This book offers an original account of a distinctly republican theory of social and global justice. The book starts by exploring the nature and value of Hegelian recognition theory. It shows the importance of that theory for grounding a normative account of free and autonomous agency. It is this normative account of free agency which provides the groundwork for a republican conception of social and global justice, based on the core-ideas of freedom as non-domination and autonomy as non-alienation. As the (...) author argues, republicans should endorse a sufficientarian account of social justice, which focuses on the nature of social relationships and their effects on people's ability to act freely and realize their fundamental interests. On the global level, the book argues for the cosmopolitan extension of the republican principles of non-domination and non-alienation within a multi-level democratic system. In so doing, the book addresses a major gap in the existing literature, presenting an original theory of justice, which combines Hegelian recognition theory and republican ideas of freedom, and applying this hybrid theory to the global domain. Fabian Schuppert creates a grand synthesis uniting neo-republican insights on freedom with Hegelian recognition theory. The result is an account of agency that arises from the idea of non-domination whose aim it is to safeguard individual freedom. When combined with Hegelian recognition theory a social focus also emerges. This amalgam comments on many of the major disputes concerning global justice from a cosmopolitan perspective. Because of the broad scope and the many contemporary discussions engaged this book will be of keen interest to scholars as well as a welcome addition to the classroom. (shrink)

Russia’s war against Ukraine has grave consequences in several political categories. These include: a reassessment of the school of ‘political realism’, one of whose proponents claims to have predicted the war. Was the West partly ‘responsible’ for the war? Second, to what extent does the war of aggression, as an undeniable violation of law, damage the status of international law and justice? Third, the war is embedded in political developments that stretch back a century. It is examined in its context (...) within American foreign policy since the Wilsonian peace programme, in relation to the dangerous reluctance of the EU to pursue a decisive geopolitical policy towards Russia, and interpreted in the light of Stalinist echoes within Russian politics. (shrink)

Kok?Chor Tan argues for a conception of Liberal Cosmopolitanism that seeks to reconcile ideals of global justice and national partiality. I provide two objections to his luck egalitarian model of global justice: first, it fails to provide adequate space for legitimate cultural variation with respect to the understanding of and valuing of natural resources; and second, that its account of ideas of collective responsibility is restricted to a point at which it becomes unrecognizable and inefficacious. I conclude with some reflections (...) on the implications of my analysis for the more general question of whether or how national partiality and global justice can be reconciled. (shrink)

Some legal theorists deny that states can conceivably act extralegally in the sense of acting contrary to domestic law. This position finds its most robust articulation in the writings of Hans Kelsen and has more recently been taken up by David Dyzenhaus in the context of his work on emergencies and legality. This paper seeks to demystify their arguments and ultimately contend that we can intelligibly speak of the state as a legal wrongdoer or a legally unauthorized actor.

I defend the cosmopolitan instrumentalist theory of secession, according to which a group has a right to secede only if this would promote cosmopolitan justice. I argue that the theory is preferable to other theories of secession because it is an entailment of cosmopolitanism, which is independently attractive, and because, unlike other theories of secession, it allows us to give the answers we want to give in cases like secession of the rich or secession that would make things worse for (...) minorities. I defend the view against the objections that it allows for colonialism and annexation, that it is not a distinct theory, and that it is impractical. (shrink)

According to the ‘fragmentation objection’ to multiculturalism, practices of cultural recognition undermine political stability, and this counts as a reason to be sceptical about the public recognition of minority cultures, as well as about multiculturalism construed more broadly as a public policy. Civic education programmes, designed to promote autonomy, toleration and patriotism, have been justified as a corrective to the fragmentary tendencies of multiculturalism. This paper distinguishes between two versions of the fragmentation objection, in order to evaluate this particular justification (...) of civic education. The cultural fragmentation version of the objection emphasises the importance of a common identity and a shared sense of belonging for political stability, whilst the value fragmentation version of the objection emphasises the importance of shared values for political stability. It is argued that neither version of the objection successfully demonstrates that multiculturalism is incompatible with political stability. However, narrow versions of each objection provide reasons to favour the promotion of toleration in public schooling, and reasons to be sceptical about the promotion of patriotism. Meanwhile, justifications of the cultivation of autonomy must appeal to values other than political stability. (shrink)

