Democracy Without Borders

• In Event: Democracy, Borders, and Immigration

Abstract

Many conceptions of collective decision-making presuppose the existence of political communities, especially nation-states, the boundaries of which are delimited and imposed, regulated and controlled—or, in a word, fixed. Yet, when the political communities of interest change with the issues at hand, fixed boundaries disempower those political communities from making decisions on those issues that are relevant to them. Is it possible to conceive of collective decision-making without fixed boundaries—that is, democracy without borders? Yes. We propose an institutional design in which the boundaries of collective decision-making shift with the issues relevant to political communities. The institutional design has three features. First, any person may opt into a “global pool” of judges available to resolve conflicts between two parties. Second, whenever a conflict must be resolved, both parties determine the boundaries of a “local pool” from which judges are randomly selected to decide the case by majority vote. Third, if any person contests the boundaries of the “local pool” as they are determined, then that person may appeal the decision of the judges in that case, and the boundaries of the “local pool” must be redetermined. This institutional design draws elements from the democratic courts of Classical Athens, the popular trials of Republican Rome, and the citizen juries of Colonial New England. However, it does not presuppose the existence of political communities with fixed boundaries, thereby empowering communities of language, culture, religion, ethnicity, gender, and class, among others, to make decisions on the issues that are relevant to them.

Authors

• Joseph Warren, University of California, Berkeley

• Kristin Zuhone, University of California, Berkeley