Citizenship and Membership: Theory and Challenges in Times of Global Crises

Dear Colleagues,

The Special Issue investigates the concept of citizenship in constitutional theory and specifically addresses the transformation such a concept is facing in pluralist and technology-driven societies. Ethnic definitions of citizenship, which claim that it should be founded on bonds of a genealogical or biological nature, have easily been dismissed by constitutional theories. However, such a paradigm has deeper theoretical foundations in political philosophy. One can name the Communitarians, whose position may be synthetized by the rejection of rights theories founded on methodological individualism, namely on an atomistic conception of the individual agent, who interacts with the world irrespective of any reference to specific historical and social contexts. Communitarian arguments somehow echo contemporary nationalist and populist rhetoric which is largely spreading across Europe and beyond. As a matter of fact, any call for the authentic ‘popular will’ implies the identification of a relatively homogeneous polity expressing consistent needs and priorities. Citizenship then goes back to its origins as membership in a ‘community of destiny’. Nevertheless, this conceptual rebound is challenged by technological developments that now a) allow individuals to direct their political opinion in easily identifiable ways through social networks, thus expressing consensus/dissent on a daily basis, and b) allow public powers to use artificial intelligence in order to rank citizens’ behaviors or allocate their social welfare expectations. 

Against this backdrop, the Special Issue explores how the meaning of citizenship, both in terms of conceptual construction and in terms of legal significance, has been transformed in a context of nationalist revival, popular will rhetoric, and technological developments.  

The Special Issue will contribute to scholarship in the fields of constitutional theory by engaging with some of the most contentious issues in contemporary scholarly debate, namely the crisis of the liberal democracy paradigm and the impact of artificial intelligence and technology on political communities.

The editors plan to put together a panel of authors from different backgrounds, who can offer original contributions engaging with constitutional theory, comparative law, sociology of law, and political science.

Prof. Graziella Romeo
Prof. Sabrina Ragone
Guest Editors

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• Constitutional theory
• Citizenship
• Membership
• Populism
• Nationalism
• Political rights
• Electoral rights