The Right to Freedom, World Citizenship, and Global Peace

4.1 Perspectives for Citizenship

In the foregoing chapter, I offered general definitions of what citizenship is: an abstract and general “content” of citizenship, a more or less invariable definition underlying all the historical and geographical transformations of this institution. In this sense, this was rather a “concept” than a “conception” of citizenship, to rely on Rawls' language. ^{5 , 6} Two other elements are instrumental to the continuation of the argument. Citizenship, as mentioned, is an ensemble of normative relations: fundamentally, of rights and duties (but possibly, also of responsibilities and the like). These relations need not be always institutionalized as law: this is more or less relevant depending on whether we are considering just the legal form of citizenship or also its psychological, sociological, cultural, and more properly ethical aspects. ⁷ Political theory and philosophy could take into account to different degrees all of these. Citizenship, though, is not freestanding: this institution, and especially its “conceptions,” and its realizations, need justification and refer to something that is not intrinsic in the concept. The concept(ion) of citizenship does not fluctuate in a void: otherwise, it would hardly be understandable, and relevant. Etymologically, as recalled, citizenship refers to the city, the place to which this membership was related and within which it was also exercised. It is only for a few centuries that history has become a history of vast nation-states: formerly, it had been characterized by city-states, empires, and other entities such as confederations and leagues with varying levels of integration and autonomy.

Besides the definition, or content, of citizenship analyzed before, therefore, the concept can be understood, explored, and criticized by reference to its requirements. Citizenship is a (legal, moral, political, civil, and cultural) condition and to gain access to it one must meet some prerequisites. The two prevailing ways are so-called ius sanguinis and ius soli. “Right of blood” and “right of soil” are two simplistic labels used to state whether national membership is based upon having been born to parents entitled to nationality in turn, or to having been born on the national soil, no matter from whom. In reality, citizenship is often a combination of both, and other criteria apply, especially for naturalization procedures, such as merit, marriage, residence, cultural integration, ius nexi (Ayelet Schachar), or even “citizenship by investment” or ius doni (Christian H. Kälin). ^{8 , 9} During naturalization, the intentions and specific circumstances (e.g. employment, uninterrupted residence in the country, plans to go abroad, etc.) are also taken into account. It is apparent that in both major cases – ius sanguinis and ius soli – citizenship is essentially a birthright: in the former it is hereditary, in the latter it is not. Through those two accesses, the majority of people become one or the other state's national. Ius sanguinis is, generally speaking, more common in the world, thus reflecting the ancestral idea of citizenship as a blood tie, but a large majority of states adopt some combination of the two criteria with an addition of other factors (time spent in the country, clean records, etc.).

There are strong initiatives in place to end statelessness, as citizenship is a fundamental human right: the Global Alliance to End Statelessness, supported by UN agencies, has the goal of ending statelessness by 2030. Moreover, denaturalization (the deprivation of citizenship) has become a less frequent practice in recent decades and centuries. ¹⁰

Saying that nationality and nationalism still determine the attribution of membership would be very simplistic, especially when considering the range of variations that hold in practice. Many former colonies and former imperial metropoles especially are impressively diverse, and their legislation reflects their conditions and history. Having granted this, it is true that national belonging still plays a significant role in the attribution of citizenship, as it is apparent from the blood ties that grant it or make its acquisition quicker. But nationality itself is no longer considered a good rationale upon which citizenship is exclusively to be based, at least in pluralistic and diverse liberal democracies. The rationale is the third factor of the model I am sketching and possibly the most relevant one since it influences both the content of citizenship and its requirements. The rationale can be very difficult to identify since it may be based on traditions, practices, and what is considered a commonsensical interpretation of the legislation under such circumstances. ¹¹ A rationale dictates the criteria for granting citizenship, but it also defines the kind of normative relations included in citizenship. It can be partly ideological – dependent on the national ideology – and partly legal/political – dependent on the country's constitution and laws. Of course, the two dimensions are intertwined. Furthermore, in any given society, different rationales for citizenship could be upheld and even institutionalized at the same moment.

