TY - JOUR
AU - Bloom, Stephen
AB - Marc Howard's The Politics of Citizenship in Europe makes a significant contribution to the literature on comparative citizenship. By breaking down citizenship legislation into component parts and measuring these empirically, Howard provides the framework for a systematic comparison of citizenship policies across Europe and beyond. Existing works have been largely structured around the close comparison of a small number of cases (Joppke 1999; Rubio-Marin 2000). The comparison of cases has also been stymied by an overreliance on strict ethnic vs. civic dichotomies. Even the citizenship laws of France and Germany, the paradigmatic cases of jus soli and jus sanguinis analyzed by Brubaker (1992), contain both civic and ethnic elements. Moreover, some countries with restrictive citizenship policies, including Germany, have liberalized their citizenship policies over the last decade owing to domestic and international pressures. Howard's comparative framework facilitates comparisons across both space and time. The main contribution of the book is the “empirical baseline” provided by Howard's Citizenship Policy Index (CPI). The CPI measures three important components of citizenship legislation: whether citizenship is awarded by birth, the length of residency necessary to naturalize, and whether those who naturalize can hold dual citizenship. CPI scores are calculated for the EU-15—the pre-2004 members of the European Union—at two points in time: the late 1980s and 2008. This allows Howard to study the origins of distinctive citizenship policies and continuity or change in policies over time. He then uses the CPI scores from both time periods to place countries into three groups: historically liberal, liberalizing change, and restrictive continuity. Individual chapters on each of the three groupings use rich empirical detail to tease out the origins of liberal and restrictive policies, and the forces that propelled or prevented subsequent liberalization. Howard advances four main arguments to explain the origins and evolution of citizenship policies across the EU-15. Two fairly intuitive explanations are provided for why some European countries developed liberal citizenship policies. First, countries with colonial possessions forged ties with peoples beyond their borders. These bonds—however unequal—spurred later immigration flows and gradually facilitated the creation a more cosmopolitan notion of national identity. Second, countries that democratized early were more likely to incorporate minority groups, including Jews, into the political process. The liberal political institutions that were established could later be opened up to immigrants from former colonies. Continuity or change in restrictive countries, Howard suggests, depends on two factors: the party in power and the extent of anti-immigrant mobilization. Leftist governments are more likely to initiate citizenship liberalization. The success or failure of liberalization attempts, however, hinges on whether anti-immigrant forces are mobilized. Anti-immigrant parties, including the People's Party in Denmark, have been able to squash attempts by left parties to liberalize citizenship policies. Liberalization has been more successful in countries where debates over citizenship remained at the elite level, as was the case in Portugal and Luxembourg. One criticism of the book is its legalistic nature. There is arguably more to citizenship and the politics of citizenship than citizenship laws. Howard anticipates this criticism and stresses the importance of citizenship for political participation (at least at the national level), public sector employment, and “the eventual integration of immigrants into the host society (p. 7).” The link between citizenship and integration is quite controversial. Clearly, Howard wants to focus on broad societal outcomes instead of narrow debates over citizenship legislation. The French case, however, argues against the notion than citizenship per se facilitates integration (Schnapper 2007). The rioters who took to the streets in 2005 were overwhelmingly French citizens (Roché 2006). It remains an open empirical question whether the North African minority in France is better integrated than the Turkish minority in Germany. The greatest weakness of the book is its treatment of the accession-12 states—the ten Postcommunist states of Central and Eastern Europe plus Cyprus and Malta—which joined the European Union between 2004 and 2007. This comes as somewhat of a surprise given Howard's (2003) previous work on civil society organizations in Postcommunist Europe. The stand-alone chapter on the new member states does not match the quality of the other chapters in the book. And while Howard does measure the CPI scores of the accession-12 in 2008, there is no attempt to analyze change over time. As a result, the categories of historically liberal, liberalizing change and restrictive continuity, and the arguments that support them, are not applied to these cases. The inclusion of twelve additional cases into his comparative framework would have allowed Howard to use multiple regression techniques to test competing hypotheses in the place of the bivariate correlation analysis that he employs. Bivariate analysis fails to control for other independent variables, causing omitted variable bias. Howard mentions a number of reasons why the new member states are not fully integrated into the analysis. First, there is a lack of secondary literature on the citizenship policies of these countries. Howard notes, however, that the EU Commission published two volumes on the citizenship policies of the accession-12, similar in form to the volumes that served as the basis of Howard's case studies of the EU-15. Second, the countries were not independent in the late 1980s, the starting point for the analysis of the EU-15. It seems to me that the starting point could have been easily moved forward a few years to the period when citizenship policies were adopted. Third, there is little variation across the countries as most are highly restrictive. This point has more merit, although one would still like to see a broader discussion of the possibility of change over time in these restrictive countries. The Latvian case is especially interesting in this light and seems to cast doubt on some of Howard's core arguments. Reforms to Latvia's restrictive citizenship policies enacted in 1998 eased naturalization procedures and offered children born in Latvia after 1991 the option of choosing Latvian citizenship at age sixteen. The impetus for liberalization came from center-right parties rather than the left (Kelley 2004). More significantly, the liberalization survived despite extensive anti-immigrant mobilization. The extreme-right “Fatherland and Freedom” Party initiated a referendum to abrogate the liberalization of citizenship. The referendum was held simultaneously with October 1998 parliamentary elections. Despite the ethnically charged campaign on its behalf, the referendum failed. A majority of Latvian voters lent their support to the liberalization of citizenship. Any criticisms of The Politics of Citizenship in Europe are outweighed by its many contributions to the study of comparative citizenship. Howard should be commended for the comparative framework that he provides and the rich detail of the case studies of the EU-15 countries. The book is a worthwhile read for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars of contemporary Europe. References Brubaker Rogers . ( 1992 ) Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany . Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press . Howard Marc Morjé . ( 2003 ) The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe . New York : Cambridge University Press . Joppke Christian . ( 1999 ) Immigration and the Nation-State: The United States, Germany, and Great Britain . Oxford : Oxford University Press . Kelley Judith . ( 2004 ) Ethnic Politics in Europe: The Power of Norms and Incentives . Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press . Roché Sebastian . ( 2006 ) Le frisson de l’émeute . Paris : Seuil . Rubio-Marin Ruth . ( 2000 ) Immigration as a Democratic Challenge: Citizenship and Inclusion in Germany and the United States . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . Schnapper Dominique . ( 2007 ) Qu’est-ce que l’intégration? Paris : Gallimard . © 2010 International Studies Association
TI - The Politics of Citizenship in an Enlarged Europe
JF - International Studies Review
DO - 10.1111/j.1468-2486.2010.00979.x
DA - 2010-12-03
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-politics-of-citizenship-in-an-enlarged-europe-8hPoPa4prd
SP - 1
EP - 660
VL - Advance Article
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -