Defensible Denationalization and Political Wrongdoing

• In Event: Democratic Boundaries

Abstract

Recently, several liberal states have adopted laws that allow them to unilaterally revoke citizenships of their members due to concerns about terrorism. This new power is, however, controversial because citizenship is generally considered to be a secured, irrevocable status of members in liberal societies. Some political theorists argue that citizenship revocation is fundamental at odds with liberal democratic principles and can never be justified. Lenard (2016: 88), for example, argues that “recent revocation laws create ‘second-class citizens’ by opening a fundamental inequality between citizens who possess one nationality and those who possess two” and so “the power to revoke is incompatible with modern democratic citizenship.” Gibney (2013: 653-4) argues, in a similar vein, that the current practice of denationalization is in tension with “the equality of status demanded by liberal principles” because it has created “two classes of citizens: those who hold a conditional citizenship and those who do not” (see also Gibney 2020). Macklin (2018: 172) contends that “citizenship revocation only enhances the discretionary and arbitrary power of the executive, at the expense of all citizens, and of citizenship itself.”
In this article, I defend the permissibility of denationalization practices that target only egregious cases of political wrongdoing. Barry and Ferracioli (2015), Joppke (2016), and Lavi (2011) have focused on cases of political violence and identify acts of terrorism as the paradigm examples of political wrongdoings that could justify denationalization. But this emphasis on violence seems unwarranted. If the wrongfulness of political wrongdoing lies with its threat to democratic self-government, then there are other ways to undermine democratic institutions that do not involve violence. For instance, the creation and spread of misinformation that aims at undermining the credibility of democratic institutions, or election meddling, and lobbying elected representations or government officials on behalf of a foreign power. Another limitation of the prevailing accounts of political wrongdoing in the literature on denationalization is that they presuppose the existence of a democratic political order, which serves to be the target of the alleged crimes. Nonetheless, political wrongdoings can and routinely take place in non-democratic regimes. Consider, for example, a state agent harassing and threatening a political dissident and her family, or an arms dealer supplying weapons to an oppressive regime. These are political wrongdoing in the sense that they violate the fundamental principles of political self-government and free public deliberation. In this article I shall define political wrongdoing as any act that intentionally deprives (or threatens to deprive) others of the benefits of living in a democratic, self-governing political community. As such, political wrongdoing includes behaviors violate the democratic rights or right to democratization of other people, typically in the following two forms:
(a) threaten the integrity of the existing democratic institutions and procedures
(b) being complicit in the suppressions of political and civil rights of others

After offering an alternative account of political wrongdoing, I put forward a negative retributivist account for denationalization. The retributivist argument aims to establish that it is not wrong to sanction certain political wrongdoers with denationalization. In addition, I offer some positive justifications for denationalization by, first, raising the instrumentalist concern of protecting democratic institutions and democratic ways of life, and, second, highlighting of expressivist value of denationalizing political wrongdoers in some cases.

Two groups of individuals are targeted by my account of denationalization. The first group is the individuals who wrongfully pose a severe risk of harm to the democratic institutions of their country of citizenship. The second group consists of individuals who pose a severe risk of harm to the political rights of people in other countries.

My arguments make the following contributions to the literature: first, my arguments can explain the fittingness of denationalization as a punishment for political wrongdoing but not other types of serious crimes. Second, my arguments apply to individuals who pose a significant threat to the democratic institutions of the denationalizing country as well as those who undermine the democratic rights of people in other countries. Third, my arguments can be used to criticize the current practices of citizenship revocation laws that disproportionately affect minority groups.

Author

• Kevin K W Ip, Hong Kong Baptist University