Membership Politics Across Borders: The Case for a Boundary Assembly

There are few issues in which the self-sufficiency of national democracy is still as accepted as in the area of membership. Even though the question of who should belong to the political community is one of the most hotly debated topics in political theory and practice today, few have questioned the authority of existing collectives to determine the conditions of access. The dogma of sovereign boundary-making holds that demoi are entitled to decide unilaterally which non-members should be granted citizenship or voting rights. However, in times of globalization and migration, democratic states are increasingly under pressure to represent the interests of ‘outsiders’ in domestic decision-making. In this paper, I argue that for reasons of legitimacy, democratic states should open up their membership politics for the participation of non-members. I outline a new institution that could be integrated into the political systems of democratic states and should have the right to draw membership boundaries: the Boundary Assembly. A Boundary Assembly is a democratic forum composed of members and non-members selected by lot. To sketch the basic features of such an institution and to discuss its strengths and weaknesses, I engage with recent literatures on democratic innovations and deliberative systems. In particular, I address three objections against the idea, which concern the Boundary Assembly’s competences, its composition, and its mode of deliberation and decision-making.