By delving beneath the layer of permanence and objectivity that characterises citizenship, Chapter 1 illustrated the historicity and the variegated nature of modern citizenship. We saw that modern citizenship represents an achievement. In a relatively short time-span of about 200 years, it has transformed the state, extended democracy and shaped social welfare provision. It successfully displaced the authority of the church and the personal, clientalistic ties between the subjects and the sovereign ruler(s) that characterised the old feudal order, by positing an abstract and uniform system of legal membership based on civic equality and political participation. Political belonging thus was no longer conditioned on either membership of a community of believers or subjecthood and obligations of fealty. Instead, it became a matter of mandatory membership of a statist community which defined – often following intense processes of social bargaining – the rights and duties enjoyed by its progressively expanding body of citizens. And even though the evolution of citizenship has not followed a predetermined and linear path, the gradual disentanglement of suffrage from property, literacy and gender differentials has brought about its democratisation.

But, as earlier argued, democratisation never extended beyond the ballot box. As Zolo (1992, p. 148) has noted, ‘in modern (extended, differentiated, complex) societies, democracy entails no form of political equality which goes beyond the holding of political rights. Equality of status did not eradicate de facto inequalities; instead, it was rendered compatible with them.’