How to Prevent Staged Reform from Becoming Endless Exclusion
A government promises to expand political membership.
People who have lived in the country for years will eventually receive a clearer path to becoming full members. The law must first be revised, officials explain. Administrative offices need time to adjust.
A transitional arrangement is introduced.
Five years pass.
The government says it needs more time.
Another five years pass.
The people waiting for membership are still waiting.
At what point does a transition cease to be a transition?
In The World Citizen Society, I argue that the transformation of political membership must be staged. Institutions cannot be rebuilt simply by declaring a new principle. But transition must not become an excuse for indefinite inequality.
This matters for Foot Democracy: the freedom to choose a political community in which one can meaningfully enter, live securely, and become a full member.
The question is not whether institutional change takes time. Of course it does.
The question is whether the arrangements introduced during that change are leading toward greater political freedom, or becoming permanent substitutes for it.
EU Enlargement — A Transition with an Endpoint
The European Union’s enlargement process offers one way to limit transitional restrictions.
When ten countries joined the EU in 2004, existing member states could temporarily restrict access to their labor markets for workers from eight of the new members. Comparable arrangements accompanied the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007.
The restrictions followed a formula known as two plus three plus two: an initial two years, a possible further three years, and, under specified conditions, a final two years.
After seven years, that particular transitional authority ended.
These measures concerned access to employment. They did not suspend all the rights associated with EU citizenship. Nor did every member state maintain the restrictions for the full seven years.
The important feature was the outer limit.
This did not prove that every restriction was necessary or fair. A deadline alone cannot make an unequal arrangement legitimate.
But it prevented the same exceptional authority from continuing indefinitely.
A transition can have a defined endpoint. Whether that endpoint is sufficient depends on what rights are at stake and what the restriction is supposed to achieve.
South Korea — Temporary Employment and Long-Term Lives
Not every system that limits opportunities for political membership describes itself as transitional.
Some are organized around temporary work, even when workers develop lasting connections with the receiving society.
South Korea’s Employment Permit System provides an example.
Under the E-9 visa category, qualifying foreign workers may work in designated sectors for an ordinary period of three years, with a possible extension of one year and ten months through reemployment.
The combined period is four years and ten months.
This is not an absolute lifetime limit. Special reentry arrangements exist, and eligible workers may change to other residence statuses, including E-7-4, a category for skilled workers that can provide a route toward longer-term residence.
On October 22, 2026, South Korea’s Ministry of Justice announced improvements to the E-7-4 system, including simpler documentation for residence extensions. The ministry described the reform as supporting the movement from skilled employment toward longer-term settlement.
That development matters. It shows that rules originally designed around temporary employment can be reconsidered.
But a conditional opportunity for longer-term residence is not a guarantee of full political membership. Nor does the announcement establish how many workers will actually benefit.
Not every temporary worker wishes to settle permanently, and there is no reason to presume otherwise.
Yet some people spend years working in the same society, learning its language, developing relationships, and building lives under its laws.
What happens if they wish to remain?
Foot Democracy requires more than permission to enter or work for a limited period. For people seeking durable membership, it requires a meaningful opportunity to establish a secure political home.
The Korean example raises this question without proving that the four-year-and-ten-month arrangement was deliberately designed to prevent naturalization—the process of becoming a citizen.
An institution’s consequences and its designers’ intentions are not necessarily the same.
Ukraine — Why Protection Sometimes Must Continue
Temporary residence can serve a different purpose: protecting people who have fled danger.
In March 2022, the European Union activated temporary protection for eligible people displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This provided immediate protection without requiring everyone first to complete the ordinary procedure for seeking asylum.
As the war continued, protection was extended.
A Council decision adopted on July 30, 2026, extended it until March 4, 2028. The corrected decision also introduced eligibility conditions relating to military obligations in Ukraine. An exception protects certain people who already held temporary protection by August 4, 2026, and continued to hold it in the same member state.
These new conditions must be distinguished from the decision to extend protection.
Here, the danger is not simply that a temporary arrangement continues too long. It may be that protection ends too soon.
Some displaced people hope to return home. Others have established work, families, or lasting connections in their receiving communities.
Their circumstances cannot all be resolved by the same decision.
Those needing continued protection should not lose it prematurely. Those wishing to establish a permanent life should have meaningful opportunities to pursue appropriate residence arrangements.
