Many political philosophers believe that sometimes we ought to tolerate substantive injustice for the sake of the intrinsic importance of democracy. In this thesis, I argue that they are mistaken. The substantive justice of outcomes has primacy over the putative intrinsic procedural justice of democracy. This is a very strong form of instrumentalism: if we face a choice between a minor substantive injustice and massive political inequality, then we ought to accept the political inequality. The thesis is divided into three parts. In the first part, I lay out the conceptual landscape for the discussion. I argue that assertions about justice are reducible to assertions about rights and that assertions about rights can be appropriately dealt with by the Hohfeldian analytic framework. Instrumentalists would gain from using this framework. The Primacy of Substance (POS) is true if people lack non-derivative individual or group democratic claim rights to do injustice. I defend my thesis by appealing to intuitions about injustices committed by gangs. I argue that gangs do not have rights to do injustice and this does not change merely because they choose to do the injustice democratically. Many philosophers accept this for severe injustices, but deny it for mild injustices. I argue that those positions are in error. People do not have democratic rights to do even mild substantive injustice. In the second part, I argue that popular intrinsic proceduralist arguments from equal respect and autonomy pose no threat to the POS. An appeal to equal respect in political philosophy, on one sense of respect, is equivalent to an appeal to the requirements of political morality. Interpreted in this way, in the absence of further argument, the appeal to equal respect begs the question against the POS. The POS is a theory about the requirements of political morality and so about the requirements of equal respect. Other arguments from equal respect rely on the appeal to contingent social beliefs which may be associated with political power. If this argument were sound, then there could be rights to do severe injustices such as rape and murder. Since people cannot have rights to do these things, contingent social beliefs cannot ground rights in the way suggested and so cannot ground democratic rights. Arguments from autonomy also do not threaten the POS. People's rights to act autonomously stop at the rights of others. This is true from the point of view of a variety of different theories of autonomy. Finally, one cannot, contra prominent arguments defend intrinsic proceduralism on the basis of what I call Truth Restricting Intrinsic Proceduralism (TRIP), which holds that people have democratic rights to decide on reasonably contentious matters of substantive justice. When we are responding to the fact that someone reasonably believes that a law ought to be enacted, we ought to pay attention to the content of that belief. Intrinsic proceduralism asks us to pay attention to the fact that they reasonably believe it. This is a mistake. Even if we accept that people have a right to impose their reasonable view, many voters in the real world are not reasonable, many people reasonably deny the reasonableness of others, and many people reasonably deny the proposition that people have a right to impose their reasonable view. Thus, even if we accept the premise, it does not imply that we ought to use democracy in the real world or in a large number of close possible worlds. Moreover, all of the most prominent arguments for TRIP have failed. Finally, proponents of TRIP have failed to recognise that it entails the democratic right to do severe substantive injustice. Since we ought to reject all theories which have this implication, we ought to reject TRIP. There is no remaining way to refute the POS.

