Constitutional Demoicracy: An International Republican Regime of Human Rights

Abstract Nowadays, many new agents, structures and dynamics make human rights insecure – think of TNCs or climate change. Yet states as they currently are seem unable to tackle these threats effectively. So what should an appropriate human-rights regime, that is, one that protects them securely and legitimately , look like, today? This article argues that republicanism provides the regime we need: a constitutional demoi -cracy. This new, mixed human-rights regime is a demoicracy for, even if states remain the primary locus where human rights are realised, they bind themselves to a union that governs together the new agents, structures and dynamics that threaten them, without their demoi merging into one global demos. It is constitutional, for this governing together gives rise to a thin but binding supranational apparatus, whose point is, similar to domestic constitutions, to constrain state power over human rights and at the same time to empower states to protect them.