In his thought-provoking book, Why Law Matters, Alon Harel defends two key claims: one ontological, the other axiological. First, he argues that constitutions and judicial review are necessary constituents of a just society. Second, he suggests that these institutions are not only means to the realization of worthy ends, but also non-instrumentally valuable. I agree with Harel that constitutions and judicial review have more than instrumental value, but I am not persuaded by his arguments in support of this conclusion. I (...) argue that Harel’s ontological claim is unsustainable, and that his axiological claim needs revision. Regarding the former, I show that constitutions and judicial review are only contingent constituents of a just society. Regarding the latter, I contest Harel’s specific account of the value of constitutions and judicial review. Harel grounds the non-instrumental value of constitutions in freedom as non-domination but, upon scrutiny, it emerges that their non-instrumental value lies elsewhere. Further, Harel holds that the non-instrumental value of judicial review stems from its embodying a right to a fair hearing. I argue that this right has non-instrumental value only under a particular set of circumstances. I thus conclude, contrary to Harel, that the non-instrumental value of judicial review is contingent on those circumstances obtaining. (shrink)

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 (...) areas for future research in the field. (shrink)

A globalized world, some argue, needs a global democracy. But there is considerable disagreement about whether global democracy is an ideal worth pursuing. One of the main grounds for scepticism is captured by the slogan: “No global demos, no global democracy.” The fact that a key precondition of democracy—a demos—is absent at the global level, some argue, speaks against the pursuit of global democracy. The paper discusses four interpretations of the skeptical slogan—each based on a specific account of the notion (...) of “the demos”—and concludes that none of them establishes that the global democratic ideal must be abandoned. In so doing, the paper (i) systematizes different types of objections against global democracy, thus bringing some clarity to an otherwise intricate debate and (ii) offers a robust but qualified defense of the global democratic ideal. (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)

This chapter describes how philosophical theorizing about justice can be connected with empirical research in the social sciences. We begin by drawing on some received distinctions between ideal and non-ideal approaches to theorizing justice along several different dimensions, showing how non-ideal approaches are needed to address normative aspects of real-world problems and to provide practical guidance. We argue that there are advantages to a transitional approach to justice focusing on manifest injustices, including the fact that it enables us to set (...) aside some reasonable disagreements about justice. The ‘bottom-up’ approach we advocate, for which we borrow Wolff’s term ‘real-world political philosophy’, is an empirically-informed normative analysis that attends to specific, identifiable injustices, and thus is partial, though not isolationist. We illustrate our approach by considering how different models of the nature of disability suggest different kinds of remedy for injustices faced by persons living with disabilities. We reflect on the nature and significance of vulnerabilities, and we assess the role of public opinion in normative theorizing, suggesting a particular significance for the opinions and experiences of marginalized groups. We finally reflect on the relevance of European legal and institutional frameworks for theorizing justice in Europe. (shrink)

Most political philosophers are reluctant to treat cultural rights as basic. Instead, the predominant view is that cultural interests are only important derivatively, in virtue of their contribution to some other interest. In this chapter I argue that political philosophers ought to follow international human rights norms regarding the importance of culture. Not only do international human rights courts and committees come to the right conclusion about the significance of culture, but, as importantly, they come to this conclusion because they (...) think about what cultural rights protect inthe right way. Contemporary political philosophers prefer to treat cultural rights as derivative in part because they tend to treat culture as a “resource” or a “good,” but this is a mistake. Cultural rights are better understood as protecting and promoting an activity. Respecting and promoting cultural participation is a constitutive element of showing respect for human dignity because, like free expression, political participation, and freedom of conscience, cultural participation is something persons do as part of making a life for themselves. (shrink)

