Political Authority

This chapter claims that only rarely do critical youth studies and social policy include young people in a truly participatory way. The implications of and reasons for this failure are explored. Moreover, through evidence collected over a 3 year youth-led research programme, the chapter investigates how the tools found within the field of user-led, action research can be used for the construction of evidence-based youth policy and the development of new theoretical and methodological models for critical youth studies. A secondary (...) aim is to identify best practices that encourage true participation of young people in decision-making and democratic structures. -/- . (shrink)

In his collection of articles, "Where Are We Now - The Epidemic as Politics", Giorgio Agamben appears to make some very startling (if not downright outrageous) claims concerning the political situation in Italy and elsewhere in Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this piece [in German] I analyse how these claims are rooted in the philosophy of Agamben's "Homo sacer" project. Focussing on three central notions (Schmitt's "state of exception", Foucault's "biopolitics", and Agamben's very own "bare life"), I show how (...) Agamben's illegitimate identification of the bare life with the subject of biopolitics leads to the derailment of his theory as well as to some of the grave political misjudgments he makes regarding the pandemic. (shrink)

Auf den Ersten Weltkrieg folgte in Mitteleuropa ein grundlegender politischer Umbruch. Albert Dikovich arbeitet die Folgen dieser demokratischen Zeitenwende für die deutschsprachige Philosophie umfassend auf. Dabei untersucht er zum einen, wie nach dem katastrophalen Gewaltereignis des Krieges und angesichts der akuten Eskalation im Inneren die Grenzen der moralisch legitimen Mittel politischer Konfliktaustragung neu gezogen wurden. Zum anderen beleuchtet er den Zusammenhang zwischen rechts- und erkenntnistheoretischen Annahmen und Positionierungen innerhalb eines Spannungsfeldes konkurrierender politischer Neuordnungsentwürfe. Dabei zeigt sich, dass die damals geführten (...) philosophischen Kämpfe um die Demokratie mit unserer Gegenwart mehr zu tun haben, als es der geschichtliche Abstand vermuten lässt. (shrink)

This book is about the ways in which real-world democracies fall short of democratic ideals and why those shortfalls matter. The project is rooted in a vast body of empirical findings that political scientists have accumulated over the last seven decades. These are findings about political ignorance, voter behaviour, the policymaking process, polarization, and the popular control of representatives. These findings are often both surprising and troubling—they suggest our democracies fall far short of democratic ideals. The book is a detailed, (...) careful exploration of why such findings matter. In part, that involves giving an account of what makes democracy valuable in the first place: why does democracy matter? And in part it involves connecting the value of democracy to the rights and duties of ordinary citizens. The overarching argument is that our duties to obey the law, and the moral permissibility of enforcing those laws, depend on the realization of democratic ideals. So the shortfalls of our democracies undermine the moral authority and legitimacy of our states. (shrink)

On one account, courts ought to enforce legislative intent only when the public meaning of the text of the statute is unclear, and on another account, they should enforce the intent even when the public meaning is clear. In this paper, I argue against both approaches. My argument rests on considerations related to the moral authority of the democratically made law. More specifically, I argue that those considerations which make democratic law morally authoritative entail that judges ought to enforce the (...) public meaning, when this is clear, and that interpretation of the public meaning which is closest to the balance of moral reasons, when the public meaning is unclear. (shrink)

Sometimes, political bald-faced lies pass for truth. That is, certain groups of people behave according to them – behave as if the political bald-faced lies were true. How can this phenomenon be explained? I argue that to explain it we need to take political bald-faced lies to be performative utterances whose goal is to bring about a worldly state of affairs just in virtue of making the utterance. When the former US-President tweeted ‘we won the election’, people stormed Capitol Hill (...) to protest election fraud and some were killed. In this way, the bald-faced lie was successful in passing for truth. My performative view of political bald-faced lies is to be preferred over various other views such as the contempt for truth view (Lynch 2021), the deception view (Lackey 2013), and the value-signaling view (Stanley 2012). These alternative views fail to adequately account for how political bald-faced lies pass for truth. (shrink)

