In this article, Rainer Bauböck criticizes, first, democratic inclusion principles that are indeterminate with regard to democratic boundaries and indifferent towards the structural features of polities. He suggests that a democratic stakeholder principle passes these critical tests and can be applied to democratic polities of different kinds. Second, he compares birthright-based and residence-based membership regimes at state and local levels and considers how they can accommodate international migrants. In the third and final part, the author argues that these two regimes are not freestanding alternatives between which democratic polities have to choose, but are combined in a multilevel architecture of democratic citizenship, in which the inclusion and exclusion dynamics of birthright and residence mutually constrain each other and every individual is included as a citizen in both types of polities.

Publication details and link to source: Rainer Bauböck, ‘Morphing the Demos into the right shape. Normative principles for enfranchising resident aliens and expatriate citizens’, Democratization, April 2015.