Most bioethicists who address questions to which global justice matters have not considered the significance of the disputes over the correct theory of global justice. Consequently, the significance of the differences between theories of global justice for bioethics has been obscured. In this paper, I consider when and how these differences are important. I argue that certain bioethical problems can be resolved without addressing disagreements about global justice. People with very different views about global justice can converge on the existence (...) of a duty to aid the very badly off — those in absolute poverty — wherever they may be. However, despite agreement on extreme cases, there should be disagreement over the extent of international obligations to those who are only relatively poor. Consequently, different theories of justice will diverge in their implications for a number of important problems in contemporary bioethics. I close by sketching in more detail two contemporary bioethical issues —concerning pharmaceutical patents and the health worker brain drain —and show how responses to them might be developed by cosmopolitan and statist liberals. (shrink)

Increasingly, western democratic countries are bearing witness to immigrant protest, that is, protest by immigrants who are dissatisfied with their status in the host community. In protesting, the immigrants object to the ways in which various laws and practices have proved to be obstacles to their full integration. Because immigrants, upon entering, have consented to abide by the rules and regulations of the host state, it might be thought that these forms of civil disobedience are, effectively, contract violations. Immigrants might (...) therefore be thought to have a particularly stringent duty to abide by the laws of their host state. This paper evaluates whether immigrants are indeed under a special duty to abide by the laws of their host state. First, it suggests that it is useful — although incomplete — to apply the device of the ‘contract’ to understanding the relationship between new immigrants and the host community. Second, it argues that there are limits to what can be demanded of and by immigrants as well as of and by host communities. It then turns to offering principles that help to evaluate the motivations of immigrant protestors, as well as that help guide their actions, when they believe that the community they have joined is treating them unjustly. These principles suggest that immigrant protest actions are subject to the restriction that they do not undermine the possibility of an inclusive democratic community. (shrink)

Publicly-funded health systems, including those national health services and social or National Health Insurances, are institutionalized solidarity in health. In Europe, solidarity originated from the legacies of labor movements, the Judeo-Christian traditions, and nationalist sentiments in the re-construction Era after the WWII. In middle-to-high income East Asian countries, such as Japan, Taiwan, Korea, the health systems were built on different grounds and do not have such ethical origins of solidarity. As health systems in Europe and East Asia are both facing (...) sustainability crises due to aging population, stagnant economy, changing boundaries, and advancing medical technologies, how those systems with the European solidaristic ethical traditions can be revived and how those without the European traditions could survive become a matter of theoretical interests and an urgent policy problem to be addressed. Drawing on contemporary theories of solidarity, this essay analyzes the boundary problem and its impact on the sustainability of the health system in Taiwan. It then considers two plausible origins of solidarity in Taiwan. One is the re-emerged civic nationalism, and the other is an ethos of common life. It is argued that after years of implementation, the National Health Insurance in Taiwan might have shaped the social values and people’s habits and formed an ethos of common life. Such ethos could be an ethical origin of solidarity in non-western societies and help the health systems endure the prolonged sustainability crises. (shrink)

Under the influence of concerns about sustainability, health system reforms have targeted institutional designs and have overlooked the role of socio-political factors like solidarity—a concept that is generally assumed to underpin the redistributive health system. The purpose of this research is to investigate users’ perceptions of the National Health Insurance as a system, their senses of solidarity and their views on the sustainability of the system in Taiwan. Using the descriptive ethics approach, qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with typical case (...) sampling of 17 participants in the Taipei Metropolitan. The framework approach was used to analyze the interview transcripts. The research finds that despite great differences between users’ perceptions of the NHI, most users could share a notion of mutual relationship among each other. Three types of reasons are used to justify the obligations of mutual aid imposed by the NHI. These reasons are embedded within divergent conceptions of solidarity. The research also finds that government’s performance, the stability of decision-making and users’ personal experiences engaging with the system are important conditions for the users’ supportive attitude toward the system. Solidarity is a plausible concept in sustaining a non-Western social health insurance such as Taiwan’s NHI. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The contextual dimension of ren or li is celebrated in English studies of Confucian ethics. However, it often gives way to the issue of individual practice in studies concerning the relationship between ren and li due perhaps to an excessive focus on personal moral development. Inspired by a painting metaphor from the Analects, the present study reassesses this unbalanced approach to the ren-li relationship through the proposed theme of contextual individuality. In the wake of relationally constituted individuality in Confucian (...) philosophy, this study shows that the moral endowment of caring for others in human nature, which constitutes the moral foundation of ren and li, calls for a contextually practical approach to the ren-li relationship. This approach is crucial for the recognition that one’s moral development may not be truly accomplished unless undertaken in the context of the moral development of fellow human beings. (shrink)

