Citizenship and State Transition.

Oxana Shevel

This chapter analyzes the national citizenship regimes adopted by newly independent states— that is, states first appearing on the world political map during the era of popular sovereignty— and factors that influence the content of these regimes. The chapter examines how the goal of attaining state sovereignty, different visions of and debates over the boundaries of the national community in whose name the new state is constituted, perceived implications of citizenship rules for political and economic power of different groups, and external actors, including other states in the region and international organizations, inform the content of citizenship regimes in new states. The chapter will highlight challenges, issues, and dynamics characteristic of new transition states more broadly, though most of the empirical illustration will come from the context of the fifteen successor states of the former Soviet Union. It contends that the politics of citizenship policymaking (meaning, a set of issues that impact the formation of citizenship rules, and groups whose status is at the center of domestic debates over citizenship rules) differ in the new states in important and systematic ways from the politics of citizenship policymaking in established ‘older’ states. Three particularly important differences will be highlighted and analyzed in the three sub- sections of this chapter.

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN Chapter 19 CITIZENSHIP AND STATE TRANSITION Oxana Shevel Introduction 407 Citizenship Regimes as a Tool for Achieving and Defending Sovereignty 410 Ethnicization of Citizenship Laws in New States 415 International Influences on Citizenship Rules in Transition States 420 Concluding Discussion 424 Introduction This chapter analyzes the national citizenship regimes adopted by newly independent states—that is, states first appearing on the world political map during the era of popular sovereignty—and factors that influence the content of these regimes. The chapter examines how the goal of attaining state sovereignty, different visions of and debates over the boundaries of the national community in whose name the new state is constituted, perceived implications of citizenship rules for political and economic power of different groups, and external actors, including other states in the region and international organizations, inform the content of citizenship regimes in new states. The chapter will highlight challenges, issues, and dynamics characteristic of new transition states more broadly, though most of the empirical illustration will oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 407 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN 408 oxana shevel come from the context of the fifteen successor states of the former Soviet Union. It contends that the politics of citizenship policymaking (meaning, a set of issues that impact the formation of citizenship rules, and groups whose status is at the center of domestic debates over citizenship rules) differ in the new states in important and systematic ways from the politics of citizenship policymaking in established ‘older’ states. Three particularly important differences will be highlighted and analyzed in the three sub-sections of this chapter. The first difference is the link between citizenship rules and attainment and safeguard of state sovereignty. New states that emerged during the course of the twentieth century in the wake of either decolonization or collapse of the former multinational federative states face the so-called ‘stateness problem’—the challenge of transitioning to democracy in a polity ‘when there are profoundly different views about the territorial boundaries of the political community’s state and who has the right of citizenship in that state.’ 1 The novelty of sudden statehood and the associated stateness problem create an intrinsic link between citizenship regime and state sovereignty since initial citizenship regimes in new states are created simultaneously with the process of state formation. By contrast, post-World War II citizenship reforms in established states have been taking place long after state sovereignty was established and the stateness problem solved. As the evidence from the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period makes clear, citizenship legislation is commonly viewed as an instrument to attain and defend state sovereignty, and its content is seen as something that can either strengthen or weaken sovereignty and territorial integrity—and thus the very existence—of the new state. This citizenship regimesovereignty-territoriality nexus thus adds another layer to the analysis and characterization of citizenship rules in new states, especially during the early stages of state transition. This will be discussed in the second section. The second important difference between new and old states relates to the question of which are the main group(s) whose status is at stake in the politics of citizenship regimes. If in longer established states citizenship debates are first and foremost about the status of relatively recent immigrants and their descendants, in the new states citizenship politics revolves around the status of the former fellow countrymen—citizens of the formerly common larger multinational state or empire. While new immigrants are also present in these states (and with time in some states new immigrants may become the main group at the center of citizenship politics, reducing the new/old state difference), initially this ‘foreign’ immigrant community is invariably small. Citizenship policymakers in transition states first and foremost focus on defining the constituent nation, with the key questions being if all or some of the former fellow citizens will be given right to citizenship in the new state and 1 Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 16. oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 408 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN citizenship and state transition 409 under what conditions, and whether some of those residing outside of the borders of the new states, in particular co-ethnics of the titular group abroad, should have the right to citizenship by virtue of belonging to the ‘imagined community’ of the nation.2 From this follows, as the third section will further elaborate, that ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’ characterization may need to be applied differently to citizenship rules in new and older states. That is to say, because in new states the group at the heart of citizenship politics are former citizens of a former common state, it is the treatment of this group that should be the main comparative yardstick. This section will use the post-Soviet experience to analyze factors that lead new states to adopt more and less ethnicized citizenship regimes toward former fellow citizens, in particular toward resident ethnic minorities and co-ethnics abroad. Finally, the third important difference between new and old states that is consequential for citizenship regimes concerns the role of international actors. The post-communist states in particular are unique in this regard because, unlike either Western states or new post-colonial states in Asia and Africa, the post-Soviet states have been legislating citizenship regimes in the shadow of international institutions. If in older states citizenship regimes were formed before international institutions with a mandate over citizenship matters were established, in the post-communist period institutions such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Council of Europe have worked to limit statelessness and promote non-discriminatory citizenship policies. The ability of international actors to achieve their objectives has been complicated by ‘ethnic unmixing’ through migration which unfolded as former multinational states began to disintegrate, prompting both voluntary and forced movement of people to their purported ethnic homelands.3 This migration complicated the application of international legal categories, to the point when the most basic distinction between immigrants and residents was no longer clear cut. Are co-ethnics who lived in another part of a common communist state during the communist era foreign immigrants in relation to their newly formed ethnic kin state if they return there? Or do they have a legitimate claim to membership in the new states of their ethnic ancestry? Do ethnic minorities in the newly formed states belong there by virtue of their residence? Or do they belong instead to their ‘ethnic homeland’ state? Or potentially to both? Or perhaps all citizens of the former multiethnic communist federal state have a right to claim belonging in any of the newly formed successor states?4 Drawing on examples from the post-Soviet region, 2 The term ‘imagined community’ is Benedict Anderson’s (Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991)). 