A Democratic Theory of Territory and Some Puzzles about

Global Democracy
Thomas Christiano

What do the principles underlying the ideals of democracy have to say about
the legitimate determination of the territorial boundaries of a democracy? On the
one hand, it would appear on the face of it that democratic principles cannot offer
much guidance because in order for democracy to determine territorial boundaries, some determination of the constituency for making this decision would have
to be made in advance. Thus democratic determinations of boundaries would
appear to presuppose precisely what they are meant to resolve. On the other hand,
the principles that underpin democracy are for many theorists, including me, the
most important principles in political philosophy. But if they have little to say
about territorial boundaries, that suggests a significant lacuna in democratic
theory. I will argue in what follows that democratic theory has a significant
amount to say about legitimate territorial boundaries by having recourse to the
principles that underpin the justification of democratic decision making.
Furthermore, I will argue that what democratic theory has to say about
boundaries casts some significant doubt on arguments for the desirability and
prospects of global or transnational democracy. Some of the reasons that lead us
to reshape territorial boundaries should also lead us to wonder about the legitimacy of global or transnational democracy. First, I argue that one foundational
element of the justification of democracy is missing in transnational and global
contexts: the requirement that people have a roughly equal stake in the groups in
which they have an equal say. This requirement cannot normally be fulfilled in
the transnational cases. Second, for the case of global democracy I will argue that
the problems of persistent minorities and some forms of majority tyranny are
dangers that are highly likely to arise at the global and transnational level. These
kinds of problems usually undercut the authority of the democratic assemblies
that make these decisions. To the extent that democratic authority can be expected
to be undercut in the global and transnational cases, we have reason to reject the
efforts to extend democracy to these spheres. Finally, I argue that the problem of
citizenship, which is the worry about whether citizens can reasonably be expected
to be well informed in a large-scale democracy, is greatly increased at the global
level. If citizens are not well informed about issues in a democratic society, the
rule over the society is turned over in effect to elites. And this problem seems to
arise in a significant way for global or transnational institutions.

JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 37 No. 1, Spring 2006, 81107.

2006 Blackwell Publishing, Inc.

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In what follows, I will lay out my basic theses about territory. I will sketch
what I take to be the basic argument that democracy is intrinsically desirable.
Then I will show how some of the main premises in this argument can also
provide defense for the theses about how to determine the proper boundaries of
territory. Finally, I will express my worries about transnational and global democracy with the help of the arguments for democracy and for the conception of
territory.
Democracy and Territory
My first main thesis is that the territorial boundaries of democratic states
ought to remain as they are except in the cases of serious injustice. This idea
derives from what Allen Buchanan calls the remedial right only account of the
right to secession or even political autonomy.1
There are two basic elements to this thesis. The first element is the conservation principle. It states that there is a strong moral presumption in favor of the
current territorial borders of democratic states. By current borders, I mean those
borders recognized in international treaties at the moment when consideration of
the justification of territorial boundaries is at issue. The conservation principle is
a moral principle because it affirms the strong moral desirability of preserving
actual territorial boundaries of states over and above the legal principle that protects territorial boundaries. This moral presumption in favor of current state
boundaries is defeasible, but it is quite strong as will become clearer when I
describe the conditions that can defeat it.
The second element of my thesis is the remedy principle. It states that the
moral presumption in favor of the current territorial boundaries of democratic
states can be defeated only when the alteration of those boundaries is necessary
to remedy serious injustice occurring within the democratic state. Examples of
such serious injustices are disenfranchisement of a portion of the population,
widespread violations of the basic liberal rights of a portion of the population,
severe and long-term impoverishment of some significant portion of the population and long-term production of persistent minorities in the population. In each
of these cases, I will argue the democratic assembly that decides these things loses
its authority over the abused population and to some degree over the population
as a whole. Under these circumstances, the population acquires a right to alternative political arrangements in order to protect against these abuses. The standard kinds of remedies in this context are secession, political autonomy and
partially consensual decision rules within the society. To be sure, these alternative arrangements may not succeed in freeing the abused population from the
injustice. The condition I have in mind here is that only if these changes in political arrangements are necessary and useful to bring about some significant
improvement in the position of the abused population, will they be useful as remedies. And only under this condition can the strong presumption in favor of the
current territorial boundaries of the democratic state be defeated.

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Transnational and Global Democracy

The second main thesis I will defend in this paper is that we ought to be quite
skeptical about the prospects for a legitimate form of global or transnational
democracy. This thesis needs to be clarified. My argument mainly will cast doubt
on a particular conception of the justification of transnational and global democracy. I mean to cast doubt on the idea, defended by many, that democracy has a
kind of intrinsic value on the transnational or global scale.2 My argument may
leave room for instrumentalist defenses of democracy though I think the arguments I provide against the intrinsic value will in significant part damage the
instrumentalist case as well. But I do not pretend to show that democracy cannot
under any circumstances have instrumental value on the world scale. Another
qualification I make to my thesis is that I do not claim that democracy will never
be an intrinsically desirable form of decision making on the transnational level.
My argument will leave the question of the intrinsic desirability of democracy in
the long term open. The argument rests on contingent premises that are made
morally relevant by the moral principles that underpin democracy but that may
no longer hold true in the very long-term future. The argument holds, I contend,
at least for the near-term future.
Why Democracy?
In this section I will give a brief sketch of what I take to be the main argument for the intrinsic desirability of democracy. Democracy is a scheme of collective decision making that gives each sane adult member an equal say at a
crucial stage of the decision making. Its decisions are binding on the members of
the group for which the decision is made. As I see it, democracy is the only way
to make collective decisions about the structure of our common world that publicly treats each person as an equal when we must make collective decisions about
that common world. The argument for this is made in four stages.
Public Equality
First, I start by postulating that the principle of equal advancement of interests is the fundamental principle for evaluating societies. A society is just
when it is structured to advance the interests of its members equally. Each person
has a life to live that is as important as anyone elses and since society is constructed to advance the well-being of persons, the principle of equality requires
that the institutions be constructed in a way so as to advance those interests
equally.3
Second, the principle of equality must be realized in a public way in the
society. It must be the case that each person can, when he or she makes an effort
and takes into account certain background conditions in society, see that they are
treated as equals. This principle of publicity is grounded in the principle of equal-

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ity. The principle of equality must be realized in a society in a way that makes it
transparent to the members of society that they are being treated as equals.
When we take into account the pervasive facts in modern societies of diversity of interest, cognitive bias, fallibility, and disagreement in peoples efforts to
determine what justice and the common good require, we infer that any collective decision that is made for the community is going to be highly controversial.
These pervasive facts are fundamental to our experience in modern societies. The
diversity of individuals interests in modern societies is ensured by the fact that
the members have very different capacities and they live in very different sectors
of the complex division of labor in modern society. Individuals also come from
very different cultural backgrounds. These factors guarantee that there will be a
diversity of interests, or conditions of well-being, for the members of the society.
We observe in modern societies a great deal of disagreement on questions of what
justice and the common good consist in. These disagreements are entirely understandable in the light of the basic diversity of backgrounds of members of the
society. This diversity ensures that people will only have a tenuous grasp of
the interests of others and their grasps of these interests will vary depending on
the extent of diversity. Individuals naturally have cognitive biases toward their
own interests and toward the conditions of life that they are acquainted with and
understand. As a consequence, they are likely to be highly fallible in their efforts
to understand others interests as well as in comparing those interests with their
own. Therefore, their efforts to understand what the common good is or what
justice is are likely to reflect these cognitive biases and are likely to be highly
fallible.
Given these background facts about diversity, disagreement, cognitive bias,
and fallibility, each person has fundamental interests in being able to see that she
is being treated as an equal. The reason for this is that each person has interests
in correcting for the cognitive biases of others. To live in a society that is regulated by principles that others choose is to be subject to their inevitable cognitive
biases. Thus to live in a society regulated by principles others choose, even if
these are different interpretations of equality, gives one good reason to think that
the dominant interests are being advanced and that ones own interests are not
being advanced.
Each person has an interest in making the world, at least to some extent, a
home for himself. Only in this way can he make sure that the world is responsive to his interests and concerns. This interest in being at home in the world is
fundamental to the well-being of each person. But that interest cannot be
advanced in a highly pluralistic modern society if one cannot see that one is
treated publicly as an equal. To live in a world that is dominated by someone
elses conception of how it ought to be organized is to live in a world that is structured in a way that makes sense to the dominant group but may well not make
much sense to oneself. Hence, the interest in being at home in the world is
advanced only when the society is arranged so that one can see that one is being
treated as an equal.