The contextual dimension of ren or li is celebrated in English studies of Confucian ethics. However, it often gives way to the issue of individual practice in studies concerning the relationship be...

Recent attempts to distinguish a normatively acceptable “civic nationalism"—as distinct from an irrationally tainted “ethnic nationalism"—have failed to take seriously the implications of the transition from the city as the immediate spatial unit of the patria to the more abstract national state that replaced it. The nation‐state has required a mythologizing naturalism to legitimate it, thus blurring the distinction between “civic” and “ethnic.” The urban political experience of the patria is lost to us; cosmopolitan intellectuals should resist the comforting temptation (...) to recover it in the nation, and should recognize civic nationalism for the oxymoron it is. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to identify the main challenges for global ethics as an academic discipline. This article assesses the moral and practical justifications for common global principles. Individual and institutional responsibility on the supranational level is connected with the standard of human rights and the relational aspects of the globalised world. It also points out two separate problems which global ethics should aim to solve. The first is metatheoretical and methodological and concerns the discipline's lack of self-reflexiveness. (...) The second is essential and concerns the clash of values . Regarding the second problem, the main future challenge of global ethics is to construct a measurement to bring political decisions closer to morality and more strongly connect rights with responsibilities. (shrink)

Yael Tamir's book Liberal Nationalism seeks to show that liberalism and nationalism are not incompatible political philosophies. Nationalism need not take the closed, authoritarian form it has so often taken; and liberalism is premised on certain national ideas, including national self-determination. This critical discussion of her account is broadly sympathetic to the compatibility thesis, but takes issue both with her notion of nationalism, with her account of a nation as a self-conscious cultural community, and with the sharp line she draws (...) between civic and cultural concerns. Although her book does not deal with education, this paper concludes with remarks about what the role of nationality should be in education, in both a Tamirian and a non-Tamirian framework. The latter is applied to education in Britain. (shrink)

The paper argues that nationality and national sentiment have been, until fairly recently, neglected topics in liberal, as distinct from conservative, political and educational philosophy. It claims that the promotion of national sentiment as an educational aim is not incompatible with liberalism, and may indeed be desirable for reasons of personal and cultural identity as well as for redistributive reasons. It then explores a remodelled conception of British nationality in particular; and finally looks at curricular implications.

Given the recent ethics scandals in the United States, there has been a renewed focus on understanding the antecedents to ethical decision-making in the research literature. Since ethical norms and standards of behavior are not universally consistent, an individual’s choice of referent may exert a large influence on his/her ethical decision-making. This study used a social identity theory lens to empirically examine the relative influence of the macro- and micro-level variables of national culture and peers on an individual’s intention to (...) behave ethically. Our sample consisted of respondents from Germany, Italy, and Japan. The results indicated that both national culture and peers were found to act as significant referents in ethical decision-making dilemmas. Although peers exerted a much stronger influence on an individual’s ethical decision-making, the impact of peers varied depending on the national culture levels of individualism and power distance. (shrink)

