Political Incorporation and Historical Institutionalism : A Comparison of the Netherlands , Germany and Belgium

The practice of enfranchising resident aliens lies at the heart of a theoretical debate among political scientists who study the institutions of sovereignty and citizenship. A number of such scholars cite this practice as evidence of the erosion both of the historical link between the nation and the state, and of the state's sovereign authority to define its political community. By contrast, other scholars argue that because these voting rights often are limited and discriminatory, they only reinforce the link between nation and state. Despite the centrality of this broad and ongoing debate to our understanding of sovereignty, citizenship and democracy, however, little is known about the conditions under which this democratic practice will emerge. This paper examines the political incorporation of aliens in three European democracies with widely varying experiences: Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Using these three cases, the paper finds considerable support for the nationalist thesis’s emphasis on historical institutional factors. This paper is prepared for delivery at the 46 Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, March 1-5, 2005, Honolulu, Hawaii. Copyright by the International Studies Association. Political Incorporation and Historical Institutionalism -1 Up until now the extension of voting rights has always been a positive thing in Dutch history. There have always been positions stating why such an extension should perhaps not put into effect, but after a few years one could not imagine it being otherwise anymore. (Dutch Member of Parliament Peter Lankhorst of the Politieke Partij Radikalen (PPR), as quoted in Jacobs 1998, p. 360) Elections in which foreigners can vote cannot convey democratic legitimacy. (The German Federal Constitutional Court, as quoted in Tomforde 1990) “In the big cities, the immigrants run the city councils . . . . Now that they are going to give them all the right to vote, they will take over the smaller towns too. Pretty soon, we won’t be the boss in our own country anymore.” (A Belgian truck driver, as quoted in Vandyck 2004) The right to cast a ballot speaks to the meaning of membership in the polity in a way that other rights--such as the right to work, own property, or receive social welfare benefits--do not. Perhaps for this reason, proposals to enfranchise noncitizens provoke powerful and sometimes puzzling reactions. A recent initiative to enfranchise New York City’s population of resident aliens, for example, met with this opinion from The New York Times: . . . it is in the nation’s best interest to encourage people who live here permanently to become citizens and throw in their lot with the interests of the United States. Extending the most important benefits of citizenship to those who still hold their first allegiance to another country seems counterproductive. (“A Citizen’s Right” 2004) As the position of the Times’ editorial board and the above epigraphs indicate, the alien franchise speaks to the very meaning of citizenship Political Incorporation and Historical Institutionalism -2 and nationhood. As more governments have considered proposals to enfranchise their resident aliens, publics have revisited debates about their shared understandings of “citizenship.” In many states these debates reflect centuries of shared experiences. Ironically, then, the debate about the political rights of noncitizens may provide important insights into the institution of citizenship and its changing nature. In this paper, I explore the debate in three states over the alien franchise. Why would the Netherlands enfranchise resident aliens with little difficulty in the 1980s, while Belgium experienced three decades of debate and abortive legislation before enacting local voting rights for resident aliens in 2004? Why did Hamburg and SchleswigHolstein’s experiment with local voting rights in 1989 fail to survive the constitutional scrutiny of the German federal constitution court? The variation in outcomes in these three states poses a challenge to a number of competing explanations for why states incorporate resident aliens. I argue that the institution of noncitizen voting is an important test of two competing bodies of research on citizenship politics--what one may call the “nationalist” and “transnationalist” theses. The two theses emphasize a variety of cultural, institutional, partisan, international and transnational factors to explain variations in the pattern of immigrant incorporation among democratic states. Broadly speaking, nationalist scholars argue that domestic factors such as institutions, the welfare state or partisan competition reinforce the historical linkage between the “nation” as a sociological construct 1 This argument seems to arise regularly in other states as well. Philip Dewinter, the leader of the Vlaams Blok party in Belgium, stated in 2004 that Belgium’s proposal to enfranchise aliens sent “a permanent message to foreigners that Belgium is a land of milk and honey, where they have rights but no duties.” See Vandyck 2004. Political Incorporation and Historical Institutionalism -3 and the “state” as a political construct. By contrast, transnationalist scholars argue that international institutions and emerging norms of human rights constitute and demarcate the rights states offer their noncitizens, and consequently weaken the ties between nation and state. Tellingly, several transnationalist scholars cite the practice of enfranchising aliens as evidence of this weakened bond (e.g. Soysal 1994). Nationalist and transnationalist scholars share a theoretical commitment to problematizing the nature of citizenship. Both bodies of scholarship acknowledge that the culture, laws and institutions of