Just War Theory debates discussing the principle of the Moral Equality of Combatants involve the notion of Invincible Ignorance; the claim that warfi ghters are morally excused for participating in an unjust war because of their epistemic limitations. Conditions of military deployment may indeed lead to genuinely insurmountable epistemic limitations. In other cases, these may be overcome. This paper provides a preliminary sketch of heuristics designed to allow a combatant to judge whether or not his war is just. It delineates (...) the sets of relevant facts uncontroversially accessible and inaccessible to contemporary professional soldiers. Relevant facts outside these two sets should by default be treated as inaccessible until proven otherwise. Even such a rudimentary heuristic created in this way demonstrates that practical recommendations of MEC-renouncing Just War Theory are not too challenging to follow and still signifi cantly impact a compliant combatant’s behavior. (shrink)

This article illuminates the relationship between John Rawls' and Michael Walzer's accounts of non-domestic justice by tracing its connection to their domestic relationship. More precisely, it places the celebrated positional shifts that characterize the latter within the context of the fundamental justificatory tension between their projects which endures: reason vs trust; and then juxtaposes this justificatory tension and their non-domestic political prescriptions. Such contextualization is important to the clarification of the pair's non-domestic relationship since it enables the observation that despite (...) this enduring justificatory tension these political prescriptions are remarkably similar. (shrink)

This article asks whether states have a right to close their borders because of their right to self-determination, as proposed recently by Christopher Wellman, Michael Walzer, and others. It asks the fundamental question whether self-determination can, in even its most unrestricted form, support the exclusion of immigrants. I argue that the answer is no. To show this, I construct three different ways in which one might use the idea of self-determination to justify immigration restrictions and show that each of these (...) arguments fails. My conclusion is that the nature and value of self-determination have to do with the conditions of genuine self-government, not membership of political society. Consequently, the demand for open borders is fully consistent with respect to self-determination. (shrink)

Smith provides a summary of Walzer's work, with particular emphasis on his method of moral argument. Walzer's argument emphasizes the importance of moral judgment based on the principle of human rights rather than on utilitarian calculation.

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)

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)

This article defends an ethics of care approach to global justice, which begins with an empirically informed account of injustices resulting from the workings and effects of contemporary neo-liberalism and hegemonic masculinities. Dominant distributive approaches to global justice see the unequal distribution of resources or ?primary goods? as the basic source of injustice. Crucially, however, most of these liberal theories do not challenge the basic structural and ideational ?frames? that govern the global political economy. Instead, they seek to ?correct? unjust (...) patterns of distribution according to an ideal theory. Subjects in these theories are generally understood as abstract, autonomous and impartial; this is in contrast to an ethics of care, which starts with an ontology of the subject as embodied, vulnerable and relational. The first part of this article explores the role and nature of theory in relation to the task of considering injustice on a global scale and offers a critique of the narrow focus in traditional theories of justice on the distribution of ?primary goods?. The second part considers the effects of neo-liberal globalization and hegemonic masculinities on global working families in order to illustrate the relationship between care and global justice. The final section sketches out a care-ethics approach to global injustice, focusing on three features: first, care as a relational approach; second, the focus in care ethics on intersecting structures of injustice; and third, care as a multi-scalar approach to global injustice. (shrink)

Kant deploys analogies from private law in describing relations between states. I explore the relation between these analogies and the broader Kantian idea of the distinctively public nature of a rightful condition, in order to explain why states, understood as public things, stand in horizontal, private legal relations without themselves being private. I use this analysis to explore the international law analogues of the three titles of private right, explaining how territory differs from property, treaty from contract and the specific (...) form of status relations between nations. I conclude with a brief discussion of the ongoing relevance of these horizontal relations. (shrink)

This essay examines the relevance of eschatological themes to the political theory of Michael Walzer. A distinctive eschatological hope is identified, which functions as a guide to thought throughout Walzer's writings, even though he seldom expresses it (and sometimes denies it). This analysis of Walzer's work demonstrates that eschatology is relevant to the contemporary discussion of justice, and conversely, that contemporary political theory can be a guide for the construction and evaluation of theological doctrines of eschatology. Any eschatology that enters (...) into political debate in a modern, pluralistic society like the United States, however, must have at least one important characteristic: it must be informed by a profound sense of limitation. (shrink)

