Page 200 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

186 Citizenship

Nevertheless, the EU vividly illustrates the problems for the democra-
tization of global political institutions which we will look into more fully
in the following chapter. Unless these problems can be solved in the
European Union, there is little prospect that other regional bodies might
develop along similar lines. The only possible candidate, currently, is the
North American Free Trade Agreement, an economic pact linking Canada,
Mexico, and the US. There are a number of reasons why it is unlikely
that it will evolve, as the EU did, from linking states purely through eco-
nomic relations to building political structures – especially, perhaps, the
disproportionate size and wealth of the US (Kivisto and Faist, 2007 : 128).
But unless the EU can overcome its “ democratic defi cit, ” which appears
to be very diffi cult indeed, there are good reasons to be skeptical about
the desirability of the EU itself as an ideal that others might choose to
emulate.

Citizenship and the environment
What difference might sensitivity to the natural environmental make to
citizenship? In many ways, there is no obvious connection between envi-
ronmentalism and citizenship. On one hand, citizenship is organized
nationally, and environmental processes do not respect the artifi cial
boundaries of nation - states. It is in this respect that environmentalism is
linked to aspirations for global citizenship. On the other hand, many of
the practices of the environmental movement involve care for local
resources. How might the environmentalist slogan “ think global, act
local ” work in practice for the extension of citizenship? In addition, the
very notion of extending rights would seem to be at odds with at least
some aspects of environmentalist thinking. The Keynesian welfare state,
for example, was premised on the possibility of continual economic

growth, and, therefore, of infinite natural resources. Might expectations
of citizenship rights themselves need to be restricted as a result of our
awareness of the potentially devastating effects of economic growth?
Indeed, environmentalists do tend to be at least, if not more, concerned
with citizenship obligations as with rights. Finally, democracy and envi-
ronmentalism are not always obviously compatible. If state planning is
needed to deal with climate change, for example, as Giddens argues, since
policy changes across society are needed, what room is there for demo-
cratic decision - making that might result in the “ wrong direction, ” poten-
tially with catastrophic consequences (Giddens, 2009 )?

In the first place, then, thinking about the relationship between the
environment and citizenship raises a number of challenges to Marshall ’ s