This special edition brings together (1) the recent methodological worries of the moralism/realism and ideal/non-ideal theory debates with (2) the soaring ambition of work in international or global political theory, as found in, say, theories of global justice. Contributors are as follows: Chris Bertram, Jonathan Floyd, Aaron James, Terry MacDonald, David Miller, Shmulik Nili, Mathias Risse and Matt Sleat.

This article takes a new idea, ‘normative behaviourism’, and applies it to global political theory, in order to address at least one of the problems we might have in mind when accusing that subject of being too ‘unrealistic’. The core of this idea is that political principles can be justified, not just by patterns in our thinking, and in particular our intuitions and considered judgements, but also by patterns in our behaviour, and in particular acts of insurrection and crime. (...) The problem addressed is ‘cultural relativism’, understood here not as a meta-ethical doctrine, but as the apparent ‘fact’ that people around the world have culturally varying intuitions and judgements of a kind that lead them to affirm different political principles. This is a problem because it seems to follow (1) that global agreement on any substantial set of political principles is impossible, and (2) that any political theory in denial of this ‘fact’ would be, for that reason, deeply unrealistic. The solution argued for here is that, if domestic political principles (i.e. principles intended to regulate a single state) could be justified by normative behaviourism, and in reference to culturally invariant behaviour, then an international system supportive of such principles is justifiable by extension. (shrink)

In contemporary democracies, global capitalism exerts a significant influence over how state power is exercised, raising questions about where political power resides in global politics. This question is important, since our specific considerations about justifiability of political power, i.e. political legitimacy, depend on how we characterize political power at the global level. As a partial answer to this question, I argue that our notion of global political legitimacy should be reoriented to include the structural power (...) of the Transnational Capitalist Class as its subject matter. Structural power is a social relation in which the institutional context makes some agents comply with others’ preferences regardless of actors’ intentional efforts to bring about such outcomes. Even when global business elites do not intentionally exercise power to obtain political control of global governance, their structural power has recognizable effects that partly enforce the world order. To advance my claim, I utilize the radical realists’ argument that the notion of legitimacy is applicable to a broader range of social practices that are beyond dyadic power relations, i.e. rulers intentionally exercising power over subjects. (shrink)

Which political principles should govern global politics? In his new book, Simon Caney engages with the work of philosophers, political theorists, and international relations scholars in order to examine some of the most pressing global issues of our time. Are there universal civil, political, and economic human rights? Should there be a system of supra- state institutions? Can humanitarian intervention be justified?

Domination consists in subjection to the will of others and manifests itself both as a personal relation and a structural phenomenon serving as the context for relations of power. Domination has again become a central political concern through the revival of the republican tradition of political thought . However, normative debates about domination have mostly remained limited to the context of domestic politics. Also, the republican debate has not taken into account alternative ways of conceptualizing domination. Critical theorists, liberals, (...) feminists, critical race theorists, and postcolonial writers have discussed domination in different ways, focusing on such problems as imperialism, racism, and the subjection of indigenous peoples. This volume extends debates about domination to the global level and considers how other streams in political theory and nearby disciplines enrich, expand upon, and critique the republican tradition’s contributions to the debate. This volume brings together, for the first time, mostly original pieces on domination and global political justice by some of this generation’s most prominent scholars, including Philip Pettit, James Bohman, Rainer Forst, Amy Allen, John McCormick, Thomas McCarthy, Charles Mills, Duncan Ivison, John Maynor, Terry Macdonald, Stefan Gosepath, and Hauke Brunkhorst. -/- Front matter and First chapter available for download. (shrink)

Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a global infrastructure development project that ambitiously aims to connect Asia with European and African continents through land and sea corridors. China adopted this gigantic game-changing master plan in 2013 and spurred much speculation among scholars and policymakers worldwide. This article investigates the development of the project through the lens of global political geography and economy. From an international relations perspective, the authors consult relevant pieces of literature and focus on the international (...) issues and events concerning the development of the project using concepts of ideas, interests, and institutions within the scope of geopolitics and political economy. The analysis is performed by reviewing critical events and arguments related to the ideas, interests and institutions evolving around the implementation of BRI. Drawing from the analysis, the authors argue that the rise of China as a dominant global superpower largely depends on the success of the BRI, and this initiative will continue to generate politics among the international actors, multinational entities, and institutions. Despite widespread speculations, the project poses a substantive threat to the USA's global dominance and is likely to create more global development cooperation under Chinese leadership and vision. (shrink)

Book Review of Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion.

