ABSTRACT
The contemporary perception that citizenship may be present in a state without yet being fully developed among its inhabitants is the foundation of the modern sociological theory of citizenship as well as its relationship to public policy. While there have been important structural or systemic limitations on the role of citizens in the governance of contemporary states, social class also serves as a limiting factor that restricts the extent to which one can broadly interpret issues of citizenship, entitlement and obligation. The diversification and individuation of public tastes, lifestyles, cultural history, and ideological differences stand at odds with any assumed political consensus on the status and privileges of citizenship. The combined onslaught of cross-cultural and transnational immigration along with the communicative and integrative role of information technology projects a new portrait of how we will come to experience, in very different ways, the rights and obligations of citizenship both as a collective ideal and as a normative imperative. How we govern as well as relate to each other in our new circumstance will present enormous challenge for governance in the contemporary administrative state.
