Abstract Democracy is a fraught concept in the realm of Indigenous politics. In its western, state-centric forms, it is used to justify colonial and imperialist violence across the globe. While in some of its earliest Indigenous forms, it constitutes a way of being that rejects constitutions of violence and fosters care-centric world-building. Oppression of children (adultism) is taken for granted in western democracies, while many Indigenous nations have children embedded within their legal and political structures for governance, as critical, if not central political agents. In this article I argue that the oppression of children is an overlooked distinction between Indigenous and western democracies and that the centering of children in human governance demonstrates an ontological alternative that provokes new possibilities for emergent non-state democracies.
Abstract Disputes over the meaning of Indigenous consultation and free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) are disputes about democracy. When states reduce these processes to procedural compliance, they collapse plural democratic traditions into a single, state-centric framework. This article explores how Indigenous democratic consultation and consent practices stem from self-determination, rooted in Indigenous cosmopolitics and legal orders. It examines self-determination through historic treaties, international human rights, and domestic law in Canada and Brazil, then analyzes autonomous FPIC protocols from Indigenous peoples across the Americas. Building on Tully, Napoleon, Rivera Cusicanqui, and Mills, the article demonstrates that state-centered consultation cannot engage with Indigenous cosmopolitics. Through treaties and protocols, Indigenous peoples have coordinated across incommensurable legal orders, enacting democracy as the coordination of plural legal and political traditions.
Abstract Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win in New York City has sparked debates about the replicability of democratic socialism. This article instead compares how Mamdani’s deployment of stories of peoplehood diverges from the strategies used by ideological peers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The conventional move of many inclusive US peoplehood stories is to center the unrealized promise of the Declaration of Independence and connect it to the Christian idea of equality. Instead, Mamdani’s story centers on the history of New York City, and he invokes Martin Luther King to ground his democratic socialism in a shared civil-religious tradition. These strategies navigate a division within the coalition opposing authoritarianism, between those who regard the American democratic tradition as irredeemably compromised and those defending it reflexively—sidestepping the origin story and Christian grounding problems without abandoning the mending tradition.
Abstract Debates about the legitimacy of democratic decision-making often treat religion as a central category. In contrast, I propose an institutional account of democratic legitimacy that does not rely on the secular–religious distinction. On this view, religion is not politically special. It is socially special, though not uniquely so. Like science, the arts, or the family, religious practices merit appropriate treatment based on their distinctive characteristics. Thus, rejecting the idea that religion is uniquely special does not preclude democratic states from granting it special treatment. I examine Eisgruber and Sager’s egalitarian account of religious exemptions and argue that the institutional account provides a more compelling explanation of their legitimacy.