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Au travers de l’apparition de communes, de comités, de conseils ou d’assemblées révolutionnaires, le tournant du XIXe et du XXe siècle charrie des expériences démocratiques qui, au-delà de leur importance pour le mouvement ouvrier, élaborent des composantes de la théorie démocratique moderne aussi riches que sous-évaluées. En se positionnant en extériorité vis-à-vis de l’Etat, ces expériences politiques participent d’une définition moderne de la démocratie radicale, envisagée comme autogouvernement ou démocratie par en bas. D’un point de vue strictement politique, la démocratie des conseils invente un certain nombre de principes qui, par l’accroissement de la dimension horizontale et la limitation de la dimension verticale de la démocratie, font sens vers la déprofessionnalisation de l’activité politique et la mise en cause de la relation dirigeant / exécutant. La compréhension stratégique de ces mouvements permet également de saisir des dynamiques communes. En articulant les tâches de destruction des structures politiques existantes, et de construction de rapports sociaux nouveaux, la démocratie des conseils réarticule la temporalité de transformation sociale, dans un équilibre instable entre brèche insurrectionnelle et institutionnalisation à long terme. Bien qu’occultés du paradigme socialiste, les courants conseillistes accompagnant ces mouvements élaborent des pratiques et théories de la transformation démocratique originales. Entre critique du substitutisme léniniste et méfiance envers le spontanéisme politique, ces théories restent d’une grande actualité pour qui s’intéresse aujourd’hui aux stratégies de transformation sociale et démocratique. / The turn between the nineteenth and the twentieth century was rich in democratic experiences. Although their influence has often been underestimated, municipalities, committees, local councils and revolutionary assemblies played an important role in the labor movement and also constitute important components of modern democratic theory. By being independant from the State, these political experiences contribute to the modern definition of radical democracy, also thought as self-government of bottom-up democracy. From a strict political point of view, council democracy has invented several principles that have increased the horizontal dimension of democracy, and reduced its vertical dimension, thus contributing to the "deprofessionalisation" of political activity, and questioning the relation between leaders and performers. The strategic understanding of these movements enables us to get hold of new dynamics. By linking the destruction of existing political structures with the construction of new social relations, council democracy brings the temporality of social transformation to an unstable balance between short-term insurgency and long-term institutionalisation. Although concealed from the socialist paradigm, council based groups working along socialist movements contribute to the development of practices and theories that relate to original democratic transformation.Between critical views of leninist substitutionism and mistrust of spontaneism, these theories are a topical issue for people interested in nowadays social and democratic transformation strategies.

Cette thèse doctorale porte sur la promotion de la démocratie par l’Union Européenne (UE) dans ce qui est défini comme son ‘voisinage’, selon le point de vue de la théorie politique normative. A cet effet, ces travaux théorisent les fondations philosophiques de la valeur de la démocratie (chapitre 1), décrivent les activités de promotion de la démocratie par l’UE dans son voisinage (chapitre 2), développent une théorie normative générale de la promotion de la démocratie (chapitre 3), l’appliquent à la promotion de la démocratie par l’UE (chapitre 4) et confrontent cette promotion de la démocratie par l’UE à leur propres standards normatifs (chapitre 5). / This dissertation examines EU democracy promotion in what it defines as its ‘neighbourhood’ from the perspective of normative political theory. To that end, it theorises the philosophical foundations of the value of democracy (chapter one); describes the substance of EU democracy promotion in the neighbourhood (chapter two); develops a general normative theory of democracy promotion (chapter three); applies this to EU democracy promotion (chapter four); and tests EU democracy promotion to its own normative standards (chapterfive).

This dissertation proposes a normative theory of political representation grounded in popular sovereignty and positive law, rather than in democracy and efficient labour allocation. The first three chapters assess the contributions to the idea of representation of three early modern thinkers. Hobbes proposes a formal model of authorised action at a distance, but, contrary to a long-standing consensus in political thought, not an actual theory of representation. Rousseau, a well-known opponent of representation, proposes ideas about government, sovereignty, and positive law, which, despite his contrary intentions, form a foundation for a normative theory of representation. Sieyes refines concepts from both to create a more mature practical statement on representation which he attempts to implement in three revolutionary constitutions in France in the 1790's. The next three chapters make an argument connecting representation to law creation. First the concept of a decision is defined, and then abstracted through various levels of political authority and action. Law creation is distinguished from all other classes of authorised political decision making by four unique properties which tie in with problems initially raised by the early modern philosophers regarding popular sovereignty. Various numbers of authorised actors are considered as constituting political bodies credentialed to carry out the relevant decisions identified as meeting the minimal conditions of law, and ultimately only assembly — a body numbering in the hundreds, with a reserved place for making recognised decisions, and a formal connection to expressed popular preferences — meets the conceptual requirements of the class of decisions mooted. The thesis ends with an argument connecting law to representation as the solution to the problem of plurality.

