Citizenship and Identity: Towards a New Republic (Routledge Innovations in Politicaltheory, 11)

Citizenship and Identity offers an analysis of contemporary politics and of the scepticism and apathy which characterise the political life of modern democracies. Starting from exploration of liberal-democracy and a critique of the fragmentation of contemporary politics, this book develops a republican perspective as an alternative framework for political institutions and civic participation. This book provides an introduction to themes within citizenship and identity. The authors draw together debates in sociology, political theory and cultural/gender studies to show how the civil, political and social meanings of citizenship have been redefined by postmodernization and globalization. Through a detailed introductory discussion of the relation between the civil and the political, and between recognition and representation, this book provides a comprehensive vocabulary for understanding citizenship. It uses the work of T H Marshall to frame the critical interrogation of how ethnic, technological, ecological, cosmopolitan, sexual and cultural rights relate to citizenship. The authors show how the civil, political and social meanings of citizenship have been redefined by postmodernization and globalization Offers an analysis of contemporary politics and of the skepticism and apathy that characterize the political life of modern democracies. Starting from an exploration of liberal-democracy and a critique of the fragmentation of contemporary politics, this book develops a republican perspective as an alternative framework for political institutions and civic participation. Schwarzmantel applies ideas of republicanism to practical politics and to the realities of political life in a complex society. The book takes the debate on democratic reform forward by describing a new form of democratic society, focusing on ideas of citizenship, plural identities and decentralization. It confronts the question of agency and the possibility of radical democracy in the conditions of liberal-democracy today The argument of this book is that there is an urgent need for the transformation of liberal-democracy, and that some version of republican theory provides the guiding concepts for a different political system here called 'the new republic'.