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  1. (3 other versions)The Methodology of Political Theory.Christian List & Laura Valentini - 2016 - In Herman Cappelen, Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    This article examines the methodology of a core branch of contemporary political theory or philosophy: “analytic” political theory. After distinguishing political theory from related fields, such as political science, moral philosophy, and legal theory, the article discusses the analysis of political concepts. It then turns to the notions of principles and theories, as distinct from concepts, and reviews the methods of assessing such principles and theories, for the purpose of justifying or criticizing them. Finally, it looks at a recent debate (...)
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  • Justice as Fairness and Reciprocity.Andrew Lister - 2011 - Analyze and Kritik 33 (1):93-112.
    This paper tries to reconcile reciprocity with a fundamentally 'subject-centred' ethic by interpreting the reciprocity condition as a consequence of the fact that justice is in part a relational value. Duties of egalitarian distributive justice are not grounded on the duty to reciprocate benefits already received, but limited by a reasonable assurance of compliance on the part of those able to reciprocate, because their point is to constitute a valuable relationship, one of mutual recognition as equals. We have unconditional duty (...)
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  • Political Ideals and the Feasibility Frontier.David Wiens - 2015 - Economics and Philosophy 31 (3):447-477.
    Recent methodological debates regarding the place of feasibility considerations in normative political theory are hindered for want of a rigorous model of the feasibility frontier. To address this shortfall, I present an analysis of feasibility that generalizes the economic concept of a production possibility frontier and then develop a rigorous model of the feasibility frontier using the familiar possible worlds technology. I then show that this model has significant methodological implications for political philosophy. On the Target View, a political ideal (...)
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  • Assessing Ideal Theories: Lessons from the Theory of Second Best.David Wiens - 2016 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 15 (2):132-149.
    Numerous philosophers allege that the "general theory of second best" (Lipsey and Lancaster, 1956) poses a challenge to the Target View, which asserts that real world reform efforts should aim to establish arrangements that satisfy the constitutive features of ideal just states of affairs. I demonstrate two claims that are relevant in this context. First, I show that the theory of second best fails to present a compelling challenge to the Target View in general. But, second, the theory of second (...)
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  • Feasibility Constraints for Political Theories.Holly Lawford-Smith - 2010 - Dissertation, Australian National University
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  • The Aim of a Theory of Justice.Martijn Boot - 2012 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (1):7-21.
    Amartya Sen argues that for the advancement of justice identification of ‘perfect’ justice is neither necessary nor sufficient. He replaces ‘perfect’ justice with comparative justice. Comparative justice limits itself to comparing social states with respect to degrees of justice. Sen’s central thesis is that identifying ‘perfect’ justice and comparing imperfect social states are ‘analytically disjoined’. This essay refutes Sen’s thesis by demonstrating that to be able to make adequate comparisons we need to identify and integrate criteria of comparison. This is (...)
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  • Prescribing Institutions Without Ideal Theory.David Wiens - 2011 - Journal of Political Philosophy 20 (1):45-70.
    It is conventional wisdom among political philosophers that ideal principles of justice must guide our attempts to design institutions to avert actual injustice. Call this the ideal guidance approach. I argue that this view is misguided— ideal principles of justice are not appropriate "guiding principles" that actual institutions must aim to realize, even if only approximately. Fortunately, the conventional wisdom is also avoidable. In this paper, I develop an alternative approach to institutional design, which I call institutional failure analysis. The (...)
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  • Idealizing Morality.Lisa Tessman - 2010 - Hypatia 25 (4):797 - 824.
    Implicit in feminist and other critiques of ideal theorizing is a particular view of what normative theory should be like. Although I agree with the rejection of ideal theorizing that oppression theorists (and other theorists of justice) have advocated, the proposed alternative of nonideal theorizing is also problematic. Nonideal theorizing permits one to address oppression by first describing (nonideal) oppressive conditions, and then prescribing the best action that is possible or feasible given the conditions. Borrowing an insight from the "moral (...)