The coronavirus pandemic, like its predecessors - AIDS, Ebola, etc., is evidence of the evolutionary instability of the socio-cultural and ecological niche created by mankind, as the main factor in the evolutionary success of our biological species and the civilization created by it. At least, this applies to the modern global civilization, which is called technogenic or technological, although it exists in several varieties. As we hope to show, the current crisis has less ontological as well as epistemological roots; (...) its reason lies in the main evolutionary trends in the development of science as a social institution. It was only later that epistemological factors were transformed into existential-ontological factors associated with the asymmetry of the existence of civilization and our biosocial nature. The perception or ignorance of a risk factor as a real fact is determined by the presence or absence of knowledge about it. In other words, risk is the result of the integration of the corresponding ontological concept into the general categorical structure. The plurality of such structures is a hallmark of multidisciplinary ontologies, each of which is associated with its own factual continuum. The aim of this study was to conceptually model for support relativistic parameter of evolutionary efficiency of stable evolutionary human strategy (SESH) in its techno-rationalistic module. The meaning of this term is equivalent to the category of scientific and technological development. (shrink)

Within the literature in green political theory on global environmental threats one can often find dissatisfaction with liberal theories of justice. This is true even though liberal cosmopolitans regularly point to global environmental problems as one reason for expanding the scope of justice beyond the territorial limits of the state. One of the causes for scepticism towards liberal approaches is that many of the most notable anti-cosmopolitan theories are also advanced by liberals. In this paper, I first explain (...) why one of the strongest expressions of liberal anti-cosmopolitanism cannot simply be dismissed because it may fail to support desired environmental ends. The political conception of justice represents one of the most important challenges to cosmopolitanism generally and is thus a serious challenge to viewing global environmental problems in terms of cosmopolitan justice. Second, I will show through the case of anthropogenic global warming that the political conception of justice under current conditions does have clear cosmopolitan implications despite its proponents' claims. (shrink)

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

Iris Marion Young’s politics of difference promotes equality among socially and culturally different groups within multicultural states and advocates group autonomy to empower such groups to develop their own voice. Extending the politics of difference to the international sphere, Young advocates “decentered diverse democratic federalism” that combines local self-determination and cosmopolitanism, while adamantly rejecting nationalism. Herr argues that nationalism, charitably interpreted, is not only consistent with Young’s politics of difference but also necessary for realizing Young’s ideal in (...) the global arena. (shrink)

Both philosophical and practical analyses of global justice issues have been vitiated by two errors: a too-high emphasis on the supposed duties of collectives to act, and a too-low emphasis on the analysis of causes and risks. Concentrating instead on the duties of individual actors and analysing what they can really achieve reconfigures the field. It diverts attention from individual problems such as poverty or refugees or questions on what states should do. Instead it shows that there are different (...) duties for political leaders, intelligence operatives, opinion leaders and citizens in devising, urging and implementing such plans as transfers of aid with accountability, military interventions in rogue states and limited intakes of refugees. With collectivist excuses for inaction such as sovereignty out of the way, it is possible to take a cautiously optimistic view of the possibility of forceful and morally responsible interventions in the range of major global problems. (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)

A strong, but underexplored linkage exists between the current global order, world poverty and the politics of aid. Exploring this linkage, which is the key concern of this article, is crucial for a fuller understanding of the symbiotic injustice of the global order and the politics of aid. Using a conceptual thought experiment that portrays the framework of post-war global order as an intrinsically unjust “Global Games Arena”, I attempt a “vivisection” of the problematic (...) relationship between the global order and the politics of aid. In the real world, I follow decolonial scholars like Adom Getachew and Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò to argue that the modern and current global order and its social, economic and political structures are founded on the unfair gains of trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism. The empirical and analytical consequence of this situation, the article shows, is that to make aid effective or altogether end its penurious impact in Africa in particular, would require, at first, a jettisoning or remaking of the current international order. In other words, I argue that aid would not be necessary in the absence of a world order that in fact requires aid to maintain a system of global injustice and inequality. (shrink)

This collection is a contribution to the growing scholarship in the humanities and social sciences devoted to the normative dimension of global climate change.

