David Miller
Democracy’s Domain
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In this article I try to address the question whether democratic theory
can guide us in solving what is sometimes called democracy’s boundary
problem, the problem, that is, of deciding who should be included in the
demos or constituency when democratic decisions are taken. How, in
other words, should the political units within which democracy will be
practiced be constituted? I take this to be primarily a question about
people rather than about territory, although of course the answer we give
will have immediate implications for the territorial reach of democratic
authority. It is a question that was not much addressed during the last
century, when democracy itself became the preeminent political value,
but it was largely taken for granted that its primary domain was the
nation-state. But several recent developments have made it more urgent.
The most obvious of these is the growing interest in transnational or
global democracy, whose advocates argue that democracy at the
national level is no longer adequate to address a range of problems that
arise as a result of ‘globalization’, broadly understood. Another is the
issue of secession: the issue of whether there may be democratic reasons
to break up larger states into smaller units. A third is the issue of immigration, where it has been argued that the appropriate demos for making
decisions about the immigration policy of any given state should be
Earlier versions of this article were presented to the 6th Pavia Graduate Conference in
Political Philosophy, University of Pavia, September 16–17, 2008, and to the Nuffield Political Theory Workshop, October 13, 2008, and I should like to thank both audiences for their
comments and suggestions. It draws upon my Wesson Lectures on Democracy delivered at
Stanford University in 2007. I am particularly grateful to Joshua Cohen for his written
commentary on that occasion. The article has also been much improved by comments
from the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs.
© 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Philosophy & Public Affairs 37, no. 3
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extended to include would-be immigrants alongside existing citizens
of the state in question.1 In all these cases, the underlying
question is whether the nation-state provides an adequate answer to
the domain question, or whether we must consider new ways of
constituting the demos.
The issue in this article is whether democratic theory is of any help in
solving this problem. The answer is not obvious. One might think that
decisions about domain should be made on other grounds; for example,
one might appeal to values such as freedom of association, or national
self-determination, or economic efficiency. Once the domain is fixed,
one can appeal to democratic theory for guidance on the best institutions and procedures to be adopted, but it is simply a mistake to think
that the theory can address the domain question itself. Several prominent democratic theorists have held this view. Joseph Schumpeter, in his
famous discussion of the idea of democracy, argued that since every
democratic system excludes some potential participants, for example,
those below a certain age, on grounds that the existing members of that
system take to be rational, there is no alternative to allowing each demos
to define itself.2 Attempts to propose criteria from the outside simply
reveal a disagreement about what makes a person fit to participate in
democratic politics, and Schumpeter felt no discomfort in conceding
that polities that excluded, for example, Jews, blacks, or women might
still qualify as democracies. So for Schumpeter the boundary question is
unanswerable and in a sense trivial: we must simply accept the boundaries that political communities have set for themselves. Robert Dahl, by
contrast, did not think that the question was a trivial one—on the
contrary—and he grappled repeatedly with it in his various contributions to democratic theory, but still concluded that “we cannot solve the
problem of the proper scope and domain of democratic units from
within democratic theory.”3 Since after saying this Dahl immediately
1. See Arash Abizadeh, “Democratic Theory and Border Coercion: No Right to Unilaterally Control Your Own Borders,” Political Theory 36 (2008): 37–65.
2. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, ed. Thomas B. Bottomore (London: Allen and Unwin, 1976), pp. 243–45.
3. Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1989), p. 207. For other attempts by Dahl on the domain problem, see Robert A. Dahl,
After the Revolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970), chap. 2; Robert
A. Dahl and Edward R. Tufte, Size and Democracy (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
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goes on to present seven criteria for judging whether the domain of a
democratic unit is justified, however, that conclusion is ambiguous. It
might mean that there is no simple entailment from democratic principles to the choice of political units; rather that choice, although
informed by democratic principles, has to be made on the basis of contingencies of time and place; in other words, it requires empirically
grounded political judgment as well. Or it might mean that the criteria
proposed by Dahl are not themselves democratic criteria. Both possibilities find support in Dahl’s text.
Why is it important to see whether democratic theory has anything to
contribute to the domain problem, given that there are other ways of
solving it? There are two reasons, one negative, one positive. The negative reason is that if we have to step beyond the idea of democracy itself
to obtain an answer to the problem of domain, we are likely to become
enmeshed in controversy. Suppose the appeal is to national selfdetermination: the boundaries of democracy should be made to coincide, as far as possible, with national boundaries. This solution will only
appeal to those who value national self-determination on independent
grounds, and by no means everybody does. The positive reason is the
discomfort we intuitively feel with the idea that boundary setting is
purely arbitrary from a democratic point of view. Few readers, I believe,
will be happy with Schumpeter’s suggestion that we must “leave it to
every populus to define [it]self,”4 because the implications of this position, clear to see in the exclusions that Schumpeter contemplated, seem
inconsistent with the idea of political equality that is central to democracy itself. We are likely, of course, to condemn the exclusion of women
or racial minorities from political rights on other grounds—that it is
merely arbitrary, or that it exposes them to exploitation, for example—
but we also think, I suggest, that it is plainly undemocratic, meaning that
it violates some constitutive element of the idea of democracy itself. The
problem, then, is to see how an appeal to the underlying values of
democracy might guide us in thinking about the question of its domain.
One reason for thinking that the domain problem cannot be resolved
by an appeal to democracy can be quickly set aside. This is the well-worn
Press, 1974); Robert A. Dahl, “Procedural Democracy,” in Philosophy, Politics and Society,
Fifth Series, ed. Peter Laslett and James Fishkin (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979).
4. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 245.
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observation that if a democratic procedure such as majority voting is
used to decide the question of who is to be included in the domain, an
obviously circularity is involved, since to use the procedure we must
already know who should be allowed to take part in operating it. (There
is no reason to believe that by starting with some arbitrarily chosen
constituency and allowing that constituency to take repeated votes on
its own membership, we will always arrive at the same equilibrium
outcome.) Clearly then, the domain problem cannot be solved by appeal
to democratic procedure. But this does not mean that it cannot be solved
by appeal to democratic theory, understood to mean the underlying
values, such as political equality, that justify procedures like majority
voting. It is too quick to conclude, as Whelan does, that “democratic
theory cannot itself provide any solution to disputes that may—and historically do—arise concerning boundaries” on the grounds that “democracy, which is a method for group decision-making or self-governance,
cannot be brought to bear on the logically prior matter of the constitution of the group itself, the existence of which it presupposes.”5 This
conflates democratic theory, as a set of normative ideals, with democratic method, as a procedure or procedures that reflect these ideals.6
ii
A better diagnosis of the problem, I believe, is that democratic theory
very often gives ambivalent answers to the question of domain, as different elements within the theory pull in opposite directions. At this
point, it is necessary to say something about the theory itself, and to
recognize that democracy has many of the features that W. B. Gallie
sought to capture in his notion of an essentially contested concept.7
Conceptions of democracy vary along a number of dimensions: they vary
5. Frederick Whelan, “Prologue: Democratic Theory and the Boundary Problem,” in
Nomos XXV: Liberal Democracy, ed. J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York
and London: New York University Press, 1983), p. 40. See also Seyla Benhabib, Another
Cosmopolitanism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), who speaks of a “paradox
internal to democracies,” namely that “democracies cannot choose the boundaries of their
own membership democratically,” p. 35.