Immediately after the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon, and a plane over Pennsylvania, many in the West, but particularly the United States of America, felt urgently the pain of the question ‘Why do they hate us?’ in relation both to those who directly perpetrated those dreadful events and to those who sympathised with their perpetrators. In this paper, I will offer an account of some of the conceptual issues at stake in addressing (...) seriously such a question as an opportunity for self-examination. I will argue that questions of this kind are the very warp and weft of international relations at their most serious levels and that the often glib demonisation of ‘them’ who hate us serves us badly in coming to terms with the problems the West faces in its relations with the Muslim world. I use this most pressing of international relations issues as a test of the prospects of Utilitarianism as a viable ‘ethics of international relations’ arguing that its notions of the good and its resources for criticism of desires and preferences are a cause for scandal in our inter-cultural negotiations with other traditions of civilization, particularly the Muslim civilization. In many ways, rather than being part of the solution, Utilitarianism is part of the problem. (shrink)

This paper addresses the justice of national self-determination claims and defends a right to self-determination rendered as both a primary right, meaning that it does not require grievances or injustices, and a prima facie right, meaning that it is defeasible by the presence of injustices or the prospect of baneful consequences. The paper’s distinct contribution lies in the ground of this right, arguing that autonomy is not alone sufficient and that a better grounding can be found in a common civic (...) life, understood as a species of the basic good of interpersonal harmony. This basic good, and the norm of self-determination that protects it, rest on the foundation of natural law. The paper manifests the collection’s focus on liberty and security by exploring the claims for liberty proffered by a group desiring collective political autonomy, claims that bear upon the security of the group’s members, the security and liberty of minorities and of people liable to be subjected to illiberal practices, and the security of all who would experience war and violence in conflicts over self-determination. (shrink)

In his Just and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer claims that his theory of just war is based on the rights of individuals to life and liberty. This is not the case. Walzer in fact bases his theory of jus ad bellum on the supreme rights of supra-individual political communities. According to his theory of jus ad bellum, the rights of political communities are of utmost importance, and individuals can be sacrificed for the sake of these communal rights. At the same (...) time, Walzer bases his theory of jus in bello on the supreme rights of individuals to life and liberty. According to his theory of jus in bello, the rights of individuals are of utmost importance, and political communities can never permissibly violate them in war. Thus, Walzer’s theory of just war is based on two incompatible theories of justice. This explains why Walzer’s theory produces incoherent practical prescriptions in cases of supreme emergencies. Furthermore, it is impossible for Walzer to base his theory of jus ad bellum on the rights of individuals as he conceives them. The theory of jus ad bellum holds that soldiers are obligated to obey the commands of their political superiors. However, this obligation violates the rights of individuals in a number of respects. This is why Walzer does not base the theory of jus ad bellum on individual rights, and produces an incoherent theory. (shrink)

RésuméLe pacifisme a toujours constitué une approche respectable et influente à l'éthique de la guerre et de la paix. On veut ici, à partir de la littérature récente, en proposer une nouvelle évaluation. Plus précisément, l'article a deux objectifs: proposer une présentation rigoureuse et charitable des thèses pacifistes; et avancer, dans la perspective de la théorie contemporaine de la juste guerre, une critique puissante et détaillée des thèses en question.

This short reply to my critics begins with four issues concerning my conception of the people’s integrity. I clarify how general morality and, more specifically, liberal political morality, relate to my account of collective integrity. I then turn to address several questions that the critics raise regarding my conception of the people’s property.

The Arab Spring has generated a variety of responses from the West. While broad political support was voiced for uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, the responses to protests in Bahrain and Morocco were muted. The swift decision to intervene in Libya stands in marked contrast to the ongoing hand-wringing on Syria. While political realists might see these contradictions as evidence that geopolitical concerns determine foreign policy, from an ethical point of view these responses also reveal a fundamental tension in (...) Western thinking about rebellion. On one hand, rebellion is viewed with a distrustful eye—as a disruptive, chaotic force that threatens to destroy the day-to-day order on which civilization is built. On the other, rebellion is perceived more optimistically—as a regenerative, creative force that can leave a better civilization in its wake. These two radically disparate ways of thinking about rebellion have deep philosophical and theological roots. The pessimistic view has historically dominated just war thought, as James Turner Johnson's contribution to this roundtable illustrates; whereas the perspective of Enlightenment liberalism offers a more optimistic judgment, as found, for example, in the works of Locke and Rousseau. (shrink)

