Deliberative democracy grounds its legitimacy largely in the ability of speakers to participate on equal terms. Yet theorists and practitioners have struggled with how to establish deliberative equality in the face of stark differences of power in liberal democracies. Designers of innovative civic forums for deliberation often aim to neutralize inequities among participants through proportional inclusion of disempowered speakers and discourses. In contrast, others argue that democratic equality is best achieved when disempowered groups deliberate in their own enclaves before entering (...) the broader public sphere. Borrowing from each perspective, the authors argue that there are strong reasons to incorporate enclave deliberation among the disempowered within civic forums. They support this claim by presenting case study evidence showing that participants in such forums can gain some of the same benefits of deliberation found in more heterogeneous groups, can consider a diversity of viewpoints rather than falling into groupthink and polarization, and can persuade external stakeholders of the legitimacy of the group’s deliberations. (shrink)

Introduction: A Theory of Democracy and Justice.

This paper draws from two central intuitions that characterize modern western societies. The first is the normative claim that our identities should be recognized in an authentic way. The second intuition is that our common matters are best organized through democratic decision-making and democratic institutions. It is argued here that while deliberative democracy is a promising candidate for just organization of recognition relationships, it cannot fulfil its promise if recognition is understood either as recognition of ‘authentic’ collective identities or as (...) recognition of too atomistic or individualized subjects. If deliberative democracy is to be understood as successfully providing authentic recognition of individual identities, it requires a specific understanding of how individuals’ recognition needs and desires are collectively and institutionally constituted. Furthermore, it is argued that even if deliberative democracy can provide the necessary circumstances for individual self-realization, it comes with homogenizing tendencies and cannot fully avoid the problems of multiculturalism. (shrink)

he subject of this thesis is ethical aspects of decision-making concerning social risks. It is argued that a model for risk management must acknowledge several ethical aspects and, most crucial among these, the individual’s right not to be unfairly exposed to risks. Article I takes as its starting point the demand frequently expressed in the risk literature for consistent risk management. It is maintained that a model focusing on cost-benefit analysis does not respect the rights of the individual. Two alternative (...) models are outlined. They evolve around the separateness of individuals, rights, and fair risk taking. It is claimed that a model that focuses on a fair procedure for risk decisions seems most fruitful to develop. Article II discusses the NIMBY conflict. The ethical premises behind the negative characterization of the NIMBY concept are investigated. It is argued that a collective weighing of risks and benefits ignores individuals’ rights not to be unfairly exposed to risks in siting scenarios. Article III presents a three-party model tool for ethical risk analysis. The focus in such analysis is a discussion of three parties that are involved in risk decisions: the risk-exposed, the beneficiary, and the decision-maker. Seven crucial ethical questions are discerned by combining these parties pairwise. Article IV discusses a model for procedural justice for risk decisions. Two theories of deliberative democracy are explored. The first focuses on a hypothetical contract, the second argues for the actual inclusion of affected parties. It is maintained that hypothetical reasoning should mainly serve as a guide concerning risk issues that affect people who cannot be included in the decision-making process. Otherwise an interactive dialogical reasoning is to be preferred. Article V explores the claim that there are no real, objective risks – only subjective descriptions of them. It is argued that even though every risk can be described in different ways, involve value judgements and emotions, the ideal of objectivity should not be abandoned. (shrink)

Theories of deliberative democracy maintain that outcomes of democratic deliberation are fairer than outcomes of mere aggregation of preferences. Theorists of impartial justice, especially Rawls and Sen, emphasize the role of deliberative processes for making just decisions. Democratic deliberation seems therefore to provide a model of impartial decision-making applicable in the real world. However, various types of cognitive and affective biases limit individual capacity to see things from others’ perspectives. In this paper, two strategies of enhancing impartiality in real world (...) decision-making are discussed. The first involves decision-making processes which detach decision-makers from their particular interests, whereas the second aims to enhance the quality of democratic deliberation and empathetic reasoning. We conclude that new forms of democratic deliberation may be necessary if we hold on to the aspiration of making decisions which are both democratic and impartial. (shrink)

