Citizenship has come to mean legal and political equality within a sovereign nation-state; in international law, only states may determine who is and who is not a citizen. But such unitary status is the historical exception: before sovereign nation-states became the prevailing form of political organization, citizenship had a range of definitions and applications. Today, nonstate communities and jurisdictions both below and above the state level are once again becoming important sources of rights, allegiance, and status, thereby constituting renewed forms of multilevel citizenship. For...

President Theodore Roosevelt once proclaimed, "Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions, and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with those institutions." But while corporations are ostensibly regulated by citizens through their governments, the firms in turn regulate many aspects of social and political life for individuals beyond their own employees and the communities that support them. Corporations are endowed with many of the same rights as citizens, such as freedom of speech, but are not themselves...