The Democratic Legitimacy of Border Coercion:

Freedom of Association, Territorial Dominion, and Self-Defence

2012-04-17
Arash Abizadeh
Department of Political Science
McGill University
855 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
H3A 2T7
Tel: 514-398- 4400 x094754
Fax: 514-398-1770
arash.abizadeh at mcgill.ca

For valuable comments, I am grateful to Chris Bertram, Thomas Christiano, Pablo

Gilabert, Kinch Hoekstra, Daniel Kofman, Colleen Murphy, Cara Nine, Jonathan
Quong, Annie Stilz, Kit Wellman, Leif Wenar, Lea Ypi, and participants at the
Workshop of the Territory and Justice Network in Novi Vinodolski, Croatia,
October 8-11, 2009; the University of California, Berkeley, February 16, 2010;
the Territorial Rights Workshop, Queen’s University, June 4–5, 2010; the
American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, Sept. 2–5, 2010; the
Territorial Rights Conference, Princeton University Center for Human Values,
April 1, 2011; the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Meeting, San
Diego, April 20-23, 2011; and the Workshop on Immigration, Integration and
Membership, University of Zurich, Feb. 24–25, 2012.
 Abstract: According to the democratic borders thesis, a state’s regime of border control is

democratically legitimate only if the laws governing it result from political processes in which

both citizens and foreigners can participate. This is because, to be democratically legitimate, the

(coercive) exercise of political power must be democratically justified to all subject to it; and

both citizens and foreigners are subject to a polity’s regime of border control. I defend this thesis

against three objections. First, it might be argued that legitimate states have the right to close

their borders thanks to a collective right of freedom of association, grounded in self-

determination. I argue that such an argument, while grounding a negative claim-right against

coercively imposed association, fails to establish a liberty-right to coerce others to prevent

unwelcome association. Moreover, it misconstrues the proper collective subject of a right of self-

determination: not only the persons whom state agents recognize as members, but all persons

subject to the coercive exercise of political power. Second, one might object that citizens enjoy

rights of dominion over the territory of their state, and may thus unilaterally refuse entry to

foreigners. I respond that just as property laws, to be democratically legitimate, require

democratic justification to those subject to them, so too must democratically legitimate border

laws. Finally, one may object that the coercive exercise of political power may sometimes be

legitimate even if not democratically legitimate. I concede this, but argue that the lack of

democratic legitimacy imposes dynamic duties to enable democratic legitimization in the future.
 1

In “Democratic Theory and Border Coercion,” 1 I argued that for a state’s regime of border

control to be democratically legitimate, the laws governing the border regime must result from

political processes in which not only citizens, but also foreigners possess democratic rights of

participation. The argument for this apparently radical democratic borders thesis is rather

simple: the argument’s first, normative premise articulates a widely accepted democratic

principle of legitimacy, while its second premise takes note of an undeniable fact. First, for

political power to be democratically legitimate, it must be democratically justified to all those

over whom it is exercised, i.e., at least to all persons subject to state coercion. 2 Second, a

bounded polity’s regime of border control subjects both citizens and foreigners to the coercive

exercise of political power. Therefore, the democratic justification of a state’s regime of border

control is owed to both citizens and foreigners, i.e., not merely to those whom its boundaries

mark as members. 3 Notice that the democratic borders thesis does not defend “open borders” or a

1
Arash Abizadeh, "Democratic Theory and Border Coercion: No Right to Unilaterally Control

Your Own Borders," Political Theory 35, 1 (2008): 37-65.

2
I say “at least” because other (non-coercive) modes of being subject to political power may also

trigger the demand for democratic justification.

3
The democratic borders thesis does not assume that all those affected by the exercise of

political power are owed a right of democratic say; it assumes, rather, that all those subjected to

state coercion are presumptively owed such a right. David Miller has recently argued that,

contrary to all appearances, states’ regimes of border control do not in fact subject foreigners to

the coercive exercise of political power. David Miller, "Why Immigration Controls are not

Coercive: A Reply to Arash Abizadeh," Political Theory 38, 1 (2010): 111-120; see also David
 2

right to freedom of movement per se: it is not a substantive moral thesis about how open or

closed a liberal democratic polity’s entry policy should be. It advances, rather, a procedural,

political claim about who has the right to participate in deciding the entry policy.

Here I wish to defend and further develop this account by way of considering three

potential objections to it, which respectively appeal to a right of freedom of association, of

territorial dominion, and of self-defence. According to the first objection, democratic citizens

have the right unilaterally to close their state’s territorial and/or civic borders to foreigners thanks

to a collective right freely to choose with whom to associate. Just as individuals have the right to

reject marriage proposals without granting their suitors any democratic say over their choice,

democratic citizens may unilaterally refuse entry and membership to foreigners without granting

them any democratic say. According to the second objection, democratic citizens collectively

enjoy rights of dominion over the territory of their state, analogous to the property rights

individuals enjoy over their own homes. Just as individuals may refuse to permit others into their

home, democratic citizens may unilaterally refuse entry to foreigners. Finally, according to the

third objection, the assumption that a polity must democratically justify its coercive exercise of

political power to foreigners has absurd implications: for example, that before waging war

against foreign enemies intent on destroying them, democratic polities must grant those enemies

Miller, "Democracy's Domain," Philosophy & Public Affairs 37, 3 (2009): 201-228. I indicate

why I find Miller’s efforts unsuccessful in Arash Abizadeh, "Democratic Legitimacy and State

Coercion: A Reply to David Miller," Political Theory 38, 1 (2010): 121-130. For a definition of

being subject to coercion, see my reply to Miller as well as the appendix to Abizadeh,

"Democratic Theory and Border Coercion."

 3

a democratic say over their conduct of war; or, more simply, that democratic polities must grant

participatory rights, over their regime of border control, to anti-democratic foreigners intent on

entering and destroying the polity’s democratic institutions. But just as individuals have a right

to self-defence, without being obliged to deliberate with their attackers about whether to defend

themselves, states are permitted to subject foreigners to coercion to block their entry or

membership, without granting them a democratic say. After clarifying the argument for the

democratic borders thesis by briefly summarizing why the democratic principle of self-

determination supports, rather than undermines, the thesis, I take up each of these three

objections in turn.