Consider, for example, a Middle Eastern state where Shariah is observed, and it is almost impossible to naturalize unless one is not a Muslim. Alternatively, a pluralistic Western democracy in the Americas where some groups are historically considered to be constitutive to the national identity. Or again, an ethnically homogenous country in the Far East. Each of these sees citizenship as a different institution, with a different relationship with national history, language, culture, religion, and ideology, and the rationale for citizenship helps to devise and administer its requirements (how one becomes a citizen) and its content (the bundle of rights and duties citizenship consists in). Bumiputera in Malaysia; naturalization procedures and practices in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Iran; the Juche ideology in North Korea, or Drukpa Buddhism in Buthan are only the most transparent examples that display rationales of citizenship. The rationale in Western liberal democracy may be more contested, composed, and difficult or impossible to state briefly and explicitly but that does not mean that there is no rationale at all.

For another, historical, example: in a 19th to mid-20th century European nation-state, nationality (a romantic-like conception of the nation) was typically understood as the identity providing a rationale for the acquisition of citizenship. The institution of citizenship was meant to strengthen the bonds among a nation, or race, and to help it develop a state in which it could freely rule and express its particular vocation, character, and culture. From this nationalistic self-conception descended requirements of citizenship to protect it: descent, blood ties, and marriages according to ius sanguinis. Finally, the content of citizenship consisted of a set of normative relations which, as already explained, could well be asymmetrical: for example, some citizens are allowed to enroll in the national army, but are not granted access to higher education and voting, or vice versa. In the case sketched (1) the rationale is some conception of nationalism, (2) the requirements are those of a strict ius sanguinis and direct affiliation, and (3) the content of citizenship is a “web” of normative relations shaped in such a way to mirror, protect and improve the national identity and its influence on the world, e.g. by serving in the army, paying taxes that are partly used to increase national power and grandeur or to fund ceremonies celebrating national traditions, or again to study and illustrate prevalently the national culture or to assist fellow-nationals, and so on.

What is, then, the essence of citizenship? We could be tempted to answer that it is its general and abstract character, that is, a compact of rights and duties that fits both the institutional arrangements of a society and the corresponding bundles of normative relations holding toward fellow nationals. In this case, the essence of citizenship would be its content. But at a deeper level, the essential in citizenship is actually its rationale, that is, goal, and purpose. As I have specified, that is the guiding force: it is the rationale that explains why ethnic Germans can naturalize, why Jews from all over the world can become citizens of Israel through the aliya according to the Law of Return, and why citizenship of the United States is instead not predicated on ethnicity or religion. If the requirements are decided by the rationale, so is the content of citizenship: it is the national ideology of Germany, Israel, and the US that makes it so that some citizens are entitled to free healthcare or obliged to serve in the military and so on.

Historically and at present, rationales for citizenship have been of a dizzying complexity. Culture, and especially political culture is very complex and composite, and political ideals (as in the case of the French Revolution) or philosophies (as for Stoicism, or the most cosmopolitan exponents of the Enlightenment) and religions (like Christianity or Islam) have frequently been in tension with nationalistic ideals and institutions. In any given nation-state, these and others can coexist and conflict, as do, for instance, laws and institutions from a previous era with a society that has been transformed since they were formulated. Nonetheless, all of them have often been conflated if not confused with the triumph of the national interest. ¹² Sometimes, such or similar concerns are still influential and sometimes embedded in state laws despite clearly exceeding the dimension of the nation-state.

Ius soli is sometimes only apparently alternative to ethnic homogeneity, as geography often serves as an effective proxy. Therefore, the naturalization of minorities is relatively controllable, not just by setting criteria that act as barriers: the first means to control citizenship is by controlling immigration. Permanent legal residence is often the first step toward naturalization: by denying the status of legal resident it is possible to exclude a person from citizenship almost indefinitely. ¹³ In reality, immigration policies can facilitate entrance for some ethnic groups, either directly or indirectly. But until very recent years, the racial and nationalistic concern was recognizable even among the members of the national community, with de jure or de facto different classes of citizenship available to the major ethnic groups and the most marginalized ones. ¹⁴

Of course, things are much more complicated than it seems on the surface. First of all, nationality can be defined in various ways: as allegiance to a particular culture rather than as sharing some physical characteristics and blood ties. Contemporary democratic politics disregards this “cultural ethnocentrism” no less than classic nationalism, but it is much more difficult to define and identify it. A state is governed in different ways and by different people at different times, but often even at the same time in any of its components, there are conflicting views, so that it is difficult to say that the policies expressed are explainable by direct reference to nationalism. In a system under the rule of law and with checks and balances, it is often the case that the welfare agency is more “cosmopolitan” while the immigration control is more “nationalistic”… or even the other way round. Managerial efficientism, conservative bureaucratism, etc., can all play a role in the matter.

