The Politics of Becoming Adult:

The Child as (Future)Citizen and Alien in Liberal Political Theory

Sana Nakata
1.

Introduction
This paper is a brief attempt to consider the child as both a citizen and alien in liberal
political theory. It draws upon broader research that undertakes a Foucauldian discourse analysis of
the childrens rights discourse. In this research, I identify reason, maturity and autonomy as key
concepts which operate to inform, shape and limit how it is possible to think and talk about children
and their rights. This paper begins with a brief consideration of how the childrens rights discourse
differs from other liberal rights movements, despite emerging from that very tradition. I argue that
because of the differences, it is not possible to engage in debates about childrens rights in the same
way as we might for other adult, social groups. I then discuss the importance of the future-citizen in
liberal political theory, suggesting that liberalism relies upon childhood to ensure societies are able
to produce a good, adult citizen. Against this discussion, I introduce Elizabeth F. Cohens attempt to
theorise a semi-citizenship for children, highlighting that its limits are imposed by the constraints of
liberal political theory itself rather than the constraints of Cohens own analysis. Finally, I consider
how Iris Marion Youngs notion of the paradox of democracy and Chantal Mouffes articulation of
citizenship as a mere legal status and her discussion of the constitutive Other, shed light on the
limits of semi-citizenship. I stop short of suggesting Mouffes radically democratic citizen provides
possibilities for childrens citizenship. Indeed, unable to escape the terms of liberal political theory,
the desirability and possibility of childrens citizenship comes to be cast not as a problem of
childrens rights but as a problem of the political itself.

2.

Paternalism, Autonomy and the Childrens Rights Discourse

The childrens rights discourse emerges from the tradition of liberal rights movements that
sought to overcome paternalistic policies by asserting the equality and autonomy of persons.
Briefly, looking to two examples from Australia, we see how assertions of equality were tied to
more than ones moral status and humanity. Both women and Indigenous people had to displace
misunderstandings that they were less rational than European men, unable to represent their own
interests on their own terms. Both groups found themselves having to demonstrate their equal
rational capacities, in order to lay claim to an equal moral status. Mary Wollstonecraft claimed
womens rational capacity as grounds for equal rights:
If, due to their capacity for rational thought, all human beings deserve equal rights
and respect, then women as beings capable of reason, are surely entitled to the same
rights as men.1
In Australia, the Commonwealth Parliament debated extending the right to vote to women in
Federal elections, and Sir Edward Braddon from Tasmania insisted that his objection is that women
are apt to decide on instinct rather than reason2. Leaving aside questions of moral status, it was in
his view, a lack of reason that justified the exclusion of women from the political sphere. Also
Australia, in the very same year, Torres Strait Islanders were described by their Government
Protector as having:
...not yet reached the state where they are competent to think and provide for
themselves; they are really overgrown children, and can be best managed for
their own welfare, as a prudent parent would discipline his child.3
These brief examples do not do justice to the broader arguments and complexities of these
two significant rights movements. They serve to demonstrate how claims to reason and maturity
came to be tied to assertions of equality, and were necessary to assert a broader claim to autonomy
that would undermine the paternalistic attitudes and practices that shaped the lives of women and
Indigenous peoples.

