The Child as Democratic Citizen

• Author: Andrew Rehfeld
• Published date: 01 January 2011
• Date: 01 January 2011
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0002716210383656
• Subject Matter: Articles

ANNALS, AAPSS, 633, January 2011 141

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the

Child (CRC) justifiably emphasizes welfare over partici-

pation rights of children for two reasons. First, children

are by nature an at-risk population. Second, democratic

citizenship rights require a minimal bundle of cognitive

and emotional capacity—which may be called “political

maturity”—that children, again by nature, lack. However,

the CRC goes too far in prioritizing welfare over partici-

pation, again for two reasons. First, millions of children

have their basic welfare needs met, and second, partici-

pation would be useful in cultivating the very political

maturity that citizens need. In this article, the author

argues that participatory institutions should be designed

to further the interests of children, cultivate their politi-

cal maturity, and mitigate the harm that giving power to

the politically immature might cause. The author dis-

cusses three institutional designs that might achieve this

result (fractional voting, national electoral constituen-

cies, and political spending accounts) and discusses how

federalism might also help to implement these designs.

Keywords: voting rights; representation; proxy voting;

children; voting age; citizenship; institu-

tional design

Children are a nuisance to most adults; they are

a particular nuisance to the democratic theorist

who wishes to exclude them from having a voice

in the direction of the policy with as much

vehemence as he wishes to include every adult

(except, of course, felons, the insane, the men-

tally retarded, and aliens).

—Schrag (1975, 443)

The Child as

Democratic

Citizen

By

ANDREW REHFELD

NOTE: Preliminary versions of this article were pre-

sented at the Child as Citizen Conference, which the

Harvard University Committee on Human Rights

Studies and the Harvard School of Public Health hosted

in Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 9–10, 2009;

at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science

Association, in Montreal, June 1–3, 2010; at the Faculty

Workshop of Washington University Law School, St.

Louis, July 7, 2010; and at the Political Theory Workshop

at Washington University in St. Louis, September 17,

2010. Thanks to Felton Earls, Samantha Brennan, Anna

Stilz, and Laura Rosenbury, and participants in those

fora for their input and feedback. Additional thanks to

Annette Appell, Jenny Diamond Cheng, Claudio López-

Guerra, David Koenig, Ron Levin, Frank Lovett, Ian

MacMullen, Neil Richards, and Daniel Weinstock for

their additional feedback. This article does not fully take

into account their responses. I intend to expand on the

discussion in this article in later publications.

DOI: 10.1177/0002716210383656

142 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Statement of the Problem

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) reflects the

widely held view that children are in need of protection and should not be treated

as full citizens of a democratic polity. Thirty-five of its forty-one substantive Articles

(listed in Part I of that document) protect, secure, and guarantee welfare rights for

children. The six articles that specify some legal and political rights of children—

including provisions for very limited freedoms of expression, thought, conscience,

religion, association, privacy, and access to information (Articles 13–17)—treat

children more as a protected class than as active agents, subordinate to their par-

ents’ views, particularly in the areas of religion and privacy. Providing that “States

Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views

the right to express those views freely in matters affecting the child,” Article 12

exemplifies in three ways this prioritization of welfare over citizenship. First, it

limits the expression of children’s voices to cases in which they have a direct per-

sonal interest. Second, they only have the “opportunity to be heard in any judicial

and administrative proceedings affecting the child”—not, that is, in legislatures.

And third, these purported rights are fully executable by an “appropriate body”

who may execute this function without oversight or post hoc accountability by the

child on whose behalf the body acts. In contrast, democratic citizens justifiably

(1) are involved in decisions that affect their interests much more broadly and

indirectly than the narrowness implied in Article 12;1 (2) are entitled to partici-

pate across judicial, administrative/executive, and legislative venues; and (3) have

the power to hold a representative to account for her or his actions even when

acting on the citizen’s behalf. According to widely endorsed principles of repre-

sentative government, these are necessary elements for a polity to be reasonably

democratic.

The emphasis on children’s welfare is, however, understandable. Children

are, by nature, an at-risk population, and their inclusion, as political citizens, must

rank behind their basic security. Even where their welfare is for the moment

secured, the exclusion of children from politics may be reasonable because children,

Andrew Rehfeld is an associate professor of political science at Washington University in St.

Louis. He received his MPP and PhD in political science from the University of Chicago, where

he has taught as a lecturer and visiting assistant professor. His main area of research is in the

theory and practice of political representation, with ancillary interests in the philosophy of

social science and the politics of the Hebrew Bible. His book The Concept of Constituency

(Cambridge University Press 2005) explored the negative consequences of representing citizens

by where they live and proposed national, permanent, randomized constituencies as a prefer-

able alternative. He is completing a second book with Cambridge University Press about the

relationship between representation and democracy. His other articles have appeared in the

American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, and Studies in American Political

Development, along with other journals. He serves as the secretary and treasurer of the

American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy and is on the governance committee of the

Association for Political Theory.