The Relationship between the State and the Citizen - Essay Example

? The Relationship between the and the Citizen Overview The relationship between the and its people is defined as citizenship. In recent years, citizenship was recognized as the belonging to a state by residence but it has emerged that citizenship is directly linked to the formation of the state. With the onset of mass democracy and protection of social principles, a new conception about citizenship was inevitably needed to analyse the relationship between the state and the individual. The thesis of this essay is to discuss the relation between the state government and its citizens with a reflection of the level of response the government has to the demands of its citizens. Many programmes undertaken by governments fail to acknowledge the full impact that citizen engagement has on the governance process which causes a lack of understanding of the relation between the citizen and the state that is necessary to ensure successful governance outcomes (Benequista, 2010). State/Citizen Relation The exact relationship between a state and its citizens is of profound concern since the state seeks to acquire maximum authority while the citizen seeks to acquire maximum liberty, a condition that is impossible in reality. However, to achieve a necessary compromise of both sides, reasonable amount of power and authority is made available to the state to ensure its smooth running and reasonable liberty is made available to the citizens to ensure the best developments of their personalities. A citizen is not necessarily a person who lives within the boundaries of a state but rather an individual who enjoys the rights made available to them and that are recognized by the state and also one who participates in the affairs of the state. The interests of the citizen should not be in conflict with the state since both the state and the individual depend on each other. The citizen depends on the state for safety, law and order as well for facilities that enable them undertake their day-to-day activities with ease. According to Veneklassen and Miller (2002), there are three definitions of citizenship that relate the status of an individual to the relationship with a nation-state (32). These include: Civil citizenship. It emerged in the Western world in the 18th century and it refers to the human rights necessary to ensure freedom of every individual. These rights include free speech, freedom of assembly, equality and property rights. Political citizenship. This definition emerged as a result of the struggles in the 19th century and it accentuates the right to participation in exercising political power. It was characterized by the struggle by women, minorities and poor people to acquire the right to vote which was initially granted only to male individuals who owned property. Social citizenship. It emerged in the 20th century and it emphasises on minimum rights and standards of economic, social and cultural well-being. It is a struggle by the disadvantaged groups to make this view of citizenship legitimate. States today are generally less responsive to the needs of their citizens and the deficit of most democratic states in being adequately democratic is a clear indication of this. The governments in these states are adapting a trend in which they are becoming more responsive to the needs of individuals or groups who are concerned with a particular part of the economy and are less responsive to the needs of the general public. Despite the requirement of a democratic political system where every citizen has equal rights and a say in the governing process, some organizations and individuals have an elevated influence over the governing process by trying to influence legislators or bureaucrats to act in their favour. As a result of this, the few in power satisfy their greed at the expense of the needs of the majority of the citizens. A state that is less responsive to the needs of its people is generally less likely to undertake duties allocated to it in the best interests of the general public. As the state continues to prioritize the interests of the few over the interests of the many, it is less likely to exploit its potential in solving several problems in the social and economic aspects of government such as in the case of the American government. A public hostility towards politicians and the government in general ensures with the widespread perception that the government works for the few and that public officials do not care about the views of the common citizen (Jacobs and Skocpol, 2005:1). The protests in the Syntagma Square in Athens is a revelation of the people’s discontent in the repeated failure of the government to meet the needs of the general public. The protests focus on the trends of counter-politics, direct democracy, anxieties about representative democracy and the building of solidarity between the Greek and Spanish protestors across the Mediterranean (Tambakaki, 2011). Skinner’s Argument According to Skinner, the issue of the power that a state has over its citizens or the extent of freedom and rights that citizens have within the state is more of a modern issue. In the seventeenth century, people started to question the powers of their leaders and this led to the constitutional turbulence of that century. When the opposition to the Stuart monarchy began questioning the powers of the crown, they considered themselves to be freeborn citizens rather than the king’s subjects (Skinner, 2003:13). Around the same time the mentality that the holders of sovereign power were representatives of the state rather than individuals acting in their own name was adopted (Kesby, 2012:130). The theories adopted during the Anglophone political arena also helped to shed light on the extent of individual rights in the aspect of the freedom of citizens. Skinner based his argument on the Anglophone political theory mainly because it has a profound impact on the development of modern theories of state