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Finally each person has an interest in being recognized and affirmed as an

equal by her fellow citizens. But to live in a world that is structured in such a
way that it does not matter whether one sees it as treating one as an equal is to
be treated as if ones moral capacities do not matter. It is to be treated as a child
or a madman. And if the interests in correcting for cognitive bias and being at
home in the world are set back when that world is structured in a way that is
indifferent to how one sees it, each person in such a position has reason to think
that her interests are not being taken seriously by the others. And so each person
has reason to think that she is not being recognized and affirmed as an equal.
From these considerations, I argue that each person has fundamental interests in being able to see, given reasonable efforts and knowledge of background
facts, that he or she is being treated as an equal in society. Hence the appropriate principle of equality with which society must be evaluated is the principle of
public equality, according to which the society ought to be organized so that each
person can see that she is being treated as an equal.
The Common World
The third stage of my argument consists in articulating the notion of a
common world. Typically, a modern political society is characterized by the fact
that the members of such a society inhabit a common world. A common world is
a set of circumstances among a group of persons in which the fundamental interests of each person are implicated in how that world is structured in a multitude
of ways. It is a world in which the fulfillment of all or nearly all of the fundamental interests of each person are connected with the fulfillment of all or nearly
all of the fundamental interests of every other person. This world is marked by a
deep interdependence of interests among the members.
Modern political societies are characterized by comprehensive systems of
provision and regulation of the basic needs of all the citizens. They regulate the
systems of education, basic health care, provision of public goods, taxation and
redistribution of income and wealth, criminal law and punishment as well as the
system of tort law. They define the system of property rights and contracts. They
provide comprehensive systems of law enforcement. They create highly unified
and integrated internal markets that are regulated in unified and systematic ways.
They provide a unified system of defense against external attacks. They provide
essential infrastructure for all the necessary utilities of everyday life as well as
commerce and sanitation. And they provide essential sources of information on
matters of expert knowledge. All of these activities and more, which implicate
the fundamental interests of their citizens, are done in a highly unified way that
looks to the overall interests of all citizens and attends to the basic fairness of the
system as a whole. It is this unified system of regulation and the societal and economic effects of this system that make a common world among citizens.
There are three facts about the idea of a common world that I want to bring
out. First, there is a multiplicity of ways in which peoples interests conflict and

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collide with each other. This is important because in a common world, compromise is possible since one can have ones own way on one contentious issue in
return for others having their way on other issues. And given the multiplicity of
connections, there is a great deal of room for compromise and accommodation.
Second, given the many ways in which peoples interests are connected with the
interests of others, there is an opportunity to have a sense of overall justice in the
relations among persons. Even if one groups interests are advanced by some features of that common world, there is a chance that overall the interests of each
are advanced equally. Third, in a common world the members of that world have,
roughly speaking, equal stakes in how that world is structured. Since all or nearly
all of the fundamental interests of each person are at stake, there is a kind of fundamental equality of stake in that world.
These facts distinguish the world of modern political societies from more
partial associations. In clubs, economic enterprises, commercial ventures, and
trade unions, the interests that people have are partial. As a consequence, the interests that people have in them are likely to be quite varied. There is no reason to
think in general that peoples interests are equally served by any one of these
associations. That is, for any association, there is no reason to think that the interests of the members are equally at stake in that association. This seems to me to
follow from the diversity of interests among persons. As a consequence, there is
reason to think that people do not have equal stakes in these partial associations.
And it seems reasonable to think that the interests that people have in such
arrangements in the case of transnational associations are also likely to be varied
and partial and consequently their stakes in these arrangements are not likely to
be equal. In contrast, the world created and sustained by political societies touches
on so many of the basic interests of persons that it is far less likely to touch on
more of the basic interests of some people than on others.
To say that people inhabit a common world in most modern political societies is not to deny the many ways in which societies have become interconnected
in the last half century through the process of globalization. There are many and
increasing numbers of interdependencies of interests of persons across borders.
But the extent of interdependencies of interests within political societies is far
greater on the whole. One recent commentator has said with regard to global economic integration: The best estimates of multinationalized production indicate
that such activity comprises less than 10 percent of output even in the worlds
most integrated economies.4 Though globalization in economic activity is an
important phenomenon, this does not undercut the claim that interdependency is
far greater within political societies than between them.
To say that people share a common world conceptually does not require that
they share a culture or even nationality. One may live in a world in which ones
interests are deeply connected with the interests of others but where there is little
shared culture. Multinational states and multiethnic states can all be cases of culturally heterogeneous but common worlds. To be sure, the lack of shared culture
or nationality in multicultural or multinational states has sometimes made such

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common worlds fragile and filled with strife. But it is because the interests of
persons in these states are intertwined that they experience such strife. So some
common worlds may prove unstable as a result of the particular diversity of
groups in those societies and as a consequence some cultural commonalities are
socially necessary conditions for stability in those societies. But there is still an
important conceptual distinction between the idea that a society is a common
world and the idea that the society is culturally or ethnically or nationally
homogeneous.
To be sure, the common worlds that most states include are products of highly
contingent and morally arbitrary causes. They are the results of the long-term formations of common legal, political, and educational institutions as well as regulatory, welfare, and taxation regimes within certain territorial confines. These
activities over the last number of centuries have forged common worlds for their
citizens. And in many cases, these common worlds were forged by the use of
force and fraud. But however one thinks of how these common worlds are formed,
the fact of a common world is a morally relevant fact now. Arbitrariness of origins
does not imply the moral unimportance of the phenomenon that has been formed.
To see why this common world is morally important we must continue the argument for democracy.
Democracy as the Realization of Public Equality in Collective
Decision Making
Since the common worlds of modern political societies are marked by the
facts of diversity of interests, cognitive bias, fallibility, and disagreement, the
question one must answer is: how ought collective decisions to be made concerning how to structure those worlds? And the question must be answered by
appeal to the principle of public equality.
When collective decisions must be made and there is substantial disagreement about how to structure the common world we live in, no decision can satisfy
the principle of public equality in its content. This just follows from the facts of
disagreement. So the question becomes: how can public equality be realized under
these circumstances of disagreement, diversity, cognitive bias, and fallibility?
I argue that the only principle for collective decision making that can guarantee that each can see that he is treated as an equal under these conditions is the
principle that each person ought to have an equal say in the process of collective
decision making. To be sure, this can only achieve a partial publicity since the
decisions that are taken democratically will themselves be controversial. But to
the extent that each has robustly equal opportunities to participate in discussion
and debate and each has such opportunities to participate in the process of collective decision, and to the extent to which many decisions must be made, so that
some will win on some decisions and others will win on other decisions, they can
to that extent see that they are being treated publicly as equals in the process of
collective decision making overall.5