The Democratic Borders Thesis and Self-Determination

The thesis that democratic legitimacy requires granting foreigners a right of democratic say

over a polity’s regime of border control may initially seem at odds with the core democratic ideal

of self-determination. After all, many have thought that the ideal of self-determination implies

that differentiated democratic polities each have the moral liberty-right to control their own

boundaries unilaterally. 4 Yet that thought is fundamentally mistaken: it begs the question of who

4
Michael Walzer goes so far as to assert that the right unilaterally to regulate “admission and

exclusion” to one’s own polity suggests “the deepest meaning of self-determination.” Michael

Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p.

62. I use the terms liberty-right, claim-right, immunity, and power in their Hohfeldian senses.

Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions, as Applied in Judicial Reasoning,

 4

the relevant “self” of self-determination is. When a regime of border control is at issue, one

cannot take it for granted that the collective self possessing a right of democratic self-

determination is comprised of the collectivity of individuals contained within a pre-existing

(politically or legally defined) boundary. This is because, at its most fundamental level, the

democratic ideal of self-determination entails a demand for democratic legitimacy and

justification: the demand that the people who are subject to political power themselves

collectively determine how such power is exercised over them. 5

New ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964). For discussion and elaboration, see Leif

Wenar, "The Nature of Rights," Philosophy & Public Affairs 33, 3 (2005): 223-252.
5
On the notion that the democratic ideal of self-determination is fundamentally equivalent to the

ideal of collective self-rule or self-government, entailing rights of political participation on terms

consistent with the equality and freedom of persons, see Carol C. Gould, "Self-Determination

beyond Sovereignty: Relating Transnational Democracy to Local Autonomy," Journal of Social

Philosophy 37, 1 (2006): 44-60; Brian Mello, "Recasting the Right to Self-Determination: Group

Rights and Political Participation," Social Theory and Practice 30, 2 (2004): 193-213. I should

emphasize that the ideal I am treating here is a democratic and rather than nationalist ideal of

self-determination, which is why I speak of the people’s, and not the nation’s, right of self-

determination. In twentieth-century international law, by contrast, self-determination was

traditionally taken to mean national self-determination: in the Wilsonian period, it referred to the

self-determination of ethno-national groups; in the post-war period, it referred to the self-

determination of the majority population occupying an administratively bounded territorial

jurisdiction (akin to what Anthony Smith has called a territorial or civic nation). See Margaret
 5

More precisely, I take the terms regulating the exercise of political power to be

democratically legitimate to the extent, and only to the extent, that they receive a democratic

justification. Such terms receive a democratic justification to the extent, and only to the extent,

that either (1) they are the outcome of political procedures and processes in which (a) all those

subject to the exercise of political power have the opportunity to participate (b) on terms

consistent with respect for their equality and freedom; or (2) they are the constitutive conditions

of these democratic procedures and processes of justification; and (3) they do not constitutively

undermine or negate these political procedures and processes. Thus legislation depriving a

religious minority political rights of political participation, even if itself the outcome of a

democratically legitimate procedure, would be democratically illegitimate, since it would violate

condition (3), while a law establishing such rights, even if itself not the outcome of democratic

procedure, would be democratically legitimate, since it meets condition (2). 6 Note that I reject

Moore, "The Territorial Dimension of Self-Determination," in National Self-Determination and

Secession, ed. Margaret Moore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Gould, "Self-

Determination beyond Sovereignty."; Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (London: University

of Nevada Press, 1991).

6
On the need to recognize that even a procedural principle of legitimacy, like the democratic

one, must incorporate the constitutive conditions of the required procedures, see Stephen

Holmes, "Precommitment and the Paradox of Democracy," in Constitutionalism and Democracy,

ed. Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Joshua

Cohen, "Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy," in The Good Polity: Normative Analysis of

the State, ed. Alan Hamlin and Philip Pettit (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989).
 6

the seemingly parallel disjunctive condition that (2’) such terms are necessary causally to

promote democratic procedures, and the conjunctive condition that (3’) such terms do not

causally erode democratic political institutions in the future (e.g. legislation that destroys the

sociological preconditions of stable or well-functioning democratic institutions). I do not

incorporate such causal conditions because they conflate what democratic legitimacy consists in

with the empirical conditions under which realizing democratic legitimacy is feasible. If it is

argued that, under the circumstances, excluding some class of persons from political

participation is instrumentally necessary for promoting solidarity amongst participants, and that

participant solidarity in turn is necessary for the stable functioning of democratic procedures

over time, the justification for exclusion is not a democratic one in my sense. The argument does

not establish the democratic legitimacy of the exclusion; it claims merely that, under these

circumstances, democratic legitimacy cannot be stably maintained over time, or, more precisely,

that only partial democratic legitimacy is feasible under the circumstances. 7

7
It seems entirely meaningful to say that democratically legitimate political outcomes sometimes

end up causing, perhaps unforeseeably, the erosion of democratic institutions. Moreover, the

exclusion of (2’) and (3’) reflects the fact that democratic legitimacy is not the only value

relevant even to democratic theory (stability, in particular, seems to me a distinct value). Thus I

agree with Miller that the ideal of “collective self-determination stands at the heart of democratic

theory”; I am also sympathetic to his view that a constituent part of this ideal is a principle of

legitimacy according to which people themselves must be able to see political outcomes as

legitimate; but whether or not he is right to think that “solidarity,” “interpersonal trust,”

“agreement on ethical principles,” or “sympathetic identification” are indispensable for people to

 7

On this account, then, if a colonial power subjects a set of persons overseas to its rule

without granting them political rights of participation, then it violates their right to self-

determination and, so, compromises the democratic legitimacy of its rule. Even should the

colonial power grant such persons political rights of participation, but only after having forcibly

annexed their territory and imposed coercive jurisdiction over them, it would still compromise

the democratic legitimacy of its rule: the coercive act of territorial annexation itself proceeded

without being democratically justified to them on terms consistent with their equality and

freedom. (I take it that territorial annexation does not count as an instance of enacting the

constitutive legal conditions of democratic procedures.) Similarly, if a state denies democratic

rights to a certain class of individuals over whom it exercises political power, such as women or

blacks, it curtails the people’s capacity for self-determination and, so, compromises its

democratic legitimacy. In other words, the collective self or demos relevant to the democratic

ideal of self-determination is not simply whomever the state happens already (politically or

legally) to recognize as rights-bearing citizens. When the South African state, under Apartheid,

denied full citizenship and political rights to non-whites over whom it nonetheless exercised

political power, it curtailed South Africans’ right to democratic self-determination. To assert that

Apartheid was justified as an instance of South African whites’ self-determination simply

misconstrues who, from a democratic point of view, the rightful bearer of a right to self-

determination is: such a right, understood as a democratic right, does not license the unilateral

see outcomes as legitimate (Miller, "Democracy's Domain," 205-208.), none of these conditions

are constitutive of democratic legitimacy. They are putative causal conditions.

