To show why, let me first make another run
at the pertinent history. Men created the
early modern republics, first the American,
then the French, and then others, in an international
realm that had been organized by
the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia into a system
of mutual recognition among overwhelmingly
monarchical nation-states. In gaining
acceptance within that system, the new
republics defined their citizens as having the
same international status as national monarchical
subjects. For international purposes,
these citizens, too, were simply persons who
owed allegiance to and could claim protection
from particular sovereign governments.
Whether those sovereigns were the representatives
of the ‘sovereign people’ or were
instead individual hereditary rulers, usurpers,
or conquering despots made no difference to
this legal status. Thus Westphalian international
law gave no official recognition or
significance to the ideological connection of
modern republican citizenship with active
self-governance, treating it instead as akin
to the legalistic, protection-oriented, imperial
version of Roman citizenship (Held,
1995: 74–83)