Institutional Design – World Citizen Theory

The hard case for Foot Democracy is not movement itself, but unequal pressure

In the previous article, “Branko Milanovic and the Citizenship Premium”, Branko Milanovic’s idea of a citizenship premium helped explain why many people may have strong reasons to move toward richer and more stable societies.

That raises the next question:

What happens when many of them want to move to the same place?

Suppose a country has good jobs, safe streets, strong schools, reliable public services, and political stability.

Many people want to move there.

But what if the number rises quickly?

Housing becomes harder to find. Schools become crowded. Hospitals face longer waiting times. Local governments struggle to process applications. Infrastructure takes years to expand.

Residents begin asking a reasonable question:

Does freedom of movement mean that a political community must accept everyone who wants to come, no matter how many arrive or how quickly?

The answer is no.

Foot Democracy does not require every community to admit unlimited numbers at any speed or under any conditions.

But pressure by itself does not justify permanent exclusion.

The difficult question is what kind of pressure is real, how serious it is, and what a community may reasonably do about it.

The Strongest Objection

Foot Democracy means that people should have a meaningful ability to choose among political communities.

That requires more than a formal right to leave. It requires realistic possibilities of Entry, residence, and eventually membership elsewhere.

But people will not choose every political community equally.

Some places will attract more people than others.

So the hard case is not migration in the abstract.

It is unequal migration pressure.

If Foot Democracy ignores that problem, it becomes unrealistic.

Numbers Are Not Enough

The first mistake is to ask only:

How many migrants are there?

A single number tells us surprisingly little.

Ten thousand newcomers may be easily absorbed by one large metropolitan area but overwhelm a much smaller town.

A country may accommodate substantial migration over ten years while struggling with the same number arriving in one year.

People may also concentrate in particular neighborhoods or regions.

The relevant questions are therefore different:

How many people are arriving?
How quickly?
Where are they settling?
What housing is available?
Can schools, hospitals, transport, and administration expand?
Who bears the fiscal costs during adjustment?

These are not the same problem.

Volume, Speed, and Concentration

Consider three communities.

In the first, migration rises gradually over fifteen years.

In the second, the same total number arrives in two years.

In the third, the number is again the same, but most newcomers settle in one small region.

The national figure is identical.

The institutional challenge is not.

This is why volume, speed, and concentration must be distinguished.

A community may be able to absorb a large number of new residents over time while being unable to provide housing or public services quickly enough during a sudden surge.

That does not necessarily mean the eventual level of migration is too high.

It may mean the rate of adjustment is too slow.

Capacity Is Local and Slow to Adjust

Housing, schools, hospitals, transport, and public administration do not expand instantly.

Planning rules, construction capacity, staffing, infrastructure, and financing all take time.

If population grows faster than those systems can respond, real pressure can emerge.

Migration may contribute to that pressure.

But it may also expose weaknesses that already existed: years of underbuilding, poor infrastructure investment, staff shortages, or the concentration of jobs in a few regions.

So the question should not simply be:

Did migration coincide with pressure?

It should be:

What is causing the bottleneck, and which response addresses the actual cause?

A capacity problem may sometimes be addressed by expanding capacity rather than restricting movement.

That is why mobility rights require something more than border rules.

They require mobility adjustment.

Mobility Rights Need Mobility Adjustment

A political community receiving more newcomers may need help adapting.

That can include faster housing construction, additional school places, healthcare investment, administrative staff, transport expansion, fiscal transfers to high-pressure areas, and better coordination between levels of government.

This is not purely theoretical.

During the European Union’s 2004 enlargement, several existing member states used transitional restrictions on workers from new member states before full freedom of movement applied. The limits were temporary and structured around a transition rather than permanent exclusion.

The United Kingdom also created a Migration Impacts Fund in 2009 to support local public services facing pressures associated with migration.

These examples do not prove that every adjustment policy works.

They show something narrower:

mobility can be combined with institutions that manage transition and local pressure.

Restrictions treat movement as the problem.

Adjustment treats institutional capacity as something that can change.