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  • Can Pragmatists be Institutionalists? John Dewey Joins the Non-ideal/Ideal Theory Debate.Shane J. Ralston - 2010 - Human Studies 33 (1):65-84.
    During the 1960s and 1970s, institutionalists and behavioralists in the discipline of political science argued over the legitimacy of the institutional approach to political inquiry. In the discipline of philosophy, a similar debate concerning institutions has never taken place. Yet, a growing number of philosophers are now working out the institutional implications of political ideas in what has become known as “non-ideal theory.” My thesis is two-fold: (1) pragmatism and institutionalism are compatible and (2) non-ideal theorists, following the example of (...)
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  • Debate: Ideal Theory—A Reply to Valentini.Holly Lawford-Smith - 2009 - Journal of Political Philosophy 18 (3):357-368.
    In her ‘On the apparent paradox of ideal theory’, Laura Valentini combines three supposedly plausible premises to derive the paradoxical result that ideal theory is both unable to, and indispensable for, guiding action. Her strategy is to undermine one of the three premises by arguing that there are good and bad kinds of ideal theory, and only the bad kinds are vulnerable to the strongest version of their opponents’ attack. By undermining one of the three premises she releases ideal theorists (...)
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  • Consequentialism and the ideal theory debate in political philosophy.Andreas T. Schmidt - forthcoming - Journal of Social Philosophy.
    Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.
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  • How not to Understand Community.Babalola Joseph Balogun - 2023 - Conatus 8 (1):55-76.
    Robert Bellah’s article “Community Properly Understood…” is critical of the conventional conception of community as a product of consensus established by shared values and goals among people of common social reality. The need for such a critical approach is arguably encouraged by the rather imprecise deployment of the notion of community in the vast communitarian literature, a deployment which truly raises issues of concern over what the term ‘community’ really means. Bellah’s article is one of the numerous responses to this (...)
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  • Conceptual Ethics and The Categories of “Ideal Theory” and “Non-Ideal Theory” in Political Philosophy: A Proposal for Abandonment.Tristram McPherson & David Plunkett - forthcoming - New Perspectives on Conceptual Engineering.
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  • Political realism and the relationship between ideal and non-ideal theory.Greta Favara - 2023 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 26 (3):376-397.
    When interest in political realism started to resurge a few years ago, it was not uncommon to interpret realist political theory as a form of non-ideal theorising. This reading has been subjected to extensive criticism. First, realists have argued that political realism cannot be interpreted as merely a form of applied political theory. Second, realists have explained that political realism can defend a role for unfeasible normative prescriptions in political theory. I explain that these developments, besides allowing us to reject (...)
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  • How Do You Like Your Justice, Bent or Unbent?Lars J. K. Moen - 2023 - Moral Philosophy and Politics 10 (2):285-297.
    Principles of justice, David Estlund argues, cannot be falsified by people’s unwillingness to satisfy them. In his Utopophobia, Estlund rejects the view that justice must bend to human motivation to deliver practical implications for how institutions ought to function. In this paper, I argue that a substantive argument against such bending of justice principles must challenge the reasons for making these principles sensitive to motivational limitations. Estlund, however, provides no such challenge. His dispute with benders of justice is therefore a (...)
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  • Scientific Models and Political Theory: The Ideal Theory Debate Revisited.Ryan M. Nefdt - 2021 - Theoria 87 (6):1585-1608.
    Political philosophy has traditionally been defined as a normative discipline with a distinctively ideal component, largely informed by moral philosophy. In this paper, I investigate a prominent critique of ideal theory specifically with the goal of resituating the debate within a larger framework in the philosophy of science. I then mount a novel case for how ideal theory should be viewed in terms of scientific modelling. I close with a discussion of how this view can dissolve apparent paradoxes and provide (...)
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  • (1 other version)A realistic conception of politics: conflict, order and political realism.Carlo Burelli - 2021 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 24 (7):977-999.
    In this paper I unpack a realistic conception of politics by tightly defining its constitutive features: conflict and order. A conflict emerges when an actor is disposed to impose his/her views against the resistance of others. Conflicts are more problematic than moralists realize because they emerge unilaterally, are potentially violent, impermeable to content-based reason, and unavoidable. Order is then defined as an institutional framework that provides binding collective decisions. Order is deemed necessary because individuals need to cooperate to survive, but (...)