In contemporary states ius sanguinis, ius soli, and all the practices of naturalization are probably understandable more as guided by a meta-rationale, a second-order justification. By this I mean that the traditional way to acquire new citizens and to expand the body politic is maintained despite being considered somehow arbitrary: from a liberal-democratic point of view, assuming equality of all persons, it is hard to attach intrinsic moral relevance to the fact of being born to Jamaican instead of Albanian parents. But even if this criterion is contingent, the existence of a criterion is considered necessary: a state institution needs a procedure through which it becomes possible to identify and form citizens. ¹⁵ This is the pragmatic-instrumental approach of liberal nationalism that maintains some aspects of nationalism to put it to the service of liberal values. Spatial proximity (ius soli) is of course convenient for wielding sovereignty, while blood ties and personal relationships (ius sanguinis) strengthen mutual commitments and affections. All these elements will play an important part in the so-called instrumental justification of citizenship (and “special ties” in general) that I will borrow from Robert E. Goodin later on and which I hold to be relatively sound. Even if too much homogeneity seems to jeopardize a minimal pluralism on morally neutral and controversial matters, and perhaps even minority rights, too much heterogeneity, whatever its constituents, is also problematic. It is difficult to imagine a political community that works well despite its members' speaking a variety of different languages (and, most importantly, lacking any shared language or code), having diverse if not completely opposite moral views, belonging to ethnic groups of distant origins and having been gathered together from remote and isolated countries. The troubles and the costly achievements of multicultural and multiethnic states are telling evidence that these fears are not unfounded, even for advocates of postnational citizenship. Yet one can envisage an even more fragmented state. Those cosmopolitan thinkers who have suggested replacing traditional requirements with a system called ius nexi, namely the recognition of vital relations, independently from the place of birth and from descent, in practice would risk ending up supporting the traditional ius sanguinis-ius soli model since these tend to coincide, however imperfectly. The place and the people who accompany one for the beginning of one's life are generally of great importance to determine one's relations. ¹⁶

It follows from this that nationalistic, centuries-long rationales for citizenship are not justified in themselves. It is not that they justify the way a state community is formed, but the very opposite: the existence of efficient nation-states capable of enforcing members' (and sometimes even outsiders') rights justifies the preservation of some requirements guaranteeing the state's survival. To some extent, they justify the underlying rationale of traditional and national citizenship, but at the same time, they look for a broader and higher criterion to criticize it. They also compel to revise the rationale whenever it appears inadequate in light of their standards. This criterion cannot be but the same holding for supranational organisms and the international community itself: peace and observance of human rights. ¹⁷ Therefore it is, in the end, the aim of peace that gives legitimacy and restrains the national rationale of citizenship to the point of forcing it to evolve in a continuous tension. From Hobbes to Kant, “perpetual peace,” or at least the containment of the bellum omnium contra omnes, can be seen as the source of legitimacy for the sovereign and the end that should animate any confederation of states' constitution. Therefore, domestic peace might work as a core rationale for national citizenship, as global peace should do for international citizenship. It is also easily arguable that there is, at any rate, a strong relationship between the two: even when leaving momentarily aside the question of distributive justice, minimal respect for human rights at home and abroad should be integrated if they are both to be granted some strength. Again, I am here relying particularly on Waldron's argument that institutional legitimation streams from the defense of essential rights, as a matter of “natural duty.”

