Category: Foot Democracy

Once Entry Is Won, How Is It Protected?
Why Political Freedom Must Be Won Again and Again

Imagine that a movement for Foot Democracy wins an important victory.

After years of organizing and campaigning, a country changes its laws. People born elsewhere now have a meaningful opportunity to seek admission, establish residence, and eventually become equal political members.

A woman who could not previously qualify applies under the new rules.

Her application is refused.

The authority offers little explanation. She cannot tell whether she failed to meet a legitimate requirement or whether the decision was arbitrary.

What has happened to the freedom that people struggled to win?

Early in this series, I distinguished between recognizing a political right and guaranteeing its effective exercise. I also left two questions open: how can outsiders win the right of Entry, and how can that right be protected once it is won?

The previous essay examined the first question.

This essay takes up the second, but with an important qualification.

Political freedom is not won once and for all.

When Does Admission Become a Right?

Consider two ways a government might admit people from abroad.

Under the first, officials grant permission when they consider admission desirable. Applicants may request admission, but the government retains broad discretion.

Under the second, the law establishes meaningful opportunities to seek Entry. It specifies conditions, requires authorities to follow them, and provides ways to challenge unlawful refusals.

Not everyone is guaranteed admission.

But the applicant is no longer merely asking for a favor. There is a legal claim that the government must consider.

This difference matters.

Yet even fair procedures cannot turn an extremely restrictive admission system into Foot Democracy.

Entry must offer a meaningful opportunity, and the institutions administering it must make that opportunity real.

Winning both requires political action.

What International Law Does Not Yet Guarantee

International human rights law already protects important freedoms of movement.

Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects freedom to leave any country, movement within a country for people lawfully present there, and protection against arbitrary denial of entry into one’s own country.

Article 13 provides certain protections against expulsion for foreigners lawfully present in a state.

These are important rights.

But they do not establish a general right to enter and settle in any foreign political community a person chooses.

That is the gap the World Citizen framework seeks to address.

The task is not simply to enforce existing movement rights more effectively. A further political freedom must be won.

Courts can sometimes develop existing protections. But the wider right of Entry cannot be expected to emerge from judicial interpretation alone.

The laws governing admission must change.

What European Law Can Teach Us

The European Union provides one example of legally protected movement across borders.

Directive 2004/38/EC recognizes movement and residence rights for qualifying EU citizens and their family members.

These are not simply favors granted by receiving governments.

The Directive specifies when rights may be restricted and how those decisions must be handled.

Article 27 addresses restrictions based on public policy, public security, or public health. Articles 30 and 31 provide protections concerning notification, reasons for decisions, and opportunities for review.

Article 15 extends important procedural safeguards to certain restrictions imposed for other reasons.

The distinction matters. Not every disagreement about residence concerns national security.

The Directive does not make Entry unconditional. Nor does it apply to everyone who wishes to settle in Europe.

EU citizenship remains connected to nationality of a member state, although qualifying family members may also enjoy rights.

Still, the example shows that cross-border movement can become a legal entitlement, protected by rules that authorities must follow.

Foot Democracy would require a broader transformation of who can claim such rights.

Why Reasons and Appeals Matter

Return to the woman whose application was refused.

Perhaps she failed to provide a document. Perhaps an official relied on incorrect information. Perhaps a legitimate restriction applied.

Without an explanation, she cannot know.

Without a meaningful opportunity to challenge the decision, an error may remain uncorrected.

A right therefore needs procedures people can actually use.

The requirements must be understandable. Officials must apply them according to law. Applicants need appropriate remedies when those rules are violated.

But judicial review differs across legal systems.

In Department of State v. Muñoz (2024), the US Supreme Court rejected an American citizen’s claim to a fundamental constitutional right to have her foreign-born husband admitted. American law also places substantial limits on judicial review of consular visa refusals.

This does not mean every immigration decision is beyond legal challenge.

It shows why the scope of legal protection must itself be addressed when an Entry right is established.

What must officials explain? What can courts examine? What remedies should applicants have?

Such questions are part of making political freedom real.

Who Protects Rights Across Borders?

Foot Democracy concerns relations between political communities. Protecting its rights may therefore require institutions operating under agreements between governments.

Brexit offers an example.

The EU–UK Withdrawal Agreement protected certain rights of citizens and family members affected by the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union.

In the UK, an Independent Monitoring Authority, or IMA, was established to monitor how public bodies apply those protections.

It can receive complaints, investigate possible failures, and take legal action in appropriate circumstances.

But the IMA does not directly resolve every individual’s case.

Its role includes identifying wider problems in the way authorities implement the law.

An unlawful decision may require an individual appeal. Repeated unlawful decisions may point to a failure in the system itself.

The Withdrawal Agreement did not establish a general right of Entry.

Nevertheless, it shows how cross-border rights may be supported by both individual remedies and independent oversight.

Neither replaces the need to win broader political rights.

A Right Must Be Won Again When It Is Threatened

Even a protection that has changed people’s lives can become vulnerable.

The United States’ Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program—DACA—offers an example.

Created in 2012 following years of advocacy by undocumented young people and their supporters, DACA allowed certain people brought to the United States as children to apply for temporary protection from removal and eligibility for work authorization.

It did not give them permanent residence or citizenship.

But it made an important practical difference.

Recipients could work under the program’s conditions and build their lives with greater protection against deportation.

In 2017, the federal government attempted to end DACA.

For the people affected, that decision threatened the protection on which they had come to rely.

The withdrawal was challenged in court.

In June 2020, the US Supreme Court ruled, by five votes to four, that the attempted rescission violated the Administrative Procedure Act.

The government had not adequately considered important issues, including the consequences for people who had relied on the program.

But the Court did not establish DACA as a permanent constitutional right.

It did not rule that a future government could never lawfully end the program.

The legal struggle continued.

Further litigation in Texas led to another significant federal appeals court ruling in January 2025.

At the time of writing, in October 2026, existing DACA recipients can generally continue seeking renewals. Federal authorities continue accepting initial requests, but are not processing them to approval.

The situation remains subject to legal and policy changes.

For recipients, this uncertainty is part of everyday life.

A favorable Supreme Court judgment in 2020 did not give them permanent legal status or settle the program’s future.

DACA is not an example of Foot Democracy’s general right of Entry. Its recipients were already living in the United States.

But it illustrates something essential.

A political victory can establish protection without securing it forever.

Courts may prevent an inadequately justified withdrawal. They cannot necessarily transform a temporary policy into lasting political membership.

The people who fought for protection must remain capable of defending it—and demanding something more secure.

A Right Must Work in Everyday Life

Political rights may also become ineffective without being formally withdrawn.

In Why the World Citizen Society Cannot Be Created Overnight, I examined the Windrush scandal in Britain.

Some long-term residents had legal rights to remain but could not produce the documents demanded by employers or public authorities.

People suffered serious harm because institutions failed to recognize rights they already possessed.

This is why records matter as much as rights.

Reliable documentation and fair procedures are essential. But institutions must not place impossible burdens on people to prove legal status that public authorities failed to document properly.

Foot Democracy will require dependable ways to recognize admission, residence, and membership.

A legal right must exist.

It must also be usable in daily life.

Entry Cannot End at the Border

An enforceable right of Entry is only part of Foot Democracy.

Someone may be admitted yet remain in insecure residence for decades, with no credible opportunity to become an equal political member.

That would expand mobility without completing political-community choice.

Meaningful Entry must therefore connect to lawful residence and a secure pathway toward full membership.

Resident Sovereignty identifies durable residence, rather than inherited nationality, as the primary basis of ordinary political membership.

Resident Equality and Membership Security concern the equal and secure standing of those who become full members.

These requirements do not mean immediate full membership upon arrival.

They mean that Entry must open a political future that is genuinely attainable.

Otherwise, crossing a border may simply lead to another form of lasting exclusion.

Political Freedom Must Be Won Again and Again

What ultimately protects a political right?

Laws matter. Courts matter. Fair procedures and independent oversight matter.

But the history of political rights gives us no guarantee that a victory will endure forever.

Governments change. Laws are revised. Officials may apply rules restrictively. People who remain excluded may demand that rights be extended further.

DACA shows how protections can be threatened even after they have transformed people’s lives.

