Post-Sovereign Citizenship

Abstract

Debates about the validity of traditional forms of citizenship in the context of globalisation and resurgent sub-state nationalism have yielded three new approaches for conceptualising relations between states and members of the polity: liberal-nationalist, post-nationalist and cosmopolitan. We argue that while these approaches strive to create more just, equal, and inclusive polities, they threaten to politically subordinate the marginalised groups they are intended to benefit by either persisting with a view of domestic sovereignty whereby ultimate political authority resides with the state or failing to recognise the significance of territory. As an alternative, we endorse a newly emergent concept of 'post-sovereign' citizenship, which we develop through a discussion of its four constitutive principles as they apply to aboriginal and sub-state national groups: democracy, equality, trust and territory. We argue that post-sovereign citizenship can better address the political demands of sub-state nations through forms of multiple, concurrent or shared sovereignty at the domestic level. The advantage of our approach is that it can promote political equality and justice among nations without resorting to secession.