I argue that there are liberal reasons to reject what I call “Global Individualism”, which is the conjunction of two views strongly associated with liberalism: moral individualism and social individualism. According to the first view, all moral properties are reducible to individual moral properties. The second holds that the social world is composed only of individual agents. My argument has the following structure: after suggesting that Global Individualism does not misrepresent liberalism, I draw on some recent insights in social ontology (...) to show that it is inconsistent with the satisfaction of an important liberal principle related to the protection of individual rights over time. As I hold, to solve this problem we need to accept group agents acting as moral agents, which in turn commits us to the weaker notion of normative individualism (a view that is consistent with the existence of some group moral properties). I conclude with the suggestion that even this solution is costly for liberalism, for the conjunction of group moral agency and normative individualism makes the latter unstable and compels liberals to a much less individualistic stance than expected. (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.

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)

This article argues that political realists have at least two strategies to provide distinctively political normative judgements that have nothing to do with morality. The first ground is instrumental normativity, which states that if we believe that something is a necessary means to a goal we have, we have a reason to do it. In politics, certain means are required by any ends we may intend to pursue. The second ground is epistemic normativity, stating that if something is true, this (...) gives us a reason to believe it. In politics, there are certain empirical regularities that ought to be acknowledged for what they are. Both sources are flawed. Instrumental normativity only requires coherence between attitudes and beliefs, and one can hang on to false beliefs to preserve attitudes incompatible with reality. I may desire to eschew power relations, and accordingly I may imagine politics to be like a camping trip. Epistemic normativity, on the other hand, operates critically, striking down existing normative claims. It shows us that politics is nothing like a camping trip, but it doesn’t tell us what we should do about it. We conclude by showing that if the two are taken together, they remedy each other’s flaws. (shrink)

Many commentators today lament the politicization of bioethics, but some suggest distinguishing among different kinds of politicization. This essay pursues that idea with reference to three traditions of political thought: liberalism, communitarianism, and republicanism. After briefly discussing the concept of politicization itself, the essay examines how each of these political traditions manifests itself in recent bioethics scholarship, focusing on the implications of each tradition for the design of government bioethics councils. The liberal emphasis on the irreducible plurality of values and (...) interests in modern societies, and the communitarian concern with the social dimensions of biotechnology, offer important insights for bioethics councils. The essay finds the most promise in the republican tradition, however, which emphasizes institutional mechanisms that allow bioethics councils to enrich but not dominate public deliberation, while ensuring that government decisions on bioethical issues are publicly accountable and contestable. (shrink)

There has been little debate in political philosophy about whether the intentions of governments matter to the legitimacy of their policies. This paper fills this gap. First, I provide a rigorous statement of political anti-intentionalism, the view that intentions do not matter to political legitimacy. I do so by building on analogous debates in moral philosophy. Second, I sketch some strategies to defend political anti-intentionalism, which I argue are promising and available to a wide range of theories of legitimacy. Third, (...) I show that the distinction has implications for debates surrounding neutrality and political liberalism. (shrink)

Political instrumentalism claims that the right to rule should be distributed such that justice is promoted best. Building on a distinction made by consequentialists in moral philosophy, I argue that instrumentalists should distinguish two levels of normative thinking about legitimacy, the critical and applied level. An indirect instrumentalism which acknowledges this distinction has significant advantages over simpler forms of instrumentalism that do not.

An individual's beliefs can be seen as rationally related to one another in a kind of web. These beliefs, however, may not form a single, seamless web. There may exist smaller, largely self-contained webs with few or no rational relations to the larger web. Such “webs of faith” make it possible for reasonable deliberators to persist in a disagreement even under ideal deliberative conditions. The possibility of reasonable disagreement challenges the assumption that rationality should lead to consensus and presents an (...) obstacle to the goals of liberal democracy. (shrink)

Proponents of public reason views hold that the exercise of political power ought to be acceptable to all reasonable citizens. This article elucidates the common structure shared by all public reason views, first by identifying a set of questions that all such views must answer and, second, by showing that the answers to these questions stand in a particular relationship to each other. In particular, we show that what we call the ‘rationale question’ is fundamental. This fact, and the common (...) structure more generally, are often overlooked or distorted within the literature. As a result, we argue, several prominent argumentative moves made by both critics and defenders of public reason are unsuccessful. Our overall conclusion is that discussions of public reason views would be more fruitful if they made consistent use of the common structure we identify. (shrink)

