Abstract
Proposals to extend the franchise to non-citizens have recently been defended on the basis of principles of democratic inclusion that challenge the sovereign authority of states to decide who may participate as a member in the democratic constituency. Here the requirement of extending the franchise to non-citizens is considered in the context of municipalities dominated by national minorities and in light of the claims of national minorities to self-rule. In these contexts, the settlement and enfranchisement of migrants sometimes dilute the strength and increase the costs of minority nationalist policies. The political dynamics created by extending voting rights to non-citizens where national minorities struggle for self-rule illuminate that moral arguments for extending voting rights to non-citizens can confuse two issues, the first being who has the right to participate in shaping the common projects of a democratic community and the second being whose interests should be considered in the course of decision making by that community. In these contexts, non-citizens have the right to have their interests considered and to have their rights taken seriously, but they may not have a strong claim to participate as voters in community decision making.
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Notes
See David Owen (2012) for a helpful assessment of the all-affected interests principle and alternatives to it in democratic theory.
Carens (2005) argues that the right to vote may be withheld if non-citizens have unimpeded access to becoming citizens: ‘Once people have been settled for an extended period—say, five years or so—they are morally entitled to the same legal rights (and ought to be subject to the same legal obligations) as citizens, except perhaps for the right to vote and the right to hold high public office. It is permissible to restrict these rights, if access to citizenship is readily available as I have argued it should be’.
In some cities, between 20 and 40 % of the population fall into this category. For example, Brussels is estimated to have 30 % foreign residence; several municipalities in New York, Florida and California have more than 40 % non-citizen residents.
Lenard and Munro (2012) argue for voting rights for non-citizens as a means to address vulnerability and exploitation.
See Eisenberg and Kymlicka (2011, p. 2).
According to Article 8b1, ‘[e]very citizen of the Union residing in a Member State of which he is not a national shall have the right to vote and to stand as a candidate at municipal elections in the Member State in which he resides, under the same conditions as nationals of that State’.
General immigration trends in Catalunya are reported in the Citizenship and Immigration Plan 2009–12 (see Generalitat de Catalunya 2009, pp. 13–14). Barcelona has experienced the greatest share of immigration. A comparison of rates across Catalan municipalities can be found at http://www.idescat.cat/poblacioestrangera/?b=4&nac=a&res=a.
With respect to the Catalan language, surveys conducted in 2006 of four key immigrant groups (Moroccans, Ecuadorians, Romanian and Chinese) show marked discrepancies in the degree to which immigrants understand Castilian and Catalan. See Generalitat de Catalunya (2009, p. 25).
These initiatives were modelled on the 1991 Canada-Quebec Accord on immigration. See Davis (2009, pp. 432–433).
One reason cited in the 2008 Citizenship and Immigration Plan why immigrants are slow to learn Catalan is because Catalans use Castilian when speaking to immigrants or foreigners (Generalitat de Catalunya 2009, p. 69).
These reforms often occur without formal constitutional amendments but instead by amending the ‘Statute of Autonomy’ which was most recently amended in 2006 Statute of Autonomy (Organic Act 6/2006 dated 19 July).
On the rise of right wing parties in Catalunya since the early 2000s, see Pardos-Prado and Molins (2009).
This proposal, which was part of Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular’s general election platform in 2008, was copied from Nicholas Sarkozy’s 2006 immigration and integration bill passed during the time when he was Interior Minister. See Davis (2009, p. 429).
This proposal was part of the campaign platforms of both the Convergencia i Unio Party in 2006 and the Partido Popular in 2008. Such contracts have been proposed and/or adopted in other European countries. See Groenendijk (2005) for a discussion of increases in restrictions on immigrants and non-citizen residents in Europe from the late 1990s, when the Maastricht provisions came into effect, until 2004.
As I understand him, Goodin proposes this more expansive version while recognizing that it would, at least in principle, ‘give virtually everyone a vote on virtually everything virtually everywhere in the world’ (64) because he thinks that it exerts the right kind of democratic pressure on polities and will require that polities compensate those whose interests have been affected through decision-making processes from which they are excluded. I take up the issue of compensation below in footnote 29.
There are many examples of voteless neighbourhoods throughout the world. For instance, Song reports that California has 85 municipalities where non-citizens make up over 25 % of the adult population and 12 municipalities where non-citizens make up more than 50 % of the adult population (Song 2009, p. 608). See Siemiatycki (2007) and Lenard and Munro (2012) for a discussion of voteless neighbourhoods in Toronto.
To be sure, jurisdiction over these kinds of services varies from place to place, but even where policy is set nationally, as some education policy is set in Spain, it is interpreted and implemented locally and thereby is shaped by local concerns and circumstances.