In the last fifteen years or so, political philosophers have been increasingly busy nurturing their latest darling, global justice (hereinafter GJ). There are many reasons why justice, the centrepiece of much political theorising since the 1970s, has spilled beyond the confines of the (nation-)state – from certain inherent features of prominent philosophical accounts of justice to the seemingly morally arbitrary nature of state borders to the perceived or assumed effects of globalisation. In any case, the previously rather scattered reflections (...) on the global dimension on justice-related topics have now moulded into a respected academic enterprise, generating a vast body of mutually interconnected research. Under the broad umbrella of GJ, a wealth of specific problems and/or issue areas have surfaced; for the purposes of the present essay, it is useful to note that the primarily normative discussion about justice in the transnational realm (i.e. what is right/wrong and what should be done about it) extends to questions of methodological, epistemological as well as ontological kind which are of wider interest to political philosophy as such. One reason for such a broadened perspective is that two of the three titles (Brooks and Brock) appeared in print four and five years ago, respectively, and Brock’s and Ypi’s volumes have already received wide critical attention from within the field. It makes therefore sense to step back and evaluate the respective contributions with the benefit of hindsight, and also perhaps more critically than has been the case with the majority of heretofore published reactions. This is facilitated by the different approaches employed in the respective books, stemming in one case (Brooks) from its genre, and from different authorial aims and modes of explication in the other two cases. (shrink)

If global distributive justice or injustice is to exist, there must be something that is just or unjust: something to which the moral assessments at issue attach. I argue in this paper against one popular candidate for that role: the “global basic structure.” I argue that principles of distributive justice that target the global basic structure fail to satisfy a crucial “action guidance” desideratum and that this problem points to an alternative target that philosophers of global (...) justice have yet to widely acknowledge. We ought to exclusively direct our principles at subspheres of global politics: disaggregating global justice for a disaggregated world. (shrink)

Compelling research in international relations and international political economy on global warming suggests that one part of any meaningful effort to radically reverse current trends of increasing green house gas (GHG) emissions is shared policies among states that generate costs for such emissions in many if not most of the world’s regions. Effectively employing such policies involves gaining much more extensive global commitments and developing much stronger compliance mechanism than those currently found in the Kyoto Protocol. In other (...) words, global warming raises the prospect that we need a global form of political authority that could coordinate the actions of states in order to address this environmental threat. This in turn suggests that any serious effort to mitigate climate change will entail new limits on the sovereignty of states. In this book I focus on the normative question of whether or not we have clear moral reasons to bind ourselves together in such a supranational form of political association. I argue that one can employ familiar liberal arguments for the moral legitimacy of political order at the state level to show that we do have a duty to support such a global political project. Even if one adopts the premises employed by the most influential forms of liberal scepticism to the ideas of global political and distributive justice, such as those advanced by John Rawls and Thomas Nagel, it is clear that the threat of global warming has expanded the scope of justice. We now have a global and demanding duty of justice to create the political conditions that would allow us to collectively address our impact on the Earth’s atmosphere. (shrink)

Interview of Katrin Flikschuh, Rainer Forst and Darrel Moellendorf by Valentin Beck and Julian Culp for Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric.

The article offers forecasts of the geopolitical and geo-economic development of the world in the forthcoming decades. One of the main accusations directed toward globalization is that it deepens the gap between the developed and developing countries dooming them to eternal backwardness. The article demonstrates that the actual situation is very different. It is shown that this is due to the globalization that the developing countries are generally growing much faster than the developed states, the World System core starts weakening (...) and its periphery begins to strengthen. At the same time there is a continuing divergence between the main bulk of developing countries and the group of the poorest developing states. The article also explains why the globalization was bound to lead to the explosive rise of many developing countries and the relative weakening of the developed economies. In the forthcoming decades this trend is likely to continue (though, of course, not without certain interruptions). It is also demonstrated that this convergence constitutes a necessary condition for the next technological breakthrough. (shrink)