Global citizenship has therefore peace as its rationale, humanity as its only requirement, and the human rights/human duties regime as its content. It seems that none of these is, in turn, specifically defined: since I have said something about (human) rights while analyzing further the idea of “humanity” goes much beyond the purpose and the possibility of this book, I shall now focus on the idea of peace. ¹⁸

4.2 The Concept of Peace and Its Relation to Freedom

The concept of peace is probably more frequently questioned in political sciences than in political philosophy, at least in contemporary times. ¹⁹ This has not always been the case in the history of thought, as peace occupied a rather important place in the political theory of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Hobbes, and, most famously, Kant (in his contribution on Perpetual Peace). Nowadays peace is frequently considered a topic in pacifism and peace studies, or as a “dialectic concept” in opposition to war. ²⁰ And yet it has a central role in international relations, international law, and domestic politics. In Monnet's speech, which I recalled at the end of the first chapter, the concern for peace was the strongest argument for superseding sovereignty as classically understood and for the ensuing establishment of the European Union: “There will be no peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty….” ²¹ In the preamble of the Universal Declaration, “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal inalienable rights” is held to be the “foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world” (emphasis added). In this way, peace is joined to two central concepts of political philosophy, freedom and justice. As evidenced by the previous quote, peace is also in tension with sovereignty, another “thick” concept that in practice sets the confines of the rights and duties collected in the institution of citizenship. The concept of peace is intrinsically bound to the very principle of a social polity, to the “realm of justice” subtracted from the original state of war and disorder. ²²

What I call the negative concept of peace is thus the mere absence of war, the absence of large-scale violations of human rights that prevent the tranquil and harmonic development of human societies. Of course, war is its opposite: in particular, however not exclusively, war in the sense of a deliberate attack of a sovereign state against another, and the condition that ensues. But positive peace is not the mere absence of war, but rather the free development of ordered political relations and communities. In this sense, while bellicose nationalism is of course a force that threatens negative peace, reasonable cultural and institutional diversity, and even a “positive” patriotism, is supportive of positive peace. There must be parties to agree on positive peace, while there can be but one (victorious) party as a consequence of the destruction of negative peace. The two concepts are distinguishable, at least to some extent, and a situation of negative peace can coexist with an absence of positive peace. ²³ Negative peace requires some restrictions to freedom since not all possible actions are to be performed if it is to be secured; on the other hand, positive peace is better pursued through freedom itself: the development and flourishing of human communities need the removal of barriers of many kinds. The one concept implies some measure of homogeneity (at least in accepting only peaceable means of cohabitation); it is rather static and cooperative. The other concept permits variety and transformation, it is dynamic and independent. A complete concept of peace without further specification implies both these meanings despite a certain tension between the two. Nonetheless, just as it is obvious that positive and negative peace are different, it is as evident that they are related, as positive peace without negative peace is simply inconceivable. States and persons need be equal in respect of each one's obligation to respect negative peace, but they are free as regards the achievement of positive peace.

4.3 Peace, Freedom, and Equality

Freedom is one of the core concepts of political theories. It is one of the most recurrent terms in our “dictionaries of morality.” ²⁴ True, justice has been authoritatively described as the “first virtue” of political institutions, but in Rawls' own theory, this does not mean that freedom ranks only second. ²⁵ Rawls' first principle of justice guarantees that all the full “equal basic liberties” compatible with the same liberty for all are distributed to each citizen. ²⁶ Rawls' attention to “fairness” helps us see some of the requirements of the “equality” that defines citizens who have a right to it: it is equality of freedom. Equal “basic goods” and opportunities, on the positive side, but also equal responsibilities, on the negative, identify more and more precisely a certain citizenry, a group within it, a subset of this group depending on the degree of focus. One of the “crucial notions for a normative theory of citizenship” is in fact the “fair equality of fundamental opportunities.” ²⁷ I believe that this ideal holds even in respect of the international community. Positive peace implies that each citizenry (supposedly granting an “equal equality of fundamental opportunity” to its members) must have the same extent of freedom of development in front of other states and communities. In this sense, far from being at odds with it, peace requires sovereignty and presupposes it. There might be different “spheres of citizenship” that define equality and freedom by different distributive principles. And the very nature of the particular liberty or good necessary for endowing a citizen with “fundamental opportunities” puts further restrains on the way this particular matter is to be dealt with. ²⁸ States can be different in everything, from the way they allow the people to participate in government, to the way they distribute drinkable water. Yet as a look at the world reveals, in these very diverse ways they can achieve sufficiency and excellence in fulfilling human and other rights and duties. Notably, neither of these goods and the corresponding rights and liberties – not participation in government and certainly not distribution of drinking water – can be achieved individually.

