I use part IV of Sen’s book on ‘public reasoning and democracy’ to make an evaluation of South Africa’s new democracy as it was institutionalized in the mid-1990s. I am rather critical about our democracy and about the level of justice attained over the past 18 years.

My aim in this paper is to provide an epistemological argument for why public reasons matter for political legitimacy. A key feature of the public reason conception of legitimacy is that political decisions must be justified to the citizens. Critics of the public reason conception, by contrast, argue that political legitimacy depends on justification simpliciter. Another way to put the point is that the critics of the public reason conception take the justification of political decisions to be based on reasons (...) that are agreement-independent. I call such reasons objective reasons. Public reasons are, however, agreement-dependent. The debate between defenders and critics of a public reason conception of political legitimacy focuses on whether objective reasons or public reasons are the right basis for the justification of political decisions. My defense of the public reason conception will grant to its critics that there are objective reasons and allow that such reasons can affect the legitimacy of political decisions. But I will show, focusing on epistemic constraints on the justification of political decisions, that it does not follow that the justification of those decisions is necessarily agreement-independent. In the epistemic circumstances that are typical of political life, public reasons will be required for the justification of political decisions. (shrink)

The paper explores satire not as a literary genre but as an idiom of political and moral reflection discussing the extent to which contexts of relative constraint or freedom of expression are adequate for its understanding. The argument deals with the satire of Early-Modern England, especially that of the Restoration and early eighteenth century, as for most of this time political authority was purposely oppressive, the satire produced was highly significant, and it allegedly is part of the beginnings of (...) a public sphere of open rational discourse. The paper outlines in turn: the significance of anonymity, differing understandings of humour, diverging satiric propensities, ritualised satire and taboo, and the distinction between constraint and restraint. It suggests that to locate satire between oppression and liberty lacks explanatory power and, in particular, that the very notion of a public sphere is of little historical value in discussing satire. If Habermas's concept is taken seriously it mythologises the early eighteenth century on scant evidence. If it is emptied of theoretical content, a healthy public sphere can be found in numerous places. The paper concludes by raising questions about how far the predominant roles of satire have changed since its 'golden age'. (shrink)

The paper explores satire not as a literary genre but as an idiom of political and moral reflection discussing the extent to which contexts of relative constraint or freedom of expression are adequate for its understanding. The argument deals with the satire of Early-Modern England, especially that of the Restoration and early eighteenth century, as for most of this time political authority was purposely oppressive, the satire produced was highly significant, and it allegedly is part of the beginnings of (...) a public sphere of open rational discourse. The paper outlines in turn: the significance of anonymity, differing understandings of humour, diverging satiric propensities, ritualised satire and taboo, and the distinction between constraint and restraint. It suggests that to locate satire between oppression and liberty lacks explanatory power and, in particular, that the very notion of a public sphere is of little historical value in discussing satire. If Habermas's concept is taken seriously it mythologises the early eighteenth century on scant evidence. If it is emptied of theoretical content, a healthy public sphere can be found in numerous places. The paper concludes by raising questions about how far the predominant roles of satire have changed since its ‘golden age’. (shrink)

Two general principles have played a crucial role in the recent debate on concepts. On the one hand, we want to allow different subjects to have the same concepts, thus accounting for concept publicity: concepts are ‘the sort of thing that people can, and do, share’. On the other hand, a subject who finds herself in a so-called ‘Frege case’ appears to have different concepts for the same object: for instance, Lois Lane has two distinct concepts SUPERMAN and CLARK (...) KENT which refer to the same person. Several theories have tried to meet both of these constraints at the same time. But should we really try to satisfy both principles? This paper will argue that the traditional project of fulfilling these two constraints has been a misguided one. Through a variation on classic identity mistake cases, I will show that our two desiderata are inconsistent: it would thus be impossible to incorporate both of them in our best theory of concepts. (shrink)

Despite the numerous instances of PED use in professional sports, there continues to be a strong negative moral response to those athletes who dope. My goal is to offer a diagnosis of this response. I will argue that we do not experience such disdain because these athletes have broken some constitutive rule of sport, but because they have lied about who they are. In violating the constraints of their own public narratives, they make both themselves and their choices unintelligible. This (...) worry becomes especially profound as we care greatly about who our athletes are. Using cases from both athletics and US politics, I argue that certain kinds of lies so violate our understanding of who a person is that we can no longer recognize them as the person we took them to be. Fundamentally, I believe that PED users have lied about something central to their public narratives. I develop this view through an examination of narrative identity, primarily focusing on J. David Velleman’s work on agency and self-constitution. I do not claim that the athlete using steroids is nonidentical to who she would be in the absence of steroid use, but that through use of PEDs, she has misled us about an important component of her pubic narrative and this is difficult for us to reconcile. Ultimately, this has implications for sport as well as other other aspects of human social life. (shrink)

In this article I present some implications for a concept of transitional justice through the comparison of two approaches: retributive vs. restorative theories. Notwithstanding their profound differences in perspective, both models are grounded upon a strong notion of the public sphere. Accordingly, after showing why neither of the two approaches exhausts the problems of transitional justice, I will demonstrate how a ‘complete’ justification requires a certain view of public reason based upon rights as truth-constraints of the public sphere.