Most discussions of the relationship between liberty and security focus on the idea that enhancing citizens’ security may require imposing constraints on their civil liberties. This paper explores the question of how measures to enhance security stand vis à vis the idea of political liberty, i.e. the idea of citizens’ collectively directing the power of their state. It distinguishes two models whereby citizens might enact that ideal of self-rule and argues that with respect to issues of national security, the less (...) direct model, which entrusts political agents to make decisions beyond direct democratic input, will often be more appropriate. It argues as well that various practices often seen as fundamentally at odds with the ideal of rule by the people are in fact consistent with a reasonable construal of that ideal. It concludes by outlining various criteria that would have to be met for such practices to be morally permissible in democratic states. (shrink)

The way citizens regard and treat one another in everyday life, even when they are not engaged in straightforwardly “political” activities, matters for achieving democratic ideals. This claim provokes an underexamined unease in many. Here I articulate these concerns, which I argue are prompted by the approaches most often associated with these issues. Such theories, like democratic communitarianism, require problematic sorts of unity in everyday social life. To avoid these difficulties, I offer an alternative, called procedural democratic informal politics, which (...) allows democrats to evaluate everyday life without demanding questionable forms of unity within it. (shrink)

A slew of recent political theorists—many taking their cue from the political writings of Bernard Williams—have recently contended that political normativity is its own kind of normativity, distinct from moral normativity. In this article, we first attempt to clarify what this claim amounts to and then reconstruct and interrogate five major arguments for it. We contend that all these arguments are unconvincing and fail to establish a sense in which political normativity is genuinely separate from morality.

When studying the feasibility and justice of basic income, researchers usually assume that policymakers would be introducing the unconditional benefit to a closed economic entity. When contemplating the introduction of a universal policy, few researchers take into consideration the fact that citizens and foreigners migrate, and that this movement alters the size and skill structure of the population. This article addresses this oversight by analyzing how basic income schemes based on residence or citizenship may affect tax base, wages, and employment (...) while incorporating migration incentives. The discussion is based upon neoclassical labor supply and migration theory and informed by the conjectured economic effects from a normative perspective. This research suggests that a basic income would create migration incentives that reduce the tax base, leading us to question this policy’s feasibility. Moreover, the flow-on effects of migration call into question the justice of both residence-based and citizenship-based basic income schemes. Therefore, this article sheds light on how basic income’s feasibility and justice relate to each other and identifies the benefits and further opportunities for interdisciplinary social policy research. (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that at least some states possess a moral right against external intervention in their domestic affairs and all human rights violations give members of the international community reasons to undertake preventive or remedial action against offending states. No state, however, currently protects or could reasonably be expected to protect its subjects’ human rights to a perfect degree. In view of this reality, many have found it difficult to explain how any existing or readily foreseeable state could (...) enjoy a moral right of nonintervention without denying the normative force of human rights. This article seeks to reconcile these apparently incompatible commitments by arguing that, in addition to acting in defense of human rights, outsiders must be appropriately responsive to individuals’ distinct and potentially countervailing interests in collective self-determination. I show that, under certain demanding but not unrealistic conditions, individuals’ interests in self-determination are of sufficient weight not simply to ground a judgment against intervention in particular cases but to generate arobust right of nonintervention on the part of some states that nevertheless fail to secure perfect protection of their subjects’ human rights. (shrink)

We are not cosmopolitans, if by cosmopolitan we mean that we are willing to prioritize equally the needs of those near and far. Here, I argue that cosmopolitanism has yet to wrestle with the motivational challenges it faces: any good moral theory must be one that well-meaning people will be motivated to adopt. Some cosmopolitans suggest that the principles of cosmopolitanism are themselves sufficient to motivate compliance with them. This argument is flawed, for precisely the reasons that motivate this paper (...) - we are cosmopolitan neither in our attitudes nor in our behaviors towards others. Other cosmopolitans suggest that 'global solidarity' is sufficient to generate a commitment to carrying out duties towards others. These latter efforts implicitly rely on insights best captured by the nationalist thesis, that is, that national communities are the best vehicles, morally speaking, through which individuals can carry out their obligations to others. I consider, and refute, two objections to my argument: first, that it is guilty of a 'time-lag fallacy' and, second, that it ignores an emergent cosmopolitan attitude among global citizens. (shrink)

