Rainer Bauböck

Political theorist and leading scholar of citizenship and migration studies. Professor at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. His work on democratic citizenship, transnational belonging, and the boundaries of political community is foundational to thinking about how membership in political entities can be reconceived for networked, non-territorial communities.

Bauböck contributes a rigorous political theory perspective to the question of what legitimizes a “nation” — and whether voluntary, non-territorial communities can generate the kind of political belonging that underwrites democratic self-governance. His scholarship is relevant to the Network Nations framework’s claims about collective identity and networked population.

Appears in: Ep 5: What Makes a Nation?