This article brings into conversation two important literatures in contemporary political theory that have, for the most part, failed to engage one another: work spanning more than two decades on multiculturalism and identity politics, and neo-republican work on nondomination. The authors take as their starting-point two widely endorsed claims: that identities are constructs and that state actors play a crucial role in their construction. Their question is how democratic states should shape identity, and their central claim is that states should (...) do so in ways that promote what they call democratic nondomination. This ideal, they stress, is multifaceted. It has both an action-level and a system-level component. In addition, it has both an inter-agentive and an impersonal dimension. Attending to democratic nondomination in its complexity is crucial to the project of evaluating alternative possible forms of state identity construction. (shrink)

In his 2007 Ethics article, “Responsibility Incorporated,” Philip Pettit argued that corporations qualify as morally responsible agents because they possess autonomy, normative judgment, and the capacity for self-control. Although there is ongoing debate over whether corporations have these capacities, both proponents and opponents of corporate moral agency appear to agree that Pettit correctly identified the requirements for moral agency. In this article, I do not take issue with either the claim that autonomy, normative judgment, and self-control are the requirements for (...) moral agency or the claim that corporations possess them. I claim that if both of these claims are correct, then corporate moral agency entails that, in a liberal democracy, corporations should have the right to vote. I show that under the conception of democracy supported by most liberal political theorists, all parties subject to the law are entitled to the right to vote, and all parties that possess autonomy, normative judgment, and self-control are subject to the law. Therefore, if the proponents of corporate moral agency are correct, then corporations satisfy the requirements for the right to vote. I then consider potential objections to this argument. I show that the strongest objection to the corporate right to vote is undermined by Pettit’s own argument for corporate autonomy. I then show that objections derived from other arguments for limiting the rights of corporations are equally unavailing. I conclude with some observations about the implications of my argument for the question of corporate speech rights. (shrink)

This article reports research in three Nottingham schools, concerned with (1) 'The school as fertile ground: how the ethos of a school enables everyone in it to benefit from the presence of artists in class'; (2) 'Children on the edge: how the arts reach those children who otherwise exclude themselves from class activities, for any reason' and (3) 'Children's voices and choices: how even very young children can learn to express their wishes, and then have them realised through arts projects'. (...) The research methodology was rooted in two modes of inquiry, philosophical investigation and action research. The article draws on this research to argue that arts-based work in school has helped disadvantaged and/or disaffected children to engage in activities (both arts-based and others), and to be able to lay the groundwork for exercising voice and agency as they did so. If social justice is to flourish there is a need for particular kinds of public spaces and a need to create conditions such that children can learn to participate in those spaces, whether or not they are comfortable with the usual settings for 'rational argument' or 'deliberative democracy'. It is suggested that arts-based education, in some forms, is one good way of creating these conditions. (shrink)

The planet seems to be heading into an ecological catastrophe, in which the earth will become uninhabitable for many species, including human beings. At the same time we humans are beset by appalling injustices. The Rio Declaration which addressed both these sets of problems contains conceptual contradictions about ‘development and ‘nature’. This paper addresses the issue of whether it is logically possible to work for both global justice and ecological sustainability. The article proposes a way of responding to the spirit (...) of the Rio Declaration without reinstating its contradictions; considers a posthuman perspective on the issue; and proposes a phenomenological approach to ethics and justice which would include both the human and more-than-human parts of the world. In section the implications for education are drawn out, in terms of ‘learning to mind’. Finally, links are drawn to the Journal theme of translation. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy, it is claimed, is essential for the legitimisation of public policy and law. It is built upon an assumption that citizens will be capable of constructing and defending reasons for their moral and political beliefs. However, critics of deliberative democracy suggest that citizens’ emotions are not properly considered in this process and, if left unconsidered, present a serious problem for this political framework. In response to this, deliberative theorists have increasingly begun to incorporate the emotions into their accounts. (...) However, these accounts have tended to focus only upon the inclusion of emotions in the external-collective exchange of reason between citizens. Little work has been done on how the individual will actually cope with emotions internally within their own minds. There has been no consideration of the capacities that citizens will need to perceive, understand and regulate emotions as they formulate reasons both by themselves and with others. Moreover, there has been little consideration of how these capacities might be educated in children so that emotionally competent deliberative citizens can be created. In this paper, emotional intelligence is presented as an essential capacity that can fulfil this role for the deliberative citizen and deliberative democracy more generally. The ‘deliberative school’ is suggested as a potential site for this transformation that can progress from generation to generation, cultivating citizens that are increasingly better equipped to handle emotionally-laden deliberative engagement. (shrink)

