Sara Goodman
  • March 31, 2026

  • Work by UC Irvine political science professor Sara Goodman published in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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Understanding what citizenship means is essential for recognizing when democratic rights are being strengthened or eroded. A new article by University of California, Irvine political scientist Sara Wallace Goodman argues that scholars must define citizenship more precisely and introduces a framework for distinguishing democratic citizenship from authoritarian forms. Findings are published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

"Citizenship is core to the definition of democracy, but citizenship also exists in nondemocracies, where the lack of participation is core to defining the regime," says Goodman, political science Chancellor's Fellow and department chair. "By identifying what citizenship in autocratic contexts is and how it differs from democratic forms, we can pinpoint specific markers when change occurs.”

Her work begins by establishing citizenship as “a formal arrangement of status, rights, and identity between an individual and a state.”

"A precise definition of citizenship is key so that we can distinguish it from other statuses and membership types as well as look for patterns within and across cases," she says.

Then, using a comparative approach with examples spanning the U.S., China and India to Venezuela, Thailand and others, she develops a framework for distinguishing types rather than degrees of citizenship, particularly differentiating between democratic and authoritarian contexts. She focuses on three dimensions  – core relationship of status to rights, scope of rights and mechanism for delivering rights – to build a conceptual structure for identifying, distinguishing and comparing citizenship.

“Refining the concept of citizenship – rather than presuming its purposeful path – allows us to explain how it operates across regime types, why it varies so widely, and what this variation reveals about the political foundations of belonging itself.”

She hopes citizenship scholars as well as country experts find the concept-based structure helpful for categorizing cases and expanding the model further, while policy makers and members of the public can use the findings to better identify shifting trends.

“Democratic citizenship is often a direct target of erosion in the context of rising authoritarianism, so concept precision gives clear markers for when the institution exhibits decline versus change. And this precision gives instructive steps for the future.”

The full study is available online with the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

 

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