The notion that immigrants have a right to immigrate to the U.S. appears to conflict with the government’s or citizens’ property rights. Michael Huemer has given one of the most interesting and provocative arguments on immigration in years. It turns the dominant view on its head. Unfortunately, the argument fails. U.S. citizens own land, individually, collectively, and via their government. For immigrants to gain a right to enter on it, Huemer must think that the landowners have lost their rights to (...) their land, the landowners’ rights are overridden, or the landowners’ rights are undermined. He does not show that any of these are true. A separate issue and one not discussed here is whether it is a wise policy to reduce or end immigration to the United States. (shrink)

Robert Nozick is the most discussed libertarian philosopher of these days. The paper examines the question of whether he supported forced taxation. The normative basis of Nozick’s position, the neo-Lockean theory of natural human rights are analyzed. On the basis of this theory, his argument in favor of the moral justification of the minimal state is reconstructed. While this reconstruction leaves it ambiguous whether such the state should be funded by taxation, six arguments are offered in favor of such tax (...) funding. These arguments are based on the same normative premises as Nozick’s own argument and can therefore be supported by contemporary Nozickians even if Nozick himself rejected taxation. These arguments are shown to help overcome some of the critical objections faced by Nozick’s theory and neo-Lockeanism as a whole. However, accepting these arguments entails accepting not only the tax financing of the minimal state, but also the expansion of the functions of this state to provide citizens with a social minimum in the form of an unconditional basic income or some other form of redistribution. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

This article offers a new interpretation of the second ‘theological’ pattern in Plato’s Republic. Situating Plato within his religious context, it argues that this pattern calls into question the traditional ancient model of divine epiphany. Divine epiphany was a central element in Greek religion. Yet, in the absence of a centralized religious organization, this model threatened the philosophers’ authoritative position. Plato’s second pattern seeks not only to undermine this potential threat but also to pave the way towards a new, philosophicalmodel (...) of divine epiphany, thus further establishing the philosophers’ authority and legitimacy within and outside his ideal city. (shrink)

I offer a Kantian argument for the idea that the state lacks the authority to punish neglected, impoverished citizens when they commit crimes to cope with that neglect. Given Kant’s own commitments to the value of external freedom and the state’s obligation to ensure it in Doctrine of Right, there is no reason a Kantian state can claim authority to punish an impoverished citizen while also failing in significant ways to protect her external freedom.

The Canadian Department of Citizenship and Immigration has recently proposed to make in-person citizenship ceremonies optional. These ceremonies are oaths of allegiances: naturalizing citizens swear loyalty to King Charles and obedience to the laws of Canada. The Department of Citizenship and Immigration proposes to allow naturalizing citizens to take these oaths by checking a box online rather than by taking part in an in-person ceremony. In this commentary, I argue that Canada should go much further. It should stop forcing naturalizing (...) immigrants to swear oaths of allegiance altogether. Such oaths create an unjust inequality between naturalized and natural-born citizens: they mean the former have much weightier political obligations than the latter. (shrink)

Democracy is widely praised as a great achievement of humanity. However, in recent years there has been an increasing amount of concern that its functioning across the world may be eroding. In response, efforts to combat such change are emerging. Considering the pervasiveness of technology and its increasing capabilities, it is no surprise that there has been much focus on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to this end. Questions as to how AI can be best utilized to extend the (...) reach of democracy to currently non-democratic countries, how the involvement in the democratic process of certain demographic groups (e.g. ethnic minorities, women, and young people) can be increased, etc. are frequent topics of discussion. In this article I would like not merely to question whether this is desirable but rather argue that we should be trying to envisage ways of using AI for the exact opposite purpose: that of replacing democratic systems with better alternatives. (shrink)

Many philosophers have recently become interested in conceptual engineering, or the activity of producing better conceptual schemes in human populations. But few, if any, are asking the question: what would it mean for actual human agents to possess the social authority to modify a conceptual scheme in this way? This paper argues for a deontological approach to conceptual engineering, wherein we have to secure social authority qua engineers before attempting to modify social concepts. I show that the dominant, consequentialist conception (...) of engineering violates basic rights that concept-users have, particularly over their own identity-constituting concepts. Using examples from the philosophy of race and sexuality, I show that conceptual engineers cannot authoritatively modify social concepts if they employ consequentialist reasoning about those concepts. (shrink)