From this cultural and national diversity in organizing collective life, it follows that different “standing floors” for relative equality give rise to different “spheres of citizenship.” ²⁹ Despite the close relation between the concept of peace and that of freedom, I think that employing both, in addition to paying due attention to the “moral dictionary” inherited from our public political culture, enables us to consider not only one agent's or one state's individual freedom in their own perspectives but also the relations that are necessary to ensure it. Peace is a political condition for freedom, both in the positive and in the negative sense of the two. ³⁰ One's freedom is enhanced by one's community positive peace, and protected by negative peace between communities. This helps us understand more clearly what is empirically obvious, namely that only in a condition in which states abstain from violating other state's and other peoples' rights and individual human rights in general (negative peace) each and every state is capable of securing respect to human rights internally (understood as negative freedom enjoyed by each citizen). Extra rem publicam nulla libertas (“there is no liberty out of society”), and no freedom without peace. On the other hand, positive peace as, say, is developed through treaties provisioning cooperation and trade-offs of goods and services, increases positive freedom of choice at the individual level. International cooperation against terrorism ensures one's freedom from interference in one's movement; international cooperation on food sharing and trading enables one to better one's health and well-being, one's choice, and also one's knowledge and enjoyment of foreign flavors. These examples are meant to illustrate that integration of freedoms does not mean their decreasing: freedom is not a zero-sum game on conditions that some restrictions on each part are respected. Integration between freedoms magnifies freedoms, once the core and essential freedoms (negative peace) are respected.

Again, it seems that while freedom is “free-standing” and original as a concept, peace has to do with the mutual and harmonic interaction between different freedoms and different agencies exercising them. ³¹ Equality is, in turn, a condition of similarity, of fairness of distribution, but abstract and rigid equality is not strictly necessary. ³² Granted, equal agents (and agencies) seem to require equal freedom to interact peacefully, while agents who are unequal need a relatively unequal “amount” ³³ of freedom. In international relations, without denying the obvious imbalances of power, wealth, demography, etc., equal respect for every human being, for the communities they formed, and for their sovereignty is all that is needed for peace.

Thus, when I claim that both global and national citizenship should have peace as their rationale (or meta-rationale) I mean that both the equality of freedom ensured by the human rights regime and the “inequalities” of freedom, or better the different and diverse ways in which freedom is exerted, along national and local particularism, must be harmonized to their mutual benefit.

4.4 The Defenses of National Citizenship

Despite the significant quantities and qualities of cosmopolitan and “cosmopolist” ³⁴ arguments, there are still some strong cases for national citizenship to be considered. I shall now focus on two examples of this kind and consider their compatibility with, and relevance for, some form of international or global citizenship. None of them implies abandoning the claim for a global citizenship lato sensu, but they both put different constraints on the way it can be envisioned. The first is a defense of the ethical significance of nationality by David Miller, and the second is a vindication of the legitimacy of special ties by Robert E. Goodin. ^{35 , 36} Many other views and theories could be invoked: for example, a more radically cosmopolitan account than the one presented here or arguments for global democracy. Yet the radicality of the present argument should not be underestimated, and I have already sketched some reservations concerning accounts of direct global democracy: at present, I will have to be content with that general line of argument. ³⁷ If one instead focuses on the matters that I stressed the most – say the distribution of coercion, the increase of equal political representation, the development of a global culture that requires a deep knowledge of foreign practices and values, and so on – then it might follow that my suggestions on these aspects imply directly or indirectly many of the crucial requests of cosmopolitanism, depending on how this latter is conceived. But since moderate stances on the legitimacy of nation-states, like Goodin's and Miller's, are prevalent within and without academia, and thanks to their convergence with some of my points, I shall address these here. ³⁸