A traditional view is that scientific evidence can be produced only by intersubjective methods that can be used by different investigators and will produce agreement. This intersubjectivity, or publicity, constraint ostensibly excludes introspection. But contemporary cognitive scientists regularly rely on their subjects' introspective reports in many areas, especially in the study of consciousness. So there is a tension between actual scientific practice and the publicity requirement. Which should give way? This paper argues against the publicity requirement (...) and against a fallback version of it, viz. that evidence-conferring methods must at least have their reliability publicly validated. (shrink)

An influential tradition holds that thoughts are public: different thinkers share many of their thoughts, and the same applies to a single subject at different times. This ‘publicity principle’ has recently come under attack. Arguments by Mark Crimmins, Richard Heck and Brian Loar seem to show that publicity is inconsistent with the widely accepted principle that someone who is ignorant or mistaken about certain identity facts will have distinct thoughts about the relevant object—for instance, the astronomer who does (...) not know that Hesperus is Phosphorus will have two distinct thoughts Hesperus is bright and Phosphorus is bright. In this paper, I argue that publicity can be defended if we adopt a relational account on which thoughts are individuated by their mutual relations. I then go on to develop a specific relational theory—the ‘linking account’—and contrast it with other relational views. (shrink)

Public reason in practice and theory -- False starts: unsuccessful justifications of public reason -- Respect for persons as a constraint on coercion -- Higher-order unanimity escape clause -- Civic friendship as a constraint on reasons for decision -- Public reason and (same-sex) marriage.

Recently, the issue of publicity has surfaced in discussions of the correct interpretation of the Rawlsian principles of justice. In an intriguing critique of G.A. Cohen's preferred interpretation of the difference principle as a principle that is incompatible with incentive-based inequalities, Andrew Williams points to a gap in Cohen's argument, alleging that Cohen's interpretation of the difference principle is unlikely to be compatible with the Rawlsian endorsement of publicity. Having explored a possible extrapolation of Cohen's critique to aggregate (...) consumer choices and a resulting extension of Williams's charge that the difference principle, on Cohen's reading, fails to meet the publicity constraint because of its informational demandingness, I defend three claims: it is doubtful that Rawls endorses a publicity constraint of the sort that would rule out Cohen's interpretation of the difference principle; it is hard to see how such a constraint could emerge from the considerations Rawls offers in favour of publicity; and under certain interpretations, the difference principle disallows incentive-based inequalities and yet satisfies suitably modest versions of the publicity constraint. (shrink)

Building on research in anthropology and philosophy, one can make a distinction between type I and type II energy ethics as a framework for advancing public debate about energy. Type I holds energy production and use as a fundamental good and is grounded in the assumption that increases in energy production and consumption result in increases in human wellbeing. Conversely, type II questions the linear relationship between energy production and progress by examining questions of equity and human happiness. The type (...) I versus type II framework helps to advance public debates about energy that address broad questions of profitability, regulation, and the environment, and in the process poses fundamental questions about the reverence for energy growth in advanced technological societies. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the claim that concepts are not public. I argue that two of the main constraints for theories of concepts, namely (1) that concepts are public and (2) that they serve to explain Frege Cases, are in tension. (1) requires concepts to be individuated coarsely, while (2) requires ..

Generic propositions are statements that make general claims about ‘kinds’ that are found in a wide variety of written genres and speech. By definition, generics do not include in their structure any reference to the conditions under which they hold true. Their misuse in popular scientific writing, however, can erode the public’s confidence in the process of science itself when they discover that conclusions are highly contingent on certain truth conditions. The language used in scholarly scientific papers often includes qualifiers (...) and hedges, the epistemological consequences of which have been explored by Bruno Latour, Thomas Kuhn, Ian Hacking and others. Some research shows that abstracts, however, of-ten include generic statements that are not warranted by the scientific evidence described in the full text. Similarly, when accounts of scientific discoveries appear in popular media, journalists often remove qualifiers, hedges and context markers that existed in the original study. Studies in anthropology by Joseph Dumit, Annemarie Mol, Harris Solomon and others explore the human reactions to such pronouncements. One possible solution to the over-use of generics in scientific abstracts, especially for studies that rely on human subjects, is the inclusion of a mandatory section entitled “Constraints on Generality,” as suggested by Gutiérrez and Rogoff. Other suggestions include using less nominalized verbs and more past-tense descriptions of what actually occurred in the particular study. (shrink)