The Politics of Becoming Adult

An analysis of childrens rights debates about sexuality and criminality similarly reveal
reason, maturity and autonomy as key terms that inform, shape and limit how we think and talk
about children and their rights. However, the important point here, is that despite the parallels and
connections between the childrens rights and other liberal rights movements, they cannot be
understood in the same way. As philosopher Onora ONeill has explained, while for other groups
the paternalistic paradigm is employed as a metaphor for the power relationships at play, it is no
mere analogy when we speak of mothers and fathers as parents, and children are not just
metaphorically childlike4. As a result, the paternalistic paradigm is projected back onto childrens
rights debates in a distorted manner.
3. The Future Citizen
This has shaped the childrens rights discourse in such a way that we are compelled to either
value the parent/child relationship as sacred, private and automatically safe and positive. This is
informed by a Romantic conception of childhood that has been present in Western literature since
Jean-Jacques Rousseaus mile. It also informs a protectionist mode of childrens rights, rights that
are restricted to ensuring that children are not exposed to the broader social and political world too
soon.5 By contrast, the liberationist position claims that consider the power imbalance between
children as adults as inherently risky, potentially harmful and fundamentally unjust.6 Elizabeth F.
Cohen reinforces Ian Shapiros claims that arguments that seek to extend to children greater rights,
particularly autonomy-based rights, are not primarily concerned (perhaps not concerned at all) with
rearing children who can survive and thrive in a democracy7. This highlights what is at stake for
liberal political theory in childrens rights debates. It might very well be possible to make children
citizens, but in allowing them to enter the political sphere before being educated in civil and
political life, we put at risk their future role as adult citizens.
In previous research, I have argued that the consent of the adult citizen offers liberalism its
only source of political legitimacy. Second, and somewhat paradoxically, the very end of liberalism
itself, at least on a Kantian account, is the achievement of this adult citizen8. A political theory that
creates a consensual relationship of power between the governed and those that govern require a
political subject that can provided the necessary consent, at least hypothetically speaking. To
provide this consent, a particular rationality is necessary, one that accepts the foundations of this
relationship. This has never been considered to be a natural process. Instead, it is one that
demands reason, maturity and experience. An individual born with the natural capacity to develop
these characteristics requires the appropriate education and care to see them become this adult
citizen. Since the Enlightenment, philosophers such Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke have
written about what this require, offering their thoughts on education, and all do say in a way that
supports their conception of the political and liberalism9. This exclusion of children from the
political sphere, is the politics of becoming adult.
4. The Limits of Semi-Citizenship
Elizabeth F. Cohens theory of citizenship identifies the conceptual and practical need for a
category between citizen and non-citizen.10 She contrasts the paternalism perspective, that
allows adult ownership of childrens higher level interests confining them to the private realm of
the family and excluding them from public affairs with the minor view that treats children as a
means to achieve adult ends and is preoccupied with childrens status as future adults11. Her theory
is an attempt to move away from this focus upon an impending adulthood toward recognition of
children as a permanent feature of the populace, arguing that while children mature...this does not
obviate the need to represent the political interests of the perpetually present class of minors in a
democratic society.12 However, having eloquently expressed what is at stake (not only for children
but for democratic politics) in debates about childrens citizenship, her final conclusion can only
point to an expanded role for Ombudsmen as a means for children to be considered semi-citizens,
while acknowledging that they cant really enforce civil rights13. Her cursory view of voting rights
considers the lowering of the age to fourteen or fifteen reasonable, even if these votes only count

Sana Nakata 3
for a quarter of an adults vote14. In short, Cohens attempt to theorise citizenship for children results
in a compromised and diluted form of adult citizenship, rather than a coherent rethinking of
citizenship that might provide an account of children as having a political status of their own. This
does not seem to emerge from any weakness in Cohens analysis. Rather it is a product of a liberal
rights discourse that sets the limits for how we can think about childrens rights. The remainder of
this paper is an attempt to understand the constraints Cohens view of childrens citizenship.
a. Iris Marion Young: the Paradox of Democracy
That Cohen ventures into territory where no normative understanding exists that admits the
sort of membership most of us could imagine children holding15 is an overdue and welcome
enterprise. However, given the lack of work and thinking around this area Cohens theory of semicitizenship falls short of a coherent theory that would see the childs political status transformed
from alien to citizen. Part of this problem is illuminated by Iris Marion Young, who argued that:
Modern political theory asserted the equal moral worth of all persons, and social
movements of the oppressed took this seriously as implying the inclusion of all
persons in full citizenship status under the equal protection of the law.16
In attempting to realise an inclusive model of citizenship, liberal political theory has universalised
what it means to be a citizen by discounting the particularities and differences between individuals,
operating against the plurality that a fuller citizenry might otherwise realise. This is Youngs
paradox of democracy. For children, liberal political theory asserts a form of rationality that only
adults can be deemed to possess. Even if children can demonstrate a liberal rationality that would
allow them to understand the consequence of, and make a meaningful choice, in voting, it remains
that liberal political theory relies upon its citizen as a future being: one that can be created in its
own making.
In attempting to reconcile the position of child liberationists who advocate for childrens full
citizenship on the same terms as adults citizenship and the position of more contemporary
childrens rights advocates that value a citizen with certain rational and mature capacities, Cohen
cannot help but present a compromise designed to provide some forms of democratic participation
by the young, without actually bringing them into a theory or conception of politics that accounts
for children on their own terms17. For Young, the better means for inclusion is based upon selforganisation but this too presumes that children might be recognised by others as legitimate
participants within the political sphere, and that children share in the liberal rationality demanded
by democratic citizenship. The limits of thinking about childrens citizenship therefore, might be
explained not by any weakness in Cohens theory, but by the terms of citizenship and democratic
participation she begins with.
b. Chantal Mouffe: citizenship as mere legal status and the constitutive Other
As Chantal Mouffe has argued, citizenship has been reduced to a mere legal status
determining the relationship of the individual (who belongs already) to the state, at the expense of
understanding citizenship in a fuller and more radical way18. Indeed, by accepting citizenship as a
legal status, Cohen looks for scope within existing policy-making practices (rather than within
politics more broadly) for children to participate. By doing this, she has no choice but to accept
citizenship as a concept that is founded upon a certain rationality and maturity that children are
deemed not to possess19. This being the case, children cannot theorised into citizenship and so must
be satisfied with some lesser form of citizenship than adults. Mouffes theory of radical democracy
appears that it might offer a way around this conundrum by attempting to expand our understanding
of citizenship itself, creating the possibility of a political space that children might be able to inhabit
on their own terms20.
Following Carl Schmitt, Mouffes commitment to the friend/enemy distinction as the
ontological base for her concept of the political, requires a constitutive Other; the need for an
alien, an outsider who offers a political alternative, a threat and an enemy to the citizen inside (the
state). With respect to children, we might view of child as a constant constitutive Other to the

