The Developmental Value of Dual Citizenship

1. The Developmental Value of Dual Citizenship Anna Ohanyan, Ph. D. Political Science Department Stonehill College Easton, Massachusetts, United States aohanyan@stonehill.edu

2. Key Arguments • State-society relations are at the core of citizenship debates • The DC arrangements affect the Armenian state-society relationships • DC arrangements contain the tools and institutions which are bound to change the institutional development of Armenian statehood and its relationship to the society • The visions of Armenian state should be driving discussions on dual citizenship • Dual citizenship is not given: the design, management and administration of DC law will harness its developmental value

3. The Communist and the Consumer • Citizenship as a bundle of rights and responsibilities • The variance of citizenship models and types of statehood • Where is Armenia headed in terms of its statehood? • The variance in state-society relationships (Marshall’s model) • Civil rights: legal status and the protection of the citizens before the law • The citizen: will not act unless the civic liberties are threatened • Political rights: political participation and suffrage • The citizen: proactive and expectant of political participation • Social rights: the guarantee of standards of living, including the right of employment and health care • The citizen: shielded against the market fluctuations; proactive welfare state

4. Citizenship and state-society relationships

6. Dual citizenship and the nation-state • DC breaks/alters the ‘social contract’ between the state and the society • DC can potentially • Generate new claimants on the already limited resources for public goods and social policies (challenge to the state) • Increase the financial flows to support the very social policy of the post-Communist Armenia (assist the society and the state) • Heighten the public pressure on the state: • If unmatched by the institutional growth of the state may translate into a backlash (challenge the state) • Increased expectations from the public of the state (challenge the state) • The gap of rising expectations and stagnant state capacities may be problematic (challenge the state)

7. Dual Citizenship Debates • The Critics and the doom and gloom arguments • Challenge to the national sovereignty • Weaken the public loyalty to the state • Dual citizens can shop for better economic and legal environments • The proponents: • The state sovereignty has already been diminished by the globalization forces • Transnational companies already rival the states for the public loyalty • Employment generation by transnational companies has already shifted the locus of power from the state to the private sector • National citizens have been transformed to corporate subjects • National citizenship has been diluted by neo-liberal policies

8. Ironically, dual citizenship is a function of global forces, but can also be made irrelevant by the same forces.

9. International Considerations • DC as a source of investments • DC as a vehicle of political representation abroad • DC as a vehicle to strengthen the nation-state in global economics and politics • DC can facilitate the rise of the “trans-nation-state” • Administratively more agile • Flexible • Entrepreneurial • Highly global • DC, the global economy and the ‘market citizenship’ • States competing for citizens with other states as well as corporations and other non-state actors • Diminishing depth of state citizenship  increasing breadth of transnational citizenship

10. Domestic Considerations • DC and the retrenchment of the welfare state • Weakening social dimension of Armenian statehood • Social rights expand the boundaries of citizenship from those who own property to those who pay taxes from their earnings (Antonin Wagner, 2004) • Weakening of the welfare state and the greater involvement of non-state actors in social provision within the industrialized world • The rise of public-private partnerships within industrialized world • DC would enable a mobilization of social contributions through governmental and non-governmental means • Diaspora organizations as major contributors for social development in Armenia

11. Policy Recommendations: The Developmental Value of Duality (DVD) • The enhancement of Armenia-Diaspora Relationships • Strengthening of the Armenian state institutionally, administratively and financially • Efficient design and careful management of the appropriate institutions is a prerequisite for the DVD to be realized • The efficient management of Dual Citizenship will fail to escape the civil society route

12. Policy Recommendations: The Developmental Value of Duality (DVD) • The liberalization of Armenia’ citizenship rights will entail a transition from conservative (passive/private) to liberalized (active/public) dual citizenship policies. • It will address the following three dimensions: • Civil society within Armenia • Civil society within Diaspora • Armenian public sector • Liberalization of citizenship will activate the dormant civil society • Liberalization of citizenship will generate more demands for an institutional and administrative evolution of Armenian state • Will strengthen the global dimension of Armenian statehood • Armenia as a “trans-nation-state”

13. The Institutional Mechanisms for Liberalizing and Realizing the DVD (incentive structures) • Network development • Horizontally, within the civil society • Vertically, between the civil society and the Armenian public sector • Create incentives for foreign residents to invest in local development in Armenia, particularly within the rural areas • Public-private partnerships • Create incentive structures for the public sector to work with the private sector and civil society organizations • DC law may enable the state to partner in some of the ongoing social development projects of Diaspora communities • State inclusion in these partnerships will enhance the overall impact of such partnerships in social development • Provide tax breaks and allow the acquisition of commercial property for foreign residents in rural areas where the reach of the state has been limited

14. The Institutional Mechanisms for Liberalizing and Realizing the DVD • Public administration reform and decentralization • Create arrangements for the local levels of government to collect taxes from foreign investments • Give all the residents the right to vote in local elections • Associational democracy • DC arrangements can facilitate the creation of associations of Diaspora-based individuals which could give them access to the policy-making processes at the local levels of government • Provide the institutional structure to realize the developmental value of dual citizenship arrangements