The overall aim of this thesis is to assess the legitimacy of constitutional laws and bills of rights within the framework of procedural epistemic democracy. The thesis is divided into three sections. In the first section, I discuss the relevance of an epistemic argument for democracy under the circumstances of politics: I provide an account of reasonable disagreement and explain how usual approaches to the authority of decision-making procedures fail to take it seriously. In the second part of the thesis, I provide an account of the epistemic features of democracy and of the requirements of democratic legitimacy. I develop a revised pragmatist argument for democracy which relies on three presumptive aims of decision-making: justice, sustainability and concord. In the third and last section, I first argue for the desirability of constitutionalism. I then explain why constitutionalism, as it is usually understood, is incompatible with my procedural epistemic account of democratic legitimacy. In the last chapter, I offer a two-pronged solution to the apparent incompatibility of constitutionalism and epistemic democracy. I first argue for the appropriateness of political constitutionalism, as opposed to legal constitutionalism, in understanding the relationship between rights and democracy. I then provide an account of rights protection and judicial review compatible with epistemic democratic legitimacy. Finally, I use the notion of pragmatic encroachment to explain how constitutional laws can achieve normative supremacy through the increased epistemic credentials of the procedure.

In representative democracy the chain of political legitimacy runs from voters to governments through votes cast at elections. In order for representation to occur, political parties must offer distinct policy platforms that citizens consider in their vote choices. This thesis examines whether citizens are adequately represented within the European Union. It finds that although representation on left-right issues occurs, it does not occur for European integration preferences. Over the course its history, European integration has changed from being primarily an economic issue to a social issue. This separation from the primary axis of political competition has increased the need for representation on EU issues directly. Political parties have polarised over European integration providing increased choice, but voters have not engaged with the issue. Examining how voters process party signals about policy positions shows that very few are affected by signals on the EU. Accounting for voters' cognitive biases suggests that the influence of EU issues in European Parliament elections has been overestimated and is non-existent in most member-states. As direct democracy might offer an alternative to inadequate representation this thesis examines why referendums have been held on the EU but finds that they are largely driven by governments' desire to contain the threat of EU issues at national elections, further undermining representation. However, as a result of institutional differences between national and European Parliament elections rather than the emergence of the EU as an electoral issue, the size of party systems at European Parliament elections has grown considerably over successive elections in many member-states, a change that has fed into national party systems. Although representation on EU issues is inadequate, the expansion of European party systems and the redrawing of the lines of political competition offers some hope that representation on EU issues might improve in the future.

In this dissertation I explore the redistributive effects of second-dimensional identity politics in parliamentary democracies. Specifically, I focus on parties’ electoral incentives to manipulate the salience of the territorial-identity cleavage. My main argument is that a greater electoral salience of the second dimension distorts the nature of redistributive outcomes. Although the redistributive effects of second dimensions of political competition have been explored in majoritarian democracies, much less is known about their effects in democracies with proportional representation (PR). The dissertation brings “bad news” in that regard: when the territorial second dimension is salient, it is no longer true that parliamentary democracies with proportional electoral systems redistribute more –which is the prevalent view in the existing literature. In fact, the so called “left-bias” of PR systems vanishes when the territorial-identity cleavage is politically activated. This key insight therefore offers a fundamental qualification to the institutionalism literature, by making an effort to understand the way in which regional diversity interacts with institutions through multidimensional political competition. The dissertation is divided in two parts: one theoretical and one empirical. First, I develop a formal model that illustrates the way in which parties’ second-dimension electoral incentives affect both the electoral stage and the subsequent post-electoral coalition bargaining among parties in national parliaments. The reason is that both right-wing and regionalist parties have incentives to increase the salience of the second dimension at the electoral stage to attract voters, and subsequently the coalition bargaining among parties in parliaments offers new opportunities for legislative coalitions. In the second part of the dissertation, I test the empirical implications at the macro-level, the meso-level and the individual-level. The main empirical results can be summarised as follows. First, I present empirical evidence according to which the legislative salience of the second dimension induces a negative effect on redistribution and a positive effect on the regionalisation of public policy. Second, I provide evidence which shows that both right-wing and regionalist parties strategically increase the electoral salience of the second dimension when they are “losers” on the first dimension. Finally, I illustrate the way in which the salience of the second dimension affects the formation of individual preferences for redistribution. In sum, this dissertation provides new arguments and empirical evidence that demonstrates how second dimensional politics can have profound redistributive consequences in parliamentary democracies.

