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...