 8

exercise of political power over persons whom state agents (or legally recognized members)

declare to be outside the demos. 8

While respect for the equality of persons by political institutions requires the treatment of

each as an equal, that is, equal respect for each in determining how to distribute goods or

opportunities, it does not require the equal treatment of each, that is, the same distribution of

goods and opportunities to each person. 9 Political equality, in other words, constrains the kind of

reasons appropriate for justifying the institutional distribution of political rights, but does not

necessarily require that each person have the same political rights in all contexts. This means that

democratic legitimacy cannot be equated with simple majoritarianism. In some circumstances,

being politically treated as an equal may require that those with higher stakes have a greater

8
Cf. Dahl’s criticism of Schumpeter’s view, according to which democratic legitimacy does not

constitutively include any substantive principle of who ought to be granted rights of

participation, on the grounds that his view absurdly implies that democracy cannot be

distinguished from a closed-party dictatorship, as long as the party is internally democratic.

Robert Dahl, "Procedural Democracy," in Philosophy, Politics, & Society (5th Series), ed. Peter

Laslett and James Fishkin (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979); Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism,

Socialism and Democracy, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1976), pp. 243-245.
9
On the distinction between equal treatment and treatment as an equal, see Ronald Dworkin,

Taking Rights Seriously: New Impression with a Reply to Critics, 2nd ed. (London: Duckworth,

1978), pp. 227, 273.

 9

political say over some range of outcomes. 10 (Therefore, the kinds of participatory rights that the

democratic borders thesis demands may be different between citizens and foreigners, or between

different kinds of foreigners, depending on the stakes involved for each.) In other circumstances,

where there is an entrenched minority who would be permanently dominated within simple

majoritarian political institutions, political equality may require differentiated political

jurisdictions, that is, constituted boundaries (whether municipal, provincial, or state) that identify

some as members (citizens) with participatory rights within the jurisdiction, and others as non-

members without the same such rights. This is what I call the minority-protection justification

for political boundaries. 11 But given politically differentiated jurisdictions, democratic political

equality may also require that political rights of participation over some areas of jurisdiction be

detached from the formal status of citizenship, and participatory rights be granted to non-

10
See Charles R. Beitz, Political Equality: An Essay in Democratic Theory (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 17-18, 24. As Beitz notes, political equality may in some

circumstances actually require procedural inequalities.

11
See Abizadeh, "Democratic Theory and Border Coercion."
 10

citizens. 12 According to the democratic borders thesis, this is precisely what is required in the

case of regimes of border control. 13

The moral core of the democratic ideal of self-determination, then, just is the right to have

the exercise of political power be democratically legitimate. To ensure that the people can

exercise self-determination over their political affairs, the democratic ideal of self-determination,

via the democratic principle of legitimacy corresponding to it, thus itself demands that “the

people” enjoy political rights of participation on terms consistent with their equality and

freedom. Which people? The very people subject to the coercive exercise of political power. This

12
In other words, the package of rights that modern states have traditionally bundled together

and tied exclusively to the status of citizenship must be disaggregated. For an argument for

disaggregating political rights of participation from the formal status of citizenship, Sarah Song,

"Democracy and Noncitizen Voting Rights," Citizenship Studies 13, 6 (2009): 607-620.
13
An exception to this may arise in the minority-protection case: when a group would become an

entrenched and dominated minority unless it could unilaterally control and close its own borders

(because it would be “swamped” by newcomers from a different group). This is because

individuals of an entrenched minority would not be able to participate under conditions that

respect their equality and freedom. See Abizadeh, "Democratic Theory and Border Coercion," p.

53. I am sympathetic, however, to the argument, advanced by Michael Dummett, On

Immigration and Refugees (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 20-21., that high levels of

immigration might submerge a cultural group in this way only when a political society is

colonized or subjected to the rule of oppressive invaders – and never simply because of open

borders.
 11

is precisely the first premise of the argument for the democratic borders thesis. The second

premise articulates a peculiar conceptual feature of political boundaries of membership: that

constituting them politically is always an instance of exercising political power over not only

those whom the boundary marks as members, but also those whom it marks as non-members. 14

Freedom of Association

Even if the value of democratic legitimacy speaks against the unilateral control of one’s

own legally defined borders, it might be thought that the central liberal value of freedom of

association speaks decisively in its favour. Thus Christopher Wellman has recently argued that

states have a right to restrict immigration unilaterally thanks to a collective right of freedom of

association (hereafter, right of association). Wellman’s argument proceeds in four steps. He

begins, first, by claiming that the human interest in freely choosing one’s associates is weighty

enough to ground a right of association, and that this right “includes a right to reject a potential

association and (often) a right to disassociate.” This is the right that protects, for example, the

14
For a more extensive discussion of the democratic principle of self-determination, and why it

supports, rather than undermines, the democratic borders thesis, see Abizadeh, "Democratic

Theory and Border Coercion." For why borders do not constitute an exception to the requirement

of democratic legitimacy (e.g. as suggested by Mathias Risse, "'Imagine There's No Countries:' A

Reply to John Lennon," Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government, Faculty Research

Working Paper No. RWP08-020 (2008), p. 21, note 18; available from

http://ssrn.com/paper=1266804.), see Sofia Näsström, "The Legitimacy of the People," Political

Theory 35, 5 (2007): 624-658.

 12

individual’s choice of “marital partner and the associates with whom he or she practices his or

her religion.” Second, not only individuals but also groups collectively may enjoy such a right.

