Global democracy and feasibility

ABSTRACT

While methodological and metatheoretical questions pertaining to feasibility have been intensively discussed in the philosophical literature on justice in recent years, these discussions have not permeated the debate on global democracy. The overall aim of this article is to demonstrate the fruitfulness of importing some of the advancements made in this literature into the debate on global democracy, as well as to develop aspects that are relevant for explaining the role of feasibility in normative political theory. This is done by pursuing two arguments. First, to advance the work on the role of feasibility, we suggest as intuitively plausible two metatheoretical constraints on normative political theorizing – the ‘fitness constraint’ and the ‘functional constraint’ – which elucidate a number of aspects relevant in determining proper feasibility constraints for an account in political theory. Secondly, to illustrate the usefulness of this feasibility framework, we sketch an account of global democracy consisting of normative principles which respond differently to these aspects and thus are tied to different feasibility constraints as well as exemplify how it may be applied in practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Global democracy
• feasibility
• functional aspects
• fitness aspects
• feasibility constraints

In responding to the challenge of finding solutions to shared political problems that cross nation-state borders, we are witnessing a growing literature on global political legitimacy in international political theory. This has led to numerous attempts to understand what political legitimacy might mean in a global context and what it might require in terms of normative principles or standards. Alongside consent and beneficial consequences, democracy is one of the main normative sources used to theorize political legitimacy. In the debate on global democracy, there has been a tendency to dismiss at the outset more ideal accounts as being too unrealistic to be of interest or of any use at all. Despite this criticism of ideal proposals, critics have themselves been rather silent about which feasibility constraints are tied to their own supposedly more realistic proposals of global democracy. Instead, some underspecified notion of feasibility is either implicitly presumed or articulated but not motivated. This has led to a general confusion with regard to feasibility and the role it plays in theorizing global democracy.¹ Such confusion is unfortunate, given that we can only assess the correctness of an account if we know what it aims to achieve, such as what the proposed normative political principles are supposed to regulate. By contrast, methodological and metatheoretical questions pertaining to feasibility have been intensively discussed in the philosophical literature on feasibility and global justice in recent years. The progress in that field, however, has not made its way into the debate on global democracy in political theory.

To remedy this deficiency and kick-start the debate on the role of feasibility in global democracy, we aim to demonstrate the fruitfulness of importing some of the advancements made in this philosophical literature into the debate on global democracy, as well as to develop aspects that are relevant in explaining the role of feasibility in normative political theory. This is done by pursuing two arguments. First, to respond to the vagueness with regard to feasibility, we suggest as plausible two metatheoretical constraints on normative political theorizing, the ‘fitness constraint’ and the ‘functional constraint’, which elucidate a number of aspects relevant in determining proper feasibility constraints of an account in political theory. Secondly, to illustrate the usefulness of this ‘feasibility framework’, we sketch an account of global democracy consisting of normative principles which respond differently to these aspects and thus are tied to different feasibility constraints as well as exemplify how this framework may be applied in practice.

In developing these arguments, the article unfolds in three sections. First, we briefly present the main conceptual and normative concerns addressed in the philosophical literature on feasibility. Secondly, we undertake a metatheoretical analysis of the two constraints and discuss the aspects they bring forward of relevance when thinking about feasibility. Thirdly, we adopt these constraints and develop an account of global democracy to illustrate the usefulness of this feasibility framework.

Feasibility: some conceptual remarks

There is no consensus in the debate as to how the very concept of ‘feasibility’ should be used.² Indeed, it is doubtful whether we can offer a meaningful answer without a clear sense of what the consequences of feasibility (or lack thereof) are supposed to entail. Thus, how feasibility is understood depends on the different roles that feasibility claims play in political theory. As we understand it, the basic idea is a more demanding constraint on normative theory than the classical ‘ought implies can’ proviso. Whereas the ‘ought implies can’ proviso filters out those normative accounts that for some reason or other cannot be realized, the role of (in)feasibility considerations is an additional requirement. In general terms, this requirement is captured by Nicholas Southwood’s ‘ought-implies-feasible’ proviso:

(OF) An agent X ought to realize a state of affairs O only if it is feasible for X to realize O (Southwood, 2016, p. 9; see also Southwood & Wiens, 2016, p. 3043).³

This proviso captures two important aspects of feasibility claims in normative theory: they are agent-relative and an obligation is conditioned on feasibility, i.e. it is necessary, but not sufficient, that it is feasible to realize a state of affairs. But additional aspects are important in understanding feasibility claims, helpfully explicated by Pablo Gilabert and Holly Lawford-Smith’s schema:

(F) It is feasible for X to φ to bring about O in Z

On this analysis, claims about feasibility involve a four-place predicate as to what a given agent X can do (a set of actions φ) to achieve a state of affairs O in a given context Z, where the context itself also includes feasibility-affecting considerations (Gilabert & Lawford-Smith, 2012, p. 812).⁴ An important aspect of the notion of feasibility in this schema is the set of actions sought to bring about an outcome, which suggests an intentional component. In line with other theorists, we find it plausible to assume that the concept of feasibility applies only to the (possible) realization of a state of affairs through intentional actions by agents (Southwood & Wiens, 2016, p. 3041, n. 6). Natural events giving rise to certain states of affairs thus fall outside its domain of application and so it would not be meaningful to ask whether heavy rainfall today is feasible or infeasible (Erman & Möller, 2019).

