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The democratic ideal promises political inclusion; however, it must define an 'inside' and an 'outside'. While it demands universal inclusion, its institutionalization invariably sets boundaries that determine how membership, voice, participation, representation, or authority are distributed, as well as what kind of ethos, practices or institutions are fostered or discredited. Today, these boundaries —territorial, legal, social, cultural, symbolic, or technological— are increasingly visible and unstable; global interdependence, migration, and multicultural societies strain the state-bounded demos; media outlets and platforms controlled by powerful private actors decide who can appear in public and on what terms; and economic inequality, the crisis of representation, and exclusionary nationalisms reduce some groups’ ability to participate as equals.
This panel seeks theoretical and empirical contributions that examine how this constitutive paradox of democracy can inform democratic renewal. Without equating every boundary with domination or assuming that every form of inclusion is emancipatory, the panel asks which boundaries can be democratically justified, who should participate in defining them, and how they can be changed.
We welcome papers on: normative criteria for constituting and redefining the demos; institutional innovations that broaden effective participation, including cosmopolitan, multilevel, or overlapping-sovereignty arrangements; exclusionary political projects and their relationship to the democratic ideal; forms of inclusion, representation, and agency for those excluded on grounds of nationality, age, capacity, coloniality, or availability, as well as for nonhuman nature; proposals for democratizing public and private spheres; and on the limits imposed in the name of defending democracy itself, such as cordons sanitaires against the radical right. We also welcome studies of the spatial and visual dimensions of political order, including how maps, borders, and cartographic imaginaries produce mutually exclusive domains.
Our aim is not to formulate a universal model of inclusive democracy, but rather to identify principles and institutional mechanisms through which the boundaries of contemporary democracies can be justified or contested. We propose understanding inclusion and exclusion not merely as objects of diagnosis and political positioning, but as criteria for democratic deepening at local, national, and global levels.
(This proposal is part of the 4TrustCM project PHS-2024/PH-HUM-65, funded by the AACC of Madrid).