According to the democratic borders argument, the democratic legitimacy of a state's regime of border control requires granting foreigners a right to participate in the procedures determining it. This argument appeals to the All-Subjected Principle, which implies that democratic legitimacy requires that all those subject to political power have a right to participate in determining the laws governing its exercise. The scope objection claims that this argument presupposes an implausible account of subjection and hence of the All-Subjected Principle, which absurdly (...) implies that all domestic laws subject foreigners to their requirements. I argue that this objection misconstrues the logical structure of the legal requirements enshrined in domestic laws: domestic laws typically enshrine narrow-scope, not wide-scope, legal requirements. To be sure, some state laws do subject foreigners to their requirements, and the All-Subjected Principle conditions democratic legitimacy on granting foreigners some say in determining them. But the best reading of the Principle does not have such general expansionary implications. (shrink)

I defend a neo-republican account of the right to have political rights. Neo-republican freedom from domination is a sufficient condition for the extension of political rights not only for permanent residents, but also for temporary residents, unauthorized migrants, and some expatriates. I argue for the advantages of the neo-republican account over the social membership account, the affected-interest account, the stakeholder account, and accounts based on the justification of state coercion.

When collective decisions should be made democratically, which people form the relevant demos? Many theorists think this question is an embarrassment to democratic theory: because any decision about who forms the demos must be made democratically by the right demos, which itself must be democratically constituted and so on ad infinitum; and because neither the concept of democracy, nor our reasons for caring about democracy, determine who should form the demos. Having distinguished between these three versions of the demos problem, (...) we argue that each of them can be solved. (shrink)

In response to the democratic boundary problem, two principles have been seen as competitors: the all-affected interests principle and the all-subjected principle. This article claims that these principles are in fact compatible, being justified vis-à-vis different functions, accommodating different values and drawing on different sources of normativity. I call this a ‘function-sensitive’ view. More specifically, I argue that the boundary problem draws attention to the decision functions of democracy and that two values are indispensable when theorizing how to regulate these (...) functions: procedural fairness and political autonomy. While the value of procedural fairness is best promoted through a version of the all-affected interests principle, applied to decision making generally, it is argued that political autonomy is best promoted through a version of the all-subjected principle, applied to coercive decision making specifically. The article concludes by drawing out some practical implications of the function-sensitive view for the case of immigration and border controls. (shrink)

In this paper, I set out to defend the claim that a central principle in democratic theory, the all-subjected principle, applies not only when one is subject to a rule by a state but also when one is subject to a rule by a ‘non-state’ unit. I argue that self-government is the value underlying the all-subjected principle that explains why a subjected individual should be included because she is subjected. Given this, it is unfounded to limit the principle to the (...) state, as subjection which threatens self-government occurs in non-state units such as corporations and families. This means that following the all-subjected principle surprisingly implies that we ought to have family and workplace democracy. (shrink)

Citizenship and residency are basic conditions for political inclusion in a democracy. However, if democracy is premised on the inclusion of everyone subject to collectively binding decisions, the relevance of either citizenship or residency for recognition as a member of the polity is uncertain. The aim of this paper is to specify the conditions for being subject to collective decisions in the sense relevant to democratic theory. Three conceptions of what it means to be subject to collectively binding decisions are (...) identified and examined, referring to those subject to legal duties and legal powers or to those subject to legal duties and state institutions. The contrast between them is most clearly illustrated in relation to non-residents, those not present in the territory of the state. The extraterritorial dimension of the law thus highlights a fundamental ambiguity in the theory of democracy concerning the extension of political rights. (shrink)

There are two classic principles for deciding who should have a right to vote on the laws, the All Affected Principle and the All Subjected Principle. This article is devoted, firstly, to providing a sympathetic reconstruction of the All Subjected Principle, identifying the most credible account of what it is to be subject to the law. Secondly, it shows that that best account still suffers some serious difficulties, which might best be resolved by treating the All Subjected Principle as a (...) subset of the All Affected Principle with which the All Subjected Principle must in any case be supplemented. (shrink)

