How Far Should Political Equality Extend?

Voting is important. But if residents are to become equal political members, the question cannot end at the ballot box.

Imagine a long-term resident of New Zealand walking into a polling place to vote in a general election. She is not a New Zealand citizen, but she meets the electoral rules. Her vote counts alongside those of citizens.

Now suppose she wants to stand for Parliament herself. She cannot do so without becoming a citizen. The law recognizes her voice in choosing a representative, but not her eligibility to become one. [3]

This is not a contradiction in the law. It is a choice about how far political participation should extend. But it raises a question: when is a resident an equal political member, rather than someone permitted to exercise selected rights?

The question for a World Citizen Revolution is therefore not simply whether foreign residents should receive the vote. It is how far political equality must extend before membership ceases to depend on the accident of birth.

Equal in What Respect?

The word equality can describe several different demands.

One is equal treatment in ordinary life. A resident should not be denied legal protection, fair working conditions, or access to justice merely because of nationality. These protections matter whether or not the person has voting rights.

A second demand concerns political voice. People who live under laws should have meaningful ways to influence them: organizing, speaking, petitioning, voting, and, where appropriate, standing for office. These opportunities are connected, but they are not interchangeable. Permission to express an opinion is not equivalent to the power to cast a vote.

A third demand concerns secure membership. A person may cast a ballot today while remaining vulnerable to losing the right to live in the community tomorrow. If the government can terminate that person’s residence because an employer withdraws sponsorship, or because an administrative condition changes, the resident’s political standing remains precarious.

Resident Equality expresses the principle that people who have become members of a political community should not remain a permanently subordinate class because they were born elsewhere. It does not mean that every newcomer must immediately exercise every right of membership. Nor does residence automatically confer full membership under existing law. How people gain membership is a distinct institutional question. Once they gain it, equal political standing requires more than a vote that can be exercised only while their permission to remain is precarious.

Equal treatment and equal voice are indispensable. But neither alone answers who may belong securely.

What Existing Systems Show

International human-rights law supplies a useful starting point—and reveals a limitation. Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects the rights of citizens to take part in public affairs, vote, stand for election, and access public service on terms of equality. It does not, by itself, require states to give every noncitizen resident the national vote. That is a legal description, not an answer to the moral question of who ought to become a citizen or equivalent political member. [1]

The European Union gives Union citizens living in another member state rights to vote and stand in municipal elections there. That right depends on EU citizenship, not residence alone, and does not extend to the host country’s national parliamentary elections. [2]

In New Zealand, an eligible noncitizen voter must be at least eighteen, have lived in the country continuously for twelve months at some point, and be legally entitled to stay without a fixed departure requirement. An ordinary temporary work or study visa does not qualify. [3]

These examples do not mean that the boundary has disappeared. They show that its location is a political and legal choice. Voting can be opened to some noncitizens while candidacy or secure membership remains subject to different rules. These reforms are not the full freedom to choose one’s political community, but they show that nationality need not determine every opportunity for political participation.

Why Voting Cannot Carry the Whole Burden

Suppose a long-term resident receives the vote in national elections. The reform would address a serious democratic exclusion. It would not necessarily settle three further questions.

First, can the resident stand for election? New Zealand’s distinction between voters and parliamentary candidates makes the question concrete. The rights may be regulated differently, and some offices involve responsibilities that require special safeguards. Still, a community should have to explain why a resident who shares its obligations may choose its leaders but is categorically forbidden to become one.

Second, can the resident take part in institutions between elections? Parties, unions, neighborhood organizations, public consultations, and lawful protest are ways of shaping policy before a ballot is cast. Formal voting equality means less when vulnerable residents cannot organize without fear of losing employment or residence.

Third, is the resident’s membership secure in practice? A person whose permission to stay is tied to a single employer may hesitate to report abuse, join a political campaign, or challenge a government decision. Formal freedom can coexist with pressures that make exercising it dangerous.

The United Kingdom’s Windrush scandal shows another danger. Many people who had settled lawfully in Britain, including Commonwealth citizens, were wrongly treated as if they lacked the right to stay because they could not produce documents that officials demanded. Some lost jobs or access to services; others were detained or removed. Qualifying Commonwealth citizens can vote in British parliamentary elections, but it would be wrong to assume every Windrush victim had that right or had exercised it. The important point is narrower: even an existing legal right to remain can fail to protect a person when the authorities do not recognize or honor it. [4]

Consider a worker who has lived in the country for fifteen years and whose children have spent their entire lives there. If an injury ends that worker’s employment, does political belonging end with economic usefulness? A community that answers yes has made membership conditional on labor-market value. It has not recognized the person as an equal member.

This is where the issue reaches beyond suffrage. Even a meaningful vote cannot fully secure equal standing if membership can be withdrawn precisely when its protection matters most.

Does Equality Require Identical Rights Immediately?

An objection deserves a serious answer. If residence can lead to political membership, does a person become a voter the day after arriving? Could a visitor, a temporary worker, and someone who has raised a family in the country for thirty years all make identical claims?

I do not think they must.

Residence has a duration, and relationships develop over time. Rules may distinguish a short visit from settlement. A system can require a qualifying period before political membership takes effect, and verify identity, lawful eligibility, and genuine residence. Such procedures may protect the integrity of democratic decisions.

