276 K. Henrard eroding the position of the state as reference point for membership, for ‘citizenship’,39 triggering arguments about post-national, and cosmopolitan citizenship.40 In the end, and notwithstanding the recognition that governance is performed at many levels,41 it remains justified to dedicate a special issue to nationality, referring to the legal bond between an individual and the state/nation-state, since nationality can still be considered the master status.42 As the following discussion on the rights that are contingent on nationality will reveal, nationality comes with core membership rights (rights to enter and reside, voting rights), that form the requisite basis for the effective enjoyment of (other) fundamental rights. 2.2 Membership: Rationale, Criteria and Contours of the Political Community Turning to the second element of the definition of citizenship, namely ‘membership’, citizenship is supposed to reflect a special bond with the political community concerned, one that makes the person possessing it deserving of the rights, and entitlements contingent on membership. There is indeed a close interrelation between the nature of the community, the criteria for membership and the rights contingent on membership: the one informs the other, while the latter confirms the former and vice versa. At the highest level of abstraction, membership of a political community requires and presupposes a certain commitment, loyalty, or allegiance.43 Nevertheless, the shifts in spatiality of the political community, go hand in hand with shifts in the nature of the community—noted above—and entail different markers that are considered relevant as proxy for this (assumed) commitment and loyalty. The earliest versions of citizenship were not based on kinship (ethnicity), rather they were residence based, and the related consent to be bound by the same rules. This was clearly visible in the permanent settlements that emerged after the Neolithic revolution. Similarly, the early city-states of ancient Greece were not about kinship, rather about men subject to the same rules, and rights and duties of political participation. During the time of the Roman Empire, Roman citizenship was not ethnic based either, but aimed at building loyalty throughout the empire that was per definition multi-ethnic.44 During the Middle Ages, feudalism was decidedly not about an overarching community, let alone in the ethnic sense, but about fragmented, reciprocal personal relationships tied to land, and thus to the place where one lived. The subsequent centralization of power by the absolute monarchs, made people born in the territory into ‘subjects of the monarch’.45 As was highlighted above, over time the Kings wanted to strengthen the loyalty of their subjects by justifying their actions 39 Benhabib (2005), p. 673. See also Habermas (2000), who refers to the ‘crisis of territorially circumscribed nation-state formation’, p. 447. 40 See also Sassen (2002), p. 280; Benhabib (2005), p. 675. 41 Rubenstein (2007), p. 102; Smith (2002), p. 113: ‘the idea of citizenship will increasingly be severed […] from membership in some single, titular sovereign political community’. 42 Joppke (2007), pp. 37–38. 43 Rubenstein (2007), p. 102. See also Saffran (1997), p. 323. 44 See also Diener (2017), p. 38. 45 See Honohan and Rougier (2018) in this special issue. 123