A virtue of the ‘ought-implies-feasible’ proviso, together with this schema, is that they make explicit the basic components of feasibility and thus render immediately problematic the oversimplification and lack of clarity too often present in the literature on global democracy, where most of the four components of the predicate are left unspecified. In this literature, critics of ambitious accounts of global democracy, such as cosmopolitan democracy, routinely deride these proposals as being unfeasible, lauding their own as being feasible. For example, Robert Dahl insisted that international organizations (IOs) could not live up to standards of democracy because the global system lacks the kinds of shared collective identity and common political culture necessary for domestic democracy (Dahl, 1999). Ruth Grant and Robert Keohane argue that IOs specifically – and world politics more generally – cannot be democratic. In their view, ‘the fact that global democracy is infeasible’ means that domestic democracy remains important (Grant & Keohane, 2005, p. 40). In these instances, the agents, actions, states of affairs, and contexts underpinning proposals are rarely specified and never contrasted against (supposedly) less feasible alternatives.

With regard to the content of feasibility, philosophers agree that the feasibility of – for example – an ideal state of affairs depends on whether or not there is a trajectory leading to it from the present state of affairs, i.e. whether or not there is an accessible path of actions that we can take from our starting-point to arrive at the sought after state of affairs (Gilabert & Lawford-Smith, 2012, p. 813). The disagreement begins when we consider what should count as ‘accessible’, which has to do with how we interpret ‘feasible’ in the proviso (OF) above. For example, theorists have argued that feasibility should be understood in terms of probability (Lawford-Smith 2013), conditional ability (Estlund, 2011, 2014), possibility (Gheaus, 2013), restricted possibility (Wiens, 2015), rational-volitional capacity (Southwood, 2016), or costliness (Räikkä, 1998).

In our view, these disagreements about how best to understand feasibility directly reflects the heterogeneity of normative political theory. Political theories have myriad aims and goals, contexts and delimitations, and we think that there are no general answers to best understand feasibility (Erman & Möller, 2018). As we will argue below, whether feasibility is best understood in terms of, say, conditional ability or costliness depends on what an intended normative political principle aims to regulate (functional constraint) and how it fits together with the other principles, values and states of affairs which are endorsed in the account (fitness constraint) (Erman & Möller, 2019).

Two constraints and aspects of relevance for feasibility

The role of feasibility in the literature on global democracy is undertheorized. It is evident that, in recent years, philosophical discussions about feasibility and methodological discussions in the debate on ideal and non-ideal theory have not made an imprint on this literature.⁵ This is unfortunate, given the progress that has been made in the field. As mentioned in the introduction, the overall aim of this article is to demonstrate the profitability of importing some of these discussions into the debate on global democracy and more importantly, to refine aspects that are relevant for understanding the role of feasibility in normative political theory. In this section, we do the latter by suggesting two metatheoretical constraints on normative theorizing – the fitness constraint and the functional constraint – through which we propose four relevant aspects for determining proper feasibility constraints of an account in political theory, together constituting a ‘feasibility framework’. According to this framework, there is no general, pre-theoretical answer as to which feasibility constraints are most appropriately tied to a normative political principle or account; rather, this depends on the context of the particular theory in question (its aim, and so on).

The functional constraint

In its most abstract form, the functional constraint is the requirement that the guiding principles of a normative account must be appropriate for the aims of the account – that is, what the suggested principles are supposed to regulate, and the limits within which they are supposed to function. The constraint involves three aspects of importance in determining appropriate feasibility constraints of an account: the principle-kind aspect; the practice-kind aspect; and the temporal aspect.

The principle-kind aspect concerns what sort of principle it is. Political theorists commonly argue for a principle of justice, a principle of fairness, a principle of democracy, a principle of legitimacy, or the like. The principle-kind aspect has consequences for the kind of feasibility considerations, and how they become appropriate, in at least two ways. First, for a principle to be feasible, it must be able to be interpreted as a principle of the intended kind. If the sought principle is a principle of justice, it arguably cannot be a principle which suggests that all goods should be distributed to, say, persons with large hands, or something similarly arbitrary. Second, when specifying what kind of principle is intended, it is important to determine whether it is supposed to have direct or indirect application – that is, whether or not its function is directly action-guiding or ‘merely’ indirectly so. Many critics of ideal accounts of global democracy take feasibility to entail direct action-guidance in the sense that it should be immediately possible to act in accordance with the principle. However, this demand neglects several indirect ways of guiding action.

A model, for example, is by definition similar in important respects to the phenomenon of interest and includes some counterfactual assumptions and simplifications which set it apart from the real phenomenon. But a model of, say, a power plant may still be helpful for the design of a control system for the power plant. Similarly, the aim of more or less ideal theories of global democracy is to supply a model case for our actual society. Assuming features that no actual society may ever exemplify might be seen exactly as a model of an actual society.