In his 2007 Ethics article, “Responsibility Incorporated,” Philip Pettit argued that corporations qualify as morally responsible agents because they possess autonomy, normative judgment, and the capacity for self-control. Although there is ongoing debate over whether corporations have these capacities, both proponents and opponents of corporate moral agency appear to agree that Pettit correctly identified the requirements for moral agency. In this article, I do not take issue with either the claim that autonomy, normative judgment, and self-control are the requirements for (...) moral agency or the claim that corporations possess them. I claim that if both of these claims are correct, then corporate moral agency entails that, in a liberal democracy, corporations should have the right to vote. I show that under the conception of democracy supported by most liberal political theorists, all parties subject to the law are entitled to the right to vote, and all parties that possess autonomy, normative judgment, and self-control are subject to the law. Therefore, if the proponents of corporate moral agency are correct, then corporations satisfy the requirements for the right to vote. I then consider potential objections to this argument. I show that the strongest objection to the corporate right to vote is undermined by Pettit’s own argument for corporate autonomy. I then show that objections derived from other arguments for limiting the rights of corporations are equally unavailing. I conclude with some observations about the implications of my argument for the question of corporate speech rights. (shrink)

It is widely believed that immigrants, after some time, acquire a claim to naturalize and become citizens of their new state. What explains this claim? Although existing answers (may) succeed in justifying some of immigrants' rights claims, they cannot justify the claim that immigrants are owed the opportunity to naturalize because these theories lack a sufficiently rich account of the purpose of citizenship. To fill this gap, I offer a novel egalitarian account of citizenship. Citizenship, on this account, partially protects (...) immigrants against social hierarchy by realizing social equality in a publicly accessible manner. This explains claims to naturalize. (shrink)

Who should have a right to participate in a polity’s decision-making? Although the answers to this ‘boundary problem’ in democratic theory remain controversial, it is widely believed that the enfranchisement of tourists and children is unacceptable. Yet, the two most prominent inclusion principles in the literature – Robert Goodin’s ‘all (possibly) affected interests’-principle and the ‘all subjected to law’-principle – both enfranchise those groups. Unsurprisingly, democratic theorists have therefore offered several reasons for nonetheless exempting tourists and children from the franchise. (...) In this paper, I argue that their attempts fail. None of the proposed rationales can do the job without having unacceptable implications for the voting rights of other groups. I then develop a new specification of the affected interests-view, one that avoids such problems. According to my life plan-principle, a person is entitled to participate in a polity’s decision-making if and only if its decisions will actually affect her autonomously chosen life plans, or prevent her from developing or revising plans of that kind. I show that this principle straightforwardly avoids enfranchising tourists and children, and thus improves upon its two prominent rivals. The paper ends by considering and rejecting two objections to my new principle. (shrink)

This article addresses two central topics in normative debates on transnational citizenship: the inclusion of resident non-citizens and of non-resident citizens within the demos. Through a critical review of the social membership (Carens, Rubio-Marin) and stakeholder (Baubock) principles, it identifies two problems within these debates. The first is the antinomy of incorporation, namely, the point that there are compelling arguments both for the mandatory naturalization of permanent residents and for making naturalization a voluntary process. The second is the arbitrary demos (...) problem and concerns who determines whether expatriate voting rights are granted (and on what terms). The argument developed provides a way of dissolving the first problem (and defending the proposed solution against possible objections) and resolving the second problem. In doing so it provides a defensible normative basis for the political theory of transnational citizenship. (shrink)

Most refugees residing in the European Union (EU) do not retain their voting rights in states of origin or lack the means to exercise them effectively. Most member states of the EU do not extend voting rights to refugees. This leaves a large population of refugees residing within the borders of the EU in a unique state of disenfranchisement. In this article, I consider this problem from a democratic perspective. Should refugees in the EU have voting rights? My answer turns (...) on three aspects characterizing the circumstances of refugees: First, refugees reside in member states for an indeterminate, and typically protracted, amount of time without any exit options. Second, the political governance of the EU and its member states significantly shapes the lives of refugees. And third, refugees lack effective voting rights, and consequently, a meaningful political membership, in any political community across the world. In turn, based on an all-subjected principle of democratic inclusion, I argue that refugees should be secured state-level voting rights in member states, albeit with a condition of the period of residency. Moreover, they should have immediate voting rights at the supranational institutions of the EU such as the European Parliament. (shrink)

