Kant clearly demarcated the tensions between the
injunctions of a universalistic morality to offer temporary
sojourn to all and the legal prerogative of the republican
sovereign not to extend such temporary sojourn to full membership.
Contra Kant, I will argue that the right to membership
of the temporary resident must be viewed as a human
right which can be justified along the principles of a universalistic
morality. The terms and conditions under which longterm
membership can be granted remain the prerogative of the
republican sovereign. Yet here too human rights constraints
such as non-discrimination, the right of the immigrant to due process, must be respected. While the prerogative of states to
stipulate some criteria of incorporation cannot be rejected, we
have to ask: which are those incorporation practices thatwould
be impermissible from amoral standpoint and which are those
practices that are morally indifferent – that is to say, neutral
from the moral point of view?
Kant’s formulations permit us to capture the structural
contradictions between universalist and republican ideals of
sovereignty inthe modernrevolutionary period. Inconclusion,
I want to name this contradiction “the paradox of democratic
legitimacy” and delineate it systematically.