Extending Citizenship to Emigrants: Democratic Contestation and a New Global Norm
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
| Author | Sybil Rhodes,Arus Harutyunyan |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512110374044 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Corresponding author:
Sybil Rhodes, Universidad del CEMA, Departamento de Ciencias Políticas y Relaciones Internacionales, Av.
Córdoba 374 (C1054AAP), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
[email: srhodes@cema.edu.ar]
Extending Citizenship to Emigrants:
Democratic Contestation and a New
Global Norm
Sybil Rhodes and Arus Harutyunyan
Abstract
We argue that the growing literature on emigrant policies should be linked to more general theoretical
discussions of the expansion of formal citizenship. State responses to emigrants’ claims for membership
and voting rights resemble patterns of citizenship extension to other previously excluded groups, such
as those without property, racial minorities, and women, insofar as emigrant citizenship has developed as
a consequence of competitive regimes and international norms. We assess the ‘global-norm hypothesis’
(the idea that increasing emigrant inclusion has resulted from the emergence of a new international
normative standard) and the ‘contestation hypothesis’ (the argument that higher levels of regime
competition make states more likely to extend citizenship to emigrants). The latter has two associated
expectations: the ‘window-of-opportunity sub-hypothesis’, which holds that regime transitions provide
an especially propitious context for implementing emigrant citizenship, and the ‘democratic-endurance
sub-hypothesis’, which posits that competitive regimes are likely to extend emigrant citizenship in a
gradual process over time. We use a combination of statistical analysis and case studies of Armenia,
Mexico, Spain, and the USA to evaluate these causal hypotheses as well as some plausible alternatives
found in the literature on expatriate policies.
Keywords
citizenship, emigrants, diasporas, voting rights, democracy
Why do some states allow their expatriates1 who acquire citizenship elsewhere to maintain their
original citizenship? Under what conditions do states recognize the citizenship rights (such as the
franchise) of and impose obligations (such as conscription) on their emigrant populations? We
argue that democratic contestation may unleash processes that eventually lead states to extend citi-
zenship to their emigrants. We test this argument through a combination of statistical analysis
and case studies of Armenia, Mexico, Spain, and the USA.
International Political Science Review
31(4) 470–493
© The Author(s) 2010
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512110374044
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Rhodes and Harutyunyan 471
Recent scholarship on the relations between emigrants and their homelands has shown that many
states tolerate multiple citizenship and have developed programs to channel their participation in
national political, civic, and economic life (Barry, 2006; Bauböck, 2005; Brand, 2006; Escobar, 2007;
Faist and Gerdes, 2008; Fitzgerald, 2008; Jones-Correa, 2001; Levitt and De la Dehesa, 2003). The
emerging literature has suggested numerous factors that shape countries’ emigrant policies, including
international law (Faist and Gerdes, 2008), home-state politics and political institutions (Lafleur,
2010), politics in host countries (Renshon, 2005; Shain, 1999–2000), economic remittances (Levitt
and De la Dehesa, 2003), and ‘re-ethnicization’ (Joppke, 2005).
Even as a scholarly research program devoted to expatriate policies has developed, the study
of migration has remained somewhat on the margins of political science scholarship (Bleich,
2008). We seek to demonstrate that it belongs in the mainstream. Rather than viewing programs
for emigrants as a highly specific policy area, we approach them as a particular instance of the
extension of citizenship to a broader section of the population within a polity, similar to the previ-
ous extension of citizenship to the un-propertied, racial minorities, women, or the illiterate.
Placing our analysis at this higher level of abstraction allows us to connect the study of migration
with broader questions. Specifically, we contribute to theoretical discussions about the expansion
of formal citizenship in democratic regimes, an abiding normative and empirical topic in political
science (Howard, 2006). Although we acknowledge that emigrants’ citizenship claims may pres-
ent particular practical and normative challenges in comparison with other groups, we suggest
that a similar political logic may influence state officials’ willingness to respond to those claims.
We employ a broad theoretical framework based on a general model of democracy as a set of
institutions that enshrine competition. Competitive regimes, we argue, provide incentives for state
officials to extend citizenship to emigrants, either as a preemptive, top-down strategy or in response
to pressure from emigrants themselves.
Our point of departure is the observation that citizenship policy has become more inclusive
over time, arguably as a result of both democratic institutions and international norms.2 Liberal
democracy has historically led to the expansion of citizenship rights via strategic elite initiative
(Plattner, 2001), prolonged struggle by previously excluded groups (Foweraker and Landman,
1999), or both.3 Studies also show that democratization provides the disenfranchised with espe-
cially auspicious conditions for making their case for citizenship. At least in the period since the
Second World War, transitions to competitive regimes generally have been, almost by definition,
accompanied by the extension of citizenship rights to more groups. Countries that democratized
in recent decades, for example, have been unlikely to deny suffrage to large segments of the popu-
lation as countries that democratized earlier did (Ramirez et al., 1997). A ‘norm of universality’
(Doorenspleet, 2000: 390) now holds sway.
Has emigrant citizenship also recently become normalized as part of the very definition of
democracy? The percentage of countries with international absentee voting has soared over the
past 35 years, as Figure 1 shows. Comparable cross-national data on the timing of dual citizen-
ship policies are unavailable, but tolerance of dual citizenship also seems to have increased in
recent decades (Faist and Gerdes, 2008). Thus, a global norm of emigrant inclusion appears to
have developed some 60 years later than occurred in the case of groups more commonly cited as
falling under the rubric of universal inclusion, such as women or racial minorities. However, a
possible alternative explanation for at least part of the increasing slope of the curve is that it
simply reflects the fact that the number of democracies has grown rapidly in recent decades.
Indeed, as is also depicted in Figure 1, since the 1970s the percentage of countries with at least
minimally democratic institutions has increased at about the same rate as the percentage with
international absentee voting.
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