ABSTRACT

Citizenship is commonly regarded as a matter of internal relations between individuals and the state to which they belong and between those individuals themselves. Standard accounts of its modern development describe it as appearing first, along with the modern state itself, in parts of Western europe, and subsequently developing both to incorporate a range of civil, political and social rights and to include within its reach all but a small minority of the state’s population. It is seen as developing elsewhere as the modern system of states expanded to rule over the greater part of humanity. Citizenship in this sense is also regarded as a good thing, something to be defended and possibly deepened within the states where it exists and perhaps even to be extended into the international sphere.