Michael Wendeler’s disputation on the Turkish republic is a discussion of Ottoman history, political philosophy, and the concept of monarchy and tyranny. Half of his disputation concerns the identification of the Turks with the little horn which arises on the head of the fourth beast in the prophet’s vision described in the Book of Daniel 7:1–28. Giving copious historical references, Wendeler explains that this little horn cannot be referring to Christ as the Jews believe, nor to the Seleucid monarch Antiochos (...) Epiphanes as the Calvinists believe. Nor can it be identifed with the Antichrist as the Catholics believe. Wendeler puts forth a detailed argument that the little horn on the fourth beast in the prophecy of Daniel can only be identified with the Turkish monarch (Ottoman Sultan). In conclusion, Wendeler draws a parallel between the monstrous ‘little horn’—the tyrannical Turkish monarchy—and the tyranny of the Catholic Church, exemplified by the untrustworthy Pope and the satanic writings of the Catholic Machiavelli. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to take the complexity of our histories of rights as seriously as the nature of rights themselves. Let me say immediately that the point is not to satisfy our sense of moral superiority by smugly pointing out the prejudices found in arguments made over three hundred years ago. We have more than our own share of problems and prejudices to deal with. Rather, in coming to grips with this history, and especially how early-modern political (...) theorists struggled with the extension and application of natural rights to the ‘New World’, we may learn something about our own struggles to extend human rights beyond the boundaries of the state system of which Grotius, Hobbes, Locke and Vattel were among the key intellectual architects. For Richard Tuck, the autonomous rights-bearing agent at the heart of liberal individualism is a product of seventeenth-century theorizing about the nature of the autonomous state acting in the international sphere. The sovereign individual is the ‘traditional cousin of the sovereign state’, argues Tuck, and especially the aggressive, violent, and minimally constrained relative described by Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Emer de Vattel. Thus the connection between liberalism and imperialism, on this reading, is not merely chronological or historical but metaphysical. The analogy between the sovereign state and the sovereign individual acting on the basis of their natural rights, constrained by the recognition of the basic rights of others (but not much more than that) represents an influential vision of liberal freedom. This minimalist account of freedom represents only one vision, however, and Tuck’s account of the pre-history of liberal rights has to be balanced against other conceptions, including more emancipatory ones. (shrink)

Two challenges have faced policymakers during the Covid-19 pandemic: First, they must determine the reliability of expert testimony in the face of uncertainty; second, they must determine the relevance of different kinds of expertise with regard to particular decisions. I argue that both these problems can be fruitfully analyzed through the lens of trust by introducing an in-depth case study of Iceland’s handling of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. I contend that the problem of relevance highlights the limited (...) appeal of a thoroughly technocratic society. Value judgments, best realized through democratic processes, are always lurking in the background. (shrink)

The paper examines one of the considerations that determines the extent to which policymakers pursue the objec- tives demanded by constituents. The nature and extent of their ignorance serve to determine the incentives confronted by policymakers to pursue their constituents’ demands. The paper also considers several other consequences of policymaker ig- norance and its relationship to expert failure.

Confucian political authority is often assumed illegitimate and it is regarded as meritocratic rather than democratic. However, I disagree with such an assumption, because from my perspective, Confucian political authority actually has a potential legitimacy which may contribute to establishing a responsive and harmonious state. Doing so, I argue that, since Confucian political authority is derived from the idea of “service” and “reciprocity,” it therefore advocates non-coercive moral persuasion and reciprocal obligations. In the following discussion, I will point out that (...) certain modern democratic theories on political authority, such as those concerning “general acceptability,” “consent,” “autonomy,” and “paternalism,” are inadequate to refute the legitimacy of Confucian political authority. Accordingly, I will propose that our contemplation over whether Confucian political authority is legitimate or not ought to be furthermore widened and deepened. (shrink)