This paper critiques the All-Subjected Principle. The All-Subjected Principle is one of the most prominent answers to the Boundary Problem, which consists in determining who should be entitled to participate in which democratic decision. The All-Subjected Principle comes in many versions, but the general idea is that all people who are subjected in a relevant sense with regard to a democratic decision should be entitled to participate in that decision. One respect in which versions of the All-Subjected Principle differ concerns (...) how to best understand ‘subjectedness’. One view spells out ‘subjectedness’ in terms of legal bindingness. Another view understands ‘subjectedness’ in terms of coercion. I argue that the All-Subjected Principle is extensionally inadequate on both views in that it yields verdicts that are at odds with our considered judgements about certain cases. These cases involve legal norms of referral or international administrative assistance. (shrink)

This paper looks at a recent challenge to the liberal inclusivist view that everyone on the state’s territory should have a path to citizenship. Economists have argued that giving immigrants an inferior legal status would persuade wealthy countries to admit more, with beneficial consequences for global justice. Whilst this trade-off might seem appealing from the impersonal perspective of the policymaker it generates incoherence from the perpective of the collective of democratic citizens, since it requires them to treat their own unjust (...) attitudes as an objective constraint. The paper also rejects the idea that a voluntary choice to migrate can be taken as consent to an inferior status. (shrink)

This paper critically engages the legal and political framework for responding to democracy and rule of law backsliding in the EU. I develop a new and original critique of Article 7 TEU based on it being democratically illegitimate and normatively incoherent qua itself in conflict with EU fundamental values. Other more incremental and scaleable responses are desirable, and the paper moves on to assess the legitimacy of economic sanctions such as tying access to EU funds to performance on democratic and (...) rule of law indicators or imposing fines on backsliding states. I hold such sanctions to be a priori legitimate, and argue that in some cases economic sanctions are even normatively required, given that EU material support of backsliding member states can amount to material complicity in their backsliding. However, an economic conditionality mechanism would need to be designed to minimize unjust and counterproductive effects. One way to pursue this could be to complement sanctions against the backsliding government with investment for prodemocratic actors in that state. (shrink)

The democratic egalitarian ideal requires that everyone should enjoy equal power over the world through voting. If it is improper to vote twice in the same election, why should it be permissible for dual citizens to vote in two different places? Several possible excuses are considered and rejected.

This article provides a survey of various topics in which questions about taxation feature alongside questions about justice. It seeks to argue mainly that taxation is a rather fragmentary domain of inquiry about which it is hard to envisage the development of views about what justice requires with respect to tax policy in general. Guided by this idea, the article attempts to highlight some aspects of taxation whose connection with justice has been under-explored by philosophers, as well as to acquaint (...) the reader with a sense of the more thoroughly researched areas. (shrink)

This paper addresses republican conditions of legitimacy for the constitution of the civic statuses of migrants. It identifies two legitimacy tests to which any civic status is subject, namely, that it does not make its bearers more vulnerable to the arbitrary exercise of private or public power and that the constitution of the person as bearer of this status is not itself the product of an arbitrary exercise of public power . It is argued that R1 puts significant constraints on (...) what can be legitimate migrant statuses and R2 links republicanism to cosmopolitanism in terms of a basic norm in respect of the production and allocation of civic statuses in that those who are subject to such a regime should have the effective power to ‘shape and contest’ the rules of this regime. (shrink)

Epistemic impairment has been the decisive yardstick when excluding infants from political agency. One of the suggestions to bypass the epistemic requirement of political agency and to encourage the inclusion of infants in representative democracies is to resort to proxies or surrogates who share or advocate interests which may be coincidental with their interests. However, this solution is far from desirable, given that it privileges the political agency of parents, guardians and trustees over other adult citizens. This article offers an (...) alternative to this conceptual frame of reference by making a case for the political agency of infants. Firstly, it maintains that political agency can be understood in terms of the several facets involved in political representation. Secondly, it claims that the all-affected principle can be reformulated as an ‘infant-affected-interests principle’ in light of which infants are members of the class of the represented. Thirdly, it explores the ways through which this political agency can occur without having to resort to alternative conceptions of representation. The conclusion ascertains that infant enfranchisement is highly undesirable and that there are more viable forms to promote infant political agency, such as virtual representation, infant-beneficial principles of political action and ombudspersons for infants. (shrink)