6. This point has also been made by Gustaf Arrhenius, “The Boundary Problem in
Democratic Theory” (mimeo), sections II–III.
7. W. B. Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
56 (1955–56): 167–98.
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both in terms of the institutional arrangements that they regard as the
best embodiment of the democratic ideal, and in terms of the underlying
values that these institutions are meant to serve. It would be a large task
to survey each of the many possible conceptions and ask how it would
resolve the domain question. Instead I shall consider just two such conceptions, which I shall label liberal and radical (or L-democracy and
R-democracy for short), that naturally form two ends of a spectrum along
which many, if not all, contemporary democratic theorists can be
positioned. As will shortly become apparent, the contrast between
L-democrats and R-democrats is in the first place a contrast between
different normative understandings of the purposes of democratic institutions, though this translates into a disagreement about the form these
institutions should take (for example, about whether democracy must
involve representation, and if so what the relationship should be
between representatives and those they represent). I choose to focus on
this particular contrast because it shows us most clearly how answers to
the domain question depend on the conception of democracy that is
being invoked to resolve it. So let me now provide brief sketches of the
two conceptions, keeping in mind that many democrats will opt for
some intermediate position that draws selectively from both.
For L-democrats, the value of democracy is best understood instrumentally, in terms of the content of the decisions that will result from
following democratic procedures. Democracy, in other words, is important for the outcomes it produces. What outcomes are these?
L-democrats will respond to this question in different ways, but two
historically important answers are that democracy serves freedom by
protecting members of the demos from domination, and that democracy
promotes welfare by ensuring that political decisions track the aggregate
interests of its constituency. Democratic procedures are assessed in
terms of these values, so majority rule, for example, is supported insofar
as it protects the freedom and welfare of the majority, but challenged
when majorities are likely to oppress or neglect the interests
of minority groups.
For R-democrats, by contrast, democracy is valued intrinsically, and
the idea of collective self-determination stands at the heart of democratic theory. Democracy is a system in which people come together to
decide matters of common concern on the basis of equality, and the aim
is to reach decisions that everyone can identify with, that is, can see as in
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some sense their decision. This cannot mean, obviously, that the decision reached represents everyone’s first choice; if that degree of consensus existed, a political procedure for making decisions would hardly be
needed. But the process by which the decision is reached—process here
encompassing not only formal voting procedures and the like, but also
the manner in which the debate between alternatives is conducted—is
such that each person feels that he or she has had a chance to influence
the outcome, and that the outcome itself is at least a fair compromise
between competing interests or rival convictions. If Locke is the patron
saint of L-democracy, Rousseau with his conception of the general will
stands in the same relation to R-democracy.
How does the contrast between these rival conceptions of democracy
bear upon the question of democracy’s domain? If we think, in liberal
terms, about democracy as valuable for the outcomes it produces, then
one of our main concerns will be with the relationship between the
constituency that makes the decisions and what we can call the impact
group: the set of people whose lives are affected by the decisions made.
We may, for example, want to establish procedures that as far as possible
ensure that the constituency and the impact group are one and the same,
that those who make the decisions are the same people as those who
bear their impact; or we may prefer a more complex arrangement that
we believe offers better protection to certain members of the impact
group. We will approach the domain question by asking, first of all, about
the effects (understood as policy impact) of bounding the demos in this
way rather than that.
If, on the other hand, we begin with the radical conception of democracy, our first concern will be with the composition of the demos itself.
We want its members to be engaged in collective self-determination in
such a way that when decisions are taken, each of them is able to see the
outcome as legitimate. Although formal procedures will matter here,
procedures alone cannot ensure this result. It depends also on the personal qualities of the members, and the way that they relate to one
another when deciding political issues: how far do they trust each other
to argue sincerely, for example, and to appeal to principles consistently
even when this works to their personal disadvantage? So questions of
domain will be approached by asking, in the first place, whether any
proposed political unit brings together a group of people whose qualities
and relationships are of the right kind to form a demos. For R-democrats
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the question of impact is secondary: their implicit assumption
is that a well-functioning demos can be expected to make good
and fair decisions.8
I shall elaborate on these arguments shortly, but to keep the larger
picture in view let us reflect for a moment on the implications of the two
conceptions of democracy for the domain question. Broadly speaking,
we might expect L-democrats to be subject mainly to an inclusionary
push. Because many questions that are decided democratically within a
given constituency have an impact on individuals or groups outside of
that constituency, there will always be a prima facie case for enlarging
the demos to include those affected individuals or groups. If they are
going to be vulnerable to the decisions that are taken, shouldn’t they
have a voice in making them? R-democrats, by contrast, are likely to be
subject to an exclusionary pull. If we expand the demos on the basis of
impact, the enlarged constituency may fail to function as a demos
should, by virtue, for example, of there being too little solidarity among
the members on account of physical distance or cultural diversity.
Indeed it has often been considered that this exclusionary pull is so
strong as to invalidate R-democracy in its pure form in the modern
world, the thought being that only a political unit on the scale of a
city-state can produce a demos that is sufficiently cohesive to practice it.
iii
It is too simple, however, to say that L-democrats will always be drawn
towards inclusion while R-democrats will be drawn towards exclusion.
As we dig a bit deeper, we see that both schools face inclusionary and
exclusionary pressures. Consider first the question of the qualities that a
8. It should be said that Rousseau himself did not assume that this was necessarily true
of the decisions taken by a demos in relation to outsiders. For instance, “it is not impossible
that a well-governed republic might wage an unjust war” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Political Economy in The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed.
Victor Gourevitch [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], p. 8). He immediately
added, however, that this would not happen “unless the people is seduced by private
interests which some few skillful men succeed by their reputation and eloquence to substitute for the people’s own interest.” For Rousseau’s general thinking about the foreign
relations of self-governing republics, see Rousseau on International Relations, ed. Stanley
Hoffman and David P. Fidler (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
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group of people must possess in order to function as a demos, and consider how an R-democrat would answer this question.9
The first quality is sympathetic identification. Those who belong to
the would-be demos must identify sufficiently closely with the remainder
of the group that they are motivated to try to accommodate their interests and their convictions. In other words, they do not regard those
others simply as obstacles to the pursuit of their own ends, as, say, two
people bidding against each other in an auction will do. The attitude they
take has to be of the form: I recognize that those people have interests
that are different from mine, or beliefs that I do not share, but I regard
them nonetheless as members in full standing of my political community, and I care enough about them to try to reach an agreement that
everyone can accept if at all possible. This goes some way beyond recognizing their human rights, an attitude that one should adopt towards
all human beings merely as such. The stronger form of recognition that
R-democracy requires depends upon mutual identification.