The state is central to social scientific and historical inquiry today, reflecting its importance in domestic and international affairs. States kill, coerce, fight, torture, and incarcerate, yet they also nurture, protect, educate, redistribute, and invest. It is precisely because of the complexity and wide-ranging impacts of states that research on them has proliferated and diversified. Yet, too many scholars inhabit separate academic silos, and theorizing of states has become dispersed and disjointed. This book aims to bridge some of the many (...) gaps between scholarly endeavors, bringing together scholars from a diverse array of disciplines and perspectives who study states and empires. The book offers not only a sample of cutting-edge research that can serve as models and directions for future work, but an original conceptualization and theorization of states, their origins and evolution, and their effects. (shrink)

Is political equality viable given the unequal private property holdings characteristic of a capitalist economy? This book places the wealth-politics nexus at the centre of scholarly analysis. Traditional theories of democracy and property have often ignored the ways in which the rich attempt to convert their wealth into political power, operating on the implicit assumption that politics is isolated from economic forces. This book brings the moral and political links between wealth and power into clear focus. The chapters are divided (...) into three thematic sections. Part I analyses wealth and politics from the perspective of various political traditions, such as liberalism, republicanism, anarchism, and Marxism. Part II addresses the economic sphere, and looks at the political influence of corporations, philanthropists and commons-based organizations. Finally, Part III turns to the political sphere and looks at the role of political parties and constitutions, and phenomena such as corruption and lobbying. Wealth and Power: Philosophical Perspectives will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in political philosophy, political science, economics, and law. (shrink)

Orson Scott Card and his Ender Series have had a profound impact on the genre of contemporary science fiction, meriting an academic analysis of some of his more theoretical ideas. I have chosen to analyze his concept of “Center” and “Edge” nations found in Xenocide and Children of the Mind through the lens of international relations, sociological, and political theory, in order to bring nuance to an underdeveloped theory that many non-academics may be familiar with. Ultimately, we must conclude that (...) Card’s concept of “Center” and “Edge” nations is too stagnant and does not account for social and hegemonic change, which influences the justifications of why these “nations” may be considered “Center” in the first place. (shrink)

Those who bear the burdens of injustice and oppression are entitled to act in ways contrary to existing laws and institutions to secure their own entitlements and those of others. This article aims to articulate a Confucian perspective on resistance against injustice. There are reasons for thinking that the notion of resistance is fundamentally at odds with Confucian political thought. In this article, I move beyond this simple conflict/compatibility model and explore the complex relationships between resistance and Confucianism. On one (...) hand, some of Confucianism’s core commitments can be better attained in contemporary societies by allowing resistance; on the other, a Confucian perspective can offer insights into current discussions on the ethics of resistance. (shrink)

What gives some people the right to issue commands to everyone else and force everyone else to obey them? And why should people obey the commands of those with political power? These two key questions are the heart of the issue of political authority, and, in this volume, two philosophers debate the answers. Michael Huemer argues that political authority is an illusion and that no one is entitled to rule over anyone. He discusses and rebuts the major theories supporting political (...) authority's rightfulness: implicit social contract theory, hypothetical contract theories, democratic theories of authority, and utilitarian theories. Daniel Layman argues that democratic governments have authority because they are needed to protect our rights and because they are accountable to the people. Each author writes two replies directly addressing the arguments and ideas of the other. Key Features Covers a key foundational problem of political philosophy: the authority of government. Debate format ensures a full hearing of both sides. A Glossary includes key concepts in political philosophy related to the issue of authority. Annotated Further Reading sections point students to additional resources. Clear, concrete examples and arguments help students clearly see both sides of the argument. A Foreword by Matt Zwolinski describes a broader context for political authority and then traces the key points and turns in the authors' debate. (shrink)

Those who bear the burdens of injustice and oppression are entitled to act in ways contrary to existing laws and institutions to secure their own entitlements and those of others. This article aims to articulate a Confucian perspective on resistance against injustice. There are reasons for thinking that the notion of resistance is fundamentally at odds with Confucian political thought. In this article, I move beyond this simple conflict/compatibility model and explore the complex relationships between resistance and Confucianism. On one (...) hand, some of Confucianism’s core commitments can be better attained in contemporary societies by allowing resistance; on the other, a Confucian perspective can offer insights into current discussions on the ethics of resistance. (shrink)