The practice-kind aspect of the functional constraint concerns the target of the principle, i.e. to what practice the principle is supposed to be applied (c.f. Adams this issue). As worded by Charles Beitz, since normative political principles are supposed to regulate the conduct and structure of a practice, any candidate principle for this practice must be ‘formulated in such a way that it satisfies a condition of applicability’ (Beitz, 2014, p. 227). Consider, for example, the potential difference between a principle of democracy for regulating some decisions at the university and a principle of democracy for society at large. Importantly, the practice-kind aspect involves a ‘target flexibility’ that is often neglected in the literature on global democracy. One dimension of this flexibility concerns criteria for a practice-kind, that is, what counts as belonging to the practice. Typically, the practice that an intended principle is supposed to regulate allows for a certain amount of flexibility, both with regard to what qualifies as the practice in question as well as the ‘borders’ of this practice, which is usually negotiable.

Critics of ambitious theories of global democracy often reject them on the grounds that they cannot regulate the kind of practice intended. Instead, it is assumed that existing practices set the limits as to what is required for democracy. As argued by John Dryzek and Simon Niemeyer, for example, discursive forms of democratic representation are preferable to electoral representation on the grounds that it is ‘sometimes feasible when the representation of persons is not so feasible (especially in transnational settings lacking a well-defined demos)’ (Dryzek & Niemeyer, 2008, p. 481).

But such proposals neglect another dimension of target flexibility, and that is the issue of how potential deviations from the sought target practice should be handled. Let us assume, for example, that the aim of the theorist is to develop a democratic theory for the European Union (EU). Suppose that the theorist finds that true democracy would demand that the EU was a fiscal union. But the EU is not a fiscal union, and a critic could therefore argue that the theorist’s principle, however justified for a fiscal union, cannot be a principle for the EU.⁶ The theorist has two basic ways of responding to this concern. First, she may contest the conceptual claim, arguing that even if changed to a fiscal union, it would still be the European Union. This option utilizes an aspect of the target flexibility mentioned above, according to which the borders of the target practice are negotiable. Secondly, she may accept the current constitution of the EU as a necessary constraint on her theory, acknowledging that her account cannot be an account for the EU. Importantly, though, and neglected in the debate on global democracy, the latter option entails an open question that depends specifically on what function the account aims to fulfil (see also Adams this issue). The theorist may conclude that if her account of democracy is not compatible with the target practice, so much the worse for the target practice. In other words, given her aim with the account, what matters might be that there is a possible arrangement playing the (approximate) role of the EU in which democracy may be upheld, not that the institution is constituted in the same way as the current EU (Erman & Möller, 2018, 2019).

The temporal aspect of the functional constraint concerns the extent to which a normative principle or account is primarily present-directed or future-directed. In other words, whether or not a principle is feasible strongly depends on when the principle is supposed to come into effect. If the function of the principle is to regulate current state of affairs, the feasibility constraints are typically set by the present empirical context of the target practice. For example, the present set of resources we have at our disposal – our present aims, desires and skillsets – will set limits as to what is possible to achieve at present, and the principles for today need to accommodate (some of) these facts. If the function of the principle is to regulate an end-state or ideal practice, however, the feasibility constraints could be much more open-ended. The upper limits for feasibility are then given not by our presently available goods and resources, and people’s present aims, desires and skillsets, but by what is possible to reach, given the present starting-point.

Indeed, between these two extremes there is an endless number of possible time-frames which delimit the feasibility space for a guiding principle. However, recall that feasibility considerations are considerations about trajectory in all of these cases, pointing to an accessible path of actions that can be taken to arrive at the desired state of affairs. It must thus be possible to move in incremental steps from the (typically less ideal) present state of affairs to the (more ideal) states that the principles directly regulate. This is not to say that the theorist, in order to justify her account, must demonstrate that the future world is reachable. Of course, if it can be demonstrated that the world is not reachable from the present world, then an account aiming to be directly applicable has problems. But as long as the case is inconclusive, which it often is when it comes to human nature and empirical circumstances in the future, uncertainty about whether or not circumstances – in which suggested principles are both applicable and justifiable – are possible to reach within the constraints set by the temporal aspect is not sufficient to reject the account.⁷

The fitness constraint

Whilst the functional constraint is context-dependent, the fitness constraint is a requirement of the relation between the commitments made in an account. Being essentially a coherence condition, the fitness constraint may seem ‘trivial’ or ‘self-evident’, with little practical import for political theorizing. However, we believe that it has implications for feasibility that are often ignored and therefore deserve more attention than many theorists acknowledge. The fitness constraint involves one aspect of particular importance in determining what kind of feasibility considerations become appropriate: the dynamic aspect.

The fitness constraint puts a dynamic condition on the principle that the account sets out to justify. Any direction of justification is allowed, whether bottom up or top down, or a set of commitments on an equal level of prior justificatory force. This is the case because the fitness constraint concerns the ways in which all relevant claims fit together in the account. Simply put, in order for the account to be justified, it must fit with the other claims on which the account is premised. If there appears to be tensions between different commitments of the account, regardless of other virtues, they must be resolved before the account may be considered justified. And the resolution may only be made in either one, or a combination of two, fundamental ways: by abandoning at least one of the commitments in the account, or by showing that there actually is no tension after all (Erman & Möller, 2018).