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 (...) the ‘applied morality’ approach to political theory that realists oppose. Instead, realism should be methodologically orientated around what I term ‘empirically constitutive political realities’ - enduring features of real political contexts that are systematically consequential in their normative implications. Realists can persuasively argue that such empirically constitutive political realities must be attended to in political theory-building, and not merely treated as a context in which independently formulated moral theories are simply applied. This framing of realism accords real politics a genuinely foundational theoretical role, but without requiring any contentious metaethical stance about a non-moral political normativity. I explain some methodological implications that follow for realism – in particular the need to prioritise empirically grounded theorisation of real political contexts over abstract and rather essentialist claims about ‘the political’. I also argue that such a framing of realism helps engender a more accurate, less divisive, and more pluralist conception of methodological debates within political theory. (shrink)

International organizations and bilateral donors often tie financial assistance to the undertaking of political and economic reforms–a practice known as conditionality. In recent years, the use of good governance conditionality has provoked controversy in the academic and policy worlds. So far, the issue of whether conditionality is effective in achieving compliance with good governance norms has occupied center stage in the debate. However, whether it is morally defensible to attach political conditions to financial assistance has largely been taken for granted.This (...) article explores the extent to which it is morally defensible to attach good governance conditions to aid and loans in international society. It argues that the use of conditionality should be limited for two reasons. First, there is an unavoidable tension between conditionality and rights to self-determination. Second, focusing on conditionality can obscure the fact that the rules of the international economy are no less contestable than the governance of individual states, and, in turn, are in just as great a need of reform. This leads to two main conclusions. First, the use of conditionality should now be rooted in a conception of basic rights and complemented by more equitable rules in the global economy. Second, the attempt to make good governance within states an issue of global concern must be accompanied by greater democratization of the international financial institutions. (shrink)

The mass killings, large-scale gang rape and large-scale expulsion of the Rohingyas from Myanmar constitute one of the most repugnant world events in recent years. This article addresses the question of whether armed humanitarian intervention would have been morally permissible to protect the Rohingyas. It approaches the question from the perspective of the jus ad bellum criteria of just war theory. This approach does not yield a definitive answer because knowing whether certain jus ad bellum conditions might have been satisfied (...) is difficult to judge without detailed knowledge of military intelligence assessments. Nevertheless, I argue that there was just cause for intervention according to both liberal and communitarian perspectives; that legitimate authority in the form of United Nations Security Council authorization would not have been morally necessary; that it is doubtful whether permissible intervention would have required humanitarian intent; that in late August 2017, intervention might well have been a last resort, but that morally relevant facts suggest intervention might have been disproportionate and lacked a reasonable chance of success, such that, all things considered, it would have perhaps been impermissible. -/- (Free access via third external link). (shrink)

The legitimacy of humanitarian intervention has been contested for more than a century, yet pressure for such intervention persists. Normative evolution and institutional design have been closely linked since the first debates over humanitarian intervention more than a century ago. Three norms have competed in shaping state practice and the normative discourse: human rights, peace preservation, and sovereignty. The rebalancing of these norms over time, most recently as the state’s responsibility to protect, has reflected specific international institutional environments. The contemporary (...) legitimacy of humanitarian intervention is based on UN Security Council authorization of the use of force. Although the Security Council is often viewed as representative of great-power influence, international acceptance of its role is based on the role of non-permanent members and their support for the sovereignty norm. The current rebalanced norms supporting humanitarian intervention, institutional bias that protects state sovereignty, and the changing character of mass violence may undermine the tenuous contemporary legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. Normative adjustments and new institutional designs are required to insure the legitimacy of international action that protects populations against mass violence. (shrink)

Hendrickson takes issue with Walzer's treatment of intervention, self-determination, and the legitimate aims of war, stating that Walzer's framework is permissive and ambiguous and using such a just war theory may lead to significant problems.

This paper argues that the reason why political leadership often involves dirty hands is because of its relationship with violence. To make the case, it maintains that violent means create and assert a form of dominating power that is in tension with the proper ends of political action. This power casts a wide shadow, frequently dominating large numbers of non-targets and empowering unscrupulous agents. On the other side of the balance, characteristically political justifications for violence are ‘supra-moral,’ meaning that they (...) are motivated by the value of a conception of morality taken as a whole (or, indeed, morality as such) rather than by any particular moral value. The weight that ought to be given to such ends is indeterminate in a way that makes uncancelled remainders arising from the evil of violence likely in many cases. (shrink)

New communitarianism is important even to those who care little about academic disputes. A greatly altered communitarian position lays the foundation for an international legal framework that is more comprehensive than the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is more attentive to beliefs in the East, and enhances the ability of nations that adhere to different values to find common ground on policies ranging from humanitarian interventions to fighting terrorist groups. The article first examines criticisms leveled against communitarianism (...) and then highlights the ways a neo-communitarian approach has overcome these criticisms. The question of under what circumstances one nation may interfere in the internal affairs of another, especially to advance human rights, using means as different as cross cultural moral judgments to armed humanitarian interventions, serves as a litmus test for distinguishing the new from the old communitarian approach. (shrink)