democratic states constitute the institution of citizenship in differing ways. This variation in citizenship practices speaks not only to the incorporation of immigrants in these societies——itself an important question——but also to the nature of state sovereignty itself. Do states retain a de facto sovereign right to regulate membership in their polity? Nationalist and transnationalist scholars come to different conclusions. I seek to intermediate the debate between nationalist and transnationalist scholars with three case studies. Using a controlled comparison design, I argue that one can best explain the differences in voting rights in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium as the result of shared, historical understandings of the meaning of “citizenship.” That is, citizenship in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany is an institution embedded in the unique historical experiences and societal conflicts of each state. To understand the different patterns of political incorporation of resident aliens, then, one must first understand how these conflicts have molded the institution of citizenship. Political Incorporation and Historical Institutionalism -4 Nationalism and Transnationalism: An Overview Why would democratic states enfranchise resident aliens? Although many democratic states offer extensive social and economic rights to immigrants, historically they have offered far fewer political rights. The incorporation of migrants has followed, furthermore, a process that reverses how citizens historically have acquired social, economic and political rights. Marshall’s seminal work (1964) argued that citizens historically acquired civil and legal rights first, then political rights, and finally social and economic rights. Klausen (1995) and Joppke (1999) among others have noted that the incorporation of migrants has reversed this evolutionary process: noncitizens have acquired economic and social rights first, then civil and legal rights. Only recently have states extended political rights to resident aliens, and these often come with restrictions. Yet the rights of resident aliens today are broad enough in many democracies that some scholars argue there are few substantive differences between the body of rights citizens and aliens have (Hammar 1990). Indeed, democratic states emphasize symbolic and totemic distinctions between citizens and noncitizens despite (or perhaps because of) the differences in the rights each group enjoys. The political rights of noncitizens therefore may reflect important changes in the nature of citizenship and the relationship between the state and the polity. There is a rich and diverse body of scholarship that examines how and why democratic states incorporate noncitizens. There are two broad points of disagreement, however, among the scholars who study citizenship politics. The first is the level of analysis that best Political Incorporation and Historical Institutionalism -5 explains the state’s policies for the incorporation of noncitizens. Do states offer political rights to migrants due to domestic factors, or are these policies a response to international and transnational pressures? Though a number of scholars creatively integrate domesticlevel and systemic factors in their analyses (see inter alia Laitin 1998, Barrington 2000, Kashiwazaki 2000, and Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer 2002), it is nevertheless useful to categorize existing hypotheses according to their level of analysis. The second point of disagreement is the implication of these practices for our understanding of important concepts——the state, sovereignty, and the polity. Does the enfranchisement of noncitizens reflect (or portend) a weakening of the historical bonds of the nation to the state? Do states retain the sovereign capacity to regulate membership in the polity? Many scholars provide different answers to these questions. Using these two points of divergence, one can categorize the citizenship politics literature into two broad theses I call the nationalist and the transnationalist theses. Nationalist scholars explain differences in how democracies incorporate non-citizens as a product of cultural, institutional and partisan factors. These scholars generally assert that shared historical conceptions of the “nation” motivate the state’s incorporation of noncitizens and its ongoing constitution and regulation of the political community. This body of scholarship includes the institutional arguments of scholars like Klausen (1995) and Joppke (1999 and 2001), political development arguments like those of Marshall (1964), Rokkan ([1970] 1999) and Rokkan and Lipset (1967), and cultural arguments such as Brubaker (1992). These arguments Political Incorporation and Historical Institutionalism -6 emphasize the importance of judicial systems (Joppke 1999, Aleinikoff 2001), the political economy of social welfare (Klausen 1995), collective action dynamics (Freeman 1995, Money 1999) and partisan competition (Hammar 1990). Together, these arguments suggest the state’s incorporation of resident aliens reflects the claims-making of immigrant groups through the political institutions that bind the nation to the state. One important nationalist hypothesis deserves emphasis. Brubaker’s important comparison of immigration policies in France and Germany called attention to important cultural differences in how societies and states conceive of the “nation”: as an ethno-linguistic community as typified by Germany, or as a multinational political construct as typified by republican France. Brubaker argued these differing conceptions of the nation are embedded in the legal doctrines of jus sanguinis (literally, citizenship by blood) and jus soli (citizenship from the soil). In jus sanguinis states an individual derives his or her citizenship from his or