Democracy is about collective self-rule under conditions that afford everyone political standing and consideration in matters of common concern. But in today’s globalized world, democratic states must respond to a growing number of demands for inclusion from beyond their borders, on issues ranging from migration, to trade, to human rights and the environment. Under these conditions, there is an urgent need for a principled means of determining who is entitled to inclusion, and on what basis. Defenders of the All-Affected Principle claim that inclusions should track the impacts that decisions can have on people’s lives. Defenders of the All-Subjected Principle adopt a similar strategy but use a narrower threshold for inclusion. My argument is that neither principle entirely satisfies. The problem is that both principles are too backwards looking. I offer an alternative formula for democratic inclusion that captures the underlying wrong to which complaints about undemocratic exclusion are seeking to draw our attention. One complaint is about domination: being exposed to the arbitrary and one-sided power of others. Another complaint is about usurpation: having your judgement displaced, without your consent. Using these two complaints as a guide does a much better job explaining when inclusion is justified and the appropriate institutional response.

This introductory chapter examines arguments for and against adopting the All-Affected Principle (AAP) as a criterion for democratic inclusion, and the alternatives. For many, the attraction of the AAP lies in its straightforward simplicity: If you are affected by a collective decision, you should be able to influence it. Yet there remains sharp disagreement among scholars of democracy about how to best formulate the AAP and the circumstances in which it applies. Surveying the literature, we argue that appeals to the AAP will vary according to: (1) organizational scope; (2) decision-making context; (3) kinds of influence; (4) how influence is allocated; (5) the definition of “affectedness”; and (6) the stringency of any participatory requirements. Whether the AAP is consistent with existing arrangements, or requires a more radical redrawing of democratic boundaries, is a question on which opinions may differ significantly. We conclude by discussing the trade-offs between more versus less ambitious versions of the AAP, the implications for addressing pressing governance challenges, and the future of the democratic project more generally.

Who should have a say in a given decision for it to count as democratic? This is the question with which the so-called democratic boundary problem is concerned. Two main solutions have emerged in the literature: the All-Affected Principle (AAP) and the All-Subjected Principle (ASP). My aim in this chapter is to question the presuppositions underpinning the boundary-problem debate. Scholars have proceeded by taking democracy for granted, treating it as an ultimate value. Consequently, the best solution to the boundary problem has been framed as the one that most loyally reflects the value of democracy. But it is not at all obvious that democracy is best conceptualised as an ultimate value. Arguably, democracy marks out a family of decision-making systems that are themselves justified by appeal to how they reflect and promote important values in particular circumstances. The values in question range from equality and self-determination, to peace, security, and respect for fundamental rights. Thus, what we call “democracy” is itself one of several possible solutions to the boundary problem: a solution that is contingently justified by appeal to a variety of different values. This means that neither the AAP nor the ASP can provide one-size-fits-all solutions to the problem.

The “All Affected Interests Principle” (AAIP) and the related “All Subjected Principle” (ASP) articulate principles of political legitimacy that can serve as potent instruments for evaluating the legitimacy of non-state institutional orders. However, while both are useful for evaluating the legitimacy of already-existing institutional orders, many of most important democratic legitimacy failures of our age arise not only from the undemocratic character of already-constituted orders but also from the fact that in many key domains we lack any institutionalized capacity to address the urgent collective action problems we face. How can such institutions be established in a democratically legitimate way, as an exercise of democratic collective agency? The chapter takes a historicizing turn, arguing that AAIP and ASP creatively retrieve and reconstruct old ideas in the history of democratic thought, liberating them from the presupposition that they can only be actualized within the territorial boundaries of the state. It then argues that we can reconstruct the concept of constituent power as a form of democratic agency to show how democratically legitimate sites of binding collective decision beyond the state can come into being.