Chapter Four: State, Government and

Citizenship

Kaleb A.
Understanding State
The state can be defined as:
An organized body of people occupying defined territory and living under
government entirely free from external control.
A political association that establishes sovereign jurisdiction with in defined
territorial border, and exercise authority through a set of permanent institutions.
Means a totality of a country’s governmental institutions & officials.
An administrative subdivision within countries
Is the highest and most powerful political organization of the society.
In general state is a group of people inhabiting in specific territory and living
according to a common legal and political authority; a body politic or nation.
The term ‗state‘ has been used to refer to a bewildering range of things: a
collection of institutions, a territorial unit, a philosophical idea, an instrument of
coercion or oppression, and so on
• The idealist approach to the state is most clearly reflected in the
writings of Hegel. Hegel identified three moments of social existence:
the family, civil society and the state. Within the family, he argued, a
particular altruism operates that encourages people to set aside their
own interests for the good of their children or elderly relatives.
• In contrast, civil society was seen as a sphere of ‗universal egoism‘ in
which individuals place their own interests before those of others.
Hegel conceived of the state as an ethical community underpinned by
mutual sympathy – ‗universal altruism‘. The drawback of idealism,
however, is that it fosters an uncritical reverence for the state and, by
defining the state in ethical terms, fails to distinguish clearly between
institutions that are part of the state and those that are outside the state.

Four types of definition

of state
• Functionalist approaches to the state focus on the role or
purpose of state institutions. The central function of the state is
invariably seen as the maintenance of social order (see p. 400),
the state being defined as that set of institutions that uphold order
and deliver social stability.
• Such an approach has, for example, been adopted by neo-
Marxists who have been inclined to see the state as a mechanism
through which class conflict is ameliorated to ensure the long-
term survival of the capitalist system. The weakness of the
functionalist view of the state, however, is that it tends to
associate any institution that maintains order (such as the family,
mass media, trade unions and the church) with the state itself.
• The organizational view defines the state as the apparatus of
government in its broadest sense; that is, as that set of institutions that
are recognizably ‗public‘, in that they are responsible for the collective
organization of social existence and are funded at the public‘s expense.
The virtue of this definition is that it distinguishes clearly between the
state and civil society.
• The state comprises the various institutions of government: the
bureaucracy, the military, the police, the courts, and the social security
system and so on; it can be identified with the entire ‗body politic‘.
The organizational approach allows us to talk about ‗rolling forward‘
or ‗rolling back‘ the state, in the sense of expanding or contracting the
responsibilities of the state, and enlarging or diminishing its
institutional machinery.
• The international approach to the state views it primarily as an actor on
the world stage; indeed, as the basic ‗unit‘ of international politics. This
highlights the dualistic structure of the state; the fact that it has two faces,
one looking outwards and the other looking inwards. Whereas the previous
definitions are concerned with the state‘s inward-looking face, its relations
with the individuals and groups that live within its borders, and its ability to
maintain domestic order, the international view deals with the state‘s
outward-looking face, its relations with other states and, therefore, its ability
to provide protection against external attack.
• The classic definition of the state in international law is found in the
Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of the State (1933).
According to Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention, the state has four
features: a defined territory, permanent population, an effective government
and sovereignty.
• What kind of relation do you think exists between society and state?
• They are highly interconnected where both society and the state are inter-
connected entities made up of people. However, they are not necessarily one and
the same.
• They differ, among other things, in terms of their scope and objectives
• Society can survive in the absence of state where as state cannot exist in the
absence of society.
• Historically, the existence of social organizations such as family, elder’s council;
tribal council were proceeding to the emergence of state.
• Among the different organizations in society, the state is the most fundamental
and influential one.
• Generally the state can’t stand totally outside the soc., pol., eco. & cultural
relations & institutions of the society as empty state without the social content
does not exist.

The R/p b/n Society and

THE State
• Government
• People
• Territory
• Sovereignty
• Recognition:-supplementary element of state
• 1/Population: Since state is a human association, the first essential
element that constitutes it is the people. How much people constitute
state? No exact number can be given to such a question. The fact is
that the states of the world vary in terms of demographic strength.
There are states with a population of greater than 1 billion like that of
China and India, and with a constituency of few thousand people like
Vatican and San Marino.