Theories of deliberative democracy have faced the charge of leading to the unjust exclusion of voices from public deliberation. The recent rhetorical turn in deliberative theory aims to respond to this charge. I distinguish between two variants of this response: the supplementing approach and the systemic approach. On the supplementing approach, rhetorical modes of political speech may legitimately supplement the deliberative process, for the sake of those excluded from the latter. On the systemic approach, rhetorical modes of political speech are (...) legitimate within public deliberation, just so long as they result in net benefits to the deliberative system. I argue that neither of these two approaches adequately meets the unjust exclusion charge. Whereas the supplementing approach does not go far enough to incorporate rhetorical speech into public deliberation, the systemic approach goes too far by legitimising forms of rhetoric that risk only exacerbating the problem of unjust exclusion. More constructively, I draw on Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric, as an art that is a counterpart to dialectic, to argue for a constitutive approach to rhetoric. I show how this approach provides a more expansive notion of deliberation that remains normatively orientated. (shrink)

Based on content analysis and in-depth interviews with the editors of 5Harfliler, Catlak Zemin and Recel-blog, popular pro-feminist women’s websites in Turkey, this article shows that these websites constitute important projects in feminist memory work in two ways: explicitly, by commemorating women in history, the gains of the women’s movement in Turkey, and by archiving misogynist policies and gender unequal legislation; implicitly, in the essays written by anonymous women whose personal memories of feminist activism as well as oppression and patriarchy (...) experienced in everyday life become sources for discussion of feminist identity and politics and contribute to women’s history writing from below. The websites also serve as a platform where feminist identity is negotiated and the past, present and future of feminist politics are discussed in a humorous, agonistic and affective style. The source of deliberation is often women’s everyday experiences and concerns rather than formal politics. Although keeping a distance from formal politics renders these websites open to criticisms of naiveté and apoliticism, they provide a creative platform for the constructive discussion of women’s shared everyday problems which are closely connected to a larger political context. (shrink)

. Migrating narratives: pedagogical possibilities for relating difference. Ethics and Education: Vol. 7, Creating spaces, pp. 225-236. doi: 10.1080/17449642.2013.766539.

In the last two decades, an ever-increasing number of scholars have challenged the conceptual borders of political philosophy and the supposed universalism of its normative pre-commitments. Surprisingly enough, the normative underpinnings of this debate have had very little impact on contemporary disputes about pluralism. This article asks how contemporary disputes about the conceptual borders of political theory can help in constructing a more plural theory of pluralism. It shows that such contributions inspire three ways of constructing a more plural political (...) theory of pluralism: a self-transformative approach, a dialogical approach and a pre-relational approach. While all three approaches progress towards less exclusionary theories of pluralism, I argue that a pre-relational approach can lead to a normative theory that is more plural than the alternatives. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Dieser Artikel nimmt die im Kontext einer vielfach diagnostizierten Renaissance der Stadt erhobene Forderung nach mehr städtischer Autonomie zum Ausgangspunkt, um aus demokratietheoretischer Perspektive der Frage nachzugehen, welche rechtfertigenden Gründe für eine größere städtische Autonomie angeführt werden können. Zu diesem Zweck rekonstruiert der Beitrag normative Leitbilder der demokratischen Stadt, die zugleich Lücken einer allein staatlich verstandenen Demokratiekonzeption verdeutlichen. Es handelt sich bei diesen Leitbildern um das Bild der Stadt als Schule der Demokratie, als urbane Kosmopolis sowie als urbane Allmende. (...) Die untersuchungsleitende These lautet, dass die Stadt ein eigenständiger politischer Handlungsraum ist, an den spezifische demokratische Versprechen geknüpft sind und der spezifische Potenziale für die Verwirklichung einer demokratischen Praxis bietet. Das Erkenntnisinteresse ist zweigeteilt: Einerseits sollen in begrifflicher Perspektive die Leitbilder auf einen spezifisch urbanen Demokratiebegriff hin befragt werden und andererseits gilt es in systematischer Perspektive die zugrundeliegenden Vorstellungen von Gemeinschaft, Partizipation und Mitgliedschaft zu beleuchten und auf ihre demokratietheoretische Anschlussfähigkeit hin zu prüfen. (shrink)