ABSTRACT On the surface, Diana Mutz's Hearing the Other Side is a work about empirical realities. But it is also an exercise in normative theory. Mutz's chief empirical findings are that people who are exposed to political disagreement tend to become less politically active and that, conversely, political activists tend not to hear views that challenge their own. These findings raise the question of whether participatory and deliberative ideals are compatible with each other, and, in addition, whether they are either (...) realistic or desirable. (shrink)

The debate between legal constitutionalists and critics of constitutional rights and judicial review is an old and lively one. While the protection of minorities is a pivotal aspect of this debate, the protection of disenfranchised minorities has received little attention. Policy-focused discussion—of the merits of the Human Rights Act in Britain for example—often cites protection of non-citizen migrants, but the philosophical debate does not. Non-citizen residents or ‘denizens’ therefore provide an interesting test case for the theory of rights as trumps (...) on ordinary representative politics. Are they the ultimate success story of the human rights framework? Or was Michael Walzer correct to describe government of denizens by citizens as a modern form of ‘tyranny’? This paper argues that neither liberal rights theorists nor democratic republicans provide a coherent response to the existence of denizens. Liberal rights theorists overstate the extent to which a politically powerless status can secure individual rights, while democratic republicans idealise the political process and wrongly assume that all those affected by laws are eligible for political participation. The paper outlines an alternative model for assessing the accountability of states to their non-citizen population, informed by the republican ideal of non-domination. It identifies gaps in state accountability to denizens–such as where there is inadequate diplomatic protection—and argues that these gaps are particularly troubling if their exit costs of leaving the state are high. (shrink)

Efficiency requires legislative political institutions. There are many ways efficiency can be promoted, and so an ongoing legislative institution is necessary to resolve this choice in a politically sustainable and economically flexible way. This poses serious problems for classical liberal proposals to constitutionally protect markets from government intervention, as seen in the work of Ilya Somin, Guido Pincione & Fernando Tesón and others. The argument for the political nature of efficiency is set out in terms of both Pareto optimality and (...) aggregate welfare maximisation, and similar arguments can be generalised to other social values. (shrink)

Managers often have discretion in interpreting their ethical requirements, and they should seek democratic guidance in doing so. The undemocratic nature of managerial ethical discretion is shown to be a recurring problem in business ethics. Joseph Heath’s market failures approach (MFA) is introduced as a theory better positioned to deal with this problem than other views. However, due to epistemic uncertainty and conceptual indeterminacy, the MFA is shown to allow a much wider range of managerial discretion than initially appears. The (...) paper explores how this range can be narrowed down with democratic input, comparing models based on formal state institutions and on the informal public sphere. A case study from the pharmaceutical industry illustrates the merits of the informal public sphere approach. (shrink)

Mark Pennington argues political systems should be decentralized in order to facilitate experimental learning about distributive justice. Pointing out the problems with Pennington's Hayekian formulation, I reframe his argument as an extension of the Millian idea of 'experiments in living.' However, the experimental case for decentralization is limited in several ways. Even if decentralization improves our knowledge about justice, it impedes the actual implementation of all conceptions of justice other than libertarianism. I conclude by arguing for the compatibility of egalitarian (...) redistribution with the epistemic virtues of markets pointed out by Hayek. (shrink)

The article elaborates an original intertwined reading of republican theory, deliberative democracy and political equality. It argues that republicans, deliberative democrats and egalitarian scholars have not paid sufficient attention to a number of features present in these bodies of scholarships that relate them in mutually beneficial ways. It shows that republicanism and deliberative democracy are related in mutually beneficial ways, it makes those relations explicit, and it deals with potential objections against them. Additionally, it elaborates an egalitarian principle underpinning the (...) resulting model that I label Equality of Access and Deliberation. The upshot of these considerations is a novel and mutually reinforcing interrelated three-tiered theoretical and institutional proposal. (shrink)