Given its formal character, we believe that few theorists would reject the fitness constraint. Yet, its dynamic aspect is surprisingly underappreciated. In several current debates, arguments are often worked out as if justifications have a set direction, not only in the literature on global democracy but also in the justice literature. Consider, for example, the debate on ideal and non-ideal theory, in which non-ideal theorists insist that we defy the ‘top down’ strategy utilized by ideal theorists – starting with general higher-level principles – and instead work in a context-sensitive ‘bottom up’ manner when we theorize appropriate principles of justice (Farrelly, 2007; Mills, 2005). Likewise, in the debate on practice-independence and practice-dependence, practice-dependent theorists insist that the justification of a principle of justice is dependent on the nature of the practice it is intended to govern and that we may only get a proper understanding of this nature through a robust interpretive methodology (Ronzoni, 2009; Sangiovanni, 2008). There is thus a tendency to assume that the endorsement of the proposition ‘q justifies p’ would also imply the denial of its converse, i.e. that ‘p justifies q’.

Importantly, though, the dynamic aspect suggests that different feasibility considerations may be appropriate for different principles within an account, depending on how the principles harmonize. Even a typical ideal account could comprise more or less ideal principles. For example, a democratic theory may consist of a principle of democracy which is construed under the constraint that it must be realizable within the long-term future and a higher-level moral principle that does not set out such feasibility demands. Similarly, a non-ideal account may consist of more or less realizable principles, for example, one regulating what democracy requires under current socio-political conditions and given available resources, another aimed at reducing severely undemocratic practices. Recalling what the functional constraint requires, the appropriate feasibility considerations for each principle is dependent on what the principle is aimed to achieve (see also Adams this issue; Scherz and Zysset this issue). And there are no predetermined limits to functional variety within an account nor to the number of principles it may incorporate, as long as the principles harmonize so that the fitness constraint is fulfilled. In a nutshell, this means that if an account includes an applied principle construed under demanding feasibility constraints, and a more general higher-level principle construed under weaker or no feasibility constraints, the applied principle must be reasonable from the standpoint of the higher-level principle given the feasibility constraints assumed by the applied principle (and vice versa) (Erman & Möller, 2019).

Global democracy and feasibility considerations

So far we have focused on our first argument, responding to the vagueness with regard to the role of feasibility in normative theorizing, by suggesting two metatheoretical constraints, which together involve four aspects that are important in determining appropriate feasibility constraints of an account. In this final section, we will pursue our second argument by illustrating how this feasibility framework might be used in theorizing the contours of an account of global democracy. By ‘contours’ we mean an account consisting of principles we see as central for global democracy, but where no claims are made about them being necessary or jointly sufficient. As will become evident below, we focus on one indispensable aspect of democracy, namely, political decision-making. Without doubt, many other aspects would have to be theorized to develop a fully fledged account of global democracy. However decision-making is often considered the most essential function of democracy since it lies at the heart of what is meant by ‘the rule by the people’, i.e. the idea that those who are supposed to abide by the rules also should be the authors of them.

Of course, the feasibility framework as such can neither lend any support for our suggested account nor solve any substantive matters with regard to global democracy, since it is constituted by metatheoretical conditions. However, it can be applied to demonstrate the rich array of possibilities available for the theorist with regard to feasibility considerations. Thus, given that the purpose of this section is not to contribute a first-order theory but to illustrate the usefulness of the feasibility framework, we will not spend much time on the kinds of justification needed to defend the suggested principles of the account. Instead, we begin by introducing the three principles (P1-P3), thereafter explicating their feasibility constraints in response to the four aspects, followed by an application of the applied principle (P3) to empirical circumstances.

Three normative political principles

Our skeleton account of global democracy consists of three principles. Let us start by introducing them:

(P1) The all-affected principle: All those persons who are significantly affected by a public decision have a moral right to due consideration.⁸

(P2) The equal say principle: All and only those agents who are subjected to a system of laws have an equal say in the decision-making about its basic form and the overarching societal goals and aims.

(P3) The rightful capacity to impact principle: All agents with the rightful capacity to impact the decision-making process, to level out inequalities, should do so.

Both the all-affected principle (P1) and the equal say principle (P2) are intermediary normative political principles in the proposed scheme, rather than what is sometimes referred to as foundational or higher-level principles.⁹ Whilst P1 constitutes a fairness principle with the aim of regulating political decision-making in general, P2 is a robust democratic principle with the aim of regulating law-making specifically.¹⁰

Both principles are tied to two weak feasibility conditions, demanding that a principle be compatible with the basic features of human nature as we know it and possible to achieve from the status quo (see Buchanan, 2004). These conditions understand feasibility in terms of conditional ability (Estlund, 2011).

One might ask why P2, given its narrower scope, is conditioned by the same weak feasibility constraints as P1. Importantly, though, a narrower scope does not necessitate more demanding feasibility conditions. Rather, in line with our metatheoretical discussion, it is the function of the principle – what the principle sets out to regulate – which is decisive. Responding to the temporal aspect of the functional constraint by building into a principle regulating law-making the requirement that it must be achievable within the near future, or that it must take into consideration exactly how current laws are made, would just taint it with a status quo bias that is unjustified given its role as an intermediary principle. Why settle for a less democratic cut-off point when we theorize what is required of law-making in order for it to be democratic?