This article brings interconnects three debates to show what this might imply for the ‘redemocratisation’ of UK society and for pedagogical reform. One debate concerns deliberative types of democratic reform, arguing in favour of a ‘creative agnosticism’ towards the two philosophical frameworks which dominate this literature. This leads into a discussion of education and critical rationality, arguing for an aptitude-based account of moral agency, one which relates to the sociocultural resources we inherit from the past. The final debate therefore concerns (...) social memory. I do not offer a theory of social memory but critique various commentators in arguing for what I call a ‘multipolar analysis’. This both describes the analytical method adopted in this article and the skills and capacities which a system based upon ‘education for discourse’ would need to facilitate. The article therefore proposes that democracy, education and memory—deliberativeness, critical rationality and social remembering—be brought closer together for the mutual benefit of each debate. (shrink)

Recognising the relevance of Iris Marion Young's work to education, this article poses the question: given Iris Young's commitment to both social justice and to recognition of the political and ethical significance of difference, to what extent does her position allow for transnational interventions in education to foster democracy? First, it explores some of Iris Young's arguments on the relationship between democracy and social justice, with particular reference to their implications for education. Second, I argue that if her ideas are (...) extended to the issue of global justice, the strategies which she offers should be extended, at least when it comes to educational intervention, to allow for a wider range of actions in support of global justice through education for democracy than Iris Young's work so far seems to allow. The wider range of strategies which I propose call on western feminists and their governments to do more to promote democracy and social justice globally. This can be done in ways that are consistent with Iris Young's stipulation that transnational interference is permissible if undertaken against dominative harm. (shrink)

A high level of citizen involvement in civic life is presumed crucial to the well-being of democracy, but the actual discourse of citizen involvement has rarely been analyzed. This article analyzes citizen participation in the school board meetings of one US community that was in the midst of conflict. After providing background on education governance practices and the community that was studied, citizen participation is examined. Citizen commentaries at school board meetings are shown to be a distinct speech genre and (...) the genre is described. Then, we characterize the discourse practices used to express negative sentiment. Feeling-limned description, avowal of feelings, rhetorical questions, reported speech, use of god and devil terms, and using meeting rules as weapons were the main negative sentiment strategies. In the conclusion we suggest when low levels of citizen involvement should be acceptable, and why `reasonable hostility' is a desirable form of citizen expression. (shrink)

Prior research has shown that human trafficking has multiple facets and is deeply enmeshed in societies around the world. Two central challenges for anti-trafficking organizations pertain to confronting systemic injustices and establishing caring organizations for survivors to start the process of healing and restoration. Analyzing the work of an anti-trafficking organization, International Sanctuary in Mumbai, we seek to elucidate how a space for caring for trafficking survivors is constructed in a largely non-egalitarian and unjust context. We contribute to discussions on (...) how caring infrastructures are possibly developed so that they do not write off existing gendered and in-egalitarian social structures and how they shape individual biographies. We also highlight how the specific, situated context—defined by those very structures—shapes and influences the transformative potential of care interventions. (shrink)

