Debates about the EU show that the holy trinity of absolute, indivisible sovereignty, nationality/citizenship and national identity/loyalty should be replaced by multilayered, pluralist concepts for descriptive, explanatory and normative purposes. Democratic pluralism criticizes replacement‐strategies (of the nation‐state by a European state, citizenship‐rights by human rights, national obligations by European or global ones). It opts for productive complementarity guided by two principles: “proximity and accountability” and “correspondence of powers and democratic say” and for progressive transdomestic shifts. The inclusion of the articles (...) on citizenship in the EC Treaty has, unintendedly, contributed to such a shift though it missed historical chances to develop a more democratic and social EU living up to minimal global obligations. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of political participation in a theory of rights. If political participation is a right, how does it stand in relation to other rights about which the participants may be making political decisions? Suppose a majority of citizens vote in favour of some limit on (say) the free exercise of religion. If their decision is allowed to stand, does that mean that we are giving more weight to the right to participate than to the right to (...) religious freedom? In this paper, I argue that talk of conflict (and relative weightings) of rights is inappropriate in a case like this. I argue that the special role of participation in a theory of rights is not a matter of its being given moral priority over other rights. Instead it's a matter of this being a right whose exercise seems peculiarly appropriate, from a rights-based point of view, in situations where reasonable right-bearers disagree about what (other) rights they have. (shrink)