Despite being fundamental to democracy, the normative concept of the people, i.e. the demos, is highly unclear. This article clarifies the legitimacy of the demos’ boundaries by structuring the debate into three strains of justification: first, normative membership principles; second, its democratic functionality and the necessity of cohesion for this essential function; and third, a procedural understanding of the demos. It will be shown that normative principles can only justify its expansion towards the ideal of an unbounded demos. On the (...) other hand, the democratic function of the demos can be understood as a criterion for its restriction. This, however, is only possible on the basis of an existing polity and not for the initial constitution of the demos. Consequently, a legitimate demos has to take both inclusionary and exclusionary tendencies into account. These tendencies need to be weighed against each other in the democratic process, which leads to a fundamentally procedural understanding of the legitimacy of the demos. (shrink)

European Journal of Political Theory, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 368-389, April 2022. Epistemic impairment has been the decisive yardstick when excluding infants from political agency. One of the suggestions to bypass the epistemic requirement of political agency and to encourage the inclusion of infants in representative democracies is to resort to proxies or surrogates who share or advocate interests which may be coincidental with their interests. However, this solution is far from desirable, given that it privileges the political agency (...) of parents, guardians and trustees over other adult citizens. This article offers an alternative to this conceptual frame of reference by making a case for the political agency of infants. Firstly, it maintains that political agency can be understood in terms of the several facets involved in political representation. Secondly, it claims that the all-affected principle can be reformulated as an ‘infant-affected-interests principle’ in light of which infants are members of the class of the represented. Thirdly, it explores the ways through which this political agency can occur without having to resort to alternative conceptions of representation. The conclusion ascertains that infant enfranchisement is highly undesirable and that there are more viable forms to promote infant political agency, such as virtual representation, infant-beneficial principles of political action and ombudspersons for infants. (shrink)

Construed as a theory of justice, relational egalitarianism says that justice requires that people relate as equals. Construed as a theory of what makes democracy valuable, it says that democracy is a necessary, or constituent, part of the value of relating as equals. Typically, relational egalitarians want their theory to provide both an account of what justice requires and an account of what makes democracy valuable. We argue that relational egalitarians with this dual ambition face the justice-democracy dilemma: Understanding social (...) relations in such a way that renders relational egalitarianism plausible as an answer to what makes democracy valuable comes at the price of understanding social relations in a way that makes it less plausible as a theory of justice, and vice versa. We also argue that there is no easy way out of the dilemma and that relational egalitarians, who want relational equality to provide both accounts mentioned, may simply have to set their ambitions lower on behalf of relational equality. (shrink)

A citizen is a member of a political community who enjoys the rights and assumes the duties of membership. This broad definition is discernible, with minor variations, in the works of contemporary authors as well as in the entry “citoyen” in Diderot's and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie..

“One person, one vote” is wedded to the idea of democracy to such an extent that many would hesitate to refer to a system, which deviated from this, as a democracy. In this paper, I show why this assumption is hard to defend. I do so by pointing to the importance of baseline in justifying a system of “one person, one vote.” The investigation will show that the reasons underlying the most prominent views on democratic inclusion cannot justify “one person, (...) one vote” robustly. This ultimately means that democrats should be less confident in their judgment that 1P1V is a necessary part of democracy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I critique one way of arguing for global democracy on grounds of affected interests and defend another. A famous argument for global democracy, which I call the Demos-Based Argument, attempts to justify global democracy based on the claim that affected interests vindicate individual claims to democratic participation or representation. I analyze and evaluate the Demos-Based Argument and consider different ways of interpreting and justifying its crucial premise: the Principle of Affected Interests. The result is that the argument (...) fails. One lesson of the discussion of the Demos-Based Argument is that the most promising, though eventually unsuccessful, justification of the Principle of Affected Interests is utilitarian. Given the failure of the Demos-Based Argument, the question suggests itself if there is another way to argue for global democracy on utilitarian grounds. I will outline a promising alternative argument for global democracy, which I call the Direct Argument. Like the De... (shrink)

