Patti Tamara Lenard's "Democracy and Exclusion"

Patti Tamara Lenard is Professor of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.

She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Democracy and Exclusion, and reported the following:

It is common to believe that states have a right to control their borders, and thereby can make choices about whom to admit – as tourists, labourers, immigrants – and whom to exclude. One of the most visible ways in which states control admission and exclusion is via the visa systems: as many readers will know, if you wish to enter another country, a first step is to acquire the appropriate visa.

As page 99 of Exclusion and Democracy summarizes, acquiring this visa is a multi-step process, and whether the process is difficult or easy to manage depends a good deal on where one holds citizenship and where one wants to go. Visas are one of many ways that states exclude unwanted people from its territory; and states also exclude individuals who reside on their territory from acquiring citizenship and the protective benefits this status offer. Indeed, page 99 is emblematic of the theme I explore in my book, namely, whether and when exclusion from a state’s territory and membership can be justified. I argue that exclusion, from territory and from membership, can rarely be defended.

Exclusion and Democracy is a case-based assessment of the permissibility and justifiability of states’ choices with respect to whom to include and whom to exclude. It takes seriously that exclusion is harmful – in several recent introductions to my book, I say to audiences that its origin story is in the choice a classmate made to exclude my oldest daughter from her birthday party, and the harm this choice generated, even though it was perfectly within the classmate’s right to do so. This harm is sometimes impermissible, as for example it is when states adopt racist criteria to exclude refugees and immigrants or when they refuse to grant citizenship to stateless peoples. But sometimes it is permissible according to the rules of democratic justice, but should be avoided anyway, since it is harmful to those who are excluded, as is sometimes the case where states adopt strict rules around citizenship tests and citizenship oath ceremonies. In nearly all cases, we can be guided by what democratic theorists call the “all-subjected” principle, to understand who deserves inclusion: all those who are subject to the law of a state, on an ongoing, life-shaping basis, are entitled to be protected from forced exclusion, in the form of citizenship status.

My objective is to speak to many audiences, including applied political theorists who are keen to discuss the relevance and application of principles of democratic justice; policy-makers who have the discretion to press policies in the direction of justice, even if only at the margins; and those who have no real experience of the harms that travel with exclusion and, importantly, with persistent threats of exclusion from one or both of territory or membership.

Learn more about Democracy and Exclusion at the Oxford University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue