tunisia. One of the greatest profiles of the Yemeni revolutionary
movement and 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate is Tawakul Karman, who was born in 1979.
In an interview with Yemeni news website al-tagheer.com, she summarized the vision
of the ongoing demonstration movement with the following words: The goal that the
youth movement and the Yemeni people are struggling for is a civil democratic state
based on political partnership and equal citizenship, and the only thing that would
guarantee this is the fall of the regime. 13

12
13

The Nehru Report, An Anti-Separatist Manifesto

Interview with Tawakul Karman, al-tagheer.com, April 23, 2011

This highlights the argument of this paper that true sovereignty lies in the equality of a
nations citizens, and that this sovereignty is manifested by civil action. It is in the
context of a community of equals that politics is made, and where law and
communication become meaningful. As Hannah Arendt wisely pointed out, people in
unequal societies do not only live isolated from their rulers, but also from themselves
on account of mutual fear and suspicion. Power results from the interplay of people
that are equal and who act. This is the reason why although tyrants can be strong, they
are in fact powerless. 14

5. Financial crisis and its effect on citizenship

The current financial crisis is the result of many crises compounded. The short story is
that it originated with the fall of the Lehman Brothers US investment bank in 2008.
Banks had over-lent their assets. When these banks tried to reclaim their money, it set
off a wave of distrust and insecurity, over the assets being potentially irretrievable.
Interest rates started to rise owing to this insecurity. This had a negative effect on the
private sector and economic activity in general. Decreasing state revenues accelerated a
debt crisis as governments faced the increasing cost of public loans in addition to
reduced tax revenues. European governments also faced increasing financial burdens to
prevent a banking collapse by recapitalizing banks. The economic slowdown worsened.
The idea of the efficient market theory, which projects the market as the supreme
arbitrator in the way societies are run, has dominated public policy over the past few
decades. As a consequence of this, governments are placed between a financial market
they do not have the tools (or, very often, the will) to legislate and the citizen. The way
in which this equation will be addressed needs urgent clarification. Failing to take a
position on this as argued by British economic historian Robert Skidelsky can lead
to the furthering weakening of government authority, at a time when it is most
needed.15
What made matters worse was the lack of institutionalized mechanisms to deal with the
crisis on a union level. Taxation is the privilege of member states, not the union, and
there is no equivalent central bank on a national level. The single currency optioned out
traditional means such as devaluation and interest-rate tools.16 In light of this, severe
budget cuts were seen as the only option. In the hope that the market distrust would not
spread to other single-currency countries, the focus was on preventing the collapse of
the euro.
This effort to save the euro has indeed been made at a very high cost to the citizens of
Ireland, Greece and now Spain. It has had serious economic and social repercussions
on the European model of citizenship of promoting growth and social protection and
combating unemployment which were the goals stated in the Maastricht Treaty.
Unemployment in Europe is at the highest levels since 1999, averaging 10.5 percent in
the 27 EU member states, and 11.3 percent in the euro area (EA-17).17 This amounts in
August 2012 to 25 million people in Europe, of whom 18.2 million live in the euro
14

Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 202

Robert Skidelsky, After the crash: the Future of Globalisation Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, 54:3
16
See for example Alexander Nicoll, Fiscal union by Force, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, 53:6, 1736
17
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Unemployment_statistics
15

area, and unemployment rates have been rising since the outbreak of the crisis in 2008.
In most European countries, youth unemployment figures are alarming. In Greece and
Spain it is more than 50 percent. Reports indicate that measures such as increasing
restrictions on unemployment support, and sickness-benefit and social-care cuts, are
the first measures taken when governments reduce public spending across Europe. For
example, in almost all countries, unemployment and social-assistance payments have
not been index linked to living costs for several years, thus making it resemble
charity.18
Arguably, there is a real need for the reformation of a financial system that has proved
to be default, and the undertaking of a serious inquiry into how to find political
solutions to a global financial market that to a large extent remains beyond political
control and untaxed. The citizens of Europe have voted to be part of a union. With
weakening governments, fewer public resources and a lack of initiative, citizens are to
an increasing extent part of a financial community that is above their heads. The citizen
used to be the criterion required by government; today arguably, the citizens place has
been taken by the market.
Around 2,500 years ago, the Greeks raised the question on what premises will our
political community be built? Citizenship was found to be the innovative answer.
Equality and citizenship have proved to be inseparable twins, and have provided for the
growth of the nation state and the rule of law. Today, in the ashes of the financial crisis,
there is a risk of citizenship and equality becoming indices of financial wealth, rather
than virtues per se. With increasing public concern over severe austerity measures, and
citizens sensitivity in creditor countries with regard to who is picking up the bill, the
question as to how our political community will be built and where the borders will be
drawn seem more potent than ever.

18

Robin Hanan, The social impact of the economic crisis in Europe, European Anti Poverty Network, issue
69, July 2012 citing Council of EU report SPC Assessment of the Social Dimension of the Europe 2020 Strategy
(2011)