Third, the groups possessing this right include political communities organized as legitimate

states. And, finally, a political community’s right of association implies the state’s right

unilaterally to restrict immigration: “just as an individual has the right to determine whom (if

anyone) he or she would like to marry, a group of fellow citizens has a right to determine whom

(if anyone) it would like to invite into its political community.” 15

Wellman is aware, of course, of the potentially profound moral difference between

individuals and groups; he nonetheless shores up his second claim by appeal to the “commonly

held” conviction according to which many groups, and not merely individuals, “have a

presumptive right to freedom of association.” The reason why some groups – Wellman’s

examples are the Boy Scouts of America and the Augusta National Golf Club – enjoy such a

presumptive right is the weight of the interests at stake. And here is Wellman’s argument for his

third claim, which imputes a collective right of association to legitimate states in particular:

15
Christopher Heath Wellman, "Immigration and Freedom of Association," Ethics 119, October

(2008): 109-141, pp. 110-111. Wellman does not, it seems to me, adequately distinguish between

the territorial boundaries regulating movement and the civic boundaries regulating membership.

For ease of exposition, I maintain this ambiguity in my discussion of Wellman, by using the term

“immigration” to refer both to territorial migration into a state’s territory, and to the acquisition

of a legal status en route to naturalization or citizenship. As Sarah Fine rightly points out,

Wellman’s concern is primarily with the acquisition of membership status. Sarah Fine, "Freedom

of Association Is Not the Answer," Ethics 120, 2: 338-356.

 13

denying such a right leads to “unpalatable implications.” This collective right is said to be the

only way to explain, for example, why a legitimate state has the unilateral right to decide

whether to join another state or regional association; without such a collective right, “one cannot

explain the wrongness” of the USA forcibly annexing Canada, or the EU coercing Slovenia to

join it. And if legitimate states possess a collective right of association, Wellman concludes,

then they must have the right unilaterally to restrict immigration. 16

It is worth asking, however, to what extent the analogies with marriage, private clubs,

religious associations, or even state annexation, illuminate the case of immigration. The analogy

with marriage in particular deserves attention, since, as one may gather from its frequent

appearance in Wellman’s exposition, it packs much of the rhetorical punch of his argument. To

examine the merits of the argument, we need first to spell out, in much greater detail than

Wellman himself does, the content of the right in question. Although we often speak of “a” right

of association, it is in fact a composite bundle of several rights, concerning at least two aspects of

human association: first, the fact of contact or interaction in physical space and time and, second,

the set of mutual special obligations acquired as a result of interacting with, or standing in a

particular relation to, others. (Thus to be married typically involves both interacting with one’s

spouse – for example, in a shared home – and acquiring a set of special obligations towards him

or her – for example, of care or financial support.) The typical function of a right of association

is to regulate the use of coercion over these two aspects of association. As the marriage example

indicates, the right of association, whether conceived as a moral right or a legal right, normally

always includes (a) a negative claim-right against being coerced to interact, or to refrain from

16
Wellman, "Immigration and Freedom of Association," pp. 111-113, 115.
 14

interacting, with potential associates; and (b) an immunity against acquiring special obligations

towards coercively imposed associates. These components of the right of association protect

against coercively imposed or prevented associations. Beyond this coercion-regulating function,

the right of association often also has a project-enabling function: to enable individuals to

choose, on the basis of their own subjective reasons or personal projects, 17 which associative

interactions and obligations to undertake. As the marriage example suggests, the right of

association often includes (c) a power to acquire special obligations towards, and rights against,

potential associates of one’s own choice; and (d) a (paired or bi-lateral) liberty-right (not) to

interact with, and/or (not) to take on special obligations towards, potential associates. 18 The

power enables individuals to pursue personal projects involving associates of their own

choosing, while the liberty-right protects such pursuits by permitting a range of associative

choices in spite of other (moral or legal) considerations that might otherwise forbid or require

some choice (e.g. despite the fact that one’s choice of association may not be one that maximizes

the good). 19

17
I use the term “personal” in the sense given by Bernard Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical

Papers 1973-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), chapter 1.

18
A paired or bi-lateral liberty-right is what Wenar calls a “paired privilege.” Wenar, "The

Nature of Rights," pp. 226-227.

19
Another way to put this is to say that the liberty-right (d) provides a kind of exclusionary

reason that blocks other reasons that might otherwise determine that one’s association with

another is required or forbidden.

 15

(That regulating coercion is the primary function of the right of association is reflected in

the fact that, construed as a moral right, it normally always includes the coercion-regulating

rights (a) and (b), but does not always include the project-enabling ones (c) and (d). This is

because the grounds of the former rights – precisely because they regulate coercion – are more

robust than those of the latter: the latter are more easily defeasible. 20 There are many cases in

which a moral right of association implies rights (a) and (b), for example, but not (d). One may

have a moral duty to refrain from joining racist organizations, or a moral duty to carry out a

promise of marriage – even if, thanks to a right of association, no one has the moral right

coercively to enforce those duties. Likewise, the fact that it is wrong for the EU to coerce

Slovenia to join it does not itself imply that Slovenians have no bare moral duty to join. A state

may or may not, under the circumstances, have a moral duty to join certain regional associations,

but whether others have a right to coerce it to join is a distinct moral question. It is one thing to

have a bare moral duty (not) to do something, and quite another for someone else to have the

moral right coercively to hold one to it – which is why the right of association, construed as a

moral right, does not always include the liberty-right (d). Nor does it always include (c): the fact

(if it is true) that others do not have the moral right coercively to prevent one from joining a

racist organization is perfectly compatible with the fact that, having joined, one may still be

unable to acquire genuinely moral obligations towards it. It is true that construed as a legal right,

by contrast, the right of association always includes a paired liberty-right (d) to associate or

refrain from associating, i.e., it always implies the absence of a legal obligation (not) to

20
In fact I have listed these rights in what I take to be their order of robustness, from greatest to

least.
 16

associate. But this is simply because what distinguishes legal liberty-rights from moral ones is

that the former, unlike the latter, by definition govern the use of coercion; thus, to say that one

has a legal liberty-right to associate or not is to say that others, including state agents, may not

legally coerce one to associate or not. A legal right of association therefore always includes a

paired liberty-right (d) to associate or not simply because, unlike the case of moral rights, such a

liberty-right is equivalent to the legal rights (a) and (b) against being coerced in one’s choice of

association. The discrepancy between a moral and legal right of association reflects the fact that

regulating coercion is the primary function of the right of association: the right creates a

presumption that whatever moral duties one may have to join or refrain from joining in

association with others are not coercible duties. 21)