Essential Elements of state

• Another question that comes up at this stage is whether the population
of a state should be homogenous. Homogeneity is determined by any
factor like commonness of religion, or blood, or language or culture
and the like. It is good that population of a state is homogeneous,
because it makes the task of national integration easy.
• But it is not must, because most of the states have a population
marked by diversity in respect of race, religion, language, culture, etc.
All problems of nation building are solved and people of a state,
irrespective of their differences, become a nation. It signifies the
situation of ‗unity in diversity‘. In short, it is to be noted that without
population there can be no state, ‗it goes without saying that an
uninhabited portion of the earth, take in itself, cannot form a state.
• Defined Territory: There can be no state without a territory of its own.
The territory of a state includes land, water, and airspace; it has maritime
jurisdiction extending up to a distance of three miles, though some states
contend for a distance of up to 20 miles. The territorial authority of a
state also extends to ships on high seas under its flag as well as its
embassies and legations/diplomat‘sresidence in foreign lands.
• As seen in the case of the factor of population, so here it should be
emphasized that the size of a state‘s territory cannot be fixed. There are
as large states as China and Russia and as small states of Fiji and
Mauritius in respect of their territorial make-up. It also possible that
states may be in the form of islands as Indonesia, Philippines, and Japan.
It is, however, certain that the boundary lines of a state must be well
marked out.
• Government: Government is said to be the soul of the state. It implements
the will of the community. It protects the people against conditions of
insecurity. If state is regarded as the first condition of a civilized life, it is
due to the existence of a government that maintain law and order and makes
‗good life‘ possible. The government is the machinery that terminates the
condition of anarchy.
• It is universally recognized that as long as there are diverse interests in
society, some mechanism is needed to bring about and maintain a workable
arrangement to keep the people together. The government of a state should
be so organized that it enforces law so as to maintain the conditions of peace
and security. The form of government may be monarchical, aristocratic,
oligarchic, democratic, or dictatorial and the like, what really needed is that
if there is no government, there is anarchy and the state is at an end.
• Sovereignty: As already pointed out, sovereignty is the fourth essential
attribute of the concept state. It is the highest power of the state that
distinguishes it from all other associations of human beings.
Sovereignty, in its simplest sense, is the principle of absolute and
unlimited power. It has two aspects - Internal and External.
• Internal Sovereignty implies that inside the state there can be no other
authority that may claim equality with it. The state is the final source of
all laws internally. On the other hand, External sovereignty implies that
the state should be free from foreign control of any kind. It is, however,
a different matter that a state willingly accepts some international
obligations in the form of membership to some international
intergovernmental and other organizations such as the United Nations
• Recognition: In addition to the essential attributes of the state agreed in the
1933, the contemporary political theorists and the UN considered
recognition as the fifth essential attribute of the state. This is because, for a
political unit to be accepted as a state with an ‗international personality‘ of
its own, it must be recognized as such by a significant portion of the
international community.
• It is to mean that, for a state to be legal actor in the international stage; other
actors (such as other states, international intergovernmental and non-
governmental organizations… etc.) must recognize it as a state. Thus,
recognition implies both approaching of the necessary facts and the desire of
coming in to effect of the legal and political results of recognition. Likewise,
for a government of a state to be formally to act on its behalf, the
government must be recognized as legitimate government of the state by
other governments.
• There are various rival theories of the state, each of which offers a different
account of its origins, development and impact on society. Indeed, controversy
about the nature of state power has increasingly dominated modern political
analysis and goes to the heart of ideological and theoretical disagreements in
the discipline.
• These relate to questions about whether, for example, the state is autonomous
and independent of society, or whether it is essentially a product of society, a
reflection of the broader distribution of power or resources. Moreover, does the
state serve the common or collective good, or is it biased in favor of privileged
groups or a dominant class? Similarly, is the state a positive or constructive
force, with responsibilities that should be enlarged, or is it a negative or
destructive? Andrew Heywood (2013) classified the rival theories of state into
four: the pluralist state, the capitalist state, the leviathan state and the
patriarchal state.

Rival Theories of State

• The pluralist theory of the state has a very clear liberal lineage. It stems
from the belief that the state acts as an ‗umpire‘ or ‗referee‘ in society.
This view has also dominated mainstream political analysis, accounting
for a tendency, at least within Anglo-American thought, to discount the
state and state organizations and focus instead on ‗government‘.
• Indeed, it is not uncommon in this tradition for‗the state‘ to be dismissed
as an abstraction, with institutions such as the courts, the civil service
and the military being seen as independent actors in their own right,
rather than as elements of a broader state machine. Nevertheless, this
approach is possible only because it is based on underlying, and often
unacknowledged, assumptions about state neutrality. The state can be
ignored only because it is seen as an impartial arbiter or referee that can
be bent to the will of the government of the day.

1/The Pluralist State

• The origins of this view of the state can be traced back to the social-
contract theories of thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and John
Locke. The principal concern of such thinkers was to examine the
grounds of political obligation, the grounds on which the individual
is obliged to obey and respect the state.
• They argued that the state had arisen out of a voluntary agreement,
or social contract, made by individuals who recognized that only the
establishment of a sovereign power could safeguard them from the
insecurity, disorder and brutality of the state of nature. Without a
state, individuals abuse, exploit and enslave one another; with a
state, order and civilized existence are guaranteed and liberty is
protected. As Locke put it, where there is no law there is no freedom.
• In liberal theory, the state is thus seen as a neutral arbiter amongst the
competing groups and individuals in society; it is an ‗umpire‘ or ‗referee‘
that is capable of protecting each citizen from the encroachments of fellow
citizens. The neutrality of the state reflects the fact that the state acts in the
interests of all citizens, and therefore represents the common good or public
interest.
• In Hobbes‘ view, stability and order could be secured only through the
establishment of an absolute and unlimited state, with power that could be
neither challenged, nor questioned. In other words, he held that citizens are
confronted by a stark choice between absolutism and anarchy. Locke, on the
other hand, developed a more typically liberal defense of the limited state. In
his view, the purpose of the state is very specific: it is restricted to the
defense of a set of ‗natural‘ or God-given individual rights; namely, life,
liberty and property.
• Two key assumptions underlie this view. The first is that the state is
effectively subordinate to government. Non-elected state bodies (the
civil service, the judiciary, the police, the military and so on) are
strictly impartial and are subject to the authority of their political
masters. The state apparatus is therefore thought to conform to the
principles of public service and political accountability.
• The second assumption is that the democratic process is meaningful
and effective. In other words, party competition and interest-group
activity ensure that the government of the day remains sensitive and
responsive to public opinion. Ultimately, therefore, the state is only
a weather vane that is blown in whichever direction the public-at-
large dictates.
• The Marxist notion of a capitalist state offers a clear alternative to
the pluralist image of the state as a neutral arbiter or umpire.
Marxists have typically argued that the state cannot be understood
separately from the economic structure of society.
• This view has usually been understood in terms of the classic
formulation that the state is nothing but an instrument of class
oppression: the state emerges out of, and in a sense reflects, the
class system. Nevertheless, a rich debate has taken place within
Marxist theory in recent years that has moved the Marxist theory of
the state a long way from this classic formulation. In many ways,
the scope to revise Marxist attitudes towards the state stems from
ambiguities that can be found in Marx‘s own writings.