3 Rogers Brubaker, ‘Migration of “Ethnic Unmixing” in the New Europe,’ International Migration Review 34, no. 4 (Winter, 1998): pp. 1047–1065. 4 Similar dilemmas presented themselves when earlier multinational empires, the Habsburg and the Ottoman, dissolved in 1918–1923. Successor states crafted rules for determining citizenship that mixed criteria of residence, co-ethnicity, and individual option rights for members of ethnic minorities to oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 409 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN 410 oxana shevel the fourth section will discuss the conditions under with international actors were able to affect the content of citizenship regimes. The concluding section will consider whether the post-Soviet experience analyzed in this chapter is indicative of the experience of other new states in the recent period, as well as the question at what point a new state ceases to be ‘new,’ and the politics of citizenship seizes to be distinct from the politics of citizenship in established older states. Citizenship Regimes as a Tool for Achieving and Defending Sovereignty When new states form as a result of political shocks such as decolonization or dissolution/collapse of former states, new states formulate initial citizenship regimes based on one of the following principles. The first is attribution of citizenship to all (legal) residents in the territory at a particular moment in time, such as declaration of independence or date of the adoption of the first citizenship law. This so-called ‘zero option’ was the basis for citizenship regimes in all former Soviet republics except Latvia and Estonia, which followed the second principle—a ‘restoration’ of citizenship to those who had been citizens of an independent predecessor state before annexation.5 Finally, the former Yugoslav republics and well as the two successor states of the former Czechoslovakia followed a third principle—attribution of citizenship to those who had been categorized as citizens of a federal entity of a predecessor state. These rules of primary attribution are an important component of citizenship regimes in new states. The choice of a particular rule is not a monocausal phenomenon, and as the post-Soviet experience in particular shows, in new states this choice is informed by policymakers’ reasoning over the issue of state sovereignty. The experience of the former Soviet republics that began to craft citizenship regimes before independence was formally achieved is particularly instructive. live in their kin states. In the case of the Ottoman Empire, population transfers were seen to be part of the ‘solution’ (Igor Štiks, Nations and Citizens in Yugoslavia and the Post-Yugoslav States: One Hundred Years of Citizenship (London, New York: Bloomsbrury Academic, 2015)); Harris Mylonas, The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-nationals, Refugees, and Minorities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Rogers Brubaker, ‘Citizenship Struggles in Soviet Successor States,’ International Migration Review 26, no. 2 (Summer, 1992): pp. 269–291. 5 oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 410 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN citizenship and state transition 411 Unlike in Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia, there was no formalized citizenship of the constituent republics in the USSR. The concept of republican citizenship existed, but union republics did not have their own citizenship laws and republican citizenship was fully subsumed into Soviet citizenship.6 The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR) was the first to adopt a republican citizenship law already in November 1989. In Estonian and Latvian SSRs citizenship legislation also became a key issue of political importance as movement for independence gained momentum in the late perestroika years and the republican Supreme Soviets proclaimed sovereignty in 1988–1989.7 Except for Armenia (1995), Georgia (1993), Kyrgyzstan (1993), Tajikistan (1995), Turkmenistan (1992), and Uzbekistan (1992), the remaining nine republics adopted first citizenship regulations before the USSR, and with it Soviet citizenship, formally ceased to exist in December 1991.8 Space constraints don’t allow us to analyze all states, but some examples can be given to illustrate how political elites saw citizenship regimes as such (and not just specific provisions of these regimes) as having the ability to strengthen or weaken the prospects of independent statehood. In Ukraine, for example, the idea of a republican citizenship law was first introduced in June 1990, when the Supreme Soviet of Ukrainian SSR debated draft sovereignty declaration. In these deliberations, the clause ‘Ukrainian SSR has its own citizenship’ became the single most contested part of the declaration. The legislators spent more time discussing it than any other clause of the declaration, including such controversial ones as Ukraine’s right to its own armed forces. Stenographic records of the article-by-article debate of the declaration takes up 265 pages, 66 of which (or 25 percent) are devoted to the debate of the clause According to Article 1 of the 1990 Citizenship law of the USSR, ‘every citizen of a union republic is simultaneously a citizen of the USSR.’ 7 Citizenship policy in Estonia and Latvia has been a subject of many studies. Comprehensive accounts of the early years in particular can be found in George Ginsburgs, ‘The Citizenship of the Baltic States,’ Journal of Baltic Studies 21, no. 1 (Spring, 1990): pp. 3–26; Andras Fehervary, ‘Citizenship, Statelessness, and Human Rights: Recent Developments in the Baltic States,’ International Journal of Refuge Law 5, no. 3 (1993): pp. 392–423; Lowell Barrington, ‘To Exclude or Not to Exclude: Citizenship Policies in Newly Independent States’ (PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1995), online ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (304216259), http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/304216259?accountid=11311; Judith Skolnick, ‘Grappling With the Legacy of Soviet Rule: Citizenship and Human Rights in the Baltic States,’ University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review 54, no. 2 (Spring, 1996): pp. 387–417; Graham Smith, ‘The Ethnic Democracy Thesis and the Citizenship Question in Estonia and Latvia,’ Nationalities Papers 24, no. 2 (1996): pp. 199–216; Lowell Barrington, ‘Understanding Citizenship Policy in the Baltic States’, in Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer, eds., From Migrants to Citizens (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000), pp. 253–301; Jeff Chinn and Lise Truex, ‘The Question of Citizenship in the Baltics,’ Journal of Democracy 7, no. 1 (January, 1996): pp. 133–147. 8 In Estonia and Latvia the first full-fledged citizenship laws were adopted after 1991 (in 1995 and 1994, respectively), but these two states created a legislative basis for regulating citizenship already in the late Soviet period on the basis of the inter-war citizenship laws and parliamentary resolutions on these laws’ implementation (for details see sources in note 7). 