Where a country (or state or municipality or organisation) is governed democratically, ordinary people are citizens, with the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Where they are governed autocratically, they are subjects, or dependents or no-ones. Citizens are partners in self-governance. Subjects live according to the discretion of their betters. Even in a benevolent autocracy, if there is such a thing, people are still subjects and dependent on the discretion of those who rule over them.

Citizens have rights. They are participants and partners in the polity and have the dignity of being included on similar terms as others in the political community. They enjoy freedom of speech and of assembly and association. They can freely seek to make themselves informed about governance and about their world and community. They can congregate with fellows and deliberate freely on political and social matters. They can organise to protect their interests. They live under the security and predictability of the rule of law.

With rights come responsibilities, primarily the duty to respect the rights of others. There is no freedom for me that does not acknowledge your freedom. Your right to promote your interests is tempered by your duty to accept that I have equally valid interests. Democratic citizens should contribute some participation to the polity. They have a duty to make themselves informed and to make their views and interests known. They are expected to participate in elections (although in most democracies this duty is not absolute). It is the dialectic of rights and duties that makes for grown-up citizenship.

The citizen can hold his or her head high in public. The subject must keep his or her back covered.