This justification concerns the practice-kind aspect, in particular its target flexibility, which raises questions about the limits of feasibility. When feasibility considerations are made in the current literature, it is typically the ‘upper limit’ that is discussed: if the suggested principles demand too much of people, the account is not feasible. But on our functional constraint, the question of a ‘lower limit’ is equally important. If an account of democracy demands too little of people, the account is equally infeasible as an account of democracy. This would mean that, rather than attempting to find a bar of ‘democracy’ low enough to be compatible with, say, the practice of slavery, abolishing the practice in its entirety seems to be the better alternative (see Erman & Möller, 2019).

Let us now compare the aim of the intermediary equal say principle (P2) with the aim of the rightful capacity to impact principle (P3), which is the most applied principle in our scheme. The aim of P3 is distributive in the sense that it is intended to level out the unequal distribution of decision-making power in the global domain to strengthen the prerequisites for approximating the all-affected principle (P1) and the equal say principle (P2), and thus realizing global democracy. To have ‘rightful capacity’ requires that three criteria are fulfilled: that an agent (a) has justified aims (i.e. to strengthen the prerequisites for realizing P1 and P2); (b) is sufficiently capable of promoting the inclusion of wrongly excluded individuals and groups in global politics (i.e. those who are not given a right to due consideration even though they are significantly affected and those who do not have a say in the law-making even though they are subjected to the system of laws); and (c) has a capacity with no ‘tainted origins’, i.e. a capacity built through moral wrongdoings (Buchanan, 2013, pp. 188–89). P3 is theorized under feasibility conditions which require that a principle is applicable to global governance arrangements under current conditions and with current resources, with the likelihood of being at least partially realized within a couple of generations. Feasibility is here understood in terms of psychological and material costliness.

Needless to say, a fully fledged theory of global democracy would have to specify this in more detail as well as accommodate further principles for regulating functions other than decision-making. But this scheme of principles suffices to illustrate the usefulness of the sketched feasibility framework. Consider first the functional constraint. To begin with, the three principles differ with regard to the principle-kind aspect. One aims to achieve procedural fairness (P1), a second aims to achieve democratic legitimacy through political equality (P2), and a third is distributive and aims to level out unequal decision-making power (P3). Moreover, concerning the practice-kind aspect, one is construed to be applied to political decision-making generally (P1), a second is construed to be applicable to law-making (P2), and a third is construed to be applicable to unequal power relations in the political domain (P3). Finally, with regard to the temporal aspect, which is particularly important for elaborating appropriate feasibility constraints, two of the principles are ideal-theoretical in the sense that they set out a (possible but demanding) long-term goal (P1 and P2), allowing us to tie them to weak feasibility constraints. The third principle is non-ideal in the sense that the temporal horizon is much more limited (P3). In sum, they have different aims, different domains of application, different levels of applicability, and vary in content and scope.

Let us move from the functional constraint to the fitness constraint. Concerning the dynamic aspect, it is quite easy to see the fitness between the principles in one justificatory direction, at least with regard to how the equal say principle (P2) is an application and specification of the all-affected principle (P1) in contexts of law-making, while the rightful capacity to impact principle (P3) is an application and specification of the equal say principle (P2) under current non-ideal conditions.¹¹ But the fitness condition concerns the whole ‘web of commitments’ and it is less straightforward how the rightful capacity to impact principle (P3) is a specification of the all-affected principle (P1), since the latter is quite general. Our argument here is that, whilst there are many ways of giving those significantly affected a moral right to due consideration, one central way of doing so that is of particular importance from the standpoint of democracy is to give them equalized access to the political decision-making by levelling out the distribution of decision power.

The other justificatory direction comes to the fore once we take into account the three aspects of the functional constraint. The equal say principle (P2) is reasonable from the standpoint of the all-affected principle (P1) given that P2 is supposed to regulate a kind of decision-making with specific constitutive features. And the rightful capacity to impact principle (P3) is reasonable from the standpoint of P1 and P2 given what P3 is intended to do and that it is supposed to be applied to current global governance arrangements (and be partially achievable within a couple of generations). Hence, the principles give each other support and fit together in a way that the fitness constraint requires:

P1 ↔ P2 ↔ P3

Note from the above analysis that the level of application of a principle, which decides whether it is an intermediary or an applied principle, is not decided by justificatory force but by aim, domain of application, and temporal horizon. Hence, the level of application is a relational matter: an intermediary principle may be an applied principle in another scheme, and so on. Indeed, one may think that the proposed scheme necessarily makes P1 justificatory prior – similar to G. A. Cohen’s famous justificatory chain of principles (2003) – and in some contexts this may well be the case. However, the fitness constraint is a formal constraint and as such neutral vis-à-vis coherentist and foundationalist theories in epistemology, so specifying and defending a justificatory priority among principles of an account is not mandatory. The fitness constraint only requires that the principles fit together such that they constitute a coherent whole and thus can be justified from the standpoint of one another given the feasibility constraints to which they are tied.

