Prior research suggests that ownership structure is associated to corporate social responsibility (CSR) in developed countries. This article examines whether and how ownership structure affects CSR in emerging markets using Chinese firms' social responsibility ranking. Our empirical evidences show that for non-state-owned firms, corporate ownership dispersion is positively associated to CSR. However, for state-owned firms, whose controlling shareholder is the state, this relation is reversed. We attribute the reversed relationship to political interferences and further test this hypothesis by demonstrating (...) that regional economic development is negatively related to CSR for state-owned firms due to decreased political interference in more developed areas. This study is the first to directly examine the relationship between the dispersion of corporate ownership and CSR in emerging markets, and our results depict that it is important to consider ownership type in assessing CSR in emerging market where state ownership is still prevalent such as China. The results also reveal that firm size, profitability, employee power, leverage, and growth opportunity affect CSR in China. (shrink)

In this paper we set out to explore the claims that corporate social responsibility (CSR) itself is little more than a complementary extension of the project of coloniality initiated by the Enlightenment (e.g. Banerjee 2019). We will not dispute that claim. Rather we will develop three points. First, we will apply a non-linear, systems approach to demonstrate how we all, of any color, ethnic origin or historical location are all part of an interconnected interrelated sets of systems—what some thinkers call (...) a complex adaptive system or systems (e.g., Miller and Page 2007) so that dismissing or degrading any particular ethnic, gender, or racial group is dismissing part of our history and origin. Secondly, we will argue that Enlightenment, coloniality, as well as neo-coloniality, and decoloniality sprung up from the Enlightenment projects themselves. Thus, the very critiques of Enlightenment, accurate as they may be, evolved from that perspective and have to be taken into account even in those critiques. Third, what appears to be an “either-or” – that is, that commerce should stick to business and not engage in political activities (forms of neocolonialism) or accept these business-political activities despite critiques – is not a simple choice. Rather, conceding that commerce and political systems cannot be nicely separated, we will provide some principles or ways to evaluate these activities, seemingly ubiquitous particularly in emerging economies. (shrink)

This article reviews the debate on ‘intersectionality’ as the dominant approach in gender studies, with an emphasis on the politics of representation. The debate on intersectionality officially began in the late 1980s, though the approach can be traced back to the institutionalization of women's studies in the 1970s and the feminist movement of the 1960s. Black and lesbian feminists have long advocated hyphenated identities to be the backbone of feminist thought. But in recent years, intersectionality has sustained criticism from numerous (...) angles within gender studies, ranging from feminist philosophy to applied political research. This article will use the theorization of ‘interference’ as a searchlight to produce an overview of this interdisciplinary debate, culminating in our affirmative answer to the question: should we move from intersectionality to interference? Our answer is based on onto-epistemological reflections, i.e., reflections in which being and knowing are always already entangled. -/- . (shrink)

In this revised edition of his 1979 classic Political Theory and International Relations, Charles Beitz rejects two highly influential conceptions of international theory as empirically inaccurate and theoretically misleading. In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference. Beitz postulates that a theory (...) of international politics should include a revised principle of state autonomy based on the justice of a state’s domestic institutions, and a principle of international distributive justice to establish a fair division of resources and wealth among persons situated in diverse national societies. (shrink)

This book offers a reassessment of the political philosophy of the British Idealists, a group of once influential and now neglected nineteenth-century Hegelian philosophers, whose work has been much misunderstood. Peter Nicholson focuses on F. H. Bradley's idea of morality and moral philosophy; T. H. Green's theory of the Common Good, of the social nature of rights, of freedom, and of state interference; and Bernard Bosanquet's notorious theory of the General Will. By examining the arguments offered by the (...) Idealists and by their critics the author is able to penetrate the deep layers of hostile comment laid down by several generations of later writers and to show that these ideas, once properly understood, are not only defensible but interesting and important. (shrink)

Charles Beitz rejects two highly influential conceptions of international theory as empirically inaccurate and theoretically misleading. In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference. Beitz postulates that a theory of international politics should include a revised principle of state autonomy based on the (...) justice of a state's domestic institutions, and a principle of international distributive justice to establish a fair division of resources and wealth among persons situated in diverse national societies. (shrink)

We analyse the liberal ethics of noninterference in social choice. A liberal principle, capturing noninterfering views of society and inspired by John Stuart Mill's conception of liberty, is examined. The principle expresses the idea that society should not penalise individuals after changes in their situation that do not affect others. An impossibility for liberal approaches is highlighted: every social decision rule that satisfies unanimity and a general principle of noninterference must be dictatorial. This raises some important issues for liberal approaches (...) in social choice and political philosophy. (shrink)

Among the functions of state borders is to delineate a domain within which outsiders may normally not interfere. But the human rights practice that has sprung up in recent decades has imposed significant limits on a state’s right against interference. This article considers the connection between human rights on the one hand and justified interference in the internal affairs of states on the other. States, this article argues, have a right against interference if and because they serve (...) their subjects. Interference by outsiders threatens to set back their capacity to serve and thus ultimately harms those over whom the state exercises power. Human rights, in turn, circumscribe the outer limits of what any state can do while plausibly claiming to be serving its subjects. On this view, human rights are distinguished from other rights because they function as cancelling conditions on the state’s right against outside interference: while interfering in the internal affairs of a state normally wrongs that state, interfering where the state fails to respect human rights does not. Contrary to what is often thought, human rights violations do not justify outside interference. They merely make a state liable to such interference. The further considerations that must enter into an all things considered judgment in favor of interference are irrelevant for determining what human rights we have. (shrink)

