The All-Affected Principle (AAP) expresses a basic intuition about what democracy is good for: I should want to have a say in decisions that significantly affect my life. Here I sketch an approach to the AAP that responds to this normative ideal, as well as to the issues of organizing these ideals into institutions and practices beyond state-based constituencies. First, I interpret the AAP a normative specification of social justice as it relates to democratic inclusion. Second, I comment on the most three common objections to the AAP principle. Third, I contrast the AAP to a common alternative, the All-Subjected Principle. Fourth, I argue that the normative force of the AAP should be derived from social justice. Fifth, specifying the AAP in this way produces a distinction between democratic equalities and democratic equities. Sixth, this approach to the AAP helps to identify constituencies—actual or latent—defined by essential interests, challenging use to find new ways and means of democratic inclusion for essential interests. Finally, I look at the question as to whether the AAP is workable in practice, noting that we already use the AAP extensively but implicitly and unevenly.

This chapter focuses on the concept of sovereignty and the twofold role it has played in nationalist thought. First, the chapter shows that an increasingly important argument for independence has been that a long-standing Scottish tradition of popular sovereignty is fundamentally in tension with the English notion of parliamentary sovereignty. Indeed, a rudimentary but highly effective argument for Scottish independence from the 1980s onwards was simply that in the absence of a Scottish state Scotland is often governed from Westminster by a party that the Scottish people did not vote for. On this account, Scottish independence is supported by the principles of democracy. But, second, the chapter also demonstrates that from the 1980s onwards Scottish nationalists frequently argued that the era of absolute state sovereignty had ended. Instead, an independent Scotland would be one among a whole raft of ‘post-sovereign’ European states, sharing membership of the European Union and pooling sovereignty where appropriate to advance their interests.

“Sovereignty” was not always there. What is called “sovereignty” today emerged under certain historical conditions at a certain time and in a certain place, and it can disappear or lose its meaning if the conditions change. Some authors assume that this has already happened so that we find ourselves in a post-sovereign era. The best way to ascertain whether they are right seems to be a reconstruction of the conditions under which sovereignty originally emerged, followed by an analysis as to whether the conditions have changed in the meantime, and, if so, how the changes affect sovereignty. Without such a historical assessment it is difficult to understand the present situation.

Sovereignty is the ‘boomerang’ concept of Western legal and political thought. For all the best efforts of scholars, politicians, lawyers and citizens to consign it to oblivion, sovereignty always returns, typically with a vengeance. The more its normative and explanatory force and its political valence are challenged, the more ubiquitous the concept of sovereignty seems to become. Unsurprisingly then, despite the recent intensification of supranational and transnational patterns of legal and political authority, once believed to be one more – and perhaps final – nail in sovereignty’s coffin, we stand today at yet another critical juncture, with sovereignty flying back in our faces.

“Sovereignty” was not always there. What is called “sovereignty” today emerged under certain historical conditions at a certain time and in a certain place, and it can disappear or lose its meaning if the conditions change. Some authors assume that this has already happened so that we find ourselves in a post-sovereign era. The best way to ascertain whether they are right seems to be a reconstruction of the conditions under which sovereignty originally emerged, followed by an analysis as to whether the conditions have changed in the meantime, and, if so, how the changes affect sovereignty. Without such a historical assessment it is difficult to understand the present situation.