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The problem of citizenship has re-emerged as an issue which is central, not only to practical political questions concerning access to health-care systems, education institutions and the welfare state, but also to traditional theoretical debates in sociology over the conditions of social integration and social solidarity. Citizenship as an institution is thus constitutive of the societal community. These sociological debates typically start with an analysis of the conceptual framework of citizenship in the work of T.H. Marshall. This article reviews the standard objections to Marshall's concept of citizenship and the hyphenated society, and develops a critique of the unitary character of the concept of citizenship in the Marshallian tradition. There are in fact, as the etymological development of the concept itself demonstrates, several distinct forms of citizenship. In reply to a recent contribution by Michael Mann to the theory of citizenship, the article contrasts the history of citizenship in Germany, France, Holland, England and the United States; on the basis of this overview, we can identify two crucial variables. The first concerns the passive or active nature of citizenship, depending on whether citizenship is developed from above ( via the state) or from below (in terms of more local participatory institutions, such as trade unions). The second dimension is the relationship between the public and the private arenas within civil society. A conservative view of citizenship (as passive and private) contrasts with a more revolutionary idea of active and public citizenship. By combining these two dimensions, it is possible to produce a historically dynamic theory of four types of democratic polities as societal contexts for the realization of citizenship rights.