The second quality that the demos must share is underlying agreement on ethical principles. There must be some basic convictions that
members hold in common, forming a kind of bank that can be drawn on
to resolve practical disputes. It is not necessary that there should be full
agreement on every principle; moreover, there will almost inevitably be
disagreement about the relative weight that different principles carry.
What is necessary is everyone should be able to distinguish between
appeals to principle that are prima facie valid—because the principle
invoked is indeed one that the political community recognizes—and
appeals that are to purely private convictions (or to interests dressed up
as convictions). Unless that condition is met, no democratic deliberation
will be possible, because the idea of making arguments that other people
are bound to take on board, either accepting them or responding to
them, will have no purchase.
The third necessary quality is interpersonal trust. Members of the
demos must have sufficient confidence in one another to play by the
9. Historically, those who we now think of as making up the R-democratic tradition
excluded large classes of people from the demos on grounds of their alleged incapacity to
take part in rational discussion and decision making. I shall not discuss such exclusions
here: for a survey, see Dahl, “Procedural Democracy,” pp. 108–20. Instead, my discussion of
the domain question takes it for granted that all adults in possession of their faculties will
be included in whatever domain is chosen.
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rules of the democratic game. This means first of all abiding by the
decisions that are reached even in cases where you find yourself on the
losing side. But trust has an equally important role to play in the process
leading up to the decision. Participants have to believe that the arguments others put forward are sincerely made, that their makers really
believe in the principles they cite to justify their positions. There is no
point in my arguing with you if every time I counter one of your
arguments—produce evidence, say, to show that it does not hold
water—you shift your ground and appeal to some other principle. If I see
you doing that, then I’ll think that you’re not really deliberating at all.
You have already decided on the position you want to hold, and you’re
simply behaving instrumentally in order to win support by invoking
principles that you don’t really believe in. Moreover, if we are going to
move towards a fair compromise between rival views, then once
again trust between the parties is needed: no one is going to be willing to make the first concession unless she believes that the other
side will reciprocate.
Finally, the demos must be a stable group whose members come
together repeatedly over time to decide upon a range of different issues.
Stability is important because of its connection with sincerity and trust.
Decisions taken at one point can serve as reference points for future
decisions, and participants can be expected to behave consistently. So if
I proclaim my adherence to a particular principle as part of my argument
for decision 1, then I can be held to that principle later on when decisions
2 and 3 are made. This gives me a considerable incentive to be sincere.
Moreover, stability over time allows greater scope to reciprocity. Some
decisions are of a nature that admits of no compromise on any particular
occasion. If we have to choose a President or a Chair, we cannot split the
difference between a man and a woman, a Christian and a Muslim. But
we can agree to elect a man now and a woman next time and so forth.
Reviewing this list, one might be tempted to conclude that Rdemocrats will want to narrow democracy’s domain as far as possible.
But for two reasons, at least, that conclusion would be too quick. First, it
is by no means clear that small size is always optimal if one wants democratic dialogue to have the properties that R-democrats look for (or to
put it in Rousseauian terms, if one wants a general will to emerge). It is
important that participants should have the freedom to express a range
of different views, and not be subject to social pressure to adopt the
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majority view (or the view of the most eloquent speakers) against their
private convictions. It may be better for that reason for political interactions to be separated from social interactions generally, and for the participants to enjoy a degree of anonymity when they express their
opinions. The village or the small town, in other words, may not be the
best setting for R-democracy.10 Second, as Dahl and Tufte emphasized in
their study of size and democracy, there is a rather obvious trade-off
between what they call “citizen effectiveness” (citizens’ ability to control
collectively the decisions of their political system) and “system capacity”
(the political system’s ability to implement those decisions).11 A very
small unit may do well on the effectiveness criterion internally, but confronting an environment in which the presence of larger and more powerful units leaves it with very little autonomy. Since the guiding ideal of
R-democracy is collective self-determination, both dimensions have to
be taken into account when settling the question of domain.
iv
Compare now the answer given by L-democrats to the question, What
makes a demos? Recall that the main idea in this tradition is that democracy serves to protect the interests of its constituency, and especially
serves to protect against domination. A major worry, therefore, is that
the demos might itself become an agent of domination, or more precisely
that a majority group within the demos might become such an agent
vis-à-vis the minority—the fear, in other words, of majority tyranny that
so disturbed liberals such as Mill and Tocqueville. From this point of
view, cultural homogeneity, valued by R-democrats as a source of identification and trust, looks much less appealing. Unless complete cultural
homogeneity can be achieved, it is better from an L-democrat’s point of
view to have a society made up of many cultural minorities, so that
there is much less chance of a majority forming with a will to oppress a
10. Evidence for this proposition can be found in Jane Mansbridge’s study, Beyond
Adversary Democracy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1983), which
found that town meetings in a small New England town were largely consensual, but that
this was partly because conflicts of interest were suppressed to avoid disrupting the social
fabric of the community.
11. Dahl and Tufte, Size and Democracy, chap. 2. See also Robert A. Dahl, “A Democratic
Dilemma: System Effectiveness versus Citizen Participation,” Political Science Quarterly
109 (1994): 23–34.
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particular minority. Ideally, cleavages within the demos should be crosscutting, so that people who find themselves on opposite sides of the
argument on one occasion will find themselves on the same side
on the next.
It is also desirable, from an L-democratic point of view, for the demos
to be segmented: rather than having one body, direct or representative,
to make all of the decisions, it is preferable to have a number of interlinked sites of decision, so that a majority in any one place is likely to find
itself countered by an opposing majority elsewhere. This idea was well
expressed in Madison’s defense of large republics in Federalist Number
10. Reserving the label “democracy” for small, unitary polities, Madison
argued that such systems had shown themselves always to be “spectacles
of turbulence” and “incompatible with personal security.”12 In contrast,
in a large federal republic, it would be near to impossible for a majority
faction to form across the republic as a whole: “the influence of factious
leaders may kindle a flame within their particular states, but will be
unable to spread a general conflagration through the other states.”13
Representatives elected by different constituencies within each state
would serve as checks on each other, dampening down the passions that
made pure democracies turbulent.
