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In this article, I question the use of the notion of ‘constituent power’ as a tool for the democratization of the European Union (EU). Rather than seeing the absence of a transnational constituent power as a cause of the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’, I identify it as an opportunity for unfettered democratic participation. Against the reification of power-in-action into a power-constituted-in-law, I argue that the democratization of the EU can only be achieved through the multiplication of ‘constituent moments’. I begin by deconstructing the normative justifications surrounding the concept of constituent power. Here I analyze the structural aporia of constituent power and question the autonomous and emancipatory dimension of this notion. I then test the theoretical hypothesis of this structural aporia of the popular constituent power by comparing it with the historical experiments of a European popular constituent power. Finally, based on these theoretical and empirical observations, I propose to replace the ambivalence of the concept of popular constituent power with a more cautious approach to the bottom-up democratization of European integration: that of a multiplication of transnational constituent moments.
Vor dem Hintergrund von Globalisierung und Migrationsbewegungen ist die Staatsbürgerschaft vermehrt der Frage nach der Rechtfertigung der Grenzen des Demos ausgesetzt. Prägend für die verfassungsrechtliche Definition dieser Grenzen war der ehemalige Bundesverfassungsrichter Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, der auch die Ablehnung der ersten Anläufe des Ausländer:innenwahlrechts mitverantwortete. Der vorliegende Aufsatz vollzieht vor diesem Hintergrund Böckenfördes Bild der Staatsbürgerschaft nach. Seine Konzeption umfasst dabei in erster Linie einen legalen Status. Im Zusammenhang mit Böckenfördes Auslegung des Demokratieprinzips bleiben die historisch-spezifischen Inhalte und Grenzen der Bürgerschaft darüber hinaus stets an die Integrationsmöglichkeiten und das Selbstverständnis gegebener, notwendig homogener politischer Einheiten gekoppelt. In der Konfrontation mit der Kritik exklusiver politischer Gemeinschaften zeigt sich dennoch eine weite politische Gestaltungsfreiheit innerhalb von Böckenfördes Konzept, andererseits aber auch die Grenzen eines Dialogs zwischen Staatsrechtslehre und jenen neueren normativen Modellen demokratischer Gemeinschaft.
Disagreement among philosophers over the proper justification for political institutions is far from a new phenomenon. Thus, it should not come as a surprise that there is substantial room for dissent on this matter within democratic theory. As is well known, instrumentalism and proceduralism represent the two primary viewpoints that democrats can adopt to vindicate democratic legitimacy. While the former notoriously derives the value of democracy from its outcomes, the latter claims that a democratic decision-making process is inherently valuable. This article has two aims. First, it introduces three variables with which we can thoroughly categorise the aforementioned approaches. Second, it argues that the more promising version of proceduralism is extrinsic, rather than intrinsic, and that extrinsically procedural accounts can appeal to other values in the justification of democracy without translating into instrumentalism. This article is organised as follows. I present what I consider to be the ‘implicit view’ in the justification of democracy. Then, I analyse each of the three variables in a different section. Finally, I raise an objection against procedural views grounded in relational equality, which cannot account for the idea that democracy is a necessary condition for political legitimacy.
This paper considers ways in which rulers can respond to, generate, or exploit fear of COVID-19 infection for various ends, and in particular distinguishes between ‘fear-invoking’ and ‘fear-minimising’ strategies. It examines historical precedent for executive overreach in crises and then moves on to look in more detail at some specific areas where fear is being mobilised or generated: in ways that lead to the suspension of civil liberties; that foster discrimination against minorities; and that boost the personality cult of leaders and limit criticism or competition. Finally, in the Appendix, we present empirical work, based on the results of an original survey in Brazil, that provides support for the conjectures in the previous sections. While it is too early to tell what the longer-term outcomes of the changes we note will be, our purpose here is simply to identify some warning signs that threaten the key institutions and values of democracy.
The COVID-19 pandemic has both highlighted and exacerbated global health inequities, leading for calls for responses to COVID to promote social justice and ensure that no one is left behind. One key lesson to be learnt from the pandemic is the critical importance of decolonizing global health and global health research so that African countries are better placed to address pandemic challenges in contextually relevant ways. This paper argues that to be successful, programmes of decolonization in complex global health landscapes require a complex three-dimensional approach. Drawing on the broader discourse of political decolonization that has been going on in the African context for over a century, we present a model for unpacking the complex task of decolonization. Our approach suggests a three-dimensional approach which encompasses hegemomic; epistemic; and commitmental elements.
