Voting Rights – World Citizen Theory

Can a Democracy Change Who Belongs Through Its Own Democratic Practices?

In 1989, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein tried to give certain foreign residents the right to vote in local elections.

They had lived there for at least five years. The proposed change covered citizens of six European countries that offered comparable rights to foreign residents.

But in October 1990, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court declared the law unconstitutional.

Under the constitutional rules then in force, the state could not extend local voting rights in this way.

That might have seemed to settle the matter.

Yet two years later, Germany amended its constitution to allow certain foreign citizens to vote in local elections.

How could a boundary confirmed by a constitutional court change so quickly?

And why did some foreign residents gain voting rights while others remained excluded?

Political philosopher Seyla Benhabib offers a way of understanding this development. Her concept of democratic iterations explains how a democracy can reconsider the meaning of its principles and change the boundaries of political participation.

But the German experience also reveals the limits of such change.

The Problem of the Outsider

In The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens (2004), Benhabib examines a tension within modern democracy.

Political communities claim the right to govern themselves. At the same time, they recognize human rights that belong to people regardless of nationality.

What happens when these commitments conflict?

A democracy may recognize everyone’s dignity while allowing only citizens to vote. It may protect refugees while retaining authority over immigration.

Benhabib does not propose abolishing political communities or every distinction between citizens and noncitizens.

But she does not accept unlimited authority over outsiders either.

Immigrants, refugees, and foreign residents have claims that cannot be dismissed simply because they lack citizenship.

For Benhabib, political membership is a question of justice, not merely a privilege existing members may grant or withhold.

This is also why she takes Hannah Arendt’s idea of the "right to have rights" seriously.

Why Membership Matters

Arendt drew attention to people who had lost the protection of a political community.

They might possess human rights in principle while lacking institutions capable of protecting those rights in practice.

This problem is especially serious for refugees and stateless people.

Universal rights are important. Yet people also need courts, public authorities, and other institutions where their claims can be heard and enforced.

Benhabib develops the idea of just membership: rules for political belonging that respect the rights of outsiders as well as the legitimate interests of democratic communities.

Her account includes protections for refugees, limits on arbitrary exclusion, and claims to citizenship for foreign residents who meet legitimate conditions.

She questions the justice of keeping people permanently in the position of outsiders.

This connects closely with the World Citizen framework.

Both approaches recognize that political membership cannot be determined entirely by the preferences of those who already possess it.

The question is how established rules can change while a community continues to govern itself.

What Are Democratic Iterations?

Benhabib calls one important process democratic iterations.

The expression sounds complicated, but the basic idea is familiar.

A society recognizes principles such as freedom, equality, and human rights.

Over time, people disagree about what those principles require.

Some defend existing laws. Others argue that the laws exclude people who should receive equal consideration.

The disagreement moves through public debates, political organizations, courts, and legislatures.

An established principle is interpreted again. Sometimes its legal meaning or application changes.

For Benhabib, this is more than repeating the same argument. It is a process through which rights that claim to apply to everyone acquire new meaning within particular democratic communities.

Consider political equality.

A country may initially understand it mainly as equality among people who already possess citizenship.

Foreign residents may then argue that years of living under the same laws give them a legitimate claim to participate in making those laws.

Their argument appeals to a democratic principle that the country already recognizes. But it asks the country to reconsider whom that principle should include.

The demand may succeed or fail. What matters is that the existing boundary must now be defended against a claim of democratic equality.

People excluded from voting can contribute through public argument, petitions, associations, and legal challenges.

These activities do not give them the same political power as citizens. But they can change how the community understands membership.

A Boundary That Changed

The German case illustrates this process.

In October 1990, the Federal Constitutional Court rejected the attempt to extend local voting rights to certain foreign residents under the constitution then in force.

The story did not end there.

On February 7, 1992, the twelve member states of the European Communities signed the Maastricht Treaty.

It provided a framework for citizens of one member state to vote and stand as candidates in municipal elections in another member state where they lived.

Germany amended Article 28 of its Basic Law in December 1992 to accommodate this arrangement.

The Maastricht Treaty entered into force on November 1, 1993. Council Directive 94/80/EC, adopted in December 1994, subsequently established detailed rules for exercising these rights.

The change was significant.

A constitutional boundary that had prevented the earlier extension of local voting rights was partly redrawn through European agreements, constitutional amendment, and legislation.

This development helps illustrate the processes Benhabib describes.

Political institutions had not abandoned democracy. They had changed the rules defining who could participate in certain democratic decisions.

Yet the result was not equal voting rights for every foreign resident.

The Boundary That Remained

The new European arrangement covered citizens of other member states.

It did not extend the same rights to all noncitizens living in Germany.

Consider two residents of the same German municipality.

One holds French nationality. The other holds Turkish nationality.

Both may have lived there for many years, worked under the same laws, raised families, and used the same public institutions.