We should not conclude, however, that for L-democrats the more
diverse the demos, the better for democracy. For L-democracy to function as it should, some degree of social unity is required. Besides guarding against majority tyranny, democrats are also concerned that
government should be subject to effective popular control, and the
danger here is that in a divided society the governing class is able to play
groups off against one another, drawing support from one quarter for
policies that oppress or discriminate against rival groups. This was the
argument deployed by John Stuart Mill to show why what he called “free
institutions” were only possible in societies whose members shared a
common national identity, which Mill regarded as the source of the
12. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist: or, The New
Constitution, ed. Max Beloff (Oxford: Blackwell, 1948), p. 45. I draw here on my discussion
of Madison in “Republican Citizenship, Nationality and Europe,” in Republicanism and
Political Theory, ed. Cécile Laborde and John Maynor (Cambridge: Blackwell, 2008),
where I locate his argument in a wider stream of thought about the virtues of extensive
republics.
13. Hamilton et al., The Federalist, p. 47.
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solidarity that could provide an effective check on government.14 What
matters here is not the particular way in which Mill understood nationality, or indeed whether he was correct to think that only such an identity
could provide the necessary solidarity. What is more relevant for democratic theory is the general shape of his argument. Mill argues, first, that
political freedom is only possible when governments are held in check
by public opinion; but this must be genuinely public, in the sense that
there is at any time a prevailing consensus on political questions which
is known (both by the government and by the people themselves) to be
shared across the political community. The main prerequisite for this is
a common language, but, beyond this, common cultural instruments:
“books, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches” must be common property
across the society if people are to understand what others are thinking.15
Second, there must be a shared commitment to limiting the powers of
government. People must, in other words, prefer to see their governments kept in check by general rules than to use governmental power to
exploit or oppress rival groups. Mill doesn’t give examples, but religious
freedom seems to illustrate his argument well. For this freedom to be
safeguarded in a society divided between, say, Catholics and Protestants,
each group has to care more about protecting religious liberty in general
than in suppressing the other group’s. Mill’s hypothesis is that this can
only happen where “common sympathies” create sufficient solidarity
between groups. Thus even someone as strongly committed to individual and cultural diversity as Mill had to recognize that a functioning
democracy would need some degree of social unity, which helps to
explain his support for national revolutions seeking independence from,
most notably, the multinational Austrian Empire.
So both R-democrats and L-democrats give us reasons for bounding
the demos, for restricting its membership to those who can be expected
to display the relevant qualities, and relate to other members in appropriate ways. R-democrats are more demanding in this respect, but both
camps have to adjudicate between reasons that favor a smaller (and
therefore generally more homogeneous) demos and reasons that favor a
14. John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, in Utilitarianism,
On Liberty, Representative Government, ed. H. B. Acton (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1972),
p. 361. Mill was not, of course, a democrat in the strict sense: but his reasons for opposing
universal and equal suffrage need not concern us here.
15. Mill, Representative Government, p. 361.
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larger (and therefore generally more diverse) body. In practice, thinkers
from both ends of the spectrum have converged on the nation-state as
the relevant unit for democracy, though with considerably more misgivings on the part of R-democrats (Rousseau, who listed “the immensity of
States” as one of the factors leading to the death of popular sovereignty,16
often spoke of the importance of love of fatherland, but only in his late
essay on Poland did he unequivocally identify “fatherland” with “nation”
in the modern sense).17
v
Up to this point we have been approaching the question of democracy’s
domain by looking at the internal properties of a good demos, in the light
of two contrasting conceptions of democracy itself. That would be the
end of the story if every democracy were an isolated, self-contained unit.
But as we know, this is far from being the case. So now we must ask how
things change when we consider that the decisions taken in democratic
bodies, especially states, are likely to make a significant impact on
people who are not currently entitled to participate in those bodies. Does
this call for a radical revision to the conclusions we have so far reached
about democracy’s proper domain? As I suggested earlier, the effect of
considering impact is likely to be to give democracy a more inclusionary
push—to expand the demos so that it includes more of those who will
bear the impact of its decisions. In particular, it may point us beyond the
nation-state towards transnational forms of democracy. But now we
need to look more closely at the grounds on which this inclusionary
push is based.
Here again there are a number of possibilities that might be considered: different principles that would point us towards contrasting solutions to the domain question. I shall focus on just two of these, both of
which have been prominent in recent debates about expanding the
demos beyond national borders. The first is the affected interests principle: a democracy’s domain should extend to include all those whose
16. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Of the Social Contract in The Social Contract and Other
Later Political Writings, p. 114.
17. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Considerations on the Government of Poland in The Social
Contract and Other Later Political Writings.
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interests will be affected by the decisions it takes. The second is the
coercion principle: the domain should extend to include all those who
will be coerced by its decisions. Since one can be affected by a decision,
in the relevant sense, without being coerced by it, but not vice versa,
the first principle is likely to extend the domain more widely
than the second.
Before exploring the two principles in greater detail, it is worth asking
why democratic theorists should be moved by the considerations they
represent. L-democrats and R-democrats will be moved in different
ways. L-democrats especially must feel the force of the affected interests
principle. If democracy is justified instrumentally, as a device for protecting the interests of the people who make up its constituency, then it
is going to appear anomalous if there are people not currently included
in the demos whose interests are nonetheless impacted by the decisions
it takes. R-democrats will not be concerned in this way with interests per
se. But both they and L-democrats must respond when the coercion
principle comes into play, because the normal effect of coercion is to
undermine personal autonomy, while protecting autonomy is central to
both conceptions of democracy. It is hard to see how a democracy could
be legitimate if it prevents outsiders from enjoying one of the conditions
it is designed to protect.
So it seems that both principles must have a bearing on the domain
question, even when we approach it entirely from within democratic
theory. And it seems also that their effect is to generate what I have called
an inclusionary push, towards incorporating those not already inside the
domain within it. But is this indeed so, on closer inspection? I shall start
with the affected interests principle, whose merits have already been
debated in recent political philosophy.18
On the face of it, the affected interests principle is quite plausible.
Simply formulated by Dahl, it states that “everyone who is affected by the
decisions of a government should have the right to participate in that
government.”19 Now Dahl suggests that we must add a rider to the effect
that the right of participation should extend only to those who are competent to participate, and that seems reasonable, since if the rationale for
18. Most thoroughly by Robert Goodin in “Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its
Alternatives,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 35 (2007): 40–68.
19. Dahl, After the Revolution, p. 64.
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participation is that it allows you to protect your interests, then this only
applies to those who are capable of doing that, and not, say, to small
children or the insane. But even with that rider, the superficial plausibility of the affected interests principle quickly evaporates once we begin
to investigate it more thoroughly. Let me indicate four problems
that it confronts.