Temporary protection should not be withdrawn prematurely. Temporary uncertainty should not be allowed to become a permanent condition of life.
A temporary arrangement must be judged by the rights it protects as well as the restrictions it imposes.
Latvia — When a Temporary Status Lasts for Generations
Latvia presents a more direct example of a temporary status surviving for decades.
When Latvia restored its independence in 1991, it faced a difficult citizenship question.
Latvia regarded itself as restoring the republic whose independence had been lost through Soviet occupation. It therefore treated the earlier republic as legally continuing, rather than regarding the country as an entirely new state. Citizenship was restored to those who had been citizens before the occupation and to their descendants.
But many people living in Latvia had arrived during the Soviet period, or were descendants of those who had.
They were not automatically recognized as Latvian citizens.
In 1995, Latvia established a special legal status for certain former Soviet citizens who possessed neither Latvian citizenship nor citizenship of another state.
They became known as Latvia’s non-citizens (nepilsoņi).
The Latvian government itself has described this as a special temporary status.
It was not an ordinary foreign-resident category. Nor is it legally identical, under Latvian law, to the status of a stateless person.
Non-citizens possess important protections. They have a legal right to reside permanently in Latvia and to return to the country even after living abroad.
These are substantial rights.
But non-citizens cannot vote in Latvian national or municipal elections.
Here is the difficulty.
A person can possess secure residence and still lack the political rights of an equal member of the community.
The historical background matters. Latvia’s restoration of independence, the consequences of Soviet occupation, the status of the Latvian language, and national security concerns cannot be dismissed as incidental.
Nor should the establishment of the non-citizen category simply be described as an arbitrary decision to exclude residents.
Latvia has made changes over time.
Naturalization has enabled many non-citizens to acquire citizenship. According to official figures, the proportion of non-citizens fell from almost 30 percent in 1996 to 8.7 percent at the beginning of 2026.
In 2019, Latvia also adopted a law that changed the position of children born to non-citizen parents. Since January 1, 2020, children who would previously have qualified for non-citizen status are instead recognized as Latvian citizens, subject to the conditions of the law. Where a child is born abroad or one parent is a foreign citizen, additional registration procedures may apply.
This reform prevented the special status from being passed automatically to another generation of children covered by the law.
But it did not automatically grant citizenship to those who already held non-citizen status.
More than thirty years after its establishment, the category still exists.
The government has taken steps toward reducing it. Yet a considerable group of residents continues to possess secure residence without equal electoral membership.
This does not prove that the Latvian authorities originally intended to establish permanent political inequality.
It shows something different, and important enough.
A status introduced as temporary can persist for generations, even when a pathway to citizenship exists.
It is possible to recognize Latvia’s historical circumstances and the reforms it has undertaken while still asking whether the remaining inequality is justified.
The availability of naturalization is relevant. So are the conditions for obtaining citizenship, the circumstances of those who remain non-citizens, and the consequences of continued exclusion.
From the perspective of Foot Democracy, the right to remain is essential. But remaining and belonging as an equal political member are not the same thing.
There is another difficulty.
What should happen to the rights that non-citizens already possess if the legal category is changed?
Simply abolishing the category could produce new insecurity unless its protections were preserved or replaced.
Reform should not place non-citizens in a worse legal position merely to eliminate the category itself.
This is an application of the principle I call Decompose before abolishing, and replace before removing.
The protections attached to an existing status and the political inequalities associated with it must be examined separately.
Preserving residence and return rights does not require accepting electoral exclusion forever.
The challenge is to protect what the existing system has secured while addressing what it has left unequal.
Latvia’s experience cannot tell us exactly what citizenship rules every political community should adopt.
But it asks a question that reaches beyond Latvia.
If a political status remains temporary in principle while continuing for decades, who decides when the transition is over?
Five Questions for Every Transitional Restriction
The four examples are not legally identical. They concern access to employment, temporary labor migration, emergency protection, and citizenship after restored independence.
But each helps us ask whether an arrangement continues to serve its stated purpose.
I propose five questions.
1. What is the restriction for?
Its legal, administrative, financial, or security justification should be identifiable. Historical circumstances matter, but the reasons for maintaining a restriction must also be examined in the present.
2. When and how will it be reviewed?
An exceptional restriction should have a credible review process and, where appropriate, an outer limit. Protection against continuing danger, however, may need extension rather than automatic termination.