European law demonstrates how cross-border rights can be made enforceable.

The UK’s Independent Monitoring Authority shows why protection sometimes requires scrutiny of institutions, not only individual decisions.

None eliminates the need for political action.

The people who seek Entry must first become political actors capable of challenging exclusion.

When they succeed, they must remain involved in shaping the institutions through which the right is exercised.

When those institutions fail, or the freedom is threatened, they must act again.

In the previous essay, I described people who struggle to change the inherited rules of political belonging as those who give birth to world citizenship.

But giving birth is only the beginning.

They must also nurture, defend, and develop the freedom they have brought into being.

Courts and laws are indispensable achievements of political struggle. They do not replace the people whose actions made them possible.

The rights of Foot Democracy are not won once and then handed over to institutions for safekeeping. They must be won, protected, expanded, and won again through continuing political action.

The World Citizen Revolution is therefore not simply an event through which a new right is recognized.

It is the continuing struggle to transform the Nation-Based Feudal Order and build institutions in which meaningful political-community choice becomes possible.

World citizenship is not merely a status to be obtained.

It is also a freedom that people must keep winning.

Further Reading

Books
- The World Citizen Revolution — On inherited nationality, political authority, and the Nation-Based Feudal Order.
- The World Citizen Society — On Foot Democracy, meaningful Entry, Resident Sovereignty, Resident Equality, and Membership Security.
Related Essays
References
1. European Parliament and Council, Directive 2004/38/EC of April 29, 2004, especially Articles 15, 27, 30, and 31. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32004L0038.
2. United Nations, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), especially Articles 12 and 13. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights.
3. UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 27, Freedom of Movement (Article 12), CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.9 (1999). https://www.refworld.org/legal/general/hrc/1999/46752.
4. Independent Monitoring Authority for the Citizens’ Rights Agreements, “Can I Complain?” https://ima-citizensrights.org.uk/complaints/can-i-complain/.
5. European Commission, “Citizens’ Rights Under the Withdrawal Agreement.” https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/relations-non-eu-countries/relations-united-kingdom/eu-uk-withdrawal-agreement-new/citizens-rights-new_en.
6. Supreme Court of the United States, Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, 591 U.S. 1 (2020). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-587_5ifl.pdf.
7. United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Texas v. United States, decision of January 17, 2025.
8. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).” https://www.uscis.gov/DACA.
9. Supreme Court of the United States, Department of State v. Muñoz, 602 U.S. 899 (2024). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-334new_hfci.pdf.
10. Wendy Williams, Windrush Lessons Learned Review, HC 93 (London: Home Office, March 2020). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/windrush-lessons-learned-review.
2026年10月23日
Who Can Change the Rules That Keep Outsiders Out?
How Outsiders Can Struggle for the Right of Entry

Imagine a woman who wants to make her home in another country.

She has learned its language. She has friends there, perhaps even an employer willing to hire her. She hopes to build a future in that community.

But she cannot obtain permission to enter and settle.

The decision rests with a government whose representatives she cannot elect. Her own government may be unwilling or unable to help her.

What can she do?

In From the Struggle for the Vote to the Struggle for Political Choice, I argued that the rights of Foot Democracy, like those of Hand Democracy, must be won through political action.

Entry presents a particular difficulty.

How can people outside a political community gain the power to change the rules that keep them outside?

The Political Problem of Being Outside

In most democratic countries, existing citizens elect the legislators who determine immigration and nationality laws.

People seeking admission generally cannot vote in those elections.

Earlier struggles for voting rights faced a similar difficulty. But many of those excluded already lived within the society they wanted to change. They could organize with neighbors, form associations, and demonstrate in public.

Someone outside the country may have none of those opportunities.

Even the courts may offer limited help.

In Department of State v. Muñoz (2024), the US Supreme Court considered the case of an American woman whose foreign-born husband had been denied a visa.

The Court held that she had no fundamental constitutional right to have her husband admitted to the United States.

The ruling did not mean that every immigration decision is beyond legal challenge. It concerned a particular constitutional claim, and other countries have different laws.

But it illustrates a problem.

Even someone with close family ties to a citizen may have little ability to challenge a decision excluding them from the country.

If a meaningful right of Entry is not recognized in law, courts cannot be expected to establish the entire right on their own.

The problem is therefore political as well as legal.

People seeking Entry must find ways to influence institutions before becoming members of the communities those institutions govern.

When Excluded People Organize Themselves

The 1996 sans-papiers movement in France offers a starting point.

People without regular immigration status organized to demand legal recognition of their residence.

Some occupied churches in Paris, including Saint-Bernard, where police forcibly removed protesters in August 1996.

The movement attracted support from associations, trade unionists, and other residents.

But those most directly affected were not simply receiving help. They organized and made demands in their own names.

The movement did not establish a general right of Entry.

Its participants were largely people already living in France. Their immediate struggle concerned residence, not admission from abroad.

That difference matters.

Still, the movement shows that people excluded from important legal and political rights can become political actors.

They need not wait for existing citizens to speak for them.

For Entry, the challenge is harder.

How can people organize before they have even entered the political community whose rules they want to change?

Political Organization Across Borders

Migrant Forum in Asia offers one example of what is possible.

Formally established in 1994, the network connects migrant organizations, trade unions, civil society groups, and advocates working across Asia and the Middle East.

They cooperate on problems such as recruitment practices, discrimination, and the rights of migrant workers.

These problems often involve more than one country.

Workers may be recruited in one state, employed in another, and affected by policies made in both.

Organizations working in different countries can therefore share information, coordinate their demands, and bring concerns to regional and international institutions.

Their political action does not depend entirely on one government negotiating for its own nationals.

That matters.

People whose lives are shaped by borders can organize across those borders.

But Migrant Forum in Asia has not won the general right of Entry proposed by the World Citizen framework.

Its work focuses primarily on the rights and conditions of migrants and migrant workers.

The next question remains open.

Could networks of this kind help people who are still outside a country organize politically to change its admission rules?

The existence of cross-border cooperation makes that possibility worth examining.

It does not guarantee success.

Allies Inside the Receiving Community

People seeking Entry may need allies who already possess political influence in the country they hope to join.

Canada’s private sponsorship of refugees offers an example of cooperation across this boundary.

Residents and authorized organizations can help refugees from abroad settle in Canada. They may provide financial and practical support through established programs.

Their willingness to help can make a real difference.

But sponsors do not decide who is admitted. Government authorities determine eligibility, procedures, and admission limits.

At the time of writing, in October 2026, Canada has paused new applications through the Groups of Five and Community Sponsors streams until December 31, 2026. Other sponsorship arrangements continue under government rules.

The program also serves people with particular refugee-protection needs. It is not a general right to migrate.

Its significance for this essay lies in the political relationship it makes possible.

People inside a community can cooperate with people outside it and accept responsibilities toward them.

But helping someone enter under existing rules is different from winning the right to change those rules.

Foot Democracy requires political action directed at the institutions governing admission.

Outsiders must participate in shaping those demands, not simply receive the benefits of decisions made by others.

Otherwise, their political future remains dependent on the goodwill of existing members.

Why Economic Support Has Limits

Economic interests may also support easier admission.

For example, the US H-2A program allows qualifying agricultural employers to recruit foreign workers for temporary or seasonal employment.

But it is not a general route to permanent residence or citizenship.

An employer may need workers for a season. Those workers may hope to build permanent lives and eventually become political equals.

The two interests can overlap without being identical.

This creates a challenge for Foot Democracy.

Greater access to foreign labor does not necessarily mean support for secure residence or full political membership.

A political alliance must therefore consider not only whether its members favor Entry, but also what they believe should follow after admission.

Reciprocity: Useful but Insufficient

Governments can negotiate agreements allowing their nationals to enter and reside in other countries.

The European Union, MERCOSUR, and arrangements between Australia and New Zealand provide examples.

Such agreements can establish valuable opportunities for cross-border movement, work, and residence.

But they have an important limitation.

Their benefits generally depend on holding the nationality of a participating country.

People born outside the agreement may remain excluded.

Reciprocity can therefore reduce barriers for some people while creating a new distinction between those inside and outside a group of states.

Where people enjoy effective democratic rights in their country of origin, they may influence their government’s efforts to negotiate mobility agreements.

