Defensible Denationalization and Political Wrongdoing

Recently, several liberal states have adopted laws that allow them to unilaterally revoke citizenships of their members due to concerns about terrorism. This new power is, however, controversial because citizenship is generally considered to be a secured, irrevocable status of members in liberal societies. In this article, I defend the permissibility of denationalization practices that target only egregious cases of political wrongdoing, understood to be wrongs committed against the integrity of liberal democratic institutions or violations of others’ democratic rights with a wrongful intention. I argue that denationalization, when properly constrained, is a justifiable response by liberal states to political wrongdoing. More specifically, I put forward a negative retributivist account for denationalization supplemented by instrumentalist and expressivist concerns. The retributivist argument aims to establish that it is not wrong to sanction certain political wrongdoers with denationalization. In addition, I offer some positive justifications for denationalization by, first, raising the instrumentalist concern of protecting democratic institutions and democratic ways of life, and, second, highlighting of expressivist value of denationalizing political wrongdoers in some cases. Two groups of individuals are targeted by my account of denationalization. The first group is the individuals who wrongfully pose a severe risk of harm to the democratic institutions of their country of citizenship. The second group consists of individuals who pose a severe risk of harm to the political rights of people in other countries. My arguments make the following contributions to the literature: first, my arguments can explain the fittingness of denationalization as a punishment for political wrongdoing but not other types of serious crimes. Second, my arguments apply to individuals who pose a significant threat to the democratic institutions of the denationalizing country as well as those who undermine the democratic rights of people in other countries. Third, my arguments imply that denationalization should target the most powerful, rather than the least powerful. Hence, they can be used to criticize the current practices of citizenship revocation laws that disproportionately affect Muslim citizens.