State, Dual Citizenship and Voting Rights: Domestic Practices and Interstate Tensions

Type Working Paper
Title State, Dual Citizenship and Voting Rights: Domestic Practices and Interstate Tensions
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2015
URL http://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/c99cf143-29e4-469b-a847-7bcd267c70d4.pdf
Abstract
The legislation concerning multiple citizenship and voting varies greatly among the European states. These issues touch upon the complex interconnectedness of (inter)national politics, ethnic majorities and minorities, identity and loyalty. This paper focuses on the processes of extending voting rights to the Hungarian dual citizens. This extension of legal rights beyond the territorial borders of a state can be seen as a manifestation of transnationalism – as the end of the Westphalian state system. However, the development can also be seen as an outside interference in the domestic politics, imposing potential territorial claims and even as a violation of state sovereignty. In East Central Europe both perspectives are often present simultaneously; a state offers citizenship for a minority group in neighbouring states, but opposes similar actions towards its own internal minorities. The focus of this paper is in the Hungarian case, but similar situations are conceivable globally – rare is an ethnically homogenous state.

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