Democracy's Edges Democracy is a flawed hegemon. The collapse of communism has left it without a serious institutional competitor in much of the world. In many respects this is, no doubt, a good thing. Democracy's flexibility, its in-built commitment to equality of representation, and its recogni- tion of the legitimacy of opposition politics are all features of political institutions that should not lightly be discounted. But democracy has many deficiencies. It is all too easily held hostage by powerful interests; it often fails to protect the vulnerable or otherwise to advance social justice; and it does not cope well with a number of features of the political landscape. Intensely felt political identities, the drawing and redrawing of boundaries, and global environmental problems are among the most urgent. In short, although democracy is valuable it fits uneasily with many other political values and is in many respects less than equal to the demands it confronts. In this volume (and its companion, Democracy's Value) some of the world's most prominent political theorists and social scientists present original discussions of these urgently vexing subjects. Democracy's Edges contains meditations on one of the most enduring problems of democratic politics: how to establish the boundaries of democratic polities democratically. Democracy's Value deals principally with the nature and value of democracy, with particular attention to the tensions between it and such goods as justice, equality, efficiency, and freedom. These books provide an accessible extension of the state-of-the-art in democratic theory. IAN SHAPIRO is Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He has written widely on contemporary political and social theory, with particular recent emphasis on democratic theory. His books include The Evolution of Rights in Liberal Theory (1986), Political Criticism (1990), Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory (with Donald Green, 1994), Democracy's Place (1996), and Democratic Justice (1999). He has also edited numerous books, including, since 1992, the NOMOS series. CASIANO HACKER-CORDON is a doctoral student at Yale University. His work centers on contemporary political philosophy and social theory. Contemporary Political Theory Series editor Ian Shapiro Editorial Board Russell Hardin Stephen Holmes Jeffrey Isaac John Keane Elizabeth Kiss Susan Moller Okin Philippe Van Parijs Philip Pettit As the twenty-first century approaches, major new political challenges have arisen at the same time as some of the most enduring dilemmas of political association remain unresolved. The collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War in the east reflect a victory for democratic and liberal values, yet in many of the western countries that nurtured those values there are severe problems of urban decay, class and racial conflict, and failing political legitimacy. Enduring global injustice and inequality seem compounded by environmental problems, disease, the oppression of women, racial, ethnic and religious minorities, and the relentless growth of the world's population. In such circumstances, the need for creative thinking about the fundamentals of human political association is manifest. This new series in contemporary political theory is intended to foster such systematic normative reflection. The series proceeds in the belief that the time is ripe for a reassertion of the importance of problem-driven political theory. It is concerned, that is, with works that are motivated by the impulse to understand, think critically about and address problems in the world, rather than issues that are thrown up primarily in academic debate. Books in the series will be interdisciplinary in character, ranging over issues con- ventionally dealt with in philosophy, law, history, and the human sciences. The range of materials and the methods of proceeding should be dictated by the problem at hand, not the conventional debates or disciplinary divisions of academia. Democracy's Edges Edited by Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www. cambridge. org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521643566 © Cambridge University Press 1999 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1999 Reprinted 2001 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library ISBN-13 978-0-521-64356-6 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-64356-2 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-64389-4paperback ISBN-10 0-521-64389-9 paperback Transferred to digital printing 2006 To the memory of Richard Ashcraft Contents List of contributors page xi Preface xiii 1. IAN SHAPIRO and CASIANO HACKER-CORDON 1 Outer edges and inner edges Parti. Outer edges 17 2. ROBERT A. DAHL 19 Can international organizations be democratic? A skeptic's view 3. JAMES TOBIN 37 A comment on Dahl's skepticism 4. ELMAR ALTVATER 41 The democratic order, economic globalization, and ecological restrictions - on the relation of material and formal democracy 5. RUSSELL HARDIN 63 Democracy and collective bads 6. DAVID HELD 84 The transformation of political community: rethinking democracy in the context of globalization 7. WILL KYMLICKA 112 Citizenship in an era of globalization: commentary on Held 8. ALEXANDER WENDT 127 A comment on Held's cosmopolitanism 9. BROOKE A. ACKERLY and SUSAN MOLLER OKIN 134 Feminist social criticism and the international movement for women's rights as human rights x Contents Part II. Inner edges 163 10. DOUGLAS RAE 165 Democratic liberty and the tyrannies of place 11. ELIZABETH KISS 193 Democracy and the politics of recognition 12. IAN SHAPIRO 210 Group aspirations and democratic politics 13. JEFFREY C. ISAAC, MATTHEW F. FILNER, and JASON C. BIVINS 222 American democracy and the New Christian Right: a critique of apolitical liberalism 14. COURTNEY JUNG 265 Between liberalism and a hard place 15. SUSAN L. HURLEY 273 Rationality, democracy, and leaky boundaries: vertical vs horizontal modularity Index 295 Contributors Brooke A. Ackerly Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles Elmar Altvater Department of Political Science, Free University of Berlin Jason C. Bivins Department of Political Science, Indiana University Robert Dahl Department of Political Science, Yale University Matthew F. Filner Department of Political Science, Indiana University Casiano Hacker-Cordon Department of Political Science, Yale University Russell Hardin Department of Politics, New York University David Held Department of Politics and Sociology, The Open University Susan Hurley Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick Jeffrey Isaac Department of Political Science, Indiana University Courtney Jung Department of Political Science, The New School for Social Research Elizabeth Kiss Kenan Ethics Program and Department of Political Science, Duke University Will Kymlicka Department of Philosophy, University of Ottawa Susan Moller Okin Department of Political Science, Stanford University Douglas Rae School of Management, Yale University Ian Shapiro Department of Political Science, Yale University James Tobin Department of Economics, Yale University Alexander Wendt Department of Politics, Dartmouth College Preface This volume and its companion, Democracy's Value, grew out of a conference on "Rethinking Democracy for a New Century" held at Yale in February 1997. The conference was sponsored by Yale's Program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics, with financial support coming from Yale's Olmsted Fund, Castle Fund, and Kempf Fund. Thanks are due to Kellianne Farnham for going well beyond the call of duty in orga- nizing the conference and helping us assemble the manuscript. We are also pleased to record our gratitude to John Haslam of Cambridge University Press for his interest in the project from the beginning, and for facilitating the timely appearance of the volumes. IAN SHAPIRO CASIANO HACKER-CORDON 1 Outer edges and inner edges Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon An enduring embarrassment of democratic theory is that it seems impotent when faced with questions about its own scope. By its terms democracy seems to take the existence of units within which it operates for granted. It depends on a decision rule, usually some variant of majority rule, but the rule's operation assumes that the question "majority of whom?" has already been settled. If this is not done democratically, however, in what sense are the results that flow from democratic decision rules genuinely democratic? A chicken-and-egg problem thus lurks at democracy's core. Questions relating to bound- aries and membership seem in an important sense prior to democratic decision-making, yet paradoxically they cry out for democratic resolution. One need not consider such extreme cases as Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, or the West Bank for evidence supporting this contention, though they surely do. Arguments about the legal status of Turkish "guestworkers" in Germany, removing full British citizenship from members of the Commonwealth, or denying public education to the children of illegal immigrants in California are all challenging