Essay Definition of Citizenship:
In the literal sense a person who lives in a city is said to be a citizen. But in political science we use this terminal different sense. To find the real meaning of the term we are to go back to ancient Greece. Aristotle, the father of political science, called a person a citizen who would take a direct and active part in the administration of the state.
Since the states in ancient Greece were as small as the cities of Greece it was possible for the residents of the city-state to make law, to adjudicate and even enforce the law. These citizens did not include the slaves, women and manual workers. In such a case the number of the citizens was just half of the entire population. The position was not very different in the medieval Europe. There were serfs in the place of the slaves.
The position is quite different in modern nation-states, where all adult people are citizens who need not take an active part in the administration of the country, because it is not possible for the entire population of a vast country to meet together and make law and interpret it or enforce it.
