However the contemporary discussion of citizenship theory begins with studying the path- breaking account given by British sociologist T. This was the first major attempt to outline the historical development of citizenship rights from the feudal period to the rise of the modern welfare state. However, since there is no universal principle which determines necessary rights and duties of citizenship, different societies attach different rights and duties to the status of citizen.
Talking in the context of England he wrote that the development of the institutions of modern citizenship coincided with the rise of capitalism. As a doctrine, citizenship was the quest of the bourgeois class for great representation in society in opposition to aristocratic privileges. In its initial phase citizenship entailed legal and civil equality.
The civil element of citizenship essentially laid in the rights necessary for individual freedom and the institutions most directly associated with it were the rule of law and a system of courts, protection of individual liberty such as freedom of speech, belief and religion, the right to own property and to enter into enforceable contract.
Marshall provides an account of the emergence of citizenship in the modern nation- state in terms of historical development of industrialization, market economy and capitalist society. But contrary to Marxist conclusion, Marshall argues that as capitalism evolved into a social system and as the class structure developed, the concept of citizenship also underwent transformation.
From being a system of rights which supported the market system and the propertied class, citizenship changed into the system of rights which were opposed to market and a particular class i. During 19th century, a number of political rights to franchise were granted to the urban working class through the institution of bourgeois democracy. Political rights refer to those facilities that guarantee activities necessary to participate in the political process and to share in sovereignty, such as the right to vote, form political parties and hold public offices.
This cluster of rights, according to Marshall, posed a threat to the capitalist system. Full danger to the capitalist class could be avoided because the newly enfranchised working class was too inexperienced to wield political power effectively.
But the working class was able to create trade unionism and through collective bargaining was able to wrest a number of concessions from the capitalist class to raise their economic and social status. Thus the collective exercise of rights by members of this working class in creating and using trade unionism established the claim that they as citizens were entitled to certain social rights.
The addition of social rights in the 20th century made the situation more complex as well as interesting. Social citizenship attempted to reform capitalism through legislature. The gradual development of universal provisions for basic education, health and social security changed the nature of cash nexus between capital and labor. Legislation on minimum wages, hours of work, employment of children, working conditions, occupational safety and compensation of occupational accidents made the employees less vulnerable to the capitalist class.
Thus the conflict between the two seemed inevitable but the problem according to Marshall was more complex. Bodin saw citizenship as the mutual obligation between subject and sovereign to obey and to protect.
With the moving to later periods, citizenship was discussed by thinkers like Mill, Bentham, who focussed mainly on individual liberty, political participation and property rights and Green, who focussed on the criterion of having a good life and social welfare. T H Marshall viewed citizenship as different parts and how they were all intertwined.
Citizenship for Marshall is a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community. Those who possess this status are equal with respect to the rights and duties that come with it. However, there is no universal principle that determines what those rights and duties shall be.
Marshall divides citizenship into three parts. In early times, these three elements of citizenship were fused, as a result of the institutions being fused. Marshall goes on to trace the history of citizenship by studying it a process of fusion and separation, where the fusion was geographical and separation functional. He assigned the development of each part to a century- civil rights to the eighteenth century, political to the nineteenth and social to the twentieth century.
We will now look deeper in these parts of citizenship and their development. The civil element is composed of the rights necessary for individual freedom, like personal liberty, freedom of speech, right to own property, freedom of thought etc.
The institutions most directly associated with civil rights are the courts of justice. Civil rights were the first to appear, in the eighteenth century.
In its formative period, it was a gradual addition of new rights to a status that already existed. With civil citizenship, law and equality were guaranteed to protect the liberty of the people, whether it was right to work, right to move freely etc. Civil citizenship paved the way to move towards political citizenship. The political element mainly means the right to participate in the exercise of political power, as a member of a body invested with political authority or as an elector of the members of such a body.
The political element made its appearance in the nineteenth century when the civil rights attached to the status of freedom was already at the core of a general idea of citizenship.
Political citizenship was meant to grant the old rights to new sections of society. Universal suffrage marked the beginning of political citizenship to individuals, however, Marshall asserted that political franchise was not one of the rights of citizenship but actually a privilege of the limited economic class. The social element means to be able to live in a society as a civilized being, according to the prevailing standards in society with economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage.
The institutions of the educational system and the social services most closely connected with it. The social element of citizenship made entry much later and was originally sourced in the membership of local communities and functional associations. This source was supplemented by a system of wage regulation that was nationally conceived and locally administered.
The system of wage regulation was rapidly decaying because of industrial change and its incompatibility with the new ideas of civil rights.
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