Abstract
Democratic citizens confront a range of problems framed as “security” issues, in policy areas such as counterterrorism and migration control, which place substantial political pressure on democratic norms. We develop a normative theoretical framework for assessing whether and how policies that curtail democratic governance standards in the name of security can be justified as politically legitimate. To do so, we articulate a novel normative account of legitimacy, which integrates insights from both democratic and realist traditions of thought to illuminate the complementary contributions of democratic and security standards to political legitimacy. We further elaborate a framework for applying this theoretical account to political practice in the form of a policy-focused “security test” for legitimacy in democratic states. Finally, we explore how this test may be deployed to help resolve policy dilemmas in democratic practice, by examining its application to a case study of national policy on irregular boat arrivals in Australia and Canada. Through this analysis, we contribute to the development of both richer theoretical understandings of the complex modern value of political legitimacy, and clearer action-guiding principles for balancing competing demands of legitimacy within securitized democratic policy regimes.
Highlights
Democratic citizens confront a range of problems framed as “security” issues in policy areas such as counter terrorism and migration control, that place substantial political pressure on democratic norms
We translate these theoretical arguments into action-guiding principles for application to policy practice in the form of a prescriptive security test for democratic processes. This identifies three conditions under which it may be legitimate for a government to restrict some democratic standards in the name of security: that the security threat is basic (Shue 1996), in the sense of being a precondition for the institutional capacity of political communities to pursue other kinds of collective interests; that the constraints imposed on democratic standards are proportionate to this threat; and that their justification is public. We explore how this test may help resolve policy dilemmas in democratic practice, by examining its application to a case study of policy responses to irregular migrant arrivals by boat in Australia and Canada—two strong democracies whose histories of political debate on the security/democracy nexus in this policy area have served as precursors for some current border-security controversies under the Trump administration in the United States
Our goal has been to advance normative debates about how tensions within securitized policy practice between national security objectives on the one hand, and democratic standards of transparency, accountability, and public scrutiny on the other, can be resolved. To this end we have presented: a normative theoretical analysis of the relationships among the political values of democracy, legitimacy and security, on which judgments about these complex political trade-offs must be grounded; based on this normative analysis, a security test for guiding assessment of the legitimacy of policy practices that curtail democratic standards; and an illustration of how this security test can be applied in policy practice, via an application of our normative security test to an empirical case study of policies concerning irregular migrant arrivals in Australia and Canada
Summary
Democratic citizens confront a range of problems framed as “security” issues, in policy areas such as counterterrorism and migration control, which place substantial political pressure on democratic norms. We explore how this test may be deployed to help resolve policy dilemmas in democratic practice, by examining its application to a case study of national policy on irregular boat arrivals in Australia and Canada Through this analysis, we contribute to the development of both richer theoretical understandings of the complex modern value of political legitimacy, and clearer action-guiding principles for balancing competing demands of legitimacy within securitized democratic policy regimes. We sketch a normative account of what security is, and explain how its protection can strengthen legitimacy by satisfying institutional preconditions for empowering intelligent collective agency, as exercised through and beyond democratic decisionmaking procedures We translate these theoretical arguments into action-guiding principles for application to policy practice in the form of a prescriptive security test for democratic processes. Since the grounds for resolving such controversies lie in their underlying normative justifications, it is at this justificatory level of analysis that we must begin
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