As part of recent epistemic challenges to democracy, some have endorsed the implementation of epistemic constraints on voting, institutional mechanisms that bar incompetent voters from participating in public decision-making procedures. This proposal is often considered incompatible with a commitment to political equality. In this paper, I aim to dispute the strength of this latter claim by offering a theoretical justification for epistemic constraints on voting that does not rest on antiegalitarian commitments. Call this the civic accountability justification for epistemic constraints (...) on voting. On this view, voters stand to one another in a normative relation of reciprocal accountability that requires them to uphold an epistemically responsible conduct. Modest epistemic constraints on voting are justifiable because they secure that participation in voting is conforming to this normative requirement. Thanks to its distinctive features, the civic accountability justification can overcome two problems that egalitarians commonly associate with the idea of epistemic constraints on voting: the disrespect problem and the hierarchy problem. (shrink)

Relying on personal experience of political European venture during the last four years, this paper aims at illustrating the role of ethics in public policy-making.Crucial importance of ethics is stressed upon at three different stages of the decision-making process: shaping a vision, devising strategy and choosing options in everyday life.

This article contributes to the literature on legitimacy by highlighting its paradox and constraints. While an optimal level of legitimacy-seeking behaviours may be necessary for organizational effectiveness, an excessive focus on legitimacy may lead to stakeholder mismanagement and have the opposite effect. These insights emerged from a longitudinal qualitative study of large-scale changes in public-sector health care in a Canadian province (1994-2002). In 1994, subordinate health care organizations underwent government-driven reforms to promote market-based logics of efficiency and cost reduction. Initial (...) years post reforms were characterized by a singular focus on government-driven priorities and inattention to other stakeholders. However, instead of giving benefits of legitimacy, these behaviours led to anger and activism from non-institutional stakeholders such as staff and community due to a decline in quality and patient satisfaction. Eventually, greater attention to stakeholder concerns ended the stand-off. These findings also elaborate Suchman's (Academy of Management Review 20(3), 571-610, 1995) framework on legitimacy and explain that legitimacy may occur for reasons other than institutionalization of values and be temporary in nature. (shrink)

Gornick and Meyers offer proposals for advancing gender egalitarianism in care of children and in the labor market. This article examines the extent to which these proposals can be extended beyond the United States and other wealthy countries. I argue that the Gornick and Meyers proposals are dependent on a particular set of global and national labor market factors, and on a peculiar configuration of institutions and political forces. The article lays out some of these key contours of the global (...) care labor market, as well as the divergent nature of public and private institutions in developing countries. I venture that the Gornick and Meyers proposals for egalitarianism are not universalizable without radical changes in the global arena. (shrink)

In the last few years, conference programs and publications have begun to appear that reflect a growing interest, among North American archaeologists, in research initiatives that focus on women and gender as subjects of investigation. One of the central questions raised by these developments has to do with their "objectivity" and that of archaeology as a whole. To the extent that they are inspired by or aligned with explicitly political (feminist) commitments, the question arises of whether they do not themselves (...) represent an inherently partial and interest-specific standpoint, and whether their acceptance does not undermine the commitment to value neutrality and empirical rigor associated with scientific approaches to archaeology. I will argue that, in fact, a feminist perspective, among other critical, explicitly political perspectives, may well enhance the conceptual integrity and empirical adequacy of archaeological knowledge claims, where this is centrally a matter of deploying evidential constraints. (shrink)

According to some philosophers, a sentence's semantics can fail to constitute a complete propositional content, imposing mere constraints on such a content. Recently, Daniel Harris has begun developing a formal constraint semantics. He claims that the semantic values of sentences constrain what speakers can literally say with them—and what hearers can know about what was said. However, that claim is undermined by his conception of semantics as the study of a psychological module. I argue instead that semantic constraints should (...) be understood as properties of public languages. (shrink)

Rawls says that public reason is the reason of the citizens of a democratic state and takes the Supreme Court in the USA as the exemplar of public reason. It differs from non public reason, which is used e.g., in universities and academic institutions. Rawls contrasts with Kant, which opposes the public reason of the scholar—or the philosopher—, who speaks before the world, to the private reason of state or church officials. The later, once they accept an authority, cannot think (...) by themselves (selbst denken). A closer examination shows that Rawls is not so far from Kant as it seems, because he takes the constitutional judges not as they are, but as they should be. However Rawls still apparently refuses Kant’s unity of reason. Further investigation of the relations between ethical reason, democratic reason and legal reason is needed. Democratic reason is tantamount both to public reason and to legal reason in a modern constitutional state. It is a requirement of ethics but still not identical with ethical reason, since it is possible to accept democratic reason and to argue against it from an ethical point of view. There is just one good way of reasoning, in spite of the constraints that the sources of law and the rules of procedure impose on legal reasoning, compared with ethics. Such constraints are based on the democratic principle, which is again based on ethical reason, which at last both grounds and limits the constraints that law imposes on reason. (shrink)