21
Thus, to take up one of Wellman’s examples: one may consistently hold that the Augusta

National Golf Club has (i) a (presumptive) moral right to freedom of association, such that others

do not have the moral right coercively to force them to admit female members; that they

consequently ought to enjoy (ii) a legal right of freedom of association, such that no one may

legally coerce them to admit women, i.e., that they have a legal liberty-right to refrain from

admitting women; but that they nonetheless (iii) have a moral duty, themselves, to admit women,

i.e., that they lack a moral liberty-right to refuse women admittance. The moral right of

association here simply does not include a moral liberty-right: we can admit a right of

association while also acknowledging moral duties. The same point holds about the right to free

speech: I may have a moral claim-right that others not coercively prevent me from saying nasty

racist things, but nonetheless have a moral duty not to say them. When it comes to legal rights,
 17

Of course it is not simply coercion that determines whether one is in fact able to associate

or avoid associating with others. Sometimes one may end up interacting with, and even acquiring

obligations towards, persons one prefers to avoid – precisely because of the absence of coercion.

Consider, for example, three possible scenarios involving a religious group whose members

deem anyone not joining them in worship, and in the practice of their religion, as ritually impure

or spiritually corrosive. First, the group may avoid association with non-worshippers altogether,

for example by having non-worshippers coercively prevented from entering the group’s

neighbourhood. Alternatively, the group (or the state on their behalf) may coercively compel

others to join them in worship and religious practice. Or, finally, absent the use of coercion on

their behalf, the group’s members may find friendly non-worshipping neighbours interacting

with them in public; indeed, they may even find themselves acquiring mutual neighbourly

obligations towards these neighbours. 22 The first scenario is of coercively prevented association,

the second of coerced association, and the third of (unwelcome yet nonetheless) uncoerced

association.

A further question, therefore, is whether one’s right of association includes another set of

coercion-regulating rights, namely, (e) a liberty-right to use coercion against others to prevent

others from associating with one, and/or (f) a liberty-right to use coercion to compel others to

by contrast, I might not have a legal duty not to say them; that is, my legal right to free speech

might include the legal liberty-right to say them.

22
Conversely, friendly agnostics in a predominantly religious society may find that whenever

they take up residence in a neighbourhood, others flee, non-coercively thwarting the association

they hoped for.

 18

associate 23 (or alternatively, in each case (e) or (f), a positive claim-right that a third party use

coercion on one’s behalf). Notice, then, that while rights (a), (b), (e), and (f) all regulate

coercion, the former two regulate coercion against the right-bearer, while the latter two regulate

coercion by the right-bearer. It should therefore be clear that any putative rights (e) and (f) would

be directly in tension with others’ rights (a) and (b), and by consequence curtail these others’

ability to exercise their right (c) (and, if it exists, (d)). Thus, under the Soviet regime, coercive

measures to compel individuals to join the Communist Party curtailed their rights (a) and (b); in

the era of desegregation in the USA, the state’s use of coercion to compel whites to associate

with blacks in shared public schools might also be thought to limit whites’ right (a) and (b);

conversely, under South African Apartheid, state coercion on behalf of whites to prevent blacks

from entering white areas, or from joining white clubs, curtailed blacks’ right (a) and, as a

consequence, curtailed their ability to exercise right (c).

The relevant point here is not to settle the question of whether the right of association

includes (e) or (f) and, if so, how to balance them with others’ rights (a)-(d). The relevant point

is, rather, that distinguishing between these component rights shows how Wellman’s argument

for his conclusion – that legitimate states have the right unilaterally and coercively to restrict

immigration – simply conflates rights (a) and (b), which regulate coercion against the right-

holder, on the one hand, with right (e), which regulates coercion by the right-holder, on the other.

23
The liberty-right (f) refers to the use of coercion in forcing interaction, such as the coercively

imposed worship common in medieval and early-modern Europe. With respect to the second

aspect of association, namely the set of mutual, special obligations, one would need to speak of a

power, rather than liberty-right, to impose such obligations.

 19

Recall that Wellman’s conclusion is supposed to follow directly from his third claim, that

legitimate states possess a right of association. And recall that the argument for this third claim is

that only a right of association could explain the wrongness of the USA annexing Canada, or the

EU forcing Slovenia to join. And indeed the wrongness of annexation is straightforwardly

explained by the rights (a) and (b) against coercively imposed association. But this is completely

tendentious to Wellman’s conclusion. At best, Wellman’s argument for his third premise

establishes the wrongness of coercion against legitimate states in matters of association: it

establishes that states have the rights of association (a) and (b). What it does not establish is that

the state’s right of association includes the (e) liberty-right to coerce others. Yet this latter right

is what his conclusion asserts: the claim that legitimate states may coercively prevent

immigration does not concern coercion against the state, but coercion by the state, against

potentially unwelcome immigrants. 24 And unfortunately for Wellman’s overall argument, neither

right (a) nor (b) – nor, indeed, (c) or (d) – entails (e) the right to use coercion against others to

prevent unwelcome association.

Are there independent reasons for thinking that a state’s right of association includes (e) a

liberty-right to subject others to coercion? It is true that in many contexts the right of association

24
Critics of a state’s right unilaterally to restrict immigration, as it sees fit, are not ipso facto

defending the right of others to deploy coercion against the state (to force it to open its borders,

for example); they are disputing the state’s (e) moral liberty-right unilaterally to deploy coercion

against others to keep its borders closed. They are attributing bare (not necessarily coercible)

moral duties to the state in its use of coercion for the purpose of avoiding unwelcome

associations.
 20

does include a liberty-right to coerce others in order to prevent unwelcome association; indeed,

the individual’s right of association often includes a positive claim-right against the state

requiring it coercively to prevent others from interacting with one against one’s wishes. To bring

out this feature of the right of association is presumably one of the functions of Wellman’s

marriage analogy: an individual typically possesses a positive claim-right against the state

obligating it coercively to prevent others from coercively imposing marriage on her. Nor is such

a right always restricted to preventing coerced association; it is frequently also geared towards

preventing uncoerced yet unwelcome association. Consider again, for example, the case of the

exclusivist religious group. While few liberal states would recognize that it is their duty

coercively to prevent non-worshippers from entering a neighbourhood populated by such a

group, they often do recognize the right of worshippers to acquire private property in which to

worship, along with the state’s duty to deploy coercion on behalf of the group, if need be, to

exclude unwelcome outsiders.

