How do affected interests support global democracy?

ABSTRACT

In 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 Demos-Based Argument, the Direct Argument is based on affected interests and ultimately on utilitarianism, but unlike the former, the Direct Argument avoids the detour over stating a criterion for individual claims to democratic participation and representation.

KEYWORDS:

• Global democracy
• Boundary Problem
• Demos Problem
• Principle of Affected Interests
• Utilitarianism

Acknowledgements

Many thanks are due to Bernward Gesang, who extensively commented on a former version of this article. I am also very grateful to Attila Tanyi for helpfully commenting on the final version, to Martin Schönfeld for his valuable comments on a long abstract, and to Fritz Gillerke and Rudolf Schüßler for stimulating discussions of the Boundary Problem. Finally, I want to thank an anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Goodin (2007, 51) holds that the principle says in its most generic form that ‘everyone who is affected by the decisions of a government should have the right to participate in that government.’ Arrhenius (2005, 20) puts it this way: ‘The people that are relevantly affected by a decision ought to have, in some sense, influence over it.’ According to Shapiro (1999, 38), ‘the right to participate comes from one’s having an interest that can be expected to be affected by the particular collective action in question.’ In Cohen’s (1971, 8) words: ‘In a perfect democracy all who are thus affected [by a decision] play some part.’ Dahl (1970, 64) says: ‘Everyone who is affected by a decision of a government should have a right to participate in that government.’ See also Young (2000, 23).

2 Different models of global democracy are discussed in the literature. For an overview, see Kuyper (2016).

3 Dahl (1970, 60) formulates the problem as ‘how to decide who legitimately make up “the people” […] and hence are entitled to govern themselves’. According to Whelan (1983, 13), the Boundary Problem consists in determining ‘the appropriate constitution of the people or unit within which democratic governance is to be practiced’ [emphasis in original]. Goodin (2007, 40) prefers talking about the problem of ‘constituting the demos’ rather than the Boundary Problem and states it as follows: ‘How do we specify the group making […] decisions [in a democratic way].’ Arrhenius (2005, 14) puts it this way: ‘Who are eligible to take part in which decision-making processes?’

4 Schumpeter (1942, 245) has famously claimed that each demos must ‘define itself’. However, Dahl (1979, 111–112) convincingly replied by rhetorically asking: ‘If the rulers numbered 100 in a population of 100 million, would we call the rulers a demos and the system a democracy?’ The Boundary Problem is practically relevant not only when it comes to global democracy but also to discussions about secession and immigration (see Miller 2009, 201–202) as well as the democratic representation of future generations (Tännsjö 2007).

5 Beckman (2009, ch. 2) helpfully distinguishes the Boundary Problem and the Problem of Inclusion by explaining that even if we have a solution to the Boundary Problem, i.e. an answer as to how to determine who should be part of which demos, we still need an answer for the Problem of Inclusion, i.e. the question whether certain persons – children, criminals, the mentally disabled – who are uncontroversially part of the demos should be enfranchised or not. Likewise, the same question comes up with regard to people who are not part of a given demos, namely resident aliens. The Principle of Affected Interests is a candidate principle for answering the Boundary Problem, not the Problem of Inclusion.

6 Arguably, the two most important alternatives are the All-Subjected Principle, according to which those and only those ought to be entitled to participate in or be represented by a government who are subject to the laws decided upon (see, e.g. López-Guerra 2005; Abizadeh 2008; Beckman 2008, 2009) and a view that primarily focuses on how well demoi function (Miller 2009, see my discussion below).

7 The main alternatives to PAI are briefly sketched in the previous note. The All-Subjected Principle would necessitate a global democracy only if the laws given by a legislature were binding for everyone. But legislatures can simply decide not to issue such laws. The criteria endorsed by Miller (2009) would make the establishment of a global democracy obligatory only if a global demos were more successful at performing demos-typical functions than local demoi. But this is exactly what Miller (2009) denies. Also, optimists concerning the functioning of a global demos, such as List and Koenig-Archibugi (2010), don’t argue that a global demos would function better than local demoi.

8 For example, Goodin (2007) and List and Koenig-Archibugi (2010). However, some reservations uttered by proponents of PAI will be addressed in Section 3.

9 For a discussion, see Tännsjö (2007).

10 For the distinction between a criterion of rightness and a decision procedure, see Bales (1971).

11 On the topic of self-defeatingness, see Parfit (1984, ch. 1).

12 As for arguments in favor of utilitarianism and defenses against objections, see Shaw (1999). For arguments in favor of global democracy, see, e.g. Tännsjö (2008) and Kuyper (2016).