Assessing the Charter on Citizens’ Rights: A Multi-disciplinary Critique

Abstract

The Idea of citizenship and the related rights and duties is at the heart of the basics of the modern state and its formation, with its very influential role on the legal structures and processes of decision-making of democratic regimes. The Charter on Citizens’ Rights, published by the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, confirms and clarifies the rights and duties of the citizens, and notified them to all governmental offices. Here I critically evaluate the contents of the Charter by using a multidisciplinary approach, showing its strengths and weaknesses for further revisions. In what follows, I offer a review of the history of the development of the idea of citizenship and its philosophical foundations in the first section. The second section is concerned with presenting very briefly the three main approaches to citizenship, i.e. the liberal, communitarian and republican, and their ethical, political, philosophical and sociological dimensions. The final section focused on the evaluation of some of the main themes of the Charter, following by some suggestions for further consideration.

Keywords

• citizen’s rights and duties
• the charter on citizens’ rights
• liberalism
• communitarianism
• republicanism
• modern identity