But it is precisely here that the analogy between marriage, private clubs, and religious

associations, on the one hand, and immigration, on the other, breaks down. It is true that one’s

ability to choose one’s associates in a marriage, private club, or religious association is often

legitimately protected by the state, coercively if need be – both against coerced and against

uncoerced but unwelcome interaction. Yet there is a fundamental disanalogy between the legal

regime in a liberal democratic state that coercively regulates individuals’ choices in marriage, or

private clubs’ choice of members, on the one hand, and the regime of border control that

coercively regulates a foreigner’s admission into its state territory, or as a member of the political

community, on the other. In the former cases, the use of state coercion against some persons, on

behalf of the individual or group in possession of right (e), is governed by a legal system that is
 21

presumptively justified democratically to both the bearer of the right and those subject to

coercion as a result. Persons are subject to democratically legitimate state coercion, in other

words, on terms presumptively justified democratically to both those on behalf of whom it is

exercised and those against whom it is exercised. But in the case of a unilaterally imposed

regime of border control, the state subjects foreigners to coercion to protect the state’s (or

citizens’) putative right of association, without the regime that regulates coercion having been

democratically justified to the foreigners subject to it. 25

And this returns us to the heart of the matter. It is true that, within the domestic context of a

liberal democratic state, individuals have the right to choose their marriage partner without

justifying their choice to rejected suitors; it is also true that individuals normally have a claim-

right obligating the state to protect these choices, coercively if need be, from unwelcome

intruders. But the state’s use of coercion here is democratically legitimate only to the extent that

the laws that recognize the individuals’ claim-right and that regulate the state’s use of coercion

have been democratically justified to both the bearers of the right and those consequently

subjected to coercion. 26 The coercive laws that protect individuals from having to justify their

25
It is true, of course, that contemporary states frequently negotiate their bilateral regimes of

border control, and often within the confines of international law. These constraints are not

nothing, but they obviously fail to meet the conditions of democratic justification (requiring (a)

participation (b) on terms respecting equality/freedom).

26
For example, property laws that, however much justified on independent grounds, are enacted

via a political process that excludes some persons subject to them, are not democratically
 22

choice in marriage to rejected suitors are themselves supposed to have been democratically

justified to both the protected individual and the rejected suitors. My thesis about borders simply

makes the parallel point about a state’s coercive restrictions on immigration: for the state’s

regime of border control to be democratically legitimate, it must be democratically justified to all

those subject to it.

On behalf of Wellman one might respond here that the right of association and democratic

legitimacy are grounded in distinct and potentially competing values and that, where they

conflict, a state’s right of association simply defeats the requirement of democratic legitimacy.

But this line of argument is not straightforwardly viable in the case at hand, because the right of

association possessed by a legitimate state (or its people) does not compete with the requirement

of democratic legitimacy, but is ultimately grounded in and conditioned by that requirement.

Recall that the state’s right of association, as Wellman conceives it, is not a right held by an

individual but is a collective right held by the state itself (or by citizens collectively as a

group). 27 Recall further that Wellman’s argument for attributing such a right to legitimate states

legitimate – even if they enjoy a distinct, non-democratic kind of legitimacy (see paper’s final

section).
27
Wellman seems to equivocate on who the rightful bearer of the right of association is: the

state, or its citizens collectively. The conflation of the categories of state and the people finds its

venerable pedigree in Hobbes’s momentous and ideologically motivated collapse of the latter

into the former; the conflation is also of course part of the ideological scaffolding of all modern

democratic states. But the distinction remains of capital importance for the dispute, in the history

of political thought, between the fundamentally opposed doctrines of state sovereignty,

 23

in particular is that not doing so would lead to “unpalatable implications,” such as an inability to

explain the wrongness of forced annexation. Yet if we dig a little deeper for the grounds

explaining the wrongness of forced annexation, and the consequent attribution of a collective

right of association to the state (or its citizenry), those grounds turn out to be the more

fundamental ideal of self-determination: the state’s (or citizenry’s) right of association is merely

a constituent part of a people’s democratic right to self-determination. The justification for

imputing a right of association to a state (or its citizenry) in particular – i.e., the justification for

the third claim in Wellman’s argument – is that possessing such a right is necessary for the

collective exercise of self-determination. As Wellman puts it, “freedom of association is...an

integral part of the self-determination to which some groups (including legitimate states) are

entitled.” 28 Yet as we have already seen, at its most fundamental level, the democratic right of

self-determination itself amounts to a demand for democratic legitimacy: the demand that the

people subject to political power themselves collectively determine how such power is exercised

over them. The right of association cannot defeat the requirement of democratic legitimacy

because the former is merely a constituent part of the democratic right of self-determination,

championed by Hobbes and his heirs, and popular sovereignty, championed by democrats or

republicans. The argument about self-determination that I provide obviously requires that the

distinction between the state and the people be kept clearly in view. On the competing doctrines

of state sovereignty and popular sovereignty, see Quentin Skinner, "From the State of Princes to

the Person of the State," in Visions of Politics, Volume II: Renaissance Virtues (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2002).

28
Wellman, "Immigration and Freedom of Association," p. 115.
 24

whose most fundamental demand is that of democratic legitimacy. As a result, when the

component rights of association are those licensing coercion against others (such as rights (e) or

(f)), then their appropriate bearer is not comprised only of those licensed to exercise coercive

political power over others: the collective self that is the proper bearer of any such right includes

those subject to coercive political power. Thus, even though democratic legitimacy and self-

determination may also require a collective right of association, and not merely individual rights

of political participation, the former does not compete with, and cannot defeat, the latter

requirement. When what is at stake is the regime of border control, the rightful bearer of a

collective right of self-determination is not restricted to those whom the politically constituted

and enforced border picks out as members only. 29

29
A potential exception to this, once again, is the case of minority protection (see note 13); and

the right of association can be used to express this exception. Recall my claim that democratic

legitimacy requires that political power be exercised according to democratically justified terms,

and that democratic justification in turn requires (a) allowing the participation of all those subject

to the coercive exercise of political power (b) on terms respecting their equality and freedom.

