Why choosing a government does not settle the question of political belonging
You may have a vote in the country where you were born.
You may help remove a government, oppose a policy, and argue about the laws under which you live.
But suppose you want to build your life in another political community. Who decides whether you can enter it, remain there, and eventually belong as an equal?
That is a different question.
In The World Citizen Revolution, I use Nation-Based Feudal Order to examine the distance between these two kinds of political freedom. The term needs explanation. It is an analytical concept developed in the book, rather than a standard name for modern society.
What the Term Describes
The Nation-Based Feudal Order describes an arrangement in which citizens and the nation become central sources of political legitimacy, while political membership remains strongly organized through nationality, citizenship, birth, descent, and territorial state boundaries.
In simpler terms, people can acquire substantial power to govern their community without acquiring a comparable freedom to choose which community they belong to.
Initial membership is largely assigned before a person can make a meaningful choice. Changing it may be possible, but the existence of a legal route does not tell us how usable that route is.
The question is therefore about more than having a passport. It concerns who may enter, who may remain, who can participate in governing, and who is recognized as a full member.
What Changed—and What Remained
The achievements of civic revolution and democratization matter to this argument. By civic revolution, I mean a transformation that challenges inherited political authority and makes citizens central to the justification of rule.
The French Declaration of Human and Civic Rights of 1789, for example, placed the source of sovereignty in the nation in Article 3. That places the source of legitimate authority beyond a ruler’s personal or hereditary claim.
A declaration of principle did not immediately produce equal political participation for everyone. Still, changing the source of legitimate authority was a profound change.
My argument asks what happened to another relationship: membership in the territorial political community itself.
Who counts as part of the nation that governs?
A political community can recognize equality among its citizens while drawing an important boundary between citizens and people who live there without citizenship. A person may therefore share its daily life and remain outside some of its central political institutions.
The advance toward self-government does not automatically resolve the boundary of membership.
Why Use the Word “Feudal”?
This is the most difficult part of the term.
The book compares institutions by asking who sets the terms, whether a person can refuse a relationship, whether leaving is possible, what alternatives exist, and whether people can participate in changing the rules.
The comparison follows a structural problem: an inherited or assigned position can shape important rights and obligations before the person has any meaningful say in that position.
That is the connection I want the word “feudal” to draw attention to.
The term does not mean that a modern citizen is a feudal lord or that a foreign resident is a serf. Modern citizenship, human rights, constitutional government, and democratic participation cannot be reduced to medieval status relationships.
Nor does taxation or a compulsory public institution become feudal simply because an individual cannot refuse every obligation.
The comparison concerns the organization of membership and rule. Its value depends on whether it helps identify a continuing constraint on political choice. If it conceals important differences instead, it needs qualification or revision.
The book’s four comparative categories—Manorial Feudal Order, Lordship-Based Feudal Order, Monarchic Feudal Order, and Nation-Based Feudal Order—serve this inquiry. They are not universal stages that every society must pass through.
An Example: Two Neighbors
Imagine two adults who have lived in the same town for many years.
They use the same roads, depend on the same public institutions, and live under the same laws. One is a citizen. The other has durable residence but retains another nationality.
Suppose the second person cannot vote in a particular election because the relevant law requires citizenship.
This is a hypothetical example, not a description of every country’s electoral rules. It shows the question the concept is meant to expose:
When people share a community’s life and obligations, what justifies giving them different standing in governing it?
The answer cannot be read from residence alone. Duration, continuity, institutional responsibilities, and the level of government may matter.
But “one is a citizen and the other is not” identifies the legal distinction. It does not finish the argument about whether that distinction is justified.
Nationality Is Not an Unchangeable Destiny
Nationality can change. Naturalization and other legal pathways matter, and it would be misleading to describe every membership boundary as permanent.
Noncitizens are also not people without rights. They can possess substantial legal protections even when they lack particular political rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes a right to nationality and a right to change nationality in Article 15. Article 13 distinguishes movement within a state from leaving a country and returning to one’s country. These provisions do not themselves establish a general entitlement to enter any foreign country a person chooses.
The institutional question remains: how accessible is the route from being an outsider to becoming a secure and equal member?
Nationality also performs several functions. Travel documents, external protection, political participation, residence, and membership need not all be treated as one indivisible package.
Examining those functions separately makes reform more precise. Reducing nationality’s control over ordinary political membership does not require abolishing nationality or making people stateless.
From Diagnosis to Institutional Change
The Nation-Based Feudal Order names the problem. It does not, by itself, supply the solution.
World Citizen Theory develops its response through two dimensions of political freedom.
Hand Democracy concerns collective self-government within a community. Foot Democracy concerns meaningful individual choice among political communities, including the freedom to stay.
Migration Freedom helps make another community a usable option. Resident Sovereignty gives durable residence primary weight in ordinary political membership. Resident Equality and Membership Security concern the equal standing and secure belonging of full members.
These principles do not give every visitor immediate access to every political function. They require institutions that connect entry, durable residence, and a credible path toward full membership.
The proposal also preserves self-governing territorial communities. It does not require one centralized world government.
What changes is the relationship between the person and the community: belonging becomes more open to individual choice, while people retain the power to govern together where they live.
The historical comparison cannot prove that this transformation will occur. It gives us a reason to examine an arrangement we may otherwise take for granted.
Why should the political community assigned to us at birth remain so difficult to choose or change?
Notes and Sources
“Nation-Based Feudal Order” is the author’s analytical term. Its definition, limits, and relationship to political membership are discussed in The World Citizen Revolution, Chapter 31, “Nation, Citizenship, and Nationality: What Did the Nation-State Make New?”, pp. 153–157, and Chapter 32, “Citizens and Noncitizens: What Does the Membership Boundary Actually Change?”, pp. 158–161. The broader comparative framework is introduced in the Introduction and Chapter 2.
For the historical example, see the Declaration of Human and Civic Rights of 26 August 1789, Article 3. The declaration is evidence of the stated principle of sovereignty, not evidence that equal participation was immediately achieved.
For the distinctions concerning movement and nationality, see the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 13 and 15.
Further Reading
For the two dimensions of political freedom, see Hand Democracy and Foot Democracy.
For the connection between residence and membership, see Resident Sovereignty, Resident Equality, and Membership Security.
For the historical argument, see The World Citizen Revolution. For the institutional proposal, see The World Citizen Society.