First, if we take “affected interests” in its simplest sense to mean being
made significantly better or worse off by the policies a demos adopts,
then for any question that has to be decided the domain is likely to vary
with the outcome, creating a problem of circularity.20 That is, if group X
has to make a decision between two policies, one of which is detrimental
to group Y, but the other of which has no impact on that group, then to
know whether the members of group Y should be included in the demos
alongside the members of group X, we have already to know which
outcome will occur.21 If to avoid that problem we say that everyone who
may possibly be affected by a decision should be included in the constituency that makes it, then the demos will expand in all directions,
depending on which possibilities are contemplated in the deliberation
leading up to the decision. The upshot is that if we adopt the affected
interests principle, we can only be sure of avoiding the circularity
problem by making democracy’s domain universal, that is to say by
including every (competent adult) human being in the demos. Some
philosophers, including Goodin, are willing to accept this implication.
But this would mean setting aside all of the questions raised earlier in
this article about the qualities we require for a well-functioning demos.
There would be a stark choice between satisfying the affected interests
principle and constituting the demos in such a way that its decisions
were likely to meet other desiderata (such as offering protection
to minority groups).
Second, there will also be an interaction between the domain and the
scope of democracy, where “scope” refers to the range of issues that a
20. See Whelan, “Prologue: Democratic Theory and the Boundary Problem,” p. 19;
Goodin, “Enfranchising All Affected Interests,” pp. 52–53.
21. This assumes that a person’s interests are affected by a decision when it makes him
or her better or worse off by comparison to the status quo ante. If we remove this baseline
and say that interests are also affected by decisions that might have been taken but weren’t,
then we immediately face the problem described in the remainder of this paragraph.
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given demos deems itself competent to decide.22 We should not assume
that this scope is universal: for any demos there will be questions that are
normatively off-limits, so to speak, such as private matters that should be
left up to each individual member to decide. Suppose then that a particular constituency has to resolve an issue that potentially affects the
interests of those who are currently not part of that constituency. If it
follows the affected interests principle, it seems it must find a way of
including these outsiders in the decision. But an alternative would be to
rule out in advance any decision that significantly affected the interests
of the excluded group, assuming this does not exhaust all the possibilities.23 This again creates an indeterminacy problem, because one cannot
settle the domain question without knowing in advance which scope
limits any particular demos is going to impose upon itself (one might
imagine such limits being laid down in a constitution, but if we approach
the question from a democratic perspective, we will want the demos
to retain ultimate control over its own constitution via some kind
of amending procedure).
Third, the affected interests principle in its simple form takes no
account of the obvious point that a decision may impact upon people to
very different degrees: it may affect their interests in relatively trivial or
highly significant ways. Insofar as the principle is meant to reflect the
underlying idea that people should have an equal opportunity to
advance and protect their interests politically, it seems that in applying it
we should try to ensure that each person’s capacity to influence a decision should correspond to how significantly he or she will be affected by
its outcome. That suggestion can lead in one of two directions. First,
assuming that the domain question has already been settled, we could
try to find a decision procedure that gives people power in proportion to
22. I follow here the terminology suggested in Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, p. 195.
For the point that scope and domain are (normatively) interdependent, see also Dahl,
“Procedural Democracy,” p. 109.
23. Some issues are such that whatever decision is taken will inevitably have spillover
effects: for example, a political unit’s choice of energy policy may affect the interests of
outsiders whatever it decides to do. Even here, it might rule out any policy whose effects
were on balance detrimental to members of other units, since the affected interests principle seems to derive most of its force from cases in which those who have no say in a
decision are harmed by it. ‘No taxation without representation’ is a more compelling
slogan than, say, ‘no public goods without representation’. See also here Whelan, “Prologue: Democratic Theory and the Boundary Problem,” section II.
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their stake in any particular decision, for instance by giving some more
votes than others. This path leads into a morass of problems, particularly
if we have concerns about other aspects of democratic equality, and I
shall not pursue it further.24 Second, we could preserve equal voting
rights on each issue, but then try to settle the domain question in such a
way that within each domain, members’ interests were impacted to
approximately the same degree, at least over the expected run of decisions. This approach is more promising: but if we follow it through, the
constituency for particular decisions cannot then be adjusted in an ad
hoc way in order to protect the interests of outside groups. Suppose that
the Xs form a group whose decisions, taken together over time, have a
roughly equal impact on the interests of each X. One of these decisions
may also affect members of external group Y. But changing the constituency for that decision to include members of Y may well upset the equality of influence that would otherwise exist between the members of X.25
What this reveals is a practical tension internal to the affected interests
principle between ensuring that everybody whose interests are affected
by a decision can take part in making it, and preserving the proper
proportion between the weight of a person’s interests and her opportunities to protect them politically.
Finally, it is worth reflecting on the fact that Dahl’s simple statement
of the affected interests principle refers to those who are affected by the
decisions of a government, because this already suggests something
about the manner of the affecting. In particular, it suggests that those
affected have no option but to bear the consequences of the decision:
there is in general no escape from what one’s government decides to do.
24. For a valiant attempt to grapple with some of these problems, see Harry Brighouse
and Marc Fleurbaey, “Democracy and Proportionality,” Journal of Political Philosophy
(forthcoming).
25. Suppose, for example, that an economy contains two groups of manufacturers, one
of whom produces primarily for the domestic market and the other for export. Some
decisions mainly affect the first group and others mainly the second. Suppose that each
group wins on some occasions and loses on others, or better perhaps that a convention
emerges whereby the domestic producers are given a greater say over questions that
primarily concern them, and similarly for the exporters. This arrangement seems to meet
the demands of the affected interests principle as well as can be expected internally. But
now it is proposed that representatives of the receiving countries should be given a say in
decisions concerning export policy; after all, their interests are also affected. If this proposal
were to be accepted, the balance between domestic producers and exporters would be
upset, probably to the detriment of the exporters.
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Although not all of the decisions made by a government can be described
as coercive, many of them are. Think, by contrast, of cases in which one
may be affected by a decision, but it is relatively easy to take evasive
action. Shoppers, for example, are certainly affected by the pricing and
other decisions taken by supermarkets, but we have little inclination to
say that they have a right to participate in those decisions, because in a
reasonably well-functioning market they can switch to another supplier
if they feel they are being overcharged or unable to buy the products they
want to buy. So the affected interests principle is most plausible where
people are unavoidably affected by certain decisions, which means that
the principle’s inclusionary push is weakened whenever those currently
outside the demos can take steps to avoid the impact of its decisions.
