We noted earlier a distinction between a legal definition of citizenship and what we might call an ethical definition of citizenship citizenship as concerned with the nature of one's membership in a political community including such issues as the rights and responsibilities of citizens We will focus here on ethical interpretations of citizenship however even here there are about (1) how a "theory" of citizenship might be formulated (2) hot modern society has shaped and we would say restricted the role of the citizen and (3) Whether there is a rationale and hope for building more active citizen involvement in the governance process In this section we will briefly examine each of these topics