The Nation And Citizen In Modern Society

The nation and the citizen are the subject of the constitutional law relationship in the modern society. The relation between them is the most foundational and central content. How to define the connotation of the nation and the citizen, how to orient the border of them and how to realize the balance of the national reason and the citizen freedom are not only the main task of constitutional law relationship, but also the prerequisite of it. Furthermore, they are a constitutional dilemma of modern constitutional and democracy state. As a result, this dissertation will explore the issue, i.e. 'the nation and the citizen in modern society in a perspective of civic republicanism. The whole dissertation consists of four parts in which the characters add up to 14,000.In the first chapter, I mainly discuss the methodology. After reviewing the two traditional research perspectives and their practices, we find that the two methodologies, i.e. liberalism theory and nationalism theory both have their limitation. On the one hand, liberalism regards the citizen freedom and human rights have priority to the national power, so the modern people have a lot of human rights, which they had never got in the pre-modern society. But according to this idea, liberalism constitutional nation must limit and even take the place of the national power, so the power of nation will become very weak and poor, which is just the defender of public order. The nation is limited in a small sphere in which its only function is to protect human rights. So the nation has not any essential action except yields to individual and society. Moreover, because the basic aim of liberal nation is fulfilling the individual's natural appetite, this inevitably results to indulge the appetite of modem people and leads to the citizen spirits degenerated. Thus the nation's governors are not citizens but 'bourgeois '. These weak, self-interest individuals cannot undertake the political responsibility. On the other hand, the nationalism theory accentuates the highest role of national reason, and it regard the nation can interfere with the individual freedom according to some reasons, such as popular sovereignty, nation-state and social equality etc, The practices of nationalism embodied in the'Rechtsstaat ' of German in the 1800's and the welfare state of western world in the 1940's. The totalitarianism nation was the most radical type of nationalism theory. In these positive nations, the citizen's freedom was eroded and even deprived by nation. As a response to this dilemma, this dissertation will put forward a new perspective, which is republicanism. Maybe by this methodology we can find a new path to the harmonious relationship between the nation and the citizen.The second chapter will review the republicanism nation theory from the three sides, which are the characters of nation, the aims of nation and the realization of national aims. Firstly, republicanism regards the nation is not only the protector of individual rights and the limited government only for developing economic, and the nation is not just the areas for the competing of various interests, and the nation is not just the republic management of fulfilling all kinds of social aims, but also the nation is a public and political community. The public connotation and political conscious, which conceal in the legal procedure and governed techniques, consist of the nation's soul and impetus. In one word, the characters of nation are public and politic. Secondly, these two characters of nation embody in the citizen freedom and political dependence respectively. The public of nation requires the citizen freedom in the time of peace; the politic of nation requires the national dependence in the time of war and emergency. The Rome republic and American constitutional practice tell us a powerful nation is harmonious with the citizen freedom, and they are dependent on each other. On the one hand, the citizen only live in a powerful nation, he would have a peaceful life; on the other hand, a republic would have more political authority. The last question of this chapter is how to fulfill these two aims of nation. For the former, the answers of republicanism are mixed government and constitutionalism. As for the latter, the answers of republicanism are a higher political authority, the dictatorship and imperialism.We should understand the republicanism not only from the nation but also from the citizen, if there are not any citizens with virtue, we cannot realize the republic only by the institutions and procedures. So the third chapter will explores the citizen theory of republicanism. The dissertation firstly retrospects the classical citizen idea of republicanism in the history, and considers the modern republican citizenship conceptis betraying and surpassing the classical citizen idea. By this way we can get a basic reorganization of what is citizen. In the second parts of this chapter, we intend to consider the significance of citizen revival. Through inspecting the "human" imagines in the liberal nation and totalitarian nation, we find that in these nations, a lot of people have attained the citizenship by the constitution, but these 'citizen' only have the name of citizen, they actually have no the really citizen action. But the nation composed of these people cannot become a lasting political community. Because a strong and stable republic depends on not only all kinds of procedure techniques such as the law of liberal nation and delicate governed skills, but also depends on some political quality such as responsible ethics, social duty, patriotic and participation mechanism. Just on this point, in the 1970's the revival of the civic republicanism began to reiterate the significance of citizen in the political nation. The last part of this chapter will explore the practices of republican citizen theory, I summarize this practices as citizen politic. The citizen politic is a domination type, which based on the citizenship, participation, virtue and political freedom. This domination type is distinguished with the domination types which based on the all kinds of govern techniques, such as the delicate govern techniques in the totalitarian nation and regular legal procedure in the liberal nation. We will discuss the citizen politic from the citizenship, democracy participation, virtue and political freedom.The fourth chapter we will come to the end of this dissertation: how to construct the harmonious relationship between the nation and the citizen. This is a most foundational constitutional problem. On this question, although the projects of liberal nation and positive nation are contradicted with each other, their presumptions are consistent, that is the national power and citizen freedom is incompatible. In the practice, the liberal nation construct itself on the natural rights, so the scale would be partial to citizen; the positive nation is constructed on the values such as the national privilege, peoples' safety or the popular sovereignty, so the scale would be partial to nation. We have to make the choice between these contradicted values. But any choice, which is either this or that, only has the logic validity; the political practices often follow the practical reason. Just facing this dilemma, the founders of American demonstrated their grade political wisdom and original idea, they regarded the powerof government and human rights are the two basic values of the any constitutional nation, and they designed the institutions to realize the healthy relationship between the nation and the citizen, In the first parts of this chapter we will go back the history of American constitution to recognize that how the federals and American constitution to construct the harmonious relationship between the nation and the citizen. In the second part of this chapter we will go into the constitutional practices in the contemporary China, we intend to apply the constitutional interpretation to dig the original meaning of 'People's republic' in the 'The Constitution of PRC (1982) to explore the possibility of harmonious relationship between the nation and citizen.