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Browse our collection of Journal of Democracy edited volumes. View Books. Our special thirtieth-anniversary issue January is now available free of charge. If the tenacious membership objection is convincing, and if we take the boundary problem seriously, we should abandon functional demos views. Part 2 of this article recalls the argument of Sarah Song that a functional membership standard of membership in a democratic community would mean that every political decision has a largely unique set of persons that ought to be included in the democratic process.
Each individual would not be part of one demos, but of many overlapping demoi —meeting the appropriate functional standard with a different set of people depending on the issue at stake—a problem partly anticipated by Frederick Whelan While Song recognized this dilemma, she did not analyze precisely what was wrong with floating demoi from the perspective of democratic legitimacy.
I expand upon her argument to fill in this gap: floating demoi make self-rule—vital for democratic conceptions of law-making—impossible. Floating demoi result in floating jurisdictions and the piecemeal enforcement of democratic rule. In short, political communities whose memberships are functionally defined cannot be democratically governed.
In Part 3, I consider the extent to which arguments for a global democracy with a global demos solve the boundary problem. Theorists who defend global demos views may do so for a variety of reasons; a global demos may be postulated specifically to solve the boundary problem e. Global democracy cannot be procedurally democratic because it cannot be held democratically accountable by its citizenry. Finally, in Part 4 of this article I sketch out a conception of democracy I call pluralist democracy.
Pluralist democracy is a non-ideal conception of democracy that recognizes democratic procedures to be historically grounded and problem-oriented. Given their problem-oriented character, it does not make sense to hold democratic procedures to ideal-theoretical standards of legitimacy. In other words, the facts that the boundary problem lays out are correct but are not an obstacle to democratic legitimacy.
In contrast to the functional demos and global demos views, however, considering the legitimacy of the constitution of a democratic community from this perspective does have the crucial advantage of affirming a vision of democracy that makes a constituted polity's internal democratic governance possible. Recently, there have been several new and innovative approaches to tackling the boundary problem e.
Most of these attempts have focused on discerning a rival, defensible standard for membership to simply accepting the status quo, which is argued to be irrelevant from a moral point of view. One FMS, most fully worked out by Robert Goodin but discussed also by Robert Dahl , Shapiro , and others, claims that a demos ought to be composed of all whose interests are affected by the decisions that the demos is to take—the all-affected-interests standard Dahl 93—95 ; Goodin ; Shapiro Regardless of this difficulty, that one's interests are affected seems a plausible and reasonable functional standard for democratic inclusion at first blush.
He proposed that all those subject to coercion ought to be included in any democratic decision procedure, rather than all those who happen to be citizens of a preexisting democratic state. To secure this conclusion, Abizadeh lays out the lines of argument familiar from Whelan's boundary problem.
While Abizadeh is usefully explicit about why his functional membership standard is democratically superior to bounded territorial states i. Abizadeh's unbounded demos thesis, and its FMS correlates, do not solve the boundary problem. The boundary problem suggests that the question of to whom justification is owed is itself a political question—one that ought but cannot hence the problem be itself subject to legitimacy procedures. But FMS do not solve this paradox.
Recall, FMS posit a functional standard that is supposed to resolve the foundational question of which persons ought to be included in a democratic body. But even if, for the sake of argument, we accept a particular standard as being correct, there is still the question of the administration of this policy and the adjudication of hard cases.
The forums in which these questions are to be deliberated and the institutions that may execute subsequent policy cannot arise from nothing. But deciding which persons those are is itself a membership issue that cannot be settled democratically because of the very same regressive structure of argumentation that fuels the boundary problem. In fact, any top-down resolution of the question of who ought to participate in whatever preferred democratic procedure deciding which persons adequately meet a functional standard, or indeed even setting the agenda on such an issue, requires an agent to initiate and an unavoidably political decision on who participates in that initiation, in setting that agenda, and in deciding who is to decide which persons are relevantly affected by a given law or policy and why.
