The Future Governance of Citizenship Part 2 pps

with others, or who does not need to because he is self-sufficient, is no part of a

city-state – he is either a beast or a god’. Human beings could thus achieve

moral perfection only within the polis.

In the public arena of the polis, citizens came together to discuss the mean￾ing of the good life and to debate how politics and the private life ought to be

conducted. The political was the koinon (the common) that applied to, and

concerned, everybody. In fact, according to Maier (1988, p. 13), the word

koinon was so closely connected with the political association of free and equal

citizens that it often meant the opposite of ‘despotic’ and oligarchic forms of

government. Thus, the process of broadening the oligarchy was equated with

making it more political.

But the idyllic picture of the polis should not lead us to overlook that

political participation was confined to Athenian adult males, almost all of

Athenian descent. Slaves, metics and women did not have a share in the offices

and honours of the state. Nor should the preceding discussion lead us to

assume that there existed a uniform understanding of citizenship in ancient

Greece. Aristotle (1948, p. 1274) himself disclosed this by stating, ‘the nature of

citizenship ... is a question which is often disputed; there is no general agree￾ment on a single definition’. In Sparta, for example, citizenship did not imply

democracy, as it did in the Athenian city-state. The citizens of Sparta did not

enjoy the freedom to participate in self-government. Instead, they were

required to conform to the requirements of a highly disciplined society and

to display militaristic loyalty. Indeed, Athenians always took such pride of their

politeuma which had institutionalised rule by the people, that is, full partic￾ipation by the citizenry in the popular assembly that regarded oligarchies,

monarchies and aristocracies as inferior forms of government. True, no one

can argue that the assembly’s decisions were always correct. Demagogues and

powerful interests often exerted powerful influence. But what was important

was that the system was open and flexible enough to give to all citizens an equal

right to be consulted before major decisions were taken, to hold public officials

to account, to dismiss dishonest officials and fight corruption, and to allow the

distribution of annual administrative posts by lottery.

The city state was thus the main locus of political identification and the site

for a genuinely participatory citizenship, until the swamping of the city-states

by the military power of Alexander the Great. The weakening of the limited

loyalties of the city-state and the emergence of an impersonal world of large

scale government under the Hellenistic kingship gave rise to a more individ￾ualised and universal philosophy. In the Hellenistic world, Stoicism put

emphasis on the universality of human nature and the brotherhood of all

men. For Stoics, all men and women were equal and equally capable of

achieving the perfect moral life within one grand universal community gov￾erned by Nomos, that is, the divine logos for human society. Against the

background of large-scale rule and under the influence of the theoretical

idealism of the Hellenised Stoics, the boundaries of the political communities

15 The cartography of citizenship

that sustained the citizen/non-citizen distinction melted down and emphasis

shifted away from citizenship and local political loyalty to natural reason which

is common to all men. The old ideal of citizenship was no longer apposite to

new political realities: it represented an exclusive, particularistic status which

was confined to a minority, and failed to take into account the emergence of a

community beyond the polis. Zeno’s institutional cosmopolitanism was based

on the premise that ‘we should regard all men as our fellow-citizens and local

residents, and there should be one way of life and order, like that of a herd

grazing together and nurtured by a common law’ (Plutarch, ‘On the Fortune of

Alexander’, 329A–B, in Long and Sedley, 1987). And Diogenes of Sinope gave

expression to this belief by coining the word kosmopolites, that is, citizen of the

cosmos.

The Greek understanding of citizenship was also called into question by the

Roman order. The Romans transformed citizenship by making it a status that

could be extended and granted to conquered peoples (Heater 1999) and by

disentangling citizenship from political participation. As regards the former,

the creation of civitas sine suffragio, that is, of the new category of citizenship

without political rights, not only rendered citizenship more passive, but also

gave it a practical and militaristic dimension. As regards the latter, citizens

should be keen to serve the army, have a strong sense of duty and respect the

law. This was indeed necessary, since Rome’s imperial power could only be

sustained by harsh discipline and the maintenance of order.2

Cicero (106–43 BC) drew on Greek philosophy and reinterpreted Stoic and

Platonic ideas in order to emphasise the importance of cultivating civic virtues

and sacrificing private life for public duty, as Cato had done. In his Republic

(I, 25), Cicero noted eloquently that since a people is not merely ‘a mob of men

come together anyhow’, but an association ‘iuris consensus et utilitatis com￾munione sociatus’ (united by acceptance of law and by common enjoyment of

its practical advantages), the legal rights at least of citizens of the same

commonwealth should be equal. For ‘what is the state but a fellowship in

law?’, Cicero observed (I, 32). This pragmatic view of the political community,

coupled with the new conception of citizenship as a legal status, not only

played a key role in the success of Roman imperialism, but, as we shall see

below, laid the foundations of the modern idea of citizenship.

Citizenship and the medieval city

Citizenship lost its political meaning in the Middle Ages. In the feudal setting,

which had the personal relationship (fealty) between lord and vassal as its

implicit basis and was dominated by ecclesiastical power, there was no room

for political participation and the classical idea of self-government. The feudal

2 This was, indeed, the meaning of the Roman ideal of ‘virtue’ – a term originating from virtus that

echoed the celebration of manliness.

16 The Future Governance of Citizenship