2/The Capitalist State

• Marx did not develop a systematic or coherent theory of the state. In a
general sense, he believed that the state is part of a ‗superstructure‘ that is
determined or conditioned by the economic ‗base‘, which can be seen as the
real foundation of social life. However, the precise relationship between the
base and the superstructure, and in this case that between the state and the
capitalist mode of production, is unclear.
• Two theories of the state can be identified in Marx‘s writings. The first is
expressed in his often-quoted dictum from The Communist Manifesto
(1848): ‗The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing
the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie‘. From this perspective, the
state is clearly dependent on society and entirely dependent on its
economically dominant class, which in capitalism is the bourgeoisie. Lenin
thus described the state starkly as an instrument for the oppression of the
exploited class.
• A second, more complex and subtle, theory of the state can nevertheless be
found in Marx‘s analysis of the revolutionary events in France between
1848 and1851, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852).
• Marx suggested that the state could enjoy what has come to be seen as
‗relative autonomy‘ from the class system, the Napoleonic state being
capable of imposing its will upon society, acting as an ‗appalling parasitic
body‘. If the state did articulate the interests of any class, it was not those
of the bourgeoisie, but those of the most populous class in French society,
the smallholding peasantry. Although Marx did not develop this view in
detail, it is clear that, from thisperspective, the autonomy of the state is
only relative, in that the state appears to mediate between conflicting
classes, and so maintains the class system itself in existence.
• Both these theories differ markedly from the liberal and, later, pluralist
models of state power. In particular, they emphasize that the state
cannot be understood except in a context of unequal class power, and
that the state arises out of, and reflects, capitalist society, by acting
either as an instrument of oppression wielded by the dominant class, or,
more subtly, as a mechanism through which class antagonisms are
ameliorated.
• Nevertheless, Marx‘s attitude towards the state was not entirely
negative. He argued that the state could be used constructively during
the transition from capitalism to communism in the form of the
‗revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat‘. The overthrow of
capitalism would see the destruction of the bourgeois state and the
creation of an alternative, proletarian one.
• In describing the state as a proletarian ‗dictatorship‘, Marx utilized the
first theory of the state, seeing the state as an instrument through which
the economically dominant class (by then, the proletariat) could repress
and subdue other classes. All states, from this perspective, are class
dictatorships. The ‗dictatorship of the proletariat‘ was seen as a means
of safeguarding the gains of the revolution by preventing counter-
revolution mounted by the dispossessed bourgeoisie.
• Nevertheless, Marx did not see the state as a necessary or enduring
social formation. He predicted that, as class antagonisms faded, the state
would ‗wither away‘, meaning that a fully communist society would
also be stateless. Since the state emerged out of the class system, once
the class system had been abolished, the state, quite simply, loses its
reason for existence.
• Marx‘s ambivalent heritage has provided modern
Marxists, or neo-Marxists, with considerable scope to
further the analysis of state power. This was also
encouraged by the writings of Antonio Gramsci, who
emphasized the degree to which the domination of the
ruling class is achieved by ideological manipulation,
rather than just open coercion. In this view, bourgeois
domination is maintained largely through ‗hegemony‘:
that is, intellectual leadership or cultural control, with the
state playing an important role in the process.
• The image of the state as a ‗leviathan‘ (in effect, a self-serving
monster intent on expansion and aggrandizement) is one associated
in modern politics with the New Right. Such a view is rooted in
early or classical liberalism and, in particular, a commitment to a
radical form of individualism.
• The New Right, or at least its neoliberal wing, is distinguished by a
strong antipathy towards state intervention in economic and social
life, born out of the belief that the state is parasitic growth that
threatens both individual liberty and economic security. In this
view, the state, instead of being, as pluralists suggest, an impartial
umpire or arbiter, is an overbearing ‗nanny‘, desperate to interfere
or meddle in every aspect of human existence.

3/The Leviathan State

• The central feature of this view is that the state pursues interests
that are separate from those of society (setting it apart from
Marxism), and that those interests demand an unrelenting growth
in the role or responsibilities of the state itself. New Right thinkers
therefore argue that the twentieth century tendency towards state
intervention reflected not popular pressure for economic and social
security, or the need to stabilize capitalism by ameliorating class
tensions but, rather, the internal dynamics of the state.
• New Right theorists explain the expansionist dynamics of state
power by reference to both demand-side and supply-side pressures.
Demand-side pressures are those that emanate from society itself,
usually through the mechanism of electoral democracy.
• While Marxists argue that the state reflects broader class and
other social interests, the New Right portrays the state as an
independent or autonomous entity that pursues its own interests.
• In this view, bureaucratic self-interest invariably supports ‗big‘
government and state intervention, because this leads to an
enlargement of the bureaucracy itself, which helps to ensure job
security, improve pay, open up promotion prospects and
enhance the status of public officials. This image of self-seeking
bureaucrats is plainly at odds with the pluralist notion of a state
machine imbued with an ethic of public service and firmly
subject to political control.
• Modern thinking about the state must, finally, take account of the implications
of feminist theory. However, this is not to say that there is a systematic
feminist theory of the state. Feminist theory encompasses a range of traditions
and perspectives, and has thus generated a range of very different attitudes
towards state power. Moreover, feminists have usually not regarded the nature
of state power as a central political issue, preferring instead to concentrate on
the deeper structure of male power centered on institutions such as the family
and the economic system.
• Some feminists, indeed, may question conventional definitions of the state,
arguing, for instance, that the idea that the state exercises a monopoly of
legitimate violence is compromised by the routine use of violence and
intimidation in family and domestic life. Nevertheless, sometimes implicitly
and sometimes explicitly, feminists have helped to enrich the state debate by
developing novel and challenging perspectives on state power.

4/The Patriarchal State

• Contrasting interpretations of state power have clear
implications for the desirable role or responsibilities of the
state. With the exception of anarchists, who dismiss the
state as fundamentally evil and unnecessary, all political
thinkers have regarded the state as, in some sense,
worthwhile.
• Even revolutionary socialists, inspired by the Leninist
slogan ‗smash the state‘, have accepted the need for a
temporary proletarian state to preside over the transition
from capitalism to communism, in the form of the
‗dictatorship of the proletariat‘.