The question then is how to analyze circumstances, if they exist, in which the (a) participation

condition is in conflict or tension with the (b) equality/freedom condition (in which the right of

association is grounded) – circumstances in which, for example, allowing for the participation of

all those subject to the coercive exercise of political power would ipso facto make respecting

some participants’ equality and freedom impossible. And a circumstance that potentially fits this

description is the one faced by individuals forming an entrenched minority; this is precisely why

such circumstances can yield a minority-protection justification for political boundaries. Now
 25

This consideration also blocks another potential reply on Wellman’s behalf. One might

argue that precisely because the right of association is a constituent condition intrinsic to

democratic procedures and processes of justification – that without recognizing a right of

association, political procedures could not allow for truly democratic participation – the

democratic legitimacy of such a right does not depend on being the outcome of a democratic

procedure but derives, rather, from being a constitutive condition of democracy. 30 Recall,

however, that what is in question in particular are rights (e) or (f). Even if these rights are rightly

considered to be constitutive of democratic procedures, the question at stake here is who – which

collectivity – is their rightful collective bearer. To repeat: it is not an intrinsic condition of

democracy that the rightful bearer of such rights be restricted to those whom the politically

constituted and enforced border picks out as members only. Quite the contrary.

insofar as the right of association is grounded in a right of self-determination qua demand for

democratic legitimacy, it is arguably grounded in the (b) equality/freedom condition: a right of

association is necessary to ensure that individuals’ political participation is on terms respecting

their equality and freedom. As such, part of the justification for a collective right of association

would be to serve minority protection. In that case, it is not that a right of association competes

with democratic legitimacy; rather, once again, the point is that circumstances justifying minority

protection may thereby justify a collective right of association restricting the scope of the

participation that democratic legitimacy requires.

30
For an argument like this about the right of association, see Thomas Christiano, The

Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and its Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2008).
 26

Territorial Dominion

It might alternatively be argued that states, or democratic citizens collectively, possess a

right of dominion over the territory of their state, analogous to the property rights individuals

enjoy over their own homes. Just as homeowners may refuse members of the public entry into

their homes, and even deploy coercion to prevent unwelcome entry, so too, it might be argued,

may democratic citizens unilaterally refuse entry to foreigners. And just as homeowners need not

include members of the public, whom they are inclined to deny entry, in their decision-making

process, democratic citizens need not grant a right of democratic say to foreigners in determining

their state’s regime of border control. 31

The response to such an objection should by now be clear: the comparison between home

ownership (or property rights more generally) and territorial dominion currently suffers from the

same kind of disanalogy afflicting the comparison between marriage or private clubs and

immigration. It is true, of course, that one need not “democratically justify” to others one’s

decision to exclude them from one’s home, and that one is entitled to enforce, or have enforced

by the state, one’s decision coercively. This is because the legal property rights in question

31
This objection is raised by Miller, "Why Immigration Controls are not Coercive.", who cites

the example of an “obnoxious neighbour” who “persists in trying to enter” one’s house against

one’s will. Miller argues that “the person who is being prevented” from entering one’s home

“does not necessarily have a right” of democratic participation “in the institution or practice from

which the prevention emerges.” The objection is also raised by Christopher Heath Wellman,

"Immigration," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition) (2010),

section 2.3; available from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/immigration/.

 27

typically include a negative claim-right obligating others to refrain from entering one’s home

without one’s consent, as well as a right to use coercion to hold others to this duty of refraining.

But for the use of coercion here to be democratically legitimate, it must be authorized and

governed by laws, including a property regime, that have themselves been democratically

legitimized; and this, in turn, requires that all those subject to these laws possess rights of

democratic participation in their formulation. Similarly, if a state’s dominion over its territory is

to include the right coercively to prevent outsiders from entering, then for such coercion to be

democratically legitimate, the laws authorizing it must be the result of political processes in

which the foreigners subject to coercion possess a right of democratic say. 32

32
It should be noted that the disanalogy between property and territorial dominion here is not a

conceptual disanalogy, concerning a difference between the nature of property rights and

territorial rights but, rather, stems from a contingent empirical difference: it so happens that in

today’s world, there is no democratically legitimate and legitimizing cosmopolitan or interstate

order authorizing individual states’ territorial dominion. (Thanks to Chris Bertram for this point.)

Nor would reformulating the objection above in terms of territorial jurisdiction alter the course

of the argument given above. Many have recently argued that states’ territorial rights are not of

ownership or property (e.g., the right to use, benefit from, and/or transfer resources), but of

jurisdiction, i.e., “the right to make, adjudicate, and enforce legal rules within a domain.” Allen

Buchanan, "Boundaries: What Liberalism Has to Say," in States, Nations, and Borders: The

Ethics of Making Boundaries, ed. Allen Buchanan and Margaret Moore (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2003), p. 233. (Cf. Cara Nine, "A Lockean Theory of Territory," Political

Studies 56, 4 (2008): 148-165; Anna Stilz, "Why Do States Have Territorial Rights?,"
 28

Self-Defence

Yet this reply may immediately be thought to expose the absurdity of my position. In

particular, the assumption that the coercive exercise of political power, to be democratically

legitimate, must be democratically justified to all those over whom it is exercised, seems

absurdly to imply that, before waging a war in its own self-defence, a democratic state must

allow the very foreigners who threaten its existence a democratic say over whether and how to

engage in that war. Just as individuals have a right to self-defence, without being obligated to

deliberate with their attackers about whether and how to defend themselves, so too are states

permitted to wage war against aggressors, without giving them a democratic say. And just as

they may unilaterally deploy coercion against aggressors, so too may they coercively and

unilaterally prevent hostile foreigners, whose entry would jeopardize the state’s institutions, from

entering the state.

It should immediately be said that the substantive point expressed here is well-founded. It

would be a reductio ad absurdum of my argument, I take it, if it required democratic polities to

commit themselves to the destruction of their existing democratic institutions and/or members.

But the point made here is not, in my view, a serious objection to my thesis about borders: it

merely indicates the limits of the thesis and, in particular, the limits of democratic legitimacy.

Democratic legitimacy is not the only value at stake in political philosophy, and the realization of

International Theory 1, 2 (2009): 185-213.) But insofar as jurisdictional rights are meant to

include the right coercively to enforce not merely the state’s domestic laws internally, but also its

boundary laws, the state is not merely asserting coercive jurisdiction over the population within

its territory.
 29

other values, such as survival, peace, or justice in outcomes, may in some circumstances be in

tension with (the intrinsic procedural value of) democratic legitimacy. Nothing I have said

implies that democratic legitimacy trumps all other, potentially competing, values; in some

circumstances democratic legitimacy may be rightly sacrificed when other values are at stake.

