Authors: Duhamel & Mény
Summary: In about 2300 words the entry both defines the concept and offers an analysis of its development. A citizen is a member of a political and territorial unit, entitled with rights and obligations which are legally determined independently from his membership in particular collectivities.
This definition is then followed by a brief description of the political rights linked to the status of citizen, which, according to Richard Bendix, is the defining characteristic of the modern nation state. Indeed, the citizen is the endpoint of a double process, i.e. of juridical levelling and of political emancipation.
The central feature of citizenship, viz the fact that individuals are in turn both governors and governed, was already present in Aristotle's politeia. However, in ancient Greek cities the division of labour excluded women and slaves from political activity, while the few proper citizen could deal with politics professionally. After a brief mention to Machiavel's notion of republican virtue and Bodin's insistance on a mutual obligation, linking the citizen to the sovereign, the entry recalls T.H. Marshall's work. He identified three elements (civil, political and social) in the status of citizen, each embodied in a specific institution and in a specific epoch: respectively 18th century's courts, 19th century's representative political assemblies and, lastly, 20th century's welfare state.
The entry closes with the modern theory of citizenship, which isolates three crucial attributes, i.e. a) possession of indivisible civil, political and social rights; b) loyalty to only one legitimate political community (the nation state), and c) priority of the public interest over private interests, while recognizing that these three elements are challenged by the complexity of contemporary western societies.