6 oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 411 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN 412 oxana shevel ‘The Ukrainian SSR has its own citizenship.’9 Analysis of the debate further shows that while proponents of Ukrainian independence supported the clause exactly as a symbolic step toward an independent state, supporters of Ukraine’s membership in the Soviet Union opposed the very idea of the citizenship law on the same general logic: not having a citizenship law made the phantom of a Ukrainian state fully separate from the Soviet Union less likely.10 The citizenship regime-state sovereignty connection can also be observed in Estonia. The Estonian evidence illuminates the rationale behind inclusion or exclusion of resident minorities. Estonia is commonly grouped with Latvia as a country that adopted a ‘restored’ citizenship model, extending citizenship only to those with a family link to a citizen of the inter-war independent predecessor state. This principle, while formally non-ethnic, in reality excluded most of the non-titular resident minorities from citizenship. However, Estonia differed from Latvia, and shares a commonality with more inclusive Lithuania, with a provision in the initial citizenship law that grants the right to citizenship to all those Russian speakers without connections to the inter-war state who registered as Estonian citizens before independence was achieved.11 In the Soviet period this act of registration was purely symbolic, as such registration— a civic initiative organized by the Congress of Estonia, a non-governmental organization that took a more radical pro-independence view than the official Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR—had no legal consequences under thenexisting legal order. But this symbolic act clearly signaled support for independent Estonian statehood on the part of those who chose to register, and this loyalty to state independence was later rewarded by the newly independent Estonian state. Just as political loyalties of the Russian speakers who migrated to the Baltic states in the Soviet period were viewed with suspicion, and this perceived lack of loyalty to the newly independent state contributed to the choice of a ‘restoration’ rather than ‘zero option’ citizenship regimes, in Estonia those who showed their support for state independence through the symbolic process of citizenship registration in the Soviet period were allowed to get citizenship in the newly independent Estonian state since they were seen as posing no danger to the sovereign statehood. A similar regulation was adopted in Lithuania. The first citizenship law of November 1989 which preceded Lithuanian state 9 Author’s calculation from the Supreme Soviet bulletins containing stenographic reports for the period in question. 10 I analyze the Ukrainian case in greater detail in Oxana Shevel, ‘The Politics of Citizenship Policy in New States,’ Comparative Politics 41, no. 3 (April, 2009): pp. 273–291. 11 Vadim Poleshchuk and Priit Jarve, ‘Country Report: Estonia’ (Florence: RSCAS, EUDO Citizenship Observatory, 2013); Lowell Barrington, ‘Nations, States, and Citizens: An Explanation of the Citizenship Policies in Estonia and Lithuania,’ Review of Central and East European Law 21, no. 2 1995): pp. 103–148. In the 1990s 21,101 people received Estonian citizenship this way. (Estonia.eu, ‘Citizenship’, November 1, 2016, online http://estonia.eu/about-estonia/society/citizenship.html). oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 412 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN citizenship and state transition 413 independence gave two years to those who were residents of Lithuania but not pre-1940 citizens or descendents to opt for Lithuanian citizenship. This option at the time Lithuanian independence was not yet secure was also interpreted as a manifestation of loyalty to Lithuanian statehood, and those who opted in before independence were recognized as citizens by the first post-independence citizenship law of December 1991.12 Another aspect of citizenship regimes in new states informed by state sovereignty concerns is policy on dual citizenship. Unlike in established nation-states where battles over dual citizenship in post-WWII era typically concern rights of co-ethnic emigrants or ethnically ‘other’ immigrants, gender equality, and/or perceived economic costs and benefits of dual citizenship, in new states the politics of dual citizenship is first and foremost about sovereignty. More specifically, concerns for safeguarding state sovereignty, territorial integrity, and associated fears of possibly subversive actions by other states, in particular neighboring states, have been a key factor behind opposition to dual citizenship, while moves towards acceptance of dual citizenship that several states in the region made during the last decade were conditional and crafted in ways that continued to address sovereignty preservation concerns. Examples from Ukraine, the Baltic States, and Kyrgyzstan illustrate this logic at work. In Ukraine the issue of dual citizenship has been one of the most if not the most contested citizenship regime elements since the summer of 1991, when the first citizenship law came up for debate in the legislature of Ukrainian SSR.13 Communists and other leftists, who openly supported restoration of the Soviet Union and/or formation of a new joint state with Russia, strongly favored dual citizenship, perceiving a connection between the single/dual citizenship issue and future prospects of the Ukrainian statehood. Such linkage is evident, for example, from the 1998 electoral program of the Slavic Party that stood for a union of Russia and Ukraine in a single state. The party program reads: ‘the introduction of the dual citizenship principle is the way towards one CIS citizenship.’14 The dual citizenship provision came just two votes short of being adopted in the fall of 1991, but then and ever since opponents of dual citizenship were able to uphold the single citizenship principle. Statements by Ukrainian elites make it abundantly clear that the core of the opposition to dual citizenship stems from fears of political consequences of dual citizenship with Russia in particular for Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. Thus, in a Neringa Klumbyte, ‘Memory, Identity, and Citizenship in Lithuania,’ Journal of Baltic Studies 41, no. 3 (September, 2010): pp. 295–313,; Egidijs Kuris, ‘Country Report: Lithuania’ (Florence: RSCAS, EUDO Citizenship Observatory, 2010); Vesna Popovski, National Minorites and Citizenship Rights in Lithuania, 1988-93 (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 2000). 13 For details see Shevel (n 10). 14 Quoted after party program as printed in Kyïvs’ke naukove tovarystvo imeni Petra Mohyly and Analitychno-doslidnyts’kyi tsentr ‘ANOD’, eds., Politychni partii Ukrainy (Kyiv: Tovarystvo ‘K.I.S.’, 1998), p. 71. 12 oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 413 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN 414 oxana shevel 1994 article written by two senior officials of the Ukrainian Ministry of Nationalities and Migration, the officials bluntly stated their belief that ‘attempts by our northern neighbor to put a dual citizenship clause in state agreements are not only misguided but also too dangerous, with long-term consequences.’15 In a similar vein, the Head of Citizenship Directorate of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration has argued that dual citizenship could ‘undermine the government’s ability to exercise sovereignty,’16 while the former speaker of the parliament was the most blunt: ‘if we have dual citizenship, we will not have the state.’17 The greater acceptance of dual citizenship in the 2000s is clearly discernible across the post-Soviet region, but it has not been unconditional, and states continued to guard against perceived sovereignty threats. Perhaps the most telling in this regard are laws that explicitly allow dual citizenship with some countries but not others. The latest Kyrgyz and Latvian laws are telling examples. In 2007 Kyrgyzstan explicitly recognized the possibility of dual citizenship, but this reform also explicitly forbade (Article 22 paragraph 1 of the 21 May 2007 citizenship law) dual citizenship with bordering states: China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, where there is a threat, even if hypothetical, that dual citizenship might lead to territorial claims and threaten state sovereignty, while no such hypothetical threat exists from dual citizenship with non-contiguous states. Latvia instituted a similar country-based approach in May 2013, when it allowed dual citizenship (both for ethnic Latvians and for immigrants) with Western states that Latvia sees as its geopolitical allies (EU and NATO members, and also Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil), but not with Russia or other former Soviet states.18 Lithuanian legislators voted for similar rules in 2008 and again in 2010, but because of the 2006 Constitutional Court ruling against widespread dual citizenship, the president vetoed both of these laws.19 Attempts to introduce conditional dual citizenship continue, with the current government pledging to find a way to legalize dual citizenship by the end of 2019.20 Such a change won’t be easy, however, since it requires a constitutional amendment, which in turn requires a referendum. 15 Nina Sokil and Vasyl’ Hubarets, ‘Chym nebezpechne i komu zahrozhue podviine hromadianstvo,’ Holos Ukrainy, 17 February 1994. 