Greenblum and Hubbard argue that physicians are duty-bound by the constraints of Rawlsian ‘public reason’ to avoid engaging their patients’ religious considerations in medical decision-making.1 This position offers a number of appealing benefits to physicians. It will appear plausible because Rawls’s philosophical tradition of Political Liberalism enjoys the status of ideological orthodoxy in institutions tasked with forming the moral imaginations of physicians and other elites.2 3 It casts the physician in the role of a ‘reasonable person’ occupying the space of (...) public reason whose medical and ethical judgments are opposed by ‘sectarian’ religious patients who refuse to be reasonable. This narrative authorises the exclusion of patient religious considerations from medical decision making when they do not ‘translate’ into reasons recognised by ‘reasonable’ medical professionals and manages the trauma of overwhelmed physicians by legitimising disengagement from difficult interactions with religious patients. The authors’ arguments depend on concepts from Rawls’s Political Liberalism 4 and are presented as if the premises of Liberal theory are incontestable—despite the fact that a large body of philosophical literature challenging its premises and core concepts has existed for decades.3 5–7 This ‘nothing to see here, move along’ approach saves more space for anecdotes about religious people, at which …. (shrink)

: Gill and Sade, in the preceding article in this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, argue that living individuals should be free from legal constraints against selling their organs. The present commentary responds to several of their claims. It explains why an analogy between kidneys and blood fails; why, as a matter of public policy, we prohibit the sale of human solid organs, yet allow the sale of blood; and why their attack on Kant's putative argument against (...) the sale of human body parts is misplaced. Finally, it rejects the claim that the state is entitled to interfere with the actions of individuals only if such actions would harm others. We draw certain lines grounded in what Rawls has termed "public reason" beyond which we do not give effect to the autonomous self-regarding decisions of individuals. Public resistance to the sale of human body parts, no matter how voluntary or well informed, is grounded in the conviction that such a practice would diminish human dignity and our sense of solidarity. A system of organ donation, in contrast, conveys our respect for persons and honors our common humanity. (shrink)

Antony Duff’s The Realm of Criminal Law offers an appealing moral reconstruction of the criminal law. I agree that the criminal law should be understood to predicate punishment upon sufficient proof that the defendant has committed a public wrong for which she is being held to account and censured. But the criminal law is not only about censoring people for public wrongs; it must serve other purposes as well, such as preventing people from committing serious crimes and more generally from (...) violating reasonable regulations. These purposes, and perhaps retributive justice, require the criminal law also to mete out harsh treatment, but only insofar as such treatments are proportional to the culpable wrong committed. The problem for the criminal law is that many mala prohibita crimes consist of a minor wrong but also call for a relatively severe punishment. To accommodate that mismatch, it is necessary to complement the criminal law, as Duff and I conceive of it, with what I call “penal law.” Penal law relies on forfeiture to explain why hard treatment is permissible. The forfeiture must be fair, and it comes with its own proportionality limits. But those limits are not as strict as the limits implicit in the criminal law. It allows for penalties that are harsher than the punishments that could justifiably be meted out for many mala prohibita offenses. One and the same act can count as a crime and a penal infraction, and one and the same criminal justice system can and should handle both crimes and the penal infractions. It is, I think, only in that way that we can accommodate both the need to prevent public wrongdoing and the distinct importance of holding people accountable for the commission of public wrongs. (shrink)

Public investments in genomic and precision medicine have begun to yield clinically useful interventions, most recently, for example, two new, FDA-approved gene therapies for sickle cell disease (F...

Public health agencies undertake a broad range of health promotion and injury and disease prevention activities in collaboration with an array of actors, such as the community, businesses, and non-profit organizations. These activities are “multisectoral” in nature and centered on public health agencies that oversee and engage with the other actors. Public health agencies can influence the hazardous activities in the private sector in a variety of ways, “ranging from prohibition and regulation to volunteerism, and from cooperation to cooption.” Hence, (...) a public health agency that possesses the necessary administrative resources and authority is vital to the effective implementation of health policies and regulations.In the developing world, however, many state health agencies lack these basic capacities in dealing with critical health threats, including their ability to avert epidemics of communicable diseases arising from poor sanitary conditions. A serious constraint is the shortage of public health funding for health agencies in the developing world for typical agency functions. This is often aggravated by the transaction-intensive demands entailed in enforcing regulations among an array of private and public sector actors including individuals, businesses, and local bodies responsible for providing civic services. (shrink)