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Here it is important to see the contribution of the idea of a common world

to this argument. As I argued above, a common world is marked by the possibility of compromise because of the multitude of ways in which individuals interests are connected to one another. The common world is also marked by the fact
that many different decisions must be made and so some may win on some decisions and others may win on others. And the common world is one in which each
person has roughly speaking an equal stake in terms of his or her interests.
If the world in which democratic decisions are to be made were one in which
only one issue was at stake, then the use of majority rule in making decisions
about that issue would imply that some are clear net winners and others are clear
net losers. Furthermore, if that world were one in which only a few issues were
at stake, it would normally be clear that some would have much greater interests
in how the issues were resolved than others and that some would have a greater
stake in the decisions than others. And those who have a lot more at stake could
rightly complain that a procedure for deciding that gives each an equal say did
not take their interests as seriously as those of others. Hence it could not satisfy
public equality.6
In order for democracy to be a publicly clear way of treating people as equals,
there has to be a publicly clear way in which the decisions in which each person
has an equal say are ones in which they also have at least a roughly equal stake.
To be sure, if many decisions are to be made, what is important is not that each
decision is equally important for each but that each person has a roughly equal
stake in the complete set of decisions taken as a whole. This equal stake is assured
in many modern political societies to the extent that everyones interests are all
or nearly all implicated in how the society overall is structured.
So in the light of the facts of diversity, cognitive bias, fallibility, and disagreement in modern societies and given the facts that many modern societies
are common worlds in which the opportunities for compromise are numerous and
each person has a roughly equal stake in the overall structure of the society, how
are collective decisions to be made? I want to say that democracy is a publicly
clear way of treating people as equals in these circumstances.
First, it gives each person and the various groups of which he or she is part
the resources with which to correct for the inevitable cognitive biases of the other
members of society in the enactment of legislation. If some group were to monopolize or dominate the decision making, this would be a publicly clear way, given
the facts of cognitive bias and diversity, in which that groups interests were being
privileged over those of others. The legislation and policies decided on would
reflect their cognitive biases.
Second, democratic decision making gives all persons and the groups to
which they belong a chance to make the world they live in to some extent a home
for themselves. Once again, if the members of a certain group had all the power
to make collective decisions or at least a lot more such power than other persons,
it would be clear that they would be able to advance their interests in making the
world a home for themselves more than others. This would be a publicly clear

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way in which that group would be publicly treating the other members of society
as inferiors.
And, third, from these facts, it would also be clear that the disfavored persons
would be treated publicly as less than equals. For one thing, since persons are
informed of the cognitive biases and diversity of persons and of the interests in
correcting for cognitive bias and the interests each has to make the world a home
for himself, each can see that a common world that is structured entirely or nearly
entirely by one group clearly disfavors the interests of the others. Such a scheme
publicly treats the members of less powerful groups as inferiors. And thus such
a scheme fails in a publicly clear way to recognize and affirm the equality of each
citizen. Moreover, such a scheme, by denying any or full rights to a say to some
group, treats that group as if it were composed of madmen or children or persons
of inferior capacity or status. And in that way, such a scheme also sets back their
interests in being recognized and affirmed as equals.
So, I contend that in a common world in which there is diversity of interests,
cognitive bias, fallibility, and disagreement, and where there are interests in correcting for cognitive bias, in making the world a home for oneself and in being
recognized and affirmed as an equal, the principle of public equality requires that
collective decisions be made democratically.7
The Limits of Democratic Authority
Before we move on to the issues of territory and transnational institutions,
we need to say a bit about the limits to the authority of democracy. The argument
sketched so far has it that democratic decision making for groups in which persons
have roughly equal stakes is intrinsically justified since it publicly realizes equality in collective decision making. Hence democracy is the realization of public
equality in collective decision making.
In my view, this is what gives democratic decision making a strong form of
authority. It gives the democratic assembly a right to rule that is correlated with
the duties to obey for the democratic citizens. It is in virtue of the fact that democracy publicly realizes equality that it has authority over its citizens. Each citizen
would in effect be treating her fellow citizens publicly as inferiors if she refused
to go along with the outcome of the decision-making process and if she tried to
bring about some alternative outcome to that which had been chosen democratically. This authority also gives the democratic assembly a right against the external interference of outside agents.
But this conception of the basis of democratic authority gives us an account
of the limits of that authority as well. The limits to democratic authority are
grounded in the principle of public equality. The idea is that when a democratic
assembly violates public equality, either it loses its authority for the issue in which
it violated public equality or it loses its authority over the population that is being
publicly treated as inferiors. I argue that democratic rights are grounded in public
equality and so any decision that disenfranchises some part of the population fails

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to have authority; the decision is essentially null and void from a moral point of
view. But it is also the case that the right against outside interference is significantly weakened by serious violation of public equality.
Here is the basic idea of the argument. Democracy is justified and has authority to the extent that it is the embodiment of public equality in collective decision making. But democracy cannot embody public equality when it violates
public equality in the content of its decisions. One way to see this is to see that
democracy expresses publicly the equality of all citizens and that is part of its
justification. But a democratic assembly cannot express public equality when it
violates public equality since when a democratic assembly violates public equality it publicly treats some portion of its society as inferiors. So a democratic
assembly no longer is grounded in public equality when it violates it and thus no
longer has authority at least for those decisions that violate public equality.
But I also argue that basic liberal rights are grounded in public equality.8
Rights to freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of association,
and freedom of private pursuits are all grounded, I argue, on the idea that they
are part of what it takes to treat individuals publicly as equals. So those democratic decisions that violate the basic liberal rights of participants also lose their
authority in the same way as in the case of disenfranchisement.
The limits to democratic authority are internal limits in the sense that the
limits are grounded in the very same principles as democracy is grounded in. And
the limits to democratic authority are undercutting limits to democratic authority
since, once the limit is transgressed, the authority of the democratic assembly is
either undercut entirely or severely weakened.
Persistent Minorities
What I want to argue in addition is that when a democratic assembly repeatedly acts in such a way as to produce a persistent minority among citizens, this
also is a public treatment of the members of that minority as inferiors.9 Here is
the basic idea. A persistent minority is a group of persons within a society that
always or almost always fails to get its way in democratic decision making. Since
democratic decision making operates by the repeated use of majority rule, it is
possible for such minorities to arise and indeed they have arisen on many occasions in democratic societies. They arise most frequently for indigenous peoples
within societies. This is one of the most serious pathologies of democratic societies. And this type of problem is distinct from, though often associated with,
majority tyranny. The majority need not be attempting to treat the minority as
inferiors when it consistently outvotes a particular minority.
Nevertheless, I argue that persistent minorities are being treated publicly as
inferiors merely by virtue of the fact that they are persistent minorities. To see
this, recall that the facts of diversity, cognitive bias, fallibility, and disagreement
obtain in these societies. Furthermore, all individuals have fundamental interests
in being able to correct for cognitive bias, make the world a home for themselves,