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  • A Marxian Critique of Nonideal Theory.Tyler Vanwulven - unknown
    This paper takes issue with the methodological framework and practices of nonideal theory. I argue that nonideal theory, while attempting to offer a substantive alternative to ideal theory, fails to deliver on its promises insofar as it takes a juridical view of society. The juridical view involves the overwhelming dependence on, employment of, and requirements of, the concept of justice. I contend that nonideal theory should instead adopt a more Marxian approach to social and political philosophy which involves, inter alia, (...)
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  • Political Realism as Methods not Metaethics.Jonathan Leader Maynard - 2022 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (3):449-463.
    This paper makes the case for a revision of contemporary forms of political realism in political theory. I argue that contemporary realists have gone awry in increasingly centring their approach around a metaethical claim: that political theory should be rooted in a political form of normativity that is distinct from moral normativity. Several critics of realism have argued that this claim is unconvincing. But I suggest that it is also a counterintuitive starting point for realism, and one unnecessary to avoid (...)
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  • Differences of difference.David Jenkins - 2021 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 24 (2):206-229.
    Realists criticise the moralised approaches that inform ideal political theory for being unable to handle the brute facts of disagreement that constitute political reality. As a result, such approaches are insufficiently political, too ambitious in terms of the substantive unanimity that can be expected to emerge from political differences, and naive in the proposals they make. In this paper, I use Brian Barry’s ‘moralised‘ approach – as developed in ’Justice as Impartiality’ – to argue that ideal theory can be reformulated (...)
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  • The Neoliberal Turn: Libertarian Justice and Public Policy.Billy Christmas - 2020 - Journal des Economistes Et des Etudes Humaines 26 (1).
    In this paper I criticize a growing movement within public policy circles that self-identifies as neoliberal. The issue I take up here is the sense in which the neoliberal label signals a turn away from libertarian political philosophy. The are many import ant figures in this movement, but my focus here will be on Will Wilkinson of the Niskanen Center, not least because he has most prolifically written against libertarian political philosophy. Neoliberals oppose the idea that the rights that libertarianism (...)
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  • On the Messy “Utopophobia vs Factophobia” Controversy.Laura Valentini - 2017 - In Kevin Vallier & Michael Weber (eds.), Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates. New York, NY: Oup Usa. pp. 11-31.
    In recent years, political philosophers have been fiercely arguing over the virtues and vices of utopian vs realistic theorizing. Partly due to the lack of a common and consistently used vocabulary, these debates have become rather confusing. In this chapter, I attempt to bring some clarity to them and, in doing so, I offer a conciliatory perspective on the “utopian vs realistic theorizing” controversy. I argue that, once the notion of a normative or evaluative theory is clearly defined and distinguished (...)
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  • (1 other version)The preference satisfaction model of linguistic advantage.Brian Carey - 2019 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 22 (2):134-154.
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  • Provisional Sufficientarianism: Distributive Feasibility in Non-ideal Theory.Brian Carey - 2020 - Journal of Value Inquiry 54 (4):589-606.
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  • Taking responsibility in an unjust world.Joe Hoover - 2019 - Journal of International Political Theory 16 (1):106-118.
    Journal of International Political Theory, Ahead of Print.
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  • Navigating by the North Star: The Role of the ‘Ideal’ in John Stuart Mill's View of ‘Utopian’ Schemes and the Possibilities of Social Transformation.Helen McCabe - 2019 - Utilitas 31 (3):291-309.
    The role of the ‘ideal’ in political philosophy is currently much discussed. These debates cast useful light on Mill's self-designation as ‘under the general designation of Socialist’. Considering Mill's assessment of potential property-relations on the grounds of their desirability, feasibility and ‘accessibility’ (disambiguated as ‘immediate-availability’, ‘eventual-availability’ and ‘conceivable-availability’) shows us not only how desirable and feasible he thought ‘utopian’ socialist schemes were, but which options we should implement. This, coupled with Mill's belief that a socialist ideal should guide social reforms (...)
