Citizenship and Federations: Some Preliminary Reflections

Some preliminary reflections are offered on the place of citizenship in a theory of federalism. Citizenship is one of the central concepts in political theory, and an account of citizenship, at the very least, defines the criteria for, and the method for the acquisition of, membership in a political community; more importantly, it also lays down the rights and responsibilities that attach to membership. The first section in this chapter makes the point that the three chapters following in this last section of the book further the debate on citizenship and federalism by invoking three different conceptions of citizenship, ethnocultural (Ch. 17), civic (Ch. 15), and economic (Ch. 16), which in turn express different underlying conceptions of political community; these different conceptions are discussed. The second section argues that the three chapters do not fully address the complication that federalism poses for citizenship, which is termed here the problem of divided, multiple or conflicting allegiances/loyalties; this is done by discussing conceptions of citizenship in the EU, and contrasting them with the situation in the USA.