Abstract Finding a moral justification for humanitarian intervention has been the objective of a great deal of academic inquiry in recent years. Most of these treatments, however, make certain arguments or assumptions about the morality of humanitarian intervention without fully exploring their precise philosophical underpinnings, which has led to an increasingly disjointed body of literature. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to suggest that the conventional arguments and assumptions made about the morality of humanitarian intervention can be encompassed in (...) what is essentially a consequentialist framework. After a brief examination of consequentialist ethics, this essay reveals a number of morally relevant factors concerning humanitarian intervention, wherein I suggest that the general consensus in the literature on these factors constitutes ?commonsense morality?. In doing so, I argue that consequentialism as a theory of the right provides the best fit with commonsense morality on humanitarian intervention. This is important not only to reveal the precise philosophical underpinnings of the debate, but also to bring ethical, prudential and political considerations together in a coherent ethical discourse. (shrink)

Both radical rebellion and humanitarian intervention aim to defend citizens against tyranny and human rights abuses at the hands of their government. The only difference is that rebellion is waged by the oppressed subjects themselves, while humanitarian intervention is carried out by foreigners on their behalf. In this paper, it is argued that the prudential constraints on war (last resort, probability of success, and proportionality) impose tighter restrictions on, or demand more of, humanitarian interveners than they do of rebels. Specifically, (...) I argue that rebels enjoy exemptions from the success principle that do not apply to humanitarians, and that rebels are not constrained by the foreseen mediated consequences of their actions ? consequences that are interceded by the agency of other parties. The same cannot be said for intervening states. If this is right, then it is possible for a humanitarian intervention to fall short of the prudential conditions of legitimate war despite being expected to accomplish no less, and to cost no more, than a rebellion which is rightly judged to satisfy these conditions. (shrink)

An armed humanitarian intervention must have a reasonable prospect of success to be justified. It must also be a proportional last resort. These are necessary conditions for legitimate AHI. It has been suggested that, in addition to these necessary conditions, there are also ideal conditions of AHI, namely disinterest and multilateralism. These conditions are said to enhance the moral credentials of an armed intervention without being strictly required. The paper concerns itself with the relationship between these two ideals and the (...) requirement of a reasonable prospect of success. Specifically, I explore the suggestion that the former are in some way instrumental to the latter. On this view, we should aspire towards disinterest and multilateralism because these things contribute to a positive humanitarian outcome. If this is correct then the ideal conditions can be partly grounded in, or justified in reference to, the prospect of success principle. (shrink)

Relative to the abundance of literature devoted to the legal significance of UN authorisation, little has been written about whether the UN’s failure to sanction an intervention can ever make it immoral. This is the question that I take up here. I argue that UN authorisation (or lack thereof) can have some indirect bearing on the moral status of a humanitarian intervention. That is, it can affect whether an intervention satisfies other widely accepted justifying conditions, such as proportionality, “internal” legitimacy, (...) and likelihood of success. The more interesting question, however, is whether the UN’s failure to provide a mandate can make a humanitarian operation unjust independently of these other familiar considerations. Is a proportional, internally legitimate humanitarian intervention, with a just cause and strong prospect of success, still morally unacceptable if it is not approved by the United Nations Security Council? This is the question that I turn to in the second half of the paper. (shrink)

The primary purpose of government is to secure public goods that cannot be achieved by free markets. The Coordination Principle tells us to consolidate sovereign power in a single institution to overcome collective action problems that otherwise prevent secure provision of the relevant public goods. There are several public goods that require such coordination at the global level, chief among them being basic human rights. The claim that human rights require global coordination is supported in three main steps. First, I (...) consider Pogge's and Habermas's analyses as alternatives to Hobbesian conceptions of justice. Second, I consider the core conventions of international law, which are in tension with the primacy of state sovereignty in the UN system. Third, I argue that the just war tradition does not limit just causes for war to self-defense; it supports saving innocent third parties from crimes against humanity as a just reason for war. While classical authors focused less on this issue, the point is especially clear in twentieth-century just war theories, such as those offered by the American Catholic bishops, Jean Elshtain, Brian Orend, and Michael Walzer. Against Walzer, I argue that we add intractable military tyranny to the list of horrors meriting intervention if other ad bellum conditions are met. But these results require us to reexamine the "just authority" of first resort to govern such interventions. The Coordination Principle implies that we should create a transnational federation with consolidated powers in place of a treaty organization requiring near-unanimity. But to be legitimate, such a global institution must also be directly answerable to the citizens of its member states. While the UN Security Council is inadequate on both counts, a federation of democracies with a directly elected executive and legislature could meet both conditions. (shrink)