That is one possible connection between Hand Democracy and Foot Democracy.

But not everyone has effective democratic rights at home.

Nor should someone’s opportunity to join another political community depend on the diplomatic influence of the country where that person was born.

Reciprocity may help expand political-community choice.

It cannot replace the struggle for Entry rights that do not depend on the political power of one’s country of birth.

From Support to Political Power

What would it take to turn these different forms of support into real political change?

Prospective migrants may need organizations that connect them with established immigrants, existing citizens, workers, civic groups, and other supporters.

Such organizations would have to influence public debate and the elected representatives who control admission laws.

But building an alliance is not the same as giving outsiders a political voice.

A coalition may accept compromises that serve its members who already possess voting rights while leaving prospective migrants excluded.

This is why the participation of outsiders matters.

They must be able to express their own interests, help determine the goals of the movement, and challenge proposals that treat their admission as a favor rather than a claim to political freedom.

These are demanding conditions.

Different groups may disagree about how many people should be admitted, what requirements should apply, and how admission should lead toward membership.

No existing movement can simply be assumed to represent everyone seeking Foot Democracy.

Nor do we know in advance which alliances might become politically strong enough to change national admission laws.

But the direction is clear.

Outsiders must become participants in the political struggle over Entry, not merely people for whom others negotiate.

What Would Winning Entry Mean?

A larger immigration program is not necessarily a right of Entry.

A government might admit more temporary workers while denying them any realistic opportunity to settle.

It might favor selected nationalities through reciprocal agreements while excluding people born elsewhere.

Foot Democracy requires something different.

People need genuine, institutionally protected opportunities to seek admission to communities other than those into which they were born.

These opportunities need not be unconditional. Receiving communities may establish legitimate requirements concerning admission and public responsibilities.

But Entry cannot remain merely a discretionary favor granted by existing members.

Nor can admission be separated from what happens afterward.

Meaningful Entry must connect to lawful residence and a credible path toward secure, equal political membership.

Otherwise, people may gain greater freedom to move while remaining permanently excluded from political equality.

The point is not simply to cross a border.

It is to make the choice of political community a real freedom.

Changing the Rules of Belonging

The struggle for Entry leads back to the Nation-Based Feudal Order.

In that order, nationality inherited at birth strongly influences which political communities people may enter and where they may become political equals.

Sponsorship programs can help particular people. Temporary labor arrangements can expand economic mobility. Reciprocal agreements can establish valuable rights for nationals of participating states.

But these measures do not, by themselves, remove the inherited structure of political belonging.

The World Citizen Revolution seeks to change that structure.

It does not require abolishing political communities or creating a single world government.

It requires political action capable of making membership in another community a meaningful possibility, while preserving collective democratic self-government.

Earlier struggles for Hand Democracy involved people who had to gain influence over institutions that denied them the vote.

Foot Democracy faces an even more difficult problem.

People outside a political community must gain influence over the rules that determine whether they may enter it.

The French sans-papiers movement shows that legally excluded people can organize in their own names.

Migrant Forum in Asia shows that political organization can cross national boundaries.

The Muñoz decision illustrates how limited existing legal claims to admission may be.

None of these examples provides a complete solution.

But they help explain why the struggle for Entry cannot depend on governments becoming more generous.

Those who seek the right must develop political organizations, find allies, and challenge the institutions that make membership depend so heavily on inherited nationality.

The right of Entry must be won through political action by those who seek it, in cooperation with others—but not in dependence on the government of their birth.

These outsiders may not yet possess the rights they demand. They may not even be permitted to enter the communities they hope to join.

Yet they are not merely asking others to decide their future. By organizing to change the inherited rules of political belonging, they are the people who give birth to world citizenship.

World citizenship, in this sense, begins as a political claim before it becomes a legally protected form of membership. The people making that claim are its political creators, not simply the future beneficiaries of reform.

But their struggle cannot end with admission. Entry must lead toward secure residence and equal political membership.

That is how the struggle for Entry becomes part of dismantling the Nation-Based Feudal Order.

That is one of the central political tasks of the World Citizen Revolution.

Further Reading

Books
- The World Citizen Revolution — On inherited nationality and the Nation-Based Feudal Order.
- The World Citizen Society — On Foot Democracy, meaningful Entry, Resident Sovereignty, and political-community choice.
Related Essays
References
1. Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, historical materials on the 1996 Saint-Bernard sans-papiers movement. 28 juin – 23 août 1996 : les sans-papiers de Saint-Bernard.
2. Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA), historical coverage of the August 23, 1996 evacuation of Saint-Bernard. Evacuation sans papiers.
3. Migrant Forum in Asia, “The Organization.” https://mfasia.org/migrantforumasia/about-mfa/the-organization/.
4. Supreme Court of the United States, Department of State v. Muñoz, 602 U.S. 899 (2024), decided June 21, 2024. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-334new_hfci.pdf.
5. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, “Temporary Pause Extended on Intake of Refugee Sponsorship Applications From Groups of Five and Community Sponsors,” November 21, 2025. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/notices/temporary-pause-extended-refugee-sponsorship-applications-groups-five.html.
6. United States Department of Labor, “H-2A Temporary Agricultural Program.” https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/h-2a.
7. MERCOSUR, Acuerdo sobre Residencia para Nacionales de los Estados Partes del MERCOSUR, Bolivia y Chile (2002). https://www.mercosur.int/documento/acuerdo-residencia-nacionales-estados-partes-mercosur-bolivia-chile.
8. Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, “New Zealand Country Brief.” https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/new-zealand/new-zealand-country-brief.
9. European Commission, “Free Movement and Residence.” https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/democracy-eu-citizenship-anti-corruption/free-movement-and-residence_en.
2026年10月23日
Equal Rights, Unequal Ability to Move
Equal mobility rights do not automatically create equal mobility capacity

Imagine two people who possess exactly the same legal right to move.

Both are allowed to leave.

Both are allowed to enter another political community.

Both can apply for residence there.

On paper, they have the same freedom.

But their lives are different.

One has savings.

A portable profession.

No dependents.

Several languages.

Friends abroad.

A passport that makes international travel relatively easy.

The other has little savings.

An elderly parent who depends on daily care.

A job tied to one local labor market.

Children in school.

A disability that requires nearby support.

A qualification that may not be recognized elsewhere.

Legally, they may have the same right.

Practically, they do not have the same choice.

That is one of the hardest problems for Foot Democracy.

Equal mobility rights do not automatically create equal mobility capacity.

Unequal Starting Points

The inequality can begin before income, housing, disability, or family circumstances enter the picture.

Consider passports.

In the January 2026 edition of the Henley Passport Index, a Singaporean passport provided access to 192 destinations without obtaining a visa in advance.

A Japanese passport provided access to 188.

An Afghan passport provided access to only 24.

These numbers do not measure a right to immigrate, work, or become a political member of another country.

A tourist visa is not Foot Democracy.

But the contrast reveals something important.

Even basic cross-border mobility is already distributed very unequally according to nationality.

Before two people begin considering jobs, housing, family, or political membership, the administrative obstacles they encounter may already be radically different.

Formal Freedom and Usable Freedom

A legal right matters.

Without it, movement may be impossible from the beginning.

But legal permission is not the same as practical ability.

A legal option can exist while remaining difficult to use in ordinary life.

This is why Foot Democracy cannot be evaluated only by asking:

Can people legally leave?

The harder question is:

Can they realistically establish ordinary life somewhere else?

Natural Attachment Is Not Institutional Lock-In

This distinction is crucial.

Suppose someone stays because their parents live nearby.

That is not the same as being legally trapped.

Suppose someone stays because they love the language, landscape, neighborhood, or community.

That is not political coercion.

People are rooted.

That is part of human life.

Now suppose someone stays because leaving would mean losing professional status for no adequate reason.

Or because accrued pension rights cannot realistically follow them.

Or because necessary records must be recreated from the beginning.

Or because a residence procedure is unnecessarily opaque.

Or because an institution demands duplicative documentation without a clear purpose.

Those are different problems.

They are forms of institutional lock-in.

Foot Democracy should not try to eliminate attachment.

It should try to reduce avoidable institutional barriers that turn legal mobility into nominal mobility.