16 Petro Chaly, ‘Element derzhavnosti—instytut hromadianstva,’ Polityka i Chas (November 21, 2001): pp. 38–46. 17 Chas 2000, February 28, 2003. 18 Peter Roudik, ‘Latvia: Extension of Citizenship to Emigrants,’ Library of Congress Global Legal Monitor, 2013, online http://www.loc.gov/lawweb/servlet/lloc_news?disp3_l205403732_text. 19 ‘President Vetoes Dual Citizenship,’ The Lithuanian Tribune, November 18, 2010, online http:// www.lithuaniatribune.com/4481/president-vetoes-dual-citizenship-20104481/. 20 ‘V planakh pravitel’stva—do 2020 uzakonit’ dvoinoie grazhdanstvo,’ Delfi, February 28, 2017, online http://ru.delfi.lt/news/live/v-planah-pravitelstva-do-2020-goda-uzakonit-dvojnoegrazhdanstvo.d?id=73887902. oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 414 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN citizenship and state transition 415 Ethnicization of Citizenship Laws in New States Much of the existing literature that analyzes citizenship regimes’ exclusiveness, or ethnicization, focuses on Western states, and, reflecting the key issue at stake in societal and elite debates over citizenship rules in most Western democracies, ‘focuses almost exclusively on access to citizenship for immigrants.’ 21 This chapter argues however that because in new states the group at the heart of citizenship politics are former citizens of a formerly common state rather than immigrants from other states, it is the treatment of this group that ought to be the main comparative yardstick, and an ethnic/civic assessment and comparisons (cross-national or crosstemporal) ought to be applied first and foremost to rules governing access to citizenship for this group. More specifically, there are two broad categories at the heart of citizenship politics in new states: first, residents at the time of independence who held citizenship of the prior larger common state, and, second, non-residents at the time of independence who nevertheless can claim some connection to new state. The first category (of residents) comprises two distinct sub-categories—residents who belong to the titular majority of the new state, and long-term resident ethnic minorities. The second group (of non-residents with a claimed connection to the new state) also has two sub-categories: co-ethnics of the titular group, and ethnic ‘other’ who have a family linkage to the territory of the new state (usually through an ancestor’s birth or residence on the territory).22 Excluded from this categorization are recent immigrants from third countries, as well as residents of the former common state who have no connection to the new state (either ethnic or territorial). This is not to say that access to citizenship for the excluded groups is altogether irrelevant, but just to highlight that the politics of citizenship in new states is not centered on the status of these groups (something that may change over time, as will be discussed in the concluding section). Maarten Peter Vink and Rainer Bauboeck, ‘Citizenship Configurations: Analysing the Multiple Purposes of Citizenship Regimes in Europe,’ Comparative European Politics 11, no. 5 (September, 2013): pp. 621–648, pp. 622–623. At the same time, more recent studies categorize and compare a broader set of citizenship indicators, including rules regulating birthright access to citizenship, facilitated access to citizenship for co-ethnics, loss of citizenship and more. See, for example, Costica Dumbrava, Nationality, Citizenship and Ethno-Cultural Belonging: Preferential Membership Policies in Europe, Palgrave studies in citizenship transitions (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) (distinguishing four modes of acquisition and loss (birthright citizenship, ordinary and preferential naturalization, and rules of voluntary and involuntary loss of citizenship)). See also Vink in this volume (reviewing existing typologies of citizenship regimes). 22 The non-residents comprising the second group could be citizens of a former common state or long-term emigrants in third countries, although in domestic debates in new states it is usually the situation of citizens of the former common state that attracts the most attention. 21 oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 415 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN 416 oxana shevel So how do citizenship rules regulating access to citizenship to the two categories (and four sub-categories) highlighted above vary in new states, and what are the reasons behind this variation? To begin, post-Soviet citizenship regimes vary substantially on whether they contain any provisions privileging co-ethnic of the titular majority group or excluding resident ethnic minorities. Citizenship regimes that do not contain any such provisions can be considered non-ethnicized. Citizenship laws of seven post-Soviet states (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine) do not contain any clauses giving preferential access to citizenship for co-ethnics, and ethnic minorities who were citizens of the USSR and were permanent residents at the time of independence were recognized as citizens in these states. Laws of eight remaining states contain provisions that give various degrees of preferential treatment to co-ethnics (Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan), and Latvia and Estonia further excluded some of the permanently resident ethnic minorities from the initial body of citizens.23 Inspired by Brubaker’s influential study of France and Germany and his argument that historically developed conceptions of national self-understanding result in distinct citizenship models that would be more or less inclusive of the ethnic ‘other,’24 some accounts see post-communist states as having more ethnicized citizenship regimes that Western states due to the fact that they are primarily selfdefined blood communities that exclude from the collective self-image of the nation ‘newcomers or the children of newcomers with no blood ties or historic connections to the country.’25 However, it is not always the case that a historically formed conception of the nation determines the content of citizenship rules in new states. Space constraints do not allow analysis of all post-Soviet cases, but a few examples pointing to the presence of different determinants of citizenship rules can be noted. One such example is Ukraine where a citizenship regime that does not contain any provisions privileging co-ethnics of the titular majority group or excluding resident ethnic minorities, and where birth or residence on state territory are the main principles in defining the original body of citizens emerge not due to a historically formed civic-territorial understanding of the nation but essentially by default. In the fall of 1991, in the context of political battles between nationalists favoring privileges for co-ethnics of the titular group and unreformed communists opposing the idea 23 This variation is documented from the author’s analysis of the tests of the first set of citizenship laws of the post-Soviet states published in International Organization for Migration, Sbornik zakonodatel’nykh aktov gosudarstv SNG i Baltii po voprosam migratsii, grazhdanstva i sviazannym s nimi aspektami (Geneva: International Organization for Migration, 1995). 24 Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 5. 25 André Liebich, ‘Is There (Still) an East-West Divide in the Conception of Citizenship in Europe?,’ in Rainer Bauböck and André Liebich, eds., Is There (Still) an East-West Divide in the Conception of Citizenship in Europe? (Florence: RSCAS, 2010), pp. 1–4, p. 3. oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 416 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN citizenship and state transition 417 of independent Ukrainian statehood and separate citizenship law as such, a purely territorial criteria for defining eligibility for citizenship emerged as the only acceptable compromise for all involved groups. For nationalists, having a citizenship law, even if the law did not grant preferential treatment to ethnic Ukrainians, was a key goal since the institution of citizenship by its very existence served to strengthen sovereignty, while territorial law legitimized the state and the state’s claim over the territory. Communists, unable to derail the law altogether or institute dual citizenship with Russia, settled for a territorial law without any privileges for ethnic Ukrainians as the least bad option. The third politically relevant group in Ukraine, ideologically amorphous old nomenklatura which jumped on the bandwagon of the independence movement in the late Soviet