Global Citizenship Configurations: How Political Regime Shapes Membership Rules around the World

Citizenship regimes are commonly classified as being either territorially or ethnoculturally inclusive following the extent to which states apply respectively ius soli and ius sanguinis principles to determine the attribution of citizenship at birth. Vink and Bauböck (2013) have questioned this dichotomy based on a regional dataset of 36 European countries and argued that territorial and ethnocultural inclusion should be viewed empirically distinct dimensions of citizenship regimes. In this paper we explore how citizenship regimes configure globally with regard to rules on birthright acquisition, ordinary naturalisation, facilitated acquisition and on the loss of citizenship. We use an original dataset based on coding of 11 indicators of citizenship laws in 2016 in 172 countries and explore variation by political regime. Based on preliminary analyses we identify two dimensions that structure citizenship regimes: a ‘birthright citizenship’ dimension structured by strength of ius sanguinis and ius soli birthright provisions, as well as an ‘individual rights’ dimension structured by residence requirements for ordinary naturalisation and individual right to voluntary renunciation of citizenship. We show that political regime is linked to variation between countries mostly on the second, but less on the first dimension.