Resiliente Demokratie: Über die Notwendigkeit politischer Inklusion und Exklusion aus demokratietheoretischer Sicht

Abstract

This thesis analyses the normative relationship between the stability of a democratic system, its legitimacy, and political inclusion and exclusion. It starts from the premise that the ideal of equality of opportunity and the autonomous realisation of one's own concept of the good life can only be achieved within a stable democracy. The question is therefore (a) under what conditions people are able and willing to organise their lives democratically and justly, and (b) how a democratic community must be organised in order to be stable in the long term. To this end, I first examine (1) the necessary conditions and limits of individuals' ability and willingness to cooperate in a democratic community governed by positive law. Building on this, I show that illegitimate political exclusions lead to dynamics that threaten the stability of democracy. Second (2), I show that political inclusion and exclusion can be described as a legal relationship between the subjects of law and the creators of law. Finally, (3) I outline how political exclusion can be democratically managed. The findings of the thesis are threefold. First, the resilience of a democracy depends on its ability to correct both illegitimate political exclusion and illegitimate political inclusion. Second, by integrating requirements for democratic legitimacy with conditions for stability, a framework is provided for determining the legitimacy or illegitimacy of political exclusion and inclusion. Third, the thesis proposes a democratic procedure for correcting illegitimate exclusion. By specifying the preconditions and limits to be taken into account, the thesis contributes to the clarification of the democratic question of how to deal with the phenomena of political inclusion and exclusion. It offers a model that describes the dynamics of destabilisation and stabilisation within democratic orders driven by political exclusion and inclusion. This model analytically distinguishes three types of ordered and politically relevant social relations: the community of solidarity that underlies cooperation; the legal community that determines the conditions and forms of cooperation through positive law; and the political community as the legislator of law. The thesis draws inspiration from Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, employs the relational (intersubjectivist) conception of law of Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, and uses a fundamental idea of Habermas' democratic theory.