The Goal Is Not Equal Mobility

There is a temptation to overcorrect.

If mobility is unequal, perhaps government should make everyone equally mobile.

That would be neither realistic nor desirable.

People have different lives.

A caregiver cannot simply be made as mobile as someone with no family responsibilities.

A person who loves a particular place does not need to be made less attached to it.

A person with a locally rooted profession may rationally prefer not to leave.

Foot Democracy does not require equal movement.

It does not require equal willingness to move.

It does not require equal outcomes.

The claim is narrower:

Public institutions should not add avoidable barriers that make an otherwise available political-community choice predictably unusable.

The World Citizen Society calls this practical standard Effective Mobility.

The principle is simple: legal freedom should not be made hollow by unnecessary institutional obstacles.

What Makes Mobility Unequal?

The two people from the beginning may have the same formal right, but very different practical choices.

One may be able to move within weeks.

The other may need to ask:

Who will care for an elderly parent?

Can the family afford housing?

Will the children enter school without serious disruption?

Will necessary disability support continue?

Will professional qualifications be recognized?

Can the person work?

Can accumulated pension or social-insurance rights be preserved?

Do they understand the procedures?

None of these questions alone proves that movement is impossible.

Together, however, they can make the same legal right much weaker in practice.

Some of these differences arise naturally from human circumstances.

Others are created or intensified by institutions.

That distinction tells us where institutional reform should begin.

Disability: From a Right to a Usable Right

Disability makes the distinction especially clear.

Article 18 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognizes, on an equal basis with others, the rights of persons with disabilities to liberty of movement, freedom to choose their residence, and nationality. It also protects access to nationality and identity documentation needed to exercise mobility.

That establishes an important legal principle.

But legal recognition does not answer every practical question.

Can accessible transport be used?

Will disability documentation be recognized?

Can a person use services without proving the same condition again from the beginning?

Will essential support disappear at a border?

The European Union has adopted a limited institutional response.

Directive (EU) 2024/2841 establishes a European Disability Card to be mutually recognized across Member States. The Directive must be transposed into national law by June 2027, and its rules are to apply from June 2028.

The card is intended primarily to make it easier for persons with disabilities during short stays in another Member State to receive the same special conditions or preferential treatment offered there to residents with disabilities.

Its scope is limited.

It does not create a single European disability-benefit system.

It does not require every Member State to accept another state’s assessment for all social-security or long-term support purposes.

But that limitation is precisely why the example is useful.

It shows one way institutions can reduce unnecessary discontinuity without requiring all political communities to operate identical systems.

A person need not always begin from zero merely because a border has been crossed.

What Can Institutions Actually Change?

Institutions cannot remove every reason movement is difficult.

They cannot eliminate family attachment.

They cannot make every house affordable.

They cannot make every profession identical.

They cannot guarantee that every destination suits every person.

But they can reduce barriers of their own making.

For example, they can:
- make qualification-recognition procedures clear and subject to reasonable time limits;
- make accrued pension rights, records, and relevant entitlements more portable where coordination permits;
- provide residence, employment, education, healthcare, and tax information in an accessible and understandable form;
- reduce unnecessary duplication of documents and assessments;
- coordinate transitions so that disability or care support does not cease merely because an administrative boundary has been crossed;
- provide review or appeal when recognition, residence, or portability is refused.
These measures do not guarantee movement.

They make an existing freedom more usable.

If a Barrier Remains, It Needs a Reason

Not every mobility barrier is illegitimate.

A medical profession can require proof of competence.

A state can require reliable identity documents.

A community can enforce safety standards.

Some restrictions serve real public purposes.

The question is therefore not:

Should every barrier disappear?

It is:

What legitimate purpose does this barrier serve, and could that purpose be achieved with less damage to mobility?

This connects Foot Democracy to a broader principle developed earlier in this series: restrictions on political freedom need justification.

The institution imposing a restriction should be able to explain why it is needed, why it is proportionate to the problem, and why a less restrictive alternative would not work adequately.

That does not eliminate regulation.

It disciplines regulation.

When Unequal Mobility Becomes Unequal Political Power

An earlier essay, “Can Foot Democracy Discipline Majority Democracy?”, examined one consequence of unequal mobility.

A person who can credibly leave may have more leverage over government than someone rooted by income, care, disability, or family.

If only a narrow group can realistically change political communities, Foot Democracy will work far better for that group than for everyone else.

That makes unequal mobility capacity not only a practical problem, but a political-equality problem.

What Equality Should Mean

Equal mobility capacity is impossible.

The more defensible principle is equal legal standing combined with a duty not to impose unjustified institutional barriers.

People should not need to be unusually wealthy, healthy, mobile, or well connected in order for a legal mobility right to be usable.

This leaves room for personal differences, legitimate regulation, and people who strongly prefer to remain where they are.

Staying should not automatically be interpreted as political consent.

The freedom to move must coexist with the freedom to remain.

Conclusion

Equal rights are essential.

But equal rights on paper do not automatically create equal political choice.

The passport someone holds can shape the obstacles they encounter before a move even begins.

Income, disability, care, housing, qualifications, employment, language, and social networks can widen the difference further.

Some of those differences are part of ordinary human life.

Others are created by institutions.

That is the line political design should pay attention to.

Foot Democracy cannot make everyone equally mobile.

Nor should it try.

Its more realistic task is to identify avoidable institutional barriers, remove them where possible, and require justification where restrictions remain necessary.

The goal is not more movement for its own sake.

It is not to detach people from family, home, or community.

It is to ensure that political-community choice is not merely a formal freedom reserved for those whose circumstances already make movement easy.

A political freedom is not fully meaningful if only the most mobile people can realistically use it.

Notes

The Henley Passport Index, January 2026, ranked passports by the number of destinations accessible without obtaining a visa in advance. Singapore provided access to 192 destinations, Japan 188, and Afghanistan 24. These figures concern short-term travel access and do not measure residence rights, employment rights, or political membership.

Article 18 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities concerns liberty of movement and nationality. It recognizes these rights for persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others and includes protections concerning nationality and identity documentation needed for mobility.

Directive (EU) 2024/2841 establishes the European Disability Card and European Parking Card. The Directive must be transposed into national law by 5 June 2027, and its rules apply from 5 June 2028. The European Disability Card is principally designed to facilitate short stays and equal access to specified special conditions or preferential treatment. It does not harmonize national disability-benefit systems or require general portability of social-security benefits.

The World Citizen Society treats unequal mobility as a central limit on Foot Democracy. Mobility capacity can vary with income, wealth, age, disability, health, family obligations, caregiving, job specificity, housing, language, education, qualifications, nationality, legal status, social networks, debt, and pension arrangements.

Sources
- Henley & Partners, “A Growing Passport Divide Reshapes Global Mobility in 2026,” 13 January 2026: https://www.henleyglobal.com/newsroom/press-releases/henley-global-mobility-report-january-2026
- United Nations / OHCHR, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Article 18: https://searchlibrary.ohchr.org/record/22683/files/22683.pdf
- EUR-Lex, Directive (EU) 2024/2841: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32024L2841
Further Reading

For why legal Entry must be accompanied by realistic mobility, see “Why Exit Is Not Enough: The Missing Problem of Entry.”

For why restrictions on political freedom require justification, see “Rights Before Choice: Why Neither Majorities nor Mobility Can Override Basic Rights.”

For why rights and records must survive movement, see “How Can Rights Survive Movement?”

For how unequal mobility can become unequal political influence, see “Can Foot Democracy Discipline Majority Democracy?”

For the broader limits of political-community choice, see “What Foot Democracy Can—and Cannot—Do.”

For the full institutional treatment, see Toshiyuki Nishimura, The World Citizen Society: Political Freedom, Democratic Choice, and the Institutions of a New Society, Chapter 16, “Unequal Mobility and Unequal Migration Pressure.”
2026年10月22日
When Mobility Creates Fiscal Risk

The fiscal problem is often not movement itself, but who pays, who collects, and who adjusts

Imagine a city receiving a large number of new residents in a short period of time.

They need housing.

Children need schools.

People need transport, administration, and other public services.

Some begin working and paying taxes.

Others cannot work immediately.

The city bears many of the immediate costs.

But the city may not control the immigration rules.

