Abstract
In recent decades, the justification of democratic political community has become a core issue in the philosophical domain of territorial rights. Current democratic theories of territorial rights have mostly focused on justifying political community based on the right to self-determination of a sovereign pre-political people. This approach has led current theories to essentially depoliticize international affairs: International issues should be resolved through moral argumentation, not by involving people in democratic decision-making processes. However, a lot of democratic philosophers, especially those subscribing to the all-affected and all-subjected approaches to the democratic principle, have argued that this depoliticization goes against democratic ideals. Instead of trying to justify a democratic political community based on a sovereign people, they hold that we must look for different ways of justifying political community. Until now though, it remains unclear what such a conception of political community should be and how it could function in a theory of territorial rights. This research project will explore the possibilities of justifying a democratic political community that is not based on sovereignty but can be applied to contemporary political problems as part of a comprehensive theory of territorial rights.
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