The democratic boundary problem and social contract theory
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885115572922 |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2018, Vol. 17(1) 3–22
!The Author(s) 2015
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1474885115572922
journals.sagepub.com/home/ept
EJPT
Article
The democratic boundary
problem and social
contract theory
Marco Verschoor
Institute for Management Research, Radboud University
Nijmegen; Institute for Philosophy, Leiden University,
the Netherlands
Abstract
How to demarcate the political units within which democracy will be practiced?
Although recent years have witnessed a steadily increasing academic interest in this
question concerning the boundary problem in democratic theory, social contract
theory’s potential for solving it has largely been ignored. In fact, contract views are
premised on the assumption of a given people and so presuppose what requires legit-
imization: the existence of a demarcated group of individuals materializing, as it were,
from nowhere and whose members agree among themselves to establish a political
order. In order to fill this gap in social contract theory, a distinction is made between
three kinds of contract views: Lockean political voluntarism, contractarianism, and
contractualism. Each of these views can be (re)interpreted in such a way that
it offers a democratic solution to the boundary problem. Ultimately, however,
a Rawlsian interpretation of the contractualist solution is defended.
Keywords
Democratic boundary problem, social contract theory, Lockean political voluntarism,
contractarianism, contractualism, legitimacy, the people
Democracy means ‘‘rule by the people’’. It refers to a form of political rule in which
‘‘the people’’ collectively govern themselves by participating as free and equal
individuals in the political decision-making process. But how to decide who legiti-
mately make up the group of individuals who are bound together as a people for
the purpose of collective self-government?
The practical relevance of this question, which is referred to in the political
philosophical literature as the democratic boundary problem,
1
can hardly be
Corresponding author:
Marco Verschoor, Institute for Philosophy, Leiden University, Reuvensplaats 3-4, P.O. Box 9515, Leiden, the
Netherlands.
Email: m.verschoor@phil.leidenuniv.nl
overstated. To see this one only has to take a look at the many disputes that arise
concerning (the drawing of peoples’) boundaries. Disputes over secession and
migration—phenomena which are becoming increasingly more common in a glob-
ally interconnected, shrinking world—essentially constitute articulations of the
boundary problem. Processes of globalization have also incited intense debate on
the moral desirability and practical possibility of installing transnational or global
forms of democratic governance. What is being challenged in this debate is an
assumption that has largely been taken for granted since the rise of the modern
doctrine of popular sovereignty: that the nation-state constitutes the proper poli-
tical unit within which democracy is practiced. But to question this assumption is,
of course, to raise the boundary problem.
2
The aim of this article is to contribute to settling these disputes concerning the
constitution of the people by means of a social contract approach. The longstand-
ing tradition of the social contract offers one of the most dominant normative
frameworks for evaluating political structures and acts. Furthermore, since
modern democratic theory can be understood as an outgrowth of a tradition of
political thought that focuses on consent as the foundation of political authority, it
is only natural to engage in the quest for the legitimacy of the people using the
conceptual tools of the social contract tradition.
Despite this, however, social contract theorists have altogether ignored the
boundary problem. Classical and early modern contract theorists (e.g. Hobbes,
Locke, Rousseau, and Kant), as Whelan (1983: 25) correctly notes, have been
primarily concerned with answering the question of how political authority can
be established among a group of previously unattached individuals, rather than
with confronting the logically prior question of ‘‘how determinate communities
come to be set off from one another in the boundary-less state of nature’’
(Whelan, 1983: 25). Similarly, modern contract theorists have been, and still are,
mainly interested in developing general moral principles (e.g. Gauthier and
Scanlon) or principles of justice for already existing political societies, usually
democratic nation-states (e.g. Rawls and Buchanan). Essentially, then, all social
contract theorists work from the assumption of a given people. They presuppose
what requires legitimization, namely the existence of a delimited group of indivi-
duals, and subsequently only ask how they could agree among themselves to estab-
lish a political and moral order. Developing a social contract theoretical solution to
the boundary problem enables me to fill a gap in social contract theory, thereby
making it a more complete moral and political theory as well as practically more
relevant since it can guide political action where it previously could not.
3
This article is organized as follows. Based on a distinction between Lockean,
contractarian (i.e. Hobbesian), and Rawlsian contractualist (i.e. Kantian) contract
views—these being the dominant incarnations of social contract theory—I shall
argue first that each of these three contract views can be (re)interpreted in such a
way that it is capable of solving the democratic boundary problem. Next, I shall
present some practical implications of these contract views. Finally, I shall argue
that the Rawlsian contractualist solution is morally superior and more deeply
democratic than its Lockean and contractarian rivals.
4European Journal of Political Theory 17(1)
To continue reading
Request your trial