Under the new European framework, the French citizen could qualify to vote in municipal elections.

The Turkish citizen did not acquire the same right merely through comparable residence.

The boundary moved. It did not disappear.

This distinction matters because democratic change does not necessarily produce equal political membership.

Extending voting rights to other European citizens was an important reform. But nationality within a particular regional organization still determined who benefited.

The comparison raises a question beyond European integration.

If two people have equally enduring relationships with the same local community, what justifies allowing only one to vote because of nationality held elsewhere?

A reform can correct one form of exclusion while leaving another in place.

When Democratic Change Is Not Enough

Benhabib helps us understand how democratic communities can challenge and revise their membership rules.

But what should guide those changes?

Public debate alone cannot guarantee that excluded residents will eventually gain political membership.

A majority may listen to their arguments and continue refusing their demands.

Benhabib recognizes this difficulty. Her theory includes rights and principles of just membership that go beyond majority preference.

The World Citizen framework shares that concern but emphasizes a more specific institutional principle, Resident Sovereignty:

Durable residence, rather than inherited nationality, is the primary basis of ordinary political membership.

This does not require full membership immediately upon arrival or establish one universal waiting period.

It means that sufficiently durable residence must create a meaningful pathway toward full political membership.

The German example shows why this matters.

EU citizenship provides one reason for granting local voting rights across national borders.

Resident Sovereignty asks a further question: should durable residence itself provide the ordinary foundation for political membership, whether or not someone’s nationality belongs to a regional organization?

Benhabib already challenges unjust and permanent exclusion. The approaches are not opposites.

Their emphasis differs.

Benhabib explains how universal rights and democratic self-government can reshape membership through public claims and legal change.

The World Citizen framework identifies durable residence as the primary ordinary relationship that should justify access to full membership.

Both concerns are necessary. A principle needs institutions capable of applying it. Democratic institutions need principles by which their decisions can be judged.

Rights Beyond National Borders

Benhabib also considers rights that cross political boundaries.

Her idea of cosmopolitan federalism concerns cooperation and overlapping legal authority beyond individual states, without simply replacing democratic communities with one world government.

European citizenship shows how some political rights can become less closely tied to nationality in the country of residence.

The World Citizen Society likewise envisages multiple political communities coordinating rights, mobility, and membership.

The two approaches are not identical. But both recognize that political boundaries do not erase obligations toward outsiders.

The challenge is to make those obligations effective.

Democracy Must Reconsider Who Belongs

The German story began with an unsuccessful attempt to extend local voting rights to foreign residents.

A constitutional court rejected the law in 1990. Within two years, Germany had amended its constitution to accommodate a new European arrangement.

Political boundaries changed.

Yet many long-term residents remained excluded because they did not possess EU citizenship.

Benhabib helps explain how such changes become possible. Established democratic principles can acquire new meaning through political demands, debate, and institutional revision.

The World Citizen framework draws attention to what remains unresolved.

If durable residence provides a strong ordinary basis for political membership, exclusion cannot be justified merely by referring to an inherited nationality distinction.

The relationship between collective democratic self-government and individual political-community choice must develop through institutions that respect both.

These decisions will not always be easy. But difficulty is not a reason to treat the existing boundary as permanent.

A democracy should not only allow its members to govern. It should also allow the meaning of membership itself to be challenged by those who seek to belong.

The German experience shows that boundaries can change.

The remaining question is whether those changes bring political equality closer to the people whose lives are governed by the institutions concerned.

References

Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), especially Chapters 2 and 5. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/rights-of-others/06822099EB47933C07C843FC5E0F7FCD
Seyla Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism, ed. Robert Post (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), “Democratic Iterations: The Local, the National, and the Global,” 45–80. https://academic.oup.com/book/7495/chapter-abstract/152417511
Seyla Benhabib, “On the Alleged Conflict between Democracy and International Law,” Ethics & International Affairs 19, no. 1 (2005): 85–100. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-7093.2005.tb00491.x
Seyla Benhabib, “Democratic Exclusions and Democratic Iterations: Dilemmas of ‘Just Membership’ and Prospects of Cosmopolitan Federalism,” European Journal of Political Theory 6, no. 4 (2007): 445–462. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474885107080650
German Federal Constitutional Court, judgments of 31 October 1990 on local voting rights for foreign residents, Schleswig-Holstein (BVerfGE 83, 37) and Hamburg (BVerfGE 83, 60).
German constitutional amendment of 21 December 1992 to Basic Law art. 28(1), BGBl. I, p. 2086. Current Basic Law: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_28.html.
Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty), signed 7 February 1992, entered into force 1 November 1993; art. 8b of the Treaty establishing the European Community.
Council Directive 94/80/EC of 19 December 1994, Official Journal of the European Communities L 368 (31 December 1994): 38–47. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:31994L0080