The rights typology of T.H. Marshall is the essential basis for identifying how citizenship rights developed in contemporary societies (Hamilton, 2024). Marshall delineates civil, political, and social rights by his method of classification, which is suggestive of a progressive line toward total citizenship. Right civil, composing the basis of individual freedom, became widespread due to the dictatorship and lack of legal protection shown in the earlier centuries. Political rights, including voting and participation in governance, have greatly increased improvement and, therefore, political equality for the present and future generations. The concept of social rights has emerged with the advent of industrialization to address the socio-economic inequalities and ensure universal accessibility to vital services and resources for all. Marshall’s typology centers on the complex interplay between rights and societal progress, concentrating on the ever-evasive goal of changes toward more inclusive and equitable citizenship.
H. Marshall’s linguistic expression of civil rights as the foundation of contemporary citizenship is a milestone in the beginning of individual liberty in the state. CivAsscribed by Marshall, civil liberties are various basic rights, and freedom of speech, religion, and property rights are a few. These rights that had their prominence in the 18th and 19th centuries were a reaction to the oppressive forms of government, namely- feudalism and absolute monarchy, that characterized pre-modern societies. According to Marshall, civil rights arose out of the crisis to guarantee individuals against interference by the state and other social actors. Civil rights are a bastion against despotism, responsible for a person’s abundance of freedom and inherent dignity within the public sphere. The pre-civil rights era’s failings brought into focus the potential of the state and its agents to subject otherwise vulnerable individuals to unconstrained power and arbitrary violations of freedoms. Through giving legal guarantees for individual rights, civil rights not only enable the citizens to practice autonomy and express themselves with freedom but also provide the foundation for a sock just and fair society; civil rights acknowledgment manifests that society recognizes the intrinsic worth and dignity of every person even though they come from the class or background.
Marshall’s attribution of civil rights as the post of modern citizenship affords insight into the transformative capability of legal protections to sustain individual freedoms and establish democratic governance. Civil rights represent a major event for continuing the struggle for human rights and justice as a commentator for future generations to create a more united and just society. In Marshall’s classification of civil rights, the discussion of political rights brings an innovative approach to understanding citizenship status, referring to increased participation and representation in democratic systems. Marshall defines civil rights as including the core fundamentals of voting, running for office, and access to political institutions. These rights are important in developing a democratic society, particularly apparent in the 19th and the centuries as democratic world governments spread out.
McBean declares that the development of political rights was an outcome of the prejudice inherent in the democratic institutions of their time, which often entailed the exclusion of certain privileged classes, such as wealthy white males, from the right to vote. Through expanding political participation and including people who were previously excluded, such as women and minorities, the objective of political rights has been to correct past injustices and build a more inclusive form of citizenship(United Nations, 1966). The provision of political rights not only promoted democracy but also ensured greater representation of various opinions in the decision-making processes. By using universal suffrage and proportional representation as instruments of political rights, a goal was to ensure that all citizens’ interests and concerns were adequately represented in the political system.
Moreover, the acceptance of political rights bolstered the legitimacy of democratic systems by augmenting their accountability population needs and hopes. By guaranteeing all citizens the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to political life, political rights strengthen the concept of citizenship by making it more robust and competitive. This way, they also lay the foundation for a society that is more egalitarian and democratic. At the core of this explanation lies Marshall’s assertion that political rights trigger the building of a modern democracy by broadening democratic participation beyond the traditional elites, thus fostering the ideas. Thus, such rights represent an essential tool on the road to building more inclusive forms of citizenship where every individual has the right to shape the collective destiny of his or her society(Hamilton, 2024). Additionally, the realization of political rights successfully reinforced the legitimacy of democratic institutions by increasing their responsiveness to the needs and aspirations of most citizens. Through this, individuals were given a chance to have meaningful political participation. Hence, a more sophisticated and inclusive form of citizenship was promoted, ultimately leading to a more equitable and democratic society. Marshall’s discussion of political rights highlights the catalytic effect of opening the political process to all, not just traditional nobility, which furthered citizenship’s foundational ethos of equality and justice. Such rights constitute credibility on the road towards more inclusive forms of citizenship where citizens’ decisions make everyone’s shared future a reality.
Marshall envisages social rights as the finishing point of the stages of the development of citizenship rights. Social rights include healthcare, education, social security, etc. This implies that the state is required to create an all-rounded economic and social equality among the citizens. Marshall argues that rights such as education and housing resulted from the social problems tied to capitalist societies(Lister, 2008). The Industrial Revolution gave rise to the phenomenon of economic polarization, resulting in a number of social conflicts, including agitation against the state to alleviate poverty and increase security. Accordingly, social rights imply the break with purely negative freedom of classical liberalism, which starts to move towards a more substantive concept of citizenship that also envisages the provision of basic amenities for human development and dignity. To this end, Marshall, in his classifications, consistently emphasizes the interdependence and cumulative nature of rights, that is, which is each period based on and the antecedent phase(United Nations, 1966).
Furthermore, Marshall puts forward the state as the main guarantor of citizen rights, which is obliged to enforce and support their implementation nevertheless; Marshall’s developmental model came across some criticism. In the opinion of some scholars, it is partially when it comes to the nature of the oppression and the marginalized people’s experience that typology has a shortcoming. Hence, the oppressed groups like the racial minorities and the LGBTQ+ people are not well addressed. However, the neoliberal turn in the politics of the late 20th century has posed big questions as far as the viability of welfare provision through the expansion of social rights is concerned, and therefore, there is a tendency to roll back welfare provision.
References
Hamilton, Dr. M. (2024). Citizenship in Contemporary Europe. Edinburgh University Press Books. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-citizenship-in-contemporary-europe.html
United Nations. (1966, December 16). International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. OHCHR; United Nations. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights
Lister, M., & Pia, E. (2008). Front Matter. In Citizenship in Contemporary Europe. Edinburgh University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1r26wp.1
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