Taken together, these four problems radically weaken the force of the
affected interests principle as a basis for fixing democracy’s domain. If
we combine them, we could say that those who are currently excluded
from the demos have a justifiable claim for inclusion only if (a) their
interests would be significantly affected by its decisions whichever way
those decisions go; (b) they are not protected against harmful consequences by the demos’s having imposed scope limitations on its own
powers of decision; (c) including the excluded group would preserve the
equal opportunities of current members to protect their interests; and
(d) they cannot readily avoid the impact of the decisions that are going to
be made. All of this severely compromises the ability of the affected
interests principle to serve as an independent criterion for settling the
domain issue. We cannot simply hold that whenever a democratic body
impacts on the interests of outsiders, those outsiders should be included
in the demos forthwith. Widening the demos may change its character
and/or the decision procedures it uses, and these in turn will alter the
quality of the decisions its takes, and their impact on different groups of
people: the original citizens, the newly admitted group, and further
groups whose interests might not have been affected by the original
demos. The circularity problem runs deep.
vi
Let us then see whether the coercion principle offers a better way of
bounding the demos. Again the principle itself seems plausible at first
sight. The belief that where someone is routinely forced to comply with
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the decisions of a democratic authority, they are entitled to a say in those
decisions, is strong and widely shared. It explains, for example, why
states that deny citizenship to long-term immigrants who make their life
in the new country are justifiably accused of violating democratic principles. But to understand the principle, we need to look more closely at
what it means to be coerced by a decision, or a series of decisions.
A helpful starting point is the following passage by Lamond:
What is common to all modes of coercion, and what makes them
instances of coercion, is the underlying notion of sufficient pressure
being brought to bear by one person to force or make another person
do as the first wills. Hence to be coerced into doing something is
not to do it voluntarily; it is to do it against one’s will. But there are
different sorts of pressure which can achieve this, and it is pressure
—not physical force nor sanctions—which is the key operative
factor in coercion.26
The key points in Lamond’s account that deserve emphasis here are,
first, that to be coerced is to be made to pursue some reasonably specific
course of action that follows the intentions of the coercer; second, that
this is not a course of action that the agent, left to her own devices, would
pursue; third, that the coercer applies “sufficient pressure,” meaning
that it is no longer reasonable for the agent to do other than what the
coercer demands; if the coercion takes the form of a threat, for example,
the threat is such that it is not reasonable for the person threatened
to refuse to comply.27 There is, of course, no hard and fast rule for
determining what level of pressure is sufficient in a particular case to
count as coercive.
One merit of this understanding of coercion is that it helps to bring
out why coercion is more detrimental to the person coerced than the
other ways in which her interests may be set back by outside intervention. The key point is that coercion undermines autonomy by making the
person coerced into an instrument of the coercer’s will; she has no real
choice but to do what the coercer commands. This means that coercion
26. Grant Lamond, “The Coerciveness of Law,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 20
(2000): 39–62, at pp. 43–44.
27. This makes room for the possibility that coercion can fail: a strong-minded or
foolhardy person may resist the pressure that the coercer brings to bear.
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requires a particularly strong form of justification in order to be legitimate, a justification that is not required in the case of impacts of other
kinds. In particular we must pay heed to the distinction between coercion and prevention.28 Coercion means that there is some course of
action that the agent is forced to take; prevention means that some
course of action that might otherwise have been available is now
blocked. So, for example, a woman who refuses a man’s offer of marriage
may prevent him from doing what he most wants, but she does not
coerce him; there is no course of action that she imposes on him. Prevention, in general, stands less in need of justification than coercion:
everything depends on how important the blocked course of action is to
the agent. Although it is nearly always better to have more options available than fewer, removing one option from the available set is much less
serious than reducing the eligible set to just a single course of action,
which is what coercion paradigmatically involves.29
To avoid confusion here, notice that prevention can sometimes take
the form of threatening coercion if a person chooses to act in a certain
way. Suppose, for example that my neighbor wants to visit me in my
house. Since I dislike his company, I refuse: I prevent him from entering
my house. He is persistent, however, so when he knocks on my door yet
again, I tell him that if he does not leave me alone, I will call the police. If
my threat does not deter him, then eventually coercion will be involved:
28. This distinction seems largely to be overlooked in the academic literature on coercion. Nozick’s influential analysis, for example, begins by discussing the case in which one
agent stops another from performing some action, which is better understood as an
account of (one form of) prevention than of coercion. He later switches to examples in
which people are forced to act in relatively specific ways without seeing any significance in
the switch (see Robert Nozick, “Coercion,” in Philosophy, Politics and Society, Fourth
Series, ed. P. Laslett, W. G. Runciman, and Q. Skinner [Oxford: Blackwell, 1972]). Nor does
the distinction appear in Scott Anderson’s otherwise helpful literature review in ‘Coercion’,
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/coercion). The discussion that follows draws upon the fuller analysis in my paper “Why Immigration Controls
Are Not Coercive: A Reply to Arash Abizadeh,” Political Theory (forthcoming).
29. As a moment’s reflection shows, prevention and coercion stand at opposite ends of
a spectrum, in the middle of which there will be cases where the first agent’s intervention
significantly shrinks the range of options open to the second without narrowing it to just
one. These, then, will be borderline cases. Note as well that coercion is consistent with
leaving the coerced person some degree of choice: a mugger who allows his victim to
choose which cash outlet he will use to withdraw the sum of money being demanded is
still a coercer.
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the police will arrive and remove him from my premises. But it does not
follow that I was coercing my neighbor by refusing to let him enter my
house against my will.30 Every other option but this one remained open
to him: it was a paradigm case of prevention. A paradigm case of coercion, on the other hand, would be the relationship between master and
slave, where the master comprehensively directs the slave’s activities,
with the threat of severe punishment as the ‘sufficient pressure’
in the case.
I have suggested that what is normatively distinctive about coercion is
that it undermines the autonomy of the person coerced. It might be
argued, however, that this exaggerates the distance between coercion
and other ways in which a person’s interests can be set back. Coercion,
after all, can be short-lived and confined to relatively trivial matters,
whereas I may be prevented from doing something that is central to my
plan of life; indeed I might agree to be coerced, for a short time, in order
to get some obstacle to my life plan removed.31 However, I do not think
that we can evaluate A’s impact on B simply in terms of the magnitude of
its effect on B’s interests. If the impact is coercive, B’s standing as an
autonomous agent is denied even if the effect on her other interests
is relatively slight.
We can now apply this analysis of coercion to the case of a democratic polity. In what sense are the current members of such a polity
coerced? It is wrong to assume that every law is coercive, since some
laws may simply serve to block possible courses of action (the law that
prevents my neighbor from entering my house uninvited, for example).
Other laws, however, will require specific courses of action (laws
that require parents to educate their children, for example), and these
30. I do not claim that the distinction between prevention and coercion is always well
marked in everyday language. Intuitions vary on this question: some are willing to describe
as coercive at least the more serious forms of prevention. This may partly be due to
inattention to the distinction drawn in this paragraph between actually coercing somebody
and threatening future coercion as a way of preventing him. Even if this is not
the explanation, the underlying question is whether there is an important normative
difference between prevention and coercion that is lost if the distinction is blurred. See
the paragraph that follows.
