THE PROBLEMATICS OF LIBERAL CITIZENSHIP
The advantages of liberal citizenship – at least for those who regard them as advantages – are easy to see. Individuals’ ability to be free to form their own opinions, pursue their own projects, and transact their own business untrammeled by the state’s political agenda and coercive power, except in so far as individual actions implicate the interests of other members of society, has been an enormously powerful wellspring of human progress, prosperity, and creativity. Although the precise causal pathways linking liberal cultures, market economies, and democratic politics remain uncertain, it is clear that the linkages are powerful and enduring. Liberal democratic polities tend to be relatively stable and tolerant regimes internally, while also peacefully co-existing with other liberal states – perhaps because their citizens’ aggressive and competitive urges are channeled into more productive and pacific realms, especially the pursuit of wealth.