This article argues that all-affected principle needs to be reconceptualized to account for the differences in the historical and current social position of those who are or who should be making legitimacy claims. Drawing on Butler’s theory of vulnerability, this article advances a new and more robust all-affected principle that affords a stronger claim to legitimacy to those most-deeply affected by both the current decision in question and the historical process and practices shaping the choices available. In particular, this article (...) identifies three sets of exclusions of groups and claims that drive this reformulation: first, cases of historical injustice such as indigenous peoples; second, cases of current processes of minoritization which silence or render some groups and opinions as marginal such as women, ethnic minorities or even people in lower economic classes; and third, cases of state establishment of boundaries and ‘worthy’ citizenship such as refugees making claims for relocation and asylum. (shrink)

Although the moral foundations of voting rights regulations have been the subject of widespread scrutiny, there is one aspect of the debate which has gone largely unquestioned and is currently accepted in every state’s actual voting rights regulations. This is the requirement of prior residence, which stipulates that immigrants are granted the right to vote only once they have lived in the host country for a certain period of time. It is this requirement I call into question in this paper. (...) Taking up the most plausible justifications for this requirement, I aim to put substantial pressure on its moral acceptability by arguing that it is not directly grounded by any of the principles that are currently defended as a means to determine the demos, nor a proxy for some other morally relevant feature, nor a warrantor for abilities held to be significant for the right to vote. (shrink)

In 1970, Stewart advocated disenfranchising everyone reaching retirement age or age 70, whichever was earlier. The question of whether senior citizens should be disenfranchised has recently come to the fore due to votes on issues such as Brexit and climate change. Indeed, there is a growing literature which argues that we should increase the voting power of non-senior citizens relative to senior citizens, for reasons having to do with intergenerational justice. Thus, it seems that there are reasons of justice to (...) disenfranchise senior citizens, or at least to grant them a lower voting weight than non-senior citizens. In this paper, we investigate whether there are democratic reasons to do so. To answer this question, we turn to the boundary problem in democratic theory, i.e., the question of who should be included in democratic decision-making. Two prominent solutions, and a more recent one, are particularly relevant: the all-affected principle, the all-subjected principle, and the relational egalitarian principle. When it comes to the all-affected principle and the all-subjected principle, we argue that there is reason to grant most senior citizens a lower voting weight than most non-senior citizens in most decisions. Whether that is the case on the relational egalitarian principle depends on how people relate to each other in society. Indeed, it is sometimes in accordance with the relational egalitarian view to grant senior citizens a greater voting weight than non-senior citizens. (shrink)

Opponents of compulsory voting often allege that it violates a ‘right not to vote’. This paper seeks to clarify and defend such a right against its critics. First, I propose that this right must be understood as a Hohfeldian claim against being compelled to vote, rather than as a mere privilege to abstain. So construed, the right not to vote is compatible with a duty to vote, so arguments for a duty to vote do not refute the existence of such (...) a right. The right against compulsion is most easily defended within a liberal framework, hence its critics often appeal instead to a republican conception of freedom. In the latter part of the paper, I argue that even these republican arguments are inconclusive. Even non-dominating interference still conditions freedom, which may require justification. Further, citizens can live up to republican ideals, so long as they are vigilant; they need not actually vote. Thus, republican arguments fail to refute a right not to vote. (shrink)

Is democracy necessarily bound to territorial spaces and boundaries, or can democratic processes and institutions dispense with territorial ties? To answer this question, which arises, for example, in debates about democracy beyond the state, this article reconstructs conceptions of territory influential in democratic theory, as well as in recent debates on transnational citizenship and territorial rights. It establishes the container-space, social-space, and place conceptions of territory, and negotiates a nuanced and multi-dimensional understanding of territorial spaces and boundaries and their relations (...) to democracy. Based on this conception, democracy does not necessarily depend on (a) territory. Neither, however, should this connection be dismissed lightly. Instead, proponents of both the preservation and the loosening of ties between democracy and territory need to answer two distinct, yet complementary questions concerning (1) the justification of territorial spaces and boundaries as social spaces, and (2) the functions they fulfil as container spaces. Exclusive place conceptions of territory, however, are not consistent with the proposed understanding of territory. In the final part, this article negotiates institutional perspectives for plural democratic spaces and boundaries by briefly reviewing theoretical sketches on democracy beyond the state, as well as developing constellations of nested political spaces within the European context. (shrink)