But three cautions follow.

A waiting period is not the same as a permanent exclusion. A rule that specifies when a resident may enter membership is different from a rule that says a foreign-born resident may never enter it, however long that person lives in the community.

A condition must be related to the purpose it serves. If the concern is a genuine connection to the community, indefinite employment with one company is a poor substitute for residence and social life. Wealth, occupation, and an employer’s preference should not quietly become qualifications for political worth.

The destination must be clear. A person cannot meaningfully choose a political community if the state offers only a chain of renewable permissions, each dependent on changing administrative discretion, without a credible route to secure membership.

This does not decide the exact length of residence required or the allocation of every public office. Those questions need democratic negotiation and institutional safeguards. They should not be disguised as matters that birth has already settled for all time.

Equality Also Creates Responsibilities

The demand for equal membership is sometimes presented as a claim to benefits without obligations. That is not the society I am describing.

A political community makes decisions about taxation, schools, public services, and security. Members share the consequences, even when they disagree. Equal membership gives them a standing in the argument; it does not promise that every decision will go their way.

A receiving community may reasonably ask how new members will share public costs and how services will remain sustainable. These are questions of political design, not reasons to give settled residents no voice.

Nor can those questions be answered simply by opening borders. Collective self-government and the individual’s freedom to choose a political community must be worked out together. Neither justifies treating political belonging as an inherited monopoly.

What Would Secure Membership Require?

A plausible system would need to distinguish the initial permission to enter, residence while a person builds a life, and the transition to secure membership. These are different stages and should not be treated as a single administrative favor. Membership security concerns the durability of the resulting status; it helps make Resident Equality effective but is not simply another name for equality.

In the stable model developed in The World Citizen Society, once a durable resident becomes a full political member, retaining a foreign nationality is no longer a ground for removal under ordinary immigration law. This protection does not place that member beyond ordinary criminal law.

The questions are practical.

Can people understand the conditions that apply to them? Are decisions made according to public rules, with reasons and an opportunity to challenge errors? Can a person’s lawful settlement count toward membership even if that person changes employers, becomes disabled, loses a job, or assumes unpaid care responsibilities? Once full membership is acquired, can it be taken away merely because the person becomes politically unpopular?

The answers need not be identical in every country. Some constitutional systems may use citizenship as the legal form of full membership. Others might recognize additional forms of political status. But a merely nominal label is insufficient if the person remains unable to exercise political rights or is exposed to arbitrary removal. These possibilities are proposals for institutional design, not claims about rights already guaranteed by international law.

Granting selected voting rights without a route to lasting membership can be genuine progress, but it is not the completion of Resident Equality. As the institutional questions developed in The World Citizen Society suggest, freedom to migrate, political participation, and membership security must be connected without being confused.

The Limits of a Single Formula

It would be convenient to write one rule that specifies the perfect number of years before a resident becomes a full member. I cannot derive such a number from the moral argument alone.

Nor do I assume that every public responsibility should be open under identical conditions from the first day of membership. Some roles may carry requirements justified by their powers, conflicts of interest, or security implications. Those exceptions must be defended in relation to the role; they cannot become an excuse for treating an entire class of settled residents as outsiders.

There are also hard cases involving people who live in more than one community. If someone maintains substantial ties to two countries, must political rights be exclusive? Does participation in one country weaken the legitimacy of participation in another? A world in which people can choose political membership will need answers that are better than either automatic exclusion or an assumption that these conflicts never arise.

For now, I would resist two tempting conclusions. One says that giving noncitizens any vote is already too much. The other says that extending a vote is enough. Both stop before the central issue is reached.

The deeper question is whether a person can cease to be a political outsider through a life actually lived in the community—and whether the resulting position is sufficiently equal and secure to withstand changes of government, employment, and fortune.

Return to the resident who can vote in New Zealand but cannot stand for Parliament without citizenship. Her vote is meaningful, and so is the difference in eligibility. The Windrush experience adds a different warning: even a right already held must be recognized and enforced when it is challenged. Equality cannot be measured by the ballot alone.

Political equality should be measured not only by whether a resident is heard on election day, but by whether that resident can belong on the days when no election is held.

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Notes and References

1. United Nations, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 25, and Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 25 (1996). Paragraph 3 asks states to report whether groups such as permanent residents hold some of these rights, including local voting rights. The Covenant’s citizen-based guarantee does not prohibit broader domestic rights.
2. European Commission, Right to vote and stand as a candidate in municipal elections. The right concerns Union citizens in another member state and municipal, not host-country national, elections.
3. New Zealand Electoral Commission, Are you eligible to enrol and vote? and How to become a candidate. Electoral residence eligibility has additional legal and overseas-voting conditions.
4. UK Home Office, Windrush Lessons Learned Review and government response; UK Electoral Commission, Who can vote in UK elections. Commonwealth nationality alone does not establish that every person affected by Windrush was entitled to vote.

Further Reading

Books

• The World Citizen Revolution — Books
• The World Citizen Society — Books

Related Essays

• “Hand Democracy and Foot Democracy: Two Dimensions of Political Freedom”
• “How Does Entry Become a Right?”
• “What Can the English and French Revolutions Teach Us?”