Unit 12
Unit 12
Unit 12
12.0 OBJECTIVES
In this unit, you will explore the idea of democracy and citizenship. After studying
this unit, you would be able to:
12.1 INTRODUCTION
Democracy is generally understood as ‘government of the people, by the people,
and for the people’ and that is why; it cannot survive without citizenship. With
the advent of representative democracies, there is a shift towards passive
citizenship from active which could be seen as the challenge of legitimacy in
front of the state. Citizens’ support for democracy is a key requirement for its
sustainability while lack of popular support could be exploited by authoritarian
forces for their own benefits. Hence, in the contemporary context, it becomes
important to analyze the relationship between democracy and citizenship.
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Democracy and Citizenship
12.5 CITIZENSHIP
In its earliest form, citizenship focused on the city instead of the state as is
evident from the experience of ancient Greek city states or polis. In general
terms, citizenship is a relationship between an individual and state. It is seen in
the context of complementary rights and responsibilities. According to T H
Marshall, citizenship is ‘full and equal membership in a political community’.
There are certain rights, duties, and responsibilities that citizens have, but they
can either be denied or partially extended to aliens and other noncitizens residing
in a country. Generally, full political rights like the right to vote and to hold
public office are extended to citizens only. The usual responsibilities that the
citizens have towards the state include allegiance, taxation, and military service.
According to Kymlicka and Norman, there are three basic dimensions of
citizenship. The first dimension is that citizenship is a legal status which depends
on civil, political and social rights. In this sense, the citizen can act within the
limits of law as a free citizen and retains the right to have protection of law.
However, it does not mean that the citizen takes part in formulation of law. Also,
it does not indicate that the rights will be uniform between citizens. The second
aspect is that the citizens are seen as political agents as they are expected to
actively participate in political activities of a society through its political
institutions. The last dimension considers citizenship to be membership in a
political community which creates a unique identity. Such understanding of
citizenship rules out the fact that it also has an identity dimension like shared
history, culture, religion or language and focuses only on a nation state
perspective.
In ancient Greece where direct democracy was practiced, there was active
participation of citizens in political community. Citizens were responsible for
the formation of policies and laws by attending assemblies and holding offices.
However, this form of active participation can only be realised in small political
communities. With rise of representative democracies, active participation has
given way to a passive one. The liberal emphasis on rights over responsibilities
has tended to dismiss the obligation to participate in public life and has caused
the rise of passive citizenship. However, this may tempt the state to ignore
citizen’s interests from policy making. Citizenship is a dynamic concept which
keeps changing from time to time and active citizenship ensures that the state
takes care of the rights of its citizens while passive citizens can be manipulated
by the state. Gerald Delanty has argued that unless citizenship is linked to
democracy, citizenship will be reduced to being a pre-political privatism and,
on the other side; democracy will be separated from civil society. Citizenship is
learned through education, socialization, exposure to politics, public life, and
day-to-day experiences. Active citizenship is more than voting or fulfilling public
obligations. It is not only choosing officials and using the system; but also
involves making and shaping the system’s structures and rules.
12.8 REFERENCES
Bellamy, Richard. (2008). Citizenship. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Dahl, Robert. (1989). Democracy and its Critics. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Kymlicka, Will and Norman, Wayne. (1995). Return of the Citizen: A survey of
the Recent Work on Citizenship Theory, in Ronald Beiner (ed.), Theorizing
Citizenship. Albany: State University of New York Pess.
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Citizens seen as political agents. Democracy and Citizenship
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