Under which conditions, if any, is it morally permissible for states to grant non-citizen residents (‘denizens’) different political, socio-economic, and cultural rights than citizens? What, if anything, could justify legal rights-differentiations along the lines of citizenship? This special issue scrutinizes these politically increasingly salient questions from a wide range of perspectives, drawing on recent literature in the ethics of migration, citizenship, multiculturalism, and refuge, as well as on normative theories of law, territory, and settler colonialism. In this introduction to the (...) volume, I sketch a conceptual map of the emerging debate on justice for denizens, making explicit some underlying theoretical assumptions common to each of the three key domains of legal rights-differentiations (political, socio-economic, and cultural rights). I distinguish the question of what is owed to denizens as a matter of justice, from that of what justice permits and requires in respect to denizens generally. And I outline four models, implicit in the literature, for theorizing the moral rights different types of denizens have and lack – to help determine which forms of unequal treatment wrong them. I conclude by providing brief summaries of the seven contributing articles, pinpointing them on my conceptual map. (shrink)

This paper argues that, in addition to humanitarian concerns, policies toward immigrants should also be shaped by recognition of special responsibilities toward some populations of noncitizens. National governments acquire such responsibilities in part through their histories of coercive impositions on those populations. Former imperial powers, in particular, often possess special obligations toward the inhabitants of their foreign colonies that go beyond their general humanitarian responsibilities. Those obligations might be met in various ways; but if national governments of wealthy, formerly imperial (...) states granted greater access for immigration to the poor of their former colonies, migration flows might significantly contribute to reductions in global levels of inequality. (shrink)

This work offers a new democratic case for federalism, understood as a form of governance in which multiple entities in a country possess final decision-making authority (viz., can make decisions free from others substituting their decisions, issuing fines, etc.) over at least one subject (e.g., immigration, defense). It argues that leading solutions to the democratic boundary problem provide overlapping arguments for federalism. The underlying logic and many details of the most commonly cited solutions focused on those relevantly affected by and (...) subject to decisions each support three distinct arguments (focused on voteshares, other forms of democratic influence, and persistent minorities) for multiple demoi possessing authority in a polity. Federalism is the best available method for recognizing the distinct demoi. This not only supports federal governance as opposed to unitary governance and subsidiarity. It also suggests that democracy and federalism are importantly related and have several implications for institutional design. (shrink)

Standard accounts of democratic disenfranchisement either start from a presumption of universal inclusion and justify electoral exclusions as deviations from the norm, or attempt to draw a demarcation line between justifiable inclusion and exclusion relying on membership in the political community. Even when successfully employed, each strategy only provides a partial view of disenfranchisement, which is usually targeted at just one or two groups of agents. In this article, I develop a generally applicable account of disenfranchisement, grounded in a respect-based (...) understanding of the relational value of democracy. This account simultaneously provides the normative basis for widespread enfranchisement under equal terms and for justified electoral exclusions. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Immigration, Joseph Carens’ builds a sophisticated account of justice in immigration based on an interpretation of liberal states’ democratic principles and practices. I dispute Carens’ contention that his hermeneutic methodology supports a broadly liberal egalitarian consensus; instead, the consensus he detects on principles and practices appears because his interpretation presupposes liberal egalitarianism. Carens’ methodology would benefit by engaging with a “hermeneutics of suspicion” that explores the ideological and exclusionary facets of liberal egalitarian principles when applied to (...) immigration. This would contribute to an account of the ethics of immigration that gives more attention to power and interest, mediated through structures of gender, race, and class. (shrink)

Temporary workers stand to gain from temporary migration programs, which can also benefit sender and recipient states. Some critics of temporary migration programs, however, argue that failing to extend citizenship rights or a secure pathway to permanent residency to such migrants places them in an unacceptable position of domination with respect to other members of society. We shall argue that access to permanent residency and citizenship rights should not be regarded as a condition for the moral permissibility of such programs. (...) Instead we will focus on the essential protections that must be extended to all migrant workers, irrespective of the length of their migration project. (shrink)

Personhood and legal status: reflections on the democratic rights of corporations Corporations can have rights but whether they should also have democratic rights depends among other things on whether they are the kind of entities to which the democratic ideal applies. This paper distinguishes four different conceptions of “the person” that can have democratic rights. According to one view, the only necessary condition is legal personality, whereas according to the other three views, democratic inclusion is conditioned also by personhood in (...) the natural sense of the term. Though it is uncontroversial that corporations can be legal persons, it is plausible to ascribe personhood in the natural sense to corporations only if personhood is conceptualized exclusively in terms of moral agency. The conclusion of the paper is that corporations can meet the necessary conditions for democratic inclusion but that it is not yet clear in democratic theory exactly what these conditions are. (shrink)

