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Democratic Authority and the Boundary Problem
Author(s) -
Simmons A. John
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/raju.12017
Subject(s) - democracy , boundary (topology) , politics , political authority , economic justice , political science , law , sociology , law and economics , epistemology , mathematics , philosophy , mathematical analysis
Abstract Theories of political authority divide naturally into those that locate the source of states' authority in the history of states' interactions with their subjects and those that locate it in structural (or functional) features of states (such as the justice of their basic institutions). This paper argues that purely structuralist theories of political authority (such as those defended by K ant, R awls, and contemporary “democratic K antians”) must fail because of their inability to solve the boundary problem—namely, the problem of locating the boundaries between different states' domains of authority in the natural or intuitive places.