ABSTRACT
This argument maintains that citizenship is possible without national community. One can have a firm and stable democratic community based on the common possession of certain rights, political and social. This common enjoyment of rights and the procedures to defend them forms a sufficient basis for democratic community. This is the stance taken by Mason in his treatment of issues of community.17 Mason distinguishes between ‘belonging to a polity’ and ‘belonging together’, and argues that an inclusive polity does not require a sense of ‘belonging together’ such as that provided by national identity. ‘Belonging together’ implies the possession of some shared attribute:
By a sense of belonging together, I mean a belief amongst them (a group) that there is some special reason why they should associate together which appeals to something other than, say, that they happen to live in the same polity.18