Political theorists have recently sought to replace the liberal, contractual theory of the firm with a political view that models the authority relation of employee to firm, and its appropriate regulation, on that of subject to state. This view is liable to serious difficulties, however, given existing discontinuities between corporate and civil authority as to their coerciveness, entry and exit conditions, scope, legal standing, and efficiency constraints. I here inspect these, and argue that, albeit in some cases significant, such discontinuities (...) fail to undermine the firm/state analogy, either because they are not significant enough to do so or because the particular trait on which they hinge is not decisive for how authority, in the state and in the firm, should be regulated to be legitimate. A pro tanto requirement exists, I thus argue, that corporate authority be held to regulatory norms comparable to those legitimate states abide by, including civil liberties, rule-of-law constraints, and accountability to subjects. (shrink)

Public reason liberals claim that legitimate rules must be justifiable to diverse perspectives. This Public Justification Principle threatens that failing to justify rules to reprehensible agents makes them illegitimate. Although public reason liberals have replies to this objection, they cannot avoid the challenge of powerful deceivers. Powerful deceivers trick people who are purportedly owed public justification into considering otherwise good rules unjustified. Avoiding this challenge requires discounting some failures of justification according to what caused people’s beliefs. I offer a conception (...) of public justification that accommodates these externalist considerations while positioning Public Reason Liberalism to provide insight into real cases of deception. (shrink)

This chapter sets out John Rawls’s conception of autonomy and considers the role that it plays in his thought across A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism. I suggest that one distinctive but overlooked feature of this conception is that it takes seriously the threat to autonomy that arises from how individuals are shaped by their social and political institutions. After setting out this conception and tracing its connections to wider discussions of autonomy, I argue for two main conclusions. First, (...) that despite appearances to the contrary, Rawls’s autonomy-based commitments are broadly speaking consistent across his two main works. Second, that these autonomy-based commitments are not in fact disbarred from playing a grounding role in Political Liberalism. On the contrary, I suggest that Rawls’s conception of autonomy motivates his aim of finding principles of justice that can be stable, and that this in turn illuminates his later commitment to a political liberalism. (shrink)

Should refugees govern refugee camps? This paper argues that they should. It draws on normative political thought in consulting the all-subjected principle and an instrumental defense of democratic rule. The former holds that all those subjected to rule in a political unit should have a say in such rule. Through analyzing the conditions that pertain in refugee camps, the paper demonstrates that the all-subjected principle applies there, too. Refugee camps have developed as near distinct entities from their host states. They (...) have formed their own economic, legal and even political systems within which refugees are subjected to political rule. The paper then demonstrates that democratic rule should be preferred over any other decision-making procedure. No amount of experts can replace the institutions that would lead to the accountability of decision-makers and to the incorporation of refugees as situated and epistemically diverse knowers of the problems they face and the solutions that would work best. (shrink)

Bolzaneto, Abu Grahib, Guantanamo: luoghi in cui la tortura è riemersa nel “civile”occidente contemporaneo. A perpetrarla sono i rappresentanti di uno Stato che si definisce “di diritto”: uno Stato la cui giustificazione ultima è la difesa e la protezione dei diritti inviolabili degli individui. La tortura, lungi dall’essere scomparsa, dunque permane come tecnica di potere nei moderni stati democratici. Essa non solo persiste come dato di fatto. Al contrario, negli ultimi decenni sono riemerse giustificazioni della tortura come pratica legale e (...) legittima per garantire la sicurezza dello Stato. Di fronte a queste nuove giustificazioni della tortura è oggi più che mai importante lasciarsi guidare dall’esperienza storica piuttosto che da ipotetici scenari futuri e, seguendo l'amonimento della studiosa statunitense Judith Shklar, fondare la difesa dei diritti sull’assunto, “ampiamente giustificato da ogni pagina di storia politica, che alcuni rappresentanti del potere statale si comporteranno regolarmente, su piccola o grande scala, in modo illegale e brutale, a meno che non venga loro impedito di farlo”. (shrink)

