Oxana Shevel, The Politics of Citizenship Policy in New States

The politics of national identity influences citizenship rules in new states, but not in the way that existing theories would predict. Existing theories attribute ethnic or civic citizenship laws to dominant ethnic or civic national identity conceptions, but in many new states there is no dominant national identity conception. In the post-Soviet region all civic citizenship laws emerge without the civic national identity conception. The case of Ukraine shows how civic citizenship law may be an unintended side effect of contested identity politics. The post-Soviet experience suggests that the politics of citizenship policy in new and older states is different: national identity is a major source of citizenship policies in new states, but its impact may be different from what existing theories posit.