The most notable development in public sculpture of the last thirty years has been the disappearance of the sculpture itself. Ever since Jean Tinguely’s Homage to New York destroyed itself at the Museum of Modern Art in 1960, sculptors have tried to find new ways to make the sculptural object invisible, immaterial, or remote. Where the sculpture did have some material presence, it often took unexpected forms. As Rosalind Krauss says, “Rather surprising things have come to be called sculpture: narrow (...) corridors with TV monitors at the ends; large photographs documenting country hikes; mirrors placed at strange angles in ordinary rooms; temporary lines cut into the floor of the desert.”However various these experiments may seem, they began with a single motive: to escape the constraints of the pedestal, the gallery, and finally of art itself. To prevent this new work from becoming just another commodity in the market, artists either produced works so intangible or remote they could not be bought and sold, or disseminated their ideas in so many reproducible forms they could not be monopolized. The political nature of these motives also meant that much of this “sculpture” could be considered “public.” Changing the nature of the art meant changing the role of the audience as well, questioning the purely contemplative role the observer plays in the conventional setting of the museum or gallery. According to Henry Sayre, “As the avant-garde work of art denies its own autonomy, it implicates the audience in its workings.”3 As the aesthetic focus shifts from the object to the experience it provokes, the relationship of the two goes beyond mere implication: the public becomes the sculpture. Artists, like Richard Serra, whose goal is to illuminate the material nature of space and the often tenuous materiality of the observer’s own body, have made “the viewer, in effect, the subject of the work,” to quote Douglas Crimp. Michael North is associate professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The Final Sculpture: Public Monuments and Modern Poets and is currently completing a study of the politics of Yeats, Eliot, and Pound. (shrink)

European quality assurance has a complicated history that must be viewed as taking place on two levels: first, in a national effort to deregulate the public sector and to make universities accountable for their teaching performance; and second, a supranational endeavor to accomplish European integration in the field of higher education. Similarly, the web of institutional constraints and opportunity structures in which accreditation agencies are embedded spans two policy levels, the national and the European. In this paper, we examine how (...) German accreditation agencies achieve some level of autonomy in a highly entrenched institutional environment. The paper is based on a qualitative study comprising archival data and over 70 semi-structured interviews. Drawing on the insights of neo-institutional theory, we argue that quality assurance agencies seek political leverage at the European level in order to strengthen their standing in the higher education systems of their own countries. (shrink)

A number of ethical frameworks have been proposed to support decision-making in public health and the evaluation of public health policy and practice. This is encouraging, since ethical considerations are of paramount importance in health policy. However, these frameworks have various deficiencies, in part because they incorporate substantial ethical positions. In this article, we discuss and criticise a framework developed by James Childress and Ruth Bernheim, which we consider to be the state of the art in the field. Their framework (...) distinguishes aims, such as the promotion of public health, from constraints on the pursuit of those aims, such as the requirement to avoid limitations to liberty, or the requirement to be impartial. We show how this structure creates both theoretical and practical problems. We then go on to present and defend a more practical framework, one that is neutral in avoiding precommitment to particular values and how they ought to be weighted. We believe ethics is at the very heart of such weightings and our framework is developed to reflect this belief. It is therefore both pluralist and value-based. We compare our new framework to Childress and Bernheim’s and outline its advantages. It is justified by its impetus to consider a wide range of alternatives and its tendency to direct decisions towards the best alternatives, as well as by the information provided by the ranking of alternatives and transparent explication of the judgements that motivate this ranking. The new framework presented should be useful to decision-makers in public health, as well as being a means to stimulate further reflection on the role of ethics in public health. (shrink)

This paper explores Brian Orend's contribution to the just war tradition, specifically his proposed jus post bellum criteria and his idea of pre-commitment to jus in bello and jus post bellum as part of an expanded jus ad bellum criterion of right intention. The latter is based on his interpretation of Kant's work: that as part of the original decision to begin a war, a state should commit itself to certain rules of conduct and appropriate war termination, and if it (...) cannot so commit, it should not continue further down the path to using force. Orend's revised right intention brings jus post bellum ?into the fold? of the just war tradition, requiring that state obligations go beyond correct conduct in war. The article argues that whatever the nature of the just cause, there is a compelling argument for committing to jus in bello and jus post bellum as part of jus ad bellum right intention. The justness of the cause in the contemporary era requires strictness rather than leniency in the conduct and termination of war for a state to remain legitimate in the eyes of the world. In the context of Orend's proposals, this would require that states ?do their homework? and ?tie themselves to the mast?; this includes providing proof that the situation on the ground is understood, conducting a feasibility test on the proposed intervention and publicly identifying and committing to their obligations and responsibilities during and after war. Recognising the practical and political obstacles to adopting this idealistic revision of the just war tradition, the paper nevertheless concludes that Orend's contribution is significant and worthy of exploration: it offers a kernel of hope for counteracting pressures to lower the threshold of resort to force, delivering greater justice for the innocent victims of war and providing greater probability of durable peace post-war. (shrink)