Realizing global democracy

As mentioned in the introduction, to evaluate the correctness of a normative political principle we must know to which feasibility constraints it is tied. Among other eventual factual premises, these feasibility constraints constitute an empirical premise of the principle. Hence, if the empirical premise turns out to be false, we have good reasons to reject the principle. While the all-affected principle (P1) and the equal say principle (P2) in our scheme are possible to refute on empirical grounds, this would be a tremendously difficult task, given the weak feasibility constraints that they must be compatible with the basic features of human nature as we know it and possible to achieve from the status quo. Yet, these kinds of principles are often rejected outright in the literature on global democracy, for example, because they presumably require a global demos or fulfil some other empirical premise (Miller, 2010; for a critique, see Valentini, 2014). But such charges do not have a bite on these principles (at least not insofar as the feasibility constraints utilized here are presumed). The rightful capacity to impact principle (P3), however, may be rejected on empirical grounds if it turns out to be unlikely to be partially realized within a couple of generations. To illustrate the kind of considerations one would have to make in testing the correctness of this principle, as well as discuss the different ways it may be realized to verify it, let us focus on two empirical examples.

We first need to specify the types of feasibility constraints that we have in mind and which proposals for realizing P3 could be construed. As we saw above, P3 must be applicable under current conditions and with current resources, where feasibility is understood in terms of psychological and material costliness. Due to space limitations, however, we focus our analysis on the material resources necessary for the instantiation of the said proposals, by which we mean economic properties in the form of labour, capital, and technology.

There are also substantial reasons for focusing on material aspects of feasibility in construing a non-ideal principle rather than the more common focus on psychological aspects such as motivation (e.g. political will). First, the literature on feasibility is unclear about the status of psychological constraints (Gilabert & Lawford-Smith, 2012). On one hand, it seems strange to let agents off the moral hook just because an action might be mentally difficult. On the other, persistent and deep cognitive biases do run through (almost) all agents which condition capacity for action. Given this lack of clarity, we will leave the topic for future research. Second, and relatedly, our focus on material conditions does not undermine the importance of thinking through other feasibility constraints, such as psychological ones. However, as our example is illustrative rather than exhaustive, we take it that showing how the feasibility framework can be applied to debates on global democracy suffices to show its merit.

Though somewhat stylized, recent literature on global democracy circulates around two nodes: a civil society view and a statist view (Besson & Martí, in press; for a similar comparative distinction, see Scherz and Zysset this issue; Buchanan & Keohane, 2006). The former, often inspired by Habermasian accounts, puts democratizing faith in civil society organizations to act as representatives for different peoples.¹² This approach sees civil society as either exercising international decision-making in democratic ways, or fixing the democratic deficits created by states through representation in the policy process of IOs (Bohman, 2007; Dryzek, 2012; Macdonald, 2008). The latter view, operating in a Kantian vein, suggests that a principle of state consent should ground a global democracy in which democratic states – qua representatives of their citizens – construct international laws, treaties, and IOs that bind states and their citizenry (Christiano, 2015; Moravcsik, 2004).

The civil society view has been a dominant thread in recent global democratic thought. Unpacked more fully, this view sees civil society actors exercising a ‘rightful capacity’ to represent excluded groups in global law- and policy-making. This can occur in two distinct ways: by representation of groups in the policy processes of IOs, or by representation in private governance initiatives and transnational networks that have authoritative capacity. Though often left unspoken, the rationale for this model is one of feasibility: we already see the involvement of non-state actors in virtually every international regime (i.e. policy area) and almost all major IOs (Steffek, 2013; Tallberg, Sommerer, Squatrito, & Jönsson, 2013). Moreover, the rise of non-state actors in IO policy processes has been complemented by a growing role of non-state actors as private governors, networked collaborators, watchdogs from outside formal IO structures, and organizers of protests and other civic actions.

These myriad roles go some way toward realizing P3 under fairly demanding feasibility constraints. States are not all democratic, and will not be so in the foreseeable future. Citizens of non-democratic states therefore need a vehicle of representation on the international stage, and, reciprocally, IOs require alternate ways to take consideration of the views of all those subjected to laws and all those who are significantly affected by law and policy. Civil society (acting as representatives of excluded groups) offers a tractable response to this problem, even if non-democratic states are often reticent to allow non-state actor access on the ground in those states. Non-state actors can represent excluded groups in IO agenda setting, research, policy formulation, decision-making, as well as implementation and evaluation of decisions (Steffek, 2013). This is crucial for feasibility reasons: IOs do not have unlimited human, financial, or technological resources to reach out and gather views from excluded groups. Staff numbers are oftentimes short, budgets constrained by national governments, and technology lacking to reach those excluded in developing and authoritarian states. In this sense, non-state actors exercise their rightful capacity to impact the decision-making by helping to include the views of those wrongfully excluded.

In a similar way, the rise of private governance initiatives and transnational networks offer a mode for individuals to be represented in international law-making as these bodies craft rules directly. These bodies often emerge in governance gaps where states fail to enact rules or when states do make rules but exclude groups from the process (Green 2013). Again, precisely because IOs and states often exclude groups of people, this approach offers a feasible way to include those excluded (say, by drafting certification initiatives that consider how vulnerable groups are treated in supply chains). This model also already has empirical bite, though to be sure there are still feasibility concerns in realizing P3. Private actors are typically located in the Global North, and questions are raised over their ability to represent those distantly located (Scholte, 2014). Moreover, private bodies also lack staff, money, and technology to systematically represent all groups significantly affected by their rules.

