The article concludes by stating that there are many reasons to shift away from the received assumptions about citizenship in favour of a new governance paradigm built on civil society and voluntary action, in which nongovernmental organisations fill the vacuum left by nation-states in creating societal cohesion and facilitating international relief and development activities.
The article warns, however, against uncritically substituting governments (both on the national as well as international level) by a network of civic associations. It promotes the more realistic idea that only government organisations and civil society together have the resources
and leverage to strengthen citizenship as an integrative device within and beyond the borders of national territories. In this respect, a re-defined notion of citizenship functions as an epistemological construct that leads to a better understanding of the much-discussed but still
nebulous notion of a global civil society.