Any bureaucratic organization deciding such matters will itself suffer from the same supposed legitimacy deficit that the boundary problem determines a constituted demos has. An organization with this decision-making capacity cannot itself be legitimated on the preferred standard of democratic legitimacy, since such an organization cannot itself be generated and justified by the extent to which its agents meet a functional standard which would raise a new problem of regression , nor can it be chosen by a democratic procedure which would raise the familiar regression from the original boundary problem.
If the legitimacy of a democratic decision-making procedure is indeed dependent on all those subject to coercion participating in the procedure or all those with affected interests, or any similar FMS , then the unbounded demos thesis has wide implications. Indeed, there is no reason to suppose that the appropriate demos for any two legal or policy questions will ever be the same.
Song puts it this way:. What the affected interests and coercion principles require is different demoi for different decisions. Song Both formulated their concerns in light of the all-affected principle, but their concerns can be extended to all FMS.
In sum, the demos that an FMS creates is not only deterritorialized but indeterminate and shifting; it is more appropriate in this context to speak of overlapping demoi— with a different demos corresponding to each separate policy issue or legislative proposal. Dahl, Whelan, and Song don't go far enough in recognizing the extent to which this conception of democracy is unstable.
Not only is the demos indeterminate when membership standards are functional, but it is radically indeterminate— there is no way in advance to predict the precise composition of any particular functionally defined demos. Of course, living in the territory of a particular polity with defined borders would expose oneself to more local policy fields than not living there, supposing that jurisdiction is still understood for the most part territorially.
Thus, the demoi under this conception of democracy constitute an ever-changing set of deliberative forums with considerably overlapping jurisdictions whose compositions are unpredictable. Whereas the tenacious membership problem demonstrates that FMS do not solve the boundary problem, the floating characteristic of the demoi that FMS create suggests that they may exacerbate it. The legitimacy concern that the boundary problem poses is elevated from a single problem at a historically defined moment the constitution of the democratic polity to a diffuse and recurring issue undermining the legitimacy of each and every decision.
I next want to draw attention to a problem beyond the question of legitimately determining which persons ought to be members of any particular demos. Let's put that problem, fundamental though it is, to one side and say for the sake of argument that we have solved it technocratically despite my objections in Part I. It still remains a fact under such a system that for every policy and rule one will be bound to and with a different set of individuals.
This itself, in my view, renders democratic government impossible. Imagine the practicalities of such a system. Even disregarding the enormous logistical task of matching every person to the network of rights and obligations that connect them to other persons based on the shared membership of floating demoi, the enforcement of rules must also be piecemeal. Remember that the exercise of political power over an individual is supposedly legitimated by some preferred democratic legitimacy procedure, which is implemented by a set of demoi corresponding roughly to the total number of rules and policies and not corresponding in any determinate fashion to territorially defined jurisdictions.
How would law enforcement look in such a system? Either enforcement organizations would enforce the rule only of a particular demos i. In the first case and notwithstanding the costs of such an operation , there would be overlapping jurisdictions and a near-total abandonment of the principle of a monopoly of legitimate violence. In the second, the locus of legitimacy of the enforcement agency would be difficult to identify, and a relationship of democratic accountability would be impossible to maintain.
Correlating then to the radical indeterminacy of the constitution and membership of floating demoi, subjection to law under a system of floating demoi would also be indeterminate. One would not—could not—know in advance with which persons one would be bound, and by which persons one could be legitimately coerced to follow which rules and policies.
And not only would law- making bodies and procedures be unstable, but the legal jurisdictions that they generate would also be indeterminate. This would have major implications in terms of the enforceability of rules and policies across overlapping and complex demoi. Jurisdictions being indeterminate also poses direct problems for their legitimacy. But with overlapping and indeterminate jurisdictions, this element of the monopoly of power is impossible.