At the heart of the tension between state autonomy and international law is the question of whether states should willingly restrict their freedom of action for the sake of international security, human rights, trade, communication, and the environment. David Hume offers surprising insights to answer this question. He argues that the same interests in cooperation arise among individuals as well as states and that their interactions should be regulated by the same principles. Drawing on his model of dynamic coordination, I (...) will reconstruct the Humean case for developing international law into a more robust legal system and also highlight the limitation of Hume’s account of justice for such a reconstructive project. Hume’s lessons are enduring; we must strengthen the essential features of international law that allow states and individuals to reap the benefits of its protections, such as nonoptional rules that articulate a moral minimum, courts with compulsory jurisdiction, and stronger mechanisms of enforcement. (shrink)

This chapter criticizes several methods of responding to the techniques foreign powers are widely acknowledged to be using to subvert U.S. elections. It suggests that countries do this when they have a legitimate stake in each other’s political deliberations, but no formal voice in them. It also suggests that if they accord each other such a voice, they will engage as co-deliberators with arguments, rather than trying to undermine each other’s deliberative processes; and that this will be salutary for all (...) parties. It moots several methods for giving nations such a voice, ranging from inviting representatives of foreign powers to participate in debates in each other’s high-level elections, to having representatives of all nations vote in each other’s key elections or legislative bodies, or in international bodies constituted in recognition of the need for binding global deliberation about shared issues. (shrink)

This article presents Minobe Tatsukichi’s emperor organ theory as a novel understanding of the temporality of founding. In contrast to a conventional framework of founding which legitimizes the constitution by postulating the pre-constitutional power of “the people,” emperor organ theory invents “the people” out of the Meiji Constitution as a democratically empowered subject to-come. In so doing, emperor organ theory calls upon the transformation of shin-min (臣民), the presumed subject of the emperor, into koku-min (国民), the people of this constitutional (...) state. However, emperor organ theory also highlights the contingency of founding moments: though koku-min emerged through the Diet as a conceptually new political actor in Japan’s nascent constitutional state, it never solidified its sovereign status as “the people.”. (shrink)

Vardoulakis examines the concept of political theology in terms of the ancient greek term "stasis." The term "stasis" means both mobility and immobility. Vardoulakis explores these seemingly contradictory meanings generate a notion of agonistic politics that challenges perceived ideas about political theology.

What kind of thing, as it were, is power and how does it fit into our understanding of the social world? I approach this question by exploring the pragmatic character of power ascriptions, arguing that they involve fictional expectations directed at an open future. When we take an agent to be powerful, we act as if that agent had a robust capacity to make a difference to the actions of others. While this pretense can never fully live up to a (...) social reality whose future is open, acting on such expectations helps constitute social order. Fictional expectations are thus built into the material practices that constitute power. This account, I argue, helps us make sense of some of the deep disagreements about the nature of power. I develop the account by drawing on Thomas Hobbes’s myth of an original institution of sovereign power before expanding it to other forms of power. (shrink)

Edmund Burke’s political philosophy is generally known as the theoretical foundation of Western conservatism. In his intellectual elaboration, society is an organic complex organized in many stratified social classes. But who has the right to lead the community towards the common good? Burke’s answer to that question is: the natural aristocracy. Being the society «a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society» – so writes Burke –, all creatures are «each in their appointed place». And the group destined (...) to lead the whole is represented by the natural aristocracy. However, this aristocracy shouldn’t be entirely confused with the big landowners and with the traditional nobility; rather, Burke’s vision is founded over a classical concept based on virtue and wisdom, and the natural aristocrats are described as «those who are virtute et honore majores». Hence, the aristocracy of birth and wealth is only a part of it — and every civil society will develop a natural aristocracy, or else fall into chaos and subversion. (shrink)

How baroque was Spinoza in his treatment of the prophets? I examine this question by comparing the pictorial treatments of Moses from the Netherlands to Spinoza’s treatment of Moses at the beginning of the Theological Political Treatise. I concentrate on two representations of Moses descending from mount Sinai, one by Ferdinand Bol and the other by Rembrandt. Of particular importance is the idea of hierarchy. I will argue that Spinoza takes an ambiguous position in relation to baroque, on the one (...) hand following the baroque’s drastic spatiotemporal condensation that questions hierarchies, but on the other refusing the baroque’s representation of unmediated or unjustified sovereign violence. (shrink)

The article explores the distinction between authority and authoritarianism from the perspective of the concept of sovereignty.

