Report on Citizenship
Citizenship is the relationship between a person and the country they
live in and support, and in return receive protection from. A person
is usually a citizen of the country they are born in, but in some
situations you can apply to change your citizenship to another
country.
Political Rights
Political rights mean equality before the law, universal suffrage,
etc. — can only be the rights of abstract human beings, rights which
abstract from the real differences in wealth, privilege, education,
occupation, kinship etc.
Natural Rights
Natural rights are a political theory that maintains that an
individual enters into society with certain basic rights and that no
government can deny these rights. The modern idea of natural rights
grew out of the ancient and medieval doctrines of natural law , i.e.,
the belief that people, as creatures of nature and God, should live
their lives and organize their society on the basis of rules and
precepts laid down by nature or God. With the growth of the idea of
individualism, especially in the 17th cent., natural law doctrines
were modified to stress the fact that individuals, because they are
natural beings, have rights that cannot be violated by anyone or by
any society. Perhaps the most famous formulation of this doctrine is
found in the writings of John Locke . Locke assumed that humans were
by nature rational and good, and that they carried into political
society the same rights they had enjoyed in earlier stages of society,
foremost among them being freedom of worship, the right to a voice in
their own government, and the right of property. Jean Jacques R...
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... The concept of active citizenship was a result of the Conservatives’
government experience in the 1980's. The government began to look for
solutions to the problems of rising crime and rising public spending
which did not involve government intervention. One solution was to
suggest that responsibility for society’s problems did not lie within
the government, but with the whole community. In other words, every
British citizen had a duty to take an active part in solving society’s
problems. To promote the idea of this active citizenship, John Major
launched the Citizen’s Charter initiative in the summer of 1991.
Together these two notions demonstrated the dual nature of
citizenship, with its concern for both the responsibilities of
citizens towards each other and also with what can be expected as a
right from the state.