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and be recognized and affirmed as equals. But the first two interests cannot be
advanced by a persistent minority since they never actually determine any
outcome. Nothing they do can help correct for the cognitive biases of the majority nor can anything they do help to make the world a home for themselves. As
a consequence, their fundamental interests are being set back. But to the extent
that this is a publicly clear consequence of persistent minority status, it must also
be seen that the members of the persistent minority cannot be said to be recognized and affirmed as equals in the society. As a consequence, the position of persistent minority is a violation of public equality in very much the same way as
disenfranchisement or violation of liberal rights is. Hence a democratic assembly
that produces a persistent minority loses its authority over that minority and it
loses its authority to some extent over other groups in the society since its directives get them to treat the minority as inferiors.
So far I have sketched an account of the justification of democracy and of
the basis and limits of democratic authority. I have also suggested that serious
violations of basic democratic and liberal rights as well as the production of persistent minorities undercut the authority of the democracy.
Territory
With this sketch of an argument for democracy and the limits of its authority in place, we are now in a position to see how the principles that underlie
democracy can provide some guidance for a theory of territory. As stated at the
outset, I argue for the thesis that the territorial boundaries of democratic states
ought to remain as they are except as is necessary to remedy serious injustice in
the society. This thesis includes two connected theses: the conservation principle
and the remedy principle.
The Conservation Principle
The conservation principle states that there is a strong presumption in favor
of the boundaries of democratic states remaining as they are. What are the arguments for this principle? There are essentially two main arguments.
The Capacity for Justice Argument
The first argument is that the modern democratic state is the only current
entity we have that includes a capacity to judge the justice or injustice of a social
and political order in a way that publicly treats persons as equals. Modern democratic states have established and settled systems for debating and deciding on
legislation and for adjudicating conflicts of interests and for enforcing law that at
least partly satisfy public equality. In these processes, they are supported by long
established institutions such as political parties and interest groups that give citizens broad significant representation in these activities. In other words, it is the

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only entity that is capable of doing these things with a minimum of legitimacy.
They are capable of doing this for the jurisdictions defined by their territories.
By contrast, the institutions that would discuss and decide issues concerning
the proper boundaries of the statesome international organizationsare currently and for the foreseeable future not capable of doing this in a defensible and
legitimate manner that treats all the participants as equals. So any attempt to alter
territorial boundaries for the sake of justice or other moral aims would necessarily proceed in a way that would not treat the affected parties as equals in any
minimal way and would therefore be illegitimate. Let us call this argument the
capacity for justice argument.
Let us look at this argument in more detail. I contend that the state is a necessary instrument for the establishment of justice among persons. What I mean
by this is that the state adjudicates disagreements about justice by establishing
rules defining liberties, and delimiting property, employment, and contract and
by setting up systems of tax and transfer for the purpose of ensuring some elements of distributive justice. It also sets up a regulatory apparatus that protects
the rights of persons from exploitation, coercion, and fraud as well as other harms.
When it does these things, it in effect settles what will be taken as just by the
members of the society for the purposes of their practical interactions. When decisions on these issues are made reasonably fairly and they result from a publicly
egalitarian resolution of disagreements citizens have about justice, the state establishes justice in its system of law and policy and in its methods of adjudicating
disagreements about the rules and enforcing the rules impartially. I also want to
say for the most part that the state is the only such instrument available. Three
reasons support this conclusion. The state is the only entity that is capable of reliably and impartially enforcing the rights of persons. Only it has a sufficient concentration of resources and manpower to threaten punishment for injustice and to
be able to stand apart from the powerful actors in society so that it may do it
impartially. It is furthermore the only institution with any chance of impartially
and evenhandedly judging injustice. The state is able to establish courts wherein
injustice can be judged by reasonably disinterested judges. Most importantly, the
state provides a context in which individuals can make authoritative collective
decisions about what is to count as just or unjust behavior among them. The state
does this by making laws regulating behavior through some recognized authoritative decision procedure. The state performs executive, judicial, and legislative
functions which are essential to the establishment of justice.
Questions of justice are at least moderately fairly discussed and decided on
in liberal democratic states. In such states institutions exist to provide everyone
with a voice in the forum of discussion and give each a say in collectively binding
decisions. Election campaigns, a multiplicity of political parties, a wide variety
of interest groups as well as state regulations governing the process of debate all
provide citizens from different sectors of society with a reasonable chance to
debate and deliberate over opposing conceptions of justice. These institutions, as
well as representative institutions, distribute power in collective decision making

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in a way that attempts, however imperfectly, to bring a broad array of citizens

into the process. The legislative institutions provide citizens with some substantial assurance that their interests and points of view will be taken seriously.
It is because of these features that modern liberal democratic states have a
certain degree of legitimacy and have the capacities to deal with the complex
questions of justice and the common good that arise for them. For example, questions of just distribution play a large role in democratic societies. Although decisions on redistribution do not satisfy everyone, these decisions are usually the
result of processes in which everyone is, or ought to be, at least partially satisfied that the decision made merits their allegiance. This satisfaction is based partly
on the fairness of the process by which decisions are made and is partly the result
of a belief that the democratic process is not likely to lead to deeply unjust outcomes. It is also based, in part, on the confidence of citizens that their fellow citizens think of them as equals (although their conceptions of equality may differ).
Moreover, the power of interest groups and political parties also provide
some assurance that the judicial and executive activities of government will be
constrained to act in ways that are at least minimally responsive to a broad array
of interests and concerns in the society. So when citizens in a liberal democratic
state see that certain legislation has passed, they have a significant amount of confidence that the legislation will be accorded respect by the judiciary and interpreted reasonably impartially. And they typically have reason for confidence that
the executive branch will attempt to enforce or implement the legislation in an
evenhanded way.
So the thought is that liberal democratic states satisfy certain essential prerequisites of legitimacy where legitimacy is to be understood as treating persons
publicly as equals in the political society. First of all, the legislative process,
imperfect as it is, does ensure a modest responsiveness to the interests of all citizens and thereby treats all their interests seriously in the process of enacting legislation. It is not merely governed by a select set of elite interests that pay only
passing attention to the interests of everyone else. Its activities are open to the
extremely zealous monitoring and publicity ensured by groups that represent a
wide variety of interests in the society. It is both egalitarian and reasonably transparent to the society at large. This is the fundamental kind of legitimate authority I have argued democratic assemblies can have. Second, these societies have
judiciary institutions that are reasonably independent of the powers in society and
that are looked to by all as typically moderately impartial interpreters and appliers of the law. Third, these societies have executive capacities that are for the
most part capable of implementing the law through its executive agencies. Citizens can have reasonable confidence that the executive branch will execute all
the laws in a reasonably conscientious way. This is not because the executive is
controlled by morally perfect persons whose sole concern is to implement the law
of a democratic assembly. It is because there are established institutions (political parties and interest groups) that specialize in monitoring and publicizing the
activities of the executive in ways that are responsive to a broad variety of inter-

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ests in the society. And of course, the society has investigative and police powers
that are to some extent devoted to the impartial enforcement of the laws. The judiciary and executive branches realize an essential condition of legitimacy, which
is the rule of law. They typically apply law impartially if highly imperfectly.
It should be noted that these achievements of liberal democratic societies,
while highly imperfect and only partly living up to the ideals of democracy, have
taken over two hundred years to bring about even from the point where the basic
ideals were laid out in the French Revolution and the American Revolution. It
has taken revolutions, civil wars, the immense sacrifices of the working class
movement, the womens movement, and the civil rights movement as well as
movements of poor people and the development of a complex legal system and
profession to get as far as they have gotten.
For these reasons, liberal democratic states, more than any other kind of state,
fulfill the function, which states and political institutions generally are supposed
to carry out, of providing a forum for discussing and authoritatively deciding on
what is to count as just or unjust.
Let us examine the alternatives to the state. On the one hand, individuals do
not have the resources to remedy injustice for reasons familiar from Locke and
Kant. Only settled law can help here.10 On the other hand, international society
is nowhere near having the capacity to render justice in the modern world in a
legitimate and reliable way. If we look at the major international institutions, they
simply do not have the marks of legitimacy that the modern liberal democratic
state has. What are the dominant global institutions? We have the Security
Council of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. We have a judicial body in
the International Court of Justice and then ad hoc judicial bodies that conduct
war crimes trials for crimes committed in Rwanda (ICTR) and the societies of
the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). And there is a permanent International Criminal
Tribunal, which has not been signed on to by the worlds most powerful states.
Only time will tell whether it will be a success or not. There are regional institutions such as the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement,
and other regional associations of states.
Do we have any institutions here that have the kind of legislative legitimacy
that modern liberal democratic states have? The most powerful global institutions
noted above are the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, and the Security Council.
The first three are reasonably successful institutions in the sense that they are carrying out the mandates that they were designed to carry out. The trouble with
these institutions from the standpoint of legitimacy is that they are institutions
that are deeply inegalitarian. Their activities are primarily responsive to the interests and concerns of the worlds most powerful states. Let us take the WTO as
an example. Their principal rule-making activities take place out of the public
view. Though the rules formally are made consensually, the main decisions are
essentially made by what one commentator has called weighted voting
processes. The powerful states manage to have their interests advanced primar-