In the last three decades, we in the West have seen nationalism turn from an apparently progressive force, as in Cuba, Vietnam, and many countries in Africa, into a negative force of degenerating chaos, as in Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Sri Lanka, and Rwanda. Elsewhere, during the same decades, the record of nationalism has been, or at least been perceived to have been, more mixed, for example in Belgium, Canada, and India. The assessments themselves are uncertain and suspect, however. Maybe (...) nationalism was not so clearly progressive or so clearly retrogressive where we had previously thought it so. Maybe we misjudge its ambivalence elsewhere. Maybe we are not even dealing with the same kind of phenomenon.More generally, we have yet to understand the role of nationalism in two world wars and countless imperialist incursions. We have only the vaguest ideas of its connection to social ideologies and movements like racism, fascism, and Nazism and little understanding of its relevance to economic systems like capitalism and socialism. (shrink)

The concept of political obligation has not attracted much attention within Heideggerian scholarship. In this paper, we identify and explicate Heidegger’s conception of political obligation embedded in his pre-Kehre works. It will be argued that Heidegger’s magnum opus Being and Time and his address as Rector of Freiburg contain a latent associative account of political obligation. We argue that the ontological framework disclosed in Being and Time and the more concrete policy prescriptions of the Rectoral Address reveal a communitarian ethos (...) which animates the early Heideggerian canon and grounds his account of political obligation. For Heidegger, Dasein must be connected to a particular community’s ontological heritage in order to delimit its ontical possibilities in concrete situations. It will be argued that this relationship between ontological heritage and ontical possibilities is what defines political obligation for Heidegger. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the relevance of borders and national membership as barriers to first admission. Strengths and weaknesses of the different liberal arguments for open and restricted borders will be analysed, focusing on the ‘liberal paradox’ which holds that an asymmetrical view on entry and exit is compatible with the liberal commitment to equality and individual liberties. Finally, a proposal will be formulated in order to find a middle way between the idealism of open borders and more realist versions (...) of liberal egalitarianism by incorporating a hermeneutical account of human morality as a relational, contextual matter which does not think in terms of borders but instead of trans-boundary dialogical spaces. (shrink)

This paper reflects on a critique of cosmopolitanism mounted by Tom Campbell, who argues that cosmopolitans place undue stress on the issue of global justice. Campbell argues that aid for the impoverished needy in the third world, for example, should be given on the Principle of Humanity rather than on the Principle of Justice. This line of thought is also pursued by ?Liberal Nationalists? like Yael Tamir and David Miller. Thomas Nagel makes a similar distinction and questions whether the ideal (...) of justice can even be meaningfully applied on a global scale. The paper explores whether the distinction between the Principle of Humanity and the Principle of Justice might be a false dichotomy in that both principles could be involved in humanitarian assistance. It will suggest that both principles might be grounded in an ethics of caring and that the ethics of caring cannot be so sharply distinguished from the discourse of justice and of rights. As a result, the Principle of Humanity and the Principle of Justice cannot be so sharply distinguished either. It is because we care about others as human beings (Principle of Humanity) that we pursue justice for them (Principle of Justice) and the alleviation of their avoidable suffering. (shrink)

This article adopts the framework set out in ‘Associative Political Obligations’ to ask two further questions about the theory of associative political obligation. (i) Which of the different interpretations of the theory of associative political obligation is most plausible? And (ii) what would be the implications of such a view? It is argued that (i) the most attractive version of the argument is one according to which such obligations obtain only in morally acceptable communities, and only between what may be (...) called ‘thick’ members. And (ii) that such a theory should give up on at least some of the conclusions that associativist theorists have tried to defend, such as that associative political obligations can establish the legitimacy of states. However, it is also suggested that this should not be considered a regrettable retreat. (shrink)

This article aims to provide some insight into the nature and content of the theory of associative political obligation. It does this by first locating the view in the wider debate on political obligation, analyzing the view in terms of four central elements that are shared by many of its versions, and then discussing important criticisms that have been made of each of these, as well as some rejoinders by defenders of the theory.