The Role of the State

• Nevertheless, there is profound disagreement about the exact
role the state should play, and therefore about the proper
balance between the state and civil society. Among the
different state forms that have developed are the following:
•  Minimal states
•  Developmental states
•  Social-democratic states
•  Collectivized states
•  Totalitarian states
•  Religious states
• The minimal state is the ideal of classical liberals, whose aim is to
ensure that individuals enjoy the widest possible realm of freedom.
This view is rooted in social-contract theory, but it nevertheless
advances an essentially ‗negative‘ view of the state. From this
perspective, the value of the state is that it has the capacity to constrain
human behavior and thus to prevent individuals encroaching on the
rights and liberties of others.
• The state is merely a protective body, its core function being to
provide a framework of peace and social order within which citizens
can conduct their lives as theythink best. In Locke‘s famous simile, the
state acts as a night watchman, whose services are called upon only
when orderly existence is threatened? This nevertheless leaves the
‗minimal‘ or ‗night watchman‘ state with three core functions

1/Minimal States
• First and foremost, the state exists to maintain domestic order.
Second, it ensures that contracts or voluntary agreements made
between private citizens are enforced, and third it provides
protection against external attack. The institutional apparatus of a
minimal state is thus limited to a police force, a court system and a
military of some kind.
• Economic, social, cultural, moral and other responsibilities belong
to the individual, and are therefore firmly part of civil society. The
cause of the minimal state has been taken up in modern political
debate by the New Right. Drawing on early liberal ideas, and
particularly on free-market or classical economic theories, the New
Right has proclaimed the need to ‗roll back the frontiers of the state.
• The best historical examples of minimal states were those in countries
such as the UK and the USA during the period of early industrialization
in the nineteenth century. As a general rule, however, the later a country
industrializes, the more extensive will be its state‘s economic role. In
Japan and Germany, for instance, the state assumed a more active
‗developmental‘ role from the outset.
• A developmental state is one that intervenes in economic life with the
specific purpose of promoting industrial growth and economic
development. This does not amount to an attempt to replace the market
with a ‗socialist‘ system of planning and control but, rather, to an
attempt to construct a partnership between the state and major
economic interests, often underpinned by conservative and nationalist
priorities.

2/Developmental States
• The classic example of a developmental state is Japan. During the Meiji
Period (1868–1912), the Japanese state forged a close relationship with
the Zaibutsu, the great family-run business empires that dominated the
Japanese economy up until World War II. Since 1945, the
developmental role of the Japanese state has been assumed by the
Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), which,
together with the Bank of Japan, helps to shape private investment
decisions and steer the Japanese economy towards international
competitiveness.
• A similar model of developmental intervention has existed in France,
where governments of both left and right have tended to recognize the
need for economic planning, and the state bureaucracy has seen itself as
the custodian of the national interest.
• In countries such as Austria and, to some extent, Germany,
economic development has been achieved through the
construction of a ‗partnership state‘, in which an emphasis is
placed on the maintenance of a close relationship between the
state and major economic interests, notably big business and
organized labor.
• More recently, economic globalization has fostered the
emergence of ‗competition states‘, examples of which are found
amongst the tiger economies of East Asia. Competition states are
distinguished by their recognition of the need to strengthen
education and training as the principal guaranteeing economic
success in a context of intensifying transnational competition.
• Whereas developmental states practice interventionism in order to stimulate
economic progress, social-democratic states intervene with a view to bringing
about broader social restructuring, usually in accordance with principles such as
fairness, equality and social justice. In countries such as Austria and Sweden, state
intervention has been guided by both developmental and social democratic
priorities. Nevertheless, developmentalism and social democracy do not always go
hand-in-hand.
• As Marquand (1988) pointed out, although the UK state was significantly extended
in the period immediately after World War II along social-democratic lines, it
failed to evolve into a developmental state. The key to understanding the social-
democratic state is that there is a shift from a ‗negative‘ view of the state, which
sees it as little more than a necessary evil, to a positive view of the state, in which
it is seen as a means of enlarging liberty and promoting justice. The social-
democratic state is thus the ideal of both modern liberals and democratic socialists.

3/Social Democratic
(Welfare) States
• The twin features of a social democratic state are therefore
Keynesianism and social welfare. The aim of Keynesian economic
policies is to ‗manage‘ or ‗regulate‘ capitalism with a view to
promoting growth and maintaining full employment. Although this
may entail an element of planning, the classic Keynesian strategy
involves ‗demand management‘ through adjustments in fiscal
policy; that is, in the levels of public spending and taxation.
• The adoption of welfare policies has led to the emergence of so
called ‗welfare states‘, whose responsibilities have extended to the
promotion of social well-being amongst their citizens. In this sense,
the social-democratic state is an ‗enabling state‘, dedicated to the
principle of individual empowerment.
• While developmental and social-democratic states intervene in economic life
with a view to guiding or supporting a largely private economy, collectivized
states bring the entirety of economic life under state control. The best examples
of such states were in orthodox communist countries such as the USSR and
throughout Eastern Europe. These sought to abolish private enterprise
altogether, and set up centrally planned economies administered by a network
of economic ministries and planning committees.
• So-called ‗command economies‘ were therefore established that were
organized through a system of ‗directive‘ planning that was ultimately
controlled by the highest organs of the communist party. The justification for
state collectivization stems from a fundamental socialist preference for
common ownership over private property. However, the use of the state to
attain this goal suggests a more positive attitude to state power than that
outlined in the classical writings of Marx and Engels (1820–95).