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ily and are in many cases able to coerce less powerful states into agreement.
Indeed, these agreements often fail to be even Pareto optimal.11 Furthermore, it
is clear that the less powerful states, often representing the worlds most poor, are
not even capable of sending adequate teams of representatives to these meetings,
guaranteeing that their interests will not be heard very often or that their concerns
will most often be ignored. The consequences of the different rounds of this trade
organization have been thought to be to the detriment of the worlds poor by many
commentators and at best quite uncertain for the welfare of the worlds worst
off.12 Overall, this particular trade organization, whose effect on the peoples of
the world is so great, has very little in the way of legitimacy in that it appears to
be dominated by the most powerful states, its most important rule-making activities are hidden from view, and there are few if any institutional mechanisms by
which most of the worlds countries can monitor or publicize the activities of this
organization. From the standpoint of the world, it would appear that the peoples
of the world are not treated even minimally as equals in this process.
The Security Council of the United Nations is similarly problematic. The first
most obvious deficit it has from the standpoint of legitimacy is that it gives some
of the worlds powers a veto right over any of its activities while it does not give
any such right to other countries. Though it does hold meetings in public, it is
clear to many that most of the deliberations are off stage. It does have a kind of
legitimacy because it is the principal organization in the world that plays a role
in restraining the use of force and it has played a role in authorizing international
criminal tribunals and peacekeeping missions.
But in all these contexts its activities have been quite deficient from the standpoint of legitimacy. Its restraint on the use of force has been quite selective and
only partially effective. Its willingness to apply international law is problematic
in the sense that it tends to stretch and bend international law in ways that accord
with the concerns and interests of its dominant states. One recent commentator
has argued that the Security Council works essentially because it functions as an
elite pact among powerful states.13
Its authorization of international criminal tribunals has also been selective in
ways that reflect the interests of the dominant powers, and the structures they
have chosen for these courts have often been guided by the interests of the
dominant powers. Furthermore, these courts have been quite unpopular in the
countries in which war crimes have been committed. They have often been quite
unresponsive to the needs and interests of those societies.14
Finally, the operation of peacekeeping missions that are authorized by the
Security Council has been marred by a lack of impartiality toward the different
legitimate factions in the countries in which they operate. In an extended study
of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Congo in 1960, one recent
commentator argues that the peacekeeping mission played an important role in
undermining the regime which it was initially committed to protecting. He argues
that in this respect there is good reason to think that the peacekeeping mission
was doing the bidding of the United States.15

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I cannot go into more examples of these issues in this paper, but these representative examples suggest that there are fundamental deficits in the legitimacy
of these institutions. They do not make rules in ways that are responsive to the
interests of a broad variety of people affected by them. They do not apply rules
in an impartial and evenhanded manner. The WTO, with its adjudicatory body, is
a partial exception to this last claim. They do not have mechanisms by which a
broad variety of people can influence the procedures. They do not engage in
careful and conscientious deliberations that take into account the opinions of
many of the worlds peoples who are affected by their actions. They engage in
selective enforcement and adjudication. And the reasons for these facts are that
they are dominated by certain very powerful states. As a consequence, these institutions cannot perform the function of carefully and impartially rendering the kind
of justice that is necessary to deciding cases of secession or autonomy.
Someone might argue that these are reasons to try to democratize these institutions. I have a lot of sympathy for this view and hope that in the long run certain
democratic principles can be brought to bear on the structure and activities of
these institutions. But we know that, for the moment, these institutions cannot be
democratized. The reason for this is that if they were they would quickly become
irrelevant. The major powers would withdraw their support and they would cease
to have any kind of power. One need only look at the fate of the General Assembly of the United Nations once it had become more inclusive of all the nations
of the world in the late 1960s. This can be illustrated in the following observation: U.S. President Ronald Reagan famously claimed that the 1983 GA resolution condemning the United States for its intervention in Grenada didnt upset
his breakfast at all. 16
Someone might object that I have simply opted for a kind of crude realism
in describing these institutions. Though some of the facts to which I have pointed
are ones that realists point to in defending their view, I do not think that I need
to side with realism. Everything I have said is compatible with a reasonable institutionalism. The fact that cooperation is possible and acts in part as a constraint
on the short-term self-interests of powerful states is not in question here. Nor is
there any question that international institutions can benefit many of the participants in the process.17 Indeed, I may even agree that many of these institutions
have contributed to overall welfare at least in the sense that if they were not
present things would probably be worse. Furthermore, I do not reject the constructivist claim that norms can make a difference in international society. Indeed,
I think they have made some difference and part of the point of the argument of
this paper is to defend a set of norms relating to the protection of democratic government. My only claim here is that these institutions cannot now or in the nearterm future be expected to render justice on most issues that are relevant to
considerations of secession and political autonomy or on important issues of
justice in other circumstances where only highly reliable, impartial institutions
that are responsive in a systematic way to the wide variety of affected interests
can do the job.

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Finally, I do not want to give the impression that I am opposed to a cosmopolitan conception of justice, including distributive justice. I do think of my
views as essentially cosmopolitan, but these views are compatible with a frank
and skeptical assessment of the value of international institutions in promoting
cosmopolitan justice in the world as we know it and for the near future. I do think
that there is injustice in a global order in which there are such extremes of wealth
and poverty. I think that there is injustice in a world where human rights are violated by all parties so frequently. It is my most fervent hope that these injustices
can be eliminated or at least mitigated. My only point in this paper is that the
international institutions we see in the world today and that we will see for some
time in the future are not up to the task of solving these problems.
If we accept these claims, two important implications arise. The first implication is that issues of justice beyond those that are involved in the crudest forms
of injustice cannot play a large role in international law at the present time or in
the near future. The system of states does not have the capacity to render justice
on most of the important issues that human beings face.
There are some standards that do have the assent of virtually all peoples such
as the protection of basic human rights and the maintenance of some bare subsistence minimum. Neither of these principles, however, is sufficiently robust to
provide guidance in solving most of the questions of justice that arise within
states.
Second, we can see what the basis must be for the presumption against secession and perhaps even federalist decentralization. To the extent that secession
must take place outside of any system of settled law, and the only way to establish justice is through settled law, there must be at least a presumption against
such actions as militating against the establishment of justice. Of course, this presumption can be defeated, but only in cases of virtually universally acknowledged
and grievous injustice. Hence, in many secessionist crises, the international community ought to tell the opposing parties to settle the matters among themselves
and not grant legitimacy to the seceding parties through grants of recognition or
through the declarations of world bodies. This forbearance is justified in view of
the fact that the state is superior to the international community in establishing
justice.
The Common World Argument
The second argument for the conservation principle I will call the common
world argument. According to this argument, modern democratic states and many
other states, for the most part, constitute common worlds for their participants. A
common world for a group of individuals is a world in which all or nearly all the
individuals fundamental interests are intertwined with each other. What happens
in this common world overall affects the fundamental interests of all the members.
The common world condition is distinct from what is sometimes called the
all affected principle according to which every person who is affected by an

