Ethics of War

Content

The history of democracy is a history in which in an increasing part of the population received political rights, especially voting rights. Over time, the demos (a term used in normative discourses) respectively the electorate (a term applied by empirical scholars) has overcome earlier class, race, and gender limits and expanded steadily, but not without fierce political conflicts. Nowadays, the boundary of the demos/electorate is still contested, especially when it comes to the questions whether, where, and how migrants and mobile people should be granted voting rights. The course will focus on the following struggles for inclusion: - the struggle for the inclusion of women - the struggle for the inclusion of immigrants and national minorities - the struggle for the inclusion of emigrants and external kin minorities Nevertheless, it is open to address other people (e.g. felons, mentally handicapped people) if students wish to do so. We will approach democratic inclusion from a normative and from an empirical angle. This means, the course contains normative literature that provides arguments for and against the expansion of the demos/electorate with reference to general normative principles. It also contains empirical literature that either shows which arguments have been used in the struggles by political actors or identifies factors that influenced the expansion of the demos/electorate.