Should expatriates vote?

Journal of Political Philosophy

Volumn 13, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 216-234

  López Guerra, Claudio ^a  

^a Och Spine at New York Presbyterian Hospitals   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 18844443726     PISSN: 09638016     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2005.00221.x     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. Although I briefly touch on the issue in Section III, I shall not discuss here how much time needs to pass by in order to distinguish between permanent and temporary statuses. Inevitably, any solution to this problem will involve a degree of arbitrariness. It is sufficient for my purpose, however, to indicate that the distinction is unavoidable and to use examples that are unlikely to be controversial.
2. The enfranchisement of expatriates lacked any significance a century ago. However, now that ease of international travel and the possibilities for overseas voting (the practice of casting a ballot from a foreign country) have improved, expatriates could strongly influence the outcome of an election in countries with high levels of emigration. Not surprisingly, in these countries the possibility of passing an overseas voting law has become a highly contentious political issue - such a law might alter the number of active voters by millions from one day to the next. For this reason, it is sometimes suggested that introducing an overseas voting method represents in fact an "extension of voting rights." See Dieter Nohlen and Florian Grotz, "External voting: legal framework and overview of electoral legislation," Boletín Mexicans de Derecho Comparado, 99 (2000), 1115-45 at p. 1117.
3. I shall focus on the arguments made in Mexico and the Philippines. The following statistics may suggest why the issue of voting by non-resident citizens has acquired an unusual political importance in these countries. According to the Commission of Filipinos Overseas, there are 7.41 million Filipinos residing abroad: 41% are transients, 36% are permanent non-residents, and the rest have an indeterminate status. Long-term expatriates would constitute approximately 8% of registered voters. The Federal Electoral Institute of Mexico estimated in 1998 that 9.9 million Mexicans of voting age live permanently in a foreign country, most of them in North America. They would represent about 14% of eligible voters.
4. A study that compares election laws in 63 democracies shows that 30 of them do not disenfranchise citizens on the basis of long-term residency in a foreign country. What is more, the authors find "that 'stronger' democracies are less inclined to disfranchise citizens residing abroad." See André Blais, Louis Massicote and Antoine Yoshinaka, "Deciding who has the right to vote: a comparative analysis of election laws," Electoral Studies, 20 (2001), 41-62 at p. 57.
5. Frederick G. Whelan, "Prologue: democratic theory and the boundary problem," Liberal Democracy (Nomos XXV), ed. J. R. Pennock and J. W. Chapman (New York: New York University Press, 1983), pp. 13-47 at p. 16.
6. As Rousseau wrote, "there is a point in which each form of government merges into the next" depending on the number of people that run the government; Of the Social Contract, bk. III, ch. 3(5).
7. Let us keep in mind the following useful truism. In modern democracies, while the acquiescence of the people confers power to rulers as a matter of fact, the normative source of their power - the reason why rulers claim to be 'entitled' to rule - is that they have been elected by the people and not, for instance, appointed by some divinity. For a discussion on the "outcome power" (the power to determine the results of the electoral competition) and the "social power" (the capacity to determine the content of governmental policies) that citizens exercise over decision-makers, see Brian Barry, "Capitalists rule OK? Some puzzles about power," Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 2 (2002), 155-84.
8. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper Perennial, 1975), pp. 244-5.
9. Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 122.
10. Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, Ibid., 1989, p. 105.
11. Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 78.
12. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, pp. 88-91.
13. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, Ibid., p. 108.
14. Habermas rightly points out that "only the rights of political participation ground the citizen's reflexive, self-referential legal standing. Negative liberties and social entitlements can be paternalistically bestowed." See Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), p. 78.
15. Mogens H. Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) p. 74.
16. Mogens H. Hansen, Was Athens a Democracy? Historisk-filosofiske Meddelelser, 59 (Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters, 1989), p. 28.
17. As a noteworthy example, in Plato's ideal but certainly not inclusive regime, the well-being of both rulers and ruled is given equal importance. See C. C. W. Taylor, "Plato's totalitarianism," Plato 2, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 280-96.
