CITIZENS AND INSTITUTIONS
Citizenship is the status of being a citizen along with the rights and duties and privileges of
being a citizen. The country’s government gives the political rights, including the right to vote
and to hold public office, while the responsibilities are loyalty, taxation and military service.
Citizenship is obtained by meeting the legal requirements of a national, state or local
government. Citizenship is different from nationality, a person’s nationality specifies which
country a person belongs to, but the inhabitants of a country aren’t always citizens of that
country, they may have acquired citizenship in another country or they may have lost it.
Citizenship in the history
The origins of the concept of citizenship began in the cities of ancient Greece, referring only
to property owners but not to women, slaves or the poorest members of the community.
A Greek citizen had the right to vote and was required to pay taxes and do military service.
Meanwhile in the Roman Empire citizenship was used by the Romans to distinguish the
residents of the city of Rome from conquered peoples, as their empire continued to grow, the
Romans granted citizenship to their allies until AD 212, when citizenship was extended to all
free inhabitants of the empire, Roman citizenship conferred important legal privileges within
the empire. During the Middle ages in Europe, the concept of c. disappeared and was
replaced by a system of feudal rights and duties. Modern concepts of c. progressed in the
18th century during the American and French revolutions, when the term citizen indicated
the possession of certain freedoms in the face of the power of absolute monarchs.
In England the term citizen referred to belonging to a borough, while the word subject was
used to indicate the subordinate position of the individual in relation to the monarch or the
state. Nowadays, the word subject is still used in British common law and nationality
legislation, but the two terms are practically equivalent.
The acquisition of citizenship
C. can be obtained by being born in a specific territory, descending from a citizen parent,
marrying a c. and through naturalisation.
Jus soli is a latin term that means “right of soil”, under this system, citizenship is acquired by
birth within the territory of the state, regardless of parental citizenship: United States and
Canada are the only developed countries who follow this law.
Jus sanguinis is the Latin term meaning “right of blood”, it’s the rule that states that a child’s
citizenship is determined by his parent’s.
The US and British Commonwealth countries adopt the jus soli as their basic principle, they
also recognise acquisition of nationality by descent, but subject it to strict limitations.
The acquisition of c. by a woman through marriage was the prevailing principle in the
modern times until after WW1; from the 1920s under the impact of women’s suffrage and
ideas about gender equality, a new system developed in which a woman’s nationality
depends on her freedom to choose and not by marriage.
Naturalisation is the process by which US citizenship is granted to a lawful permanent
resident after meeting the requirements established by Congress in the Immigration and
Nationality Act (INA).
Government and politics; the British institution
Britain is a constitutional monarchy, which means it has a democratic parliament to make
laws and a King/Queen as Head of State (the current monarch is King Charles III), but unlike
the other countries such as Italy does not have a formal written constitution.
