Introduction

Summary

The demand and struggle for rights has been the centerpiece of the development of modern citizenship. In his seminal essay Citizenship and Social Class, first published in 1950, British sociologist T. H. Marshall defined citizenship as determined by three types of rights: civil rights, political rights, and social rights. The first refers to the classical legal protections and liberties of the individual, the second to suffrage and political participation, and the third to what Marshall defined as “the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security . . . to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in society.” Developing his argument along the lines of British history, Marshall assigned the achievement of civil rights to the eighteenth century, of political rights to the nineteenth century, and of social rights to the twentieth century. He readily conceded the simplifications in his chronology in order to stress his systematic point: The emergence of a comprehensive and egalitarian concept of citizenship as an institutional counterbalance to the social inequalities of market capitalism. Although this process was hardly free from conflicts and contradictions, Marshall was confident that this expansion of rights had created a fairly stable and legitimate democratic social order.