Contributivism
On Practices, Debates and Attitudes About Grounding Democratic Inclusion on Economic Contributions
Contributivism is the idea that economic contribution grounds political influence in the form of franchise. This project investigates institutional embodiments and political prospects of this idea in the EU today. The institutional forms we study include legal practices that make economic contributions a ground for enfranchisement either directly, as in citizenship-by-investment program that give direct access to franchise, or indirectly as in investment immigration policies. We focus primarily on the first kind, common in Eastern and Southern Europe. Then we look at the political prospects of contributivism spreading to other parts of the EU. Four countries – UK, Germany, France, and Italy – are investigated. In order to establish these prospects, we examine what law-makers claim by studying parliamentary debates on voting rights for foreign residents and non-resident citizens, and then we probe contributivist attitudes in the electorate. The research design combines theory development with systematic empirical studies: in-depth comparative studies of the laws enabling “citizenship for sale”, medium-N cross-national analysis of parliamentary debates and surveys on popular attitudes by means of conjoint analyses. This methodology was chosen because we need a multidisciplinary approach and cross-national comparisons to understand how contributivism is currently practiced and if it is making a come-back, which we suspect it may.
- Anna-Sara Lind, (Head of Project)
Department of Law, UU - Anthoula Malkopoulou,
Department of Government, UU - Patricia Mindus,
Department of Philosophy, UU - Jonas Hultin Rosenberg,
Department of Government, UU - Elena Prats,
Department of Philosophy, UU - Johan Wejryd
Department of Government, UU
NEWS
2020
- February 2020, Patricia Mindus and Elena Prats' paper Quality of Legislation Meets Migration Policy- An Introduction, in Quality of Legislation Meets Migrations Policy (Mindus&Prats eds.), is accepted to be published in a Special Issue in The Theory and Practice of Legislation journal. DOI: 10.1080/20508840.2020.1729554.
2019
- 21-22 November 2019, Elena Prats presents her paper “The value of values: The introduction of arbitrariness by citizenship by investment programmes as an erosion factor of the Rule of Law in the EU” at the Globalcit Annual Conference, European University Institute, Florence, Italy.
- 14-15 November 2019, Elena Prats presents her paper “Citizenship by investment programmes: an open door for arbitrariness in citizenship policies?” at the PhD Workshop on International Migration and Human Rights, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
- 6- 8 November 2019, Elena Prats presents her paper “Granting citizenship on arbitrary grounds: the case of Citizenship by investment programmes” at the Conference Organizing Migration and Integration in Contemporary Societies – OMICS, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
- 1 - 1 October 2019, Elena Prats gives her mid-term seminar at Uppsala University. The opponent is professor René de Groot, professor at the Maastricht University.
- 1- 12 September 2019, Elena Prats presents her project at the Higher Seminar in Philosophy of Law at the Philosophy Department, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
- 1- 14 August 2019, Elena Prats presents her project “Trading Places: Assessing the Legitimacy of Citizenship-by-Investment Programmes in the EU” at the Work in Progress Seminar of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany.
- 25 July 2019, Elena Prats’ article “Citizenship by Investment Programmes: express naturalisation for bulky wallets. An arbitrary de jure stratification?” has been accepted to be published at the Revista de Derecho Político UNED
- 12 July 2019, Elena Prats presents her paper “Selling Votes in the European Union? Presenting Citizenship by Investment Programs and their Relation to Democracy” at the XXIX IVR World Congress, Lucerne, Switzerland.
- 19 June 2019, Elena Prats presents her project “Trading Places: Assessing the Legitimacy of Citizenship-by-Investment Programmes in the EU” at the Faculty of Law of the University Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain.
- The official kick-off of the project Contributivism is scheduled to 1 July 2019.
- 15 March 2019: op-ed in Aftonbladet signed by 91 Swedish researchers on the duty of enfranchised adults to support disenfranchised climate strikers under the age of 18. Written by a small group of researchers including Johan Wejryd och Jonas Hultin Rosenberg.
2018
- December, Patricia Mindus' book The European Citizenship After Brexit is nominated to UACES 2019 Best Book Prize
- December 18, Elena Prats gives a guest seminar at the Department of Law, Stockholm University: "A market for citizenship"
- November 15, the research team hands in a grant application to NordForsk titled “The Return of Contributivism? On Economic Contribution in Enfranchisement of Migrants” together with colleagues from Stockholm University, University of Copenhagen, Oslo University, University of Southampton and University of Reading
- November 5, the project Contributivism is awarded a project grant by the Swedish Research Council