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action ought to have a say in it.18 The distinction is that in the common world,
all or nearly all the fundamental interests of each person are implicated. We live
in a world where our interests are affected by what people do around the globe.
But it is still the case that the pervasive intertwining of fundamental interests
occurs mostly with people in the modern state. Though some of our fundamental interests are affected by people elsewhere, it is not the case that they are all
implicated in the actions of people around the globe. By contrast, we do have
such relations with fellow citizens of the modern state.
Recall that the idea of a common world is important because of its connection to the underlying principle of equality. The main idea behind the importance of a common world is the idea that in a common world individuals
have roughly equal stakes in the world they live in. Their interests are roughly
equally at stake in such a world as a result of the idea that all or nearly all of
their fundamental interests are at stake for each person. In contrast, people
participate in many organizations, groups, and associations wherein there
is no clear sense that people have equal stakes in the arrangements. Sometimes
they do and sometimes they dont, and it is very unclear when they do and when
they dont. For instance, people have very different stakes in economic organizations, clubs, associations, and other forms of human interaction. They have
different stakes in the mutual effects of their interactions. As a consequence,
the principle of equality has a much more uncertain hold on these kinds of
associations because the interests of different individuals are not equally at stake
in them.
Two quick reminders are important here. First, though this common world
has been partly created by the modern state through its political and legal system,
its educational system and the economic integration that is brought about by these
facts, the moral arbitrariness of the origins of the territorial boundaries of the
modern state does not imply that those territories are now morally unimportant.
Second, the existence of a common world does not imply the existence of a
common culture or nationality.
The common world consideration provides support for the principle of conservation of the territorial boundaries of liberal democratic states because only in
the case of a common world can the principle of equality have a clear and defensible public realization. Only when the stakes people have in a particular association are roughly equal can the principle of public equality have a clear hold. And
I argue that modern states do normally realize a common world.
The common world consideration and the capacity for justice consideration
combined with the idea that democratic and liberal societies realize public equality support the idea that liberal democratic societies ought to be presumptively
immune from attempts to break them up. In addition, this reasonably robust conception of representative democracy has a broad international consensus behind
it as evidenced by the Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of June 1990 and
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.19 Finally, a robust liberal
democracy of this sort has to be one of the greatest achievements of modern

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civilization. To split it up or weaken its power on the basis of uncertain prospects

of greater justice from international institutions seems foolhardy.
The Remedy Principle
So the principles offered in this paper provide some help in deciding questions of territorial boundaries, first by restricting dramatically the room for legitimate alterations to territorial boundaries and second by protecting democratic
states and potentially democratic states from political fragmentation. But the principles defended in this paper also offer some guidance in picking out the sorts of
injustices that undercut the claim of even democratic states to the protections
described above. They point to conditions under which the kinds of radical
remedy that secession or even political autonomy might provide may be
legitimate.
Here is the basic idea. If the only remedies for systematic and widespread
efforts at disenfranchisement or widespread efforts at deprivation of liberal rights
or systematic impoverishment of a minority are secession or political autonomy,
then it seems that secession or political autonomy may be permissible courses of
action. But I would want to argue also that if the only remedy for the existence
of a persistent minority is to have secession or political autonomy, then this also
seems to me to be just given the basic arguments I have provided here. Beyond
these causes, if a group in society cannot show that they are being treated publicly as inferiors by the society they live in, then it seems to me that it would be
irresponsible to think that they have a right to secede.
This guidance derives from the overarching importance of the principle of
public equality in the evaluation of states. Systematic and ineliminable violation
of public equality for a particular group of people is one key sign that the society
is not a unified entity but a system of exploitation of one group by another. It
deprives the democratic assembly of legitimate authority and thus deprives it of
the right not to be interfered with by others. If, by contrast, a society does treat
its members in accordance with public equality, then the disputes that arise
between members are best dealt with in the democratic forum provided by that
society. International institutions are simply not designed to deal with these kinds
of cases for they are not democratic. They can at best deal with the kinds of
extreme alienation that arise when a group is being treated systematically as a
group of inferiors.
This claim about the legitimacy of secession is not sufficient to justify secession or political autonomy. It merely undercuts the immunity of the political
society from external interference. In many situations where these conditions are
satisfied it may still be the case that secessionist action would be too hazardous
and unwise. Indeed, from our experience with humanitarian interventions in the
last part of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century,
we have considerable reason for being cautious in our efforts to attempt to bring
about secession and to intervene on behalf of oppressed minorities. The only

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claim I wish to advance here is that the fact that a society is ruled by a democratic assembly does not give it a right against external interference when that
assembly engages in widespread and persistent violations of democratic, liberal,
and economic rights, as well as when that society is permanently ruled by an
insular majority. And this is explained by the fact that the assembly in these circumstances no longer acts within the bounds of its legitimate authority.
Worries about Democracy in Transnational and Global Institutions
The ideas of the foregoing sections give rise to puzzles about democracy in
global and transnational institutions. In this section, I do not intend my remarks
to be taken as conclusive reasons for rejecting the ideas of global or transnational
democracy. I intend them merely as bringing out some trouble points that need
to be discussed when we explore the possibility of global democratic institutions.
They address perplexities in the foundations of the idea that global and transnational democracies can be intrinsically just or fair. Some of these difficulties may
be merely short-term worries but some of them are long-term problems. Furthermore, some of these problems may arise more for global institutions than for
transnational institutions. In addition to the worries implied by the comparisons
I made between modern states and international institutions above, there are three
main worries.
Problems Concerning the Ground of Transnational and Global Democracy
The first puzzle I want to discuss relates to the idea that for democratic decision making to be intrinsically fair to the participants, the participants must have
equal stakes in the decisions.
It is often argued that global democracy or transnational democracy can be
grounded in the fact that peoples activities all around the world have effects on
people in other parts of the globe. Since peoples activities in different parts of
the globe have effects on those in other parts, each should have a say in the overall
organization of the globe. Each should have a say in what affects him or her. This
argument has been put in different ways. Some have noted that actions of persons
in one part of the world affect people in other parts of the world and so they all
ought to have an equal say. This might be called the all affected principle.
Others note that actions of persons in one part of the world engage and direct the
actions of persons elsewhere. Another criterion is that actions of persons in one
part of the world affect at least some of the fundamental interests of those in other
parts of the world.20
But these arguments fail to take into account one of the basic requirements
for the desirability of democratic decision making. I have argued above that for
democracy genuinely to treat people as equals, it is necessary that the combination of issues on which democratic decision making is resorted is one in which
individuals have a roughly equal stake. It is not enough that people are affected,