The article presents and discusses an ongoing fellowship project entitled ‘Space for Interference’, conducted under the Norwegian Programme for Research Fellowships in the Arts. Two concrete site-specific art projects produced under Space for Interference serve as a point of departure for an investigation into methods of interference and the forms of address that artists use when intervening in other specialized fields in society. The institutions that provide the site for an art project have different social functions. We (...) ask what may be their motivation for allowing artists access to their physical environments, apparatuses, procedures, systems and discourses. The fact that the artists’ projects in these contexts function as a means of self-observation for the institutions seems obvious. Nevertheless, we seek to investigate the various economic and political factors that allow these institutions to include potentially critical activities, which aim to modify or transgress their systems, and thereby displaying how they are malleable and mobile bodies. One assertion we make is that by doing so the involved institutions prove to be modern, self-critical and flexible, thus complying with political requirements to adapt to the rapidly changing environments of the information and communication age. The perspective from systems theory in the Luhmannian tradition has proved useful since it shows how the issues of art may also be the problems of science, business, politics and the law in the complex and decentered social universe of today. The issues of contingency, insecurity, paradox and autoreflexivity, surplus meanings and the complexity and decentering of the subject are at the heart of contemporary art. Systems theory provides a way to link such practices theoretically with scientific discourse and with the advanced problem solving and criticality of other social domains, like politics, business and the media industries. (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 book offers a reassessment of the political philosophy of the British Idealists, a group of once influential and now neglected nineteenth-century Hegelian philosophers, whose work has been much misunderstood. Peter Nicholson focuses on F. H. Bradley's idea of morality and moral philosophy; T. H. Green's theory of the Common Good, of the social nature of rights, of freedom, and of state interference; and Bernard Bosanquet's notorious theory of the General Will. By examining the arguments offered by the (...) Idealists and by their critics the author is able to penetrate the deep layers of hostile comment laid down by several generations of later writers and to show that these ideas, once properly understood, are not only defensible but interesting and important. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether philanthropic giving decisions and amount of charitable giving are related to firms’ political connections and ownership type. To this end, Chinese firms listed on either the Shenzhen or Shanghai stock exchange between 2004 and 2011 are examined, where government interference in the business sector is prevalent, state ownership structure is dominant, and corporate political connections prevail. Our analyses show a significant and positive relationship between political connections and the likelihood and extent of (...) firm contributions; a significant and negative relationship between state ownership and extent of firm contributions; and a stronger relationship between political connections and corporate philanthropy in non-state-owned firms. These findings with regard to the relationship between corporate giving, political connections, and ownership type have important implications for understanding corporate giving behavior in China and in emerging markets in general. (shrink)

In feminist and cultural studies, there is a growing body of work concerned with how people’s lives are subjected to multiple, intersecting axes of differentiation and power. There is growing concern that we seem unable to address more than one difference at a time, thus failing to interrogate enactments of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in science, technology, and medicine. This article aims to contribute to the effort to conceptualize the making of and interactions between differences. It explores how (...) differences such as disability, gender, and class are made and unmade in sociotechnical practices. It shows that interactions between enactments of differences are complex, contradictory, unpredictable, and surprising and defy simple conclusions about effects and politics. These patterns of interference need to be investigated in situated practices, and we have to examine carefully how processes of differentiation interact to support and reinforce but also to challenge and undermine each other. (shrink)

Generative artificial intelligence has given us synthetic media that are increasingly easy to create and increasingly hard to distinguish from photographs and videos. Whereas an existing literature has been concerned with how these new media might make a difference for would-be knowers—the viewers of photographs and videos—I advance a thesis about how they will make a difference for would-be communicators—those who embed photos and videos in their speech acts. I claim that the presence of these media in our information environment (...) reduces our ability to show one another things, even as it may increase our resources for telling. And I argue that this has consequences beyond the disruption of knowledge acquisition; showing is a way that we preserve relational equality through superficial asymmetries in political communication, and thereby express respect for our audiences. If synthetic media reduce our options for showing, they then interfere in the way that we manage our relationships in the context of collective political action. (shrink)

Misrepresentation and mischief in the research process can impact on ethical conduct, the validity of findings and deliberately change the outcome. This short report presents a scenario about deliberate interference in adoption research by one organisation seeking accreditation to deliver adoption services. Unbeknown to the researchers, fake participants completed an online survey designed to capture the post-adoption needs of adult international adoptees living in Australia. Interference was unexpected as it was naively assumed that all stakeholders involved in adoption (...) would be concerned with meeting post-adoption needs. A definition of politically motivated fake participants, implications for the research process, predicting such interference and strategies to address the problem are discussed. (shrink)

Champions of systemic approaches to deliberative democratic theory consider that deliberative systems serve sundry functions. Whether guaranteeing political freedom should be one of those functions has not been explored in the scholarly literature. This article thus examines which conceptions of freedom underpin systemic approaches to deliberative democracy. I explore and circumscribe the analysis to two prominent options: freedom as absence of interference and freedom as non-domination. The answer to which of these alternatives best serves as a function of (...) the deliberative system hinges on the previous question of whether holistic evaluations of systemic deliberative performance are to be endorsed. The article then argues that holistic evaluations are only compatible with freedom as non-interference. By contrast, freedom as non-domination is incompatible with holism. I then provide reasons for endorsing freedom as non-domination and, by implication, to reject holistic systemic evaluations. (shrink)