It may not control the work-authorization system.

It may not receive enough additional revenue when the costs first appear.

Residents see crowded services and rising expenditure.

The easiest conclusion is:

migration is causing a fiscal crisis.

Sometimes movement really does create pressure.

But that is not yet a complete diagnosis.

The deeper question is:

Is the fiscal risk caused by movement itself, or by a mismatch between the institutions that make the rules, collect the revenue, and pay the costs?

What the National Numbers Can Hide

Public debate often asks a simple question:

Does migration cost taxpayers money?

OECD research shows why the answer is rarely simple.

In its International Migration Outlook 2021, the OECD examined the fiscal impact of immigration across 25 member countries over 2006–2018.

For most of them, immigrants’ total net fiscal contribution remained within a relatively narrow range—roughly minus one to plus one percent of GDP.

The result differed across countries.

Age mattered.

Employment mattered.

Taxes and social contributions mattered.

So did the way governments counted public expenditure.

This does not mean fiscal effects are unimportant.

It means national averages tell only part of the story.

A country can show a modest overall fiscal effect while a particular city faces intense pressure.

That is exactly what happened in New York.

New York City: When Local Costs Become Large

Beginning in 2022, large numbers of people seeking asylum arrived in New York City.

The city provided shelter and other services.

The costs were substantial.

According to the New York City Comptroller, actual asylum-seeker-related spending in fiscal years 2023 through 2025 totaled about $8.25 billion.

Of that amount, roughly $5.0 billion was funded by the city itself.

State government provided substantial support.

Federal support covered a much smaller share.

Those figures matter because the central legal rules governing asylum and employment authorization are federal, while much of the immediate shelter and service burden fell on the city.

This is not proof that asylum seekers caused a general fiscal crisis in New York.

Nor does it tell us what the long-term fiscal contribution of those residents will be.

It shows something more specific.

A mobility regime can be fiscally manageable in aggregate and still create severe pressure in one place.

Why?

Because authority, costs, revenue, and timing may be divided across different institutions.

The Competence-Resource Problem

The World Citizen Society calls this a competence-resource problem.

The principle is straightforward.

If an institution is responsible for providing a public function, it needs access to the resources required to perform it.

Otherwise responsibility and revenue drift apart.

A national government may control important migration rules.

A city may have to provide shelter, schools, transport, waste collection, housing-related infrastructure, and administrative services.

If the local government lacks adequate revenue or transfers, residents may experience a real deterioration in services.

That reaction should not automatically be dismissed as hostility to newcomers.

The fiscal imbalance may be genuine.

But if the problem is a mismatch between responsibility and resources, restricting movement is not the only possible response.

Revenue sharing may help.

Transfers may help.

Infrastructure investment may help.

The allocation of responsibilities may need to change.

The correct diagnosis changes the policy menu.

Costs Today, Work Months Later

New York also illustrates another kind of mismatch.

Under the ordinary U.S. rules for asylum applicants, a person generally must wait 150 days after filing an asylum application before applying for employment authorization.

Employment authorization cannot ordinarily be granted until the application has been pending for 180 days.

Applicant-caused delays can extend that timetable.

The fiscal timing is easy to see.

Local service costs can begin immediately.

Lawful employment under the ordinary asylum-based authorization route may begin months later.

This does not mean that the 150-day or 180-day rule caused New York City’s fiscal burden.

The causes were much broader.

But it illustrates an important institutional point:

a system can create immediate expenditure while delaying a newcomer’s ability to participate legally in the labor market.

That is one way institutions can manufacture avoidable fiscal strain.

The relevant question is not simply:

How much do newcomers cost?

It is also:

Are public institutions making it harder than necessary for newcomers to work, contribute, and establish ordinary life?

Mobility Adjustment Can Mean Moving Resources

Earlier in this series, I argued that large, rapid, or concentrated movements can create real adjustment pressures.

The response need not always be permanent exclusion.

Sometimes adjustment is fiscal.

A city receiving a large number of newcomers may need additional schools, housing infrastructure, administrative capacity, transport, language services, or temporary accommodation.

Those things require money.

Mobility Adjustment can therefore mean more than slowing, sequencing, or redirecting movement.

It can also mean moving resources toward the places that bear the adjustment costs.

This matters because national averages can conceal local pressure.

The relevant question is not merely whether the country can absorb movement.

It is whether the particular institutions that must respond have the capacity and resources to do so.

Redistribution Raises a Scale Question

A different fiscal problem appears when the people financing redistribution are more mobile than those who depend on it.

Suppose a small political community finances a generous social program from a narrow and highly mobile tax base.

If enough high-income residents leave, financing may become more difficult.

Does that prove redistribution is incompatible with Foot Democracy?

No.

It may mean that the scale of financing matters.

Some redistribution can remain local.

Other obligations may require wider pooling, equalization, shared funds, coordinated tax rules, or common minimum protections.

The question is:

At what level can a fiscal obligation be sustained without making political mobility either meaningless or destabilizing?

That is an institutional-design problem.

The previous article examined how highly mobile taxpayers can put pressure on governments. That pressure matters fiscally, but movement alone does not decide whether a tax policy is sustainable.

When Fiscal Costs Are Hidden or Exported

Fiscal comparison can also mislead.

A government may appear cheap because some costs are hidden.

Taxes can remain low while debt rises.

Pensions can be underfunded.

Infrastructure maintenance can be postponed.

Environmental costs can be left to future residents.

Or costs can be exported.

Residents may use infrastructure financed elsewhere.

Pollution may cross borders.

Tax rules may erode another community’s tax base.

A community can therefore look fiscally attractive because someone else is paying part of the bill.

This matters for Foot Democracy because mobility responds to visible signals.

If those signals are incomplete, people may compare jurisdictions using the wrong price.

Cheap government today can mean expensive government tomorrow—or expensive government somewhere else.

That is why fiscal transparency and rules for cross-community costs matter.

Equalization Can Help—and Create New Risks

Political communities do not begin from equal fiscal positions.

Some have large tax bases, valuable land, natural resources, established infrastructure, or high-income populations.

Others face weaker tax bases, remoteness, demographic decline, high service costs, or inherited liabilities.

If every community had to finance every basic guarantee entirely from its own resources, formal political equality could coexist with profound institutional inequality.

Some equalization may therefore be necessary.

But equalization creates another problem.

If a community can make expensive discretionary choices while assuming that a wider institution will always rescue it, fiscal responsibility weakens.

This is often described as a soft budget constraint.

The challenge is to preserve solidarity without erasing responsibility.

A wider system may need to compensate for structural disadvantage.

That is different from guaranteeing that every discretionary local choice will be financed by someone else.

There is no single formula for drawing that line.

A Better Fiscal Question

The OECD numbers and the New York experience point in the same direction.

The question “Does migration cost money?” is too broad.

A political community should instead ask:

Who receives the revenue?

Who bears the immediate service costs?

At what level of government?

When do those costs arise?

When do revenues arrive?

Can newcomers work and contribute?

Are responsibilities matched with resources?

Are costs being exported to another community?

Are liabilities being pushed onto future residents?

These questions do not eliminate fiscal conflict.

They locate it more precisely.

A badly designed fiscal system can make sustainable mobility look unsustainable.

It can also make unsustainable policy look temporarily cheap.

Mobility Is Not the Fiscal Constitution

Foot Democracy can create useful fiscal pressure.

It can sharpen comparison and expose capacity problems.

But it can also move tax bases, concentrate local costs, complicate redistribution, and reveal mismatches between authority and resources.

Institutions determine how those effects are handled.

A stable fiscal order needs transparent budgets and liabilities.

Responsibilities matched with resources.

Equalization where justified.

Shared minimum protections where necessary.

Rules for exported costs.

Attention to long-term obligations.

And institutions that make economic participation realistically possible after people move.

The central principle is:

Mobility is one element in the fiscal architecture. It is not the fiscal constitution.

Conclusion

Political mobility has fiscal consequences.

Those consequences are real.

But the New York case shows why their location and timing matter.

A national fiscal picture can look modest while one city bears billions of dollars in immediate costs.

A person may be legally admitted while institutional rules delay economic participation.

A community may appear cheap because someone else—or someone in the future—is paying part of the bill.

