This chapter examines citizenship as a relationship between individuals, society, and the state. It explains how rights empower citizens, how responsibilities make social life possible, and how critical thinking helps citizens evaluate claims, participate responsibly, and protect democratic life from manipulation and weak reasoning.
By the end of this chapter, learners will develop the following advanced competencies:
Citizenship competence: the ability to define citizenship, explain its legal and political dimensions, and distinguish normative and empirical theories of citizenship.
Rights-responsibilities competence: the ability to explain the correlativity of rights and responsibilities, and to identify right holders and duty bearers.
Human-rights competence: the ability to explain the meaning, principles, and categories of human rights, including civil and political, socio-economic and cultural, and solidarity rights.
Constitutional rights competence: the ability to connect citizenship, human rights, democratic rights, and responsibilities with the FDRE constitutional framework and international human rights instruments.
Critical-thinking competence: the ability to identify intellectual standards, principles of critical thinking, barriers to reasoning, and apply critical thinking to civic and political case studies.