31. Thus if there is a job that I very much want to have, and the person offering it will
only give it to me if I agree to serve as her personal slave for a week beforehand, I might
rationally accept this proposal. It is worth reflecting on why we regard such agreements
as morally unacceptable.
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laws coerce those who would not otherwise act in the required way.
Moreover, if the polity’s scope resembles that of a modern democratic
state, the web of laws is sufficiently directive that virtually everyone will
be intermittently subject to coercion. This, then, is what justifies the
intuition that those who are bound by a legal system have a right to
participate in the decisions that govern the system. Their unavoidable
coercion can only be made legitimate by the opportunity they have to
influence those decisions.
The question now is whether the same considerations can justify
extending the democracy’s domain to include outsiders. In what sense
might they be subject to coercion as a result of the decisions it takes?
They would be, of course, if a demos decides to apply its laws, or a
significant proportion of them, to outsiders. In the case of nation-states,
this indeed happens when people enter their territory as visitors; they are
immediately obliged to obey most of the laws that apply to citizens. In
normal cases we do not regard such coercion as problematic because we
assume that visitors give their consent to the existing body of law when
they arrive in the territory. This preempts the question whether they
should be given a voice in decision making. On the other hand, we regard
imperial or colonial relations as problematic in the extreme, from a
democratic perspective: we think that those who are ruled from the
outside should either be given representation in the imperial legislature,
or allowed to become self-governing.
The more interesting and controversial cases are those in which,
without subjecting outsiders formally to its decisions by legal imposition, a demos nonetheless subjects them to significant impact that might
in certain cases amount to coercion. It is easy to think of possible
examples. A democratic state might attempt to dictate the foreign policy
of a neighboring state by threatening military action if the neighbor did
not comply. Or a state that has become economically dependent on a
second could be coerced by the threat to break off trade relations. There
is nothing built-in to the idea of democracy itself that excludes such
possibilities of external coercion. The question before us is whether
expanding the demos so that it includes members of the threatened
community is the right way to respond to this risk.
Consider first two other possible responses. One is to bind the demos
externally in such a way that it is prevented from pursuing coercive
policies. Democratic states may agree among themselves to abide by
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rules that constrain their external behavior. This of course happens
already in the case of international law. The rules in question may be
adopted by express consent through international treaties and so forth,
or they may be consented to tacitly as, over time, they come to be
accepted as defining acceptable behavior between states. They are
enforced through the readiness of democratic political communities to
apply sanctions to those who break them. At present the scope of such
rules is too narrow to cover all cases in which external coercion might
occur; they apply to military aggression, for example, but not to the use
of economic power to coerce vulnerable communities. But their range
has expanded over time and there seems no reason why it cannot be
enlarged still further to cover such cases.
Someone might dispute whether this first response, even if it provides
an effective solution to the problem of democratic coercion, is consistent
with democratic principles, our touchstone here. After all, the external
rules, when applied, narrow the scope for decision of the demos in question, and this is surely a democratic loss. But equally, by protecting some
other democratic unit or units from being coerced, they safeguard selfdetermination in those places, and that is a democratic gain. Unless a
demos knows in advance that it is never going to be vulnerable to coercion, the benefit of being secured against coercion will surely outweigh
the lost opportunity to coerce others, which is why we may expect
states and other democratic bodies to consent to a regime of the kind
I have sketched.
A second possible response to the coercion problem is for the demos
to grant voice to those who are liable to be coerced. For instance, a
democratic state might invite representatives of a second state that will
feel the impact of a decision it is about to take to put their case to its
legislature before the decision is finally taken.32 Admittedly this will not
have much effect in cases where a large majority in the demos is already
bent on pursuing a coercive policy. But in cases where the majority
is uninformed, or undecided, or where it is unwilling to pursue
32. For a valuable discussion of this and other methods by which democracies might
address the problem of external impact, see Michael Saward, “A Critique of Held,” in Global
Democracy: Key Debates, ed. Barry Holden (London: Routledge, 2000). Saward’s analysis
employs the affected interests principle, but the mechanisms he describes would serve
equally well as safeguards against external coercion.
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a policy in the face of publicly expressed opposition from the vulnerable group (perhaps for reputational reasons), it may have
the desired effect.
It might be said that this is in fact a case of democratic inclusion, not
an alternative to it. Members of the affected community are being asked
to join the demos as it makes its decision. But this is not really so. Under
the arrangement I am envisaging, the representatives are being given an
opportunity to explain why a policy that is being mooted would have a
seriously damaging impact on their community. They are not being
given a vote, nor are they invited to take part in the ensuing discussion
once they have made their case. This will be especially important for
those who stand towards the R-democrat end of the spectrum and are
concerned about the conditions that make democratic deliberation possible. Allowing external voice does not disrupt those conditions—for
example, it preserves equality and continuity within the deliberating
body—whereas taking in external representatives as full members may
do just that.
Given that external binding and voice are feasible alternatives to
democratic inclusion as responses to the danger of coercion, when will
inclusion be the better option? Only, it seems to me, when one demos
finds itself systematically vulnerable to the decisions taken by another,
as for instance will be the case when one state is wholly dependent on
its neighbor for vital resources such as food, water, energy, and so
forth. Under these circumstances it will be better, as a matter of democratic principle, for the two political communities to merge, perhaps
leaving each to wield very limited devolved powers. If circumstances are such that political autonomy is not a real option for your
community, it is preferable to form a minority within a larger unit,
in the hope that over time democratic procedures will work fairly to
protect your interests.
I have taken seriously the challenge that the possibility of external
coercion presents when thinking about the domain question, and have
tried to show that its inclusionary push can be tempered once we consider other solutions. At the same time, it is important that we should
keep the distinction between coercion and prevention clearly in mind,
and not be tempted to regard as coercive policies that are actually preventive in nature. This applies especially to immigration policies that
exclude would-be immigrants from the territory that the democracy
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governs. Such policies are not coercive because their effect is to rule
out one particular course of action—entering the territory in question—while leaving all others open.33 They may be criticized on a
number of grounds, of course—being discriminatory, for example, or
restricting freedom of movement for no good reason—but they do not
stand in need of the special justification that accompanies coercion.
Once again it is important to distinguish the coercive nature of a law or
policy from the use of coercion to enforce it. Suppose illegal immigrants try to enter a state’s territory by crossing the high seas. If they
are detected, the boat that carries them may be forced to turn round
and return to its original territory. This act is likely to be coercive in
nature, but the law that it is being used to defend is preventive rather
than coercive: it simply requires outsiders not to enter the state’s territory without proper authorization. In this respect it resembles the law
of property that enables me to exclude my troublesome neighbor from
my home, which, as we saw, may eventually have to be enforced by the
use of coercion.
