ABSTRACT
F r o m the higher reaches of the Conservative government (in the person of Douglas Hurd) to the Communist Party, via a special Speaker’s Commission and Charter ’88, the concept of citizenship is under active consideration. In this concern, two conceptions of citizenship are being drawn upon. These conceptions are different: they have different histories in the development of western thought, and, more importantly, they have different conceptions themselves of the nature of the individual, and of the character of the social bonds existing between individuals as citizens. We may identify them as the ‘liberal’ or ‘liberalindividualist’ conception, and the ‘classical’ or ‘civic-republican’ conception. I do not claim that anyone has held entirely, or exclusively, to either conception. Each is put forward as a model, to aid analysis. It should be noted, further, that ‘liberal individualism’ is only one form of liberalism.