her parents, while in jus soli states the individual derives citizenship from his or her place of birth. States with jus sanguinis laws tend to view citizenship as membership in the nation (a cultural community), while jus soli states tend to understand citizenship as membership in the state (a political community). Hammar (1990), Brubaker (1992) and Barrington (2000) all find that these competing cultural conceptions affect how states incorporate immigrants. Jus soli states tend to provide a broader range of social and economic rights than jus sanguinis states do. Although they do not necessarily dismiss nationalist arguments, transnationalist scholars assert that systemic and transnational Political Incorporation and Historical Institutionalism -7 factors today have circumscribed the state’s capacity and authority to constitute the political community. That is to say, transnational and international pressures today have overturned the traditional modes of incorporation that nationalist scholars emphasize. As Castles and Davidson (2000) note: Globalization erodes the autonomy of the nation-state, undermines the ideology of distinct and relatively autonomous cultures, and causes the increasing mobility of people across borders. . . . These new factors destabilize traditional ways of balancing the contradictions that have always beset the nation-state model: the contradiction between the inclusion and exclusion of various groups, between the rights and obligations of citizenship, and-most important--between political belonging as a citizen and political belonging as a national. (p. ix) Systemic and transnational factors have changed citizenship politics in three ways, according to these scholars. First, the large influx of immigrants during the latter half of the 20 century has caused states to develop institutional alternatives to citizenship——variously called “denizen rights” (Hammar 1990) or “quasi-citizenship” (Castles and Davidson 2000)——in order to incorporate these residents. Second, rather than making claims for social, economic and political rights through the institutions of the state in which they reside, resident aliens increasingly appeal both to their states of origin and to international laws and norms (Soysal 1994, Sassen 1996). Third, because of this transnational claims-making by migrants, states face multiple levels of governance and influence on their citizenship policies and practices that they did not face half a century ago. For all three reasons, transnational scholars tend to emphasize the importance of systemic and cross-border processes in the constitution of political communities. These researchers variously emphasize the importance of international norms (Soysal 1994, Sassen 1996), Political Incorporation and Historical Institutionalism -8 international and nongovernmental organizations (Barrington 2000, Martiniello 2000, Kashiwazaki 2000), and transnational activist networks (DeSipio 2001, Guarnizo 2001, Kashiwazaki 2000, Soysal 1997). For these reasons, transnationalist scholars argue that international and cross-border processes are eroding the capacity of the nation-state to regulate membership in its political community. They consequently view institutional innovations like the alien franchise as evidence of the transformation of the institutions of citizenship and sovereignty. Due to their emphasis on domestic factors, by contrast, nationalist scholars generally are skeptical of arguments that assert the transformative impact of international and transnational factors. They argue that the variation in incorporation regimes among democratic states reflects not “postnational” norms of “personhood” as Soysal (1994) memorably argued, but instead they reflect a shared national history of inclusiveness. The practice of enfranchising resident aliens stands at the intersection of the debate between nationalist and transnational scholars. As I have argued elsewhere (Earnest 2004), the institution of the alien franchise challenges both theses. Nationalists have a hard time explaining the apparent decoupling of citizenship and political rights, while transnationalists cannot readily explain why some states have adopted non-citizen voting rights, others continue to deliberate them, and still other states have rejected such rights on constitutional grounds. The debate has suffered, furthermore, from research agendas that have emphasized case research and have yet to test competing nationalist and postnationalist hypotheses in a large-n study. My previous study sought to redress this deficiency, and Political Incorporation and Historical Institutionalism -9 studied the voting rights practices in 25 democracies from 1960 to 2000. I tested four nationalist and three postnationalist hypotheses against an ordered dependent variable that measured the voting rights for resident aliens in each of the 25 democracies. The study found strong support for nationalist arguments (though some findings were significant and contrary to nationalist expectations) but only weak support for transnational arguments. One nationalist argument in particular explained much of the variation in political incorporation for the 25 democracies in the study: jus soli states were significantly more likely to enfranchise non-citizens than jus sanguinis states. (Earnest 2004, pp. 143-164). Since the study used the jus sanguinis/jus soli distinction as a proxy for competing cultural and legal conceptions of nationhood (as Brubaker 1992 suggested), the study found strong support for nationalist cultural explanations. Indeed, when controlling for other hypothesized factors, jus soli states are four to six times more likely to have some form of noncitizen voting than are jus sanguinis states. (Earnest 2004, pp. 146-165) This paper provides a qualitative complement to these findings of statistical significance.