Pluralizing the Subject and Object of Democratic Legitimation

• Main Author: Neer, Adrian
• Other Authors: Bertoldi, Nancy
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Democracy; The State; First Nations; European Union; 0615
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/43674

States are the traditional focal point of democratic legitimation. In the standard model, the institution of the state is normatively privileged: it is the primary object of democratic legitimation, and the national political community is the primary subject. How, I ask, should the standard, state-centric model of democratic legitimation be transformed in light of the presence of substantive jurisdictional conflict and plural political identity? Substantive jurisdictional conflict describes a challenge to the state’s authority from non-state institutions that represent a territory which overlaps with a part of or extends beyond the state’s territory, make jurisdictional claims that are grounded independently from the state, and do not seek to form states themselves. Plural political identity describes the attachment of individuals to multiple political communities. Under these circumstances, I argue that non-state institutions can be important supplementary objects of democratic legitimation alongside states. The normative rationale for this transformation to the standard model is that adding non-state institutions as additional objects of democratic legitimation will enhance the ability of individuals and political communities to rule themselves. The basic shape of the model I develop is that the strength of competing jurisdictional claims can be assessed by comparing the primary roles of institutions. An account of an institution’s primary role describes its contribution to the production of democratic legitimation on behalf of a particular political community or political communities. The primary role of the state, for example, is to enable a project of democratic constitutionalism on behalf of the national political community. I then develop a criterion to guide state citizenries when considering how to respond to the claims of non-state institutions: they should distribute the jurisdiction necessary for non-state institutions to play their primary roles, subject to the qualification that their state’s primary role of enabling democratic constitutionalism is not negatively impacted. This approach pluralizes the meaning of democratic legitimation away from a strict association with the state towards multiple institutional locations.