Democratic Citizenship

Abstract

> Democratic states involves some kind of political, and perhaps wider social and economic, equality between their citizen members which is part of its normative value and (quite possibly) moral justification. But what kind of equality is this, and what are its implications for how we conceptualise democracy and citizenship? It can’t be equal votes and allied political rights because plural voting is not necessarily undemocratic And the value of equal citizenship itself problematic when we consider that democratically made decisions affect children, resident non-citizens, disenfranchised felons and others who those decisions certainly affect. And how is the equal citizenship peculiarly valuable when citizens are mostly speaking anonymous to one another sharing only institutional connections? The papers in this panel grapple with these and allied questions. Jonathan Seglow’s paper argues that abolishing the secret ballot would better justify the authorisation of the state’s coercive power and enable relations of mutual accountability. Andrew Shorten maintains that existing theories of political alienation used to identify what is objectionable about second-class or marginal citizenship, with a view to eliminating it, are problematic and that alienation may even be consistent with enjoying citizenship’s value. Alex Volacu claims that the relational equality that inter alia minimises disparities of power is the key to justifying which groups, such as resident non-citizens and citizen non-residents, should enjoy voting rights and which not. Relatedly Chiara Destri defends political equality as equal power against the recent rival view which calls for the equal consideration of citizens’ judgements, arguing that only the former can account for democracy’s distinctive value and justification. Overall, and in overlapping ways, the four papers interrogate the elusive notion of democratic equality.

Title	Details
Citizenship and Alienation	View Paper Details
Against the Secret Ballot	View Paper Details
Citizenship, Residence, and Electoral Rights: A Relational Account	View Paper Details
What Kind of Political Equality?	View Paper Details