This civil society view is often contrasted against a statist model (or state consent view). On this score, state governments act as the primary representative of different people (typically, their citizenry) in law-making beyond the state. In some ways, this model is also attractive due to its feasibility. State governments have provided the context and backdrop for international law to develop over the past two centuries. The proliferation of IOs with legal authority has occurred through the delegation and pooling activities of state governments (Hooghe & Marks, 2015). Obligations to follow IO decisions and treaty regimes are therefore not imposed on states, but rather voluntarily accepted (i.e. consented to). By representing citizens in the formation and exercise of international authority, democratic legitimacy is maintained as those citizens – through chains of delegation – empower their government who in turn empower international authority-wielders (which can be revoked later if the demos wills it).

Proponents of this model are quick to note that state consent remains the key mechanism for rendering international authority democratic. In Thomas Christiano’s words, states remain ‘the most important institutional mechanism for making large scale political entities directly accountable to people’ (2015, p. 7). Additionally, these advocates often deride the importance of civil society efforts. Much of the work engaged in by civil society, so it is said, is part of soft or administrative law, and therefore not a source of international law stricto sensu in the same way as treaty or customary international law (Besson & Martí, in press). Finally, advocates argue that sovereignty combined with consent mean that the citizens of small states are given equal voice in the process of international law-making, helping to overcome inter-state imbalances.

The feasibility of this model in cashing out P3 can be criticized, however. Not all states are democratic, and citizens of those states are not able to sanction their representatives (thus breaking the democratic chains of delegation).¹³ Some civil society actors now certainly exercise forms of international legal authority viewed as binding over its addressees, and IO policy processes are sometimes captured by special interest groups (Braithwaite & Drahos, 2000). Lastly, while the practice of inter-state negotiations may be formally equal (a disputable claim), they are certainly rife with informal imbalances in terms of resources. Smaller states have less access to information, an inability to send large delegations to international treaty negotiations, less technological ability to collect their own citizens’ views, and so on. Given that many states will remain undemocratic in the foreseeable future, and that weak states do not have the money, time, or technology to compete with stronger states in the formation of international law, the notion that a statist model approximates P3 is dubious.

Yet statist proponents are correct to note that the source of international law is predominantly – and, with some exceptions, will remain for generations to come – state consent. Given this impasse, we suggest that viewing the civil society model and state model together is productive in realizing P3. Few scholars opt for either side of this debate tout court (though some do), yet how the positions can be combined in realizing normative principles remains underspecified. Most clearly from our analysis, it is evident that states and state-backed IOs have a crucial role to play in crafting international law in democratic ways as representatives of their citizens. But this cannot occur without civil society actors helping to include the views of under-represented groups in the policy process of negotiations. Similarly, non-state actors can help level out negotiation imbalances by providing weaker states with information, acting as pro bono advisors and negotiators, and helping to reduce compliance costs through monitoring implementation of international laws.

Inversely, IOs and states – much more so than civil society – are in a position to help non-democratic states’ transition toward democracy. This is a crucial step in ensuring actors from different states exercise their rightful capacity to represent all those bound by international laws. Keohane, Macedo, and Moravcsik have argued that IOs specifically – and multilateralism in general – have net democratic benefits: while it might mean that IOs gain some authority at the expense of governments, these same IOs promote individual rights, restrict special interests, and improve parliamentary deliberation (Keohane, Macedo, & Moravcsik, 2009). Because not all civil society actors are necessarily ‘good’ democratic representatives, restricting overly-represented groups that might crowd out more vulnerable ones is a step toward realizing P3. In a complementary way, Tallberg and his colleagues have shown that having a high rate of democratic states in an IO membership-pool greatly enhances its openness to civil society activity in the policy process (Tallberg, Sommerer, & Squatrito, 2016). This highlights the symbiosis between an IO’s ability to help democratize states, and civil society’s ability to contribute more deeply to IOs’ decision-making. Given restrictions in resources, combining the civil society and statist views is therefore more fruitful for the realization of P3 than either view on its own.

This argument can be made precisely because of the methodological commitments allowed by the feasibility framework. Many scholars who advocate global democracy pitch their institutional prescription at a higher level, closer to P2 in which their model immediately seeks to cash out the equal say principle (or some version of it). In this way, advocates tend to err and see the civil society model and the statist model as contending candidates. However, by specifying how these two views can embody P3 and ‘fit’ with P1 and P2 – as well as outlining some feasibility constraints that determine how the proposals can be made functional – we open up space to combine the two in useful ways. We are able to see the strengths and weaknesses of both models in enacting P3, and develop prescriptions – under the given feasibility constraints – that allow the strengths of one to compensate for the weaknesses of the other.

Conclusion

In this article, we have drawn upon the philosophical literature on feasibility as well as the methodological debates in the justice literature and suggested two metatheoretical constraints, which bring forward four aspects of importance in determining proper feasibility constraints of an account in political theory. In order to show the promise of this framework, we have outlined how it can be used to identify different principles that an account of global democracy may comprise, different ‘levels’ at which these principles work, and how they fit together. We have then turned toward analyzing two prominent models of global democracy – a civil society view and a statist view – and shown their limitations in light of certain feasibility considerations accompanying the rightful capacity to impact principle (P3). The feasibility framework here allowed us to make a comparative analysis and highlight how the views might be reconciled in attaining P3 in productive ways.