The debate over rival conceptions of political legitimacy tends to focus on first-order considerations—for example, on the relative importance of procedural and substantive values. In this essay, I argue that there is an important, but often overlooked, distinction among rival conceptions of political legitimacy that originates at the meta-normative level. This distinction, which cuts across the distinctions drawn at the first-order level, concerns the source of the normativity of political legitimacy, or, as I refer to it here, the grounds of (...) political legitimacy. If we focus on the grounds of political legitimacy, there are three main conceptions of political legitimacy: will-based, belief-based, and fact-based conceptions. I present an objection to each of those main conceptions and defend a hybrid account of the grounds of political legitimacy. (shrink)

Does the Australian state exercise legitimate power over the indigenous peoples within its borders? To say that the state’s political decisions are legitimate is to say that it has the right to impose those decisions on indigenous peoples and that they have a (at least a prima facie) duty to obey. In this paper, I consider the general normative frameworks within which these questions are often grasped in contemporary political theory. Two dominant modes of dealing with political legitimacy are through (...) the politics of ‘recognition’ and ‘justification’. I argue that in order to address the fundamental challenges posed by indigenous peoples to liberal settler states today we need to pluralise our conceptions of political legitimacy. (shrink)

The debate over the constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples is a deeply political one. That might appear to be a controversial claim. After all, there has been much talk about minimising the scope for disagreement between ‘constitutional conservatives’ and supporters of more expansive constitutional recognition. And there is concern to ensure that any potential referendum enjoys the maximum conditions and opportunity for success. However, my argument shall be that any form of constitutional recognition of Australia’s First Peoples needs to be (...) seen as part of an ongoing transformation in the relations between Indigenous peoples and the Australian state. (shrink)

W artykule tym przedstawiam koncepcję rozwoju autorstwa wybitnego nigeryjskiego myśliciela i demokraty Claude’a Akego. Ake zaproponował abstrakcyjny paradygmat rozwoju społeczeństw afrykańskich w warunkach demokracji. Paradygmat ten opiera się na rolnej strategii rozwoju, zgodnie z którą powinien być on uzyskiwany małymi krokami i pierwotnie generowany na wsi. Ake zdefiniował rozwój jako proces, „poprzez który ludzie kształtują i zmieniają siebie oraz swoją sytuację życiową, by osiągać wyższe poziomy cywilizacyjne, zgodnie z własnymi wyborami i wartościami”. Zdaniem nigeryjskiego myśliciela, rozwój jako proces zbiorowy powinien (...) być wytwarzany przez tych, którzy mają go doświadczać. Ake krytykował dominujący, jego zdaniem, zachodni paradygmat rozwoju Afryki, zgodnie z którym rozwój może zostać narzucony Afrykanom z zewnątrz, a demokratyczna władza wcale nie musi stanowić warunku sine qua non rozwoju. W opinii Akego, zachodnie próby zintensyfikowania rozwoju w Afryce, które cechował brak zrozumienia dla afrykańskich uwarunkowań kulturowych, w tym sposobów myślenia i życia Afrykanów, skończyły się porażką. Koncepcja Akego, choć ciekawa i poparta ważnymi argumentami oraz przykładami, nie jest wolna od uogólnień i sprzeczności. Co więcej, jak się wydaje, nigeryjski myśliciel zaprezentował model rozwoju bliski autarkii i wyzuty z realiów współczesnej ekonomii. W konsekwencji krytycznie oceniam część opinii Akego i ukazuję podstawowe, moim zdaniem, ich mankamenty. (shrink)