Normative questions concerning political authority and political obligation are widely seen as central questions of political philosophy. Current global transformations require an innovative response from normative political thinking about these two topics. In light of a concrete example of the supranational forms of authority and obligation that have been and are emerging beyond the national state and beyond the traditional domains of international law, I lay out what has become the standard approach to authority and obligation and indicate why this (...) approach is inadequate in contemporary circumstances. I sketch an alternative approach and suggest how the most promising exemplar of this kind, Habermas’ discourse theory of law and politics, can better deal with the example. Having thus made plausible the advantages of the discourse theory of the alternative approach, I end with an ‘internal’ critique of Habermas’ own recent writings on the global political order. (shrink)

This article presents a new set of analytical tools for understanding competing conceptions of political membership. Controversies concerning nationality and citizenship are often seen as products of conflict between `civic' and `ethnic' visions. However, the conceptual roots of current discussions and disagreements about political membership are actually more complicated than this might suggest. After examining the dichotomy of civic and ethnic and its limitations, this article identifies five competing ways of understanding the meaning of belonging to, or being a citizen (...) of, a given polity. Political membership may be understood and discussed as a matter of descent from common biological ancestors, cultural attachment, or identification with particular political principles. Alternatively, it may also be imagined either as an exchange of rights for duties or as a benefit granted to those contributing materially to the community. Each of these conceptions figures significantly in current political and intellectual discussions of citizenship and nationality. The typology may also prove applicable to new kinds of debates about global citizenship. (shrink)

Those who believe that they have special obligations to their community — to their family, state or nation, clan, tribe, or cultural group — often insist that they have duties not merely to present and future members. They also claim to have responsibilities to, or in respect to, their predecessors. David Miller, in his defence of ‘nationality,’ claims that the existence of a nation as a historical community is one of the features which make it ‘a community of obligation.’ ‘“Because (...) our forebears have toiled and spilt their blood to build and defend the nation, we who are born into it inherit an obligation to continue their work….’” Being a member of a nation, says Yael Tamir, requires individuals to keep faith with its history. Annette Baier thinks that if we fail to pass on our inherited public goods to our descendants we can be blamed not only for harming their interests but also for not carrying out the intentions of our forebears. (shrink)

Those who believe that they have special obligations to their community — to their family, state or nation, clan, tribe, or cultural group — often insist that they have duties not merely to present and future members. They also claim to have responsibilities to, or in respect to, their predecessors. David Miller, in his defence of ‘nationality,’ claims that the existence of a nation as a historical community is one of the features which make it ‘a community of obligation.’ ‘“Because (...) our forebears have toiled and spilt their blood to build and defend the nation, we who are born into it inherit an obligation to continue their work….’” Being a member of a nation, says Yael Tamir, requires individuals to keep faith with its history. Annette Baier thinks that if we fail to pass on our inherited public goods to our descendants we can be blamed not only for harming their interests but also for not carrying out the intentions of our forebears. (shrink)

Some legal theorists deny that states can conceivably act extra-legally, in the sense of acting contrary to domestic law. This position finds its most robust articulation in the writings of Hans Kelsen, and has more recently been taken up by David Dyzenhaus in the context of his work on emergencies and legality. This paper seeks to demystify their arguments and, ultimately, contend that we can intelligibly speak of the state as a legal wrongdoer or a legally unauthorized actor.

This paper attempts to follow the changes in the concept “state” over the last two hundred years, by tracing changes in the aims of public education. Four major stages are identified. The first is characterized by the establishment of the nation-state, when a national and civic education are fused together. The second is marked by the erosion of the identity between state and nation, and by attempts to prevent this process through the development of contradictory educational strategies: ‘neutral civic education’ (...) and nation building through the mechanism of the ‘melting pot’. At the third stage, despite the above-mentioned efforts, the awakening of national minorities demanding special national education sharpens the distinction between civic and national education. This leads to the last stage, the politics of difference, when the nationally homogenous nation-state is replaced by a consciously heterogenous state. Such a state can grant all its members equal civil and national rights only if it endorses traditional liberal values. Hence, despite the fact they firmly criticize liberalism and attempt to revive particular national education supporters of the politics of difference cannot deny that liberal values and civic education offer the best protection for their own ends. (shrink)