(But even in these cases, as we shall see, the degree of democratic legitimacy is morally relevant

in its own right, because it has implications for persons’ moral responsibilities.) Thus the absence

of democratic legitimacy in itself does not ipso facto imply the absence of a moral liberty-right,

on the part of state agents, to exercise coercive political power. In the context of an existential

struggle with hostile foreign enemies unwilling to engage in a democratic resolution of

differences, for example, it is simply not feasible to secure their democratic participation in

political decision-making. And in circumstances in which democratic legitimacy is not feasible,

or where it is not feasible without sacrificing a conditioning or more urgent value, a more

minimal form of political legitimacy will have to do.

The question is what the conditions for this minimal form of political legitimacy are, and

under what circumstances they are sufficient to yield political legitimacy to state agents lacking

in democratic legitimacy. Consider Allen Buchanan’s account of the distinction between

“minimal” and “full political legitimacy.” Buchanan argues that “a wielder of political power”

possesses political legitimacy “if and only if it (a) does a credible job of protecting at least the

most basic human rights of all those over whom it wields power, (b) provides this protection

through processes, policies, and actions that themselves respect the most basic human rights, and

(c) is not a usurper.” He then goes on to argue that “where institutional resources are available

for democratic authorization of a wielder of political power, political legitimacy requires

democracy,” that is, “full political legitimacy.” (This is perhaps because, under such
 30

circumstances, condition (b) includes respect for democratic political rights.) But where the

institutional resources are lacking, democratic authorization is not required and one is left with

“minimal” political legitimacy. 33

Whatever the merits of Buchanan’s specific proposal, the following point is correct: where

democratic legitimacy is not feasible, it is not a necessary condition of political legitimacy. Yet

three clarifications are in order. First, it is important to see that the relevant feasibility condition

is a dynamic, not static, condition. Recall that, according to Buchanan, an agent wielding

political power when the institutional resources for democratic authorization are lacking may

nevertheless possess political legitimacy, if the agent meets conditions (a)-(c). Now consider the

case of such an agent who fails to use the political power available to it to foster, or uses its

political power actively to hinder, the development of the institutional resources that would make

democratic authorization possible in the future. For precisely the same reasons that political

legitimacy requires democratic authorization when it is institutionally feasible, so too does it

require the wielder of political power to foster such institutions when it is feasible for it to do

so. 34 A static specification of the relevant feasibility condition would simply be at odds with the

acknowledgement that legitimacy requires democratic authorization when it is institutionally

feasible. When the institutional resources for democratic authorization are lacking, political

33
Allen Buchanan, "Political Legitimacy and Democracy," Ethics 112, July (2002): 689-719, pp.

703, 718-719.
34
The failure to do so would presumably be, on Buchanan’s account, a failure to meet condition

(b).
 31

legitimacy still requires that the wielder of political power fulfil the “dynamic duty” of fostering

such resources, when feasible. 35

Second, it is important to resist the thought that political legitimacy is a disjunctive quality

that one either possesses or not. Political legitimacy is a matter of degree. The temptation to

construe it as a disjunctive quality arises in part from the thought that political legitimacy implies

a moral liberty-right to wield political power, a liberty-right that one either possesses or does

not. 36 But this is not the only normative function of the concept: how much legitimacy state

agents possess has further moral consequences for both state agents’ duties and others’ specific

duties, particularly their dynamic duties concerning bringing about institutional change over

time.

Third, the relevant feasibility condition is not the feasibility of democratic legitimacy on its

own, but the feasibility of democratic legitimacy in conjunction with other urgent values. The

35
On the notion of “dynamic duties,” see Pablo Gilabert, "The Feasibility of Basic

Socioeconomic Human Rights: A Conceptual Exploration," The Philosophical Quarterly 59, 237

(2009): 659-681.
36
Buchanan appears to take a disjunctive view. See his definition of political legitimacy,

according to which “an entity has political legitimacy if and only if it is morally justified in

wielding political power, where to wield political power is to attempt to exercise a monopoly,

within a jurisdiction, in the making, application, and enforcement of laws.” Buchanan, "Political

Legitimacy and Democracy," 689-690. I also find Buchanan’s reference to a pre-defined

“jurisdiction” problematic for the obvious reason that, in the case with which I am concerned, the

boundary of jurisdiction is precisely what is in question.

 32

relevant feasibility condition incorporates trade-offs between the procedural value of democratic

legitimacy and other values. For example, the democratic authorization of regimes of border

control, via processes in which foreigners have rights of democratic participation, may be

possible, but if under the circumstances it would inevitably lead to the annihilation of the polity,

or to genocidal policies, then such authorization is not (morally) feasible in the relevant sense,

precisely because democratic legitimacy does not trump all other values.

In the case of war, then, we might say that an agent exercises coercive political power

legitimately only if it is conducting a just war, does not commit war crimes, and, where there

exist democratically legitimized interstate laws of war, abides by them. Furthermore, because of

the dynamic aspect of the relevant feasibility condition, legitimacy is also conditional on the

agent exercising power in a manner that in the long run helps foster peace and, where feasible,

democratic institutions designed to avoid violent conflict in the future.

In the case of immigration, the democratic borders thesis implies that the current interstate

regime of border control is not democratically legitimate. But the state agents enforcing them

may (or may not) enjoy a more minimal kind of political legitimacy, one that at least yields them

a moral liberty-right to subject foreigners to coercion in some (perhaps even many) cases – for

example, for reasons of peace, or justice, or for the simple reason that the necessary institutional

resources are missing. Whether or not they do enjoy this more minimal kind of political

legitimacy, despite lacking democratic legitimacy, will depend in part on how the value of

democratic legitimacy ought be weighed against other values when they compete. Even though I

have bracketed this fundamental question here, I have argued that even this more minimal

political legitimacy, when sufficient, demands fostering democratic institutions over time. And

although the democratic authorization of border coercion is currently unfeasible (because the
 33

institutions for such authorization do not exist, except in cases such as between EU states), the

development of such institutions in many interstate contexts is feasible. The development of such

institutions is, I take it, what political legitimacy demands of us today.

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