Modern citizenship entails a bundle of predictable and enforceable rights and obligations for every member of the political community. Democracy and citizenship were coextensive in several nineteenth-century European countries because membership in the political community was restricted by law to those who were independently capable of exercising their political rights and obligations. Only those who fulfilled some social and economic prerequisites for the effective exercise of citizenship – property, income or education – were entitled to these rights. With the advent of universal suffrage, a defining condition of democracy became that all individuals must be empowered to exercise as citizens the same rights and obligations. Yet the difficulty faced by contemporary democratic regimes is that while democracy is a system of positive rights, it does not automatically generate the conditions required for an effective exercise of these rights, as well as obligations. In particular, the material security and education, as well as access to information, necessary to exercise citizenship are not guaranteed to everyone by the mere existence of democratic institutions. Hence, in many countries, some groups remain incapable of exercising their rights and obligations. We face a new monster: democracies without an effective citizenship for large sections of the political community.

Citizenship can be universally exercised only when the normative system is guided by universal criteria, when the rule of law is effectively enforced, when public powers are willing and able to protect rights, and when all individuals enjoy some social and economic prerequisites.