Cet article est la traduction française de l’introduction du livre d’Ayelet Shachar, «The Puzzle of Birthright Citizenship», avec la permission de l’éditeur, tirée de The Birthright Lottery : Citizenship and Global Inequality, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp.1-18. © 2009 President and Fellows of Harvard College. Traduction de Martin Provencher.This paper is the French translation of Ayelet Shachar’s introduction, «The Puzzle of Birthright Citizenship», digitally reproduced by permission of the publisher from The Birthright Lottery : Citizenship and Global Inequality, Cambridge, (...) Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp.1-18. © 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Translation by Martin Provencher. (shrink)

This study surveys debates on citizenship, the state, and the bases of political stability. The survey begins by presenting the primary sense of 'citizenship' as a legal status and the question of the sorts of political communities people can belong to as citizens. (Multi)nation-states are suggested as the main site of citizenship in the contemporary world, without ignoring the existence of alternative possibilities. Turning to discussions of citizen identity, the study shows that some of the discussion is motivated by a (...) perceived need for citizens to have a sense of political belonging, on the assumption that such a sense promotes political activity and has other personal and social benefits. But there are serious problems with the strategy of understanding the relevant sense of belonging in terms of identification with the nation-state. The study explores a more promising way to generate this sense of belonging. First, societies should function, to a sufficiently high degree, in accord with political principles of justice and democratic decision making. Second, there should be a general consensus on political principles among citizens, as well as high levels of engagement in democratic deliberation. (shrink)

This paper intersects the literature on the democratic boundary problem with the literature on the constructivist turn in political representation to show that the boundary problem broadly construed involves a distinction between ‘the problem of inclusion’ (into pre-existing demoi and their decision-making procedures) and ‘the problem of constituting the demos’ (which involves criteria for partaking in constituent power). This distinction is consistently neglected by democratic theorists. However, it has serious implications for representative democracies because the standard answers to the boundary (...) problem – the all-affected-interests principle, the all-subjected principle, and the substantive-demos principle – do not apply to the problem of constituting the demos. A new principle aimed at the latter problem is here proposed: the constructivist-representative principle. In the end, it should be clear that ascertaining who should be entitled to participate in which democratic decision requires the adoption of different principles depending on the specific demos in question and on the type of decision-making procedure involved (e.g., constitution-making-or-changing, lawmaking, policymaking, etc.). (shrink)

This article argues for reading the Algerian-French sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad (1933–1998) as a political theorist of migration. Various contributions have recently called to move away from the court-like assessment of claims by host states and foreigners and to engage more frankly with empirical work more attentive to concrete experiences and power relations. I contend that Sayad’s sociological work constitutes a substantial empirical and normative resource for ethical and political theory of migration, pointing to the persistence of ‘state thought’ and presenting (...) original normative perspectives on emigration, inclusion in democracy, naturalization or postcolonial relationships. Such a reading of Sayad from a political theory perspective would then constitute a prime example of the cross-fertilization of empirical and normative approaches. (shrink)

Prior to the democratic breakthrough in most Western countries, the right to vote was premised on a person’s economic contribution. No country today reserves voting rights exclusively to contributors, but economic contribution matters once again. It matters for immigrants’ access to citizenship and its associated political rights, and it matters for emigrants’ attempts to keep the right to vote in their ‘home country’. Economic contribution has attracted very little attention in the literature on democratic inclusion. The few scholars who have (...) discussed it have rejected it based on its expected implications, without going into detail about its different instantiations and normative underpinnings. This paper lays the foundation for a more thorough critique. Informed by historical practices, we distinguish between two main types of economic contributivist regulations: those that condition the right to vote on the size of the contribution, and those that condition it on compliance with legally required contributions. We suggest that contributivism can be based either on property rights or on reciprocity. We conclude the paper by contrasting contributivism with established principles of democratic inclusion (such as the all-affected principle), and by arguing that, unlike these other principles, contributivism is incompatible with the democratic ideal of self-rule. (shrink)

Electoral representation is a cornerstone of contemporary democracy. Democracy today is widely interpreted to mean that the people governs itself through electing officials of government. But while...

