Citizenship
Citizenship is among the most important concepts in the contemporary world. On the macro level, citizenship is used as a category to allocate the more than 5 billion people on this planet among the various nation-states. On the micro level, citizenship is utilized to describe the attributes of membership in one of those states, and, as a consequence, citizenship frequently becomes an integral part of an individual's personal identity. In short, any discussion of citizenship necessarily entails a discussion of fundamental political relationships.
Historical Background
Two different elements are involved in the modern concept of citizenship: One is primarily a legal notion, and the other stems from political theory. As one would expect of an idea that has survived transitions from the ancient world of the Greek city-states to the medieval municipalities to the contemporary territorial nation-state, each element in the concept of citizenship contains an extensive network of subordinate components.
In the legal view, the central distinction is between a "citizen" and an "alien." This concept of citizenship stresses the presumed connection between an individual's allegiance to a particular nation and the obligation of that nation's government to protect its citizens. In the political view, the allegiance-protection relationship is only a minimum condition of citizenship.
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