The Self-Constituting Demos: A Defense of the Affected-Interests Principle

• In Event: Democratic Boundaries

Abstract

Before there may be democracy, or a special kind of group decision-making, there must be a demos, or a special kind of decision-making group. Central to any theory of democracy, then, is an answer to the question of how to constitute the demos, or how to decide who the decision-making group will be.

There are at least three candidates that theorists of democracy consider when answering the question of how to constitute the demos: a “standing-citizens principle” (e.g., Whelan 1983, Song 2012), a “coerced-subjects principle” (e.g., Fraser 2009, Abizadeh 2012), and an “affected-interests principle” (e.g., Goodin 2007, Ron 2017). This paper carries out a defense of neither the standing-citizens principle nor the coerced-subjects principle, each of which has many champions, but the affected-interests principle, which has many critics by comparison.

The defense consists of the claim that, in contrast to either the standing-citizens principle or the coerced-subjects principle, the affected-interests principle satisfies both a “procedural condition of democratic legitimacy,” concerning the means by which the constitution of the demos occurs, and a “substantive condition of democratic legitimacy,” concerning the ends for which the constitution of the demos occurs.

Among the consequences of this claim is the ability to distinguish not only the three principles, but also three corresponding conceptions of the demos: a “non-constitutable demos,” an “other-constituted demos,” and a “self-constituting demos.” To defend the affected-interests principle and its corresponding conception of the demos (i.e., the self-constituting demos), therefore, is to develop a radical theory of democracy that resists any and all readymade categories for group decision-making.

References

Abizadeh, Arash. 2012. “On the Demos and Its Kin: Nationalism, Democracy, and the Boundary Problem.” American Political Science Review 106(4): 867-82.

Fraser, Nancy. 2009. Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World. New York: Columbia University Press.

Goodin, Robert E. 2007. “Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its Alternatives.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 35(1): 40-68.

Ron, Amit. 2017. “Affected Interests and Their Institutions.” Democratic Theory 4(2): 66-81.

Song, Sarah. 2012. “The Boundary Problem in Democratic Theory: Why the Demos Should Be Bounded by the State.” International Theory 4(1): 39-68.

Whelan, Frederick G. 1983. “Prologue: Democratic Theory and the Boundary Problem.” In Nomos XXV: Liberal Democracy, eds. J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman. New York: New York University Press, 13-47.

Author

• Kristin Zuhone, University of California, Berkeley