People are more likely to think statements are valid when they agree with them than when they do not. We conducted four studies analyzing the interference of self-reported ideologies with performance in a syllogistic reasoning task. Study 1 established the task paradigm and demonstrated that participants’ political ideology affects syllogistic reasoning for syllogisms with political content but not politically irrelevant syllogisms. The preregistered Study 2 replicated the effect and showed that incentivizing accuracy did not alleviate these differences. (...) Study 3 revealed that syllogistic reasoning is affected by ideology in the presence and absence of such bonus payments for correctly judging the conclusions’ logical validity. In Study 4, we observed similar effects regarding a different ideological orientation: environmentalism. Again, monetary bonuses did not attenuate these effects. Taken together, the results of four studies highlight the harm of ideology regarding people’s logical reasoning. (shrink)

Several authors have recently claimed that we each possess a right against interference with our minds. However, it remains unclear how this claim is to be justified. I offer a novel argument in defence of it. The argument is intuitive—appealing centrally to intuitions regarding cases—and abductive—taking the form of an inference to the best explanation; I offer a series of cases involving intuitively wrongful interventions, argue that five somewhat promising attempts to account for the wrongfulness of these interventions leave (...) some of this wrongfulness unexplained, and show that my proposed alternative explanation, which invokes a right against mental interference, can account for this residual wrongfulness. (shrink)

In the context in which the majority of Romanians are orthodox and the level of trust in Church is very high, this paper aims to analyze the level of political interference into religious life. The article focuses on particular aspects of political communication, namely the use of religious symbols and religious events in electoral campaigns. The main hypothesis of the research refers to the supposition that during the electoral years, the visibility of politicians presented by newspapers as (...) attending religious events is higher than in the rest of the time. Moreover, the paper aims to analyze if there is an overlapping between the years in which politicians are presented to attend more religious services and the years in which people have higher trust in Church. (shrink)

The present text aims at mapping out a synopsis of the main political parties from Romania after 1989 on the one hand, and at pointing out the way in which their activity interferes with religion, on the other hand. To this point we have endeavored to place emphasis on the role played by the church within the Romanian society, as well as the main paths of influence the clerical representatives may exert upon the political life, occasionally voluntarily, yet (...) involuntarily for the most part. (shrink)

Increasingly, policymakers within biomedicine argue that “non-financial” interests should be given equal scrutiny to individuals’ financial relationships with industry. Problematized as “non-financial conflicts of interest,” interests, ranging from intellectual commitments to personal beliefs, are managed through disclosure, restrictions on participation, and recusal where necessary. “Non-financial” interests, though vaguely and variably defined, are characterized as important influences on judgment and thus, are considered risks to scientific objectivity. This article explores the ways that “non-financial interests” have been constructed as an ethical problem (...) and the implications for research integrity. I conducted an interpretive, qualitative study, which triangulated two data sources: documents (including published accounts of identifying and managing “non-financial” interests and conflict of interest policies) and in-depth interviews with 16 leaders within evidence-based medicine, responsible for contributing to, directing, or overseeing conflict of interest policy development and implementation. This article outlines how evolutions in the definition of conflict of interest have opened the door to include myriad “non-financial” interests, resulting in the generalisation of a statistical concept—risk of bias—to social contexts. Consequently, biases appear equally pervasive among participants while in reality, a politics of objectivity is at play, with allegations of conflict of interest used as a means to undermine others’ credibility, or even participation. Iterations of the concept of conflict of interest within biomedicine have thus consistently failed to articulate or address questions of accountability including whose interests are able to dominate or distort evidence-led processes and why. Consequently, current policy solutions meant to mitigate bias may instead serve exclusionary purposes under the guise of impartiality while remaining vulnerable to interference from powerful stakeholders. (shrink)

The traditional problem of evil sets theists the task of reconciling two things: God and evil. I argue that theists face the more difficult task of reconciling God and evils that God is specially obligated to prevent. Because of His authority, God's obligation to curtail evil goes far beyond our Samaritan duty to prevent evil when doing so isn't overly hard. Authorities owe their subjects a positive obligation to prevent certain evils; we have a right against our authorities that they (...) protect us. God's apparent mistake is not merely the impersonal wrong of failing to do enough good — though it is that too. It is the highly personal wrong of failing to live up to a moral requirement that comes bundled with authority over persons. To make my argument, I use the resources of political philosophy and defend a novel change to the orthodox account of authority. (shrink)

Freedom is sometimes cast as the psychological ideal that distinguishes human beings from other animals; sometimes as the ethical ideal that distinguishes some human beings from others; and sometimes as the political ideal that distinguishes some human societies from others. This paper is an attempt to put the three ideals in a common frame, revealing their mutual connections and differences.

Western societies today are marked by a broad liberal consensus in favor of toleration. Yet, some philosophers have charged that political toleration as a liberal ideal is incoherent. Some have argued that toleration is incompatible with liberal political orders due to egalitarian considerations. Others have suggested that in a truly liberal society, where the state’s justice-based duties of non-interference are the most appropriate response to diversity, political toleration is practically redundant. This article defends political toleration (...) against the above allegations. My goal is twofold: first of all, to formulate a coherent conception of toleration that is fully consistent with the egalitarian spirit of our times and then to demonstrate that, contrary to critics’ claims, political toleration is not an obsolete ideal that belongs to a bygone era. And all this because, I believe, in a liberal constitutional order, political toleration’s specific role is not identical with, and cannot be reduced to, the state’s justice-based duties of non-interference. Accordingly, I argue that political toleration belongs to a specific mode of politics: the extraordinary politics. When the rules of justice are not available, or their application is not feasible, the extraordinary politics, in which toleration plays a role, emerges as the persistent residue of the ordinary politics. Therefore, political toleration and justice-based duties of non-interference should be seen as accompanying practices that represent two modes of politics. (shrink)

Many political theorists argue that cross-cultural communication within multicultural democracies is not best served by a commitment to identity politics. In response, I argue that identity politics only interfere with democratic participation according to an erroneous interpretation of the relationship between identity and reasoning. I argue that recognizing the importance of identity to the intelligibility of reasons offered in the context of civic deliberation is the first step towards the kind of dialogue that democratic participation requires.

