Traditional conceptions of democratic citizenship are being challenged by developments such as migration, populism, increasing polarization, social fragmentation, and digital communication technology. This book considers recent conceptions of citizenship by bringing together insights from different disciplines.

Traditionally, citizenship has been defined as the legal and political link between individuals and their democratic political community. However, traditional conceptions of democratic citizenship are currently challenged by various developments like migration, the rise of populism, increasing polarization, social fragmentation, and the challenging of representative democracy as well as developments in digital communication technology. Against this background, this peer reviewed book reflects recent conceptions of citizenship by bringing together insights from different disciplines, such as political science, sociology, economics, law, and history.

Democracies are transforming worldwide, but at the same time political inequality is increasing. This development threatens to leave growing portions of mass publics effectively ‘outside’ the political process. This volume brings together leading authorities in the field of democratic citizenship and participation to address pertinent questions concerning the quality of the democratic political process at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Analysing causes and consequences of recent developments in democratic governance and citizenship, it contributes new and original research to the ongoing debate on the crisis of representative democracy. The contributors deal with a broad range of issues including aspects of democratic citizenship and citizens' perceptions of system performance, political inequality and the democratic impact of participatory innovations. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students in democratization studies, democratic citizenship, comparative politics, political sociology and political participation.

In 'Democracies in Flux' Putnam and nine world renowned scholars investigate the condition of social capital in eight advanced democratic nations.

This book introduces the concept of 'act of citizenship' and in doing so, re-orients the study of what it means to be a citizen. Isin and Nielsen show that an 'act of citizenship' is the event through which subjects constitute themselves as citizens. They claim that such an act involves both responsibility and answerability, but is ultimately irreducible to either. This study of citizenship is truly interdisciplinary, drawing not only on new developments in politics, sociology, geography and anthropology, but also on psychoanalysis, philosophy and history. Ranging from Antigone and Socrates in the ancient world to checkpoints, euthanasia and flash mobs in the modern one, the 'acts' and chapters here build up a dynamic and wide-ranging picture. Acts of Citizenship provides important new insights for all those concerned with the relationship between individuals, groups and polities.

Argues that immigration politics is a central - but overlooked - object of inquiry in the democratic thought of classical Athens. Thinkers criticized democracy's strategic investments in nativism, the shifting boundaries of citizenship, and the precarious membership that a blood-based order effects for those eligible and ineligible to claim it.

This book examines how the Internet can improve public communications and enrich democracy.