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Barry Hindess
To cite this article: Barry Hindess (2004) Citizenship for all, Citizenship Studies, 8:3, 305-315,
DOI: 10.1080/1362102042000257023
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Citizenship Studies, Vol. 8, No. 3, September 2004, pp. 305–315
Peter Nyers has suggested that the title of this special issue, ‘What’s Left of
Citizenship?’, can be interpreted in at least two ways. On the one hand, it is a
question of what remains of citizenship after the securitization of political
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ISSN 1362-1025 Print; 1469-3593 Online/04/030305-11 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd 305
DOI: 10.1080/1362102042000257023
Barry Hindess
contextual view that the promotion of citizenship has often seemed like a good
idea in the circumstances, and through the more ambitious, universalistic view
that citizenship is a desirable end for all of humanity.
of the classical period lived under Persian rule in Asia Minor, and, while there
were certainly some revolts against Persian rule, we have no reason to suppose
that they would all have preferred the citizenship enjoyed by those who lived in
the free cities.2 Many others lived in cities ruled by tyrants, cities in which the
self-governing aspect of citizenship was much reduced, and, in some cases at
least, the citizens had clearly chosen this option. Or again, in the later years of
the Western Roman Empire, whole communities of citizens opted for the
non-citizen alternative offered by the local barbarians. It is tempting to read this
last example as showing simply that the advantages of citizenship depend on the
presence of a state both willing and able to secure them. Yet it also shows that
many living on the fringes of the Empire or just outside it, and who had seen
what citizenship had to offer, nevertheless preferred a way of life which was not
organized around that institution.
In the early modern period, civic republicanism promoted the image of the
citizen as political activist and warrior, arguing that the liberty of the citizens
depends on the liberty of their city, and thus on the active involvement of
citizens in their own government and also, when required, in defense of the city
against outsiders. Yet, as Hobbes (1968, p. 266) reminds us, there is no reason
to suppose that the citizens of Luca, an Italian city which had LIBERTAS
emblazoned above its gates, found rule by their fellow citizens any less intrusive
than the authoritarian rule which prevailed in Constantinople. The implication is
that some might have preferred the security of the latter condition to the dubious
advantages of active citizenship. Many years later, according to his own speech
on the scaffold, Charles the First, King of England, was executed for taking the
view that while the liberty of the people was important, upholding that liberty
was his business, not theirs.3 There was clearly significant support for this view
among his subjects. Later still, when the French Revolution tried to export
citizenship to other parts of Europe, it met with popular support in some quarters
and popular opposition in others.
Throughout the history of the modern European empires there were persistent
reports of Europeans who deserted their own side and chose to live with the
natives. These continued well after the Europeans had begun to think of
themselves as citizens and the distinction between citizen and non-citizen subject
had become an important aspect of imperial government. In these cases,
individuals appear to have forsaken the joys of citizenship in favour of ways of
life in which the concept and practice of citizenship had no place. On the other
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side of the imperial divide, most of those who resisted the initial imposition of
European rule were not fighting for citizenship although, as I noted above, the
later independence movements could be seen as aiming to achieve states of their
own, and thus the privileges of citizenship within them, for subject peoples. Yet
even in Western states today, when the advantages of citizenship might seem to
have been well established, there are indigenous people who prefer their own
way of life to the supposed benefits of citizenship (Alfred, 1999)—as, of course,
there are in other parts of the world. There are also indigenous groups
campaigning, not unreasonably, to have things both ways, to be granted the
benefits of equal citizenship and to retain significant elements of their own way
of life.
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the Western system of states and the discourses of civilization which it promotes,
it may be difficult for us to disentangle this universalistic view of the benefits
of citizenship from the more modest, circumstantial, view with which I began
this section. It is important to make the effort for, while this modest view seems
eminently defensible, the more substantial alternative has a great deal to answer
for. Both will often lead to the view that citizenship should be defended and
even expanded further but, as our discussion of the negative aspects of citizen-
ship will show, there will also be cases in which they lead to very different
conclusions.
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The suggestion here is not simply that humans will naturally tend to form
themselves into groups. It is the more substantial claim that they will, over time,
form themselves into what would now be called societies, that is, into discrete
and relatively self-contained collectivities, each endowed with its own particular
customs and ways of life.
Nevertheless, while describing the polis as a natural collectivity in this sense,
Aristotle also presents it as a relatively unusual development. Not only, in his
view, had much of humanity not advanced beyond the lesser forms of human
collectivity, the family or the village, but many of those who had done so
belonged to states that were tyrannical and deformed. The polis, and the politics
which develops within and around it, is therefore seen not only as natural, but
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centuries, and it remains influential in many quarters today. If I have used the
work of Kant to represent this broader tendency in European thought, this is not
to suggest that his own writings were especially significant in the modern
development of citizenship. My point is simply to show that the apparent
universalism of citizenship discourse is entirely compatible with such histori-
cism. The elitist perception which it fosters of the relative incapacity of those
who do not already exercise the rights and duties of citizenship played an
important part in even the more enlightened practices of European imperial
administration, as it did, of course, in the administration of European populations
themselves. It clearly underlies the imperial distinctions noted earlier between
citizens and non-citizen subjects. The end of empire and the consequent
globalization of citizenship may have obliterated these particular distinctions but
they have hardly destroyed the elitist view of humanity on which they were
based.