period, saw advantages in the territorially based law for instrumental reasons. Such a law gave it a sovereign state to rule, and supporting such a law was also a useful strategy for electoral purposes as it allowed the nomenklatura to position itself as a desirable moderate alternative to the ‘radicals’ on the left and the right.26 Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Tajikistan illustrate a second pathway to territorially based citizenship regimes without provisions excluding minorities or privileging co-ethnics emerging. Quite surprisingly, this pathway is through a violent conflict over territory that all these states experienced in the late Soviet or early post-Soviet period. A combination of ethnic conflict with a non-ethnic citizenship regime goes against arguments such as Joppke’s that unconsolidated borders are more likely to lead to ethnicized citizenship regimes,27 or Weil’s that non-ethnic citizenship is ‘impossible, even unthinkable’ in states with large ethnic minorities and unconsolidated state borders.28 In the new post-Soviet states the opposite logic seems to be at work: states that face actual or perceived challenges to their territorial integrity come to see a territorial citizenship regime without any ethnic criteria (be it to include co-ethnics abroad or to exclude domestic minorities) as a countermeasure against challenges to territorial integrity. Differently put, by defining the body of citizens through the territory of the state, which means extending citizenship to resident ethnic minorities and not extending it to ethnic kin abroad, new states legitimize sovereignty claims over desired territory. This logic was at work in states where ethnic conflict already erupted, like the four noted above, as well as in Ukraine where in the early 1990s there was no open conflict but a probability of such conflict over Crimea. In debates over citizenship the tensions in Crimea were regularly cited as a reason for a territorially based non-ethnicized citizenship regime which would solidify Ukraine’s claim over the territory. This logic outlives 26 For a more detailed discussion of how interests of these three political groups in Ukraine collided and aligned during the debates preceding the adoption of the initial citizenship law see Shevel (n 10). 27 Christian Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010), p. 51. 28 Patrick Weil, ‘Access to Citizenship: A Comparison of Twenty-Five Nationality Laws,’ in Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer, eds., Citizenship Today: Global Perspectives and Practices (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001), pp. 17–35, p. 33. oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 417 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN 418 oxana shevel the immediate post-independence period, as none of these four states subsequently added ethnicized provisions to citizenship laws. It appears that as long as there is even a hypothetical threat to state sovereignty and territorial integrity (which in the content of a new state usually means an actually or potentially irredentist neighboring state, and/or a geographically concentrated resident minority that is feared to be secessionist), this threat contributes to the adoption and maintenance of territorial rather than ethnic criteria for citizenship. Russia’s experience suggests a third possible pathway to territorial and less ethnicized citizenship—the objective to exercise influence over territory larger than the existing state. Territorial criteria for initial citizenship determination Russia adopted in late 1991 reflected the perceived link between territorial principle in citizenship rules and legitimacy of claims over a territory, although here the territory in question was the former USSR and not just new Russia. The 1991 Russian citizenship law gave the right to Russian citizenship to all citizens of the USSR, and by doing so asserted Russia’s ‘special interest’ over the entire territory of the former Soviet Union. This was not the only concern, as the Russian lawmakers also were responding to nationalizing policies in the former Soviet republics than made many ethnic Russians and Russian speakers anxious, and in many cases targeted them for discrimination. Still, debates over citizenship in the Russian republic’s legislature in the fall of 1991 show that those who advocated maintaining some form of political unity of the former Soviet region under Russia’s leadership saw the citizenship regime that made USSR citizenship as eligibility criteria for new Russian citizenship as a means towards this end.29 The above examples show that, rather than being a reflection of historically formed non-ethnic and territorial understanding of the nation, territorial and non-ethnicized citizenship regimes can result from the inability of domestic actors to agree on any other principle, from desire to hold on to territory when territorial control is threatened by secessionist conflict, or from the goal to expand territorial control—or at least institutionalize influence—beyond existing borders. Finally, in states where citizenship legislation does contain provisions giving preferential treatment to ethno-cultural kin reasons behind the emergence of these provisions are also varied, and do not always result from a historically formed and broadly shared ethnic understanding of the nation. Particularly puzzling are ethnicized clauses in citizenship legislation of states where ethnic nationalism is weak The politics of citizenship at the time the 1991 citizenship law was adopted in Russia is discussed in detail in several studies, including George Ginsburgs, ‘Citizenship and State Succession in Russia’s Treaty and Domestic Repertory,’ Review of Central and East European Law 21, no. 5 (1995): pp. 433–482; Oxana Shevel, ‘The Politics of Citizenship Policy in Post-Soviet Russia,’ Post-Soviet Affairs 21, no. 1 (January–March, 2012): pp. 111–147; Igor Zevelev, Russia and its New Diasporas (Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 2001); Peter Waisberg, ‘Redefining Russian: Identity, Dual Citizenship, and the Politics of Post-Soviet Russian Citizenship’ (MA Dissertation, Carleton University, 1995), online https://curve.carleton.ca/f5ec0c61-2fe2-46d6-84d2-1dfb64d7878d. 29 oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 418 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN citizenship and state transition 419 since in such states there is neither a strong ethnic nationalist party to push for ethnicized citizenship rules nor a historically formed and broadly shared ethnic understanding of the nation to underpin such rules. Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan fall in this category. Belarus is a particularly interesting example given that ethnic Belarussian nationalism is broadly recognized as being weak, both historically and in the post-independence period. Yes, Article 17 of the 1991 citizenship law grants ethnic Belarusians the right to citizenship under simplified rules (without fulfilling residency, income, or absence of other citizenship requirement). Just as in Ukraine, in Belarus the broader domestic political context at the time of the law’s adoption determined this outcome. The November 1991 law was debated in the most open political climate Belarus has seen, during late perestroika, after the failed antiGorbachev conservative coup, and before the authoritarian regime would be consolidated under President Lukashenka a few years later. The uncertainty of the early transition period, including uncertainty about the actual strength and electoral potential of political actors and groups, helps to explain how a numerically small and politically weak Belarussian anti-communist and ethnically minded opposition was able to insert these clauses into citizenship rules by being able to credibly present itself as a political force of growing importance and to bargain its support for other pieces of legislation debated at the same time.30 In Russia citizenship rules in recent years also became more ethnicized. Since April 2014, the so-called ‘compatriots’ are entitled to Russian citizenship under simplified rules. The definition of compatriots in the law has been purposefully ambiguous since the concept was first introduced in 1999,31 but there is a clear ethnic tint to it as compatriots are defined as those having affinity with Russian culture and who are fluent in the Russian language.32 The Russian case is interesting as it shows how citizenship policy can simultaneously pursue a more ethnic-oriented approach and a territorial ‘imperial’ one. A legal category purposefully defined ambiguously enables policies consistent with both more territorial ‘imperial’ interpretations (as the concept of ‘compatriots’ could be extended to most residents of the former Soviet 30 Author’s findings from an ongoing research project. More generally on the flux and profound uncertainty of the transition period see Valerie Bunce and Maria Csanadi, ‘Uncertainty in the Transition: Post-Communism in Hungary,’ East European Politics and Society 7, no. 1 (Spring, 1993): pp. 240–275. For uncertainly induced competitiveness in Belarus in particular in the early 1990s see Lucan Way, ‘Deer in Headlights: Incompetence and Weak Authoritarianism after the Cold War,’ Slavic Review 71, no. 3 (Fall, 2012): pp. 619–646, , online http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.71.3.0619. 