Cosmopolitans typically argue that the realization of cosmopolitan ideals requires the creation of global political institutions of some kind. While the precise nature of the necessary institutions is widely discussed, the problem of the transition to such an order has received less attention. In this paper, we address what we take to be a crucial aspect of the problem of transition: we argue that it involves a moral coordination problem because there are several morally equivalent paths to reform the existing (...) order, but suitably placed and properly motivated political agents need to converge on a single route for the transition to be successful. It is, however, unclear how such a convergence can take place since the duty to create global institutions does not single out any coordination point. We draw on the so-called theory of hegemonic stability to address this problem and conceptualize what we call the hegemonic transition. From an explanatory point of view, we rely on the theory’s insights to explain how a hegemon may contribute to the creation of a rules-based international order by providing salient coordination points and accordingly, enabling coordination among states. From the normative point of view, we identify necessary conditions for the hegemonic transition to be morally permissible. To the extent that these conditions obtain, other states have pro tanto moral reasons to follow the salient coordination point provided by the leading state. (shrink)

The question raised in this paper is whether legal rights to vote are also moral rights to vote. The challenge to the justification of a moral right to vote is that it is not clear that the vote is instrumental to the preservation of some critical interest of the voter. Because a single vote has ‘no impact’ on electoral outcomes, the right to vote is unlikely to serve the interests of the individual. The account developed in this paper holds that (...) moral voting rights can be justified once we acknowledge that voting by a sub-set of citizens is among the necessary preconditions for democratic institutions making a significant difference to their collective interests. The justification of a moral right to vote does not, then, apply to each individual citizen but only to a sub-set of them. In order to justify inclusive moral voting rights, the further consideration must be added that individuals have critical interests in public recognition of equal status. An inclusive moral right to vote accordingly depends on both collective interest in the outcomes of democratic institutions and on individual interest in equal recognition. (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)

A defining feature of democracy is the inclusion of members of the political association. However, the corresponding right to exclusion has attracted undeservedly scant attention in recent debates. In this paper, the nature of the right to exclusion is explored. On the assumption that inclusion requires the allocation of legal power-rights to the people entitled to participate in the making of collective decisions, two conceptions of the right to exclusion are identified: the liberty-right to exclude and the claim-right to exclude. (...) The choice between them depends on the nature of the interests that justifies the power-rights of people included. The position is defended that if rights to democratic participation are power-rights, we must also accept that the people included have claim-rights to the exclusion of non-members. (shrink)

This article challenges the association between realist methodology and ideals of legitimacy. Many who seek a more “realistic” or “political” approach to political theory replace the familiar orientation towards a state of justice with a structurally similar orientation towards a state of legitimacy. As a result, they fail to provide more reliable practical guidance, and wrongly displace radical demands. Rather than orienting action towards any state of affairs, I suggest that a more practically useful approach to political theory would directly (...) address judgments, by comparing the concrete possibilities for action faced by real political actors. (shrink)

In this article we defend the view that, on the All Affected Principle of voting rights, the weight of a person’s vote on a decision should be determined by and only by the degree to which that dec...

