In Defence of Multilevel Citizenship – A Rejoinder

The twenty-two responses to Rainer Bauböck’s proposal for strengthening urban citizenship suggest two general lessons. First, there is more common ground than expected. None of the authors defends a strong statist view that would not leave any space for a conversation about citizenship at the local level. Second, in spite of its long premodern pedigree, the idea of urban citizenship seems still so new that it needs to be fleshed out in more detail. Conceptual confusion makes it hard to distinguish misunderstanding from disagreement, so the most urgent task now seems to be clarification.