Topicality of the research topic. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an increase in the instability of the structure of ecosocial systems. Technological innovations have led to a sharp deterioration in natural social ecodynamics. The aim of the research is the conceptual modeling of the proliferation of biopolitics from the social sphere to the field of international relations with the subsequent transformation into a systemic factor of the global evolutionary process. Research methods and results. The model (...) is based on our previously proposed concept of a three-module stable evolutionary strategy of technogenic civilization. In relation to the triple spiral of anthropo-socio-technogenesis, i.e., the historical development of the cultural-ecological niche of Homo sapiens, constructed by him, this means the following. Periods of stable progressive growth of evolutionary and civilizational success are replaced by periods of various scales crisis, up to civilizational or even biological-evolutionary singularity. During the crisis, the importance of the political factor increases sharply, and over the past 50 years, this primarily relates to the field of biopolitics. The regional differentiation of the biopolitical sphere reconstruction during the fight against the pandemic will inevitably complicate international relations not only between regions that belong to different cultural and civilizational types. Probably less so, the same problems will affect the reconciliation of differences caused by geopolitical, interethnic, religious and even economic (competition) reasons. The first phase of the adaptive civilizational response is to reduce the degree of connection between the individual socio-cultural elements of modern civilization, i.e., slowing down the globalization process and intensifying interregional conflicts of various contents. In particular, such contradictions will be most acute in the post-Soviet geopolitical space, where the conditions of the civilizational rift are imposed on the conflicts of the transition period. Due to the specifics of modern high technologies, the process will enter the phase of global socio-techno-ecological self-developing systems reconstruction, which includes man as its element. And the obvious conclusion will be the transition of the development of biopolitical issues to a new, no longer international, but global-evolutionary level. In our understanding, transbiopolitics is a political issue related to the rationalization of the global evolutionary process. The latter will become a bearing element of the global process of evolution of the noosphere with the subsequent complication and increase of cohesion between separate sociocultural types which are a part of system of the modern globalizing civilization. (shrink)

Interview of Katrin Flikschuh, Rainer Forst and Darrel Moellendorf by Valentin Beck and Julian Culp for Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric.

In this paper, I examine global public reason as a method of justifying a global state. Ultimately, I conclude that global public reason fails to justify a global state. This is the case, because global public reason faces an unwinnable dilemma. The global public reason theorist must endorse either a hypothetical theory of consent or an actual theory of consent; if she endorses a theory of hypothetical consent, then she fails to justify her principles; (...) and if she endorses a theory of actual consent, her theory will lead to a highly unstable political system. On either side of the dilemma, global public reason faces untenable implications. Although similar criticisms have been advanced against domestic public reason, my argument is not repeating points made before me. My argument is new, in that it raises these objections specifically against global public reason, and in that it shows how, due to increased diversity of belief in the global arena, these problems are more pressing for global public reason than they are for domestic public reason. (shrink)

This article questions the use of immigration as a tool to counter global poverty. It argues that poor people have a human right to stay in their home state, which entitles them to receive development assistance without the necessity of migrating abroad. The article thus rejects a popular view in the philosophical literature on immigration which holds that rich states are free to choose between assisting poor people in their home states and admitting them as immigrants when fulfilling duties (...) to assist the global poor. Since the human right to stay is entailed by values that feature prominently in the philosophical debate on immigration, the article further contends that participants in that debate have particular reason to reject the popular ‘choice view’ and endorse the alternative position presented in the article. (shrink)

The failure of global governance, and how to remedy this, is a recurrent theme in political philosophy. This essay suggests a number of priorities, including: strengthening and reforming the United Nations system; addressing the pessimism in discourse about global governance, and acknowledging the advances which have been made; and engaging the cult of nationalism, with a reclaiming of the universalist ideals of the renaissance. Part of engaging the cult of nationalism also involves re-thinking the role of religion, especially (...) as a force supporting nationalism and the status quo. Ultimately we do not know what future global governance will look like, but the key is to believe that transformation is possible. (shrink)

A review article of Gillian Brock's Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account. Reviewed by Dara Salam. Public Reason, Vol.3, No.1, June 2011, pp. 114-117.

Drawing upon John Rawls’s framework in The Law of Peoples, this paper argues that MNEs have a responsibility to promote well-ordered social and political institutions in host countries that lack them. This responsibility is grounded in a negative duty not to cause harm. In addition to addressing the objection that promoting well-ordered institutions represents unjustified interference by MNEs, the paper provides guidance for managers of MNEs operating in host countries that lack just institutions. The paper argues for understanding corporate responsibility (...) in relation to the specific institutional environment in which MNEs operate. (shrink)

