From the Struggle for the Vote to the Struggle for Political Choice

Why Foot Democracy, Like Hand Democracy, Must Be Won Through Political Action

Early in this series, I distinguished between winning recognition for a political right and securing its effective exercise.

But I left another question open.

How can people excluded from a political community gain influence over the rules that determine whether they may join?

The history of voting rights offers part of an answer.

Rights now considered fundamental were not established by argument alone. People organized, protested, persuaded others, and changed political institutions.

The rights of Hand Democracy had to be won.

The World Citizen framework proposes another dimension of political freedom: Foot Democracy, the freedom to choose one’s political community.

If that freedom is to become a genuine right, will it not also have to be won?

And what would such a struggle have to change?

The Rights of Hand Democracy Were Won

In Britain, the Reform Act of 1832 extended voting rights to additional property holders but left most working men excluded.

The Chartists responded by demanding wider political participation. Their People’s Charter of 1838 called for reforms including universal male suffrage, secret ballots, and the removal of property qualifications for members of Parliament.

Their major petitions were rejected. Several demands were eventually adopted through later political struggles involving other groups as well.

Reform was neither immediate nor inevitable. Some people gained rights before others, and partial victories sometimes weakened support for further change.

The United States offers a related lesson.

Women’s suffrage required generations of organizing before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920. Although the Fifteenth Amendment had prohibited racial discrimination in voting in 1870, many African Americans continued to face exclusion. The civil rights movement helped secure stronger protections through the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

These struggles were different, and neither reform removed every barrier.

But they reveal two tasks: gaining recognition for a right and making its exercise possible.

Both required political action.

The Order That Foot Democracy Challenges

Foot Democracy is not simply another campaign to expand voting rights.

Hand Democracy concerns collective democratic self-government. Foot Democracy concerns meaningful political-community choice, including opportunities to leave one community, enter another, establish residence, and become an equal political member.

Earlier struggles for the vote largely concerned participation within existing political communities.

Foot Democracy also concerns membership between them.

The World Citizen framework calls the present international membership structure a Nation-Based Feudal Order.

This is a comparison of political structures, not a claim that modern nationality law is historically identical to feudalism.

Nationality is largely inherited at birth. It strongly influences where people may live and where they can become political equals.

A country may extend democratic rights to its citizens while leaving people born elsewhere with few realistic opportunities to join.

Hand Democracy can therefore advance while inherited restrictions on political belonging remain.

Foot Democracy challenges those restrictions.

It does not require abolishing political communities, creating a single world government, or immediately eliminating nationality.

It requires institutions that make political-community choice meaningful while preserving democratic self-government.

But who would bring about such a change?

Political Action Without the Vote

In 2006, the United States experienced a remarkable wave of immigrant-rights demonstrations.

The protests followed the House of Representatives’ passage of H.R. 4437 in December 2005. The bill proposed stricter immigration enforcement and would have made unlawful presence in the United States a federal felony.

Large demonstrations followed across the country.

On May 1, A Day Without Immigrants brought marches, workplace absences, and consumer boycotts.

Participants included immigrants with different legal statuses, American citizens, students, workers, and community organizations.

Many immigrants taking part could not vote in national elections.

But they could organize, demonstrate, and make their concerns visible.

The protests drew attention to immigrants’ importance in workplaces and communities.

H.R. 4437 never became law. The Senate pursued a different approach, and Congress did not reach agreement.

We cannot conclude that the demonstrations alone prevented the bill’s enactment. The two chambers disagreed over major elements of immigration policy.

But the protests became part of the political environment in which the proposal was contested.

People who could not vote made themselves difficult to ignore.

The demonstrations did not establish Foot Democracy. They did, however, show that electoral exclusion does not necessarily mean political silence.

The harder task is turning political influence into lasting legal rights.

From Workers’ Mobility to Political Rights

European integration offers another example.

The Treaty of Rome, signed in 1957, established a common market in which the free movement of workers was an important principle.

The initial purpose was closely connected to economic activity.

Over time, European integration developed beyond workers’ mobility.

The Maastricht Treaty, signed in 1992 and effective from 1993, established citizenship of the European Union.

Citizens of member states gained additional rights, including the right to vote and stand in municipal and European Parliament elections in another member state where they lived, under the applicable conditions.

Economic integration had become connected to political participation across national borders.

This matters because it shows that institutions established partly for economic mobility can develop political rights.

But the limits are important.

EU citizenship depends on nationality of a member state. A long-term resident holding only a non-EU nationality does not acquire those same rights simply by living in the EU.

Nor does an EU citizen automatically gain the right to vote in another member state’s national parliamentary elections.

The EU is therefore not a completed model of Foot Democracy.

It offers something more limited: an example of economic mobility becoming connected to political rights through institutional change.

That development was possible. It was not inevitable.

When Political Compromise Works—and When It Does Not

The United States provides another lesson.

In 1986, Congress enacted the Immigration Reform and Control Act.

The law combined measures against unauthorized employment with legalization programs and provisions concerning agricultural labor.

About 2.7 million previously unauthorized immigrants eventually gained lawful status through its legalization programs.

The law resulted from political compromise among groups with different interests in immigration, employment, agriculture, and enforcement.

Legalization did not automatically provide citizenship or national voting rights. The law also introduced new enforcement measures.

Nevertheless, it changed the legal position of millions of people.

In 2013, another comprehensive immigration reform bill reached the Senate.

It proposed a pathway toward legal status and eventual citizenship for qualifying undocumented immigrants, alongside border-security measures and other reforms.

The Senate approved it by 68 votes to 32.

But the bill did not become law. The House did not enact it.

Why did one major compromise become law while the other failed?

The answer cannot be reduced to whether supporters agreed among themselves. Political circumstances, legislative institutions, and the content of the proposals all mattered.