The task is therefore not to deny fiscal pressure.

It is to diagnose it correctly.

Foot Democracy should allow people greater freedom to change political communities.

The institutions around that freedom must still allocate revenue, costs, obligations, and responsibility in a sustainable way.

Every political order has fiscal costs.

The real question is whether those costs are visible, fairly assigned, and carried by institutions capable of managing them.

Mobility should change who may belong. It should not make fiscal responsibility disappear.

Notes

The OECD, International Migration Outlook 2021, examines fiscal outcomes in 25 OECD countries over 2006–2018. For most countries, immigrants’ total net fiscal contribution remained between approximately −1 percent and +1 percent of GDP. The OECD also emphasizes the importance of age, employment, taxes, social contributions, and the treatment of public expenditure in explaining cross-country differences.

The New York City Comptroller reports actual asylum-seeker-related expenditures of approximately $1.47 billion in FY2023, $3.75 billion in FY2024, and $3.02 billion in FY2025—about $8.25 billion in total. City funding accounted for roughly $5.0 billion of those three years’ actual expenditures, with the remainder primarily supported by New York State and, to a much smaller extent, the federal government.

Under the ordinary U.S. asylum employment-authorization rules, an applicant generally may file for employment authorization after the asylum application has been pending for 150 days and may become eligible to receive an Employment Authorization Document after 180 days. Applicant-caused delays can stop the relevant clock. The example is used here to illustrate a timing mismatch; it does not establish that this waiting period alone caused New York City’s fiscal costs.

Chapter 14 of The World Citizen Society, “Fiscal Discipline Without Fiscal Determinism,” identifies a competence-resource problem where institutions responsible for Entry-related services lack adequate revenue or transfers. It also argues that avoidable barriers to work, qualification recognition, language access, and regulated professions can manufacture fiscal strain.

The term soft budget constraint is associated with János Kornai’s work on socialist economies and was later applied more broadly, including to intergovernmental fiscal relations. Here it describes the danger that guaranteed rescue can weaken responsibility for discretionary fiscal choices.

The exact formulas for equalization, insolvency, bailout conditions, common funds, and the division between local and wider redistribution remain unresolved in The World Citizen Society. The theory deliberately leaves these as institutional-design questions rather than supplying false precision.

Further Reading

For adjustment when movement becomes large, rapid, or geographically concentrated, see “What If Too Many People Want to Move to the Same Place?”

For how unequal mobility can become unequal political influence, see “Can Foot Democracy Discipline Majority Democracy?”

For why rights and records need to survive movement, see “How Can Rights Survive Movement?”

For the broader limits of political-community choice, see “What Foot Democracy Can—and Cannot—Do.”

For the full institutional treatment, see Toshiyuki Nishimura, The World Citizen Society: Political Freedom, Democratic Choice, and the Institutions of a New Society, Chapter 14, “Fiscal Discipline Without Fiscal Determinism.”

2026年10月22日
Can Foot Democracy Discipline Majority Democracy?

Mobility can constrain majority power—but it must not give the most mobile people more political power than everyone else

Suppose 60 percent of voters support a law.

The law is enacted.

Majority rule is central to democracy.

But democracy is more than majority rule.

The previous article described political captivity: people may possess substantial democratic freedom within a political community while having little meaningful freedom over which political community they can eventually belong to.

That condition matters for majority power.

If almost everyone is effectively tied to the political community into which they were born, a majority governs people who may have few realistic political alternatives.

Foot Democracy changes that background.

But it creates another problem.

What happens when some residents can leave much more easily than others?

Can mobility discipline majority government without giving the most mobile residents more political power?

That is the question here.

Rights Come First

One boundary can be stated briefly.

Earlier in this series, I argued that neither majority approval nor the availability of Exit can justify a violation of basic rights.

That principle does not change.

A majority cannot defend discrimination by saying, “You voted and lost.”

Nor can it say, “If you dislike it, leave.”

Foot Democracy becomes relevant after that constitutional boundary is secured.

Its role is not to decide what rights a majority may violate.

Its role is to change the incentives and alternatives surrounding political choices that remain legitimately open to democratic decision.

Two Kinds of Discipline

There are therefore two different ways in which majority power can be constrained.

The first is constitutional discipline.

Rights, legal procedures, courts, review, and other constitutional institutions limit what a majority may legitimately do.

The second is mobility-based discipline.

If residents have meaningful alternatives among political communities, governments may face pressure from the possibility that some people will choose to live elsewhere.

The distinction matters.

Constitutional discipline limits authority.

Mobility-based discipline changes incentives and alternatives.

If a majority violates a basic right, the answer is not to wait and see whether enough people leave.

But if a majority makes a legitimate policy choice about taxation, housing, transport, or public services, mobility may become part of the political environment in which that decision operates.

Norway: When Exit Becomes Political Leverage

Norway provides a useful example.

Norway has long imposed a tax on net wealth.

During a series of tax reforms from 2021 through 2024, effective taxation of business wealth and dividends increased.

Some wealthy residents subsequently moved abroad, and moves to Switzerland became prominent in the public debate.

That movement mattered politically.

Governments care when taxpayers, investors, business owners, or highly skilled residents leave.

Even a relatively small number of departures can become highly visible.

This looks like mobility-based discipline.

Government makes a decision.

Some residents have an alternative.

They use it.

The government must then decide how much political meaning to attach to their departure.

But the example immediately raises another question.

What if those most capable of leaving are also among the wealthiest and most economically influential members of the community?

Departure Is Information, Not a Verdict

One response to the Norwegian case would be simple:

wealthy people left, therefore the tax policy failed.

But the evidence does not support so simple a conclusion.

A 2026 NBER study by Marius A. K. Ring examined Norwegian tax reforms from 2021 to 2024.

It found clear migration responses among the very wealthy, concentrated especially among the top 0.1 percent and largely in 2022 and 2023.

But the estimated scale was much smaller than the public language of an “exodus” might suggest.

The study estimates that at most about 100 people left because of the reforms.

It also estimates that, without reform-induced outmigration, wealth-tax revenue would have risen by about 75 percent between 2021 and 2024.

After accounting for that outmigration, the increase was still about 71.5 percent.

The study also found no evidence that the affected firms reduced investment as a result.

That does not prove that every feature of the policy was optimal.

Nor does it prove that migration responses do not matter.

It shows something narrower and more important for this article:

Departure is information. It is not a verdict.

A government should notice when residents leave.

It should ask why.

It should examine the fiscal consequences.

It should consider unintended effects.

But movement does not replace political judgment.

A majority may know that some residents will leave and still rationally choose the policy.

When Government Responds to Exit

Norway’s response reveals the other side of the problem.

In 2024, Norway strengthened its exit-tax rules for unrealized gains when individuals cease to be Norwegian tax residents.

The stated objective was to preserve Norwegian taxation of gains accrued during Norwegian tax residence rather than allowing those gains to escape taxation simply because the owner moved abroad.

For emigrating individuals, the revised rules also introduced a NOK 3 million tax-free allowance.

The government explicitly noted that this allowance could mitigate possible negative effects on mobility.

This creates a difficult question for Foot Democracy.

A political community may have a legitimate interest in maintaining tax claims connected to gains accumulated while a person lived under its institutions.

But a tax triggered by departure can also affect the practical freedom to leave.

So where is the line?

When is an exit tax a legitimate way to preserve an existing fiscal claim?

When does it become a disproportionate obstacle to Exit?

Foot Democracy does not provide an automatic answer.

Both interests have to remain visible.

Freedom to leave does not imply freedom to erase every obligation created before leaving.

But neither should a government be able to make departure prohibitively costly simply because it wants to keep residents inside its tax base.

When Mobility Becomes Extra Political Power

Now imagine two voters.

Both have one vote.

One is wealthy, internationally connected, owns liquid assets, speaks several languages, and can establish residence elsewhere quickly.

The other has an ordinary income, cares for an elderly parent, depends on a locally specific job, and has children established in local schools.

Formally, both may possess the same freedom to leave.

Practically, they do not.

Now suppose the government considers a tax increase.

The first voter can credibly say:

If you adopt this policy, I can move.

The second voter cannot make the same threat.

At the ballot box, each has one vote.

Outside the ballot box, their mobility gives them different leverage.