4/Collectivized States
• The state brings not only the economy, but also education, culture, religion,
family life and so on under direct state control. The best examples of
totalitarian states are Hitler‘s Germany and Stalin‘s USSR, although modern
regimes such as Saddam Hussein‘s Iraq arguably have similar characteristics.
• The central pillars of such regimes are a comprehensive process of
surveillance and terroristic policing, and a pervasive system of ideological
manipulation and control. In this sense, totalitarian states effectively
extinguish civil society and abolish the private sphere of life altogether.
• This is a goal that only fascists, who wish to dissolve individual identity
within the social whole, are prepared openly to endorse. It is sometimes
argued that Mussolini‘s notion of a totalitarian state was derived from Hegel‘s
belief in the state as an ‗ethical community‘ reflecting the altruism and mutual
sympathy of its members.

5/Totalitarian States
• The modern state emerged largely through the triumph of civil authority
over religious authority, religion increasingly being confined to the private
sphere, through a separation between church and state. The advance of
state sovereignty thus usually went hand in hand with the forward march
of secularization.
• In the USA, the secular nature of the state was enshrined in the First
Amendment of the constitution, which guarantees that freedom of worship
shall not be abridged, while in France the separation of church and state
has been maintained through a strict emphasis on the principle of laïcité.
• In countries such as Norway, Denmark and the UK, ‗established‘ or state
religions have developed, although theprivileges these religions enjoy stop
well short of theocratic rule, and their political influence has generally
been restricted by a high level of social secularization.

6/Religious States
• Nevertheless, the period since the 1980s has witnessed the rise of the religious
state, driven by the tendency within religious fundamentalism to reject the
public/private divide and to view religion as the basis of politics. Far from
regarding political realm as inherently corrupt, fundamentalist movements have
typically looked to seize control of the state and to use it as an instrument of
moral and spiritual regeneration.
• This was evident, for instance, in the process of ‗Islamization‘ introduced in
Pakistan under General Zia-ul-Haq after 1978, the establishment of an ‗Islamic
state‘ in Iran as a result of the 1979 revolution, and, despite its formal
commitment to secularism, the close links between the Sri Lankan state and
Sinhala Buddhism, particularly during the years of violent struggle against Tamil
separatism. Although, strictly speaking, religious states are founded on the basis
of religious principles, and, in the Iranian model, contain explicitly theocratic
features, in other cases religiously-orientated governments operate in a context of
constitutional secularism.
• In its broadest sense, to govern means to rule or control others.
Government can therefore be taken to include any mechanism through
which ordered rule is maintained, its central features being the ability
to make collective decisions and the capacity to enforce them.
• A form of government can thus be identified in almost all social
institutions like families, school, businesses, trade unions and so on.
However, government in our context, is to refer to the formal and
institutional processes that operate at the national level to maintain
public order and facilitate collective action. It is a body or organ that
administers a country and main organization dealing with affairs of the
whole country. Thus, government is one of the most essential
components and also an administrative wing of the state.

Government
• In other words, government can also refer to political organization
comprising individuals and institutions authorized to formulate public
policies and conduct affairs of state. Governments are empowered to
establish and regulate the interrelationships of the people within their
territorial confines, the relations of the people with community as a
whole, and the dealings of the community with other political entities.
• Thus, government applies both to the governments of national states,
for instance the federal government of Ethiopia and to the
governments of subdivisions of national states such as the regional
states, provinces, and municipal governments, etc. of Ethiopia. Any
form of government, to be stable and effective, must possess two
essential attributes: authority and legitimacy.
• Authority: In politics, the word authority implies the ability to compel obedience.
It can simply be defined as ‗legitimate power.‘ While power is the ability to
influence the behavior of others, authority is the right to do so. Authority is
therefore, based on an acknowledged duty to obey rather than on any form of
coercion or manipulation. Thus, authority is the legitimacy, justification and right
to exercise that power. Authority can be expressed as naked force and terror as was
the case in many undemocratic governments or through a series of more or less
transparent public hearings as in the case of most democratic states.
• Legitimacy: The term legitimacy (from the Latin word legitimare, meaning ‗to
declare lawful‘) broadly means rightfulness. Thus, legitimacy is the attribute of
government that prompts the governed to comply willingly with its authority. It
confers on an order or commands an authoritative or binding character, thus
transforming power in to authority. Thus, legitimacy is the popular acceptance of a
governing regime or law as an authority.
• 1/Self-Preservation: primary purpose the defense of the country‘s
territory against external attack.
• 2/Distribution and Regulation of Resources
• 3/Management of Conflicts
• 4/Fulfillment of Social or Group Aspirations
• 5/Protection of Rights of Citizens
• 6/Protection of Property
• 7/Provision of Goods and Services
• 8/Implementations of Moral Conditions…laws and institutions
are designed to shape citizens character in accordance with some
standard of morality.

Purposes and Functions

of Government
• citizen refers to the person who is a legal member of a particular State and
one who owes allegiance to that State. To describe it in a different mood,
citizen is a person who is legally recognized as member of a particular,
officially sovereign political community, entitled to whatever prerogatives
and encumbered with responsibilities. The means by which we determine
whether a person is legal member of a particular State or otherwise is called
‗citizenship‘.
• At the formal level, citizenship simply denotes to the network of
relationships between the State and the citizen.
• Citizenship status, however, is not only restricted to persons. Organizations
and [endemic] animals could also be considered as citizens. The term
"corporate citizenship" (CC) has been used increasingly by corporations,
consultants and scholars to echo, underscore, extend, or reorient certain
aspects of corporate social responsibility

