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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
The growing economic liberalization within, and interdependence between, modern states have limited the ability of state administrations effectively to pursue public policies without the “co-operation and self-restraint” of their citizens. The concept of citizenship will thus increasingly be a battlefield in the struggle for ideological hegemony between major political interests who attempt to define citizenship to enhance their respective political agendas. These debates over the nature of citizenship have been articulated most clearly in the United Kingdom, where the Speaker's Commission on Citizenship (report released in September 1990) has been a focal point in the discussion of what citizenship in a modern state entails.
La libéralisation et la plus grande interdépendence des ´conomies font en sorte que les administrations publiques des États modernes peuvent de moins en moins se passer de la coopération et de l' autodiscipline de leurs citoyens. Dans ce contexte, le concept de citoyenneté devient de plus en plus un enjeu dans la lutte pour l'hégémonie idéologique entre les grandes forces politiques qui cherchent á imposer une définition de la citoyenneté qui sert leurs intérêts respectifs. C'est dans le Royaume-Uni que ce débat autour de la nature de la citoyenneté dans un État moderne s'est le plus clairement exprimé, surtout à l'occasion des travaux de la Commission sur la Citoyennet´ (rendus publics en septembre 1990) présidée par le Président des Communes.
1 Cairns, Alan and Williams, Cynthia, eds. Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada, Royal Commission Research Studies, Vol. 33 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press for Supply and Services Canada, 1985), 43.Google Scholar
2 See, for instance, Dunn, John, Interpreting Political Responsibility (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Political Obligation in its Historical Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Simmons, John, Moral Principles and Political Obligation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; and Lyons, David, Rights (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1979).Google Scholar
3 First Section Draft Report of the Commission on Citizenship (2 January 1990), Sect. II, ii.
4 Encouraging Citizenship: Report of the Commission on Citizenship (London: HMSO, 09 1990).Google Scholar
5 Marshall, T. H., Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950).Google Scholar
6 Cairns and Williams, eds., Constitutionalism.
7 “The strategy [of the current Social Democratic government] is therefore to introduce a new set of citizen rights to collective capital (‘economic citizenship’) as a means of resolving the existing contradictions between social citizenship with full employment and economic growth” (Esping-Andersen, G. and Korpi, W., “Social Policy as Class Politics in Post-War Capitalism,” in Goldthorpe, John, ed., Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984], 190).Google Scholar
8 Dunn, John, The Economic Limits to Modern Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 A fascinating question for sociologists, no less than for political scientists, is why such demands are arising in so many places with such ferocity.
10 For statistics see Britain's Social Trends 17 and Social Trends 18 (London: HMSO, 1987 and 1988)Google Scholar; Walker, A. and Walker, C., eds., The Growing Divide (London: Child Poverty Action Group, 1987)Google Scholar; The Guardian, December 7, 1988, 15; Harrison, B. and Bluestone, B., The Great U-Turn (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 131Google Scholar; and the Report of the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, Vol. 2 (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1985), 565.Google Scholar
11 “In denying the economic successes that have occurred since 1981,” comments one of the more reflective Labour MPs, “the Left is unable to appreciate that it is not the lack of economic growth, but its distribution that is a fundamental cause of the underclass's existence” (Frank Field [MP for Birkenhead] in Losing Out [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989]).
12 The Sunday Times, October 25, 1987. See also Blunkett, David and Crick, Bernard, “The Labour Party' Aims and Values,” in the Guardian, 02 12, 1988.Google Scholar
13 For a sustained critique of the 1981 Act, see “British Nationality: The Report of the Working Party,” published by JUSTICE (the British section of the International Commission of Jurists) in London, 1980.
14 See Foot, David K., “Population Aging and the Canadian Labour Force,” Discussion paper on the Demographic Review (Ottawa: Studies in Social Policy, 01 1987).Google Scholar
15 See Deaton, R. L., The Political Economy of Pensions (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1989), 59.Google Scholar
16 The “Fourth Dimension,” following from Marshall's categorization, was expressed as “the voluntary acceptance by the majority of citizens of some responsibility to further the public good at some time by the exercise of public duty” (Sect. 42 of the first section draft oflhe Commission Report, January 1990). Interestingly, references to the “Fourth Dimension” were dropped in the final report.