power and civic liberty (Skinner, 2003:11). Based on the understanding of the term ‘libertas’ John Cowell in his law dictionary of 1607 which refers to a privilege given to specific people who enjoy favour above the ordinary citizen, (Skinner, 2003:12) critics of parliament disputed the exclusive privileges. They argued that their living conditions were degraded to conditions that fit the description of slaves rather than free citizens by preservation of the goodwill of the crown. They claimed that the condition they were living in under an arbitrary power with the ability to interfere with their freedom and exercise of liberty undermined their freedom as citizens. The difference between slaves and free citizens is that slaves are individuals who do not have liberty and live in the subjugation of other people in political power while free citizens are not under the dominion of anyone else, have the power to make their own decisions and can participate in the decision making of the government. The critics of the Crown were concerned about the prerogative right given to the King to impose levies without the approval of parliament, to imprison without cause and to put to death his subjects whenever he passed judgment and ascertained that his actions were in the best interests of the public. Due to this, they argued that they would have to live under the dependence on the will of the king which was a deprivation of their liberty and hence they would be living as slaves. The ability to block a legislation passed by the parliament by the king exercising his prerogative power would reduce the effectiveness of parliament leaving the whole nation under entire dependence on the will of the king. This would make the entire free kingdom into a nation of slaves under a king with the power to pass judgment and to make laws at his discretion. When the office of the king was abolished in 1649 after the civil war, King Charles I was charged in his trial with seeking to establish a tyrannical power to rule according to his will which would overthrow the rights and freedom of his subjects as well as nullify all prior efforts to make Britain a free nation (Manganiello, 2004:265). As a result of the trial, it was ascertained that having a prerogative power in England was a potential threat to the freedom, safety and public interests and would only serve to oppress the citizens of the nation. However, according to Hobbes the presence of a sovereign power in a nation would not pose any threats to the freedom of the people and he maintained that the supporters of parliament who pushed for the abolishment of the office of the king had misunderstood the meaning of liberty (Skinner, 2003:15). Hobbes explains that liberty is not the state of dependence or independence of the citizens but rather the freedom to make individual decisions and to exercise one’s powers without hindrance from any external forces. He further disputed the common perception that the subjects of the common-wealth had liberty while in a Monarchy they were slaves, stating that it was not logical to assume that liberty of the people was more limited in the Monarchy government than when they lived under the conditions of self-government (Laborde, 2000, 48:540-557). Price in the defence of the Crown in his essay ‘Two Tracts on Civil Liberty’ states that a free person is not dependent in the will of another and provided that the person lives under the power of leaders, they cannot be said to be free but they can be treated kindly (Skinner, 2003:17). Price in an evaluation of the American colonists and their declaration of independence, states that any country that is subjected to the rule of law of another country in which it has no liberty is definitely not governed by its own will and as such is in a state of slavery. The evaluations by various writers in the past only serve to acknowledge that the extent of liberty of the people must be measured to the extent that they remain free by the powerful power of the law (Edvinsson, 2009:101). According to Skinner, the relation between the state and its citizen determines the history, foundation and perception of the state in the modern world. He discusses in detail the Western European history by utilising contributions from various distinguished contributors and by using India as a comparative example due to its status as the greatest post-colonial democratic state. Hannah Arendt’s ‘the right to have rights’. The rights of man according to Arendt were supposed to be independent of all governments but it seemed that any time an individual or group of people became refugees and lacked their own government, they were left without an authority to protect their rights and they had no institution that was willing to guarantee their protection (Kesby, 2012:73) For example the refugees fleeing the Nazi revolution found that other states were reluctant to welcome them after they had been expelled from their homelands. This proved that human rights were indeed alienable from an individual. However, despite hindering the full realization of human rights the independence of a state also ensures the protection of these rights. State rights and individual rights are thus in a conflict-ridden relationship in which the human rights are dependent on the state rights. Arendt could therefore not find a distinct difference between refugees and stateless individuals since while refugees may not be stateless according to the law they were still stateless in reality. According to Arendt, the solution to being stateless was to create laws in the spheres of interest that would only entail the implementation of one human right and that is the right to belong to a political community (Malksoo, 2003:158). In her work on refugees and their state of not having a political community which a person belongs to she shows the contradictions and failures of current theories and practices through the experiences of individuals who lack rights and those with no legal status. The commitment of