I aim to explain why majority voting can be assumed to have an epistemic edge over lottery voting. This would provide support for majority voting as the appropriate decision mechanism for deliberative epistemic accounts of democracy. To argue my point, I first recall the usual arguments for majority voting: maximal decisiveness, fairness as anonymity, and minimal decisiveness. I then show how these arguments are over inclusive as they also support lottery voting. I then present a framework to measure accuracy so (...) as to compare the two decision mechanisms. I go over four arguments for lottery voting and three arguments for majority voting that support their respective accuracy. Lottery voting is then shown to have, compared to majority voting, a decreased probability of discrimination. That is, I argue that with lottery voting it is less probable under conditions of normal politics that if the procedure selects X, X is reasonable. I then provide two case scenarios for each voting mechanism that illustrate my point. (shrink)

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 (...) on how abstract and idealized political theory should be, and assesses the significance of disagreement in political theory. The discussion is carried out from an angle inspired by the philosophy of science. (shrink)

This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

This chapter describes a philosophical approach to theorizing justice, mapping out some main strands of the tradition leading up to contemporary political philosophy. We first briefly discuss what distinguishes a philosophical approach to justice from other possible approaches to justice, by explaining the normative focus of philosophical theories of justice – that is, a focus on questions not about how things actually are, but about how things ought to be. Next, we explain what sorts of methods philosophers use to justify (...) theories of justice. Following this, in the longest section, we highlight major questions about justice that have drawn the attention of philosophers, and indicate how competing conceptions of justice have arisen from differing answers to these questions. The goal here is not to answer but to elucidate some of the larger questions about justice, as well as to establish a framework for understanding and distinguishing different kinds of claims about justice and some of the relations between them. (shrink)

Institutions to address short-termism in public policymaking and to more suitably discharge our duties toward future generations have elicited much recent normative research, which this chapter surveys. It focuses on two prominent institutions: insulating devices, which seek to mitigate short-termist electoral pressures by transferring authority away to independent bodies, and constraining devices, which seek to bind elected officials to intergenerationally fair rules from which deviation is costly. The chapter first discusses sufficientarian, egalitarian, and prioritarian theories of our duties toward future (...) generations, and how an excessive focus on the short term in policymaking may hinder that such duties be fulfilled. It then surveys constraining and insulating devices, and inspects their effectiveness to address the epistemic, motivational, and institutional drivers of political short-termism as well as their intra- and intergenerational legitimacy. (shrink)

This chapter assesses John Gray’s modus vivendi-based justification for liberalism. I argue that his approach is preferable to the more orthodox deontological or teleological justificatory strategies, at least because of the way it can deal with the problem of diversity. But then I show how that is not good news for liberalism, for grounding liberal political authority in a modus vivendi undermines liberalism’s aspiration to occupy a privileged normative position vis-à-vis other kinds of regimes. So modus vivendi can save liberalism (...) from moralism, but at cost many liberals will not be prepared to pay. (shrink)

Does political decision-making require experts or can a democracy be trusted to make correct decisions? This question has a long-standing tradition in political philosophy, going back at least to Plato’s Republic. Critics of democracy tend to argue that democracy cannot be trusted in this way while advocates tend to argue that it can. Both camps agree that it is the epistemic quality of the outcomes of political decision-making processes that underpins the legitimacy of political institutions. In recent political philosophy, epistemic (...) democrats have embraced this instrumentalist way of thinking about democracy. In this chapter, I argue that the attempt to defend democracy on epistemic instrumentalist grounds is self-undermining. I also develop an alternative – procedural – epistemic defence of democracy. I show that there is a prima facie epistemic case for democracy when there is no procedure-independent epistemic authority on the issue to be decided. (shrink)

