Democratic Theory Volume 6, Issue 1, Spring 2019: 73–96 doi: 10.3167/dt.2019.060105 ISSN 2332-8894 (Print), ISSN 2332-8908 (Online) Equality, Proportionality, and the All-Affected Principle Jonas Hultin Rosenberg Abstract: The question of who ought to be included in the demos is distinct from, and yet related to, the question of how to distribute decision- making power among those who are included. Political equality is the most common answer to the former question within democratic theory. In demo- cratic practice, it is usually realized through one person one vote. Within democratic theory, there is not as much agreement as to what the answer to the latter question should be. The answer that has attracted most attention within the scholarly literature is that all those who are affected should be included. However, prominent scholars have argued that this all-affected principle is incompatible with political equality and therefore an unattractive answer to the question of inclusion. This article challenges this critique and argues that it is based on a misconception of political equality and a narrow reading of the all-affected principle. Keywords: all-affected principle, democratic theory, inclusion, numeric equality, political equality, proportional equality, proportionality principle In Considerations on Representative Government, John Stuart Mill argues: “But though everybody ought to have a voice, that everyone should have an equal voice is a totally diferent proposition” (Mill 1861: ch. VIII ). Mill thus maintains that the question of inclusion in the demos – in this arti- cle understood as the group of people that collectively have full political control and individually have decision-making power in a democracy – is a completely diferent issue to that of the distribution of decision-making power among those who are included. Although it is true that these are two diferent questions, they are nonetheless related in the important respect that both the question of inclusion and the question of distribu- tion concern the allocation of decision-making power in a democracy. Therefore, to fully understand the implications of a principle of inclu- sion, in terms of the allocation of decision-making power that it gen- erates, we must assume a particular distribution among those who are included, and, correspondingly, to fully understand the implications of a distribution scheme we must assume a particular principle of inclusion.