31 For more on the purposes behind this ambiguity see Oxana Shevel, ‘Russian Nation-Building from Yel’tsin to Medvedev: Civic, Ethnic, or Purposefully Ambiguous?,’ Europe-Asia Studies 63, no. 2 (2011): pp. 179–202. 32 On ethnicization of Russian nation-building policies in recent years see Helge Blakkisrud, ‘Blurring the Boundary Between Civic and Ethnic: The Kremlin’s New Approach to National Identity Under Putin’s Third Term,’ in Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud, eds., The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism, 2000-15 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), pp. 249–274. oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 419 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN 420 oxana shevel republics), and also policies favoring a more narrow cultural-linguistic group, as such an interpretation (including casting just ethnic Russians as compatriots) could also be consistent with the letter of the law. All of the above examples show how the broader domestic context and the dynamics of post-communist transition in the presence of the stateness problem in a given state can explain citizenship policy outcomes, including presence and absence of more ethnicized clauses, more accurately than variables such as historically formed understandings of the nation or the strength of ethnic nationalist parties. The experience of new post-Soviet states invites further probing into causes of more and less ethnicized citizenship rules in new states, as the question remains to what extent there is a systematic set of factors behind the extent of ethnicization of citizenship regimes in new states. International Influences on Citizenship Rules in Transition States As noted in the introduction, the role of international actors is an important factor that sets new transition states, especially in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, apart from established older states. In established states international influences generally are not an important cause of citizenship rules. Western states adopted initial citizenship rules decades and in some cases more than a century before the end of World War II and before international human rights, norms, and institutions rose in importance. International law acknowledges that criteria for granting citizenship are a matter of state sovereignty, and ‘leaves it to each State to lay down the rules governing the grant of its own nationality.’33 Since World War II, however, international norms are credited with contributing to the expansion of dual citizenship in particular in Western democracies, and to some degree also in the developing world.34 International rules and norms are also credited with The International Court of Justice ruling in Nottebohm (Leichtenstein vs. Guatemala), judgment of 6 April 1955, online http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/18/2674.pdf. 34 Thomas Faist and Peter Kivisto, eds., Dual Citizenship in Global Perspective: From Unitary to Multiple Citizenship (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Randall Hansen and Patrick Weil, Dual Nationality, Social Rights, and Federal Citizenship in the US and Europe: The Reinvention of Citizenship (New York: Berghahn Books, 2002); Tanja Brondsted Sejersen, ‘ “I Vow to Thee My Countries”—The Expansion of Dual Citizenship in the 21st Century,’ International Migration Review 42, no. 3 (Fall, 2008): pp. 523–549. 33 oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 420 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN citizenship and state transition 421 contributing to reforms of citizenship regimes that brought about gender equality and reduction of statelessness.35 In the post-communist transition states international rules and international actors such as the EU, Council of Europe, the OSCE, and the UNHCR have been important players in citizenship politics since the early-mid 1990s. Since 1997, the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Nationality has been the main international instrument setting standards of citizenship policy for member states, which includes most (nine of the fifteen) of the post-Soviet states. The EU conditionality has been recognized as a particularly important causal factor in liberalization of citizenship regimes in states wishing to join the EU,36 most notably in Latvia and Estonia where the initial citizenship laws were the most exclusive, disenfranchising resident ethnic minorities.37 The questions how exactly, under what conditions, and through what mechanisms international pressures impact citizenship regimes in new states is debated. This section will briefly address some important aspects of these debates, namely: whether international pressures promote more civic-territorial as opposed to ethnic citizenship rules; through what mechanisms international pressures translate into domestic policy changes; and whether and how the power of international influences varies (over time and/or across cases). On the first question—whether international actors push for non-ethnicized citizenship rules—the evidence from transition states offers some surprises. A number of international legal instruments prohibit ethnic and racial discrimination. These instruments include the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Article 1), the 1950 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR, Article 14), and the 1997 European Convention on Nationality (Article 5). These non-discrimination criteria do not mean, however, that international law mandates non-ethnicized and condemns ethnicized citizenship rules as a matter of course. International law prohibits only such a distinction in treatment that amounts to discrimination, while differences in treatment that have ‘objective and reasonable justification’ are nondiscriminatory.38 While some lawyers argue that provisions of citizenship laws that 35 Sejersen (n 33); Maarten P. Vink and Gerard-Rene de Groot, ‘Citizenship Attribution in Western Europe: International Framework and Domestic Trends,’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36, no. 5 (May, 2010): pp. 713–734. 36 Judith Kelley, Ethnic Politics in Europe: The Power of Norms and Incentives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 37 Barrington, ‘To Exclude or Not to Exclude’ (n 7); Kelley (n 36); Vello Pettai, ‘Estonia and Latvia: International Influences on Citizenship and Minority Integration,’ in Jan Zielonka and Alex Pravda, eds., Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe, volume 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 257–280. 