Nossa seleção de verbetes parte do interesse de cada pesquisador e os dispomos de maneira histórico-cronológica e, ao mesmo tempo, temática. O verbete de Melissa Lane, “Filosofia Política Antiga” vai da abrangência da política entre os gregos até a república e o império, às portas da cristianização. A “Filosofia Política Medieval”, de John Kilcullen e Jonathan Robinson, é o tópico que mais demanda espaço na nossa seleção em virtude das disputas intrínsecas ao período, da recepção de Aristóteles pelo medievo e (...) da tensão entre poder Papal e Civil. No verbete “Liberalismo”, de Gerald Gaus, Shane Courtland e David Schmidtz, vemos as fontes fundantes da Filosofia Política da modernidade. As ideias de liberdade negativa e positiva se coadunam com a Ética Liberal e sua influência sobre a abrangência do valor fundamental da liberdade individual diante das políticas públicas. O texto de Ian Carter, “Liberdade Positiva e Liberdade Negativa”, expõe o paradoxo da liberdade em suas concepções valorativas e neutra, muito úteis para compreender os problemas políticos que enfrentamos hoje. Por fim, Bas Van Der Vossen no texto “Libertarianismo” trata das noções tensas entre Estado e indivíduos. A concepção de “liberdade de si”, genuinamente negativa, ganha destaque justificatório. Jackie Scully, no verbete Bioética Feminista, exemplifica o valor da influência dessas correntes no âmago de todos os contemporâneos. Sua escrita homenageia postumamente Anne Donchin com um apanhado histórico da luta de inserção de políticas feministas na pesquisa acadêmica global. No verbete “Democracia”, os professores brasileiros Gustavo Dalaqua e Alberto Ribeiro Barros acrescentaram tópicos importantes ao tema geral, respectivamente: “Construtivismo Representativo vs. Representação Descritiva” e “Democracia Contestatória de Philip Pettit”. O texto de Thomas Christiano perpassa os principais argumentos de justificação política contra e a favor da democracia ocidental, com foco central nas concepções de liberdade e igualdade. Os verbetes dispostos nessa seleção de textos são tendenciosos na medida que expressam o interesse genuíno de cada pesquisador com os assuntos relevantes em suas pesquisas. Em virtude disso, a escolha “adota um lado” em detrimento de outros – mais especificamente: de outro que poderia ser mais “progressista”. Por si só, o livro já nasce reclamando um segundo volume, que será providenciado. Colocamos de lado qualquer exigência de “imparcialidade”, algo que não existe na Filosofia, muito menos na Filosofia Política. Sobressai, nesse aspecto, o caráter reflexivo que o assunto exige e a importância do assunto, sem o qual não teríamos a modernas concepções de representatividade, as teorias da justiça ou mesmo as ciências sociais. Um outro volume, portanto, se faz imperativo, por conta da abrangência da própria SEP e do respeito a seu projeto inicial, genuinamente um plano plural. (shrink)

Why should one person obey another? Why (to ask the question from the first-person perspective) ought I to submit to another and follow her judgment rather than my own? In modern political thought, which denies that some are born rulers and others are born to be ruled, the most prominent answer has been: “Because I have consented to her authority.” By making authority conditional on the subjects’ consent, political philosophers have sought to reconcile authority’s hierarchical structure with the equal moral (...) standing of governor and governed. Yet such consent accounts of authority have long been deemed problematic on a number of grounds, not the least of which is that few citizens have given their consent to the state under whose laws they live. So unless we are willing to deny the state’s authority over those who have not consented, or revert to the pre-modern assumption of a natural political hierarchy, we must find another way of reconciling authority with our standing as free and equal moral agents. In recent political and legal philosophy, the most influential solution to this problem has been Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority, according to which legitimate authority, while it does not require the consent of the governed, must exist for their sake, or serve them. The normal way to justify someone’s authority, on the service conception, is to show that, by treating her directives as binding, the subjects are likely better to conform to reasons that apply to them anyway. The service conception has, however, recently been criticized (by, among others, Thomas Christiano, Scott Hershovitz, and Jeremy Waldron) for being insufficiently attuned to the significance that procedural, and in particular democratic, features of political and legal institutions have for the justification of their authority. If these ‘democratic critics’ are right, then two commitments that many in the liberal-democratic tradition may find independently attractive turn out to be in tension: the liberal idea that authority is normally legitimate only insofar as it serves its subjects, and the democratic idea that legitimate authority can (and regularly does) rest on fair procedures. In this article I argue that the critics’ arguments rest on a misunderstanding of the service conception; yet their worries point the way to an under-appreciated and interesting view of democracy as an authoritative arbitration procedure. After introducing the service conception’s view of justified authority, I briefly distinguish a broad and a narrow interpretation of it, and suggest that we should embrace the latter to make sense of the idea that political authority serves its subjects (Section I). Next I turn to the objection raised by the democratic critics: the service conception, they say, cannot make room for the intrinsic fairness of democratic procedures because it is preoccupied with the quality of outcomes (Section II). But, I argue, the objection rests on an illicit identification of two different kinds of outcomes: the outcome of the decision-making procedure on the one hand, the outcome or result of treating that first outcome as authoritative on the other. Distinguishing between these is crucial for an adequate understanding of democracy’s authority. While the service conception is indeed organized around the latter, this does not commit it to an exclusive concern with the former; yet it is a singular commitment to the former that is problematic from a democratic point of view (Section III). To bring home this point, I sketch a model of authority as arbitration that is frequently overlooked in recent discussions of authority even though it is centrally concerned with procedural (and ultimately democratic) values and fits squarely into the service conception of authority (Section IV). (shrink)

