Time is among the most fundamental categories of political and, specifically, democratic life. While time in the sociopolitical world leaves traces in many (subtle) ways, we do not find it among the guiding concepts of democratic theory. This Special Issue, therefore, understands itself as part of a project that traces the centrality of time and temporality in democratic theory and practice. Our goal is to move toward an in-depth discussion of time in democratic theory by unearthing and systematizing the fragments of this emerging agenda. In this editorial, we deepen the status of time in democratic theory. We do this by discussing both the research that explicitly addresses the relationship between time and democracy and the many latent forms of how temporality shapes democratic thinking. Finally, we identify three dimensions of how time is relevant in and for democratic theory, and we locate the contributions to this Special Issue regarding these dimensions.

Are immigrants entitled to the right to vote in receiving societies? Or is voting the most effective path to fostering immigrants’ political agency, integration, and protection of their interests? This special issue explores these core questions through a range of contributions that offer nuanced and forward-thinking insights. In this introduction, we survey key literature at the intersection of democratic theory and migration justice, outlining major arguments and tensions in the field. By weaving together diverse perspectives, we propose a framework to navigate what may seem like deep divisions, ultimately clarifying the evolving role of political participation in immigrant inclusion and democratic legitimacy. While we recognize the differing positions among scholars, we emphasize points of convergence and the broader trajectory of the debate. This approach reflects our hope to promote constructive dialogue and highlight emerging consensus, particularly in light of the contentious nature of migration and its implications for democratic practice.

Recently, Will Kymlicka reconsidered his multicultural liberal nationalism in response to empirical findings on minority–majority relations in multicultural settings. The empirical findings are disheartening, demonstrating that majorities judge various minorities as less deserving of access to social rights and recognition as legitimate agents making political claims, leading to membership penalties. These results led Kymlicka to recalibrate his normative position into multicultural nationalism. In my response, I will assess Kymlicka's renewed normative position according to a moderate critique of methodological nationalism. I will argue that if multicultural nationalism aims to promote inclusive membership for immigrants by transforming the existing prominent and exclusive stories of peoplehood, then it should avoid relying on fixed, methodologically nationalist epistemic presuppositions.

Euro-American discourse on secularism has come to construe it as the foundation of modern democracy and as a civilizational asset of the West. Secularism's teleology posits the secular as an epistemological space in which Western societies have arrived through a successful and completed process of secularization, which the religious and racialized Others of Western modernity must duly follow. Taking Jürgen Habermas's conception of the secular and his imperative to translate religious into secular languages as examples, I first unpack the critical temporal elements of this secularist conception of democracy. Second, I critique this account by analyzing the negatively dialectical understanding of democratic practice, history, time, and translation in the works of the contemporary Moroccan intellectual and historian Abdallah Laroui. I argue that he offers us a more challenging, self-reflective way of conceptualizing the secular and the (Islamic) religious beyond civilizationalist framings.

In this article, I question whether the widely endorsed functional demos views—like the “all affected interests” and “all subjected” approaches—adequately measure legitimacy in democratic inclusion. I argue that these views fall short of this task and propose an alternative criterion for evaluating electoral rights allocation. The “permanent disenfranchisement condition” asserts that electoral regulations leading to involuntary, permanent disenfranchisement are undemocratic. This condition challenges traditional exclusions based on factors like denizenship or mental illness. Age-based or residency requirements, however, remain permissible, as they do not imply inherent unfitness for political participation. Additionally, I introduce the “democratic ethos proviso,” which is less stringent and failure to fulfill it is less consequential. It stipulates that electoral regulations should be justifiable with reference to the specificities of the relevant democratic ethos.

This article explores a feminist chronopolitics of care through tracing the (missing) links between care, time and democracy. In democratic and care theories, temporalities have mostly been theorized regarding duration and speed. To extend this limited understanding of democratic and caring temporalities, the article draws on feminist theories of time to theorize the temporalities of care. Drawing on the concept of caring democracy, which centers dependencies and caring relationships, the article expands its limited temporal understanding. The emphasis on the temporalities of care challenges hegemonic temporal regimes based on linear clock-time in capitalist societies. Instead, it proposes reflecting on the multiple temporalities of care and integrating them into democratic processes. This might allow for a move toward a gender- and time-just caring democracy through what I propose to call feminist chronopolitics.

Time is not the first concept that comes to mind when we think about democracy. Yet, every notion of the “political” is based on a specific perception of time. While institutionalized democracies are legitimized by a time that appears as objective and linear, more radical approaches to democracy rely on specific “political” times. Drawing on Claude Lefort, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, I argue that there are two logics of time that lead to very different political potentials: With Lefort, constant struggles leading to the production of a linear time appear as the political; Deleuze and Guattari emphasize the political potential of queer times that escape any pregiven identity, subjectivity, and linearity. If we conceive of democracy as the structure that realizes the political, the question of time becomes crucial to understand its meanings.

The article examines the meaning of migrants’ (dis)enfranchisement within democratic polities, focusing on ideas of political authority and agency derived from democratic theory. Building on the notion that democratic voting represents a mutual and second-personal exercise of authority, the article argues that the disenfranchisement of migrants signifies their exclusion from agential authoritative relationships in politics, and ultimately, from a quintessential democratic mode of political agency. We recall some of the principles for expanding voting rights and acknowledge that there may be reasons in favor of exclusion. However, we highlight how any such exclusion (re)shapes the political relationships instantiated in the practice of voting. While we rebut the challenge of “voting fetishism,” we conclude by discussing how alternative forms of political participation for migrants, though important, cannot compensate for the unique impoverishment of political authority and agency that disenfranchisement specifically incurs.

Multiple interrelated global crises challenge political thinkers and activists to engage with temporality. Taking the diagnosis of already unfolding planetary environmental catastrophe seriously, climate activists and environmental scholars in the Global North have increasingly focused on experiences of irredeemable loss. These “postapocalyptic” discourses draw on Indigenous, decolonial, and feminist engagements with temporality to highlight the interconnections between different temporal scales, speeds, and rhythms in the Anthropocene. Moreover, the notion of the postapocalyptic present offers an analytical link between historical narratives about the development of extractive capitalism and social “lived” temporalities of mourning, care, and disruption. Feminist debates about the limits and possibilities of social (care-) strikes here provide important insights about the need to interrupt dominant temporal regimes defined by an incessant drive for heightened economic productivity. Disruptive and prefigurative political practices can in turn create room for experimentation with more sustainable and caring forms of societal organization in a diminished present.

Immigrants without citizenship are usually excluded from democratic participation. It is often argued that this is a grave injustice that calls for redress; immigrants should be enfranchised whether they have citizenship or not. Most arguments for this claim hold that immigrant enfranchisement is justified by immigrants’ interest against being ruled by the receiving state. In this article, I argue that this view fails to explain why immigrants should be enfranchised. I offer an alternative view according to which immigrant enfranchisement is justified by a shared interest of immigrants and citizens in relating as mutually serving agents of justice by participating in the common undertaking of ruling the polity justly together.

José Medina and Claudia Gâlgău discuss the epistemology of protest, epistemic self-empowerment and hope in the midst of persistent forms of oppression. “Social change and liberation often take many generations, and we need to cultivate sustainable communities of resistance that will not give up hope and will help people achieve recognition and dignity, and even flourish, amid structural forms of oppression.”