310 D. Owen We can begin to approach these issues by noting two contrasting—and equally inadequate—views of entitlement to citizenship. The first is clearly expressed by the UK: [It] regards the sovereign power of states to determine their own citizens not merely as a principle of international law that applies in relations with other states but also as an element of their internal democratic self-determination. State discretion therefore primarily means legislative discretion. A democratically legitimate legislature should be broadly free to set the rules not only for citizenship acquisition but also for deprivation in accordance with its political goals and in a way that it considers conducive to the public good, within constraints of constitutional and international law that the legislature has itself freely accepted.39 The second contrasting conception considers citizenship as an individual entitlement that is held against the State and thus limits the scope of the State’s deprivation powers. The underlying normative view is to think of citizenship as a foundation of individual autonomy analogous to individual property that the State must protect and of which it cannot deprive its citizens without losing legitimacy.40 Whereas the first view assigns discretionary power to the state, the second view ascribes it to the individual. What both views fail to recognize is that the normative point of the institution of state citizenship in an international order of plural selfruling states is not simply to allocate persons to states on the basis of unilateral state choices or unilateral individual choices but on the basis of a reciprocal relationship between individuals and states. To see this point, let us step back from the issue of citizenship deprivation for the moment to address a prior question: ‘what do we need state citizenship rules for?’ In a global political society organised as an international order of plural autonomous states, there are two basic functions that such rules are to play: 1. to ensure that each and every human being is a citizen of a state and hence that everyone has, at least formally, equal standing in a global society organised as a system of states; 2. to link persons to states in ways that best serve the common interest, that is, where this supports protection of the fundamental interests of individuals, the realization of the common good within states, and the conditions of cooperation between states. An appropriate general response to these requirements is the principle that Ayelet Shachar calls ‘ius nexi’ which highlights the importance of a genuine connection 39 40 Bauböck and Paskalev (2015), pp. 62–63. Bauböck and Paskalev (2015), p. 63. 123