See Lenard’s chapter in this volume for an argument that favours extending the franchise to non-citizens in national rather than local elections because national policies, such as immigration status and mobility rights, are especially important to the interests of non-citizens and are typically developed at the national level. I agree that many national policies are important to the interests of immigrants. Nevertheless, two considerations which underline the importance of local participation over national participation for immigrants, are first that social citizenship is strongest at the local, not national level, and second that electors are more likely to have an impact on local policy relevant to their interests. At the local level, policies are typically designed to reflect the distinctive interests of neighbourhoods and regions, rather than broader national interests, as is the case with policies about borders control, security and citizenship status.
An additional reason to extend the franchise includes the ascendance of transnational and supranational organizations, such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the European Union etc., with real decision-making power.
Regional Statutes of Autonomy for the autonomous regions in Spain have been amended over 30 times (Colino 2009, p. 285 f. 2).
Starting in 1970, Belgium passed a series of agreements that have decentralized the state and steadily transferred powers to Flanders, Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital region.
See Kleiner-Liebau (2009, pp. 202–203) for discussion of this problem in Catalunya. According to Kleiner-Liebau, a similar conflict occurs between established and ‘new’ migrants.
The struggle between the central state and regional governments for jurisdictional authority and resources to manage the numbers of immigrants is especially clear in the Spanish case in large part because of the strong central government in Spain. A useful discussion of the kinds of problems Catalunya faces in this respect is found in the Citizenship and Immigration Plan, 2009–2012. See Generalitat de Catalunya (2009) regarding tensions about jurisdiction over work permits (pp. 53–54) and resources required to teach Catalan to an ever-increasing number of students (p. 68). The report also discusses the evolution of jurisdiction in Catalonia over reception services, health services and equality and accommodation policies (especially Chapter 3).
In the case of Quebec, see Banting and Soroka (2012, p. 161).
The importance of social mobility and incentive structures for immigrant integration is discussed by Kymlicka 2001 (Chapter 15).
For evidence in Canada of some anxiety about whether immigrants identify with national minority or majority communities, see, most recently, Banting and Soroka, who measuremost recently, Banting and Soroka, who measure the effects of competitive nation-building on immigrants’ sense of belonging in Canada/Quebec and conclude that immigrants in Quebec have a weaker sense of belonging to Quebec than other immigrants in Canada, especially if they are racial minorities. But immigrants to Quebec also have a weaker sense of belonging to Canada which, according to Banting and Soroka, suggests that, when faced with competing national projects, Quebec’s immigrants withdraw and remain less attached to both communities.
Two further ways to resolve conflicts between franchise extension and local self-rule are worth briefly mentioning. First, principles of democratic inclusion, such as the all subject to the law principle, may be qualified so that non-citizen voting rights are limited in contexts where they are likely to jeopardize the capacity of a national minority to sustain its culture and language. But, as I argue in the previous section, assessing which policies are related to cultural and linguistic protection and which are not is notoriously difficult both because minorities and majorities often disagree about what jeopardizes the capacity of a national minority to sustain its societal culture (e.g. do national minorities need jurisdiction over linguistic policy, religious freedom, labour rights, immigration policy or, for that matter, voting rights in order to offer their members a sufficiently robust protection for their identity?) and because the kinds of rules and regulations whereby cultural and linguistic security are translated in the practices of local institutions are many and varied. So it is difficult to tell which policies need to be shielded from non-members. A second option, relevant only to the all-affected interests principle, is to exclude non-citizens from the franchise and compensate them when their interests are nevertheless affected. Robert Goodin’s (2007) influential argument shows that the inclusionary logic of the affected interests principle requires that states compensate those whose interests are affected by decision making but who are excluded from the vote. But, as the cases I have sketched above make clear, this possibility may only exacerbate the opportunity for political mischief by the national majority, which either requires that the franchise is extended and thereby imposes on national minorities risks to their identity or allows national minorities to opt-out of franchise extension and thereby saddles them with the costs of compensating non-citizens who are affected by local decision making but excluded from the vote.
See Lenard and Munro (2012). Also see Lenard, this volume, for an argument that links the right to vote to the political self-determination of people and to guaranteeing the equality of political voice.
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Acknowledgments
My thanks to Rainer Bauböck, Michael Blake, Colin Macleod, Sue Donaldson, Alex Gunn, Patti Lenard, David Owen, Lorenzo Piccoli, Ilenia Ruggiu and Christine Straehle for comments on this paper. My thanks also to the participants at the 2012 American Philosophical Association Meetings in Seattle and at the 2013 Canadian Political Science Association Meetings, especially Amy Reed-Sandoval and Shelley Wilcox, for their questions and comments.
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A previous version of the paper was presented at the 2012 American Philosophical Association Meetings and at the 2013 Canadian Political Science Association Meetings.
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Eisenberg, A. Voting Rights for Non-citizens: Treasure or Fool’s Gold?. Int. Migration & Integration 16, 133–151 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-014-0331-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-014-0331-y