This is the democratic danger.

Foot Democracy is meant to increase political freedom.

It should not create a system in which the most mobile residents acquire a second, unofficial vote.

Equal membership inside a community must not depend on how credible a person’s threat of Exit is.

The Exit Threat Is Not a Democratic Entitlement

Political influence is already unequal in many ways.

People have different amounts of money.

Different networks.

Different access to officials.

Different organizational resources.

Different ability to attract media attention.

Mobility can become another source of unequal influence.

That does not mean governments should prevent people from leaving.

Nor should mobility be deliberately made difficult simply to equalize political leverage.

But governments should not confuse a credible Exit option with greater democratic standing.

A person who can move easily does not thereby acquire a stronger claim to have public policy designed around their preferences.

Otherwise Foot Democracy would work against Resident Equality.

Formal equality at the ballot box would coexist with an informal hierarchy based on mobility.

How Should Government Read Exit?

The answer is neither to ignore Exit nor to obey it.

Governments should treat movement as evidence.

If taxpayers leave after a policy change, that matters.

If families leave because housing becomes unaffordable, that matters.

If professionals leave because institutions deteriorate, that matters.

If new residents arrive because a community provides opportunities unavailable elsewhere, that matters too.

But these are inputs into democratic judgment.

They are not commands.

Government still has to ask:

What are the policy’s benefits?

Who bears its costs?

Who gains?

Who leaves?

Who cannot leave?

Are costs being shifted onto another community?

Is the policy sustainable?

Are there less damaging ways to achieve the same objective?

Foot Democracy can make these questions harder to ignore.

It cannot answer them automatically.

Exit Can Strengthen—or Weaken—Voice

Mobility can improve democratic politics even when people do not move.

Residents can compare neighboring communities.

If similar services cost much more in one place, voters can ask why.

If one city builds housing while another remains chronically short, residents can compare the rules.

Visible alternatives can sharpen public debate.

In that sense, Foot Democracy can strengthen Hand Democracy.

But Exit can also weaken Voice.

If the people most able to organize opposition, finance civic organizations, or supply professional expertise leave first, those who remain may become less able to reform the community.

Sometimes Exit and Voice reinforce one another.

Sometimes one weakens the other.

The important question is not merely whether Exit is possible.

It is what Exit does to political power both for those who leave and for those who remain.

Discipline Without Veto

Foot Democracy does not give mobile residents a veto over majority rule.

A political community is entitled to make collective choices.

It may choose higher taxes, more redistribution, stronger environmental regulation, larger public services, or different housing rules.

Some residents may dislike those choices.

Some may leave.

That does not mean democracy failed.

Nor should a government design every policy to maximize resident retention or tax revenue.

The discipline created by mobility is weaker—and more useful—than a veto.

Movement reveals consequences.

It makes alternatives visible.

It creates comparison.

It may create pressure to explain, reform, or defend a policy.

But the decision remains a democratic one, bounded by rights and equal political standing.

This produces a two-sided constraint.

A majority should not assume that everyone born under its authority must remain politically tied to it forever.

But mobile residents should not be able to convert their greater ability to leave into greater political rank.

Conclusion

Can Foot Democracy discipline majority democracy?

Yes.

But not by replacing constitutional rights.

And not by turning the most mobile residents into a privileged political class.

Norway illustrates both sides.

Exit can be real.

It can affect political debate.

It can lead governments to reconsider tax design.

Government may in turn try to preserve fiscal obligations that would otherwise disappear when residence changes.

Yet the fact that people leave does not itself decide whether the original policy was right or wrong.

Departure is information, not a verdict.

Foot Democracy works only when two principles remain together:

people should have meaningful alternatives among political communities;

and equal membership inside a community must not depend on how credible a person’s threat of Exit is.

A majority may govern the community.

It should not own the political future of everyone born into it.

Notes

Earlier in this series, “Rights Before Choice: Why Neither Majorities nor Mobility Can Override Basic Rights” argued that majority approval and the availability of Exit are both insufficient to justify restrictions of basic rights. This article begins after that constitutional principle is accepted.

The distinction between constitutional discipline and mobility-based discipline is analytical. The first concerns legal limits on majority authority. The second concerns incentives, comparisons, and alternatives created when residents possess meaningful political-community choices.

Statistics Norway, Taxation of the Rich and Incentives for Investments: The Case of Norway, Discussion Papers No. 1001 (2023), discusses Norwegian capital-income and wealth taxation and the contemporary debate surrounding wealthy investors and international mobility.

Marius A. K. Ring, Taxing Entrepreneurial Wealth: Evidence from Norway, 2021–2025, NBER Working Paper No. 35854 (2026), analyzes reforms during 2021–2024. It finds migration responses concentrated among the wealthiest residents, estimates at most roughly 100 reform-induced departures, and estimates that wealth-tax revenue rose substantially even after accounting for this outmigration.

Norwegian government materials on the 2024 exit-tax amendments state that the principal objective is to preserve Norwegian taxation of unrealized gains accrued during Norwegian tax residence. For emigrating individuals, the reform introduced a NOK 3 million tax-free allowance; the government explicitly noted that this could mitigate negative effects on mobility.

The exit-tax discussion here does not conclude that exit taxation is inherently justified or inherently incompatible with Foot Democracy. It identifies a conflict requiring institutional justification: preserving legitimate fiscal claims without making departure disproportionately difficult.

The discussion of Exit and Voice draws on Albert O. Hirschman. Exit may sometimes reinforce Voice through comparison and political pressure, while selective Exit may also weaken the political capacity of those who remain.

Further Reading

For the constitutional boundary, see “Rights Before Choice: Why Neither Majorities nor Mobility Can Override Basic Rights.”

For the relationship between Exit and Voice, see “Albert Hirschman: Why Exit and Voice Are Not Enough.”

For why mobility does not produce a clean democratic verdict, see “Charles Tiebout and the Limits of Voting with Your Feet.”

For the broader limits of political-community choice, see “What Foot Democracy Can—and Cannot—Do.”

For the full institutional treatment, see Toshiyuki Nishimura, The World Citizen Society: Political Freedom, Democratic Choice, and the Institutions of a New Society, especially Chapters 5, 13, 14, and 16.

2026年10月22日

What Foot Democracy Can—and Cannot—Do

Political freedom is incomplete when we can choose governments but not the community we belong to

Imagine someone who has voted in every election for thirty years.

She reads the news. She joins campaigns. She argues with friends. She signs petitions. Sometimes she protests.

Her preferred party loses again and again.

But her political rights are protected. She can speak, organize, and vote.

In the ordinary democratic sense, she is politically free.

Yet there is another question.

What if she wants not only to change the government, but to live under a different political community altogether?

Can she enter another country?

Can she live there securely?

Can long residence eventually make her an equal political member?

For most people, the answers still depend heavily on where they happened to be born.

That is the problem Foot Democracy addresses.

It does not claim that elections are unimportant. It asks whether political freedom is complete when we have substantial freedom within a political community but very little freedom over which political community we may ultimately belong to.

Two Kinds of Political Freedom

Democracy usually asks how people govern the community to which they already belong.

Who votes?

Who represents them?

How can citizens criticize government?

How can majorities be held accountable?

These are questions of Hand Democracy.

Foot Democracy asks a different question:

Can people meaningfully change political communities?

Hand Democracy concerns freedom within a political community. Foot Democracy concerns freedom among political communities.

A person may therefore possess strong democratic rights where they live while having almost no realistic possibility of becoming an equal member somewhere else.

That is where the idea of political captivity becomes useful.

What I Mean by Political Captivity

By political captivity, I mean a situation in which a person may possess substantial political freedom inside a community but has no realistic alternative political community to which they can move and eventually belong as an equal.

The word is deliberately limited.

It does not mean that democratic states are prisons. It does not mean that everyone who cannot easily migrate is literally captive. And it does not mean that a person who remains somewhere is necessarily unhappy.

It describes something narrower:

Political membership may be largely non-choosable even when political participation is real.

A person may be free to criticize the government, organize, vote, and stand for office.

Yet the political community in which those rights can ultimately be exercised as an equal member may still be determined largely by birth.

Hand Democracy can therefore be strong while Foot Democracy remains weak.