38 As one international lawyer explained citing a European Court of Justice ruling, ‘the difference in treatment is only discriminatory when it has no objective and reasonable justification: if it does not pursue a “legitimate aim” or if there is not a “reasonable relationship of proportionality” between the means employed and the aim thought to be realized’ (Eva Ersbøll, citing the European Court of Justice ruling in the case of Abdulaziz, Cabales and Balkandali, (Series A, no. 94), in Eva Ersbøll, ‘The oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 421 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN 422 oxana shevel give preferential treatment to a particular ethnic group ‘are problematic in view of Article 5(1) of the 1997 European Convention on Nationality’ because they ‘could be classified as positive discrimination based on ethnic origin,’39 other legal experts argue that in the post-Soviet context provisions granting citizenship rights to coethnics are in fact desirable since their absence carried with it a risk of statelessness.40 Avoidance of statelessness and respect of the principle of a ‘genuine and effective link’ between an individual and the state when determining citizenship eligibility are key principles of the international legal instruments on citizenship.41 The activities of international citizenship watchdogs in the post-Soviet region confirm that these organizations were primarily concerned with eliminating statelessness and ensuring that all long-term residents of the newly independent states have a right to citizenship in these states. As long as national citizenship legislation achieved these two objectives, international organizations (IOs) did not pressure the post-Soviet states to abandon ethnicity as a criterion for granting citizenship under simplified rules. The position the IOs took in the Baltic states is illustrative of this approach. Lithuanian citizenship legislation was the only one of the three that IOs did not criticize. However, the Lithuanian citizenship law contains an ethnic criterion and grants preferential treatment to ethnic Lithuanians.42 Latvian and Estonian legislation similarly allowed co-ethnics to acquire citizenship under simplified rules, but used inter-war citizenship status as a criterion for determining the initial body of Principle of Non-Discrimination in Mattes Relating to National Law—A Need for Clarification,’ 2nd European Conference on Nationality ‘Challanges to Nation and International Law on Nationlity at the Beginning of the New Millenium’ (Strasbourg, 2001), online http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/standardsetting/nationality/Conference%202%20(2001)Proceedings.pdf. 39 Gerard Rene de Groots, ‘Conditions for the Acquisition of Nationality by Peration of the Law Ex Lege or by Lodging a Declaration of Option,’ 2nd European Conference on Nationality ‘Challanges to Nation and International Law on Nationlty at the Beginning of the New Millenium’ (Strasbourg, 2001), pp. 65–93, pp. 83, 90, online http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/standardsetting/nationality/Conference%20 2%20(2001)Proceedings.pdf. 40 Thus, Michele Iogna-Prat, Senior Legal Adviser of the UNHCR’s Division of International Protection, reasoned that, given the fact that at the time of USSR disintegration co-ethnics of one republic lived in another republic, many such individuals were in danger of becoming stateless if they did not receive citizenship of the republic of their residence and citizenship law in their homeland republics did not grant citizenship rights to co-ethnics (Michel Iogna-Prat, Nationality Laws in Former Soviet Republics (Geneva: UNHCR, 1993), p. 25). 41 For a discussion of international legal instruments pertaining to citizenship that highlight the central importance of these two principles, see Carol Batchelor, ‘Statelessness and the Problem of Resolving Nationality Status,’ International Journal of Refugee Law 10, no. 1–2 (1998): pp. 156–183; Council of Europe, European Convention on Nationality and Explanatory Report (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1997); Committee of Experts on Nationality, Council of Europe, Statelessness in Relation to State Succession. Feasibility Study. The Necessity of an Additional Instrument to the European Convention on Nationality (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2001). 42 Article 2 paragraph 3 of the 2002 Lithuanian citizenship law uses the language ‘persons of Lithuanian origin’ which effectively means ethnicity since territorial origin from Lithuania and citizenship in inter-war Lithuania are treated in different paragraphs of Article 2. Similar provision was contained in Article 17 paragraph 2 of the 1991 Lithuanian citizenship law. oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 422 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN citizenship and state transition 423 citizens. International actors criticized this non-ethnic principle for determining the initial body of citizens in Latvia and Estonia because it excluded from citizenship many long-term residents of Latvia and Estonia whose ancestors were not citizens of interwar Latvia and Estonia. Even though the excluded residents were for the most part ethnically non-Latvian/Estonian, the IOs objected to their exclusion first and foremost because they were long-term residents. Lithuanian citizenship law meanwhile allowed all permanent residents to become Lithuanian citizens, and additionally made Lithuanian ethnicity an eligibility criterion for simplified citizenship acquisition. International watchdogs likewise did not criticize citizenship laws of five other non-Baltic former Soviet republics which also contain provisions privileging co-ethnics in citizenship acquisition because the zero option principle of the law gave access to citizenship to long-term residents and thus satisfied the criterion of ‘genuine and effective’ link. The experience of post-Soviet transition states thus highlights that ethnicization is a matter of degree, as well as permissibility of a certain degree of ethnicization under international law. Whether and how international actors have impacted citizenship regimes of nonEU candidate states is another question generating scholarly debate. Some studies have found that international actors can socialize citizenship policymaking elites in non-accession states into international norms on citizenship, and promote policy liberalization this way. Checkel made this argument about Ukraine, contending that IOs (in particular the Council of Europe), socialized citizenship policymaking elites in the Ukrainian Presidential Administration into learning, embracing, and promoting the Council of Europe’s norms on citizenship.43 At the same time, this author’s research on citizenship regime transformation in Ukraine reached a different conclusion, finding that international actors’ influence on the Ukrainian citizenship regime took the form of neither conditionality nor socialization, nor did preferences of the international actors remain unchanged while domestic actors were made to change their position.44 Instead, in the process of interacting with each other in the mid-1990s, both international actors and Ukrainian political elites changed their original preferences on the question of how statelessness can be avoided. The final outcome—a set of legal changes adopted in the end of the 1990s and early 2000s that largely eliminated statelessness in Ukraine—reflected this new compromise. The outcome was thus an internationally compliant citizenship policy, but this result did not follow from either a unidirectional international pressure on the Ukrainian actors or domestic actors’ acquiescence or socialization into these pressures. Mechanisms of international influences, in particular in states where the carrot of EU membership is not available, deserve further investigation. 43 Jeffrey Checkel, ‘Social Learning and European Identity Change,’ International Organizations 55, no. 5 (Summer, 2001): pp. 553–588. 44 See Shevel (n 10). See also Oxana Shevel, Migration, Refugee Policy, and State Building in Postcommunist Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), chapter 4. oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 423 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN 424 oxana shevel Another important issue concerning international influences in new states pertains to timing: does the influence of international actors increase, decrease, or remain unchanged as new states mature? In the post-Soviet states that adopted citizenship laws relatively early—in the late Soviet or the first years of the postSoviet period—these initial citizenship regimes were adopted without much if any international involvement. It took time for international actors to familiarize themselves with the consequences of the first citizenship laws in the region and to form opinions on whether or not new states’ citizenship policies are in compliance with international standards. The influence of international actors on domestic citizenship regimes may therefore proceed along an inverted U-shape of sorts: from limited or no influence on initial citizenship regimes formulated in the late Soviet and the first few years of the post-Soviet era, to most powerful influence five to ten years into transition, the time when domestic policymakers are still relative novices on citizenship issues and international law, and international agencies enjoy the role of the main, if not the only, resident expert on the subject, and when EU conditionality induces changes in domestic rules; to subsequently n more limited influence of international actors as the carrot of EU accession is no longer