L’apparition de la démocratie au Bénin a favorisé l’émergence des élitesreligieuses et traditionnelles sur la scène publique. Ces dernières ont saisil’opportunité que leur offraient les changements institutionnels au niveau de l’Étatpour s’organiser en groupes d’intérêts et essayer d’améliorer leur situation sociale.Mais leurs ambitions vont bien au-delà de leurs sphères de prédilection, car cesélites religieuses et traditionnelles entendent être associées à l’élaboration despolitiques publiques et participer au développement de l’État béninois. Ce souhaitmet en exergue la probabilité de l’existence d’une gouvernance conjointe ouplurielle, à échelons différents, de la cité, notamment au niveau local, entre élitespolitiques, religieuses et traditionnelles. D’autre part, si la position de l’Étatbéninois à l’endroit des chefferies religieuses et traditionnelles a varié depuis laproclamation de l’indépendance et qu’il leur est reconnu une certaine importance,le statut de ces institutions sociales n’est toujours pas éclairci. Il n’en demeure pasmoins que les gouvernements et les élites politiques au Bénin peuvent avoir uneconception instrumentale de ces relations. Par ailleurs, les élites religieuses ettraditionnelles ne restent pas passives face à l’action de l’État et des élitespolitiques. Aux questions de savoir quand, où et comment ces élites politiques,religieuses et traditionnelles se rencontrent, il peut y avoir plusieurs modalités deréponses qui entraînent à leur tour certaines configurations relationnelles non sansconséquences sur l’État béninois. / The apparition of democracy in Benin has contributed to the emergence ofreligious and traditional elites on the public stage. These elites have seized theopportunity that the institutional state transformations have offered them to organizethemselves into lobbies and to try to improve their social situation. However, theirambitions go beyond their traditional domains, and these religious and traditional eliteswish to participate in the development of public policy and of the Beninese state. Thisambition underlines the probability of the development of a joint or plural managementof cities, notably on a local level, between political, religious and traditional elites.Also, although the position of the Beninese state concerning religious and traditionalchieftainships has varied since the declaration of independence and the state recognizesthat these chieftainships have a certain importance, these the status of these socialinstitutions remains unclear. However, the country’s successive governments andpolitical elites can have an instrumental conception of these relations. It is also worthnoting that the religious and traditional elites do not remain passive concerning the stateand political elites’ actions. There can be several different kinds of response to thequestion of how these political, religious and traditional elites come together, responseswhich imply certain relational configurations which have an impact on the Beninesestate.

On the basis of case studies of 19th and early 20th century Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, I address the question of how and when incumbent right elites reformed electoral systems under a rising political threat from the left. Some states adopted proportional representation (PR) earlier than others. Why did different states adopt PR at different times? One important factor was the existing electoral system before the adoption of PR. This has been missed in academic research since most scholars have assumed that the electoral system in place before the adoption of PR in most Western European states was single-member plurality (SMP). I show that the system in place prior to PR in most Western European states was not SMP but a two-round system (TRS). TRS effects are still poorly understood by political scientists. I argue that both PR and TRS were used as safeguards by the parties on the right against an electoral threat from the left, which originated from the expansion of suffrage. PR was used as a last resort after other safeguards had been exhausted. I state that in the presence of a strong left threat, countries with TRS could wait longer to implement PR than countries with SMP in place. Under TRS, the adoption of PR was considerably delayed since electoral coordination between parties could be applied more effectively than under SMP systems. This was largely due to the increase of information and time after the first round of TRS elections, which was used by right parties to coordinate votes around the most promising candidate before the second round. First round results under TRS were used as an "electoral opinion poll". Based on these results, the right could react more effectively than the left in order to improve outcomes in round two.