Every democracy rests on a foundation it cannot justify democratically. Before any vote can be taken, before any deliberation can proceed, someone must already have determined who gets to participate. This prior determination—who constitutes 'the people'—shapes every subsequent democratic decision, yet it cannot itself be made through democratic procedures without falling into infinite regress.

This boundary problem represents perhaps the deepest theoretical challenge in democratic theory. If democracy means rule by the people, then the definition of 'the people' precedes and constrains all democratic action. Yet if that definition is imposed non-democratically, the entire edifice of popular sovereignty stands on undemocratic ground. Robert Dahl called this the problem of the 'unit'—we cannot use democratic criteria to decide what the democratic unit should be.

The challenge is not merely academic. Every naturalization law, every decision about voting age, every boundary drawn around a municipality or nation-state represents an answer to the boundary question. These answers determine who faces conscription, who pays taxes, who enjoys welfare benefits, and who decides on war and peace. Understanding the theoretical frameworks for approaching this paradox illuminates both the limits of democratic legitimacy and the institutional mechanisms societies have developed to navigate an inherently problematic terrain.

The logical structure of the boundary problem is deceptively simple. Democratic legitimacy requires that those governed by decisions participate in making them. But determining who is governed—who falls within the jurisdiction, who counts as a member—is itself a decision. If we make that decision democratically, we need a prior demos to vote on it. But constituting that demos requires another decision, generating infinite regress.

This circularity cannot be escaped through procedural ingenuity. Some theorists have suggested that founding moments establish demos boundaries, which subsequent democratic procedures then operate within. But this merely pushes the problem back one step. The founders themselves were a particular group, whose authority to define membership was not democratically established. The American constitutional 'We the People' notoriously excluded the majority of people living in the territory.

The problem intensifies when we consider that boundary decisions are not one-time events but ongoing choices. Immigration policy continuously reshapes who will become future members. Territorial adjustments alter which populations fall under which jurisdictions. Age thresholds determine when individuals transition from subjects to citizens. Each of these decisions affects who will make subsequent decisions, including future boundary decisions themselves.

Frederick Whelan articulated the dilemma precisely: democratic theory provides convincing reasons why people should participate in decisions affecting them, but provides no democratic way to determine who those people are. The scope of the demos is logically prior to democratic decision-making. This means democracy, at its foundations, necessarily relies on non-democratic determinations.

Recognizing this limitation does not invalidate democracy but reveals its dependence on prior normative commitments about community, territory, and membership. These commitments may be defensible on various grounds—historical, cultural, pragmatic—but they cannot be defended on purely democratic grounds. Democratic theory, however sophisticated, cannot bootstrap itself into existence.

Takeaway

Democratic procedures cannot determine their own scope—recognizing this foundational dependence on non-democratic boundary decisions is essential for honest assessment of democratic legitimacy and its inherent limits.

The most influential theoretical response to the boundary problem is the 'all affected interests' principle: everyone affected by a decision should have a say in making it. This principle has intuitive democratic appeal. If legitimacy derives from consent, then those affected without consenting seem to suffer democratic injustice. The principle appears to offer a substantive criterion for determining boundaries that doesn't depend on arbitrary historical contingencies.

Robert Goodin has developed the most sophisticated version of this argument, suggesting that all possibly affected interests should be enfranchised. This expansive interpretation reflects the genuine interconnectedness of contemporary decisions. Climate policy affects future generations and foreign populations. Trade agreements shape livelihoods across borders. Financial regulation ripples through global markets. A stringent application would dramatically expand democratic inclusion beyond territorial citizenship.

Yet the principle faces severe practical and theoretical objections. Practically, determining who is affected requires the very decision that we're trying to make—we cannot know who will be affected until we know what will be decided, but we cannot decide legitimately until we know who should participate. The principle also implies radically unstable boundaries that shift with every issue, undermining the stable institutional framework democratic governance requires.

Theoretically, the principle proves too much. Virtually every significant decision affects people across the globe. Strict application would establish a single global demos for most important decisions, eliminating the value of political pluralism and self-determination for particular communities. It would also enfranchise those with trivial stakes alongside those with vital interests, ignoring the meaningful differences in how decisions affect different populations.

Some theorists respond by distinguishing between being affected and being governed—only those subject to coercive laws should participate in making them. This 'all subjected' principle offers more determinate boundaries but raises its own difficulties. It potentially disenfranchises emigrants while enfranchising short-term visitors. It struggles with extraterritorial legal effects. Most fundamentally, it still cannot explain why subjection to particular laws—rather than others that might have been enacted—confers membership rights.

Takeaway

While the affected interests principle captures something important about democratic inclusion, its practical indeterminacy and radical implications reveal that no single criterion can resolve boundary questions—multiple considerations must be balanced through institutional judgment.

Actual democracies navigate boundary questions through layered institutional mechanisms rather than pure theoretical principles. Citizenship law establishes the primary boundary, typically combining jus soli (birth in territory), jus sanguinis (descent from citizens), and naturalization procedures. These legal frameworks represent accumulated political judgments about membership, encoding particular balances between openness and closure, between civic and ethnic conceptions of political community.

Comparative analysis reveals significant variation in how democracies handle boundary zones. Some extend local and regional voting rights to non-citizen residents, recognizing that territorial presence generates legitimate claims to participation in decisions affecting daily life. The European Union creates a novel supranational citizenship layer, allowing movement and political participation across member states while preserving national citizenship. These arrangements suggest boundaries can be multiple and graduated rather than singular and absolute.

The trend toward resident voting rights in municipal elections reflects a principle of stakeholder democracy—those embedded in a community through residence, taxation, and social ties have legitimate claims to voice regardless of formal citizenship status. Over fifty democracies now permit some form of non-citizen voting. This institutional innovation recognizes that the affected interests principle, while theoretically problematic, captures something normatively important that rigid citizenship boundaries miss.

Constitutional arrangements also constrain how boundaries can be changed, typically requiring supermajorities for citizenship law revisions or territorial alterations. These entrenchment mechanisms reflect awareness that boundary questions are foundational—ordinary majorities should not easily alter who will constitute future majorities. Such constraints are themselves undemocratic in form but may be necessary to protect the stability democratic politics requires.

Normative assessment of these mechanisms must acknowledge trade-offs. More inclusive boundaries may dilute the self-determination of existing communities. More restrictive boundaries may exclude those with legitimate stakes. Federal arrangements multiply boundaries but enable appropriate matching between decision scopes and affected populations. There is no institutionally perfect solution—only more or less defensible compromises that balance competing values of inclusion, self-determination, stability, and practical governability.

Takeaway

Rather than seeking theoretical purity, examine how democracies actually manage boundary questions through graduated membership, multiple jurisdictional layers, and constitutional constraints—these institutional innovations offer practical wisdom that pure theory cannot provide.

The boundary problem reveals democracy's dependence on normative foundations it cannot itself provide. This is not a flaw to be fixed but a structural feature to be acknowledged. Democratic legitimacy is always partial, always resting on prior determinations that shape who participates in all subsequent decisions.

Institutional responses—graduated membership, nested jurisdictions, affected interests considerations—do not solve the theoretical problem but manage it practically. They represent accumulated political wisdom about balancing inclusion against self-determination, stability against responsiveness, principle against pragmatism.

For democratic reformers, this analysis suggests humility about procedural perfectionism alongside attention to how existing boundary mechanisms include or exclude. The demos is always historically constituted, but its boundaries remain subject to ongoing normative evaluation and institutional redesign—through processes that are themselves imperfectly democratic but potentially moving toward greater justifiability.