The focus of this article is the global and European experience of the reception, assimilation, and social application of the Bible, reproduced in the works of a number of prominent Kyiv Theological Academy (KTA) representatives from the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The analysis specifically covers the works of professors Stefan Solskyi, Kharysym Orda, Nikolai Drozdov, Afanasii Bulgakov, Mykola Makkaveiskyi, Vasylii Pevnytskyi, Arsenii Tsarevskyi, Volodymyr Rybinskyi, Dmytro Bohdashevskyi, and Aleksandr Glagolev. The author uses the metaphor (...) of the Biblical world to describe the historically developed spiritual and cultural component of the European world, for which the Bible played the role of a normative and symbolic core. Affiliation with the Biblical world — as a way of broad social application of the Bible and assimilation of the norms and public behaviors sanctioned by this text — was and still is a stable symbolic marker as well as a cultural and ideological factor of integration with European civilization. The historical panorama of the reception of Biblical knowledge and the inculturation of Biblical morality by Christianized nations, reproduced in the writings of Kyiv academics, is presented as a field of centuries-old intercultural contacts and active inter-confessional interaction, and as an important ideological and moral factor of the socio-political integration and development of civil society. The issues addressed by Biblical studies in Europe and the rest of the world and considerations and solutions prompted by these issues proved to be fruitful for both the academic research and public practices in which academics of the Kyiv Theological Academy were engaged. The past and modern foreign experience related to the inculturation of the Bible was interpreted by the Kyiv researchers in the local context, more specifically, in the modernization attempts of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Therefore, the reflection of European and worldwide experience, though not fully implemented, was productive and was a potential factor that could have contributed to the European modernization of Kyiv cultural and religious life of the time and its integration into the global Biblical World. (shrink)

It is natural to think of political philosophy as being concerned with reflection on some of the ways in which groups of human beings come together to confront together the problems that they face together: in other words, as the domain, par excellence, of collective action. From this point of view it might seem surprising that the notion of collective obligation rarely assumes centre-stage within the subject. If there are, or can be, collective obligations, then these must surely constrain the (...) ways in which we can act collectively. Indeed, one might even suspect that considerations about collective obligations ought to play a central role in demarcating the form that any legitimate form of political organization ought to take. -/- Elsewhere I have argued that we have good reasons for accepting the existence of global collective obligations - in other words, collective obligations which fall on the world’s population as a whole.(Wringe 2006, 2010, forthcoming, under review) For example, the existence of such obligations provides a plausible solution to a problem which is sometimes thought to arise if we think that individuals have a right to have their basic needs satisfied. In this paper, I shall argue that in many situations, forward-looking global obligations give rise to an obligation on individuals to work towards bringing into existence and support an institutional system which will enable their obligations to be met. Call such an obligation the ‘Obligation to Promote Satisfactory Global Institutions.’ I shall also examine a significant challenge to this line of argument, which I call the ‘Pluralist Challenge’ One might suppose that the ‘Obligation to Promote Satisfactory Global Institutions’ could be met by providing strategic support to attempts to modify and extend existing international institutions. After all, creating new institutions is a difficult matter: perhaps it would be better, especially where stringent obligations are concerned, to concentrate on those institutions which we already have. On the other hand, existing international institutions are subject to a range of significant moral and ethical criticisms. It would simply be naïve to suppose that their existence of such institutions is based on an international consensus about what justice requires; and it is not clear how we could motivate individuals who have severe ethical reservations about the existence of such institutions, or why we should wish to. This suggests that those who think that there are global collective obligations, and that such obligations should play an important role in shaping how we think of international distributive justice are faced with a significant dilemma: either support a program of extending and strengthening existing institutions in a way which risks entrenching some existing forms of injustice; or commit oneself to a program of attempting to build new institutions which will have to compete with those institutions we have already and which are unlikely to be in a position to meet help us to discharge our collective obligations at any point in the near future. Neither option seems satisfactory. I shall argue that our response should be to look for plausible ethical constraints on how international institutions should be developed, and suggest that these constraints are likely to take a cosmopolitan form. (shrink)

Focusing on how recent protests centered on global economic and environmental injustices can contribute to furthering deliberative politics and realizing deliberative democracy, Francis Dupuis- D � ri examines the important and historical tension between force and persuasion. However, casting protest as legitimate in the framework of deliberative politics and as serving deliberative democracy obscures its own value in endeavors to achieve social, economic, and environmental justice. Being sympathetic to Dupuis- D � ri � s work, I wish (...) to make several, interrelated conceptual and practical clarifications in order to bring back to the fore the fundamental importance of protest, in terms of contributions not to deliberative politics and deliberative democracy but to public discourse. (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)