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or that some of their fundamental interests are affected, it must be that their fates
are somehow mostly equally bound up with the issues they are dealing with. If
two people have an equal say in a matter that affects one persons interests much
more than the others interests and there are no other issues wherein the others
interests are more implicated, then it appears that there is some unfairness in them
having an equal say. And the same holds for combinations of issues. If two people
have fundamental interests in collective decisions over some combination of
issues but the interests of one are much more bound up with that set of issues
than the others are, it does not seem fair to give each an equal voice. Indeed, it
would seem that this would amount to not treating the people in question as
equals.
This is why democracy is particularly desirable at the modern state level in
the modern world. At least in the normal case, individuals inhabit a world in
common with others in such a political community and so there is a rough equality of stake for all the individuals. As a consequence, giving each person an equal
voice is a fair way of distributing power among them.
But this cannot be said of individuals in different states. Though their lives
are mutually affected in a variety of ways, they are not mutually affected to the
same deep extent as the lives of members of a single modern state are. Overall,
my interests are far more bound up with the interests of other persons in the
United States than they are with persons in China or even in Canada even though
there are clear ways in which we of different political societies influence each
others lives. We do not inhabit common worlds with these other people. And as
a consequence, there is an inequality in the effects we have on each other.
But the worry this raises is precisely that it is not clear that we have equal
stakes in the decisions or the combinations of decisions that are made by transnational and global institutions. And thus the necessary condition for the intrinsic
fairness of democratic decision making seems not to hold in the case of transnational institutions or global ones.
To be sure, it is not obvious that we always do not have equal stakes. The
existence of a common world may guarantee something like equal stakes but the
absence of a common world does not entail inequality of stakes. Nevertheless, it
does appear reasonable to think that as a general rule there are inequalities of
stakes in larger transnational institutions. For instance, in the WTO some member
states have far greater stakes in external trade than other states. And yet, some
kind of democratic principle would appear to give them all equal voices. The
legitimacy of such institutions must always be called into question since it is
unclear whether equality of stakes is present.
These difficulties are magnified by the requirement that I have defended,
which is that democracy publicly realizes equality among citizens. This demands
that the equality be one that everyone can see to be in effect among them. I have
argued that this is a key element in the argument for the intrinsic desirability of
democracy. But if we have good reason to think that transnational institutions are
unlikely to involve equality of stakes in the sets of decisions they make, there is

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a very strong reason for thinking that these collective decision-making areas
cannot be egalitarian in a publicly clear way to all the members. Many will have
good reasons for complaining that their interests are being given less than equal
consideration on the grounds that others are given an equal say in matters that
affect their interests more deeply than the interests of the others. Even if these
complaints are not always justified, the appearance of inequity will not go away
in these contexts.
To be sure, though the fact that different groups of people have different
stakes in decision making may undermine the intrinsic fairness of making decisions in a democratic way, it does not imply that there can be no instrumental
rationale for democratic decision making in these contexts. It may be that despite
the absence of intrinsic fairness in democracy in these institutions there is some
reason to think that these institutions will produce more desirable outcomes than
nondemocratic collective decision-making institutions produce or than the
absence of collective decision-making institutions produces.
The trouble with instrumental justifications, however, is that there is serious
disagreement on what the best outcomes are supposed to be. And it is precisely
these disagreements that democratic decision making is supposed to resolve in a
way that treats each as an equal.
One might try to resolve such problems by insisting on a kind of global
democracy where all issues are at stake in the decision making. This would
involve a kind of world government that is to replace existing political entities.
This might produce a kind of equality of stakes in the democratic process.
Unfortunately this solution would solve the problem at the cost of existing
political communities, which currently make up the international scene. In the
short run, given the observations I have made about the global order above, I fear
that it would bring even more serious problems in its wake. We would in effect
be sacrificing the current system of states where there is at least some democracy
in many states and in which there are settled traditions of political debate and collective decision making. To eliminate these for the sake of a large-scale global
democracy would seem to be sacrificing the admittedly imperfect but important
achievements of modern democratic states for the sake of something entirely
unknown and uncertain.
The creation of such a global democracy might create a kind of common
world in the long run, but it would not automatically imply that the people of the
world share a common world. Whether or not it does, it is subject to two other
serious worries, to which I will now turn.
The Problem of Persistent Minorities on a Global Scale
The second problem I want to discuss here is the problem of persistent
minorities. Recall that the presence of persistent minorities in the modern democratic state undercuts the authority of the state with respect to those minorities.
This is a significant problem in modern states as they are. But it would appear to

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be an even greater problem in global and transnational institutions if they were

fully democratized. The larger the constituency, the larger the chances are that
particular minorities would simply get lost in the democratic decision making.
To be sure, not all minorities would be lost since some of them could make
common cause with others on the larger global scale. And presumably global
democratic institutions would have to be ruled by coalitions of different groups
each of which is a minority on its own. Still in a world as diverse as the one we
live in, it seems hard to imagine that there will not be large portions of humanity that will find themselves not part of any winning coalition for significant
periods of time. We see this already in modern states where the level of diversity
is generally considerably smaller than the world overall.
But as I argued above, the presence of persistent minorities undercuts the
authority of the democratic assembly at least with regard to the persistent minority and it weakens the authority secondarily with regard to the rest of the population. The consequence of this is that we can infer that the authority of global
democratic institutions will be severely weakened by this problem.
The way these problems are sometimes resolved in modern states is through
the devices of political autonomy and consensual institutions. In the case of political autonomy, the most extreme measure available is secession, but less extreme
methods are also available such as partial political autonomy for a particular
region and a federal structure of governance. In these two kinds of institutional
structures, the problem of the persistent minority is partly resolved by allowing
the minority to make decisions for itself either as an independent political unit or
at least to make some broad class of decisions for itself.
The methods of consensus politics include supermajority rules on some or
all issues or some kind of consociational decision-making process. These kinds
of rules ensure that the minority has some say by requiring that the supermajority be large enough so that it has to include the minority group in the final
decisions.
As I see it, both of these kinds of devices are somewhat nondemocratic. They
involve departures from egalitarian ways of making decisions. The establishment
of political autonomy involves cutting out a piece of the common world so that
only the members of a small group have a say over it even though many persons
interests are deeply implicated. That is, only some of those whose fundamental
interests are implicated have a say in the decisions made by the politically
autonomous group.
In the case of consensus decision-making rules, the rules are not democratic
to the extent that they give minorities a kind of veto over the decisions. Instead
of each having an equal say, a minority has a kind of veto power though it may
not be the minority whose interests we are trying to protect. The reason for majority rule is that it is the one rule for decision making that seems to treat each person
as an equal in a variety of different ways. The more we move toward supermajority rule, the more we endanger the equality in the decision making. Of course,
it may be necessary to do this under certain circumstances, circumstances that the

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underlying principle of equality seems to pick out. But we should not be deceived
into thinking that the consequent institutional structure is entirely democratic.
In addition, to the extent that we are talking about global governance institutions, it is not clear what the possibility of secession amounts to. It would appear
that secession would simply imply that the institutions are not global after all. If
we were to insist on global institutions, the possibility of secession would be ruled
out. And thus one possible remedy for the problem of persistent minorities would
be ruled out by global institutions even though the problem itself is likely to be
far greater than it is at the national level.
Thus we seem to be able to anticipate a very significant problem of persistent minorities on the global scale without some main devices that can be used
to remedy this problem. The problem of persistent minorities, I have argued, cuts
right at the heart of the legitimacy of democratic institutions and so democratic
global institutions would start life with a very serious obstacle to establishing
their genuine legitimacy.
The Problem of Citizenship at the Global Level
There is one more difficulty that I want to raise for prospects of global or even
transnational democracy. One difficulty concerning citizenship in large states is
that citizens have little incentive to become informed about matters of politics
because they have so little impact on the outcomes of decision making. Economists defend the idea that citizens are rationally ignorant on the grounds that a
citizen cannot advance his or her interests through the political process.21 But one
need not agree with economists that citizens are exclusively concerned with
narrow self-interest to think that there is a genuine problem here. First, it is well
observed that citizens are not very well informed about politics in modern democratic states. Second, the sense of responsibility that is often necessary to engage
the moral capacities is highly attenuated in the case of voting in large-scale democracies. Where one has little sense of responsibility for outcomes and the complexity of issues is very hard to grasp, it is hard to become interested in the moral
issues that are involved in the decisions even if one is a moral person overall.
This problem is likely to be increased when it comes to decision making in
transnational or global institutions. Here the greater size of the constituencies
combined with the even greater complexity of the issues at stake suggests that
citizens are even less likely to vote in an informed way about matters connected
to global institutions than they are in national democratic decisions. This worry
is confirmed by the widespread observation that citizens of various countries tend
to be far less informed about the foreign policies of their states than they are about
the domestic policies.22
To some degree, citizens do seem to solve some of the problems relating to
low levels of information in politics. They make decisions that help them advance
their interests. But the way they solve them in part is by taking short cuts to information that are made available to them by established and settled political insti-