Welfare states are in a care crisis both in the sense of a practical care gap and in the new movement to limit care to mere rehabilitation. Few political theorists pay attention to these developments, and those who do say little about the potential limits to care. This article discusses Philip Pettit’s theory of social justice in relation to questions of public care provisions. Pettit’s theory has been praised by feminists for its attention to social injustices and because it highlights (...) fair limits to care. The article examines how Pettit builds up his argument involving the idea of a gateway good, heuristics and a set of constraints. Although the article points to the value of Pettit’s theory, Pettit’s arguments to limit the state’s care tasks depend on the false assumption that a theory of justice considers able-minded adults only. This article argues that Pettit’s assumption that we leave out children and not-so-able-minded elderly leads to a general neglect o... (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that private associations might be legitimately constrained by a requirement of reasonableness. I present a list of goods that freedom of association protect, and argue that the limits to associational freedom have to be sensitive to the nature of these goods. In defending this claim, I cast doubt on two popular liberal arguments: One is that attitudes cultivated in the private sphere are not likely to spill over into the public arena. The other is that (...) governmental intervention into the inner life of private associations will jeopardise attaining some associational goods. I challenge these assertions in two ways: First, I argue that the value of associations cannot be measured only in terms of the effects it has on their members. We should also pay attention to the long-term effects on society. Second, I argue that imposing some constraints on the sorts of activities associations might pursue does not necessarily threaten any associational good. These challenges are backed up by research coming from social psychology that suggests that an important part of human behaviour is automatic. I focus on the automaticity of social stereotypes and their causal effectiveness in producing behaviour. The upshot of the argument is that spillover effects are likely to happen. I argue that this is problematic for liberalism because citizens have an interest in exercising a sense of justice. The fact that racist or sexist attitudes cultivated in private spills over the public sphere provides weighty reasons to intervene in those associations. (shrink)

When exercising their public health powers, states claim various rights against their subjects and aliens. The paper considers whether public health considerations can help justify some of these rights, and explores some constraints on the justificatory force of public health considerations. I outline two arguments about the moral grounds for states’ rights with regard to public health. The principle of fairness emphasizes that those who benefit from public health measures ought to contribute their fair share in upholding them. Alternatively, states’ (...) rights might be justified by a natural duty of justice to uphold and not to obstruct institutions implementing public health policies. I indicate some reasons for preferring the latter justification. I further argue that the assignment of some rights to states via public health-based justification is undermined on several counts. Domestic political institutions cannot effectively perform some of their functions in protecting public health. Furthermore, transborder public health threats pose collective action problems at the global level. Finally, concerns about human rights work against the assignment of some rights to states. I conclude by arguing that these concerns call for global coordination, and that some rights claimed by states ought instead to be assigned to global institutions. (shrink)

This article explores the “fair trial” as a good practice for the construction of public proof. If proof signifies closure on matter at hand, and publicness is taken to signify both “access to” and “participation in” the construction of proof by the publics concerned, the authors contend that the “fair trial” is a good example of building public proof and that its backbone constraints can be of great interest to the defenders and advocates of participative Technology Assessment, especially citizens' juries.

The "grassroots turn" in bioethical discussions about justice in allocation of health care resources has attracted a great deal of support; in the absence of a convincing theory of justice in rationing, democratic decisionmaking concerning priority setting emerges with a kind of inevitability. Yet there remain suspicions about this approach – most importantly, worries about the socially corrosive impact of explicit, public decisionmaking that in effect sets a price on the lives of persons. These worries have been quieted, particularly by (...) the work of Leonard Fleck, but not altogether stilled. I explore more sympathetically the ideals to which concerns about public rationing somewhat dimly respond, and suggest constraints on priority setting discussions which might accommodate those ideals rather better. Keywords: "grassroots" decisionmaking, publicity principle, pricing life, rationing health care CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Positive arguments on behalf of passion are scarce in liberal political theory. Rather, liberal theorists tend to push passion to the margins of their theories of politics, either by ignoring it or by explicitly arguing that passion poses a danger to politics and is best kept out of the public realm. The purpose of this essay is to criticize these marginalizations and to illustrate their roots in impoverished conceptions of passion. Using a richer conception of passion as the desire for (...) an envisioned good, I argue that it is neither possible nor desirable to eliminate passion from politics. Passion should therefore be established as a central category of analysis in political theory alongside other key concerns. Key Words: passion • reason • politics • liberalism • eros. (shrink)

Would compulsory treatment or vaccination for Covid-19 be justified? In England, there would be significant legal barriers to it. However, we offer a conditional ethical argument in favour of allowing compulsory treatment and vaccination, drawing on an ethical comparison with external constraints—such as quarantine, isolation and ‘lockdown’—that have already been authorised to control the pandemic. We argue that, if the permissive English approach to external constraints for Covid-19 has been justified, then there is a case for a similarly permissive approach (...) to compulsory medical interventions. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the challenge European states have imposed on themselves, namely, to provide state-of-the-art health care equally to all and for less than market price. Continued endorsement of that challenge in these states hinges on their character as media democracies: the public is moved by a supposed morally warranted expectation that all should receive adequate health care at no significant personal cost. The structural and economic constraints that hamper such forms of healthcare delivery result in systems that are (...) financially inefficient and fail to provide the quality of treatment patients are led to expect. This essay examines the tension between secular moral claims to social solidarity and the actual limits of accessibility to healthcare services. Its critical focus addresses both the difficulties that result from politicians invoking high moral ideals while framing their decisions around short-term political advantage, and the transformation of the Enlightenment’s secular aspirations into a political ideology that distorts such moral ideals. This essay concludes that the commitments to very particular notions of equality and human dignity, which frame contemporary Europe’s provision of publicly subsidized health care, have given rise to a governance that is morally incoherent and unsustainable. This failure of public health care in Europe can thus be read as one more belated manifestation of the epistemological and moral failure of the Enlightenment’s secularizing project, a failure which should invite contemporary Europeans to honestly face the moral challenge of postmodernity. (shrink)