Imagine that you are a farmer living in Kenya. Though you work hard to sell your produce to foreign markets you find yourself unable to do so because affluent countries subsidize their own farmers and erect barriers to trade, like tariffs, thereby undercutting you in the marketplace. As a consequence of their actions you languish in poverty despite your very best efforts. Or, imagine that you are a peasant whose livelihood depends on working in the fields in Indonesia and you (...) are forcibly displaced from your land by a biofuels company because corrupt government officials have stolen the land and sold it to the company. Or, suppose that you work on the coast of Bangladesh but find that increasingly you are unable to cope with salination resulting from sealevel rise – a product of anthropogenic climate change. These, I believe, are cases of global injustice. My question is: What are those who bear the brunt of global injustice entitled to do to secure their, and other people’s, entitlements? Often people focus on the duties of the affluent to respect and uphold the rights of the disadvantaged. This is understandable. But there is a striking omission. Rarely do people analyze, or even mention, what those who lack their entitlements are entitled to do to secure their own rights. This is my focus in this paper. More specifically, I examine what agents are entitled to do to change the underlying social, economic and political practices and structures in a more just direction. (shrink)

Some types of solar radiation management (SRM) research are ethically problematic because they expose persons, animals, and ecosystems to significant risks. In our earlier work, we argued for ethical norms for SRM research based on norms for biomedical research. Biomedical researchers may not conduct research on persons without their consent, but universal consent is impractical for SRM research. We argue that instead of requiring universal consent, ethical norms for SRM research require only political legitimacy in decision-making about global SRM (...) trials. Using Allen Buchanan & Robert Keohane's model of global political legitimacy, we examine several existing global institutions as possible analogues for a politically legitimate SRM decision-making body. (shrink)

The terms “patriotism” and “nationalism” are distinguished historically, conceptually, and geographically. Historically, patriotism is shown to have roots in the classical republican tradition of political thought, according to which citizens should give priority to the common good of their political or civic, as distinct from national, community. Conceptually, it is argued that patriotism is best understood as a political philosophy, an account of the form or forms of dialogue that citizens should engage in when responding to their conflicts, whereas nationalism (...) is a political ideology, an account of the kinds of things that citizens should be saying within those dialogues, in particular, when they take the form of negotiation. Patriotism, then, is that political philosophy which endorses the maxim “conversation first, negotiation second, force third,” since conversation between citizens has the best prospects for realizing and developing the common good. Nationalism, by contrast, is the ideology of those who, when it comes to political negotiations, give the greatest weight to the needs of their national community. Finally, regarding geography, patriotism is shown to be concerned with the jurisdiction of the state, whereas nationalism emphasizes the permanent and sharply demarcated territory where the national community is located. The chapter then concludes with the recommendation that we all need to affirm a global patriotism, alongside the more local forms. (shrink)

Many political theorists defend the view that egalitarian justice should extend from the domestic to the global arena. Despite its intuitive appeal, this ‘global egalitarianism’ has come under attack from different quarters. In this article, we focus on one particular set of challenges to this view: those advanced by domestic egalitarians. We consider seven types of challenges, each pointing to a specific disanalogy between domestic and global arenas which is said to justify the restriction of egalitarian justice (...) to the former, and argue that none of them – both individually and jointly – offers a conclusive refutation of global egalitarianism. (shrink)

I start this paper by addressing Kant’s question why rightful interactions require both domestic public authorities (or states) and a global public authority? Of central importance are two issues: first, the identification of problems insoluble without public authorities, and second, why a domestic public monopoly on coercion can be rightfully established and maintained by coercive means while a global public monopoly on coercion cannot be established once and for all. In the second part of the paper, I address (...) the nature of the institutional structure of individual states and of the global authority. Crucial here, I argue, is Kant’s distinction between private and public right. Private right concerns rightful relations between individual legal subjects, where public right concerns their claims on their public institutions. I propose that the distinction between private and public right should be central to liberal critiques of current legal and political developments in the global sphere. (shrink)