Understanding
Citizenship
• Generally, the concept of citizenship varies from society to society,
depending on the place, the historical moment and political organization.
Although differences may exist, there are common elements such as
rights, duties, belonging, identity and participation one can find in
definitions of the term.
• i) Citizenship as a Status of Rights: The mere fact of being a citizen
makes the person a creditor of a series of rights. Hohfeld (1978), for
instance, discovered four components of rights known as ‗the Hohfeldian
incidents‘ namely, liberty (privilege), claim, power and immunity.
• a) Liberty Right: is a freedom given for the right-holder to do something
and there are no obligations on other parties to do or not to do anything to
aid the bearer to enjoy such rights. The beholder got benefits from liberty
rights without obliging others
• b) Claim Rights: are the inverse of liberty rights since it entails
responsibility upon another person or body. The duty bearer has
to accomplish something that is indispensable for right holders
to enjoy the claim rights. That is, there must be somebody who
is there to do or refrain from doing something to/for the claim
holder, i.e., claim rights are rights enjoyed by individuals when
others discharge their obligations.
• c) Powers Rights: are rights regarding the modification of first-
order rights. They are cooperative controls that are imposed on
others. The holder of a power, be it a government or a citizen,
can change or cancel other people and his/her own entitlements
• d) Immunity Rights: allow bearers escape from controls and thus they are the
opposite of power rights. Immunity rights entail the absence of a power in other
party to alter the right-holder‘s normative situation in some way. For instance,
civil servants have a right not to be dismissed from their job after a new
government comes to power.
• ON DEFINITION OF CP:
• i) Citizenship as a Status of Rights…. The mere fact of being a citizen makes
the person a creditor of a series of rights. In this sense, current political
discourse often tends to identify citizenship withrights. Marshall 1998,
distinguishes three types of rights that historically have been established in
succession: the civil, or the rights necessary for the development of individual
liberty; political, i.e. the right to participate in the exercise of political power, as
an elected member or as a voter and social rights, which are those that guarantee
the right to public safety, health, the right to education, etc.,
• ii) Membership and Identity
• iii) Participation: Participation occupies a key position in citizenship.
Nonetheless, individuals differ in what approaches they find important –
some people focus on their private affairs while others actively participate in
the life of the society, including politics.
• iv) Inclusion and Exclusion: All individuals living in a particular state do not
necessary mean that all are citizens. For instance, there are non-citizens
visiting, working and living in Ethiopia brandedas foreigners/aliens.
Foreigners have the likelihood of staying in the territorial administration of
Ethiopia as far as they have authorized visas. The aliens, therefore, have
rights just like the Ethiopian citizens such as the right to life, movement, and
protection of the law. Additionally, there are also responsibilities shared by
both the non-citizens and citizens domiciled in Ethiopia particularly in
respecting the laws of the country.
• Citizenship is not an eternal essence rather a cultural artifact
mold by people through time and that is why the notion of
citizenship and the meaning attached to it changes with the
change in political thoughts, ideologies, policies and
government.
• Therefore, to realize the notion of citizenship, what it is and what
it could become, understanding its theoretical explanations come
out to be the crucial one. Though there are different approaches
to citizenship, most contemporary works that address the issue of
citizenship speak of the following four approaches: liberal,
communitarian, republican and multicultural citizenship.

Theorizing Citizenship
• 1/Citizenship in Liberal Thought: Liberal theory of citizenship begins
with the individual person (the self). The self exists as the true symbol
of liberal theory. Accordingly, it gives a strong emphasis to the
individual liberty of the citizen, and rights that adhere to each and every
person. The self is represented as a calculating holder of preferences and
rights in a liberal society.
• Hence, in liberalism the primary political unit as well as the initial focus
of all fundamental political inquiry is the individual person. Liberals
insist that individuals should be free to decide on their own conception
of the good life, and applaud the liberation of individuals from any
ascribed or inherited status. Advocators of this though argue that
individual citizens act rationally, corresponding to the constitutions and
laws of the State, to advance their own interests.
• First, how can individuals be/are prevented from destroying each other and from
destroying the basis of their mutually beneficial interaction? The most common
problems related with advocating individualism are free-raiders problem and the
tragedy of the commons.
• Second, liberalists affirmatively valorize the privatization of personality,
commitment, and activity. Hence, the problem has to do with is the ways in which
individuals and their ideas are framed. The preferences and insights of autonomous
individuals might originate from impure process, the information they were
provided might be biased or meaningless, or their preferences might have arisen
from a fit of anger.
• Third, as we have seen in the above, individuals have absolute freedom either to
actively engage in politics or ignore at all.
• Fourth, liberalists justify that inequalities arise out of differences in individual
talents, values, and choices – differences, moreover, that the State cannot seek to
efface without endangering citizens‘ liberties.