Philosophical questions are not like empirical problems, which can be answered by observation or experiment or entitlements from them. Nor are they like mathematical problems which can be settled by deductive methods, like problems in chess or any other rule-governed game or procedure. But questions about the ends of life, about good and evil, about freedom and necessity, about objectivity and relativity, cannot be decided by looking into even the most sophisticated dictionary or the use of empirical or mathematical reasoning. (...) Not to know where to look for the answer is the surest symptom of a philosophical problem.Isaiah BerlinCritics of recent philosophical analyses of nationalism suggest that nationalism is a unique social phenomenon that cannot, and need not, be theorized. Are there, indeed, some special features constitutive of nationalism that might defy theorization? Those answering this question in the affirmative point to the plurality and specificity of national experiences, as well as to the emotional and eclectic nature of nationalist discourse. (shrink)

This paper is a homage to Isaiah Berlin. It argues that Berlin's philosophy has preceded many of the present discussions concerning liberalism-culturalism. In an age in which most liberal philosophers ignored the importance of belonging, of member-ship, identity, cultural affiliations and historical continuity, Berlin stands out as a welcome exception. His philosophy is therefore fresh and innovative as it was in the sixties and seventies when it was written. It carries within it the germs of the liberalism of the fringes (...) advocated nowadays by members of national minorities, immigrants, women, and gays, the kind of liberalism which fits well the politics of identity and recognition. (shrink)

Many political philosophers take it for granted that we have special obligations to compatriots. They do not deny that we have negative duties towards strangers as well as our compatriots. Our moral duties not to kill others, not to deceive others, and not to harm others are duties to everyone, that is, they are general and not special duties. Meanwhile, they suppose that our positive duties to aid others are special duties. We must give priority to our compatriots when we (...) aid others. Our first responsibility is to the poor, the hungry and the homeless citizens of our own country. (shrink)

This essay sheds new light on Korean democracy after democratization. It examines how the notion of ‘transcendental collectivism’, associated with familial bonds and the concept of chŏng, led to an emphasis on citizen‐empowerment. This participatory perspective replaced the militant elite‐led activism of the transitional period, which was underpinned by a Confucian ‘transcendental individualism’ predicated on the concept of ren. The argument is based on a detailed case study of a recent episode of citizen action. The article shows how the search (...) for a new democratic citizenship that was capable of overcoming the parochial regionalism that has bedeviled Korean politics for decades, led ordinary (especially young) Korean citizens to come up with a new national democratic civic ethos that corresponded to the changed political environment. This new ethos was uri‐responsibility, a uniquely Korean view of collective moral responsibility. After examining uri‐responsibility and comparing it with Kantian‐liberal accounts of responsibility, its strong democratic implications for Korea are explored. (shrink)

Many of the most popular liberal arguments for cultural rights all note that the world is formed into groups. But in the attempt to universalise these arguments, it is too often assumed that the nation is the most important of these groups. This focus upon the nation ignores the many and varying bases of self?respect. It overlooks the fact that self?respect may be tied to many different kinds of groups. Further, most discussions of cultural rights are fuelled by the experience (...) of particular groups. Which groups depends on the theorist and issue at hand. The discussion may be sound for the particular group being discussed. But then many cultural rights theorists, in generalising from one case to others, may not have good reason to do so, leading into a mistaken universalism. The study of cultural rights arguments, with closer reference to the case studies that underpin them, should serve to limit illicit generalisation and to illuminate the true value of cultural rights arguments. (shrink)

The rise of regional identities in Europe is a process largely welcomed by liberals and especially applauded by radical democratic and postcolonial theorists. Yet this trend towards post-nation-state identity is not only attractive to democratic and postcolonial theories, but is also an integral part of current neo-fascist ideologies. This article examines the intellectual origins of rightwing ethnoregionalism and the idea of ‘exclusionist multiculturalism’ through the works of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle and Alain de Benoist. It also compares the idea of (...) exclusionist ‘regional’ multiculturalism with liberal multiculturalism and defends a democratic, civic republicanism as an alternative to both. (shrink)

