It’s not just Trump: The right in Europe is also cracking down on citizenship
President Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship have not taken place in a vacuum. They are part of a growing pattern of incumbent leaders strategically changing who is allowed to vote and jeopardizing the quality of democracy in the process.
This year, the governments of Hungary, Italy, and Germany have similarly proposed or attempted to institute sweeping changes to their citizenship laws. Efforts to reduce or remove citizenship rights are increasingly common.
In each case, elected officials presented their efforts as necessary actions to resist the influence of foreign interests and outsiders while restabilizing domestic politics. In a way, it’s a win-win for them. If their efforts fail, they have shown supporters they are committed to reshaping their countries around populist and nationalist sentiments that have grown in popularity. When they succeed, they give themselves a meaningful electoral advantage by removing voters who might oppose them.
In March, Hungarian Máté Kocsis — a member of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz Party — announced that Fidesz would propose legislation to revoke citizenship from dual citizens whose “activities endanger the national sovereignty, public order, territorial integrity or security of Hungary.” The legislation was justified as a response to international non-governmental organizations and media outlets whose work was framed as interfering with Hungarian domestic politics.
Two weeks later, the Italian government issued a surprise decree that would drastically limit diaspora Italians’ ability to claim citizenship through the law that grants citizenship to ethnic Italians around the world. This rule change has been framed as a necessary corrective after an increase in citizenship applications from diaspora Italians in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. It is also noteworthy because Italian voters abroad consistently support moderate-progressive parties, even as conservative and anti-establishment parties have been gaining a dominant role in parliament.
A few days later, in Germany, the newly elected center-right government proposed stripping citizenship from “terror supporters, antisemites, and extremists who call for the abolition of the free and democratic basic order” as part of their negotiations to form a new government. This proposal was criticized by Human Rights Watch for being “unclear what, if any, safeguards would exist to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory application, and violations of human rights.”
The events we currently see in Hungary, Italy, Germany and the U.S. align with an emerging global pattern of incumbents strategically and selectively pushing for formal changes to citizenship laws. Efforts to choose who votes are nothing new — U.S states in the Jim Crow South famously used a variety of techniques including poll taxes, literacy tests, and whites-only primaries to obstruct Black Americans from voting. Democratic countries have revoked citizenship before — in 1946, roughly 70,000 American citizens living in Canada all lost their citizenship after voting in Canadian elections.
But the current trend of laws throttling citizenship started in the mid-2000s. The graph above shows that leaders around the world increased their attempts to decide who gets to vote via changes to citizenship laws around 2008, with substantial increases starting in 2010.
Reforms of this type are part of an emerging playbook that incumbents have increasingly used since the fall of the Soviet Union to re-level the electoral playing field to their advantage while minimizing harsh condemnation from their powerful democratic allies. By altering who can access citizenship, incumbents can influence election outcomes by affecting who is allowed to vote in elections. Since the efforts pass through government, incumbents do not attract the same level of negative attention as they would receive for jailing or repressing their opposition or committing observable forms of electoral fraud.
Incumbents’ efforts to manipulate citizenship and election rules also create opportunities to capitalize on the growing support for populist, nationalist, and nativist sentiments by showing voters that they are willing to neutralize the influence of outsiders by permanently removing them from elections. By attempting to revoke citizenship status from members of their opposition, incumbent leaders can show their supporters that they are committed to obstructing voters who would otherwise influence the future of their countries to their supporters’ discontent.
In each of these cases, elected officials are taking steps to show their supporters that they are willing to try to incrementally shape the electorate in their image while keeping up the appearance of upholding democratic process. If the attempts fail or are blocked by courts, elected officials have demonstrated their willingness to act against the forces that their supporters oppose.
In fact, if these leaders fail to pass these citizenship measures, it might even reinforce the idea that their opponents — outsiders, opposition parties, courts, NGOs, and international media — are too powerful. And of course, if they succeed, elected officials in Hungary, Italy, Germany, and the U.S. will have prevented potential opposition voters from accessing the franchise, which could help solidify their grip on political power in the future.
Andrew Foote is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
