argues that the advent of nationalism marks the ascendancy of the Culture model over others.6 Contrary to what this account would lead one to expect, however, there are actually three other, distinctly different, conceptions of the nature of belonging in given polities that currently actively compete with this perspective.
Belief: Citizenship as Identification with a Polity’s Founding Principles
In contrast to “communitarian” and other advocates of the Culture view, American liberal thinkers often stress political culture and belief in certain common and fundamental liberal political values or principles as the basis of citizenship and national identity, at least in liberal democracies. For instance, the ideas of “constitutional patriotism” (Levinson 1988) or “constitutional faith” are often presented as central and defining elements of American national identity. Jacobsohn (1996: 23) argues, “being an American consists largely of sharing in those constitutive ideas that define membership in the political community. Assimilation in this context relates exclusively to principles” (cf. Huntington 1981: 24).
While many authors present this “Belief” conception of nationality as quintessentially American (Kohn 1957a; Mead 1975; Huntington 1981; Jacobsohn 1996; Walzer 1992), similar arguments also figure centrally in current European political and social theory. Defending the value of understanding political membership this way, Habermas argues that a “liberal political culture has a constitutional patriotism as its only common denominator” and concludes that “democratic citizenship does not necessarily have to be rooted in the national identity of a people” (1992: 28–29). The cultural integration of groups must therefore be distinguished from the “political integration of citizens,” the latter based on shared principles (1994: 132). Similarly, Mouffe (1992) argues, “What we share and what makes us members in a liberal democratic regime is not a substantive idea of the good but a set of political principles specific to such a tradition: the principles of freedom and equality for all.” Such a perspective implies that citizenship is properly understood not as “a legal status,” but as “a form of identification” (231). In other words, from this perspective, citizenship appears as a Leave membership.
While increasingly common among European as well as American defenders of the Belief model, the expression “constitutional patriotism” can actually be somewhat misleading. Examples of a political community united by belief in common values or principles can be found in the absence of constitutions as well, as this idea’s Christian antecedents suggest (Levinson 1988; Mead 1975). Nor need the Belief conception of political membership be limited to nation-states. At points in his writing, St. Augustine advanced what would qualify as a “Belief” vision of citizenship, in the City of God (Augustine 1958: 469–71, 63). And Habermas (1992) sees the Belief vision of political membership as the one most auspicious for development of a supranational European citizenship.
Because of the sense of identification and commitment involved, the Belief conception of citizenship resembles the Culture view. However, in the Belief model, there is also an important element of choice. Citizenship, by this view, is supposed to be a form of membership whose acceptance involves asserting one’s autonomy and individuality.
One shortcoming of the literature praising the Belief model as the basis of U.S. national identity is its partial and selective reading of U.S. history (Smith 1988).The way this literature typically presents the alternatives where understandings of citizenship are concerned is also flawed logically and conceptually. Advocates of the Belief model often misleadingly depict it as the only alternative to an illiberal, exclusionary, or ethnocultural approach to membership in the nation. In reality, however, “the” illiberal or ethnocultural view of nationality is often an amalgam of the Culture and Descent views. There are also other alternatives to those views: the Contract and Monetized Contract models.
Contract: Citizenship as Equal Rights for Equal Duties, or a Rights-bearing Status Acquired by Virtue of Living Together Cooperatively
A different, equally significant, alternative to Culture or Descent conceptions of political membership is the idea of citizenship as a “contract” between the citizen and the state consisting of a set of duties toward or participation in the state or community balanced by a set of rights the citizen enjoys, guaranteed by the state. Citizenship in this case is conceived of as a Quit-type membership, based not on blood, culture, or convictions, but rather on active performance, whether participation in key activities or fulfillment of required tasks. This perspective can be readily illustrated by reference to contemporary British liberal thinking. According to Albert Weale, for example, “the concept of citizenship makes the question of identity the ground of rights and duties” (1991: 158). In other words, what rights and duties one has depends on whether one “is” British, Italian, Brazilian, or something else. Similarly, Hall and Held draw on the Contract perspective in characterizing citizenship as “a matter of right and entitlement” that “is two-sided: rights in, but also responsibilities towards, the community” (1989: 175). Reading Hall and Held as proponents of what I call the “Contract” view might appear to be unfair, since their view is not narrowly “contractarian,” but rather emphasizes civic participation. Such an emphasis is by no means at odds with the “Contract” perspective as defined here, however. Of the five conceptions of citizenship identified here, it is in fact the “Contract” view that places the greatest emphasis on active participation.
In this understanding, insofar as it emphasizes reciprocal rights and duties, citizenship is, surprisingly, not altogether different from a traditional feudal relationship, particularly as it linked lords and vassals within the more elite sociopolitical strata. Bloch notes that “reciprocity of unequal obligations” was the hallmark of “European vassalage” (1961: 158). In exchange for a fief, protection of person and property, and rendering of justice, the feudal vassal was normally obliged to perform military service, as well as participate in courts of law and consultative councils (219–24, 228).
Where democratic citizenship is envisioned according to this model, the reciprocity of obligations involved has increasingly been generalized to incorporate the masses of the population into what were originally aristocratic, or at least gentlemanly, roles. Alfred Marshall depicted the extension of the duties associated with citizenship as a progressive process that promised eventually to make “every man” into “a gentleman” (Marshall 1950: 4, 7–9). The same idea was reiterated by British Home Secretary Douglas Hurd in the following terms: “Public service may once have been the duty of an elite, but today it is the responsibility of all who have time and money to spare” (quoted in Heater 1990: 140).
As it was extended from the elite to commoners, the feudal “contract” increasingly became the same for all. From this perspective, citizenship generally appears a matter not simply of rights and duties, but of equal rights and equal duties. Hence T. H. Marshall’s famous definition of citizenship as “a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community,” who thereafter “are equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status is endowed” (1950: 28–29).
There are actually two distinct variants of the Contract view: state-centered and society-centered, both of which figure significantly in current controversies about political membership. Besides obeying the law, the duties most often included in the state-centered version of the “rights for duties” contract are military service and voting. The place of voting in the state-centered Contract model sometimes figures as a duty of citizens, but is also often mentioned as one of the rights they receive.
In the society-centered version, the duties of the citizen, such as voluntary community service and charity work, are closer to those of members of the traditional upper class toward those below them. The medieval local lord, for instance, often was responsible for the commons and had such charitable duties as caring for babies abandoned on “his” lands, while later the local gentry in England were responsible for administering the Poor Laws. The ideal of citizenship thus came to be associated with the national and local roles of the English gentry during the Elizabethan period (Heater
