Ökonomische und vorübergehende Migration stellen liberal-demokratische Gesellschaften vor die Herausforderung, traditionelle Ideale von Gesellschaft und demokratischer Inklusion zu überdenken. Christine Chwaszcza entwickelt einen moralischen Standpunkt für die ethische Bewertung von Fragen zu Immigration, sozialer und demokratischer Inklusion, der demokratietheoretische Überlegungen und Forderungen post-nationaler Gerechtigkeit in einer transnationalen Perspektive integriert. Das Buch wendet sich an Forscher und fortgeschrittene Studierenden der Politischen Philosophie, der Rechtsphilosophie und der Sozialwissenschaften.

The reflection of global justice demands an innovative revision of traditional patterns of argument of political theory. How can moral responsibility be defined in connection with intergovernmental action? Ethical, institutional, and logical implications of a human legal foundation of intergovernmental justice are discussed in three theoretical chapters in this book. Further chapters deal with the structure of intergovernmental responsibility in connection with ethics of peace, humanitarian intervention, the fight against poverty, as well as migration. Moreover, the book analyzes governmental liability (...) and collective political duties towards individuals, who are citizens of other states. (shrink)

Is sovereignty in Hobbes the power of a person or of an office? This article defends the thesis that it is the latter. The interpretation is based on an analysis of Hobbes’s version of the social contract in Leviathan . Pace Quentin Skinner, it will be argued that the person whom Hobbes calls “sovereign” is not a person but the office of government.

In a variety of disciplines, there exists a consensus that human rights are individual claim rights that all human beings possess simply as a consequence of being human. That consensus seems to me to obscure the real character of the concept and hinder the progress of discussion. I contend that rather than thinking of human rights in the first instance as “claim rights” possessed by individuals, we should regard human rights as higher order norms that articulate standards of legitimacy for (...) sociopolitical and legal institutions. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism in normative theory of transnational justice is often characterized by the thesis that the moral and legal status of states must be entirely derived from the moral status of the individuals who constitute them. Although the thesis itself is rather indeterminate in substantive and analytical content, it is generally understood as the claim that states should not be granted the status of moral and legal agents sui generis. This article argues that such a view is analytically and methodologically misleading, (...) and that any fruitful approach towards a liberal theory of transnational justice must face the challenge of coming up with a more complex concept of statehood, and acknowledge that in international relations and international law states are collective moral agents in their own right that can be addressees of genuinely collective forms responsibility. The argument starts with a critical examinations of two common interpretations of the cosmopolitan thesis, a reductivist reading, which suggests that we can reduce the moral and legal status of states to the rights and duties of the individuals (section I), and a methodological reading, which suggests that the moral status of individuals must based on the acknowledgment of “universal” individual rights (section II). For different reasons, both readings are argued to fail. Section III then presents an outline of how to conceive of states as agents that possess moral and legal status sui generis and be addressees of collective responsibility. Keywords : cosmopolitanism, statism, ethical individualism, methodological individualism, collective agents, collective responsibility (Published online: 25 August, 2008) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics 2008. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v1i3.1859. (shrink)