Much liberal-democratic thought has concerned itself primarily – even exclusively – with coercive interference in citizens’ lives. But political actors do things – they engage in influential speech, they offer incentives, they mislead other actors, they disrupt the expected functioning of decision-making mechanisms etc. – that fall short of coercion, yet may nonetheless call for normative evaluation and public justification, precisely because they serve to purposively alter citizens’ beliefs, intentions and behaviour. With this article, I explicate a conception (...) of political manipulation to capture this sort of interference, and to distinguish individual manipulation from the manipulation of nonindividual agents like committees, institutions and states. The account, beyond being necessary for further work on the ethics of political manipulation, should prove useful to both normative thinkers interested in power, justice and the ethics of democratic decision-making, and empirical scholars in search of a conceptual apparatus to sharpen their investigations into the exercise of subtle forms of political power. (shrink)

In this article, I sketch a Kant-inspired liberal account of human rights: the freedom-centred view. This account conceptualizes human rights as entitlements that any political authority—any state in the first instance—must secure to qualify as a guarantor of its subjects' innate right to freedom. On this picture, when a state (or state-like institution) protects human rights, it reasonably qualifies as a moral agent to be treated with respect. By contrast, when a state (or state-like institution) fails to protect human (...) rights, it loses its moral status and becomes liable to both internal and external interference. I argue that this account not only steers a middle course between so-called natural-law and political approaches to human rights but also satisfies three important theoretical desiderata— explanatory power, functional specificity, and critical capacity. (shrink)

Almost all philosophical understandings of tolerance as forbearance require that the reasons for objection and/or the reasons for withholding the power to negatively interfere must be of the morally right kind. In this paper, I instead put forward a descriptive account of an act of tolerance and argue that in the political context, at least, it has several important advantages over the standard more moralised accounts. These advantages include that it better addresses instances of intolerance and that it is (...) able to makes sense of state acts of tolerance. (shrink)

Working in the tradition of analytic philosophy, Alexander Brown argues in this book that many different forms of political communication that often infuriate the public can also be ethically or morally objectionable. These forms include question dodging, offering scripted answers, stonewalling, not listening, disseminating propaganda, making false promises, being insincere, making false denials, refusing to take responsibility, never apologising, boasting, and gaslighting. Brown bases his argument on host of reasons including those having to do with contempt, deception, interference (...) in autonomy, and violating the right to be heard. This is not to say that, all things considered, politicians should never engage in dubious political communication. Sometimes these are necessary evils. Brown argues, however, that further moral inquiry is needed to show why they are evils, and to determine when the use of these rhetorical tactics can be excessive, unreasonable, or out of place. Key Features: Identifies and conceptualizes forms of dubious political communication Develops an ethical evaluation of political communication Considers possible justifications for the use of dubious political communication Makes practical recommendations on how to regulate unethical political communication. (shrink)

This article sets out to describe and solve two puzzles that emerge in segregated labour markets (e.g. the USA or Sweden). First, in many hiring contexts people profess to adhere to egalitarian norms, and specifically to a qualification norm according to which job qualification should be the basis of employment. Still there is evidence of frequent norm violations (discrimination). Surprisingly, the norm persists and people do not frequently protest against such norm violations. The second puzzle is that people are suspicious (...) of the hiring of minorities, perceiving such hirings as evidence that a ‘political correctness’ norm has replaced the qualification norm. The article proposes that both puzzles can be solved within a game-theoretical model of social norm-following, where implicit bias is introduced into an ‘employment game’. Within this model, implicit bias plays a double role. First, it interferes with employers' hiring decisions regarding ethnic majority and minority members, respectively. This is the standard way of understanding the effects of implicit bias. Second, implicit bias interferes with bystander evaluations of hired candidates' qualifications. This is a hitherto overlooked effect of implicit bias. The article concludes that once we understand the double role of implicit bias, the two puzzles are resolved. (shrink)

Eleni Panagiotarakou | : The focus of this paper is on the “right to place” as a political theory of wild animal rights. Out of the debate between terrestrial cosmopolitans inspired by Kant and Arendt and rooted cosmopolitan animal right theorists, the right to place emerges from the fold of rooted cosmopolitanism in tandem with environmental and ecological principles. Contrary to terrestrial cosmopolitans—who favour extending citizenship rights to wild animals and advocate at the same time large-scale humanitarian interventions and (...) unrestricted geographical mobility—I argue that the well-being of wild animals is best served by the right to place theory on account of its sovereignty model. The right to place theory advocates human non-interference in wildlife communities, opposing even humanitarian interventions, which carry the risk of unintended consequences. The right to place theory, with its emphasis on territorial sovereignty, bases its opposition to unrestricted geographical mobility on two considerations: the non-generalist nature of many species and the potential for abuse via human encroachment. In a broader context, the advantage of the right to place theory lies in its implicit environmental demands: human population control and sustainable lifestyles. | : Le présent article porte principalement sur le « droit territorial » en tant que théorie politique des droits des animaux sauvages. Issu du débat entre théoriciens cosmopolitistes du droit animal, soit terrestres inspirés par Kant et Arendt, soit enracinés, le droit territorial trouve ses sources dans le cosmopolitisme enraciné qui va de concert avec certains principes environnementaux et écologiques. Contrairement aux cosmopolitistes terrestres, qui préconisent d’étendre les droits de citoyenneté aux animaux sauvages tout en défendant les interventions humanitaires à grande échelle et la mobilité géographique illimitée, j’estime que la théorie du droit territorial est davantage en mesure d’assurer le bien-être des animaux sauvages, grâce à son modèle basé sur la souveraineté. La théorie du droit territorial préconise la non-ingérence dans les communautés fauniques, allant jusqu’à s’opposer aux interventions humanitaires, qui risquent de provoquer des conséquences non désirées. Cette théorie, en mettant l’accent sur la souveraineté territoriale, base son opposition à la mobilité géographique illimitée sur deux considérations : le caractère non généraliste de bon nombre d’espèces, et le risque de mauvais traitements par empiètement humain. Dans un contexte plus large, l’intérêt de la théorie du droit territorial réside dans ses exigences environnementales implicites : le contrôle de la population humaine et l’adoption de modes de vie durables. (shrink)

