Note on political community

The idea of political community

A political community is a group of people bound together by a shared system of rule and a sense of common membership, within which collective decisions are taken and obeyed. In ordinary use it means the state and its citizens; in theory it is the answer to the questions of who belongs, on what basis people are bound together, and what they owe each other. The syllabus makes it the theme of Unit V together with political obligation.

Forms and examples. (1) The Greek polis, a small community of citizens who took part directly in rule, which Aristotle regarded as the setting in which human beings realise their nature. (2) The modern nation-state, which arose after the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), consolidates authority within a territory and claims a shared culture and history. (3) Multi-ethnic democratic states such as India, which tries to bind people of many religions, regions and cultures through an inclusive citizenship laid down in the Constitution. (4) Communities that do not match state boundaries: the Kurds, spread over Iraq, Syria and Turkey, want a state, while the former Soviet Union combined groups who never formed one nation. (5) Wider communities: non-traditional threats (terrorism, climate change) call for cooperative security, and the idea of global citizenship asks whether membership could extend beyond the state.

What binds it. Citizenship as a legal status with equal rights; shared identity (history, language, culture), which can slide into exclusion since democratic states often define identity in ways that suit some groups more than others; common political participation; and the relation of rights to obligations.

Debates. Liberals build the community on consent and equal rights; civic republicans on active participation and civic virtue; communitarians and multiculturalists on shared identity and recognition of cultural groups, and Kymlicka argues that minority rights can strengthen integration; critics from feminist and other critical perspectives ask who is excluded. Any account must accept that democratic membership is a continuing project and its boundaries are renegotiated.