Analyzing Citizenship Across Democracy and Autocracy

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines why some states make national citizenship accessible and others do not, and whether democratic pressure propel states towards broader definitions of citizenship. Citizenship laws are important to study because they simultaneously define who can participate in a national election and who belongs in the nation. And while autocratic contexts may not provide opportunities to formally participate like democracies, shaping a cohesive nation remains an important goal. Are citizenship laws more participatory in democracies than autocracies? To examine the political factors that determine citizenship policy, this project collects global data of laws for gaining and losing citizenship, across countries and over time. With this comparative view, the project examines the relationship between regime values and how states define their national communities. This project advances prosperity and welfare, especially in terms of how obtaining citizenship can create security and opportunity for immigrants and diasporic communities. This project theorizes that regime-level factors create meaningful contexts for understanding variation in citizenship policy settings. As a result, democracies and autocracies may both maintain similarly accessible (or restrictive) citizenship laws but be motivated by distinct reasons. To test this and related arguments, the project conducts statistical analysis and tests several hypotheses with original data, obtained by building an expanded Global Citizenship Law Dataset, which describes laws for gaining and losing citizenship, across 191 countries over time. This research will make significant contributions to scholarly literature on citizenship and migration, public policymaking, welfare, immigration policy, and democratization. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.