Soft regulatory measures are often promoted as an alternative for existing regulatory regimes for nanotechnologies. The call for new regulatory approaches stems from several challenges that traditional approaches have difficulties dealing with. These challenges relate to general problems of governability, tensions between public interests, but also (and maybe particularly) to almost complete lack of certainty about the implications of nanotechnologies. At the same time, the field of nanotechnology can be characterized by a high level of diversity. In this paper, we (...) discuss and compare two models for framing public policy in relation to technology regulation: the first is a deliberative model based on foresight knowledge and the second the wide reflective equilibrium model, developed by political philosopher John Rawls. In both models, the aim is to find consensus on (a framework for) policy measures and regulation. On the basis of a critical discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of both models, some tentative conclusions are drawn for effective policy making and implementation based on soft law. (shrink)

The management of water is a topic of great concern. Inadequate management may lead to water scarcity and ecological destruction, but also to an increase of catastrophic floods. With climate change, both water scarcity and the risk of flooding are likely to increase even further in the coming decades. This makes water management currently a highly dynamic field, in which experiments are made with new forms of policy making. In the current paper, a case study is presented in which different (...) interest groups were invited for developing new water policy. The case was innovative in that stakeholders were invited to identify and frame the most urgent water issues, rather than asking them to reflect on possible solutions developed by the water authority itself. The case suggests that stakeholders can participate more effectively if their contribution is focused on underlying competing values rather than conflicting interests. (shrink)

ABSTRACT As academics, we do not only produce and reproduce knowledge; we also produce our citizenship as a social and agonistic space. There are nuances embedded within academic citizenship – unqualifiable, but compelling in their production and reproduction of power dynamics, bringing into disrepute notions of academic citizenship as a homogenous or inclusive space. There are ways of being and becoming within citizenship that might be less readily conceivable, and hence, slip beneath the radar of scholarly scrutiny and debates.We have (...) yet to delve into how we come into the presence of one another. In offering an expanded understanding of academic citizenship as alterity, I argue that academic citizenship has to involve wading into a curious uncertainty about the other so that the immensity of diversity, its unknown-ness, is brought to bear on the university, not as fear and estrangement, but as a rupture with a continuity of Othering. (shrink)

The teaching profession in South Africa, like elsewhere in the world, is regulated by the specific codes of conduct, as stipulated by the South African Council for Educators. While common criticisms against SACE include failing to ensure the registration of all teachers, and not adequately dealing with the unprofessional conduct of teachers, it is the question of whether SACE can act as an ethical regulator, which attracts the most attention. Seemingly, there exists a tension between the legalistic approach to ethical (...) deliberation, as contained in SACE, and the real experiences of teachers, which teachers argue, are neither understood nor taken into account by SACE. In considering whether it is at all possible to teach teachers how to act ethically, or how to use their ethical judgement, the article turns its attention to the inter-related practices of deliberation, belonging and inclusion, as manifestations of ethical teaching. (shrink)

Mientras Carole Pateman (1988) afirma que «para las feministas la democracia no ha existido jamás», Julieta Kirkwood (1986) sostiene que «no hay democracia sin feminismo». Ambas aluden a la deuda del ideal democrático con la emancipación de las mujeres, e incluso a la función estructural de la exclusión de las mujeres en la democracia liberal. A partir de los encuentros y desencuentros entre democracia y feminismo, el presente artículo pretende ofrecer una definición de la democracia feminista que vaya más allá (...) de la inclusión a través de la acción afirmativa, abordando las tensiones que esta genera en el debate feminista de las últimas décadas y los nuevos desafíos en torno a las políticas de redistribución y de reconocimiento. ¿Es posible superar la opresión y la dominación a partir de políticas centradas en el interés de grupo? ¿Cómo se define ese interés sin esencializar la diferencia? Responder a estas preguntas resulta clave para plantear un concepto eficaz de democracia feminista. (shrink)

This study is a corpus analysis of nominal uses of ‘public’ as a reference to a group of humans, a category of reference that has animated the debate over membership in the body public among theorists of publicity and deliberative democracy. The study finds that the public metonym is the most common nominal use of ‘public’ as a reference to a group of humans in ordinary English. In addition, it presents a fine-grained analysis of the discourse features of the public (...) metonym based on the corpus results, finding that three features characterize the public metonym: definiteness, non-assignability, and anthropomorphism. It shows how these features are encoded by linguistic constructions, then extends the analysis by drawing attention to some basic contradictions among these three features. Finally, it shows how these contradictions can be accounted for by describing ‘public’ as metonymic. The paper draws together public sphere research, discourse studies, and rhetoric in order to describe the features of a central trope of civic identity. (shrink)

