Understanding Citizenship

• Citizenship is being a member of a political community.
• The concept of citizenship dates back to classic Athens, the birthplace of democracy.
• Citizens are members of the polis or the city-state

Inclusive and Exclusive Membership

• Citizenship is inclusive as only citizens can formally participate in city-state public life.
• It is exclusive, as only men of certain ages and economic classes could claim citizenship.

Citizenship in the Modern Nation-State

• Citizenship means possessing full civil and political rights within a political community, subject to certain disqualifications.
• Citizenship is centered on the capacity to enjoy political rights.
• Political rights include the right to participate in government, vote, hold public office, and petition for redress of grievances

Beyond Rights: Obligations

• Citizenship is not just about rights; it includes the duty of allegiance to the political community.

Ways of Becoming a Citizen

• Bernas (2009) identifies three ways to become a citizen:

• Jus sanguinis involves acquiring citizenship through parentage.

• Jus soli is about acquiring citizenship based on place of birth.

• Naturalization is the legal adoption of an alien with the privileges of a native-born citizen.

Filipino Perspective on Citizenship

• Maria Serena Diokno's (1997) study highlights that citizenship means membership in a political community.
• Citizenship includes the local community, as Filipinos struggle to identify with abstract concepts like the nation.

Challenges for Filipino Citizenship

• Balancing being part of the nation-state and local communities is an ongoing challenge.
• A good citizen pays taxes, votes honestly, obeys traffic rules, asserts rights, speaks for the voiceless, and respects the environment.

Filipino Citizenship as a Process

• Filipino citizenship is construed in terms of processes where citizens negotiate their rights and obligations to the community.
• Citizenship is understood in the context of deliberation.

Importance of Democratic Governance

• Citizenship is the foundation of collective action, a shared vision, and a link to future generations.

Practice of Active Citizenship

• Pro-active citizenship includes indigenous, day-to-day practices of democracy in communities, formal government mechanisms and elected officials may or may not exist
• Active citizenship is practiced when communities resolve issues through deliberation, whether formal or informal
• Such practices also involve initiatives by organized groups that engage in democratic processes and explore alternative solutions.

Effective Citizenship as a Two-Way Street

• Effective citizenship requires the government to exercise the rule of law and be accountable to the public.
• The government should ensure social requisites for democracy like a decent standard of living, employment, education, and healthcare.
• People with limited prospects are often too preoccupied to focus on concerns beyond their basic needs.

Citizens' Role in Transforming Institutions

• Citizens must perform their obligations and exercise their rights collectively.
• Citizens acting together can implement plans, negotiate with government entities, and apply pressure to bring about change.

Building an Identity

• According to Diokno (1997), building an identity has three concerns
• Instrumental - Citizens and officials should act according to rules and identities consistent with democratic processes.
• Moral – Values and beliefs should embody and reinforce democratic principles.
• Transformative – The process should encourage self-reflection and redefinition of individuals, institutions, and communities.

Seeking Leaderships and Accountability

• People's participation depends on organization, an enabling environment, and functional leaders.
• Effective citizenship is often hindered because government infrequently appears as a role model of positive values.

Understanding Distributed Leadership

• Leadership can be understood not as an individual pursuit, the structure, or design of a system but as a social process.
• Distributed leadership is a collective social process emerging through interactions of multiple actors.
• Leadership is construed as “as group activity that works through and within relationships, rather than individual action”

Distributed Leadership politically salient concepts

• Politically, distributed leadership can take two forms
• Distributed leadership is a social process arising from interactions and relationships between stakeholders.
• Second, distributed leadership is not simply a matter of technical design.

From Collective Action to Enacting Change: Expand the Frame of Possible

• The first battle is waged not necessarily on physical spaces (public parks, streets), but on the spaces of the civic imagination.
• Asking the ‘what if’ question, "and not taking as given all the givens is an important first step, but needs some amount of concreteness

From Collective Action to Enacting Change: Choose a Defining Fight

• Defining the boundaries of the fight, is about defining the boundaries of the fight.
• Powerful citizens set the terms of [the] contrast
• Parties involved in the debate must still respect each other's humanity and rights, eschewing primarily the resort to violence

From Collective Action to Enacting Change: Finding an Early Win.

• What would eventually lead to palpable, lasting change must be sustained
• Early wins set in motion the grind necessary for changes to happen

Citizen Participation: The very base of collective action

• Citizenship goes beyond entitlements and other obligations defined by law.
• Is an active practice to participation in the public
• Which is the very base of collective action, vision, means to a sustainable future