The Politics of Becoming Adult

adult citizen, but not one that necessarily forms part of the alien or enemy characterisation. Rather,
the child as a constitutive Other might be our friend, in the guise of our children and our families, or
in the guise of our societys future, or even as our past selves. In this way, children can be
understood at once as alien and future citizen, within the state; a constitutive other who is not
necessarily an enemy and one that can exist within our political community and not just from
outside.The child as a constitutive Other to the future-citizen is evident through a consideration of
liberal political philosophy more broadly.
This interdependent relationship between the political legitimacy of the liberal state, and the
very goal of liberalism itself, as premised upon an autonomous citizen casts a net of complexity
over the question of childrens citizenship that is yet to be seriously contemplated. This informs,
shapes and limits how we are able to think and talk about the desirability and possibility of
childrens right to citizenship. Autonomy-based rights, and specifically citizenship rights, have
emerged in different social movements to transform the political status of an individual from alien
to citizen. To bring women into the public sphere, from the private realm of home and family. To
reject the place of Indigenous peoples and other marginalised races as too primitive, incapable or
less than human and thereby placing them outside of social and political spaces. However, children
are the embodiment of concepts of childhood that are integral to the realisation of a liberal citizen.
In this sense, children may be Mouffes constitutive Other. The foundation of citizenship rights
remain tied to a presumption that reason, maturity and autonomy is attained, in most places, at the
age of eighteen. To be able to imagine children as citizens, with political rights, requires us to
consider whether or not children are rational, mature and autonomous. For Cohen, consistent with
the work of childrens rights theorist David Archard, the fact that there is some evidence at least,
that some children at least, demonstrate these emerging qualities, is sufficient to hypothesize a
theory of semi-citizenship that allows a mediated, partial recognition of children as citizens and
facilitate their participation in public-policy making, though not politics. However, this discounts
the complexity of citizenship itself.
5. Conclusion
However, it is not clear that Mouffes radical democratic citizenship would be any better at
achieving this. Mouffe claims citizenship as a type of political identity through identification with
the respublica. That is, a citizen is one who accepts submission to the rules of respublica, as an
articulating principle that affects the different subject positions of the social agent21. While the
terms of respublica might be broader and more fluid than the terms of reason, maturity and
autonomy it is not particularly clear to what extent or to what potential effect. It remains, as always,
that the respublica represents a normative ideal of political engagement constituted by its own
rationality that all must not only accept and have the capacity to participate in, but also be
recognised as possessing, in order to be included. We never escape the terms of discourse, and so
settle with rewriting its terms. So long as we remain satisfied that ones political status and ones
citizenship is premised upon our liberal rationality it would appear both undesirable and impossible
to theorise childrens citizenship. If we are not satisfied with this then it seems we must grapple
with liberal political theory rather than debates about children and their rights.
Notes

