Ediberto Román's new book is an eloquent indictment of the sustained modes of subordination that have marked Western political membership since the ancient Greek city-states. In the process, Román focuses on what he takes to be the central paradox of Western political practice and intellectual thought. While numerous societies have defended in principle a robust and potentially inclusive conception of citizenship, from the Romans to the American republic, in reality such inclusivity has been marred by systematic forms of racial, religious, gender, and class hierarchy. As a historical matter, citizenship has been far more compatible with what Román calls “formal gradations of membership” (p. 6) than equality. He views these gradations as pervasive even today, despite the de jure decline of both segregation and explicit legal barriers for nonwhites and women.

Román begins this account by clarifying his use of the term “citizen.” Instead of an empty synonym for subject, inhabitant, or national, citizenship in his view embodies a substantive ideal of individual and collective self-government. Román locates the birth of this ideal in ancient Athens, as exemplified by Aristotle's vision in the Politics that citizens “are all who share in the civic life of ruling and being ruled in turn” (quoted on p. 17). Román then traces the ideal throughout Western history, emphasizing how such rich notions of self-government have always been compromised by conditions of exclusion. In Athenian life, equality for those included as full members went hand in hand with dependent status for slaves, women, foreigners, and the poor—the vast majority of the population. As for ancient Rome, although its imperial project of territorial expansion actually promoted inclusive practices for newly conquered peoples, these groups nonetheless often acquired only partial rights. In medieval city-states like Florence, the merchant class alone—those members of the city's independent guilds—enjoyed meaningful citizenship, while “country folk and city plebeians were excluded from the status” (p. 44). As for the contemporary nation-state, Román turns his attention to key philosophers in the emergence of modern Western politics: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. In each case, he details how their accounts of membership, so influential for the development of today's liberal democratic politics, were riddled with exclusionary tendencies. Here, Román especially emphasizes the status of women, highlighting the “patriarchal” (p. 57) nature of Machiavellian virtù and the gendered foundations of modern social contract theory.

Finally, in the American context, Román underscores the long history of de jure subordination for nonwhite peoples. He pays particular attention to the rise in the nineteenth century of the doctrine of plenary power, providing the political branches broad and essentially unchecked authority over “indigenous nations, the inhabitants of the island colonies, and immigrants in entry and exclusion proceedings” (p. 85). Román then argues that African Americans and immigrants today continue to live as “de facto subordinates” (p. 119) due to structural disparities in opportunity, the racialized nature of the criminal justice system, and the brutality of the existing regime of border enforcement. In a context in which more and more commentators describe fears of “a Hispanic majority” (p. 139) or “mass invasion” (p. 138) by Mexicans, even formal citizens of Mexican American descent exist in the United States as outsiders. For Román, the only way to address this continuing problem of inequality is to produce “a new vision of citizenship” able to overcome once and for all the “global history of partial membership and subordinate rights” (p. 152). Román ends by calling on lawyers, publics, and political leaders to embrace fully a model of membership that incorporates international norms and provides “a baseline or floor of basic human and civil rights” (p. 153).

In presenting this overview of the “dark side” of citizenship, the work as a whole is most successful as a reminder of just how systematic practices of exclusion have been historically. Román also compellingly highlights the often forgotten experiences of colonization and second-class status that have defined US territorial possessions. However, Román is less successful in presenting a clear argumentative account of why membership and subordination have been so deeply interconnected or why specific forms of servitude emerged at particular moments. In part, this is because Román's methodological approach is to follow the abstract idea of “citizenship” throughout world history, without explaining in any detail the economic, political, or cultural causes that gave birth to each variation. The result is that all examples of exclusion (gender, racial, indigenous) across all historical moments have the tendency of appearing equivalent to each other.

Moreover, the lack of clarity in explaining the forces generating particular combinations of membership and exclusion means that Román often shifts between two polar claims about the roots of subordination. On the one hand, he seems to argue that while the concept of citizenship has been an emancipatory one, this ideal has been undermined by individual prejudices and faulty political compromises. He notes that the vision of inclusion was compromised in practice by “consequential human beings” with their own “sentiments,” “values,” and “biases” (p. 12). In other words, there is nothing philosophically embedded in the notion of citizenship that necessitates exclusion. The historical fact of partial membership is simply the result of illiberal traditions and political failures, which eventually could be overcome. In this guise, Román sounds quite similar to Rogers Smith in his presentation of the “multiple traditions thesis” (Civil Ideals, 1997). Smith too sees the American experience as marked by liberal and illiberal strands, but views their combinations as “none too coherent compromises among the distinct mixes” (p. 6) rather than as implying that liberalism itself is inevitably bound to an exclusive politics. Yet, on the other hand, Román at times does indicate that citizenship is intrinsically and congenitally joined to practices of subordination: “since the very inception of democratic thought, the virtues of democracy … have simultaneously supported the practice of treating disfavored groups as subordinate members of society” (p. 56). Indeed, the transhistorical quality of the book—in which no matter how much conditions change from ancient Athens to modern America, the one constant is always the linkage between inclusion and servitude—suggests that exclusion is encoded in the very DNA of citizenship.

This ambiguity in argumentative position has critical implications. For one, depending on which account he defends, Román's conclusion leads in fundamentally alternative directions. If the problem is genetic, then calling for a better model of citizenship drawing from international norms would be deeply inadequate to the task of transforming current practices. Under this reading, equality instead would require jettisoning and transcending the very concept of citizenship. Yet, if the problem has merely been “political” or a matter of personal biases, then despite the litany of historical abuses, one actually could interpret the book as a Whiggish narrative of improvement. A reader could argue that conditions may not be perfect, but that the overall trajectory indicates progress from de jure subordination. While this is certainly not what Román wants, it would not be incompatible with the historical arc.

In the end, despite the flaws in analytical and causal precision, Citizenship and Its Exclusions is still a useful addition to the growing literature on citizenship, immigration, and the long history of inequality. It works best when focusing on the contemporary American situation and as an overview of the persistent vitality of a political concept. It also suggests the value of more research into those ideological and material forces that continue even today to link notions of membership to practices of subordination.