Nation and empire: Hierarchies of citizenship in the new global order

Abstract

Citizenship in nation-states has always contained tensions between inclusion and exclusion, between the citizen and the national, between the active and the passive citizen and between the citizen a s political sovereign and the warrior-citizen. These tensions have been transformed and sharpened b y globalization and the emergence of a global order based o n the hegemony of a single superpower. For the first time in history, most states have the institutional structures of democratic nation-states, and the majority of the world's people are defined as citizens. This article argues that this formal equality masks a new global hierarchy of nation-states and of citizenships. These hierarchies apply with regard t o international law, trade, the control of weapons of mass destruction and global governance. A s a result patterns of differentiated citizenship within nation-states are now overlaid b y patterns o f global inequality.