Republicanism and Universalism: Factors of Inclusion or Exclusion in the French Concept of Citizenship
Titel:
Republicanism and Universalism: Factors of Inclusion or Exclusion in the French Concept of Citizenship
Auteur:
Lefebvre, Edwige Liliane
Verschenen in:
Citizenship studies
Paginering:
Jaargang 7 (2003) nr. 1 pagina's 15-36
Jaar:
2003-03
Inhoud:
European Integration has renewed interests in the concepts of both citizenship and citizenship rights: civil, political and social. Citizenship is an instituted process and a status. The development of citizenship rights depends on a nation's legal infrastructure and varying community capacities for participatory association. In the French case the communities were and are: religious, labor (the private sector being apart from the civil service sector, which includes about five million people), immigrants and political parties. The article's study of citizenship and democratization in France expands beyond a focus on the French state capitalist dirigisme, to include relationships among public spheres, community associational life and patterns of political culture. Somers [(1993) 'Culture and place of the public sphere: law, community, and political culture in: transition to democracy', American Sociological Review , 58, pp. 587-620] has examined these assumptions for the English case. The French revolutionaries of 1789 and later French thinkers believed that voting rights represented the entire spectrum of political rights. While they projected to integrate large numbers into an abstract body of citizenship through universal male suffrage, the law in fact took effect only in 1850-1852 under the directory of Napoleon III and was ratified during the empire in 1852. Women acquired voting rights only in 1944. The French concept of citizenship has always intentionally neglected social and socioeconomic and cultural pluralist dimensions, because of a fear of social fragmentation leading to the destruction of the Republican ideology; this has brought about a renewal of the attack on particularism. The French notion that democracy is based on the 'will of the people' to live together allowed the concept to be universalized to include everyone who wanted to belong to the French nation. This was reinforced from 1889 until 1993 by a generous application of jus soli . A study of the long struggle of the French government to balance jus soli and jus sanguinis principles can be an example for the European concept of citizenship. The legal puzzle of the French colonial legacy may also help establish the European Union's immigration policy, since every conceivable situation has been dealt with in some legal way during its evolution.
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