Korean Educational Development Institute(KEDI)

The theme of citizenship has come to the forefront of public debate in Asian countries recently, with policies and studies focusing on processes such as democratization and civil society. All modern nation-states are confronted with challenges to effective democracy. Nationalism, welfare reform, and immigration separate the “members” and “non-members” of society in regard to individual entitlement and obligations. Citizenship discourse is the prism through which a nation-state views the politics, society, culture, and philosophy, of its past and present, and attempts to imagine a future. Citizenship as the legal and social framework for individual autonomy and political democracy has been central to Western political philosophy, linking modernization and democratization synonymous to Westernization.