Who are the ones with the power? Coercion and the Limits of the Demos

Talk presented at the 2025 NASSP conference, where I argued that by framing the problem of the foundations of the liberal-democratic state in terms of the debate on open borders and coercion as the basis of the demos, we can derive Böckenförde’s dilemma. In other words, liberal-democratic states cannot fully remain consistent with their own principles, which prompts us to explore new ways of constituting the demos.