The Right To Stand as a Candidate and the Democratic Value of Elections

The Moynihan Institutes’ Center for European Studies welcomes Annabelle Lever, professor of political philosophy and permanent researcher at the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po (CEVIPOF).

The right to stand as an electoral candidate to the legislature (and to serve if selected) is the neglected stepchild of democratic theory. Although it is generally accepted that adequate protection for the right to stand, no less than for the right to vote, marks a distinction between democratic and undemocratic elections, the right to stand has received little, if any, attention in the philosophical or social scientific literature. The aim of this talk is to show why that is a mistake, and how attention to the right to stand illuminates the democratic potential of elections.

Annabelle Lever received a Ph.D. from MIT and started her academic career as a lecturer, then assistant professor at the University of Rochester in New York. Before moving to Sciences Po, Paris, she taught at the University of Geneva (Switzerland) and held research and teaching positions at the University of Manchester, the London School of Economics and the University of Reading.

She has published widely on sexual and racial equality, security and democratic theory, is the author of On Privacy, editor of New Frontiers in the Philosophy of Intellectual Property, and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy and of the journal CRISPP (the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy).