Lior Erez

Alfred Landecker Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy and Public Policy

My job at the Blavatnik School is available from next year and I cannot reccomend it enough.

www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/node/12312

Citizenship literature Archives - Globalcit

📚 New Citizenship Literature 🌍

🪪 Citizenship Renunciation without Emigration – Lior Erez
🌐 Protecting Nationals Abroad and the Reconceptualization of Sovereignty – Ioanna Pervou
🌏 Citizenship by Choice, Not Necessity – Nils Witte & Floris Peters

And many more 📖 tinyurl.com/5n7pr623

Great opportunity at the University of Vienna for citizenship/migration scholars

jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Tenure-T...

Calling all early-career #Citizenship researchers 📣

Submit your entry for the 2026 GLOBALCIT – Rainer Bauböck Essay Award 🏆

The ❓ How will Artificial Intelligence transform membership, rights and practices of citizenship?

🏅 €1,000 + publication 📖

➡️ tinyurl.com/bde6wn9w

Here's a great opportunity for early-career researchers working across political theory & IR and with a particular interest in the methods and methodological challenges involved. @duncanbell.bsky.social @ecpr-nptmethods.bsky.social @adrianblau.bsky.social @ipsa-rc31.bsky.social

Citizenship Renunciation without Emigration | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core Citizenship Renunciation without Emigration

If long-term residents can choose not to naturalise, why cannot citizens renounce their status without leaving?

Dr Lior Erez argues for the right to renounce state citizenship while remaining a resident in his new article. 👇
https://ow.ly/g3xF50Xannb

That said, while the dilemma is meant to motivate the main argument through negation (if no mandatory citizenship for residents, therefore.. etc), I think that the positive argument on pp. 5-10 can be persuasive even if you don't see an incoherence in the status quo

The second is that the status quo reflects some tension between competing underlying conceptions of the value and function of citizenship itself, between ascriptivism and voluntarism.

Thanks - on p.3 ('The Dilemma') I argue that the status quo is incoherent for two reasons. The first is equality of treatment - if noncitizens and citizens are similarly situated, why should the former be afforded the freedom to choose to become citizens.

Banner featuring the hashtag #OpenAccess over a green background and the text "American Political Science Review" on a blue background.

#OpenAccess from @apsrjournal.bsky.social -

Citizenship Renunciation without Emigration - https://cup.org/4nTVQZh

"argues for the value of citizenship renunciation as an expressive political act, distinct from territorial exit..."

- @liorerez.bsky.social

#FirstView

Haven't really thought about it through the NB framework, but this makes sense I think; lowering the cost of renunciation reinforces the legitimacy signal of staying

May be of interest: @deeesharp.bsky.social @artsofdenial.bsky.social @rebeccabuxton.bsky.social @pattitlenard.bsky.social

A surprising statistic: over 30% of articles published in early view in
APSR in the last three weeks had an author called 'Lior'

5. a right to renounce without emigrating strengthens autonomy and democratic legitimacy. It places less burden on dissenters and offers a more consistent account of citizenship. /end

4. Instead, I defend renunciation as expressive political exit. It is a way for citizens to formally sever political ties while staying socially embedded. It’s distinct from emigration: it retains membership in society while withdrawing consent.

3. I reject the idea of mandatory citizenship for residents (as prominently defended recently by de Schutter and
@leaypi.bsky.social
).The coercive cost of forcing naturalisation is hard to justify.

2. The article opens with a dilemma: long-term resident noncitizens can refuse to naturalise, but citizens often can’t renounce unless they leave. Either citizenship for residents should be mandatory, or renunciation without emigration should be permitted.

1. I argue that citizens should be able to renounce their citizenship while remaining residents. The current norm (both in law and normative theory) ties renunciation to emigration. But I argue that this link deserves rethinking.

My new article, 'Citizenship Renunciation without Emigration', is now available (open access) in APSR
@apsrjournal.bsky.social

🧵

doi.org/10.1017/S000...

📢 New Open-Access Working Paper! @artsofdenial.bsky.social & Rainer Bauböck ask:

Citizenship as Reparations: Should the Victims of Historical Injustice Be Offered Membership❓

13 authors reply 💬, exploring questions of justice, colonialism, nation-building, and more 🌍

📖 🔗 tinyurl.com/dz8ht87z

Citizenship as Reparations: Should the victims of historical injustice be offered membership? - Page 5 of 15 - Globalcit Kickoff contribution by David Owen and Rainer Bauböck. Comments by Jocelyn Kane and Patti Tamara Lenard, Ashley Mantha-Hollands, Timothy Jacob-Owens, Lior Erez, Peter Spiro, Christoph Sperfeldt, Alfon...

