In contemporary democracies, global capitalism exerts a significant influence over how state power is exercised, raising questions about where political power resides in global politics. This question is important, since our specific considerations about justifiability of political power, i.e. political legitimacy, depend on how we characterize political power at the global level. As a partial answer to this question, I argue that our notion of global political legitimacy should be reoriented to include the structural power of the Transnational Capitalist Class (...) as its subject matter. Structural power is a social relation in which the institutional context makes some agents comply with others’ preferences regardless of actors’ intentional efforts to bring about such outcomes. Even when global business elites do not intentionally exercise power to obtain political control of global governance, their structural power has recognizable effects that partly enforce the world order. To advance my claim, I utilize the radical realists’ argument that the notion of legitimacy is applicable to a broader range of social practices that are beyond dyadic power relations, i.e. rulers intentionally exercising power over subjects. (shrink)

Camila Vergara’s Systemic Corruption is an extraordinarily rich, provocative and original work of political theory, which makes several compelling interventions in the normative literature. It deve...

We argue that a reinvention of the plebeian tribunate should play a key role in addressing the challenges stemming from increasing concentrations of, and inequalities in, social, political, economic, and cultural power in liberal democracies. Addressing these challenges, which negatively affect parliamentary representation, requires a form of institutional innovation that gives voice to non-elites who are ruled but do not rule. We propose revisions of the composition and tasks of the tribunate that are tailored to these current challenges. Our fully (...) randomly selected tribunate emerges as a vehicle not only for contesting concentrated power but also for articulating lines of conflict, disruptive agenda-setting, and political experimentation. Our proposal contributes to developing realist democratic theory. We argue that the reinvented tribunate not only meets realist commitments to avoiding moralization and idealization but also demonstrates the underexploited capacity of realism to inform institutional innovation and thus contribute to substantial political analysis. (shrink)

In this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning power concentration. To address the challenges we then (...) put forward three main normative claims, each of which is compatible with the evidence. We start with a critique of the epistocratic position commonly thought to be supported by the evidence. We then introduce a qualified critique of referenda and other forms of plebiscite, and an outline of a tribune-based system of popular control over oligarchic influence on the policy process. Our discussion points towards a renewal of democracy in a plebeian but not plebiscitarian direction: Attention to the relative power of social classes matters more than formal dispersal of power through voting. We close with some methodological reflections about the compatibility between our normative claims and the realist program in political philosophy. (shrink)

Political theorists concerned with ways to counteract the oligarchic tendencies of representative government have recently paid more attention to the employment of “class-specific institutions” (CSIs)—that is, political institutions that formally exclude wealthy elites from decision-making power. This article disputes a general objection levelled against the justifiability of CSIs, according to which their democratic credentials are outweighed by their explicit transgression of formal political equality—what I call the political equality objection. I claim that, although CSIs do not satisfy political equality fully, (...) their exclusionary thrust is inter alia justified in virtue of the fact that they unfold against the background of badly ordered, class-divided societies. Parallel to recent arguments in nonideal theory arguing for the priority of the right to resist economic oppression over the protection of private property rights, access to the empowering properties of CSIs should take priority over the full satisfaction of formal political equality. Yet, I also claim that the justification of CSIs depends on their orientation toward overcoming class divisions because, otherwise, we might end up wrongly naturalizing those divisions—a conclusion that needs to be avoided to reply to the political equality objection. The result is, I believe, a convincing egalitarian case for the democratic justifiability of CSIs. (shrink)

Kevin Vallier has recently argued that the ideals of public justification and public deliberation should be separated. The link between the two, Vallier suggests, has been assumed without being properly defended. Once examined, the connection falls apart. In this paper, I argue that there is, in fact, a clear and convincing story available for why the two ideals should be treated as mutually reinforcing. Drawing on recent empirical evidence, I argue that the deliberative behaviour of citizens can have a clear (...) and positive impact on the behaviour and policy choices of public officials. (shrink)

This article tackles the issue of offshore tax sheltering from the perspective of normative political realism. Tax sheltering is a pressing contemporary policy challenge, with hundreds of billions in private assets protected in offshore trusts and shell companies. Indeed, tax sheltering produces a variety of empirical dilemmas that render it a distinctive challenge for global governance. Therefore, it is crucial for normative political theorists to confront this problem. A realist approach offers three distinct advantages, elaborated in the three subsequent sections (...) of the article. First, it relaxes the theoretical burden by starting from the real practice of tax evasion rather than from an abstract theory of equality or justice. Second, this approach recognizes that sheltering is a political harm: a threat to the very maintenance of order, not just a problem of inequality or injustice. If politicians fail at such polity maintenance, realism's ethic of responsibility provides clear political reasons why they should be held accountable. Third, realism's focus on power and its acceptance of coercion open up new strategies for addressing the problem that would not be allowed by theories with a stronger emphasis on consensus. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay is a critical study of Jason Brennan's Against Democracy. We make three main points. First, we argue that Brennan's proposal of a right to competent government only works if one considers the absence of government a viable proposition, something most of his opponents are not prepared to do. Second, we suggest that Brennan's account of competent decision-making is blind to forms of oligarchic power that work against the very ideals of justice and epistemic virtue that competence is (...) meant to safeguard. Third, we muster empirical evidence to argue that, in the real world, democracy is not just about making decisions and selecting policies, in which case Brennan's argument misses its mark. (shrink)

Four years after the Panama Papers scandal, tax avoidance remains an urgent moral-political problem. Moving beyond both the academic and policy mainstream, I advocate the “democratization of tax enforcement,” by which I mean systematic efforts to make tax avoiders accountable to the judgment of ordinary citizens. Both individual oligarchs and multinational corporations have access to sophisticated tax avoidance strategies that impose significant fiscal costs on democracies and exacerbate preexisting distributive and political inequalities. Yet much contemporary tax sheltering occurs within the (...) letter of the law, rendering criminal sanctions ineffective. In response, I argue for the creation of Citizen Tax Juries, deliberative minipublics empowered to scrutinize tax avoiders, demand accountability, and facilitate concrete reforms. This proposal thus responds to the wider aspiration, within contemporary democratic theory, to secure more popular control over essential economic processes. (shrink)