Political liberalism’s central commitments to recognizing reasonable pluralism and institutionalizing a substantive conception of justice are inconsistent. If reasonable pluralism applies to conceptions of justice as it applies to conceptions of the good, then some reasonable people will reject even many liberal conceptions of justice as unreasonable. If so, then imposing these conceptions of justice on citizens violates the liberal principle of legitimacy and related public justification requirements. This problem of justice pluralism requires that political liberals abandon their commitment to (...) institutionalizing a substantive conception of justice. Instead, political justification should be limited to the public justification of a modest scheme of rights and a set of constitutional rules. Justice pluralism chastens the ambitions of political liberalism while pushing the political liberal research program in new and promising directions. (shrink)

Der neue politische Realismus erkennt in John Rawls einen Erzfeind. In jüngeren Debatten scheint oft evident zu sein, dass gerade Eine Theorie der Gerechtigkeit exemplarisch für einen Moralismus sei, der die politische Wirklichkeit verzerre. Doch die Sache ist kompliziert. In diesem Aufsatz blicke ich zurück auf sein Frühwerk im Lichte dieser Kritik. Dabei geht es mir um vier Einwände: dass Rawls’ Idealtheorie kein Ratgeber für das politische Handeln und ideologisch verblendet sei; Macht und ihre Legitimierbarkeit nicht überzeugend konzipiere; die Bedeutung (...) politischer Konflikte und Uneinigkeit über den Inhalt der Gerechtigkeit unterschätze; und verkenne, dass eine wahrlich politische Theorie auf die Geschichte eingehen müsse. Wie stichhaltig sind diese Vorwürfe und was fördern sie zutage? Der Aufsatz zeigt, dass selbst Rawls’ erstes Hauptwerk nicht so einfach eines Moralismus überführt werden kann, wie es auf den ersten Blick den Anschein hat. Damit meine ich nicht, dass die Einwände allesamt keinen Biss hätten. Doch werden die Rechtfertigungslasten der Rawls’schen Gerechtigkeitstheorie nicht immer gebührend berücksichtigt; und manche Konterpunkte sind gerade bei wichtigen philosophischen Weggabelungen nicht ausreichend mit argumentativer Substanz untermauert. Wer einen Anti-Moralismus verficht, wofür es gute Gründe gibt, sollte weiterhin das konstruktive Gespräch auch mit dem frühen Rawls suchen und auf die internen Spannungen sowie realistischen Konzessionen seines Egalitarismus achten. (shrink)

