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‘Marshall-ing’ Social and Political Citizenship: Towards a Unified Conception of Citizenship1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Michael Lister
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Abstract

Marshall's work on citizenship has become a cornerstone of most contemporary discussions of citizenship. Yet, in this article, it is argued that his work is frequently misunderstood, or misinterpreted. I argue that Marshall presents a normative argument that citizenship should be seen as a unified but dynamic concept. The unified nature of citizenship should not, however, obscure the tensions within the concept. These tensions are negotiated, so that citizenship should be seen as a complex relationship where tensions and webs of interdependence co-exist. This, it is argued, is an important theoretical framework with which to consider a issues such as the impact of the restructuring of welfare.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , 2005 , pp. 471 - 491
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2005.

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Footnotes

1

An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Council of European Studies 13th International Conference of Europeanists, Chicago, 14–16 March 2002. I am grateful for all the helpful comments I received there. I am also indebted to Daniel Wincott, David Marsh and two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply.

References

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54 It is interesting to consider whether such criteria mean that Scandinavian countries are also lacking in their social citizenship provision, as elements of conditionality have long operated in active labour market policies. Yet there is a distinction to be drawn between what we might at one end of a spectrum term workfare and at the other end, active labour market policies. For the latter, workfare elements are present, but the programme is broader. Active labour market policies, it might be argued, see unemployment as a structural problem requiring a mixture of state policies (such as retraining, as well as job creation programmes and subsidies), and might be seen as realizing the right to work. See J. A. Drøpping, B. Hvinden and K. Vik, ‘Activation policies in the Nordic countries’, in M. Kautto, M. Heikkilä, B. Hvinden, S. Marklund and N. Ploug (eds), Nordic Social Policy: Changing Welfare States, London, Routledge, 1999, p. 138. Workfare might be characterized as a much more market-based solution, which sees unemployment as a problem of individual motivations and its focus is reducing the claimant roles. Such policies are conditional and stigmatizing. Clearly, this dichotomy is somewhat stylized. However, the closer social policy approximates to the former, the more compatible it is with the notion of social citizenship rights, and equally, the more a policy approximates the latter, the less it corresponds to what Marshall saw as a good conception of citizenship.Google Scholar

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57 Radcliff, B., ‘The Welfare State, Turnout, and the Economy: A Comparative Analysis’, American Political Science Review, 86: 2 (1992), pp. 444–54; B. Rothstein, ‘Social Capital in the Social Democratic Welfare State’, Politics and Society, 29: 2 (2001), pp. 206–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Both these authors suggest that the welfare state seems to impact upon other aspects of citizenship, such as voter turnout, more general political participation and levels of social trust.