ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses whether the concept of common citizenship provides an adequate justification for the highlighting of the obligations. It considers how far and in what ways this revived perspective has influenced the actual course of social policy in Britain and France, before and after the election of leftwing governments in both of them in 1997. French citizenship was triumphantly invented in the aftermath of the French Revolution, with the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 and the adoption of the first French Constitution. The almost simultaneous advent of centre-left governments in Britain and France in 1997 can be interpreted in much the same way. It is actually arguable that the French socialist government has produced a more glaring breach with the universalistic principles of the twentieth century welfare state than anything so far attempted in Britain.