The socioeconomic and ethnic characteristics of parents are some of the most important correlates of adverse health outcomes in childhood. However, the relationships between ethnic, economic, and behavioral factors and the health outcomes responsible for this pervasive finding have not been specified in child health epidemiology. The general objective of this paper is to propose a theoretical approach to the study of maternal behaviors and child health in diverse ethnic and socioeconomic environments. The specific aims are: (a) to describe a (...) causal pathway between the utility that women obtain through work outside the home and through child care and disease hazard rates in childhood using an optimization model; (b) to specify the influence of ethnic and socioeconomic factors on model constraints; (c) to use the model as a tool to learn about how different combinations of maternal wage labor and child care time might influence child health outcomes in diverse social contexts; (d) to identify parameters that will require measurement in future research; (e) to discuss research strategies that will enable us to obtain these measurements; and (f) to discuss the implications of the model for biostatistical modeling and public health intervention. Optimization models are powerful heuristic tools for understanding how ethnic, environmental, family, and personal characteristics can place important constraints on both the quality and quantity of care that women can provide to their children. They provide a quantitative appreciation for the difficult trade-offs that most women face between working in order to purchase basic goods that children cannot do without (e.g., food, clothing, shelter, health insurance), and increasing offspring well-being through child care (e.g., training in social skills, affection, protection from environmental hazards, help with homework). (shrink)

This paper examines the debate over the relationship between the public sphere and communication, which has become a focus of attention after the publication of Jürgen Habermas's Structural Transformation of Public Sphere in English in 1989, following the two volumes of his The Theory of Communicative Action in 1984 and 1987. Although the historical account of the public sphere has also received a good deal of attention, I deal mainly with the normative dimension of Habermas's theory as it led to (...) a rethinking and reassessment of public broadcasting, to the end of restructuring it as a site where 'citizens act as a public'. That is to say, a site where people assemble and unite freely, and express and publicize their opinions on matters of general interest without constraint in an age of deregulated communications. Several scholars have provided us with maps for re-organizing the media of communications in this respect, but they have failed to analyze the 'information' which feeds the 'informed citizen'. This paper addresses not only what information means today—whether it is a digit, a signal, or content—but also how it is produced within daily routine practices and how the nature of the means of its dissemination influences its character. Another serious aspect of those assessments, including that of Habermas, is the global character of communications today. Habermas is well aware of the mismatch between the global market and the absence of its corollary in politics. Yet his silence in the economics of information, even as he acknowledges the digitalization of communications and 'a world public sphere', also calls for a critical account of the relations between 'information', democratic politics and the question of scale. (shrink)

A part les contraintes imposées aux décisions publiques par 1a mobilité, l’analyse reçue des choix publics postule que le processus politique fonctionne essentiellement de la même façon en régime fédéral qu’en régime unitaire. Il s’avère cependant qu’il existe une dimension du processus politique en régime fédéral qui se prête spécifiquement à l’analyse économique, nommément le fait que, là où les fonctions se recoupent dans un même territoire, il se trouve deux niveaux de gouvernement qui se concurrencent dans l’offre des mêmes (...) services à un même groupe de votants. Si alors on définit les votes comme des inputs dans la production d’outputs politiques, on se trouve en situation de concurrence par deux offreurs ou plus visà- vis d’une même ressource placée en propriété commune. On peut supposer que l’analyse conventionnelle de l’allocation des ressources en régime de propriété commune puisse jeter un éclairage sur l’aboutissement du processus politique fédéral. Dans ces conditions, il y va de l’intérêt de chacun des deux offreurs de chercher à s’attirer les votes et donc d’être le premier à offrir l’output politique en question. En l’absence de droits exclusifs sur le bassin de votes, le chevauchement amène les deux joueurs à vouloir réaliser le profit politique, de crainte de le perdre à l’avantage de l’autre partie. Et pourtant, le profit s’en trouvera ultimement dissipé ex post pour les deux parties après l’avènement du deuxième joueur. On découvre ainsi que les forces mises en branle dans un régime fédéral type sont de deux ordres : une force restrictionniste d’abord, fondée sur la mobilité des ressources entre les entités décentralisées, et une force expansionniste liée à la dynamique politique étudiée dans ces lignes. Ce résultat peut expliquer pourquoi le dossier empirique reste ambigu sur la contribution du fédéralisme au freinage de la croissance du secteur public. Les conséquences de ce processus sont dégagées et les avenues possibles de solution explorées.Except for the mobility constraints imposed on political decisions of lowerlevel governments, public choice analysts assume that the working of the political process under federalism remains the same at all levels of government as under unitary state. This paper argues that one dimension of the political process in a federalist framework lends itself to specific economic analysis, namely the fact that, once constitutional limits break down and functions overlap, two or more levels of government compete for the same voters in the supply of services in a given territory.Viewing votes as inputs in the production of political outputs, the conventional analysis of allocation under cnmmon-property rule should shed light on the outcome of this process. The analysis shows that it is in the interest of both suppliers to seek to gain the votes in being first to implement programs.There are thus two forces operating in a typical federalist system, an expansionist one rooted in the political dynamics analyzed here, and a restrictionist one based on the mobility of resources among decentralized entities. This may explain why the empirical record is rather mixed on the contribution of federalism to containing government growth. The consequences of this process are derived and possible avenues for improvement are explored. (shrink)