18. Walzer argues that it is a matter of political justice to make sure that "the process of self-determination through which a democratic state shapes its internal life must be open, and equally open, to all those men and women who live within its territory, work in the local economy, and are subject to the local law." See Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice, (New York: Basic Books, 1983) p. 60.
19. Ian Shapiro, Democratic Justice (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 38.
20. Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) p. 23.
21. Jon Elster, "Cross-voting" (unpublished), p. 28. Manuscript discussed at a colloquium on justice in the Department of Political Science, Columbia University. (Permission to quote has been granted by the author.)
22. Philippe C. Schmitter, "Exploring the problematic triumph of liberal democracy and concluding with a modest proposal for improving its international impact," in Democracy's Victory and Crisis, ed. Axel Hadenius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 297-310 at p. 299.
23. See Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy, pp. 246-51.
24. Shapiro considers it a fact that "the decisions of members often (and, it seems, increasingly) affect the interests of non-members." See Ian Shapiro, "Democratic justice and multicultural recognition," Multiculturalism Reconsidered, ed. Paul Kelly (Oxford: Polity Press, 2002), pp. 174-83 at pp. 174-5.
25. Ian Shapiro, Democratic Justice, p. 235.
26. In the introduction to a book on deliberative democracy, Jon Elster comments that, in his view, all contributors of that volume agree "that the notion includes collective decision making with the participation of all who will be affected by the decision or their representatives: this is the democratic part." See Jon Elster, "Introduction," Deliberative Democracy, ed. Elster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 1-18 at p. 8 (my emphasis).
27. Joshua Cohen, "Democracy and liberty," Deliberative Democracy, ed. Elster, pp. 185-231 at p. 224 n.1.
28. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 110. It is thus contrasted with the other rule derived from the discourse principle, namely the moral principle, which stipulates that the interests of all persons possibly affected by an action should be given equal consideration.
29. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, Ibid., p. 120.
30. Robert E. Goodin, "Inclusion and exclusion," European Journal of Sociology, 2 (1996), pp. 343-71.
31. For discussions on the need for breaking the traditional monopoly of the state in the protection of civil and social rights see Veit Bader "Citizenship and exclusion," Political Theory, 2 (1995), 211-46;
32. Seyla Benhabib, "Deterritorialized politics and dilemmas of political membership," Transformations of Citizenship (Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum, 2001)s
33. and Jean Cohen "Changing paradigms of citizenship and the exclusiveness of the demos," International Sociology, 3 (1999), pp. 245-68.
34. See Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, p. 355, n.11.
35. Adam Przeworski, "Minimalist conception of democracy: a defense," Democracy's Value, ed. Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 23-55 at p. 47.
36. The government of the Cook Islands estimates that about 65,000 Cook Islanders live in New Zealand and Australia, while the number of citizens residing within the country barely totals 15,000.
37. It should be noticed that Mexican and Filipino expatriates have not been formally disenfranchised. In most cases, they could vote if they went back to their countries on election day. However, they have clearly made their demands as if the non-existence of an overseas voting procedure implied disenfranchisement, which is sufficient for our purposes.
38. Jorge Ramos Avalos, "Mexicanos sin voto," La Prensa, June 26, 2000.
39. See Jürgen Habermas, "Citizenship and national identity," Appendix II in Between Facts and Norms, p. 495.
40. Richard W. Soudriette, "The perspective of the International Foundation of Election Systems," manuscript presented at the Trilateral Conference Mexico-US-Canada on Overseas Voting, Mexico City, September 2-3, 1998.
41. Jan Rath, "Voting rights," The Political Rights of Migrant Workers in Western Europe, ed. Zig Layton-Henry (London: Sage, 1990), pp. 127-57 at p. 141.
42. Goodin, "Inclusion and exclusion," p. 363.
43. Conrado de Quiros, "There's the Rub," Philippine Daily Inquirer, August 23, 2000.
44. Sergio Acosta Salazar, Gaceta Parlamentaria, Year IV, 832, September 7, 2001.
45. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000), p. 30.
46. T. H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship and Social Development (New York: Doubleday, 1964), p. 112.
47. As a minor observation, expatriates would enjoy no special position here - for instance, why would Chilean Anglophiles (the friends of Augusto Pinochet, perhaps) be impeded from offering tribute and mercenary services in exchange for electing MPs?