Disagreement persists about when, if at all, disenfranchisement is a fitting response to criminal wrongdoing of type X. Positive retributivists endorse a permissive view of fittingness: on this view, disenfranchising a remarkably wide range of morally serious criminal wrongdoers is justified. But defining fittingness in the context of criminal disenfranchisement in such broad terms is implausible, since many crimes sanctioned via disenfranchisement have little to do with democratic participation in the first place: the link between the nature of a criminal (...) act X (the ‘desert basis’) and a fitting sanction Y is insufficiently direct in such cases. I define a new, much narrower account of the kind of criminal wrongdoing which is a more plausible desert basis for disenfranchisement: ‘political wrongdoing’, such as electioneering, corruption, or conspiracy with foreign powers. I conclude that widespread blanket and post-incarceration disenfranchisement policies are overinclusive, because they disenfranchise persons guilty of serious, but non-political, criminal wrongdoing. While such overinclusiveness is objectionable in any context, it is particularly objectionable in circumstances in which it has additional large-scale collateral consequences, for instance by perpetuating existing structures of racial injustice. At the same time, current policies are underinclusive, thus hindering the aim of holding political wrongdoers accountable. (shrink)

Essays on the political, legal, and philosophical dimensions of political legitimacy Scholars, journalists, and politicians today worry that the world’s democracies are facing a crisis of legitimacy. Although there are key challenges facing democracy—including concerns about electoral interference, adherence to the rule of law, and the freedom of the press—it is not clear that these difficulties threaten political legitimacy. Such ambiguity derives in part from the contested nature of the concept of legitimacy, and from disagreements over (...) how to measure it. This volume reflects the cutting edge of responses to these perennial questions, drawing, in the distinctive NOMOS fashion, from political science, philosophy, and law. Contributors address fundamental philosophical questions such as the nature of public reasons of authority, as well as urgent concerns about contemporary democracy, including whether “animus” matters for the legitimacy of President Trump’s travel ban, barring entry for nationals from six Muslim-majority nations, and the effect of fundamental transitions within the moral economy, such as the decline of labor unions. Featuring twelve essays from leading scholars, Political Legitimacy is an important and timely addition to the NOMOS series. (shrink)

Though many ethicists have the intuition that we should leave nature alone, Kyle Johannsen argues that we have a duty to research safe ways of providing large-scale assistance to wild animals. Using concepts from moral and political philosophy to analyze the issue of wild animal suffering (WAS), Johannsen explores how a collective, institutional obligation to assist wild animals should be understood. He claims that with enough research, genetic editing may one day give us the power to safely intervene without (...) perpetually interfering with wild animals’ liberties.---------------Questions addressed include: In what way is nature valuable and is interference compatible with that value? Is interference a requirement of justice? What are the implications of WAS for animal rights advocacy? What types of intervention are promising?---------------Expertly moving the debate about human relations with wild animals beyond its traditional confines, Wild Animal Ethics is essential reading for students and scholars of political philosophy and political theory studying animal ethics, environmental ethics, and environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Freedom is among the central values in political philosophy. Freedom also features heavily in normative arguments in ethics, politics, and law. Yet different sides often invoke freedom to establish very different conclusions. Some argue that freedom imposes strict constraints on state power. For example, when promoting public health, there is a limit on how far the state can interfere with individual freedom. Others, in contrast, argue that freedom is not just a constraint but also an important goal of state (...) power and collective action. Good public health policy, for example, promotes people’s freedom. Of course, different arguments often draw on different theories of freedom. So, to evaluate such arguments, we need to analyze these different theories and their implications and assess their plausibility. -/- The broadly liberal tradition views freedom as being about external options. Such theories typically start with an account of when someone has a specific freedom or unfreedom to do something. For example, some argue that only a narrow set of interpersonal interferences count as constraints on freedom. Others argue that a far broader set of factors, including ill health and natural constraints, can reduce one’s freedom. -/- Since the 1980s and 1990s, scholarship has increasingly recognized that to use liberal freedom in normative arguments, one must move beyond specific freedom and unfreedom. Most laws and policies both subtract and add specific freedoms. What matters is how a person’s freedom is affected overall. Philosophers and economists have thus engaged in intricate debates about how to measure overall freedom. Moreover, policies and law affect not only one person at one point in time but also multiple persons across time. So, liberal freedom-based arguments also require distributive criteria for intertemporal and interpersonal distributions of freedom. -/- In the early 21st century, republicanism has developed into a prominent alternative to liberal theories. Republicans argue that being a free person is not just, or not even primarily, about liberal option-freedom. Freedom requires being free from dominating power. Republicans and liberals have engaged in a lively debate on who offers the better theory. In developing the republican ideal, republicans also engage in intramural debates. For example, is domination primarily an interpersonal or structural phenomenon? And what economic institutions does republicanism imply? -/- Theorizing around freedom has become richer and moved from narrower questions regarding specific freedom and unfreedom to overall freedom and to republican theories of nondomination. But recent theorizing also seeks to extend its focus and scope. Historically, theorizing started with the freedom of able-bodied male citizens within nation states. Recent theorizing shifts the focus to include issues around gender, disability, freedom at the international level, and the freedom of nonhuman animals and future generations. Beyond fascinating implications of existing theories, a more inclusive focus is likely to also yield important lessons on how current theories can be improved. (shrink)