This article studies a seeming paradox ? the adoption of multi-culturalist strategies and arguments by the neo-fascist European New Right. Why would neo-fascists adopt such a theoretical framework, and why has multiculturalism failed in Europe? In this article, I argue that the European New Right employs a multiculturalism framework, which I define as a recognition/exclusionist one, in order to create a new discourse of ?legitimate exclusionism? of non-authentic European immigrants. In short, multiculturalism, by celebrating differences between ethnic and cultural groups, (...) inherently admits that there exist such differences between individuals. This allows neo-fascists to distinguish between themselves and ?others?, immigrants not sharing their cultural heritage, and to claim the need for protecting such a cultural heritage through exclusion of others. As this article attempts to claim, immigrants will not benefit from multiculturalism, but the right of the radical integralist in its different versions. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to question, from the perspective of a principled theory of criminalization, the legitimacy of making irregular immigration a crime. In order to do this, I identify three main ways in which the political decision to introduce a crime of IM may be defended: according to the first, IM is a malum in se the wrongness of which resides in its being a violation of states’ territorial sovereignty; according to the second, IM is a justified (...) malum prohibitum the wrongness of which resides in its being a violation of a justified immigration regulation; according to the third, IM is a malum in se the wrongness of which resides in its harmful consequences for receiving states’ citizens. My thesis is that none of these arguments succeeds in providing us with sufficiently good reasons to justify the use of criminal punishment to enforce the closure of state borders. As regards the first, I argue that it relies on a misleading conception of what is entailed by states’ territorial sovereignty, and that therefore it is unsound as an argument for the state’s right to control immigration. With regard to the second, I argue that, be they legitimate or not, immigration regulations enacted by states cannot provide those would-be immigrants they aim to exclude with content-independent reasons to comply with them; and this is a necessary pre-condition to conclude that IM is a justified malum prohibitum. As regards harm-based approaches, I argue that the notions they rely on are completely unfit as criteria for criminalization. This leads me to the conclusion that, unless other more convincing arguments are provided for, IM should not be criminalized. (shrink)

To respond to globalization‐related challenges, many contemporary political theorists have argued for forms of democracy beyond the level of the nation‐state. Since the early 1990s, however, political theory has also witnessed a renewed normative defense of nationhood. Liberal nationalists have been influential in claiming that the state should protect and promote national identities, and that it is desirable that the boundaries of national and political units coincide. At first glance, both positions—global democracy and nationalism—seem to contradict each other. We do (...) not share this oppositional picture. Developing a more harmonic picture of nationalist ideals and cosmopolitan visions is the aim of this essay. (shrink)

Prominent normative theories for accommodating minority national groups appeal to the value of national cultures and/or the psychology of group recognition. This article aims to show that an argument from political authority provides a better justification. Building on Joseph Raz's theory of authority, the article argues that members of minority national groups are disadvantaged in relation to their majority counterparts under standard democratic institutions; such institutions do not provide minority national groups with comparable access to the conditions for legitimate political (...) authority. Constitutional arrangements for accommodating minority national groups—such as territorial self-government or power-sharing—are justified insofar as they might offset this disadvantage. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary work on the nature of borders and society has enriched and complicated our understanding of democracy, community, distributive justice, and migration. It reveals the cognitive bias of methodological nationalism, which has distorted normative political thought on these topics, uncritically and often unconsciously adapting and reifying state‐centered conceptions of territory, space, and community. Under methodological nationalism, state territories demarcate the boundaries of the political; society is conceived as composed of immobile, culturally homogenous citizens, each belonging to one and only one (...) state; and the distribution of goods is analyzed according to a stark opposition between the domestic and the international. This article describes how methodological nationalism has shaped central debates in political philosophy and introduces recent work that helps dispel this bias. (shrink)

While there is a growing body of work on moral issues and global governance in the fields of global justice and international relations, little work has connected principles of global health justice with those of global health governance for a theory of global health. Such a theory would enable analysis and evaluation of the current global health system and would ethically and empirically ground proposals for reforming it to more closely align with moral values. Global health governance has been framed (...) as an issue of national security, human security, human rights, and global public goods. The global health governance literature is essentially untethered to a theorized framework to illuminate or evaluate governance. This article ties global health justice and ethics to principles for governing the global health realm, developing a theoretical framework for global and domestic institutions and actors. (shrink)