17 “The success of the new orthodoxy lies in its ability to supply an account of a good society which is in line with the direction of socioeconomic change, and which justifies the characteristic morality and lifestyle of the newly prosperous middle classes: ‘suburban prejudice made flesh,’ as it has been aptly described” (Jordan, Bill, The Common Good [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989], 15).Google Scholar
18 See Esping-Andersen, Gosta, Politics Against Markets (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Esping-Andersen, Gosta, Rainwater, Lee and Rein, Martin, eds., Stagnation and Social Policy (London: M. E. Sharpe, 1987)Google Scholar; Korpi, Walter, The Democratic Class Struggle (London: Routledge and Regan Paul, 1983)Google Scholar; and Milner, Henry, Sweden: Social Democracy in Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar
19 One might usefully keep in mind Barbalet's insistence that social rights and the welfare state are not synonymous (Barbalet, J. M.Citizenship [Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1988], chap. 5).Google Scholar
20 Mill, J. S., Considerations on Representative Government, ed. by Acton, H. B. (London: J. M. Dent, 1972), 250–251.Google Scholar
21 See Buchanan, James, Liberty, Market and State (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1986)Google Scholar and Tullock, G., Private Wants, Public Means (New York: Basic Books, 1970).Google Scholar
22 Consult Przeworski, Adam and Sprague, John, Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).Google Scholar
23 “If the welfare state were to be financed by the entire society, and especially the privileged strata, their support would depend on their being on the beneficiary side as well. Expensive welfare states are vulnerable to tax resistance movements, but targeted nonuniversalist programs are the most vulnerable of all” (Esping-Andersen, Gosta, “Citizenship and Socialism: Decommodification and Solidarity in the Welfare State,” in Esping-Andersen, , Rein, and Rainwater, , eds., Stagnation, 90).Google Scholar
24 For a more careful discussion of this difference see Dworkin, Ronald, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977)Google Scholar, and Lyons, Rights.
25 See Taylor, Charles, “Alternative Futures: Legitimacy, Identity and Alienation in Late Twentieth-Century Canada,” in Cairns, and Williams, , eds., Constitutionalism, 183–229Google Scholar, for a more thorough discussion of this.
26 The Times, November 19, 1987, 2.
27 The New Statesman and the New Society were merged into the New Statesman and Society (NSS) in January 1988.
28 NSS, April 15, 1988, 3.
29 Ibid, (emphasis in original).
30 The Times, September 19, 1988, 2.
31 The Sunday Times, October 23, 1988, B3. his.
32 The Sunday Times, October 9, 1988, Al.
33 The Times, October 14, 1988, 16.
34 NSS, January 8, 1988, 21–23.
35 The Times, November 22, 1988, 4.
36 Encouraging Citizenship, v.
37 First section draft report, Sect. II, ii.
38 See the Manchester Guardian, January 31, 1988,
39 Malcolm Wicks, “Community Care and Citizenship,” draft paper for the Commission on Citizenship, March 28, 1990, 5.
40 The Sunday Times, October 16, 1988, A4.
41 Welfare Without the State (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1987).Google Scholar
42 NSS, April 15, 1988, 3.
43 The Times, September II, 1989, 13.
44 NSS, October 7, 1988, 28–31.
45 “ … Citizenship, even in its early forms, was a principle of equality Starting at the point where all men were free and, in theory, capable of enjoying rights, it grew by enriching the body of rights which they were capable of enjoying” (Marshall, Citizenship, 33).
46 NSS, April 29, 1988, 14.
47 A 1988 Labour policy review document argued that a Bill of Rights would be “by its very nature concerned with negative rather than positive freedom” (“as if,” remarked one critic, “the former were unimportant”); that the protection of basic rights would be “at the mercy” of the judiciary; and that the document would tie British law to the European Human Rights Convention: factually true, but not a potently negative criticism. See NSS, May 20, 1988, and December 2, 1988; and the Manchester Guardian, October 25, 1988, 5; December 2, 1988, 15.
48 For example, Katzenstein, Peter, Small States in World Markets (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985)Google Scholar and Corporatism and Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Milner, Sweden: Social Democracy in Practice; and Korpi, W., Economic Growth and the Welfare State (Stockholm: SOFI, 1985).Google Scholar