We can see the continuing effects of this elitist view of humanity at two rather
different governmental levels. First, the perception that some societies
are considerably less advanced than others, and consequently that the individuals
who belong to them (and perhaps even their descendants in other parts of
the world) may not yet be fit to govern themselves, clearly plays a
significant part in the politics of all modern democracies, especially in the
treatment accorded to non-Western immigrants and indigenous peoples. Second,
the imperial project of governing and in certain respects improving the
character of subject peoples may no longer be pursued in its original guise but
it nevertheless informs the practices of Western states, working now through
a more remote set of instruments. Indirect rule within imperial possessions
has been superseded by an even less direct form of decentralized rule, in which
the citizens of post-colonial successor states are governed through sovereign
states of their own (Hindess, 2002). It is in these states that the destructive
impact of neo-liberalism on citizenship has been most severe. Democracy is
certainly an integral part of the good governance program promoted by the
World Bank and other development agencies. Yet ‘good governance’ also aims
to ensure that states’ freedom of action, and thus the ability of their citizens to
determine what their own states might do, is severely constrained by national
and international markets, credit-rating agencies and international financial
agencies.
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Conclusion
I began this paper by drawing a distinction between two senses in which the
development and expansion of citizenship might be regarded as progressive:
circumstantial and universalistic. Citizenship is progressive in the first sense to
the extent that it delivers an improvement in conditions which is recognized as
such by the people concerned, and in the second because it is thought to be an
important stage in the development of humanity. These perspectives are not
always easy to disentangle, and much of the modern experience of citizenship,
first in Western states, and then more broadly through the achievement of
independence, might well be seen as progressive in both senses.
I went on the consider some of the negative aspects of citizenship, focusing
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first on its exclusive and divisive character and second on the elitist view of
humanity to which Western understandings, and Western practices, of citizen-
ship have been so closely associated. The problems with the former are well
known, while the latter is clearly related to the universalistic view of the
progressive character of citizenship. They are two sides of the one coin. If we
wish to avoid the elitism, as I think we should, then we must also steer clear of
the universalism on which it rests.
As for the more modest, circumstantial perspective, I have argued that if there
are circumstances in which we might judge citizenship to be progressive, there
will be others in which we should take a contrary view. Let me conclude by
suggesting that we keep both possibilities in mind when assessing the condition
of citizenship in the world today. Citizenship has always been a matter of being
governed, at least as much as it has been one of participating in the work of
governing. It is a matter today of being governed by one’s own state or city, and
by agencies and forces operating within it. It is also a matter of being governed
by agencies and forces acting at a supra-national level. This last condition clearly
inhibits the ability of states to manage their own affairs. I don’t want to suggest
that such constraint is necessarily a bad thing. My point, rather, is that the
character of the international governmental regime leaves far too much to be
desired. Not only are the international markets and the major international
agencies dominated by Western interests and concerns, but many of these
concerns are themselves structured by the elitist view of humanity outlined
above, and thus seem to provide a readily available licence for Western
intervention.
To make these points is not to deny that the globalization of citizenship has
elements which are progressive in the modest sense. In a world dominated by the
system of states, the condition of those who are without citizenship, or without
a state capable of securing its benefits, is hardly an attractive one. However, it
is to insist that, if we are concerned for the future of the modestly progressive
elements of citizenship in the world today, then we should treat the international
regime as a major target for reform. It is also to insist that the idea of citizenship
should be accorded no special privileges of the kind it receives, for example, in
the discourse of contemporary cosmopolitanism. I noted earlier that the cosmo-
politanism of the European enlightenment was a very superior affair, and I have
seen nothing to suggest that more recent variations on this theme have entirely
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Citizenship for All
escaped its underlying presumptuousness (cf. Bowden, 2003). Concern for the
welfare of humanity can be found in numerous cultural traditions, many of them
promoting solidarities that cut across the territorial boundaries of states. It is far
from clear that this concern is best pursued today primarily through the Western
idiom of citizenship.
Notes
1. Aristotle describes the citizen as someone who is ruler and ruled by turns. Yet we should be careful not
to see participation in government as the defining characteristic of Greek citizenship. Aristotle also insists
that the citizen ‘of necessity differs under each form of government; and our definition is best adapted to
the citizen of a democracy, but not necessarily to other states. For in some states the people are not
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acknowledged, nor have they any regular assembly, but only extra-ordinary ones’ (Aristotle, 1988, 1275b,
pp. 4–68).
2. Gore Vidal’s Creation (1981) offers a useful corrective to the now conventional celebration of the Greek
polis.
3. ‘For the People; and truly I desire their Liberty and Freedom as much as any Body; but I must tell you
that … ‘tis not for having a share in Government [Sirs] that is nothing pertaining to ‘em. A Subject and
a Sovereign are clear different things.’
4. David Scott has argued that ‘we have to give up the … presumption that liberalism and indeed democracy
(even a purportedly radical one) have any particular privilege among ways of organizing the political
forms of our collective lives’ (1966). His point applies equally well to citizenship itself.
5. There are many other reasons for this condition too, of course (Hindess, 2000b). The institutions of
representative government, for example, are clearly designed to ensure that citizens play a strictly
circumscribed role in the government of the state to which they belong.
6. Dugald Stewart (1980 [1793]) uses the term ‘conjectural history’ to refer especially to the work of Adam
Smith, but he clearly sees it as describing a more general movement in European thought.
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