One of the central controversies in normative business ethics is the question whether transactions and economic relationships can be wrongfully exploitative despite being mutually beneficial and consensual. This article argues that anyone who accepts a shareholder theory of business ethics should accept deontological constraints on mutually beneficial, consensual exploitation.

This paper considers the relation between philosophical discussions of, and social-scientific research into popular beliefs about, distributive justice. The first part sets out the differences and tensions between the two perspectives, identifying considerations which tend to lead adherents of each discipline to regard the other as irrelevant to its concerns. The second discusses four reasons why social scientists might benefit from philosophy: problems in identifying inconsistency, the fact that non-justice considerations might underlie distributive judgments, the way in which different principles (...) of justice can yield the same concrete distributive judgments, and the ambiguity of key terms. The third part distinguishes and evaluates three versions of the claim that normative theorising about justice can profit from empirical research into public opinion: that its findings are food for thought, that they amount to feasibility constraints, and that they are constitutive of normatively justified principles of justice. The view that popular opinion about justice has a strongly constitutive role to play in justifying principles of distributive justice stricto sensu is rejected, but it is argued that what the people think (and what they can reasonably be expected to come to think) on distributive matters can be an important factor for the political theorist to take into account, for reasons of legitimacy, or feasibility, or both. (shrink)

Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy Without Contempt seeks to reorient the conversation among religious ethicists and political theorists about religion in public life. Rather than focus on religious speech in general, Kaveny distinguishes deliberation and indictment as forms of discourse, and she subjects indictment to ethical evaluation. She aims to constrain the public exercise of inordinate indictment, while encouraging prophetic indictment that meets the demands of justice. While the book is a much-needed corrective, Kaveny's focus on the powerful rhetoric of prophetic indictment (...) omits the harms that can come to the body politic from unjust silence. Such silence deserves more moral attention. (shrink)

Anyone who has ever lived with roommates understands the Hobbesian state of nature implicitly. People sharing accommodations quickly discover that buying groceries, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, and a thousand other household tasks, are all prisoner's dilemmas waiting to happen. For instance, if food is purchased communally, it gives everyone an incentive to overconsume. Individuals also have an incentive to buy expensive items that the others are unlikely to want. As a result, everyone's food bill will be higher than (...) it would be if everyone did their own shopping. Things are not much better when it comes to other aspects of household organization. Cleaning is a common sticking point. Once there are a certain number of people living in a house, cleanliness becomes a quasi-public good. If everyone ‘pitched in’ to clean up, then everyone would be happier. But there is a free-rider incentive—before cleaning, it's best to wait around a bit to see if someone else will do it. As a result, the dishes will stack up in the sink, the carpet will get grungy, and so on. (shrink)

Anyone who has ever lived with roommates understands the Hobbesian state of nature implicitly. People sharing accommodations quickly discover that buying groceries, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, and a thousand other household tasks, are all prisoner's dilemmas waiting to happen. For instance, if food is purchased communally, it gives everyone an incentive to overconsume. Individuals also have an incentive to buy expensive items that the others are unlikely to want. As a result, everyone's food bill will be higher than (...) it would be if everyone did their own shopping. Things are not much better when it comes to other aspects of household organization. Cleaning is a common sticking point. Once there are a certain number of people living in a house, cleanliness becomes a quasi-public good. If everyone ‘pitched in’ to clean up, then everyone would be happier. But there is a free-rider incentive—before cleaning, it's best to wait around a bit to see if someone else will do it. As a result, the dishes will stack up in the sink, the carpet will get grungy, and so on. (shrink)

Deliberative democratic theorists typically use accounts of public reason— that is, constraints on the types of reasons one can invoke in public, political discourse—as a tool to resist political exclusion; at its most basic level, the aim of a theory of public reason is to prevent situations in which powerful majority groups are able to justify policy choices based on reasons that are not even assessable by minority groups. However, I demonstrate here that a type of exclusion I call "conceptual (...) exclusion" complicates this picture. I argue that the possibility of conceptual exclusion creates the potential for public reason constraints to further exclude already marginalized groups— contrary to the standard view—and thus that taking conceptual exclusion seriously requires both a revision of traditional accounts of public reason and a reconceptualization of our civic obligations. (shrink)