Simply counting the numbers of women present in politics is an inadequate basis for theorizing the difference they might make. Drawing on research on British MPs Act), this article shows how insights gained from empirical research can inform and improve our theorizing. It suggests that the relationship between women’s descriptive and substantive representation is better conceived as complicated rather than straightforward.

The paper examines the complex relation between anti-democratic forces (“the extremists”) and the broader liberal-democratic institutional environment. The task of containing extremists is analysed both from a theoretical standpoint and in terms of its practical feasibility. I argue that the realities of political communication and the character of political argumentation make containing extremism in practice a much more daunting proposition than is usually understood in the literature. Insights from political philosophy, political science and communication theory are brought together to press (...) these points. As a result, extremists often cannot be stopped from running for office even if the state possesses tools to ban extremist parties. Moreover, once extremist politicians become members of legislative bodies, several democratic and procedural considerations start to apply to them so that it becomes difficult to limit their influence. Their elevated status (given their positions as legitimate representatives of the people, together with the increased media and argumentative platform they gain) complicates attempts at stopping the proliferation of their views. The last part of the paper briefly sketches possible (remnants of) a strategy of containment, arguing that only a combination of informal sanctions can be (partially) successful, including deplatforming, refusal to engage with them, and a pariah status in the legislative assembly. (shrink)

This article looks at the cosmopolitan potential of post-national citizenship working at the state level. The article stresses the idea of post-national citizenship as capable of translating cosmopolitan language into one that can be developed within the state-society relationship. To this end, four questions designed to clarify this relationship are raised.

This dissertation examines the injustices perpetrated against Indigenous people in Canada within the explicit framework of democratic theory. I examine the ability of Deweyan democracy as a purported problem-solving mechanism to deal with this problem of widespread social injustice. Deweyan democracy is distinctively epistemic, and depends upon diversity and inclusion in order to function effectively as a social and political mechanism for problem-solving. I argue that the inclusion within Deweyan democracy is insufficiently theorized to provide justice-based solutions to social problems, (...) is overly instrumental, and can actually create injustice. Finally, I suggest that while contemporary Deweyans have applied Deweyan democracy in ways that do not provide sufficient solutions for social and political problems, there may yet be resources in Deweyan democratic theory to be explored, specifically with regard to reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people within a democratic society. (shrink)