Critics of Liberal Theory

of Citizenship
• 2/Citizenship in Communitarian Thought
• Communitarianism is as an approach emphasizes on the importance of
society in articulating the good. The communitarian (also known as the
nationalist) model argue that the identity of citizens cannot be understood
outside the territory in which they live, their culture and traditions, arguing
that the basis of its rules and procedures and legal policy is the shared
common good.
• Communitarian citizenship thought has been criticized for various reasons.
Communitarianism is hostile towards individual rights and autonomy – even
that it is authoritarian since it melts the self into the society. A community
push people to sacrifice large parts of their individual differences in order to
follow shared values. Other critics argue that communities are dominated by
power elites or that one group within a community will force others to abide
by its values.
• 3/Citizenship in Republican Thought
• Republican citizenship theory put emphasis on both individual and group
rights. Means republican though attempts to incorporate the liberal notion of
the self-interested individual within the communitarian framework of
egalitarian and community belonging. Like communitarian thought, it
emphasizes on what bind citizens together in to a particular community.
Citizenship should be understood as a common civic identity, shaped by a
common public culture.
• It encourages people to look for the common ground on which they stand,
despite their differences, as citizens. At this juncture, an effective balance
between toleration and obligation is required. Toleration involves citizens
participating politically as advocates of particular interests, with their
concern focused on ‗fairness between different sections of the community
and the pursuit of common ends.
• Republican citizenship has been criticized by scholars who advocate multicultural and
other approaches of citizenship.
• The first is that the republican conception of citizenship is no longer realistic.
• The second is that the conception poses a threat to an open, egalitarian, and pluralistic
society. This second criticism is put forcefully by Young (1990: 117), who detects a
denial of ‗difference‘ in republican attempts because in practice republican politicians
enforced homogeneity by excluding from citizenship all those defined as different. To
be sure, Young‘s point is that the search for common ground serves to justify the
dominance of a particular – and typically male – group.
• The third point concerns the claim that citizenship involves a false ideal of
impartiality. Here, the republican response is to deny that the ideal is false. We should
indeed strive to think and act, when establishing laws and policies, as members of the
public rather than self-interested individuals. Butthis does not mean that we cannot
take account of the particular needs and interests of the people – even people who
‗stand in different social locations‘ – who compose the polity.
• 4/Multicultural Citizenship
• The increasing diversity in States challenges particularly the liberal
conceptions of citizenship. The liberal view the rights of the
individual as paramount and group identities and rights as inconsistent
with and inimical to the rights of the individual. A number of factors
have caused scholars to raise inquires about the liberal analysis and
expectations for identity groups in democratic States.
• These factors include the rise of the ethnic revitalization movements
demanding recognition of group rights as well as individual rights; the
structural exclusion of racial, gender, ethnic, and language groups; and
increasing immigration throughout the world that made States
multinational and polytechnic.
• Before the 1930, there wasn‘t officially inscribed legal document
that deals with citizenship. But in 1930 Ethiopia adopted a legal
document named as ―Ethiopian Nationality Law‖. Recently, this
nationality law has replaced by another legal document called
―Ethiopian Nationality Proclamation NO. 378/2003‖ which was
adopted in 2003 by the House of People‘s Representatives.
• This proclamation is enacted in accordance to article 6 and 33 of
the 1995 FDRE constitution and affirmed that a person can
acquire Ethiopian citizenship either by birth or naturalization.
Now, let‘s discuss the modes of acquiring Ethiopian citizenship
included in the 2003 nationality proclamation.

The Modes of Acquiring

Ethiopian Citizenship
• 1) Acquisition by Descent: the 1930 Ethiopian nationality law asserted that ―any
person born in Ethiopia or abroad, whose father or mother is Ethiopian, is an Ethiopian
subject.‖ In its Article 6(1), the 1995 FDRE constitution stated that ―any person of
either sex shall be an Ethiopian national where both or either parent is Ethiopian.‖ In line
with this, Article 3 of the 2003 nationality proclamation ascribed two principles under
the acquisition of Ethiopian citizenship by decent.
• One, ―Any person shall be an Ethiopian national by descent where both or either of
his/her parent is Ethiopian;‖ second, ―An infant who is found abandoned in Ethiopia
shall, unless proved to have a foreign nationality, be deemed to have been born to an
Ethiopian parent and shall acquire Ethiopian nationality.‖ According to the proclamation,
any person can‘t acquire Ethiopian citizenship through the principle of Jus Soli (law of
soil). It means that children born in the territorial administration of Ethiopian do not
have the right to acquire Ethiopian citizenship. Birth place of a child is not a
requirement to acquire Ethiopian nationality. Wherever a child was born, he/she has the
right to attain Ethiopian citizenship if, and only if, he/she is born from an Ethiopian
father or mother or both Ethiopian parents.
• 2) Acquisition by Law (Naturalization): Article 6(2) of the 1995 FDRE
constitution also avers that aliens can get Ethiopian citizenship. Under
naturalization, there are various ways of acquiring Ethiopian citizenship
in accordance with of the amended Ethiopian nationality proclamation
of2003 recognized by the provisions of Articles 5 to 12 of the 2003
nationality proclamation. These are:
• a) Grant on Application (registration): happens when an alien requests a
host state to be granted citizenship status of the country in question.
However, host countries, including Ethiopia, do not simply grant
citizenship status to those who apply unless they fulfill certain
requirements. The common ones are applicant‘s age, length of residence
in the host country, criminal conviction, income and moral character. But
the criteria vary from country to country
• For instance, according to Article 5 of the 2003 Ethiopian nationality
proclamation, an applicant shall get Ethiopian nationality if, and only if,
he/she (1) reach the age of majority, 18 years; (2) lived in Ethiopia for a
total of at least four years; (3) has sufficient and lawful source of
income (economically self-reliant); (4) is able to communicate in any of
the indigenous languages spoken in Ethiopia; (5) has a good character;
(6) has not recorded criminal conviction; (7) has been released from
his/her previous nationality or the possibility of obtaining such a release
upon the acquisition of Ethiopian nationality or that he/she is a stateless
person; and (8) takes the oath of allegiance indicated in Article 12 of
the proclamation: ―I-----, solemnly affirm that I will be a loyal
national of the federal democratic republic of Ethiopia and be faithful to
its constitution‖.
• b) Cases of Marriage: an alien who is married to an Ethiopian citizen
have the possibility of acquiring Ethiopian citizenship. Yet, there are
certain preconditions set in Article 6 of the proclamation in which the
marriage and the alien married to an Ethiopian citizen must fulfill just
to allow the foreigner acquire Ethiopian nationality by law.
• One, the marriage shall be thru in accordance with the laws of
Ethiopia or the State where the marriage is contracted; second, the
marriage shall lapse at least for two years; third, the alien married to
an Ethiopian citizen have to live in Ethiopian for at least one year
preceding the submission of the application; and fourth, the alien have
to reach the age of majority, be a morally good person, and lastly take
the oath of allegiance stated under Article 12 of the proclamation.
• c) Cases of Adoption (Legitimating): this process whereby an
illegitimate child get citizenship status of his/her caretaker‘s nationality.
In this case, Article 7 of the nationality proclamation asserts that a child
adopted by and grown under the caretaker of Ethiopian citizen has the
right to acquire Ethiopian citizenship.
• But, the child could get Ethiopian citizenship if the adopted child has
notattained the age of majority; lives in Ethiopia together with his/her
adopting parent; and has been released from his/her previous nationality
or the possibility of obtaining such a release upon the acquisition of
Ethiopian nationality or that he/she is a stateless person. However,
where one of his/her adopting parents is a foreigner, in writing, such a
parent has to express his/her agreement that his/her adopted child gain
Ethiopian nationality.
• d) Citizenship by Special Cases: as it is labeled in Article 8, an
alien who has made an outstanding contribution in the interest of
Ethiopia may be conferred with Ethiopian nationality by law
without undergoing the pre-conditions stated in Article 5 (sub-
articles 2 and 3) of the 2003 Ethiopian nationality proclamation.
That is, he/she is not required to live in Ethiopia for a total of four
years and may lack the ability to communicate in any of the
languages spoken in Ethiopia.
• e) Re-Admission to Ethiopian Nationality
(Reintegration/Restoration): this is a process by which a person
acquires his/her lost citizenship. The 2003 Ethiopian nationality
proclamation acknowledges this principle in its Article 22.
• Dual citizenship is the condition of being a citizen of two nations. Of course,
a person may acquire more than two States which is called multiple
citizenship. Duality/multiplicity arises because of the clash among the Jus
Soli, Jus Sanguini and naturalization. For example, a baby born to a French
family visiting the United States would acquire U.S. citizenship by Jus Soli
and French citizenship by Jus Sanguinis.
• A child born from a mother and father of two different countries could
acquire dual citizenship through decent. Besides, on the one hand, a State
may allow its naturalized citizens to keep their original citizenship, an on the
other, a State may refuse its citizen to revoke his/her citizenship for various
reasons which are cause for dual/multiple citizenship. People who declared
that they no longer were citizens of such a country and became naturalized
in another still would be claimed as citizens by the original nation.