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  • Nonideal Justice as Nonideal Fairness.Marcus Arvan - 2019 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (2):208-228.
    This article argues that diverse theorists have reasons to theorize about fairness in nonideal conditions, including theorists who reject fairness in ideal theory. It then develops a new all-purpose model of ‘nonideal fairness.’ §1 argues that fairness is central to nonideal theory across diverse ideological and methodological frameworks. §2 then argues that ‘nonideal fairness’ is best modeled by a nonideal original position adaptable to different nonideal conditions and background normative frameworks (including anti-Rawlsian ones). §3 then argues that the parties to (...)
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  • The Arrow of Care Map: Abstract Care in Ideal Theory.Asha L. Bhandary - 2017 - Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 3 (4):1-27.
    This paper advances a framework to conceptualize societal care-giving arrangements abstractly. It is abstract in that it brackets the meaning of our particular relationships. This framework, which I call “the arrow of care map”, is a descriptive tracking model that is a necessary component of a theory of justice, but it is not a normative prescription in itself. The basic idea of the map is then multiply specifiable to track various ascriptive identity categories as well as different categories of care (...)
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  • Twenty-One Statements about Political Philosophy: An Introduction and Commentary on the State of the Profession.Mark R. Reiff - 2018 - Teaching Philosophy 41 (1):65-115.
    While the volume of material inspired by Rawls’s reinvigoration of the discipline back in 1971 has still not begun to subside, its significance has been in serious decline for quite some time. New and important work is appearing less and less frequently, while the scope of the work that is appearing is getting smaller and more internal and its practical applications more difficult to discern. The discipline has reached a point of intellectual stagnation, even as real-world events suggest that the (...)
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  • Ideal vs. Non-ideal Theory: A Conceptual Map.Laura Valentini - 2012 - Philosophy Compass 7 (9):654–664.
    This article provides a conceptual map of the debate on ideal and non‐ideal theory. It argues that this debate encompasses a number of different questions, which have not been kept sufficiently separate in the literature. In particular, the article distinguishes between the following three interpretations of the ‘ideal vs. non‐ideal theory’ contrast: (i) full compliance vs. partial compliance theory; (ii) utopian vs. realistic theory; (iii) end‐state vs. transitional theory. The article advances critical reflections on each of these sub‐debates, and highlights (...)
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  • Problema fezabilității în teoria dreptății sociale.Eugen Huzum - 2012 - Sfera Politicii 5 (171):124-135.
    G. A. Cohen and Andrew Mason have recently argued, against many contemporary philosophers, that feasibility is not a legitimate constraint in theorizing about social justice. Their main argument is that principles of justice are logically independent of issues of feasibility and, consequently, feasibility has no bearing on the correctness of these principles. This article is a critical examination of three attempts to show that Cohen and Mason’s argument is unsound. The examined attempts are those of Harry Brighouse, Collin Farrelly, and (...)
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  • The Struggle for Climate Justice in a Non‐Ideal World.Simon Caney - 2016 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 40 (1):9-26.
    Many agents have failed to comply with their responsibilities to take the action needed to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change. This pervasive noncompliance raises two questions of nonideal political theory. First, it raises the question of what agents should do when others do not discharge their climate responsibilities. (the Responsibility Question) In this paper I put forward four principles that we need to employ to answer the Responsibility Question (Sections II-V). I then illustrate my account, by outlining four kinds of (...)
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  • The Construction of a Sustainable Development in Times of Climate Change.Eric Brandstedt - 2013 - Dissertation, Lund University
    This dissertation is a contribution to the debate about ‘climate justice’, i.e. a call for a just and feasible distribution of responsibility for addressing climate change. The main argument is a proposal for a cautious, practicable, and necessary step in the right direction: given the set of theoretical and practical obstacles to climate justice, we must begin by making contemporary development practices sustainable. In times of climate change, this is done by recognising and responding to the fact that emissions of (...)