In this article I undertake to discover the extent to which five distinct philosophical arguments for “hardhearted” responses to hunger are rationalizations. In each case, I consider the prima facie appeal and then consider the extent to which these appeals can be answered or overcome by principles promoting policies of food equity. I pay special attention to the appeal that pits political self-determination against food equity, because I believe it is especially important to determine the extent to which respect for (...) sovereignty and political self-determination is to be seen as compatible with promoting policies of food equity. (shrink)

How can firms mitigate the impact of moral violations on consumer evaluations? This question has pervaded the business ethics literature. Though prior research has identified decoupling as a moral reasoning strategy where consumers separate moral judgments from evaluations, it is unclear what motivates individuals to decouple. It is the objective of this research to explore regulatory focus theory as a motivating factor for moral decoupling. Three experiments are undertaken. Study one demonstrates that with a prevention mindset as opposed to promotion (...) mindset, moral decoupling can be achieved. Specifically, those in a prevention mindset report more favorable evaluations when information about a violation explicitly lowers consequences of moral violations. However, when the violation is related to the business functionality of the brand, those in a prevention mindset report less favorable evaluations, except when consequences are lowered. This indicates an inability to decouple, and results in negative emotions. The research shows that inability to decouple for those in a prevention mindset leads to negative emotions, lowering evaluations. These results contribute to the moral reasoning literature by linking regulatory focus to decoupling strategies. Further, the research bridges literature on norm activation, moral foundation, regulatory focus, and moral decoupling to reconcile theoretical differences in judgment styles. Implications for businesses and brands are discussed. (shrink)

When a liberal-democratic state signs a treaty or wages a war, does its whole polity do those things? In this article, we approach this question via the recent social ontological literature on collective agency. We provide arguments that it does and that it does not. The arguments are presented via three considerations: the polity's control over what the state does; the polity's unity; and the influence of individual polity members. We suggest that the answer to our question differs for different (...) liberal-democratic states and depends on two underlying considerations: the amount of discretion held by the state's officeholders; the extent to which the democratic procedure is deliberative rather than aggregative. (shrink)

The traditional conception construes human rights as moral rights all people have due to some basic feature or interests deemed intrinsically valuable. This comported well with the revival of the discourse of human rights in the wake of atrocities committed during WWII. It served as a useful referent for local struggles against foreign rule and domestic dictatorship in the 1980s. Since 1989, human rights discourse acquired a new function: the justification of sanctions, military invasions, and transformative occupation administrations by outsiders, (...) framed as enforcement of international law against violators. The traditional conception doesn't fit this new function, hence the efforts to counter-pose a "political" to the "traditional" approach. This essay analyzes two recent versions of the political conception, and argues for a third. The thesis is that sovereign equality and human rights are normative principles of our dualist international system and both are needed to construct a more just version of that system. (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.

Muchos conservadores defienden fronteras cerradas basadas en derechos básicos de asociación. Algunos conservadores son también defensores del principio libertario de legitimidad. No es claro sin embargo que este tipo de defensa de las fronteras cerradas sea coherente con los ideales libertarios. Aquí argumento que los conservadores libertarios de este tipo deben rechazar esa clase de defensa de las fronteras cerradas porque o bien colapsa en algún tipo de estatismo incoherente con el principio libertario de legitimidad o bien colapsa en un (...) precepto ideal que no tiene ningún atractivo con respecto de la realidad aquí y ahora y que podría ser aplicado solo transformando la naturaleza de las sociedades que conocemos. Como resultado los libertarios deben buscar formas de justificación alternativas para las fronteras cerradas. (shrink)

This paper surveys the most important recent debates within the ethics of war. Sections 2 and 3 examine the principles governing the resort to war (jus ad bellum) and the principles governing conduct in war (jus in bello). In Section 4, we turn to the moral guidelines governing the ending and aftermath of war (jus post bellum). Finally, in Section 5 we look at recent debates on whether the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello can be evaluated independently (...) of each other. (shrink)