Theory of the political inclusion

The paper presents, firstly, the concept of inclusion as a core concept in sociological systems theory. The concept of inclusion is a general way of t heorizing on membership in social systems. Citizenship is then treated as a special case of this general concept of inclusion. Secondly, the paper dis cusses the more specific form of political inclusion. A historical account compares the aristocratic, republican and democratic models of political in clusion and then describes the specifically modern model of political inclu sion which implies political democracy (passivity of political participatio n) and the universality of access to the entitlements of the welfare state. The arguments of the first two parts are then used for diagnosing a crisis of political inclusion in present-day world society. For at least 150 year s political inclusion was a success story in modern society. Earlier and mo re pervasively than in other functionally specified systems a nearly comple te inclusion of every human being in the entitlements of one and only one n ational state in the modern world seemed to emerge. But now a reversal seem s to happen. Numerous crisis symptoms can be observed: a deterritorializati on of politics; a regionalization of effective social interdependencies whi ch ignore political borders; the career and global activity of organization s (multi-national enterprises etc.) which can choose the states in which th ey prefer to operate; legal and illegal migration and the impossibility of its political control.