Why do so many people remain so passive in the face of today’s massive, looming economic, political, and ecological crises, such as climate change? Despite some notable rhetorical and regulatory examples, attempts to stem climate change have, as a rule, not come to frame the activities of most citizens. The inability to confront the imperative of social transformation today is a complex, manifold problem. At root, it has to do with fundamental systemic features of a global social system that we (...) all contribute to reproducing in our everyday lives. While these features do not preclude political engagement, innovation, and action, they do undermine the bases of movements towards truly systemic transformation. This article focuses on one such feature, reification, as a social-structural foundation of passivity that impedes the social innovations required to tackle the climate crisis. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Seit jeher dienen Städte als Projektionsfläche sowohl für die Identifikation von problematischen Tendenzen der Gesellschaft als auch für die Entwicklung erstrebenswerter gesellschaftlicher Zukünfte. Als Kristallisationspunkt und Triebkraft soziopolitischer Entwicklungen nimmt die Stadt eine zentrale Stellung in Praktiken des Regierens und deren Beobachtung ein – und doch tut sich die Politische Theorie traditionell schwer damit, ein Verständnis von Stadt zu entwickeln, das diesem Status und den damit verbundenen Ambivalenzen gerecht wird. Allzu oft verbleiben entsprechende Debatten dem Souveränitätsparadigma verhaftet, sodass die (...) Stadt primär in Relation zum Prinzip territorialstaatlicher Souveränität begriffen wird. Unser Beitrag argumentiert, dass eine Auflösung dieser konzeptionellen Verwicklung dazu beitragen kann, das Verhältnis zwischen dem Städtischen und dem Politischen als ein konstitutionslogisches, das sich von anderen Konstitutionslogiken des Politischen unterscheidet, sichtbar zu machen. Dazu greifen wir auf eine raumtheoretische Perspektive der Moderne zurück, die Stadt und Territorialstaat nicht als „Kleines“ und „Großes“, sondern als zwei eigenständige, zugleich komplementäre und konfligierende Modi der räumlichen Vergesellschaftung begreift. Unser Beitrag zeigt auf, dass Verdichtung und Heterogenisierung, als die beiden wesentlichen raumstrukturellen Merkmale des Städtischen, mit einer spezifischen Konstitution des Politischen im Sinne einer Erzeugung von kollektiver Macht und gesellschaftlicher Ordnung verbunden sind. Die Stadt tritt damit nicht bloß als Ort der Materialisierung übergreifender soziopolitischer Phänomene in den Blick, sondern als räumliches Prinzip, das Möglichkeiten für gemeinsames Sprechen und Handeln sowie für Praktiken der konfliktiven Infragestellung hegemonialer Projekte erst hervorbringt. Eine dergestalt angelegte politische Theorie der Stadt erlaubt es, politische Praktiken nicht nur in der Stadt zu lokalisieren, sondern als genuin städtische Phänomene zu erfassen und sowohl die Komplementaritäten als auch die Widersprüche zwischen den Raumprinzipien der Stadt und des souveränen Territorialstaats herauszuarbeiten. (shrink)

What role should the political ideal of non-domination play in theorizing global justice? The importance of this ideal is defended most prominently in neo-republican political thought where non-domination embodies a conception of political freedom and serves as the foundational ideal of state citizenship [Pettit, Philip. 1997. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Clarendon Press; Laborde, Cecile. 2008. Critical Republicanism. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press]. It has been argued, however, that these theories can be extended to the global (...) political community and yield a separate framework for global justice. This paper agrees with proponents of non-domination that there is a significant critical and normative potential in the ideal's capacity to speak to the structural inequalities of power in the global order and to make them central, in a way that not only encompasses but also moves beyond questions of redistribution. Yet it argues that this should be conceived as a complement to existing approaches to global justice, rather than a full-fledged alternative. Non-domination's central contribution lies in reframing our perspective on the political authority of states and global institutions. As such it should be viewed as a freestanding principle to assess the political legitimacy of institutionalized global power relations. (shrink)

Authority figures permeate our daily lives, particularly, our political lives. What makes authority legitimate? The current debates about the legitimacy of authority are characterised by two opposing strategies. The first establish the legitimacy of authority on the basis of the content of the authority’s command. That is, if the content of the commands meet some independent normative standard then they are legitimate. However, there have been many recent criticisms of this strategy which focus on a particular shortcoming – namely, its (...) seeming inability to account for who can legitimately command whom. This is the basis of the second strategy, which attempts to characterize the normative relationship that underlies and makes possible authoritative commands. The central point of Part I is that these two strategies are, in fact, not opposed and both raise questions which a theory of legitimacy must answer. If this is the case, then we need to ask: how ought we to determine the legitimacy both of the content of commands as well as who can command whom? Part II will answer this question. Starting with the question of standing, I argue that we ought not to look for normative principles outside of the institutions in which authority is embedded. Rather, one ought to start by elaborating the ontology of institutions in which a sui generis form of normativity arises. A joint commitment account of social ontology provides the tools necessary to see how the direction obligations emerge concurrently with the formation of institutions. Similarly, the question of content can be answered by paying close attention to the social ontology of institutions. We need not look beyond the internal constitutive standards of the institution itself. The constitutive standards provide an internal criterion by which the legitimacy of commands can be established. (shrink)

In the political context, the tenet of subsidiarity states that societal tasks should be solved by subordinate entities in society if these entities have the competencies to solve such problems wit...