Indeterminate jurisdictions also present a problem with regard to the plausibility of citizens being able to identify which rules and regulations apply to them, and what their corresponding rights and obligations may be. Recall Dahl's worry that citizens may not be able to devote much time and energy to the institutions that floating demoi give rise to.
Once we focus on the indeterminacy of jurisdictions and law enforcement, the problem becomes much more dramatic: under the floating demoi of FMS, jurisdictional questions will dominate the interactions between persons. Uncertainty about one's own rights and obligations and the rights and obligations of others in one's vicinity would disrupt ordinary patterns of legitimate expectation. Normal economic and civic relationships between persons are based on expectations that, to a large extent, we share many rights and obligations with the people we interact with.
Under FMS with floating demoi, such expectations would be impossible. It is already a significant legal fiction that it is possible for individuals to be aware of all the legal rights and obligations to which they are subject in a modern, stable jurisdiction, even with substantial legal training.
Where the set of rights and obligations differs for every person, this problem becomes endemic. Each person would need to be a legal specialist in their own right in order to be able to identify even very roughly what they are legally permitted and obligated to do. Together, the myriad difficulties related to the enforcement of democratic rules made in unstable jurisdictions and the legal uncertainty that citizens of such demoi would face can be labeled the floating demos objection.
A global demos would avoid the problems detailed above, as the question of membership could be settled definitively all persons ought to be members of the global democratic body. It would also result in a stable demos with a stable jurisdiction and the possibility of one enforcement organization applying the law consistently to all. This sort of move, however, does not come without costs—many theorists are skeptical about global democracy on a wide variety of grounds that are beyond the scope of this article e.
Regardless, from the perspective of the legitimation of the constitution of the demos, the global demos seems to be a theoretically elegant solution for those who propose FMS. After showing the affinity of two important accounts for FMS—Goodin's and Abizadeh's—with global demos solutions to the boundary problem, and engaging Song's objections to global democracy, this section lays out a critique of global democracy based on the impossibility of democratic accountability in a global state.
Both Goodin and Abizadeh concede that their arguments for FMS respectively, on principles of all-affected interests and all-subject-to-coercion result in an expansionary logic that cannot be stemmed before reaching a fully global demos comprising all persons Abizadeh 18—19 ; Goodin 65— The expansionary logic has several drives.
First, for any specific decision a person may be directly affected or not, but some of those that are not directly affected would be affected had the decision gone the other way Goodin A system of worldwide democracy with a global demos would include at least every single person meeting any particular FMS while avoiding the flaws of floating demoi. Initially, Abizadeh wants to propose a standard less inclusive than the principle Goodin discusses.
It does not say that all those who are affected by a political regime are owed democratic justification and hence rights to democratic participation. Yet, Abizadeh recognizes that the best way to theorize the unbounded demos is in terms of a global demos consisting of all living people.
Abizadeh further specifies the global implications of his view when he reflects on how a border regime granting participation rights to all those coerced by it may look institutionally:. Abizadeh 54 The global demos seems to be a theoretically elegant solution to the boundary problem. It proposes that participation rights are granted to all persons everywhere—at least for those decisions that affect them which, as discussed above, quickly expands to include all persons everywhere.
But, is such a global democracy feasible? Is it normatively desirable? Is it logically possible? This section develops a critique on the feasibility of a global democracy on procedural terms, namely that it would not be realistically possible for citizens to hold a global democratic government to account, which, given the centrality of accountability to democracy, undermines the possibility of democratic government.
This is the position that Immanuel Kant takes:. The idea of international right presupposes the separate existence of many independent adjoining states. And such a situation is essentially a state of war, unless there is a federal union to prevent hostilities from breaking out. But in the light of the idea of reason, this state is still to be preferred to an amalgamation of the separate nations under a single power which has overruled the rest and created a universal monarchy.
