This chapter develops a theory of domination, one that helps discern the normative potential of welfare institutions for democratic social movements. It critically appraises three existing approaches to domination: neo-republican approaches that focus on direct domination, neo-Kantian approaches that focus on structural domination, and post-structuralist approaches that focus on abstract domination. In each case, the chapter shows that the distinctive understanding of domination produces a different picture of the welfare state-both in terms of how we should understand the functioning of welfare institutions as well as how such institutions can overcome or reinforce structures of domination. The chapter argues that domination exists in three worlds-the objective, the intersubjective, and the subjective – each corresponding to a different "face" of power. Advocates of these three perspectives fail to recognize these distinctive levels of analysis or worlds and so overgeneralize from one level of analysis. These three theories, then, offer important insights into the nature of domination – but they are only the building blocks of a theory of democracy, domination, and the welfare state.

This chapter elaborates on the notion of a ground of justice, more specifically its ontology. We explore in what sense different principles or grounds of justice may be of the same rank even though they capture rather different domains. (One might say that something like trade justice is not as important as human rights protection.) While these concerns may well not be equally important, they are on a par from the standpoint of the universe. Moreover, we deal with the overall untidy ontological picture generated by the grounds-of-justice view and explore some features of the interconnectedness among them. We supplement that picture by exploring in historical perspective how different grounds have become instantiated. We can then also put the grounds-of-justice approach to work in engagements with other thinkers, in this chapter especially Rainer Forst.

The right to justification (RTJ) is borrowed from moral and political theory to offer normative guidance in the concrete and localized circumstances of the proportionality test. Based on the seminal work of Rainer Forst, Mattias Kumm has illustrated in various pieces how the RTJ operates in the proportionality context by identifying “excluded reasons” for limiting rights. However, Kumm does not clearly explain if the test also helps identify what the RTJ positively requires. This chapter aims to remedy this deficit in three steps: (1) present the core features of Forst’s account of the RTJ and emphasize the right that best demarcates the RTJ from rival accounts of human rights, namely the right to democratic participation; (2) reconstruct the precise role that the RTJ should play in proportionality analysis as suggested by Kumm, which the author insists on the common thread between Forst and Kumm, namely how the principle of mutual justifiability should inform the evaluative part of the proportionality test; and (3) show how the RTJ can help to balance two equally protected rights, expression and privacy, by reference to the practice of the European Court of Human Rights.