Sometimes both may be necessary.

But they should not be confused.

When Can Safeguards Be Justified?

There may be situations in which temporary limits are justified.

Suppose a small community faces a sudden inflow far beyond its available housing, administrative, or essential-service capacity.

Doing nothing may harm both existing residents and newcomers.

But safeguards should have to pass a demanding test.

A community should be able to show:

First, that the capacity problem is real rather than merely asserted.

Second, that less restrictive responses—such as infrastructure expansion, fiscal support, housing measures, or administrative assistance—are insufficient.

Third, that the safeguard is proportionate to the problem.

Fourth, that it is nondiscriminatory.

Fifth, that it is time-limited and reviewable.

There is also another boundary.

Safeguards may slow the pace of Entry. They should not solve capacity problems by creating a permanent class of residents who can live and work in the community but never gain a credible path to membership.

This follows directly from Resident Sovereignty.

The pace of admission may be adjusted.

Permanent political inferiority should not become the adjustment mechanism.

Perception and Reality Are Different Problems

Migration politics has another difficulty.

Residents may overestimate migration levels.

Governments may also underestimate genuine local strain.

Both errors matter.

A national government may point to manageable national statistics while one city is experiencing severe housing pressure.

A local political debate may blame migration for problems caused mainly by years of underinvestment.

So a workable system needs both accurate data and serious attention to lived conditions.

Political trust suffers when governments dismiss visible pressure.

It also suffers when exaggerated perceptions become the only basis for policy.

Neither statistics alone nor perception alone is enough.

Hand Democracy Cannot Simply Cancel Foot Democracy

At this point, a deeper political conflict appears.

Residents may say:

We live here. We should decide who enters.

That claim reflects Hand Democracy—collective self-government by the people who live under a community’s institutions.

Potential migrants may answer:

My freedom should not be permanently determined by the political community into which I happened to be born.

That claim reflects Foot Democracy.

Neither claim can simply erase the other.

If Hand Democracy always has absolute authority over Entry, Foot Democracy disappears whenever existing residents prefer exclusion.

But if Foot Democracy always overrides local self-government, communities lose meaningful control over institutions they must sustain together.

The boundary has to be worked out through institutions rather than fixed by declaring one principle supreme.

The Goal Is Choice

Foot Democracy does not aim to maximize migration.

Nor is zero migration the goal.

The objective is choice.

People should have meaningful possibilities to remain where they are, to move elsewhere, and to build membership when they do move.

That means reducing unnecessary barriers while building institutions capable of handling movement.

The stable formula is:

Mobility Rights + Mobility Adjustment.

This Is Not the Final Answer

Important questions remain.

How much pressure is enough to justify a temporary safeguard?

Who measures capacity?

How should the costs of adjustment be shared?

Those questions require more detailed institutional answers.

For now, the narrower point is enough.

Unequal migration pressure is a serious objection to a simplistic version of Foot Democracy.

It is not a refutation of Foot Democracy itself.

It shows that political freedom requires institutions capable of adjustment.

Conclusion

If many people want to move to the same place, the receiving community faces a real problem.

Housing, schools, hospitals, budgets, and administration cannot expand infinitely or instantly.

But that does not mean mobility must remain a privilege distributed by birth.

The question is what follows from the pressure.

A capacity problem can justify adjustment and, in some cases, temporary safeguards. It should not automatically justify permanent exclusion.

Foot Democracy therefore requires more than opening borders.

It requires political communities capable of adapting to movement without turning temporary strain into permanent hierarchy.

That is the harder—and more realistic—version of political freedom.

Notes

This article distinguishes migration volume, speed, and spatial concentration because each can create different institutional pressures.

“Mobility adjustment” refers to measures that expand or redistribute capacity in response to movement—for example housing, infrastructure, public-service funding, administrative support, and coordination between levels of government.

Temporary safeguards in the World Citizen framework are not unrestricted emergency powers. They require a demonstrated problem, consideration of less restrictive responses, proportionality, nondiscrimination, and time-limited review.