A crucial socio-political challenge for our age is how to rede!ne or extend group membership in such a way that it adequately responds to phenomena related to globalization like the prevalence of migration, the transformation of family and social networks, and changes in the position of the nation state. Two centuries ago Immanuel Kant assumed that international connectedness between humans would inevitably lead to the realization of world citizen rights. Nonetheless, globalization does not just foster cosmopolitanism but simultaneously yields (...) the development of new group boundaries. Group membership is indeed a fundamental issue in political processes, for: “the primary good that we distribute to one another is membership in some human community” – it is within the political community that power is being shared and, if possible, held back from non-members. In sum, it is appropriate to consider group membership a fundamental ingredient of politics and political theory. How group boundaries are drawn is then of only secondary importance. Indeed, Schmitt famously declared that “[e]very religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is suffciently strong to group human beings e#ectively according to friend and enemy”. Even though Schmitt’s idea of politics as being constituted by such antithetical groupings is debatable, it is plausible to consider politics among other things as a way of handling intergroup di#erences. Obviously, some of the group-constituting factors are more easily discernable from one’s appearance than others, like race, ethnicity, or gender. As a result, factors like skin color or sexual orientation sometimes carry much political weight even though individuals would rather con!ne these to their private lives and individual identity. Given the potential tension between the political reality of particular groupmembership defnitions and the – individual and political – struggles against those definitions and corresponding attitudes, citizenship and civic behavior becomes a complex issue. As Kymlicka points out, it implies for citizens an additional obligation to non-discrimination regarding those groups: “[t]his extension of non-discrimination from government to civil society is not just a shift in the scale of liberal norms, it also involves a radical extension in the obligations of liberal citizenship”. Unfortunately, empirical research suggests that political intolerance towards other groups “may be the more natural and ‘easy’ position to hold”. Indeed, since development of a virtue of civility or decency regarding other groups is not easy, as it often runs against deeply engrained stereotypes and prejudices, political care for matters like education is justified. Separate schools, for example, may erode children’s motivation to act as citizens, erode their capacity for it and!nally diminish their opportunities to experience transcending their particular group membership and behave as decent citizens. This chapter outlines a possible explanation for such consequences. That explanation will be found to be interdisciplinary in nature, combining insights from political theory and cognitive neuroscience. In doing so, it does not focus on collective action, even though that is a usual focus for political studies. For example, results pertaining to collective political action have demonstrated that the relation between attitudes and overt voting behavior or political participation is not as direct and strong as was hoped for. Several conditions, including the individual’s experiences, self-interest, and relevant social norms, turned out to interfere in the link between his or her attitude and behavior. Important as collective action is, this chapter is concerned with direct interaction between agents and the in$uence of group membership on such interaction – in particular joint action. Although politics does include many forms of action that require no such physical interaction, such physical interaction between individuals remains fundamental to politics – this is the reason why separate schooling may eventually undermine the citizenship of its isolated pupils. This chapter will focus on joint action, de!ned as: “any form of social interaction whereby two or more individuals coordinate their actions in space and time to bring about a change in the environment”. Cognitive neuroscienti!c evidence demonstrates that for such joint action to succeed, the agents have to integrate the actions and expected actions of the other person in their own action plans at several levels of speci!city. Although neuroscienti!c research is necessarily limited to simple forms of action, this concurs with a philosophical analysis of joint action, which I will discuss below. (shrink)

I shall first briefly revisit the broad idea of ‘epistemic injustice’, explaining how it can take either distributive or discriminatory form, in order to put the concepts of ‘testimonial injustice’ and ‘hermeneutical injustice’ in place. In previous work I have explored how the wrong of both kinds of epistemic injustice has both an ethical and an epistemic significance—someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower. But my present aim is to show that this wrong can also have a (...) class='Hi'>political significance in relation to non-domination, and so to freedom. While it is only the republican conception of political freedom that presents nondomination as constitutive of freedom, I shall argue that non-domination is best understood as a thoroughly generic liberal ideal of freedom to which even negative libertarians are implicitly committed, for non-domination is negative liberty as of right—secured non-interference. Crucially on this conception, non-domination requires that the citizen can contest interferences. Pettit specifies three conditions of contestation, each of which protects against a salient risk of the would-be contester not getting a ‘proper hearing’. But I shall argue that missing from this list is anything to protect against a fourth salient threat: the threat that either kind of epistemic injustice might disable contestation by way of an unjust deflation of either credibility or intelligibility. Thus we see that both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice can render a would-be contester dominated. Epistemic justice is thereby revealed as a constitutive condition of non-domination, and thus of a central liberal political ideal of freedom. (shrink)

