From October 2019 to May 2020, 150 French citizens have been involved in a participatory democracy experiment, defining measures to fight against climate change. But how, and through which legal process, can the citizens’ proposals be implemented?
Which countries make it easiest for the children of immigrants to obtain citizenship, and which countries make it the most difficult? This essay gives an overview of birthright citizenship, which may be acquired by soil or by blood and may also include particular conditions or discriminations.
Two recent books explore how the judiciary has become the new engine of urban restructuration in New Delhi. Having managed to get hold of a real ‘slum demolition machine’, the judges are arbitrarily trying to impose their upper-middle class conception of the city.
By studying political and legal debates over citizenship through the prism of the colonial situation in the nineteenth century, in the metropole as well as the colonies, Silyane Larcher proposes a new genealogy of citizenship and asks us to rethink how the French Republic was constructed.
According to Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, animals are far more than just creatures to whom we have a duty; they are indeed our fellow citizens. The theory is radical yet fragile: it misconceives the nature of both the animal and the citizen. The problem is the lack of responsibility, accountability and liberty – in other words, the irreducible innocence of animals.
The world is no longer a vague, indeterminate idea: our lives are so globalized that it is now a reality. Does cosmopolitanism have a future under such conditions? Michaël Fœssel explains the origin and meaning of this utopia, highlighting its transformations and reaffirming its political relevance.
What is an American? By exploring the history of the loss of citizenship, Patrick Weil argues that being American means being a sovereign citizen endowed with inalienable rights. The history of denaturalization, a seemingly marginal phenomenon, provides fresh insight into the legal construction of citizenship as a fundamental right.
How can we explain the fact that Northern European countries are remaining relatively untouched by the current crisis? Are the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish social democracies homogenous? Yohann Aucante outlines the various factors that created the Scandinavian-style welfare state and industrial democracy, while assessing the influence they have on the rest of Europe.
Has Russia, amidst rising social discontent and pervasive economic crisis, rediscovered collective mobilization? In this essay, Carine Clément emphasizes the potential for self-organization evident in mobilization “from below,” which is rapidly expanding in daily life.
Mayotte joined the ranks of French departments in 2011. Although it passed almost unnoticed, the event reflects an integration that began in the 1970s but that is likely to continue for many years to come. The case of this small island raises the question of how colonial modes of governance can be ended in France’s overseas territories.
A world-famous legal scholar, Bruce Ackerman wants to reinvigorate citizenship in today’s democracies. Here, he reexamines the intellectual foundations of his work, and some of the pragmatic applications he designed with others. His principle is to always consider how the state intervenes in the autobiography of every man.
A citizen, if informed, is active and attentive. In a transparent democracy, public authorities are truly accountable to their voters and citizens trust their leaders. In this interview, Dominique Cardon therefore advocates opening and making public data available online and encourages us to bet on their upright citizen use.
In the United States, empowerment strategies emphasizing commitments that are brief, informal, and fun have proved tone deaf to the political importance of associations. If civic engagement is to play a role in social change, citizens must realize that voluntary associations also depend on conflict and professionalization—as well as a prominent role on the part of the state.
At a time when Europe is equated with sovereign debt and political powerlessness, one should not forget that the foundations for a European citizenship have already been laid. Its potential for democracy needs to be interrogated, as do the cultural resources that it can rely on.
If human rights are our last utopia, it is only if we understand, says the American historian Samuel Moyn, that they are not the same as the rights of man as proclaimed at the end of the 17th century. But while the distinction is stimulating, it might appear to be conceptually too cut-and-dried.
Europe is inventing a new form of citizenship founded not in government participation but in the achievement of specifically European rights and in a political debate increasingly geared to European issues, evidencing, Justine Lacroix asserts, if not the existence of a European people, at any rate that of a political Europe.
In his recent book devoted to the historiographical debate over the Great War, Christophe Prochasson explores the ongoing renegotiation of the forms of patriotic consent, as well as the blurring of boundaries between true and false and the manner in which the Republic was put to the test by the conflict.
Confidence and trust have flown away: such seems to be the inevitable conclusion during these times of economic stagnation and collapsing banking system. It has thus become urgent to define more clearly the boundaries of that blurred and elusive notion, which is what Éloi Laurent proposes here in a tightly-reasoned criticism of Yann Algan and Pierre Cahuc’s The Society of Distrust.
What is citizenship? Not only a status, it derives above all from acts and practices. The collective volume Acts of citizenship advocates for a new approach of civic action, by focusing for instance on case studies about the political struggles of illegal immigrants.
In his latest work, Purcell concerns himself with democracy applied to urban life. Democracy necessitates the interaction of citizens’ activisms in an agonistic fashion. The author strongly advocates for a “right to the city” when elitist agendas pretend to artificially harmonize social classes in urban life.