3. What progress has been made?
Governments should be able to identify actual institutional changes rather than rely on promises. Latvia’s naturalization record and reforms concerning children show progress, but do not settle the position of all remaining non-citizens.
4. Can affected people challenge its continuation?
They need meaningful opportunities to organize, participate in public debate, seek review, and pursue available legal remedies. This is especially important where those affected cannot vote.
5. What happens to existing rights?
A reform should not remove functioning protections before suitable alternatives are in place. Ending an unequal legal category is not necessarily an improvement if it also destroys secure residence or other essential rights.
These questions are proposed safeguards, not an existing universal legal test.
They do not guarantee agreement. But they make it harder to justify indefinite restrictions merely by describing them as transitional.
Who Can End the Waiting?
There is one question that administrative reviews cannot answer by themselves.
Who has the political power to end the waiting?
People excluded from full membership may work, pay taxes, raise families, and spend much of their lives under a community’s laws without being able to vote on those laws.
Their future may depend on decisions made entirely by existing members.
In the previous essay, Once Entry Is Won, How Is It Protected?, I argued that the struggle for Foot Democracy continues even after rights have been legally recognized.
The same is true of institutional transition.
Those waiting for political equality cannot rely indefinitely on official promises. They must be able to organize, challenge decisions, and work with others to change the rules.
A review procedure can help. It cannot replace political agency.
No Permanent Transition
Political transformation takes time.
Institutions must be prepared, existing rights protected, and new responsibilities coordinated. Emergency conditions may require protection to continue.
But temporary employment, emergency protection, time-limited market restrictions, and long-standing citizenship distinctions do not raise identical problems. Each must be judged according to its purpose and consequences.
Latvia’s experience brings the central difficulty into focus: a political community can protect people’s right to remain while continuing to deny them equal political membership.
The answer is neither to destroy existing protections nor to accept their associated inequalities indefinitely.
Staged reform must remain a path toward political equality, not a permanent substitute for it.
Necessary protection should last as long as it is needed. Restrictions that have lost their justification must remain open to challenge.
And those affected must be able to participate in changing the institutions that determine their political future.
Transition is not a destination.
The people waiting for equal political membership cannot be expected to wait forever.
Further Reading
Books
- The World Citizen Revolution — On the historical transformation of inherited political membership.
- The World Citizen Society — Especially Chapter 19, Why Transition Must Be Staged.
Related Essays
- Why the World Citizen Society Cannot Be Created Overnight
- The Four-Gap Audit: Why Reform Can Fail Even When the Goal Is Right
- Once Entry Is Won, How Is It Protected?
- When Does Residence Become Full Membership?
References
- European Commission. The Impact of Free Movement of Workers in the Context of EU Enlargement (2008). https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52008DC0765
- Republic of Korea Ministry of Justice. Improvements to the Skilled-Worker (E-7-4) System (2026-10-22). https://www.immigration.go.kr/bbs/immigration/214/611600/artclView.do
- Council of the European Union. Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/1912; consolidated version (2026). https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02026D1912-20260804
- Council of the European Union. Recommendation concerning transition out of temporary protection (2025-09-16). https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2025/09/16/protection-of-displaced-ukrainians-council-adopts-recommendation-about-transition-out-of-temporary-protection/
- Republic of Latvia Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Society Integration in Latvia (n.d.). https://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/society-integration-latvia
- Republic of Latvia. On the Status of Those Former U.S.S.R. Citizens Who Do Not Have the Citizenship of Latvia or That of Any Other State (1995). https://likumi.lv/ta/en/en/id/77481
- Republic of Latvia. On the Termination of the Granting of the Status of a Non-citizen to Children (2019-10-17). https://likumi.lv/ta/en/en/id/310468
- Republic of Latvia Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs. A Child Born in Latvia or Abroad after 01.01.2020 (n.d.). https://www.pmlp.gov.lv/en/child-born-latvia-or-abroad-after-01012020
- Republic of Latvia Ministry of Foreign Affairs. National Report to UN Human Rights Council A/HRC/WG.6/11/LVA/1 (2011). https://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/media/2672/download?attachment=
- Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia. Latvia Has a Population of 1.845 Million (2026). https://stat.gov.lv/en/statistics-themes/population/population/press-releases/27583-number-population-latvia-2025.