Dual Citizenship
• Citizenship can be lost when a State provides for lapse or withdrawal of
citizenship under certain conditions, or when a citizen voluntary renounces it.
The primary rational for loss of citizenship is the absence of a genuine link
with the state. Many citizenship laws also provide for loss if there has been
fraud in the course of acquiring citizenship. Some States have provisions for
depriving people of citizenship in cases where their behavior is considered to
demonstrate disloyalty towards the state.
• One can imagine a number of reasons why a nation might want to terminate
citizenship of individuals. Aleinik off put denationalization grounds into three
categories: allegiance, punishment, and public order. One may lose a country‘s
citizenship when he/she demonstrates a lack of allegiance which could be
explained through what we called active disloyalty (for example, treason) or
simply no loyalty at all (apathy or unconcern about the fate of the nation).
Citizenship is related with enjoying rights in one nation.

Ways of Loosing
Citizenship
• a number of reasons why a nation might want to terminate citizenship of individuals.
Aleinik off put denationalization grounds into three categories: allegiance, punishment,
and public order. One may lose a country‘s citizenship when he/she demonstrates a lack
of allegiance which could be explained through what we called active disloyalty (for
example, treason) or simply no loyalty at all (apathy or unconcern about the fate of the
nation). Citizenship is related with enjoying rights in one nation.
• However, a country may seek to deny such benefits to people it believes are unworthy
of enjoying them. Denationalization, on this account, may be justified as punishment.
For example, the U.S. Congress has enacted several denationalization grounds that fall
within this category, such as violation of laws against subversion, draft evasion, and
desertion from the armed forces in time of war. Also, the time that a citizen deemed to
be a threat to public order, dangerous to national security or who embroil the state in
foreign controversies, the State may denationalize the person. Generally, the commonly
discussed ways of losing citizenship are deprivation, renunciation, lapse/expiration and
substitution.
• Deprivation is an involuntary loss of citizenship which arises while
government authorities or court take a decision to nullify an individual‘s
citizenship. It is on the assumption that the burden of justification for the
loss of citizenship of an individual lies on the state.
• The citizen may be deprived of his/her citizenship for reasons of uncovering
national secrets, non-compliance with citizenship duties (duty of loyalty),
loss of genuine link with his/her state, flawed acquisition of citizenship,
promising loyalty to and/or serving in armed force of another country, trying
to overthrow the government by force, seriously prejudicial behavior, and
becoming naturalized in another country. But, the 1995 FDRE constitution
asserts that ―no Ethiopian national shall be deprived of his or her Ethiopian
nationality against his or her will.‖ Similarly, in its Article 17, the 2003
Ethiopian nationality proclamation prohibits the possibility of losing
Ethiopian nationality through deprivation.
• Lapse/expiration is another way of losing citizenship which is not
applicable to Ethiopia. Lapse is a mode whereby a person loses his/her
citizenship because of his/her permanent residence or long term residence
abroad beyond the number of years permitted by the country in question.
For example, if an Indian citizen stays outside his/her country continuously
for more than seven years, he/she automatically loses his/her Indian
nationality by the principle of lapse.
• Renunciation is the voluntary way of losing citizenship. The UDHR
(1948) guarantees the right of a person to change his/her nationality. Loss
of citizenship is voluntary only if it is intended and initiated by the
individual concerned. An Ethiopian national has the full right to renounce
his/her Ethiopian nationality if he/she wishes according to Article 33(3) of
the FDRE constitution and Article 19 of the 2003 Ethiopian nationality
proclamations. However, the person who has renounced a country‘s
nationality may not be actually released from that status until he/she has
discharged his/her obligations towards that particular State or accused of a
crime. This situation is called indelible allegiance.
• Substitution: citizenship may be lost when the original citizenship is
substituted by another state, where it is acquired through naturalization.
On the other side, this may also take place when a particular territory is
annexed by another state; the inhabitants‘ citizenship within the
annexed territory will be replaced by the citizenship of the subjugator.
• Statelessness is the condition of having citizenship of any country and
with no government from which to ask protection. According to the
international law, stateless person is a person who is not considered as
a national by any state under the operation of its law. Statelessness
almost always results when state failure leads people to flee – be it due
to invasion and conquest by another state, civil war, famine, or an
oppressive regime – from their home country.