Lacanian Zizek attempts to Hegelian and anti-capitalism, is to establish close contact. Critique of global capitalism in the process, Zizek and other left-wing intellectuals exists between the points of attack. Although the distinction between Lacan Zizek, "it sector" of several concepts, but he Lacan's "real world" equated with capital, this is a misunderstanding. Political interference in how to deal with Lenin and decision theory, the Zizek see an objective principle of universality and the concrete application of the theory (...) that exists between the cracks, but far-fetched to understand the universality of the vacancy for the Lacanian sense of energy refers to. Zizek left Ji theoretical difficulties inherent in the theory that his position must be re-reflect on their own tension. Zizek sets out to bridge the Lacanian Hegelianism and anti-capitalism. Despite their common endeavor to criticize global capitalism, there is a discrepancy between Zizek and other left-wing intellectuals. Although Zizek distinguishes different interpretations of Lacan's concept of le rée / the real, he misreads it by equating it with capital. In matters of dealing with Lenin's theory of political intervention and decisionism, Zizek perceives the chasm between a universal principle and its application in reality. However, the universality of the principle is understood, in a far- fetched fashion, as the empty signifier in Lacan's sense of the word. The dilemma of Zizek's left-wing theory compels him to reflect on the tension of his own position. (shrink)

By freedom, classical liberals meant non-interference, independence from the state, the personal and proprietary liberty of the governed. It is negative freedom as the antithesis both to absolutism and anarchy. In the republican interpretations, the freedom of a free political community is made possible and guaranteed by the institutionalization of the liberty of the political community. Political liberty is the medium, stage and precondition for the freedom of its members. That, in turn, is conditional upon the (...) readiness of its members to protect the liberty of their community and themselves, i.e. upon the virtue of the free citizen. In this article I engage with four different interpretations of both kinds of liberty concepts in different discourses of the 20th-century UK and US and 20th—21st-century Hungary. (shrink)

In Wittgenstein and the Study of Politics, Michael Temelini outlines an innovative new approach to understanding the political implications of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Most political philosophers who have approached Wittgenstein have done so through the idea of therapeutic skepticism, implying politics that privilege conservatism or non-interference. Temelini interprets Wittgenstein differently, emphasizing his view that we come to understand the meanings of words and actions through a dialogue of comparison with other cases. Examining the work of Charles Taylor, Quentin (...) Skinner, and James Tully, Temelini highlights the ways in which all three, despite their differences, share a common debt to that dialogical approach.A cogent explanation of how Wittgenstein’s epistemology and ontology can shed light on political issues and offer a solution to political challenges, Wittgenstein and the Study of Politics highlights the importance of Wittgensteinian thinking in contemporary political science, political theory, and political philosophy. (shrink)

Since at least 2016, many have worried that social media enables authoritarians to meddle in democratic politics. The concern is that trolls and bots amplify deceptive content. In this chapter I argue that these tactics have a more insidious anti-democratic purpose. Lies implanted in democratic discourse by authoritarians are often intended to be caught. Their primary goal is not to successfully deceive, but rather to undermine the democratic value of testimony. In well-functioning democracies, our mutual reliance on testimony also generates (...) a distinctively democratic value: decentralized testimonial networks evade control by the state or powerful actors. The deliberate exposure of deception in democratic testimonial networks undermines this value by implicating citizens in their own epistemic corruption, weakening the resilience of democratic society against authoritarian pressure. In this chapter I illustrate that danger through a close reading of recent Russian social media interference operations, showing both their epistemic underpinnings and their ongoing political threat. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Calvin's Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church: Calvin's Two Kingdoms by Matthew J. TuiningaGuenther ("Gene") HaasCalvin's Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church: Calvin's Two Kingdoms Matthew J. Tuininga CAMBRIDGE: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2017. 258 PP. £69.99 / £27.99In recent years, a vigorous debate has arisen within Reformed circles concerning the nature of the two kingdoms theology of John Calvin. Although (...) all recognize that Calvin articulated a distinction between the spiritual kingdom of the church and the political kingdom of the state, there is disagreement over [End Page 211] the nature of the engagement of Christians with the temporal kingdom and over what should guide the state in enacting civil justice and order.The Kuyperian Neo-Calvinist movement holds a transformationalist understanding of the engagement of members of the spiritual kingdom with all vocations and spheres of life. Alternatively, two kingdoms Reformed theologians, such as David VanDrunen and Michael Horton, argue that the Reign of Christ is confined to the spiritual kingdom and must not be brought to bear directly on the temporal kingdom. Matthew Tuininga's book supports the latter view in his exposition of Calvin's political theology. Tuininga argues that Calvin articulated a sharp distinction between church and political society, such that politics is seen not as "a means of transforming society into the kingdom of God according to the dictates of Christian scripture, but as an endeavour to secure temporal order and civil righteousness in accord with reason, natural law, and the virtues of charity and prudence" (1).Tuininga begins by situating Calvin and his two kingdoms theology in their historical and political context, indicating Calvin's concern for the autonomy of church contra government interference. The central chapters (3–6) present the eschatological basis for Calvin's two kingdoms doctrine and detail the development of this theme in Calvin's thought. The Kingdom of God is identified with the church and its spiritual authority. It is distinct from the state's temporal authority, whose role is to maintain civil righteousness and order. To support this distinction between the mandate of the two kingdoms, Tuininga presents in chapter 7 the novel, and debatable, claim that Calvin holds to two covenants of God with Israel: the covenant of grace made with Abraham and confirmed at Sinai and the narrower covenant of the law for Israel's national life, in which God's blessings and punishments were conditional on Israel's obedience and disobedience. Although this legal covenant—with its earthly and temporal character—is embedded in the broader covenant of grace, it is abolished with the fulfillment of the covenant of grace in the coming of Christ. Only the covenant of grace—with its heavenly, inward, and spiritual character—remains in force for God's people today.Chapter 8 argues that Calvin's views on the mandate of the magistrate to protect religion and enact public justice is based not on appeals to scripture but to reason, the evidence of national laws, and natural philosophy. In chapter 9 Tuininga unfolds the implications of Calvin's two kingdoms theology for Christian political involvement in society. And in his conclusion, Tuininga unfolds numerous ways that this two kingdoms theology can guide contemporary Christians' engagement with modern liberal democracies.This work is a welcome exposition of Calvin's political theology to support the two kingdoms theology. However, in addition to the novel, and debatable, claim that God made two covenants with Israel, this reviewer finds that Tuininga's exposition fails to incorporate key points in Calvin's thought: the failure of civil rulers' to enact natural law faithfully and consistently (2.2.13, 23; 3.14.2), [End Page 212] the description of the calling of civil authority as "holy and lawful before God … the most sacred and by far the most honorable of all callings" (4.20.4), and Calvin's claim that the best rulers are those governing according to both tables of the Decalogue (4.20.9–11). Nevertheless, this book is an important contribution to the ongoing debate and should be widely read.Guenther ("Gene") HaasRedeemer University CollegeCopyright © 2018... (shrink)

