Membership, Coercion and Democratic Continuity

In this paper I attempt to reconcile arguments about bounded membership with arguments about universal inclusion. I start from the premise that the legitimacy of political authority depends on a proper answer to the question of membership. My proposal is to accept the indeterminacy of boundaries as a sort of original sin of boundary making. As a way out of this indeterminacy, I suggest to use admission to membership as a remedial mechanism through which boundaries regain normative integrity. In order to account for two major normative concerns related to membership – justification of coercion and democratic continuity – I put forward two principles of admission. The principle of just inclusion responds to individual claims of inclusion into the states in which they are subject to coercive power and should guarantee easy access to a legal status of nationality. The principle of democratic recognition responds to the community concerns about democratic continuity and requires that nationals commit to political membership in order to acquire full political citizenship. My proposal entails the dismantling of the paradigmatic model of citizenship that bundles together legal, political and identity memberships. It is often the case that arguments of inclusion or exclusion are plausible when they deal with certain types of membership but not with others. By distinguishing between a status of legal nationality and a status of political citizenship, I attend to different fundamental interests and concerns about membership without sacrificing some for the sake of others. I also reject arguments, according to which citizenship should be used as an instrument for global justice. Whereas I accept that access to nationality should be based on a principle of just inclusion (including non-voluntary inclusion), I maintain that admission to citizenship should rely on explicit individual commitment to membership.