Expansive Citizenship—Voting beyond Territory and Membership

Voting rights have traditionally been regarded as the core of democratic citizenship. While T. H. Marshall (1965) described citizenship as a bundle of civil, political, and social rights, political philosophers from Aristotle via Rousseau to Michael Walzer have understood citizenship to be essentially a status of full membership in a self-governing polity. This republican conception explains the central place of electoral rights: citizens are those who participate in collective self-government either directly or through voting for representatives and running as candidates for elective public office. Special thanks to Harald Waldrauch from whose ongoing research on the rights and legal statuses of migrants this essay has greatly benefited.