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Empowering Affected Interests — Democratic Inclusion in a Globalized World

In this book, Empowering Affected Interests, Archon Fung and Sean W. D. Gray explore the radical implications of the All-Affected Principle in a globalized world, bringing together leading theorists to examine how democracy might be reimagined to address cross-border interdependence on issues like immigration, climate change, and labor markets.

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Many demands for democratic inclusion rest on a simple yet powerful idea. It’s a principle of affected interests. The principle states that all those affected by a collective decision should have a say in making that decision. Yet, in today’s highly globalized world, the implications of this ‘All-Affected Principle’ are potentially radical and far-reaching. Empowering Affected Interests brings together a distinguished group of leading democratic theorists and philosophers to debate whether and how to rewrite the rules of democracy to account for the increasing interdependence of states, markets, and peoples. It examines the grounds that justify democratic inclusion across borders of states, localities, and the private sector, on topics ranging from immigration and climate change to labor markets and philanthropy. The result is an original and important reassessment of the All-Affected Principle and its alternatives that advances our understanding of the theory and practice of democracy. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Cambridge University Press
November 2024
Archon Fung is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government and the Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. 

Sean Gray is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) alone and do not necessarily represent the positions of the Ash Center or its affiliates. 

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