For the laws progressively lose their impact as the government increases its range, and a soulless despotism, after crushing the germs of goodness, will finally lapse into anarchy. This liberal response seems, however, to rely on a pre-political standard of substantive goodness that politics ought to facilitate.
If the final end of politics is fixed in this way, then the desirability of a particular system of government would turn on its securing that end. However, the conception of democracy I endorse is open-ended I return to this point in the next section.
A democratic legitimacy standard ought therefore not to be interrogated on substantive grounds, but rather on procedural grounds, if it is to be interrogated on its own terms.
Whatever else the merits or demerits of the global demos as an ideal, we must ask ourselves whether a global democracy can further democratic government, or whether, for procedural reasons, it brings us further from that goal. I will argue that a global democracy would in fact be suspect on procedural grounds. I object to the legitimacy of a global democracy with a global demos based on the impossibility of such a polity being accountable to its citizens.
Song has offered a criticism of proposals for a global demos that offers an excellent starting point for our investigation. Song stipulates that a basic set of political rights are necessary for democratic government to be possible. This is the minimal procedural core of democracy. Song goes on to challenge global conceptions of democracy on the grounds that they cannot secure sufficient solidarity among global citizens the polity being too large and complex.
Recourse to solidarity, however, makes Song's argument fragile in a particular sense: solidarity is at best instrumentally necessary to democracy, and, some may say, is just another political value between which democratic procedures must arbitrate, given incommensurable differences between people's views of what is in fact valuable i. So, despite being sympathetic to her overall argument, I choose to sketch out a line of critique based on procedural aspects of democracy that are intrinsic to democratic government.
I therefore proceed by further developing an aspect of her first constitutive feature of democracy—equal rights and liberties—as it offers fertile ground for a new procedural critique of global democracy. At first blush, a procedural objection to global democracy grounded on the need for democracies to secure equal rights and liberties is not obvious. There is no theoretical reason to suppose that the negative freedoms listed—freedom of speech, press, and assembly—could not, in principle, be guaranteed by a global democracy no matter how unlikely it is to achieve them.
The same applies to equal suffrage. However, we ought to start by asking ourselves why freedom of speech, press, and assembly are constitutive freedoms in a democracy.
The answer must lie at least in part in their being prerequisites for citizens to hold governments to account ; to exchange and debate their views on governmental activities; and to form their judgment on how they wish to cast their votes on election day.
It is therefore a prior demand that citizens must have adequate access to knowledge and information of government action to inform those democratic electoral accountability mechanisms that make sense of democracy's constitutive liberties as reported by Song and Dahl.
Following the analytical definition of the core components of democratic accountability by Mark Philp , I hold that three things are required for an agent to be held accountable; they must be required to inform, explain, and justify their decisions and commands.
Once we recognize the importance of adequate access to information about government activities, an accountability-based, procedural critique of global democracy starts to emerge. A global democratic government would clearly be less accountable on these terms than a national democratic government, and more likely to be oligarchic Christiano ; Urbinati Indeed, Robert Keohane ff points out that sophisticated accounts of global democracy recognize the impossibility of global democracy meeting this accountability standard through electoral politics and develop alternative accountability mechanisms to try to fill this gap.
Some may claim that a system of global accountability could be devised gargantuan though the task appears by targeting and streamlining information on the activities of the global government to those citizens concerned Macdonald ; Marchetti Determining which citizens are affected in the relevant ways would be a political decision that raises the same specter of the boundary problem that global democracy purported to solve.
So far, we have considered FMPs and global democracy as two ways of addressing the boundary problem, which holds that whatever the theory of legitimacy that we believe our preferred democratic decision procedure should meet, the initial act of constituting the demos can never be considered met by it.
Yet we have seen how inadequate both solutions are. The first leads to floating demoi with radically indeterminate jurisdictions that undermine the possibility of democratic government.
The second undermines the possibility of a relationship of accountability between citizens and a global democracy. This leaves us with a dilemma: is there no way for democratic theory to resolve the boundary problem?
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