My contribution, building on the framework I develop in my book project, is that reparative citizenship could be permissible even when it does not generate a right to citizenship. See here:

globalcit.eu/citizenship-...

Glad to see the debate on reparative citizenship, with a lead essay by David Owen @artsofdenial.bsky.social and Rainer Bauböck, and responses from many great scholars, is now available in full at the @globalcit.bsky.social website: cadmus.eui.eu/entities/pub...

Framework to protect human rights wins award for global impact - University of Birmingham A political framework, created by Birmingham and Oxford researchers, to support aid donor countries to protect human rights, wins the Atlas Award 2025.

A nice overview of my research with @ndasandi.bsky.social , on the occasion of our 2023 World Development article winning the 2025 Elsevier Atlas Award in the theme of global peace and justice

www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2025/fr...

Relational Egalitarianism and Migration: An Introduction In this introductory essay to the special issue on relational equality and migration, I first introduce a familiar way of conceiving of the connection between equality and migration, one that focuses ...

My introduction to the special issue on relational equality & migration is now out! It provides a comprehensive introduction to the state of the debate about relational egalitarianism & migration + an overview of the special issue contributions doi.org/10.1515/mopp... #philsky #poltheory #migcitsky

The flag and the stick: Aid suspensions, human rights, and the problem of the complicit public Foreign aid donors often use, or are expected to use, the threat of aid suspensions in response to human rights violations. The use of such conditiona…

And the winning article itself:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Foreign aid donors often use, or are expected to use, the threat of aid suspensions in response to human rights violations. The use of such conditionality seeks to pressure the ‘recipient’ government into ending or preventing rights abuses. This article argues that this approach tacitly relies on the assumption that most citizens in the recipient country oppose their government’s rights violations. However, in recent years, and particularly linked to the rise of populism, there has been growing recognition of instances around the world in which significant parts of the public support government actions giving rise to human rights violations. Drawing in particular on the example of donor responses to recent efforts to introduce repressive anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda, the article argues that such cases present donors with a dilemma that arises because the threat of aid suspensions serves two distinct but related purposes: an instrumental function (‘the stick’), whereby the threat of withdrawing aid is used to pressure the ‘recipient’ government into ending the rights violation; and an expressive function (‘the flag’) that is often overlooked, whereby conditionality signals the donor government’s commitment to international human rights norms. While typically these two functions of aid conditionality reinforce one another, we show that when faced with a ‘complicit public’, the stick and flag come apart, generating the dilemma for donors. The threat of aid sanctions is likely to trigger a public backlash but refraining from effective criticism will undermine support for international human rights norms. Based on this analysis, the article provides a framework for recognizing and evaluating potential responses to this dilemma that considers the salient political and ethical features of such contexts. In doing so, it demonstrates the importance of understanding the political ethics of aid suspensions and other donor responses to human rights violations.

Here is the abstract:

Good news! "The flag and the stick: Aid suspensions, human rights, and the problem of the complicit public", written by the Bluesky-less Niheer Dasandi and yours truly, and published in World Development, is the 2025 @ElsevierAtlas Award Winner (Peace and Justice Theme)

t.co/igWqbH807Y

Comm v.Malta seminar at @ucl.ac.uk Laws on June 4, convened by @colmocinneide.bsky.social A variety of takes 🇪🇺EU illiberal turn; merit to philosophical & comparative.

Horrible video/cool conversation❗️https://youtu.be/2CtESu1Y4Qs
@liorerez.bsky.social
@maartenpvink.bsky.social @globalcit.bsky.social

Fascinating and important conversation on the groundbreaking CJEU judgment of European Commission v Malta with @profkochenov.bsky.social, @sarahganty.bsky.social, Dr Oliver Gerstenberg, @liorerez.bsky.social and @msumption.bsky.social, chaired by Dr Claudia Sternberg

@laws.ucl.ac.uk

IN NEW ISSUE: Many argue for limits on a state's right to exclude potential members, but what about limiting inclusion? @liorerez.bsky.social‬ & Ayelet Banai argue the principle of self-determination offers an answer: buff.ly/jmaaqyA (OPEN ACCESS)

@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @sagepub.com #polsci