Infant political agency: Redrawing the epistemic boundaries of democratic inclusion
| Published date | 01 April 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885119874341 |
| Date | 01 April 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article EJPT
Infant political agency:
Redrawing the epistemic
boundaries of
democratic inclusion
Andre Santos Campos
Nova University of Lisbon, Portugal
Abstract
Epistemic impairment has been the decisive yardstick when excluding infants from
political agency. One of the suggestions to bypass the epistemic requirement of political
agency and to encourage the inclusion of infants in representative democracies is
to resort to proxies or surrogates who share or advocate interests which may be
coincidental with their interests. However, this solution is far from desirable, given
that it privileges the political agency of parents, guardians and trustees over other
adult citizens. This article offers an alternative to this conceptual frame of reference
by making a case for the political agency of infants. Firstly, it maintains that political
agency can be understood in terms of the several facets involved in political represen-
tation. Secondly, it claims that the all-affected principle can be reformulated as an
‘infant-affected-interests principle’ in light of which infants are members of the class
of the represented. Thirdly, it explores the ways through which this political agency can
occur without having to resort to alternative conceptions of representation. The con-
clusion ascertains that infant enfranchisement is highly undesirable and that there are
more viable forms to promote infant political agency, such as virtual representation,
infant-beneficial principles of political action and ombudspersons for infants.
Keywords
Child enfranchisement, constituency, infant-affected-interests principle, infants,
ombudsperson, political agency, representation
Corresponding author:
Andre Santos Campos, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Nova University of Lisbon,Av. de Berna 26,
4th floor, 1069-061 Lisbon, Portugal.
Email: andrecampos@fcsh.unl.pt
European Journal of Political Theory
!The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885119874341
journals.sagepub.com/home/ept
2022, Vol. 21(2) 368–389
From its inception, one of liberalism’s main concerns with regard to legitimacy and
power was to upgrade individuals from subjects of a king to citizens of a state.
The change in status had important implications for children. As subjects, there is
little distinction between children and adults, for both are equally under the king’s
authority. Citizens of a state, however, are those who consent to authority as the
basis of political power, which makes it paramount to distinguish between
those who have the rational capacity to consent and those who do not. Children
are often viewed as lacking such capacities. And even if many children prove to rise
above the epistemic threshold, infants do not.
1
Epistemic impairment has been the decisive yardstick when excluding infants
from political agency. In general terms, an agent is a being with the capacity to act,
and ‘agency’ denotes the exercise or manifestation of this capacity. Whereas per-
sonal agency entails the capacities to form, realise and revise temporally extended
plans, political agency involves the capacity to act in concert with others by
exercising political power. From this viewpoint, infants are utterly incapable of
being ‘normative agents’ (Griffin, 2008: 45) insofar as they lack the autonomy and
the freedom to deliberate and to carry out any deliberations. Consequently, they
cannot be regarded as political agents.
The epistemic impairment of infants is also invoked, most forcefully by will-
theorists of rights, as a reason for claiming that infants do not have rights. Unlike
interest-theorists, who view the function of rights as one of protecting significant
interests, will-theorists propose to see rights as zones of freedom to be granted only
to those able to exercise the powers to waive or to seek enforcement of the relevant
claims. As a result, infants do not have rights strictly speaking, even though they
still have interests that can be protected through granting rights directly to those
able to exercise powers associated with the relevant claims, namely parents or
guardians (Kramer, 2001: 30). Some authors counter such conclusions simply by
endorsing an interest theory of rights (MacCormick, 1976: 315; Sumner, 1987: 47)
or by restricting children’s rights to their developing competencies (Cowden, 2012);
others recognise the soundness of both views and apply them conjointly to chil-
dren, who change through their different stages of development from being the sort
of creatures whose interests are protected by rights to being the sort of creatures
whose rights protect their choices (Brennan, 2003).
However, even these authors who grant rights to infants on account of their
having interests deserving of special protection tend to narrow the scope of such
rights to welfare rights, not extending them to political rights. What is deserving of
protection is that infants are particularly vulnerable as human persons and that
they have the potential to become citizens when they grow up, not the fact that
they are citizens already. Political agency is a mere future possibility that is entirely
disconnected from their condition as infants. One way to bypass the epistemic
requirement of political agency and to encourage the political inclusion of infants
is to resort to proxies or surrogates who share or advocate interests which may be
coincidental with their interests, such as parents, guardians and trustees. These
forms of political agency would mirror proposals for empowering other kinds of
369Campos
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