It is common to encounter the criticism that Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority is flawed because it appears to justify too much. This essay examines the extent to which the service conception accommodates this critique. Two variants of this critical strategy are considered. The first, exemplified by Kenneth Einar Himma, alleges that the service conception fails to conceptualize substantive limits on the legitimate exercise of authority. This variant fails; Raz has elucidated substantive limits on jurisdiction within the service conception (...) of authority, albeit reluctantly and equivocally. The second, exemplified by Scott Hershovitz, alleges that the service conception fails to conceptualize procedural limits on the legitimate exercise of authority. He objects that the normal justification thesis fails to deny legitimacy to rational and expert dictators. This argument is more potent, but its force is concealed when it is aimed at the normal justification thesis rather than the quite separate jurisdictional limits of Raz’s theory. Clarifying those jurisdictional aspects of the service conception shows why the first argument fails and exposes the real strength of the second. Both variants have important consequences for our understanding of the service conception. (shrink)

Constitutions enshrine the fundamental values of a people and they build a framework for a state’s public policy. With regard to generational change, their endurance gives rise to two interlinked concerns: the sovereignty concern and the forgone welfare concern. If constitutions are intergenerational contracts, how (in)flexible should they be? This article discusses perpetual constitutions, sunset constitutions, constitutional reform commissions and constitutional conventions, both historically and analytically. It arrives at the conclusion that very rigid constitutions are incompatible with the principle of (...) intergenerational justice. Recurring constitutional reform commissions in fixed time intervals would give each generation of citizens a say without leaning too much to the side of flexibility. (shrink)

The passage of time influences the content of the law and therefore also the validity of legal arguments. This is true even for charter-arguments, despite the widely held view that constitutional law is made to last. In this paper, I investigate the reason why the sanctity-of life argument against physician assisted suicide lost its validity between the Supreme Court decision in Rodriguez v. British Columbia in 1993 and Carter v. Canada in 2015. I suggest that a rhetorical approach to argument (...) evaluation is the best basis for a satisfying explanation. (shrink)

This paper is part of a broader argument that seeks to offer a justification for political authority. It aims to investigate the role of truth in political argument and to place the problem of reasonable disagreement. The argument focuses on the possibility of political deliberation, that figures as a stage of political decision-making. It has to do with a confrontation between incompatible substantive beliefs which, however, all seem to be reasonable. How can citizens holding incompatible beliefs engage in an enterprise (...) of justifying them to one another? That is the question. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the view that, surprisingly, the more citizens deliberate about politics, the less likely they are to participate in the realm of the political, and vice versa. In the first part of the paper, I approach the problem from the perspective of the paradox of voting, the claim that voting itself is instrumentally irrational because of the very low probability that a single vote will make any difference at the elections. In the second part of the (...) paper, I argue that rather than analyzing voting instrumentally, it is better to view it as part of the civic commitments that constitute what it means to be a citizen in a democratic society. The act of voting is not primarily an individual?s attempt to decisively influence any particular outcome, but an affirmation of the key practice that upholds the democratic society in which citizens play a part. This reveals a meta-paradox of voting. Namely, to not vote is to exhibit a type of behavior that implies acceptance of democracy simultaneously with rejecting its defining component. Because of that, I will claim, not voting is itself irrational. In light of that conclusion, in the third part of the paper, I explore the extant divide between deliberation and participation by referring back to the analysis of civic commitments. Whereas participation without deliberating reveals ideological bias, deliberation without participation expresses a lack of understanding of what it means to be a citizen. The way to connect them is to engage in a process of attaining reflective equilibrium between the two, starting from the practice of deliberation that would be fully informed by the awareness of our democratic commitments and disconnected from ideologically motivated participation. (shrink)

This paper studies how legal choices, and in particular legislative determinations, need to consider multiple rights and values, and can be assessed accordingly. First it is argued that legal norms (and in particular constitutional right-norms) often prescribe the pursuit of goals, which may be in conflict one with another. Then a model of teleological reasoning is brought to bear on choices affecting different goals, among which those prescribed by constitutional norms. An analytical framework is provided for evaluating such choices with (...) regard to possible alternatives. The assessment of legislative choices according to proportionality is then considered, and is modelled using the provided analytical framework. Finally, the framework is expanded to include the ideas of reasonableness and institutional deference, and the corresponding margins of appreciation. (shrink)