Este artículo presenta un análisis contextual de las teorías sobre la ciudadanía en el exterior, así como sus relaciones conceptuales y prácticos con la ciudadanía europea. Aunque la residencia en otro país puede ser un factor que cuestiona el derecho de participación y representación política de los no-residentes, consideramos que los emigrantes de primera generación son miembros legítimos del demos. En consecuencia, deberían tener derechos de participación y representación en su país de origen. Sin embargo, en el caso concreto de (...) los ciudadanos europeos, los derechos políticos en el exterior constituyen un recurso no sólo en relación a los gobiernos de origen, sino también frente a las administraciones de los países de residencia. (shrink)

This paper has a twofold aim in determining who should be granted electoral rights at the state level, one negative and another positive. The negative part deconstructs the link between state-level political membership and citizenship and contests naturalization procedures. This approach argues that naturalization procedures, when coercively used as a necessary condition for accessing electoral rights at the state level, are both inconsistent with liberal democratic ideals and an inexcusable practice in liberal democratic states. The positive part of the paper (...) seeks to establish what – if not the acquisition of citizenship –could determine state-level political membership for non-citizens. In other words, it attempts to explain how and in what conditions non-citizens may become political members of a state without naturalizing. This approach considers the most prominent arguments that base state-level political membership on residency, i.e. residency as a legal status granted by the previous members of the community and residency as physical presence within a defined jurisdiction. It argues that, in a world of increasing human mobility across borders, while the former way of understanding residency might be too restrictive, the latter might be too banal to forge membership ties that form a political community. Domicile is the proposed alternative, introduced as a type of residency that is self-given and remains stable despite numerous changes of residency. Domicile is a legal term that indicates where a person officially registers her permanent home even when residing abroad. In sum, this is an argument against naturalization as the access door for electoral rights at the state level and in favor of defining membership in the political community based on domicile. (shrink)

Democracies that appoint legislators through elections in territorially defined, sub-national constituencies and simultaneously enfranchise expatriate citizens must either assign expatriate voters to in-country constituencies (assimilated representation) or group them into distinct overseas constituencies that elect their own legislators (discrete representation). This essay critically reviews extant normative discussions of the two models and develops a normative analysis of its own. This suggests that when expatriates form but a small part of a democracy’s overall demos, discrete representation is the more attractive model (...) of expatriate representation as it overall better satisfies four important standards of evaluation, namely: equal opportunities for political influence, deliberation within the legislature, deliberation among constituents, and partisan voter mobilisation. This argument is also defended against the potential objections that the said standards can be satisfied by other means than discrete expatriate representation and that the defence of discrete expatriate representation implies a proliferation of special constituencies. (shrink)

Current world migration is disrupting conceptual boundaries of national democratic polities. One area where the traditional sense of political community is being challenged concerns electoral rights for non-resident citizens and non-citizen residents. With the right to vote being an ultimate expression of political membership in a democratic nation-state, any debates about these two groupsck. It provides direct empirical evidence that undermines the conventional wisdom that Koreans define their polity purely on the basis of their ethnicity. Contrary to our expectations, a (...) close scrutiny of the Korean debates in question reveals ample references to the civic ideals of political community. The line of reasoning that emphasizes duties towards the welfare of the polity has produced powerful justifications for denying political franchise to overseas compatriots, while granting limited electoral rights to qualified resident foreigners. A broader implication of this empirical finding is that it highlights a fundamental limitation of Baubck's scheme should be modified to address both the rights-based logics and the somewhat obsolete duty-based logic of franchise extension. (shrink)

This essay argues that legal efficacy understood as existent binding force and as dominance of a system of coercion vis-à-vis competing systems is not strictly a matter of fact, but involves what can be termed justified normativity in a factual context. The argument is divided into four sections. The first three sections describe different dimensions of a normative concept of legal efficacy applied to legal systems: efficacy as persuasiveness, as indirect communication, and as constitutive obedience. The final section focuses on (...) the efficacy of individual norms and adds a new criterion – membership – which establishes a multi-layered test of efficacy. (shrink)