Bibliography
Archard, David. "John Locke's Children." In The Philosopher's Child, edited by Susan M. Turner
and Gareth B. Matthews, 85-104. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1998.
Cohen, Elizabeth F. "Neither Seen nor Heard: Children's Citizenship in Contemporary
Democracies." Citizenship Studies 9, no. 2 (2005): 221 - 40.
Guggenheim, Martin. What's Wrong with Children's Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2005.
Hindess, Barry. "The Liberal Government of Unfreedom." Alternatives 26 (2001): 93-111.
Locke, John. Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Edited by John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
. Two Treatises of Government. London: Everyman, 1993.
Mouffe, Chantal. The Return of the Political. New York: Verso, 1993.
Nakata, Martin. Disciplining the Savages, Savaging the Disciplines. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies
Press, 2007.
O'Neill, Onora. Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Parliament of Australia, House of Represenatatives. "Hansard." p. 11937. Canberra: Government
Printer, 1902.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile. Translated by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1979.
Shapiro, Ian. Democratic Justice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, and Ulrich H. Hardt. A Critical Edition of Mary Wollstonecraft's a
Vindication of the Rights of Woman, with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. Troy,
N.Y.: Whitston Pub. Co., 1982.
Young, Iris Marion. "Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Citizenship." Ethics 99
(1989): 250-74.

Mary Wollstonecraft and Ulrich H. Hardt, A Critical Edition of Mary Wollstonecraft's a Vindication
of the Rights of Woman, with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Pub.
Co., 1982), 58.
2 House of Represenatatives Parliament of Australia, "Hansard," (Canberra: Government Printer,
1902), 11937.
3 MacDougall 1902 quoted in Martin Nakata, Disciplining the Savages, Savaging the Disciplines
(Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007).
4 Onora O'Neill, Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), 40.
5 For a persuasive account of protectionist mode of childrens rights see Martin Guggenheim, What's
Wrong with Children's Rights (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).
6 Farson, Howard Cohen others
7 Elizabeth F. Cohen, "Neither Seen nor Heard: Children's Citizenship in Contemporary Democracies,"
Citizenship Studies 9, no. 2 (2005): 224. Ian Shapiro, Democratic Justice (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1999), 77.
8 The legitimate political authority of the liberal state is premised upon a hypothetical social contract
between the governed and those that govern. This consent must be provided by a rational being and it
must be freely given. However, in Foucauldian terms, this contract presents as more of a bargain. As
Barry Hindess (Barry Hindess, "The Liberal Government of Unfreedom," Alternatives 26 (2001).) has
argued this is less about a free and consenting individual as it is about an individual that is free to
consent. In this way, the liberal citizen risks becoming a bit of a paradox: he must be rational and
autonomous in order to provide consent, making the use of political authority over him legitimate.
Without this, the liberal state risks being undermined. To guard against this, it is presumed in this
hypothetical scenario that a rational individual would always choose to surrender some sovereignty
over himself to the sovereignty over the state. Thus, there is no possibility that this bargain could not be
struck: a rational individual consents; if an individual fails to consent it must be because they are not a
rational being.
9 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979). Rousseaus
Emile offers a Romantic account of childhood and an education designed to preserve innocence as
much as possible, with a goal toward realising an adult who has not been prematurely corrupted by
modern, adult life. By contrast, John Locke (who childrens rights theorist, David Archard relies
heavily upon) offers a conception of the child as a blank-slate, who needs only the appropriate
education in order to become a good adult citizen. This education should give respect to the abilities a
child has at any given point in time, and allow for the child to have experiences that are consistent with
those abilities. David Archard, "John Locke's Children," in The Philosopher's Child, ed. Susan M.
Turner and Gareth B. Matthews (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1998), John Locke,
Some Thoughts Concerning Education, ed. John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1989), John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (London: Everyman, 1993).
10 Cohen, "Neither Seen nor Heard: Children's Citizenship in Contemporary Democracies," 224.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.: 230.
13 Ibid.: 235.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.: 222.
16 Iris Marion Young, "Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Citizenship," Ethics 99
(1989): 250.
17 In Cohens essay, her discussion of citizenship shifts to examples of childrens participation in local
government activities in Northern Ireland. The participation she describes, however, is in different
forms of public policy consultation and decision-making processes. These processes highlight the
1

distinction between policy-making and politics, where childrens participation in the political might
actually see them play a role in shaping the terms in which they are understood and brought into publicpolicy, as one outcome of politics.
18 Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (New York: Verso, 1993), 62.
19 Cohen, "Neither Seen nor Heard: Children's Citizenship in Contemporary Democracies."
20 Mouffe asserts her theory of radical democracy will overcome the paradox of democracy suggested
by Iris Marion Young in Young, "Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Citizenship."
In this essay, Young argues that modern political theory in asserting equality and the full inclusion of all
persons as citizens, universalised the particular. By doing so, modern citizenship according to this
critique operates against plurality, further inhibiting the ability of social groups to maintain their
difference while attempting to be included in the political sphere. For children, this is especially the
case.
21 Mouffe, The Return of the Political, 70.