In sum, the article outlines a feasibility framework for the construction of normative principles and proposals, demonstrates its fruitfulness in evaluating two prescriptions, and brings new considerations of feasibility to global democracy scholarship. Indeed, as mentioned at the outset and demonstrated throughout, democracy is only one normative source that may be utilized when theorizing political legitimacy in the global domain. In line with our suggested feasibility framework, the appropriate principle for regulating a certain practice depends on what the principle is supposed to regulate and to what kind of practice it is meant to be applied (as well as within what time-frame). By showing why democracy is important in some set of cases, and relating it to feasibility, we have advanced the literature on global democracy, taken the wider discussions about political legitimacy in global politics a step forward, and contributed to a broader dialogue about feasibility in normative political theory.

Acknowledgments

The authors owe special thanks to the participants of the conference “Legitimacy Beyond the State: Normative and Conceptual Questions” in Bad Homburg (January 2017), in particular Nate Adams, Antoinette Scherz and Cord Schmelzle. In addition, Eva Erman thanks the Swedish Research Council as well as the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation for the generous funding of her research, and Jonathan Kuyper thanks Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for the same generosity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eva Erman

Eva Erman is a Professor in the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University. She works in the field of political philosophy, with a special interest in democratic theory and methodology. She is the author of The Practical Turn in Political Theory (2018) and Human Rights and Democracy: Discourse Theory and Global Rights Institutions (2005). She has also published numerous articles in scholarly journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Political Philosophy, Journal of Politics, Journal of Philosophical Research, Ethical Theory & Moral Practice, European Journal of International Relations, International Theory, and Human Rights Quarterly. Furthermore, Erman is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Ethics & Global Politics (Routledge).

Jonathan W. Kuyper

Jonathan W. Kuyper is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the Queen’s University Belfast. He works in the fields of political theory and international relations, often with a focus on democratic theory and practice. He has published work on these topics in the American Political Science Review, WIREs Climate Change, Review of International Studies, European Journal of International Relations, and Political Studies. He is the co-editor of a recent special issue of Environmental Politics which focuses on the normative and empirical aspects of the Paris Agreement for global climate governance.

Notes

1. For exceptions with regard to vagueness about feasibility in the global democracy literature, see Ulaş (2016) and Valentini (2014).

2. This section draws heavily on Erman & Möller, 2019, where one finds a more developed analysis of feasibility and the two metatheoretical constraints, albeit not in relation to global democracy (see also Erman & Möller, 2018, Ch. 7).

3. ‘Agent’ does not necessarily (and in political theory not even typically) entail a single person, but can be a group of persons, an institution and the like.

4. Furthermore, it has also been argued that a sought state of affairs must be relatively stable to be feasible (Cohen, 2009, pp. 56–57; Rawls, 1999, pp. 440–41).

5. For literature on ideal and non-ideal theory, (see for example Simmons, 2010; Mills, 2005; Farrelly 2007; Valentini, 2012; Sen, 2009; Schmidtz, 2011; Erman & Möller, 2013).

6. This line of argument – to let the nature of the target practice play an essential role for normative political principles – is common among proponents of practice-dependence in the justice literature (Ronzoni, 2009; Sangiovanni, 2008).

7. This point is similar to Christian Barry and Laura Valentini’s note that reasonable disagreement about the feasibility of principles is not sufficient to reject a principle (Barry & Valentini, 2009: 510–11).

8. Note that P1 does not say that only those who are significantly affected have a moral right to due consideration. It thus leaves open the case for including others on other grounds (e.g. children who are not significantly affected but for other reasons should have this moral right).

9. However, if one wished to give further justificatory support for the account as a whole, one could well include such a principle, say, a principle of equal respect for persons (e.g. labelled P0 in the scheme), aiming at regulating individual conduct between persons (practice-kind aspect) and perhaps construed under no feasibility constraints and thus, similar to fundamental principles in general, constituting what is sometimes called a ‘fact-insensitive’ principle (Cohen, 2003).

10. It is worth noting that the suggested feasibility framework allows us to see two allegedly competing criteria of inclusion – the so-called ‘all affected principle’ and the ‘all subjected’ principle – as compatible and as giving each other support. On our construal, being significantly affected by a decision does not ground a democratic say because there is no intrinsic connection between being affected in general and having a democratic say (Abizadeh, 2012; Owen, 2012). However, it grounds a moral right to due consideration. By contrast, being subjected to a system of laws does ground a democratic say (here in the form of P2). In our view, the ‘all subjected’ form of P2 is fitting for regulating law-making because it is able to capture the idea of autonomy as self-rule underpinning democracy, which says that we should only comply with the system of laws that we ourselves have authored. While being affected need not undermine autonomy as self-rule, being coercively and/or legally subjected does. Of course, the feasibility framework as such does not give support these arguments, as they must be settled on substantive rather than metatheoretical grounds. However, we illustrate how the framework opens up the possibility space for such arguments.

11. As noted in footnote 9 we might give the all-affected principle (P1) further justificatory support by demonstrating how it is an application and specification of a higher-level moral principle of some kind, such as the equal respect principle (P0) in contexts of decision-making.

12. This view is also congruent with the notion of ‘constituent power’ that has become more important in debates over democratic deficits at the EU and global level.

13. Of course, even well-developed democratic states have representational deficits due to how political systems weight votes.