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  • Title IX: An Incomplete Effort to Achieve Equality in Sports.Leslie Francis - 2016 - Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 43 (1):83-99.
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  • What Second-Best Scenarios Reveal about Ideals of Global Justice.Christian Barry & David Wiens - 2020 - In Thom Brooks (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Global Justice. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    While there need be no conflict in theory between addressing global inequality (inequalities between people worldwide) and addressing domestic inequality (inequalities between people within a political community), there may be instances in which the feasible mechanism for reducing global inequality risks aggravating domestic inequality. The burgeoning literature on global justice has tended to overlook this type of scenario, and theorists espousing global egalitarianism have consequently not engaged with cases that are important for evaluating and clarifying the content of their theories. (...)
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  • Adaptive Ideals and Aspirational Goals: The Utopian Ideals and Realist Constraints of Climate Change Adaptation.Patrik Baard - 2015 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28 (4):739-757.
    There is a growing need to implement anticipatory climate change adaptation measures, particularly in vulnerable sectors, such as in agriculture. However, setting goals to adapt is wrought with several challenges. This paper discusses two sets of challenges to goals of anticipatory adaptation, of empirical and normative character. The first set of challenges concern issues such as the extent to which the climate will change, the local impacts of such changes, and available adaptive responses. In the second set of uncertainties are (...)
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  • Motivational Limitations on the Demands of Justice.David Wiens - 2016 - European Journal of Political Theory 15 (3):333-352.
    Do motivational limitations due to human nature constrain the demands of justice? Among those who say no, David Estlund offers perhaps the most compelling argument. Taking Estlund’s analysis of “ability” as a starting point, I show that motivational deficiencies can constrain the demands of justice under at least one common circumstance — that the motivationally-deficient agent makes a good faith effort to overcome her deficiency. In fact, my argument implies something stronger; namely, that the demands of justice are constrained by (...)
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  • The Problem of Historical Rectification for Rawlsian Theory.Juan Espindola & Moises Vaca - 2014 - Res Publica 20 (3):227-243.
    In this paper we claim that Rawls’s theory is compatible with the absence of rectification of extremely important historical injustices within a given society. We hold that adding a new principle to justice-as-fairness may amend this problem. There are four possible objections to our claim: First, that historical rectification is not required by justice. Second, that, even when historical rectification is a matter of justice, it is not a matter of distributive justice, so that Rawls’s theory is justified in leaving (...)
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  • Dirty Hands and the Complicity of the Democratic Public.David Archard - 2013 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (4):777-790.
    The alleged problem of the dirty hands of politicians has been much discussed since Michael Walzer’s original piece (Walzer 1974). The discussion has concerned the precise nature of the problem or sought to dissolve the apparent paradox. However there has been little discussion of the putative complicity, and thus also dirtying of hands, of a democratic public that authorizes politicians to act in its name. This article outlines the sense in which politicians do get dirty hands and the degree to (...)
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  • Towards a non-ideal theory of climate migration.Joachim Wündisch - 2022 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 25 (4):496-527.
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  • Rawlsian Contractualism and Healthcare Allocation: A response to Torbjörn Tännsjö.Quinn Hiroshi Gibson - 2021 - Diametros 18 (68):9-23.
    The consideration of the problem of healthcare allocation as a special case of distributive justice is especially alluring when we only consider consequentialist theories. I articulate here an alternative Rawlsian non-consequentialist theory which prioritizes the fairness of healthcare allocation procedures rather than directly setting distributive parameters. The theory in question stems from Rawlsian commitments that, it is argued, have a better Rawlsian pedigree than those considered as such by Tännsjö. The alternative framework is worthy of consideration on its own merits, (...)
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  • Justice, Symmetry, and Voting Rights Ceilings.Alexandru Volacu - 2021 - Theoria 87 (3):643-658.
    In this article I aim to offer a first critical assessment of the most prominent arguments in favour of restricting the voting rights of senior citizens. The first argument discussed, most thoroughly articulated by van Parijs, maintains that intergenerational justice would be improved under schemes which restrict the voting rights of senior citizens, thereby diminishing their overall electoral weight. The second argument, reconstructed from Lau's defence of child enfranchisement, maintains that the cognitive decline associated with the process of aging should (...)