So, to sum up, being coerced by a demos does generate a claim for
inclusion that is far stronger than any claim that the affected interests
principle is likely to generate. In particular, it explains the widely held
view that people who live in a country and are routinely subject to its
legal system are entitled to be admitted to democratic citizenship in that
place. But the normative force of the coercion principle depends upon
understanding ‘coercion’ in a strict sense. Once we distinguish being
coerced from other kinds of impact, the problem of external coercion
(coercion of those who are not already included in the demos) becomes
less pervasive. Moreover, where a threat of external coercion does arise,
it can often be dealt with in ways other than by widening the demos to
include the vulnerable group. These alternatives will be attractive to the
extent that such widening might disrupt the proper functioning of the
demos as it now exists. I explore this dilemma more fully in the final
section of the article.
33. It might be said in reply here that there is no guarantee that many other avenues are
open to the would-be immigrant. For a discussion of this question, see Miller, “Why Immigration Controls Are Not Coercive.”
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vii
My question has been whether democratic theory itself can give us an
answer to the question of democracy’s domain, and my answer to it is
that we must strike a balance between the need to have a demos that
functions well internally and the need to include within the demos those
whose lives will be systematically impacted by its decisions. In other
words, if we are faced with the question whether a particular democratic
constituency should be expanded or contracted in the name of democracy itself, we will typically need to trade off two potentially conflicting
considerations. In the case of a proposed expansion, for instance, we
should ask (a) how far will including new members in the demos improve
or worsen its performance as a decision-making body (make it more or
less likely to reach decisions that are fair to all, for example); and (b) how
strong is the democratic case for inclusion, in light of the nature and
extent of the external impact of the decisions that will be taken and the
availability of alternative ways of controlling that impact? Now one can
imagine cases in which a domain change is better on both counts: but it
seems more likely in general that there will be gains in one direction and
losses in the other, and then we have to engage in the weighing process
typical of trade-offs.
I have also suggested that the outcome of this weighing up will depend
on the conception of democracy that we favor, in particular where it
is located on the spectrum between L- and R-democracy. Because
R-democrats expect more from the demos, in terms of the quality of its
procedures and the ensuing decisions, they are less likely to accept arguments for expansion that involve diluting the characteristics of the membership. Or, to put the point the other way round, those who advocate
highly inclusive forms of democracy—democracy at the global level, for
example—should be ready to concede that this may come at the price of
a relatively thin form of democracy, standing well towards the liberal end
of the spectrum.
If we wish to apply this framework to a particular case of potential
enlargement or contraction, we should ask at least the following questions: (1) How well do the prevailing democratic institutions perform,
judged by our favored criteria of democracy? For example, if we are
liberals, how effectively are minority groups safeguarded from oppression? If we are radicals, how closely are policy-making procedures
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guided by democratic deliberation? Where we already have a wellfunctioning democracy, this is a prima facie reason not to alter its
domain; conversely, where democratic control of decision making is
weak, or where majorities abuse minorities, might shifting to a wider or
narrower domain help to remedy these defects? (2) How will changing
the domain alter the character of the demos, in terms both of the individual characteristics of the members, and in terms of the relationships
that exist between them? Will the new demos be more or less diverse, in
terms of religion, ethnicity, language, nationality, and so on than the
existing one? Will there be a single dominant group, or several large
minorities? And what effect will the proposed change have on interpersonal trust and the shared understandings that underpin the existing
democratic system? (3) What effect will altering the domain have on the
nature and extent of external impact, i.e., the degree to which decisions
taken within the democracy will either coerce or unavoidably harm the
interests of those who are not included? Will this impact be systematic,
or occasional? (We might think that enlarging democracy’s domain will
usually reduce external impact in this sense, but we should at least consider the possibility that enlargement, while obviously eliminating external effects on those who will now be included, will create a powerful
institution whose impact on those who still remain outside is greater
than before.)34 (4) Where we can predict relevant external effects, how
feasible will it be to control these, either by some form of self-limitation
on the part of the demos, or by the creation of higher-level institutions,
such as a legal system that can apply sanctions to a democratic body
whose decisions have an unjustified negative impact on outsiders?
These are difficult questions to answer. Because trade-offs are
involved, there can be no algorithm for deciding whether any proposed
shift of domain represents a democratic gain or a democratic loss. For
the same reason, we should not think that domain questions can be
34. Thus if we treat the EU as a democratic institution that is more inclusive than the
nation-states from which it was formed, it may well be true both (a) that decision making
at EU level helps to avoid negative externalities that one member-state might otherwise
impose on others, and (b) that EU decision making, precisely because it is coordinated,
imposes greater negative externalities on certain outside groups, such as farmers in developing countries, than would be produced by separate decisions taken in member states. If
so, there is democratic gain internally and democratic loss vis-à-vis the outside world,
judged by the impact criterion.
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resolved through the rulings of some external committee of experts.
Instead they are questions that must be debated within existing demoi
whenever proposals for altering boundaries appear on the agenda, for
example, when the issue is whether to transfer powers to some higherlevel body such as a regional federation, or when a subgroup such as a
minority nation makes secessionist demands. One reason for thinking
that domain questions can only be resolved internally is that each demos
will have its own conception of democracy, especially in terms of where
it places itself on the L-democracy/R-democracy spectrum, which as we
have seen will shift the balance between inclusionary push and exclusionary pull. A Swiss citizen and a U.S. citizen will respond differently to
questions about the proper scale of democracy, and not merely because
the scale of their existing institutions is so different.
Are there then no general lessons to be drawn about democracy’s
domain? The implications of my analysis for ideas of transnational or
global democracy are the subject for another paper.35 But I hope that
what I have said here will at least be sufficient to guard against two
mistakes, each the mirror image of the other, often encountered in
current debates about democracy. The first, characteristic of certain
thinkers in the R-democrat tradition, is to focus entirely on the character
of the demos itself, in the belief that if we can produce a body of citizens
imbued with sufficient democratic virtues, the problem of external
impact will take care of itself. The second, prevalent in the literature on
transnational democracy, is to ask only about where democracy is
needed—meaning that there are questions of impact that one would
ideally like an inclusive democratic institution to resolve—without considering whether it is actually possible to conjure the necessary democratic body into existence (or if this is possible, in a formal sense at least,
how it is likely to perform). Whichever particular conception of democracy one favors, thinking about democracy’s domain requires the twosided approach set out and defended here.
35. See my essay “Against Global Democracy,” in After the Nation: Critical Reflections on Post-Nationalism, ed. Keith Breen and Shane O’Neill (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, forthcoming).