progressive democratic state to the individual rights of the citizens according to Arendt contradicts with the claim by a state to having national independence. In the example of refugees, independent states have the right to deny their memberships or excluding individuals or a category of people from getting citizenship in the country or even refusing to allow them entry into the country. The relationship between the citizens and the state is characterized by the common practice of looking to common origins for a sense of belonging and the legalizing of human rights. The state is an instrument that serves to protect the rights of the nation and the people in general instead of being a protector of the individual. The conflict between the individual and the people led to the conflict between the state and the nation which the nation won at the domestic level. This was realized when the French Revolution combined the declaration of human rights with the demand of the people for self-rule during the birth of the nation-state (Kesby, 2012:55). Arendt shared similar sentiments with Edward Burke who argued that the comprehensive rights of man create abstract principles even though they could not be enforced and hence could not serve their purpose of matching the worth of the rights of the Englishmen. These concepts established the rights of nationals of a country as just a national and not the universal rights of an individual as a citizen in general. Despite the claim by the liberal state to protect and value rights of man, it only protects the rights of its citizens in reality. The rights of man were neither properly allocated into the law nor was it enforced because if it had, it would be available to every individual without bias on their membership or nationality. On the other hand, the rights of citizens are exclusive and qualified because they only apply to the individuals with legal citizenship in a nation-state. Due to this, rights of man have little value when an individual is stateless and does not have any citizenship rights. Based on the discussion, I agree with Arendt’s statement that state citizenship is the ‘right to have rights’ since belonging to a democratic political community gives an individual the liberty to implement their thoughts and opinions in the government by participating in civic activities such as voting. Individuals are also ensured of exercising their citizenship duties only when they belong to an independent political community that is capable of respecting and protecting their rights. Conclusion The interest in the relation between the state and the individual has escalated with the emergence of policy innovations, debates as well as political events. As a result of these debates it has been discovered that most states are less responsive to the needs of their citizens. The needs of the few are put before the needs of the many and as a result, have lost the confidence of most of their citizens of being democratic (Rosanvallon, (2011:51). To alleviate this predicament, any efforts to empower citizens in a state require to be accompanied by adequate measures by the state to make sure there is accountability and reactivity. These mechanisms include formal strategies such as hearings, elections and consultations; bottom-up processes such as social mobilisation, budget preparation, and monitoring of citizens as well as forums where the citizens can hold the government accountable for decisions it makes. Working across the local and national levels can also help to ensure greater accountability of the government and to make it more responsive. Government programmes should ensure that every citizen receives adequate civic education to reduce the gap that is increasingly being realised between different members of society. With a greater knowledge of the political arena and awareness of their rights citizens of a state would be better equipped to claim their rights and to exercise their liberty. The investment of the government resources in support of the small enterprises and minorities as well as the privileged ensures equitability as allocated in the democratic constitution and hence the balance between the state and citizen needs would be eventually achieved. Bibliography Benequista, N., 2010, 'Putting Citizens at the Centre: Linking States and Societies for Responsive Governance - A Policy-maker's Guide to the Research of the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability', Prepared for the DFID Conference on 'The Politics of Poverty, Elites, Citizens and States', Sunningdale, UK. Available at: http://www.dfid.gov.uk/r4d/PDF/Outputs/CentreOnCitizenship/Citizenship-DRC-Policy-Findings-Paper-2010. Edvinsson, R. (2009). The Quest for the Description of the Law. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 101. Jacobs, L. R. and Skocpol, T. eds., (2005) Inequality and American Democracy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Kesby, A. (2012). The Right to Have Rights: Citizenship, Humanity, and International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 130. Laborde, C. (2000). ‘The Concept of the State in British and French Political Thought’, Political Studies, 48:540-557. Malksoo, L. (2003). Illegal Annexation And State Continuity The Case Of The Incorporation Of The Baltic States By The USSR: A Study Of The Tension Between Normativity and Power In International Law. Leiden: M. Nijhoff Publishers, 158. Rosanvallon, P. (2011). Democratic Legitimacy: Impartiality, Reflexivity, Proximity. Princeton University Press, 51. Skinner, Q. (2003). ‘States and the Freedom of Citizens’. In Q. Skinner & Bo Strath (eds), States and Citizens: History, Theory, Prospects. Cambridge University Press. Tambakaki, P. (2011). ‘Greek Protest in Syntagma Square: In Between Post politics and Real Democracy’. Open Democracy 28 June 2011. Available at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/paulina-tambakaki/greek-protest-in-syntagma-square-in-between-post-politics-and-real-democracy Read More