1) Modern notions of citizenship seek to establish free and equal citizens by disregarding ascribed inequalities like gender, caste, race, etc. Citizens are conceived as bearing rights and exercising them equally. 2) T.H. Marshall suggested citizenship evolved from civil rights to political rights like voting, and later to social rights through welfare states. 3) Max Weber argued that citizenship in modern states is institutionally thin, defined against class affiliations, and citizens are seen purely as members of a state rather than in terms of profession or family.

1. MODERN CITIZENSHIP Dr Deepak Kumar

2. MODERN CITIZENSHIP
During the ancient and Middle Ages, only male members of the society were
eligible for citizenship.
The modern notion of citizenship seeks to constitute free and equal citizens, by
disregarding a scriptive inequalities and differences (of culture, caste, gender,
race etc.).
Thus, citizens are conceived as bearing rights and exercising their rights equally
with other citizens.
The citizen in modern times is the rights’ s bearing individuals whose socio-
economic locations are seen as unrelated to the status of citizenship.

3. John Stuart Mill (1805-1873)
In his famous work “On Liberty” (1859), he believed that there should be no distinctions
between men and women, and that both were capable of citizenship.
T.H. Marhsall
He suggested that the changing patterns of citizenship were as follows: first- a civil relation in
the sense of having equality before the law. Second-political citizenship in the sense of having
the power to vote, and third- social citizenship- in the sense of having the State support
individual persons along the lines of a welfare State.
Marshall argued that in the middle of 20th century that modern citizenship encompassed all
three dimensions: civil, political and social.

4. Marhall strongly argued that citizenship required a vital sense of community in the sense of a
feeling of loyalty to a common civilisation.
He further argued that conflicting principles in citizenship arose ‘from the very roots of our
social order’.
He defined citizenship as “a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community”.
The ‘membership’ may be formally or procedurally specified. The ‘community’ has all the
vagueness of both its popular and social scientific usage.

5. MARC STEINBERG
He saw citizenship emerge out of a class struggle interrelated with the principle of nationalism.
People who were native-born or naturalised members of the state won a great share of the
rights out of “a continuing series of transactions between person and agents of a given
State in which each has enforceable rights and obligations”.
He further argued: “The contingent and uneven development of a bundle of rights
understood as citizenship in the early 19th century was heavily indebted to class conflict
played out in struggles over State policy on trade and labour.”
Besides him, other thinkers also suggests that the notion of citizenship rights emerged out of
this spirit (nationalism) of each person identifying strongly with the nation of birth.
A modern citizenship is one which least people participate in a number of different ways.

6. MAX WEBER
He described that, citizenship in the modern state is institutionally very thin indeed.
He identified a number of connected reasons why the ‘only political contribution made by
the citizens in a parliamentary state consists in placing a voting slip…into a ballot box
every few years.’
He said that the citizen of the modern state is defined irrespective of class, even against class
affiliations and benefits.
Further, Weber argued that “equal voting rights constitutes of the ‘citizen of the state’
means that the individual is not considered in terms of the particular professional and
family situation, but purely and simply as a citizen.’

7. Karl Marx, in an early essay, objected to the modern state because it left intact and ignored-
indeed was based upon- social inequalities to which its citizens were subjected.
In ruling a national territory, the modern state provides equal voting rights to its citizens,
according to Weber’s account, because it equally protects those citizens within its borders and
equally offers those citizens and opportunity to die in securing its defence.
Weber further argued:
“Looked at from a social-scientific point of view, the modern state is an ‘organisation’ in
exactly the same way as factory; indeed, this is its specific historical characteristics. In
both cases the relations of rule within the organization are subject to the same
conditions…. namely a system of justice and administration which, in principle at any
rate, function in a rationally calculates the predictable performance of a machine.”

8. WILLIAM COBBETT
He was a British journalist.
He said that the ‘greatest right’, which is called the “right of rights” was
having a share in the ‘making of the law’, and the submitting the laws to the
‘good of the whole’.
Beside him, many other thinkers argue that participating in law making is as
essential aspect of citizenship.

9. MODERN CITIZENSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY TIMES
Today, citizenship is related to many other contextual aspects of society, besides State, the family,
military service, the individual, freedom, religion, ideas of rights and wrong, ethnicity, and
patters for how a person should behave in society.
Douglas Hurt, said that ‘citizenship is essentially doing good to others’.
When there are many different ethnic and religious groups within a nation, citizenship is only
the bondage which unite them all as equals without discrimination.
Citizenship links as ‘individual with the State’ and gives people a universal identity- as legal
member of a nation-besides their identity based on ties of ethnicity or an ethnic self.

10. The modern citizenship is much more passive, action is delegated to others, citizenship is often a
constraint on acting, not an impetus to act.
Passive citizenship means, such as tolerance, respect for others, and simply ‘minding one’s own
business.
Citizens are aware of their obligations to authorities, and they are aware that these bonds ‘limits
their personal political autonomy is a quite profound manner’.
There are different opinions relating to the relationship between individualism and citizenship.
Some thinkers argue that modern individual and modern citizen seem to be the same, but too
much of individualism can create ‘crisis of citizenship’.
Other thinkers say that individualism can corrupt citizenship.

11. Weather the focus of a person’s efforts should be on the collective good or on the
individual good?
Habersman says that while citizenship widened to include more people, the public sphere
shrink and became campaigns having less focus on issues and more focus on sound bites and
political scandals, and int eh process, citizenship become more common but meant less.
Citizenship was not always about including everybody, but was also a powerful force to exclude
persons at the margins of the society, such as outcastes, illegal immigrants and others.
Feliks Gross argues that democratic citizenship extends human, political and civil rights to all
inhabitants, regardless of race, caste, religion, ethnicity, or culture.
In a civic state, which is based on the concept of such citizenship, even foreigners are protected
by the rule of law.

12. LIMITATION OF MODERN CITIZENSHIP
Citizenship continues to place the individual at its core, and citizenship is seen as a legal status
indicating the possession of rights which as individuals holds equally with others.
Whereas formal/legal equality may be assured by the liberal framework, this equality is unlikely
to translate itself into substantiate equality.
Unless the practical ability to exercise rights or legal capacities imparted by citizenship, are
actually available to all.
The liberal framework disregards the fact that those disadvantaged by the existing structures of
inequality i.e., class, caste, race, gender etc. are unable to participate in the community of
citizens, on an equal basis, despite the fact that as citizens they are (equal) legal members of the
community.