available for states that joined the EU (and not held out to more states because of enlargement fatigue inside the EU), while in the post-Soviet states domestic elites’ know-how has grown and preferences became entrenched. Recent studies show that in the post-accession period citizenship policy reforms in new member states were indeed influenced by concerns that had more to do with domestic and sometimes foreign policy considerations and bilateral relations and not fears of international sanctions.45 So far no backsliding took place in countries such as Latvia and Estonia that were forced to liberalize citizenship regimes in order the join the EU, but at some future point domestic politics might push towards such a backsliding. If this happens, it remains to be seen if the EU and the international community more broadly have levers to prevent such developments. Concluding Discussion Drawing on the evidence from the post-Soviet region, this chapter sought to outline the main differences in the politics of citizenship policymaking in new versus established states. It has argued that three such differences are particularly notable Schulze, Jennie, ‘Does Russia Matter? European Institutions, Strategic Framing, and the Case of Stateless Children in Estonia and Latvia,’ Problems of Post-Communism, early view (October 21, 2016. 45 oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 424 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN citizenship and state transition 425 and consequential for citizenship regimes: (1) greater prominence of sovereignty concerns in new states; (2) different groups at the heart of citizenship politics (not immigrants from foreign states but former fellow citizens of an until recently common state, in particular those who become ethno-cultural minorities in their state of residence and/or an ethnic kin of another new state), which in turn has implications for analysis of ethnicization of citizenship rules; and (3) the role of international actors who have potentially more opportunities to influence citizenship regimes in new states than they have in older states, but who also face reality on the ground that may not easily map onto the categories and policy prescriptions in the international law. This concluding section will consider two further issues. First, is the post-Soviet experience analyzed in this chapter indicative of the experience of other new states in recent period? Second, at what point does a new state cease to be ‘new,’ and the politics of citizenship cease to be distinct from the politics of citizenship in established older states? Space constraints allow only a nod to the experience of new states outside the former Soviet space46 so this section will briefly look at South Sudan, the most recent new state. Some similarities with the post-Soviet citizenship politics are present. After South Sudan became independent in 2011, it adopted a citizenship law that allocated citizenship based on one’s belonging to one of the ‘indigenous ethnic communities of South Sudan,’ and/or habitual residency in South Sudan since 1956, the date of Sudanese independence. Sudan, for its part, amended its citizenship law and denationalized individuals who acquired (‘de jure or de facto’) the citizenship of South Sudan and forbade dual citizenship between the two states, while allowing dual citizenship with other states.47 Just like in new post-Soviet states, the key group at the heart of citizenship politics in the South Sudanese and Sudanese context is not newcomer immigrants but long-term residents. Sovereignty issues are also consequential. The new state of South Sudan striving to fill its newly declared state sovereignty with all ‘required elements,’ including a body of citizens, claimed a group of residents of the prior common state as ‘its’ nation, without any expectation of consent on the part of those attributed citizenship. Sudan, for its part, pushed back against perceived encroachment on its sovereignty (although true motivations of Sudan’s actions would require further investigation) and denationalized those who resided in Sudan but were ‘claimed’ by South Sudan, upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and depriving many of them of basic rights in their country of residency.48 The prohibition of dual citizenship only with South Sudan that Sudan adopted is similar to the rules adopted by some of the See Sadiq in this volume. Bronwen Manby, The Right to Nationality and Secession of South Sudan: A Commentary on the Impact of the New Laws (New York: Open Society Foundations, 2012). See also Bronwen Manby, Citizenship Law in Africa: A Comparative Study, 3rd edition (New York: Open Society Foundation, 2016). 48 Human Rights Watch, ‘Sudan: Don’t Strip Citizenship Arbitrarily’ (2012), online https://www. hrw.org/news/2012/03/02/sudan-dont-strip-citizenship-arbitrarily. 46 47 oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 425 5/12/2017 5:49:48 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN 426 oxana shevel post-Soviet states discussed in this chapter—disallowing citizenship with neighboring states with which actual or potential territorial disputes impacting on state sovereignty exist, while allowing dual citizenship with states that are not seen as threatening to sovereignty. The answer to the second question—does transition ever end?—depends on changes in the realities that make citizenship politics in new states distinct. The prominence of sovereignty concerns and the main group whose citizenship status is at the heart of domestic politics of citizenship are both factors that can change over time. In broadest terms, the longer a new state exists as a sovereign entity, the more sovereignty will become the new normal rather than something to strive for or to defend. As this happens, we can expect the politics of citizenship to gradually become decoupled from concerns over sovereignty and to center around other issues, be it the status of new immigrants, economic implications of citizenship rules, gender aspects, or others. When this happens, citizenship regimes might also become less ethnicized, following an observation made by Suny, among others, that nationalism is malleable over time, and can progress from one form to another.49 We can thus envisage, for example, that access to citizenship for domestic minorities may become more politically acceptable the longer a new state exists, and as perceived threats to sovereignty from the domestic minority (and/or from its ‘kin’ state) diminishes.50 At the same time, even if concerns over sovereignty diminish, ethnicized citizenship policies and minority exclusion may persist or develop for other reasons, so the end of transition might, but does not have to, bring less ethnicized citizenship regimes. Another marker of a new state ceasing to be ‘new’ would be a change in groups whose status is at the heart of citizenship politics. The distinction between new and old states would diminish once the dust of the post-imperial migration of ethnic unmixing settles, and citizenship politics begins to center more on the status of immigrants from other states rather than on the status of former citizens of a recently defunct common state. Such refocusing of citizenship politics took place in Western states after World War II, when traditional countries of emigration became countries of immigration. This is likely to be a process rather than an abrupt change, as it has been in Western states. Once immigrants become a key group impacted by existing citizenship regimes and their situation gains prominence in domestic debates over citizenship rules, a different analytical approach to ethnicization would also become warranted, with greater attention to ethnicization (or lack thereof, as the case may be) of rules governing birthright citizenship Ronald Grigor Suny, ‘Nationalism, Nation Making, and the Postcolonial States of Asia, Africa, and Eurasia,’ in Lowell Barrington, ed., After Independence: Making and Protecting the Nation in Postcolonial & Postcommunist States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006). pp. 279–295, pp. 284–285, 291. 50 There is some evidence of this dynamic in Estonia, for example, as shown in Schulze (n 45). 49 oxfordhb-9780198805854_Part-4.indd 426 5/12/2017 5:49:49 PM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 12 2017, NEWGEN citizenship and state transition 427 and naturalization of immigrants and their children, as opposed to rules governing status of former fellow citizens of a former common state. 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