Suffrage and Citizenship

If politics is about the relation between the separated state and civil society, political expression must have an institutional means that allows for the ‘bridging’ of that divide. This chapter begins the analysis of the mechanisms that appear to ‘traverse’ the gap: suffrage and citizenship (Chap. 10 ) and political parties (Chap. 11 ). The struggle for the franchise in the nineteenth century was the emerging working class striving to obtain a political role in a system in which it had no economic stake. Its achievement meant that this class, whose interests conflicted with prevailing interests, was allowed access to the reins of political power. To contain the implications of this access, citizenship, among other means, was created as the definition of ordained membership in this territorially defined marketplace society under the jurisdiction of a state. Citizenship was the institutional means to promote a national identity and to delineate the rights and define the obligations of those who qualified for the franchise but were not stakeholders in the economy.