My dissertation develops a novel approach to institutional analysis and begins to apply this approach to debates in the international justice literature. The main innovation of this institutional failure analysis approach is to ground our normative evaluation of institutions on a detailed understanding of the causal processes that generate problematic social outcomes. Chapters 1 and 2 motivate the need for this new approach, showing that philosophers' neglect of causal explanations of global poverty leads extant normative analyses of poverty astray. (...) The upshot is that causal (as opposed to moral) analyses of social outcomes must play a more central role than is typical in philosophers' moral assessment of institutional arrangements. Chapter 3 introduces and outlines the failure analysis framework. -/- Chapters 5 and 6 employ the failure analysis approach to address recent debate concerning an example of severe deprivation caused by institutional failure— the economic stagnation and authoritarian governance associated with natural resource dependence. Chapter 5 articulates a causal explanation of this so-called "resource curse." I claim that the curse occurs when a resource dependent country's domestic institutional structure permits the political leaders to disregard citizens' interests. My argument enumerates the conditions under which state leaders choose to advance citizens' interests. In chapter 6, I show that extant prescriptions to address the resource curse fail to satisfy at least one necessary condition for mitigating the resource curse. In particular, I highlight the importance of providing citizens with credible exit options both as necessary to successfully mitigating the resource curse and as being among the best forms of compensation to curse victims. I then explore the feasibility of various options for helping curse victims avoid absorbing the consequences of their resource-cursed situation. I end by tentatively proposing a strategy for mitigating the resource curse that satisfies the necessary conditions for a successful prescription as identified by the explanation in chapter 5. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the advantages of a theory of political representation for a prag- matist theory of (global) democracy. I first outline Dewey’s disregard for political rep- resentation by analyzing the political, epistemological and aesthetic underpinnings of his criticism of the Enlightenment ideal of democracy and its trust in the power of the detached gaze. I then show that a theory of political representation is not only com- patible with a pragmatist Deweyan-pragmatist perspective on democratic politics (...) but also that Dewey’s concept of “publics”, if applied to contemporary circumstances of globalized politics, requires such a theory. I suggest a pragmatic theory of political rep- resentation that combines elements of Dewey’s aesthetics, particularly his own theory of vision, with Michael Saward’s conception of representative claim-making into the notion of aesthetic democratic representation. (shrink)

In 2000 Bill Joy proposed that the best way to prevent technological apocalypse was to "relinquish" emerging bio-, info- and nanotechnologies. His essay introduced many watchdog groups to the dangers that futurists had been warning of for decades. One such group, ETC, has called for a moratorium on all nanotechnological research until all safety issues can be investigated and social impacts ameliorated. In this essay I discuss the differences and similarities of regulating bio- and nanotechnological innovation to the efforts to (...) regulate nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction. I then suggest the creation of a global technology regulatory regime to ensure the safe and equitable diffusion of genetic, molecular and information technologies, and point out the principal political obstacles to implementing such a regime. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, we explore the debate on corporate citizenship and the role of business in global governance. In the debate on political corporate social responsibility it is assumed that under globalization business is taking up a greater political role. Apart from economic responsibilities firms assume political responsibilities taking up traditional governmental tasks such as regulation of business and provision of public goods. We contrast this with a subsidiarity-based approach to governance, in which firms are seen as intermediate actors (...) who have political co-responsibilities in society endowed upon them by national governmental institutions. We argue that both approaches face conceptual and empirical problems, and do not make clear the content and scope of political corporate responsibility. Based on Iris Marion Young’s account of political responsibility we argue that corporate actors and governmental actors have a shared responsibility to tackle societal problems. Taking political corporate responsibility not only entails engaging in private action or engaging in public–private partnerships, but it also includes aiding governmental actors to remedy injustice or even create public institutions where they do not yet exist. By adding this perspective we contribute to the debate on responsibility in corporate citizenship and clarify the political role business can play in global governance. (shrink)

This book develops an integrated perspective on the practices and politics of making knowledge work in inclusive development and innovation. While debates about development and innovation commonly appeal to the authority of academic researchers, many current approaches emphasize the plurality of actors with relevant expertise for addressing livelihood challenges. Adopting an action-oriented and reflexive approach, this volume explores the variety of ways in which knowledge works, paying particular attention to dilemmas and controversies. The six parts of the book address (...) the complex interplay of knowledge and politics, starting with the need for knowledge integration in the first part and decolonial perspectives on the politics of knowledge integration in the second part. The following three parts focus on the practices of inclusive development and innovation through three major themes of transformative learning, evidence, and digitization. The final part of the book addresses the governance of knowledge and innovation in the light of political struggles about inclusivity. Exploring conceptual and practical themes through case studies from the Global North and South, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners researching and working in development studies, epistemology, innovation studies, science and technology studies and sustainability studies more broadly. (shrink)

In this article, we philosophically reflect on the nature of corporate governance. We raise the question whether control is still a feasible ideal of corporate governance and reflect on the implications of the epistemic insufficiency of economic institutions with regard to grand challenges like of global warming for our conceptualization of corporate governance. We first introduce the concept of corporate governance from the perspective of economics and politics. We then trace the genealogy of the concept of governance based (...) on a selective reading of Giorgio Agamben’s work, who has pointed at two interdependent paradigms of governance in the Christian tradition, and apply his categories in the context of corporate governance. We finally engage in a critical reflection on the concept of corporate governance and develop four characteristics of corporate governance that can guide future conceptual as well as empirical research in the field of corporate social responsibility of economic institutions. (shrink)