The Mild Form

Political captivity does not have to look dramatic.

Return to the voter who has lost elections for thirty years.

She may still love her country. Her family is there. Her language is there. Her memories are there.

Perhaps she never wants to leave.

That is perfectly compatible with political freedom. Foot Democracy is not a duty to move.

But suppose she does want another political option.

She may admire another society. She may prefer its laws, public institutions, political culture, or way of life.

Yet preference alone does not allow her to enter.

Even if she receives permission to move, long residence may still leave her outside equal political membership.

Her democratic freedom inside her original community can therefore coexist with a strong inherited constraint on political belonging.

No wall is required.

The constraint may lie simply in the absence of another realistic community where she can enter, remain, build an ordinary life, and eventually belong as an equal.

The Extreme Form

The Berlin Wall made the extreme form visible.

There, the East German government restricted not merely Entry elsewhere but Exit itself.

When a government prevents people from leaving, the loss of freedom is obvious.

But political captivity does not require a wall.

The deeper question survives in democratic societies where departure is perfectly legal.

A person may be free to leave and still lack a meaningful place to enter.

That is why formal Exit is not enough.

The issue is whether political-community choice is realistically usable.

What Foot Democracy Changes

Foot Democracy changes the structure of political freedom in several ways.

First, it reduces the extent to which political membership is assigned by birth.

Second, it creates meaningful alternatives. A person who cannot change a community from within may have another option besides permanent political defeat.

Third, it can place some pressure on governments. If residents possess real alternatives, governments may have stronger reasons to pay attention to why people stay, leave, or arrive.

Fourth, it allows institutional comparison. Different communities can experiment with different combinations of public services, taxation, housing, regulation, and political institutions. People and governments can learn from those differences.

None of these effects is automatic.

But they add something ordinary electoral democracy does not provide.

Mobility can discipline government. It cannot govern in place of government.

What Makes the Choice Real?

Legal permission to move is only the beginning.

A meaningful political alternative requires more than an open border.

A person must be able to establish ordinary life in the destination community.

Housing matters. Work matters. Professional recognition matters. Family circumstances matter. Rights portability matters. Information matters. Accessibility matters.

And Entry itself is not enough if a durable resident can never become an equal political member.

Foot Democracy is therefore not merely the right to cross a border.

It requires a workable path from departure to Entry, ordinary residence, realistic mobility, and eventual membership.

What Foot Democracy Cannot Do

Foot Democracy should not be asked to solve problems that require other institutions.

Foot Democracy can…	It cannot…
give people meaningful political alternatives	make every political outcome just
reduce birth-based political lock-in	replace basic rights
place additional pressure on governments	replace elections or democratic participation
encourage comparison and institutional learning	eliminate public-goods or externality problems
make membership more open to choice	make everyone equally able or willing to move
increase freedom among political communities	settle fiscal, welfare, or security policy by itself

These limits tell us what kind of principle Foot Democracy is.

It is not a substitute for government. It is not a substitute for rights.

It is one additional dimension of political freedom.

Choice Is Not Justice

This is the most important limit.

Choice and justice are different.

A person may choose between two unjust systems. A majority may choose an unjust law. A community may become attractive because it excludes people who have no political power there. A resident may remain somewhere for reasons that have nothing to do with approval.

So the existence of alternatives cannot justify whatever a government does.

A minority cannot simply be told:

“You can always leave.”

A political community must still respect basic rights. It must still justify restrictions. It must still provide legal remedies. And it must still allow people to challenge decisions from within.

More choice can make political life freer without making every political outcome just.

This is why Foot Democracy supplements Hand Democracy and rights protection rather than replacing them.

Why This Matters

The central question now becomes clearer.

Why should the political community into which a person is born be the only place where they can realistically become a full and equal political member?

There may be good reasons for regulating migration.

There may be capacity limits, security concerns, administrative constraints, fiscal questions, and family or welfare questions.

Those problems need institutions of their own.

But none of them, by itself, establishes that inherited nationality should remain the nearly exclusive gateway to equal political membership.

Foot Democracy does not say:

Let everyone move everywhere without rules.

It says that political-community choice should itself be recognized as an important dimension of political freedom.

Conclusion

A World Citizen Society would still contain political disagreement.

Elections would still matter. Rights would still need protection. Communities would still make mistakes. Some people would move more easily than others. Some would never want to move at all. Public goods, welfare systems, fiscal policy, and security would still require institutions.

Foot Democracy does not make those problems disappear.

Its contribution is narrower.

It reduces the extent to which political belonging is something a person simply receives at birth and carries for life with few meaningful alternatives.

People should have a meaningful possibility—not a guarantee of happiness, not a guarantee of justice, and not an obligation to leave—to establish life in another political community and eventually belong there as equals.

That limitation is not a weakness in the theory.

It is part of the theory.

The point is not that political-community choice solves politics.

The point is that political freedom is incomplete without it.

Foot Democracy is a dimension of political freedom, not a complete theory of justice.

Notes

The World Citizen Society defines Foot Democracy as a rights-bounded freedom to change political communities. It requires more than formal Exit: Meaningful Entry, lawful residence, Effective Mobility, a path toward political membership, and a protected freedom to remain.

The book calls the practical condition discussed in “What Makes the Choice Real?” Effective Mobility: a legally available move must be realistically usable for establishing ordinary life without avoidable institutional barriers making the option merely nominal.

The phrase political captivity is used here descriptively rather than as a separately formalized concept in The World Citizen Society. It refers to substantial freedom within a political community combined with little realistic freedom over which political community one may eventually join as an equal.

The framework does not treat Exit as political consent or as a waiver of rights. Nor does it treat Foot Democracy as superior to Hand Democracy. Foot Democracy adds a channel of political freedom while leaving the need for rights, collective self-government, fiscal institutions, public goods, social protection, and democratic participation intact.

Category: Foot Democracy

When Does Admission Become a Right?

What International Law Does Not Yet Guarantee

What European Law Can Teach Us

Why Reasons and Appeals Matter

Who Protects Rights Across Borders?

A Right Must Be Won Again When It Is Threatened

A Right Must Work in Everyday Life

Entry Cannot End at the Border

Political Freedom Must Be Won Again and Again

Further Reading

References

The Political Problem of Being Outside

When Excluded People Organize Themselves

Political Organization Across Borders

Allies Inside the Receiving Community

Why Economic Support Has Limits

Reciprocity: Useful but Insufficient

From Support to Political Power

What Would Winning Entry Mean?

Changing the Rules of Belonging

Further Reading

References

Unequal Starting Points

Formal Freedom and Usable Freedom

Natural Attachment Is Not Institutional Lock-In

The Goal Is Not Equal Mobility

What Makes Mobility Unequal?

Disability: From a Right to a Usable Right

What Can Institutions Actually Change?

If a Barrier Remains, It Needs a Reason

When Unequal Mobility Becomes Unequal Political Power

What Equality Should Mean

Conclusion

Notes

Sources

Further Reading

What the National Numbers Can Hide

New York City: When Local Costs Become Large

The Competence-Resource Problem

Costs Today, Work Months Later

Mobility Adjustment Can Mean Moving Resources

Redistribution Raises a Scale Question

When Fiscal Costs Are Hidden or Exported

Equalization Can Help—and Create New Risks

A Better Fiscal Question

Mobility Is Not the Fiscal Constitution

Conclusion

Notes

Further Reading

Rights Come First

Two Kinds of Discipline

Norway: When Exit Becomes Political Leverage

Departure Is Information, Not a Verdict

When Government Responds to Exit

When Mobility Becomes Extra Political Power

The Exit Threat Is Not a Democratic Entitlement

How Should Government Read Exit?

Exit Can Strengthen—or Weaken—Voice

Discipline Without Veto

Conclusion

Notes

Further Reading

Two Kinds of Political Freedom

What I Mean by Political Captivity

The Mild Form

The Extreme Form

What Foot Democracy Changes

What Makes the Choice Real?

What Foot Democracy Cannot Do

Choice Is Not Justice

Why This Matters

Conclusion

Notes

Further Reading

What Tiebout Was Trying to Explain

The Model Starts with Mobility

Tiebout Begins After Entry

Why Does Entry Change at the Border?

Who Can Afford to Vote with Their Feet?