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105

tutions such as interest groups and political parties. For instance, particular citizens tend to follow certain opinion leaders judgments and the positions of their
political parties.23 The main point I wish to make here is that citizens overcome
some of the problem of information in decision making with the help of settled
institutions in civil society. These institutions are essential to making democracy
possible even to the imperfect extent that it is in modern states.24 And it is important that these are long established and settled institutions precisely because it is
only under these conditions that citizens can rationally come to trust these institutions so as to use them as shortcuts for important information. These institutional devices, imperfect as they are, are what stave off complete elite control of
government.
The worry I wish to suggest here is that the danger of complete elite control
of governmental institutions becomes very alarming when we consider global or
transnational institutions, in the light of the problem of citizen information briefly
sketched above. In addition, in the absence of established and settled institutions
for debate and discussion like political parties and interest groups that are connected to citizens, it is hard to see how the problem of information can be mitigated on the global scale. This is admittedly a problem that need not last forever
but it is one that is likely to last for a very long time. This is because it is hard
to see how nongovernmental institutions of global reach such as political parties
can establish the kind of trust that is necessary for citizens to be able to rely on
them in the process of participation. Therefore, the prospects for real democracy
on the global level are not likely to be very good for a very long time.
It seems to me that the dangers of elite control of transnational and global
democratic institutions are unlikely to disappear in the foreseeable future. These
dangers undercut the claim of such institutions to be in accord with the ideals that
underpin democracy. And so we must be very skeptical about arguments that
attempt to apply ideas of democracy on a global or transnational scale.
Conclusion
In this paper I have given a brief sketch of what I take to be the main principles underlying the moral foundations of democracy. I have argued that these
principles can offer some substantial guidance in the construction of a theory of
territory. But I have also argued that a number of the principles that play a role
in the theory of territory cast some doubt on the prospects in the near to medium
term for democracy on a global or even transnational scale. I do not offer these
worries with the intention of offering conclusive reasons against democracy on
the global scale. I offer them as important cautionary notes that must be taken
into account and that have not been adequately taken into account.
I want to thank Allen Buchanan, Carol Gould, and Alistair Macleod for their
comments on previous drafts of this paper. Needless to say there is still much for
them to disagree with in this version.

106

Thomas Christiano

Notes
1

This thesis is defended at length in Allen Buchanans Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce
from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991) and more
recently in his Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004), chap. 8.
2
See Thomas Pogge, Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty, in World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002) 16895; Andrew Kuper, Democracy Beyond Borders (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004); Carol Gould, Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004); and James Bohman, The Democratic Minimum: Is Democracy a Means to Global Justice? Ethics and International Affairs 19, no. 1 (2005): 10116.
3
The argument for this principle of equality is made in my papers An Argument for Equality and
against the Leveling Down Objection, in Social Justice and the Law, eds. Joseph Campbell,
Michael Rourke, and Harry Silverstein (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming); and A Foundation for Egalitarianism, in Egalitarianism, ed. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen and Nils Holtug
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
4
See Geoffrey Garret, Global Markets and National Politics: Collision Course or Virtuous Circle?
International Organization 54 (autumn 1998): 787824, esp. 791. Garret goes on to remark that
the level of global economic integration is about as high as it was at the end of the nineteenth
century and that the reason for our current sense of increasing globalization is the massive contraction of global trade that took place in the mid-twentieth century.
5
See my The Rule of the Many (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), chaps. 58, for a discussion of
the institutional implications of public equality. See also Charles Beitz, Political Equality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989) for sophisticated discussion of institutional design for
a democratic society.
6
This is why I have some doubts about the argument advanced by Robert Dahl in A Preface to Economic Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) that the argument for political democracy transfers straightforwardly to democracy for economic firms.
7
The argument sketched here is developed in more detail in my papers The Authority of Democracy, Journal of Political Philosophy 12, no. 3 (August 2004), 26690, and in Democracys
Authority: Reply to Wall, Journal of Political Philosophy (forthcoming, 2006), and in great
detail in my book The Constitution of Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
8
See my The Authority of Democracy for a more developed account of the limits to democratic
authority. See further my The Constitution of Equality, especially the chapter on An Egalitarian
Conception of Liberal Rights for more discussion about the idea that basic liberal rights are
grounded in public equality.
9
See my Democratic Equality and the Problem of Persistent Minorities, Philosophical Papers 4,
no. 2 (May 1995), and chap. 7 of The Constitution of Equality for a more detailed treatment of
persistent minorities.
10
See John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter
Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge Universty Press, 1988), chap. 9 and Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysical Foundations of Justice, trans. John Ladd (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 76.
11
See Richard H. Steinberg, In the Shadow of Law or Power? Consensus Based Bargaining and Outcomes in the GATT/WTO, International Organization 56 (spring 2002): 33974, esp. 349. For
further description of the WTO from a legal perspective see Eric Stein, International Integration
and Democracy: No Love at First Sight, The American Journal of International Law 95 (July
2001): 489534.
12
See Joseph Stiglitz, Two Principles for the Next Round or, How to Bring Developing Countries in
from the Cold, The World Economy 23, no. 4 (April 2000): 43754. For a more mixed view see
Arvind Panagariya, Agricultural Liberalization and the Least Developed Countries: Six Fallacies, The World Economy 28, no. 9 (September 2005): 12771301.

Democracy, Territory, and Global Institutions

13

107

See Eric Voeten, The Political Origins of the UN Security Councils Ability to Legitimize the Use
of Force, International Organization 59 (summer 2005): 52757, esp. 54448.
14
See Christopher Rudolph, Constructing an Atrocities Regime: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals, International Organization 55 (summer 2001): 65591. For some empirically grounded
skepticism about the efficacy of human rights regimes more generally see Oona Hathaway, Do
Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference? Yale Law Journal 111 (June 2002): 19352041.
15
See David Gibbs, The United Nations, International Peacekeeping and the Question of Impartiality: Revisiting the Congo Operation of 1960, The Journal of Modern African Studies 38, no.
3 (2000): 35982.
16
See Voeten, The Political Origins, 531.
17
For the seminal exposition of institutionalism see Robert Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation
and Discord in the World Political Economy, new edition with a new preface by the author
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
18
See Gould, Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights, 175 for this principle.
19
See Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the
CSCE [Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe], http://www.osce.org/docs/english/
1990-1999/hd/cope90e.htm; and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in International Law: Selected Documents, 20052006 Edition, ed. Barry E. Carter (New York: Aspen
Publishers, 2005), 494509, especially Article 25 on pp. 50203.
20
See Gould, Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights, 17680 for a review and critique of some
different approaches and a defense of the approach that makes human rights central to determination of who ought to have a say in collective decisions. See also Thomas Pogge, World Poverty
and Human Rights, 184.
21
See Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957) for
an account of this problem and for its implications for equality.
22
See Robert Dahl, Can International Institutions Be Democratic? A Skeptics View, in Democracys
Edges, eds. Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 1936, for a detailed discussion of this problem and the difficulties relating to citizens
knowledge of foreign policy. I agree in large part with his main conclusions.
23
See generally Samuel Popkin, The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Elections (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) for an excellent review of many cognitive shortcuts citizens take in making decisions about who to vote for in elections.
24
See my The Rule of the Many (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), chaps. 58 for discussion of
the question of what citizens ought to know if they are to participate as equals in a democratic
process and of the institutional devices by which the problem of citizen information can be at
least partly overcome.