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  • Disability and philosophy: applying ethics in circumstances of injustice.Leslie Francis - 2016 - Journal of Medical Ethics 42 (1):35-36.
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  • Norms for political cynics. A metatheoretical exploration of the relation between power and normativity in politics.Tim Heysse - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Supporters of political realism and republicanism as well as students of political feasibility and non-ideal theory progressively focus on the dimension of power in the political relation. Yet we lack the theoretical framework to represent these features of power. In this essay, I take a first step towards designing the necessary conceptual tools for such a framework by analyzing the relations between the concepts of power and normativity that define the political relation. Adopting a ‘methodological cynicism’, I analyse the reasons (...)
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  • A non-ideal global basic structure.Sabrina Martin - 2016 - Etikk I Praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics 2:11-26.
    Focusing on the basic structure as the subject of justice has tended to lead theorists to make a choice: either there is no global basic structure and therefore obligations of justice remain domestic only or there is sufficient institutional basis at the global level to warrant affirming a basic structure global in scope, meaning that duties of justice must also be global. Recent literature, however, has pointed out that this might be a false choice between denying and asserting the existence (...)
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  • Facts, principles, and global justice: does the ‘real world’ matter?Johann Go - 2023 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 26 (6):810-830.
    The world is undeniably full of injustice. Many feel that much political philosophy is practically impotent and engaged instead in overly abstract theorising insufficiently sensitive to the realities of the world. One response to this concern is David Miller’s influential model of evidence-based political philosophy, which claims to be sensitive to empirical evidence from the social sciences, takes seriously people’s opinions, and defends the role of facts in grounding normative principles. Using various examples from the field of global justice, one (...)
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  • Self-Ownership, the Conflation Problem, and Presumptive Libertarianism: Can the Market Model Support Libertarianism Rather than the Other Way Around?Marcus Agnafors - 2015 - Libertarian Papers 7.
    David Sobel has recently argued that libertarian theories that accept full and strict self-ownership as foundational confront what he calls the conflation problem: if transgressing self-ownership is strictly and stringently forbidden, it is implied that the normative protection against one infringement is precisely as strong as against any other infringement. But this seems to be an absurd consequence. In defense of libertarianism, I argue that the conflation problem can be handled in a way that allows us to honor basic libertarian (...)
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  • Justice, feasibility, and ideal theory: A pluralist approach.Andrew Mason - 2016 - Social Philosophy and Policy 33 (1-2):32-54.
    :A qualified pluralism is defended that recognizes value in a variety of forms of political theory and resists arguments that purport to show that one particular approach should occupy a privileged position. Against realists, it is argued that abstract analyses of political values that bracket a wide range of facts about people and their circumstances can be both coherent and important, whereas against those who think “ideal theory” or the identification of ultimate principles should come first, it is argued that (...)
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  • Addressing Poverty and Climate Change: The Varieties of Social Engagement.Simon Caney - 2012 - Ethics and International Affairs 26 (2):191-216.
    In this article I propose to explore two issues. The first concerns what kinds of contributions academics can make to reducing poverty. I argue that academics can contribute in a number of ways, and I seek to spell out the diversity of the options available. I concentrate on four ways in which these contributions might differ.My second aim is to outline some norms that should inform any academic involvement in activities that seek to reduce poverty. I set out six proposals. (...)
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  • The moral benefits of coercion: A defense of ideal statism.Naima Chahboun - 2024 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 23 (1):47-66.
    This paper contributes to recent discussions on ideal anarchism vs. ideal statism. I argue, contra ideal anarchists, that coercive state institutions would be justified even in a society populated by morally perfect individuals. My defense of ideal statism is novel in that it highlights the moral benefits of state coercion. Rather than the practical effects on individual compliance or the distributive outcomes that follow therefrom, coercive state institutions are justified through the moral benefits they provide. The state is morally beneficial (...)
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