This paper tackles the asymmetry of economic interests and geopolitics between developed and developing countries. Currently, the geopolitics presupposes that the majority of novel technologies are devised and designed in developed countries with their subsequent transfer to the developing countries. Moreover, in the context of the global crisis, the issue of de-dollarization is relevant from the political and economic points of view. Our specific focus is on the small oil countries and the issue how to get off the oil (...) needle in the painless way. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the rise of cryptocurrency that is envisaged as the substitute of the U.S. dollar which has been the world most dominating currency for the last several decades. This paper considers the global asymmetry which has the greatest impact on countries with economies dependent on energy exports. In the light of the diminishing returns from the sale of oil, we examine the ways for escaping this asymmetry. The authors consider the geopolitical asymmetry stemming from the dominance of the U.S. dollar, analyze the political situation and offer the pathways for the development of those economies where oil become an obstacle for economic development. The paper examines the ways of solving the above-mentioned problem by other states in detail and conduct the comparative analysis of the above issues in relation to the economy of Azerbaijan. From this case study we conduct a comparative analysis of the developed and developing countries taking into account the economic asymmetry and global economic and financial security. (shrink)

The term “environmental justice” carries with it a sort of ambiguity. On the one hand, it refers to a movement of social activism in which those involved fight and argue for fairer, more equitable distribution of environmental goods and equal treatment of environmental duties. This movement is related to, and ideally informed by, the second use of the term, which refers to the academic discipline associated with legal regulations and theories of justice and ethics with regard to sustainability, the environment, (...) and ecology. It is this latter, more academic—though vast and interdisciplinary—use of the term that is the subject of this essay. However, activists who pay careful attention to the arguments offered with regard to the political, legal, social, and philosophical treatments of these issues are potentially in a stronger position with regard to their own social movement. In that way, the two uses of the term may progress hand in hand. More broadly, however, the foundational claim about which both grassroots activists and legal, ethical, and policy advocates can agree is that environmental burdens—climate change, pollution, and their associated health risks—are borne disproportionately by the poorest and most vulnerable populations, and tend to have the greatest impact on racial and ethnic minorities, no matter where they are in the world. This is what makes the empirical questions about the environment a normative question about justice. (shrink)

This paper argues that the possibility of global justice is premised on the solutions of three-fold interrelated problem: (1) problem of heterogeneity, (2) problem of inequality, (3) problem of realpolitik. The problem of heterogeneity questions the assumed globality equated as universality or commonality underpinning global justice in view of the empirical human diversity and plurality that cannot be assumed away by the desirability of the normativity of global justice. The problem of inequality highlights the ineradicability of (...) class='Hi'>global inequality as a pervasive fact of international life. It also criticizes the fairness argument that tries to make do with the ineradicable inequalities as long as they work towards the least advantaged members of global society mainly by rendering such an attempt as futile considering the inapplicability of principles of justice, Rawls's difference principle for example, in the global context; the unwillingness of powerful states to relinquish their hierarchical positions in the global political structure that benefit them; and the difficulty of not knowing what in/equality would mean for the least well-off when the fairness argument is granted. The problem of realpolitik makes the subordination of realpolitik (power and interest) to idealpolitik (justice)unwarranted given that the global realities point to the converse of subordination, especially the realities of the hierarchical structure of global politics and its concomitant unequal power relations. (shrink)

Any treatment of the relationship between pragmatism and politics would be incomplete without considering the multiple areas in which pragmatist thought and political studies intersect. Extensive scholarly work on pragmatism and politics can be found in the broad literature on political science, democratic theory, global political theory, public administration, and public policy. To a lesser extent, scholarship employing a pragmatist approach can be found in other subfields of political studies, including American politics and international relations. Unfortunately, (...) the few works in these subfi elds tend to appeal to a generic form of pragmatism (e.g., pragmatism as brute instrumentalism or pragmatism as vicious opportunism), not the robust version associated with classic and contemporary philosophical pragmatism.1 Most works on classic pragmatism and politics draw heavily on John Dewey’s political writings. Pragmatism’s two other founders remained relatively silent on the subject; in Robert Talisse’s words, “neither [Charles Sanders] Peirce nor [William] James wrote systematically about politics.” Neo-pragmatist treatments of politics can be found in the works of the late Richard Rorty, Cornell West, and Richard Posner. (shrink)