The contrast shows that forming a coalition is important, but support must also be sufficient to overcome the barriers within the political system.

Political agreement in one place does not guarantee reform everywhere it is needed.

Economic Freedom and Political Equality

Who might support Foot Democracy?

People seeking to migrate may value lawful entry and secure residence. Long-term residents may seek citizenship and full political equality.

Employers may favor easier access to international labor.

Others may support political-community choice because they believe inherited nationality should not determine a person’s opportunities so strongly.

These interests can overlap. They are not identical.

An employer might support international recruitment without supporting national voting rights for foreign workers.

A political movement might support citizenship for settled residents while opposing wider opportunities for entry.

Even migrants may place different priorities on residence, citizenship, or freedom of movement.

Support for economic mobility does not automatically mean support for political equality.

Whether different groups cooperate may depend partly on their political strength.

If one group can obtain the reform it wants without broader support, it may have little incentive to join a wider coalition.

If groups cannot achieve their goals separately, cooperation may become more attractive.

This is a political hypothesis, not an established historical law.

Britain’s 1832 electoral reform offers a reason to take the possibility seriously. It extended representation to some property-owning groups while leaving most workers excluded. Much of the earlier middle-class support for wider reform weakened afterward.

A similar division could arise if international mobility expanded without equal political membership for long-term residents.

The challenge for the World Citizen Revolution is therefore not merely to gather supporters of freer movement.

It is to discover whether groups with different goals can form a durable coalition supporting both meaningful mobility and political equality.

Whether such a coalition will emerge remains an open question.

From Political Demands to New Institutions

Political action is necessary, but a political victory alone is not enough.

Earlier in this series, the history of voting rights showed why recognition and effective protection are different tasks.

The problem also appeared in When Does Residence Become Full Membership?, which examined the Swiss municipality of Emmen. There, naturalization decisions were challenged before the Federal Supreme Court, which imposed constitutional limits on how applicants could be rejected.

That protection mattered.

But judicial review of individual naturalization decisions does not, by itself, create a general freedom to choose one’s political community.

Foot Democracy requires a broader institutional change.

People must have meaningful opportunities for lawful entry, sufficiently secure residence, a credible route toward full political membership, and protection against removal under ordinary immigration law after becoming full members merely because they hold another nationality.

Political communities must retain legitimate authority to govern themselves. But that authority must coexist with the freedom of others to seek membership.

These institutions cannot simply be copied from earlier suffrage reforms.

Nor should the existing order be dismantled before workable alternatives have been established.

Political movements, legislatures, courts, and administrative institutions all have roles to play.

The challenge is not only to recognize new rights but also to build arrangements that make those rights real.

The Political Task of the World Citizen Revolution

The history of Hand Democracy does not provide a ready-made plan for Foot Democracy.

But it teaches us that rights rarely become secure merely because their justification is persuasive.

People who lack those rights must make their demands heard. They must find allies among those who already possess political influence. And they must turn political support into law and institutional change.

The 2006 immigrant-rights demonstrations show how people without voting rights can influence political debate.

European integration shows that economic mobility can become connected to political participation.

American immigration reform shows that compromise can produce substantial change, but does not guarantee success.

None tells us exactly how the World Citizen Revolution will proceed.

The task is larger than expanding the right to vote.

It is to transform the Nation-Based Feudal Order by replacing inherited restrictions on political membership with institutions that protect both collective self-government and meaningful political-community choice.

That transformation will depend on political movements and alliances whose outcomes cannot be known in advance.

The rights of Hand Democracy had to be won. The rights of Foot Democracy will have to be won as well.

Winning them will mean more than removing the barriers of the old order.

It will mean building the institutions of a new one.

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Further Reading

Books

• The World Citizen Revolution — On inherited political status and the Nation-Based Feudal Order.
• The World Citizen Society — On Hand Democracy, Foot Democracy, Resident Sovereignty, and political-community choice.

Related Essays

• How Does Entry Become a Right?
• Social Rights and Feudal Privilege
• When Does Residence Become Full Membership?
• From Nationality to Residence

References

1. UK Parliament, “The Reform Act 1832.” https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/houseofcommons/reformacts/overview/reformact1832/.
2. UK Parliament, “The Chartists.” https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/chartists/.
3. U.S. National Archives, “19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women’s Right to Vote (1920).” https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/19th-amendment.
4. U.S. National Archives, “15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Voting Rights (1870).” https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/15th-amendment.
5. U.S. National Archives, “Voting Rights Act (1965).” https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act.
6. University of Washington, Mapping American Social Movements Project, “Immigrant Rights Protests — Spring 2006.” https://depts.washington.edu/moves/2006_immigrant_rights.shtml.
7. U.S. Congress, Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, H.R. 4437, 109th Congress. https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/BILLS-109hr4437rfs.
8. Congressional Research Service, Criminalizing Unlawful Presence: Selected Issues, RS22413 (2006). https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RS22413.html.
9. EUR-Lex, “Treaty of Maastricht on European Union.” https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM:xy0026.
10. Migration Policy Institute, “Key Immigration Laws and Policy Developments Since 1986.” https://www.migrationpolicy.org/publication/key-immigration-laws-and-policy-developments-1986.
11. Congressional Research Service, Comprehensive Immigration Reform in the 113th Congress: Major Provisions in Senate-Passed S. 744 (2013). https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R43097.html.
12. U.S. Senate, Roll Call Vote 168, June 27, 2013, S. 744. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1131/vote_113_1_00168.htm.
13. Swiss Federal Supreme Court, BGE 129 I 217, July 9, 2003. https://relevancy.bger.ch/php/clir/http/index.php?highlight_docid=atf%3A%2F%2F129-I-217%3Ade&lang=de&type=show_document.