The author regards Montaigne as one of the architects of modern political thought, a precursor of Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, and the American Founding Fathers. The Essais, for Schaefer, are notable primarily on account of their formulation of a primitive version of bourgeois liberalism: the doctrine that society functions best when individuals pursue their own self-interest with a minimum of governmental interference. Montaigne, in other words, was an early Modern apostle of the gospel preached in our own (...) time by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt's Concept of the Political advances an understanding of the political in which the political is assessed in terms of the autonomy of the friend-and-enemy distinction. This article questions the autonomous foundations of Schmitt's concept of the political. Ultimately, Schmitt's desire to establish the autonomous nature of the political, allowing the specifically political antithesis to achieve mastery over all other forms of discourse, is replete with paradox. Whilst Schmitt endeavours to establish the autonomy (...) of the political—where the political is free from interference from other domains—it is argued that his account of the political is highly dependent on the state. More critically, Schmitt's depiction of the political as autonomous is a strategic manoeuvre to establish the autonomy of the domain of the political vis-à-vis other conceptual domains. (shrink)

The paper tries to show the importance of the writings of John Locke in preparing the way for secularism. He provides a theory for disentangling religion and the state for several main reasons, including the avoidance of religious persecution of minorties; the avoidance of civil strife; and the need to leave it to individuals to work out their own salvation by exercising their conscience free of state interference. Locke is a creative theorist; his creativity shows itself in the new (...) arguments he formulates and publishes on behalf of the freedom of religion from the state and the freedom of the state from religion. The influence of his Letter on Toleration and the Second Treatise in Two Treatises of Government has proved worldwide and lasting. The paper also takes up a later work by Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, where Locke retreats to some extent from the religious individualism, but not the religious toleration, of his most famous works. But even that retreat gives only a little comfort to those who deplore secularism. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between everyday talk, the reproduction of political ideology and the interactional accomplishment of situated identities through analyzing how institutional members index neoliberal ideology in their everyday interactions. Analysis of audio- and video-recorded data from racially diverse business members of two Texas chambers of commerce illustrates how chamber members indirectly index neoliberal ideology through taking stances toward government policies. White, upper class participants display neoliberal stances through using complaints – constituted by questions, humor, idioms and (...) inference-rich terms – about the Affordable Care Act because it is a form of government interference that increases taxes and the federal deficit. Minority business members use discursive strategies such as double-voiced discourse and self-repairs to balance tensions between criticizing neoliberal ideology because it does not benefit minorities yet still orient to its taken-for-granted value in their business community. Overall, while participants’ interactions generally seem to operate within the structural constraints of neoliberal ideology, our analysis illustrates how participants take up neoliberal ideology in situated ways that, at times, provide avenues for negotiating the relevance of neoliberal ideology to everyday life. (shrink)

The central task of this book is to map a subtle but significant addition to the political discourse on liberty since the early modern period; a gradual shift of focus form the individual secure in spheres of non-interference, or acting in accordance with authentic desires and beliefs, to the actions of a self at liberty. Being free stands opposed, classically, to being in someone else’s power, being subject to the will of another – in particular, to being constrained (...) by the intentional actions of others. “Constrained” usually means having choices or opportunities taken away or limited by the designs of others. But what if we press the connection between intentions and constraints a bit further, focusing less on negative constraints and more on enabling ones? Constrained or unfree, that is, not simply through a limitation of choices or options, but where free choices and intentions themselves become the object of theoretical and practical attention. What does it mean to be free or unfree in relation to these kinds of “constraints”? (shrink)

L’article étudie comment les idées de la France des Lumières et de la France révolutionnaire ont contribué au changement de la langue sociopolitique russe, comment elles ont interféré avec le processus littéraire du romantisme en Russie et ont finalement contribué au changement du paradigme intellectuel en Russie dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle. L’histoire des concepts de citoyen, de société, d’opposition politique est retracée de la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle – à travers des documents officiels (Instructions, par Catherine (...) II), des textes littéraires (A. Radichtchev) – jusqu’au premier tiers du XIXe siècle – à travers les écrits politiques des décembristes. En conclusion, il est soutenu que l’échec du républicanisme des décembristes inspiré par la France des Lumières a orienté, dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle, la pensée russe vers la problématique de la diversité humaine et de la nationalisation de l’Empire. Les principes universels du siècle des Lumières sont remplacés par l’intérêt porté à la diversité humaine de l’Empire russe, ce qui nécessitera, à son tour, l’élaboration d’un langage spécifique et de ses concepts. Cependant, ce tournant serait une conséquence du processus de réception des idées et des concepts de la France des Lumières et aurait été accéléré par la Révolution française. (shrink)