Jelena Belic

Fusing Galaxy of Countable Possibilities: The Principle of Affectedness and Political Equality

The all-affected principle is predominantly debated in relation to the problem of justifying the composition of the demos, while its role in relation to the allocation of political power within the demos is often neglected. The possible reason for this neglect may be found in the assumption of the egalitarian view of democracy that members of the demos, in virtue of sharing a common world, have roughly equal stakes in decisions, and accordingly, should have equal participatory entitlements. The paper aims to challenge this assumption by problematizing the relation between equal stakes and allocation of political power. More specifically, it is concerned with the question of what has to be true of affectedness so that it confers equal participatory entitlements. Based on discussing proportional and egalitarian view of democracy, two claims are made. First, it is only equality of stakes in a strong sense that justifies limiting participatory entitlements to the members of the demos. Second, both versions of egalitarian democracy account endorse equality of stakes in a weak sense, thus failing to defend the position that participatory rights should be limited to the members of the demos.