  Democratic governance provides another potential link between self-determination and controls on immigration. Given that democracy’s principal virtue is thought to be its connection to self-determination, democrats often favor bounded groups which enjoy dominion over their own affairs. As Frederick Whelan puts it, “democracy requires that people be divided into peoples (each people hopefully enjoying its own democratic institutions), with each unit distinguishing between its own citizens—understood in a political sense as those eligible to exercise democratic political rights here—and others, who are regarded as aliens here, although (hopefully) citizens somewhere else.” (Whelan 1988: 28) The basic idea here is that, in order for democracies to function, there must be rule by the same people upon whom the rule is imposed. But this is possible only if the same group of individuals who first vote are subsequently bound by the outcome. If membership constantly fluctuated, however, then self-determination would not occur, because the “self” that votes would not match the “self” which is then bound by the results.