One of the most noticeable trends in recent years has been the increasing reliance of public decision-making processes on algorithms, i.e. computer-programmed step-by-step instructions for taking a given set of inputs and producing an output. The question raised by this article is whether the rise of such algorithmic governance creates problems for the moral or political legitimacy of our public decision-making processes. Ignoring common concerns with data protection and privacy, it is argued that algorithmic governance does pose a significant threat (...) to the legitimacy of such processes. Modelling my argument on Estlund’s threat of epistocracy, I call this the ‘threat of algocracy’. The article clarifies the nature of this threat and addresses two possible solutions. It is argued that neither solution is likely to be successful, at least not without risking many other things we value about social decision-making. The result is a somewhat pessimistic conclusion in which we confront the possibility that we are creating decision-making processes that constrain and limit opportunities for human participation. (shrink)

Which standards should we employ to evaluate the global order? Should they be standards of justice or standards of legitimacy? In this article, I argue that liberal political theorists need not face this dilemma, because liberal justice and legitimacy are not distinct values. Rather, they indicate what the same value, i.e. equal respect for persons, demands of institutions under different sets of circumstances. I suggest that under real-world circumstances – characterized by conflicts and disagreements – equal respect demands basic-rights protection (...) and democratic participation, which I here call ‘political justice’. I conclude the article by considering three possible configurations of the global order – the ‘democratic world-state’, ‘independent democratic states’, and ‘mixed’ models – and argue that a commitment to political justice speaks in favour of the latter. (shrink)

One of the main challenges faced by realists in political philosophy is that of offering an account of authority that is genuinely normative and yet does not consist of a moralistic application of general, abstract ethical principles to the practice of politics. Political moralists typically start by devising a conception of justice based on their pre-political moral commitments; authority would then be legitimate only if political power is exercised in accordance with justice. As an alternative to that dominant approach I (...) put forward the idea that upturning the relationship between justice and legitimacy affords a normative notion of authority that does not depend on a pre-political account of morality, and thus avoids some serious problems faced by mainstream theories of justice. I then argue that the appropriate purpose of justice is simply to specify the implementation of an independently grounded conception of legitimacy, which in turn rests on a context- and practice-sensitive understanding of the purpose of political power. (shrink)

The prevailing view is that democratic procedures are unable to confer democratic legitimacy to decisions about democratic procedures. This paper examines this claim in detail and uses referendums on the inclusion of previously disenfranchised groups in the demos as a running example. The paper distinguishes between pure, imperfect and quasi-pure models of procedural democratic legitimacy and sub-versions of them. To various extents, each model does have the capacity to confer legitimacy to demos decisions under well-defined circumstances. The paper argues that (...) quasi-pure procedural legitimacy represents the most promising account of democratic legitimacy in cases where democratic procedures are the subject of collective decision-making. According to this model, the decision to revise the rules for membership in the demos is permissible by democratic standards if and only if the revision is not forbidden by democratic principles for inclusion. The point is that the range of alternatives that are not forbidden by democratic principles of inclusion are likely to be considerable due to vagueness of the principles themselves and/or them being subject to reasonable disagreement. The paper concludes with a discussion about the possibility of democratic legitimacy for democratic institutions not introduced as a result of democratic decision-making. (shrink)

For many liberal democrats toleration has become a sort of pet-concept, to which appeal is made in the face of a myriad issues related to the treatment of minorities. Against the inflationary use of toleration, whether understood positively as recognition or negatively as forbearance, I argue that toleration may not provide the conceptual and normative tools to understand and address the claims for accommodation raised by at least one kind of significant minority: democratic dissenting minorities. These are individuals, or aggregates (...) of them, who oppose, on principled grounds, the outcomes of the majoritarian decision-making process. I argue that democratic dissenting minorities' claims are better understood as calls for respect for a person's capacity for self-legislation. I view respect as the cornerstone of justice in a liberal democracy: all norms resulting in a constraint on a person's conduct should be appropriately justified to her. I argue that the reconciliation of democratic dissenting minorities' claims requires an enhancement of the justificatory strategies of democratic decisions by enhancing in turn citizens' rights to political participation. This should be done both during decision making and after a provision is enacted by also securing space for contestation through such forms of illegal protest as civil disobedience and conscientious objection. (shrink)

By reference to the illustrative case of the supranational regulation of local systems of food production, we aim to show the importance of identifying issues of international legitimacy as a discrete component – alongside issues of global distributive justice – of the liberal project of public justification of supranational collective decisions. Therefore, we offer the diagnosis of a problem but do not prescribe the therapy to cure it.

Climate change governance is extremely challenging because of both the intrinsic difficulty of the issues at stake and the plurality of values and world-views. For these reasons, the ethical concerns that characterise climate change should also be meaningfully addressed through a specific version of procedural justice. Accordingly, in this article we adopt an impure notion of procedural justice. On this theoretical basis, we define relevant fairness criteria and contextualise them for climate governance systems. Then, we empirically justify fairness criteria against (...) a critical and divisive element for the future governance of the Green Climate Fund, i.e., the no-objection procedure. The article concludes with some considerations prompted by the analysis. (shrink)

Welfare conditionality (WC) is a crucial ingredient of social policies around the world. Welfare conditionality demands that recipients meet specific behavioral goals to either access the benefit for the first time or retain the benefit's ongoing advantages. This article argues that any justification of WC must seriously consider procedural protections (PPs) and how they shape the policy's outcome. Procedural protections are institutional principles and mechanisms that guarantee fairness in the administrative decision-making process. This essay normatively evaluates appeal procedures—a key component (...) of PPs—in the context of conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) implemented during the last two decades in Latin America. It explains why CCTs often fail to provide their recipients with adequate appeal procedures to protect them against administrative errors and poor decision making. These plans can be unfair redistributive programs not because of the type of conditionalities they promote but, rather, due to the limited PPs they provide. (shrink)

This article discusses a procedural, minimalist approach to justice in terms of fair hearing applicable to value conflicts at impasse in politics. This approach may be summarized in the Adversary Argumentation Principle (AAP): the idea that each side in a conflict should be heard. I engage with Stuart Hampshire’s efforts to justify the AAP and argue that those efforts have failed to provide normatively cogent foundations for it. I suggest deriving such foundations from a basic idea of procedural equality (all (...) parties in a conflict should be granted an equal chance to have a say) which all conflicting parties could be thought to endorse. But what happens once all parties have been heard if no agreement is reached? Borrowing a distinction well known to scholars of peace studies, but surprisingly neglected by justice-driven political philosophers, I claim that although the AAP might be inconclusive with regard to resolving a conflict, it is a promising principle for managing value conflicts justly. The AAP is thus considered anew through the lens of conflict management: as a principle of justice to characterize normatively the way conflicting parties should interact for their interaction to be morally justifiable to such parties with a view to changing antagonistic conflict dynamics into cooperative ones. (shrink)