We live in tragic times. Millions are sheltering in place to avoid exacerbating the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. How should we respond to such tragedies? This paper argues that the human right to health can help us do so because it inspires human rights advocates, claimants, and those with responsibility for fulfilling the right to try hard to satisfy its claims. That is, the right should, and often does, give rise to what I call the virtue of creative resolve. This resolve embodies a fundamental commitment to finding creative solutions to what appear to be tragic dilemmas. Contra critics, we should not reject the right even if it cannot tell us how to ration scarce health resources. Rather, the right gives us a response to apparent tragedy in motivating us to search for ways of fulfilling everyone’s basic health needs.
The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting countries across the globe. Only a globally coordinated response, however, will enable the containment of the virus. Responding to a request from policy makers for ethics input for a global resource pledging event as a starting point, this paper outlines normative and procedural principles to inform a coordinated global coronavirus response. Highlighting global connections and specific vulnerabilities from the pandemic, and proposing standards for reasonable and accountable decision-making, the ambition of the paper is two-fold: to raise awareness for the justice dimensions in the global response, and to argue for moving health from the periphery to the centre of philosophical debates about social and global justice.
The first case of COVID-19 infection in Africa was recorded in Egypt on 14 February 2020. Following this, several projections of the possible devastating effect that the virus can have on the population of African countries were made in the Western media. This paper presents evidence for Africa’s successful responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and under-reporting or misrepresentation of these successes in Western media. It proceeds to argue for accounting for these successes in terms of Africa’s communitarian way of life and conceptions of self, duty, and rights; and that a particular orientation in theorizing on global justice can highlight the injustices inherent in the misrepresentation of these successes and contribute shared perspectives to formulating a framework of values and concepts that would facilitate the implementation of global policy goals for justice. The paper is thus grounded in a rejection of the insular tenets of theorizing prevalent in the global justice debate and to persistent inclinations in Western scholarship to the thinking that theorizing in the African context that draws inspiration from the cultural past has little to contribute to the quest for justice globally. On the contrary, it argues that reflexive critique of cultural history is a necessary source of normative ideals that can foster tolerant coexistence and a cooperative endeavour toward shared conceptions of justice in the contemporary world.
Introduction
(2022)
Large companies are increasingly on trial. Over the last decade, many of the world’s biggest firms have been embroiled in legal disputes over corruption charges, financial fraud, environmental damage, taxation issues or sanction violations, ending in convictions or settlements of record-breaking fines, well above the billion-dollar mark. For critics of globalization, this turn towards corporate accountability is a welcome sea-change showing that multinational companies are no longer above the law. For legal experts, the trend is noteworthy because of the extraterritorial dimensions of law enforcement, as companies are increasingly held accountable for activities independent of their nationality or the place of the activities. Indeed, the global trend required understanding the evolution of corporate criminal law enforcement in the United States in particular, where authorities have skillfully expanded its effective jurisdiction beyond its territory. This paper traces the evolution of corporate prosecutions in the United States. Analyzing federal prosecution data, it then shows that foreign firms are more likely to pay a fine, which is on average 6,6 times larger.
China’s law to control international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) has sent shockwaves through international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civil society and expert communities as the epitome of a worldwide trend of closing civic spaces. Since the Overseas NGO Management Law was enacted in January 2017, its implementation has seen mixed effects and diverging patterns of adaptation among Chinese party-state actors at the central and local levels and among domestic NGOs and INGOs. To capture the formal and informal dynamics underlying their mutual interactions in the longer term, this article employs a theory of institutional change inspired by Elinor Ostrom’s distinction between rules-in-form versus rules-in-use and identifies four scenarios for international civil society in China – “no change,” “restraining,” “recalibrating” and “reorienting.” Based on interviews, participant observation and Chinese policy documents and secondary literature, the respective driving forces, plausibility, likelihood and longer-term implications of each scenario are assessed. It is found that INGOs’ activities are increasingly affected by the international ambitions of the Chinese party-state, which enmeshes both domestic NGOs and INGOs as agents in its diplomatic efforts to redefine civil society participation on a global scale.
In ‘Justice and Natural Resources,’ Chris Armstrong offers a rich and sophisticated egalitarian theory of resource justice, according to which the benefits and burdens flowing from natural (and non-natural) resources are ideally distributed with a view to equalize people’s access to wellbeing, unless there are compelling reasons that justify departures from that egalitarian default. Armstrong discusses two such reasons: special claims from ‘improvement’ and ‘attachment.’ In this paper, I critically assess the account he gives of these potential constraints on global equality. I argue that his recognition of them has implications that Armstrong does not anticipate, and which challenge some important theses in his book. First, special claims from improvement will justify larger departures from the egalitarian default than Armstrong believes. Second, a consistent application of Armstrong’s life planfoundation for special claims from attachment implies that nation-states may move closer to justify ‘permanent sovereignty’ over the resources within their territories than what his analysis suggests.
In this paper, we discuss Armstrong’s account of attachment-based claims to natural resources, the kind of rights that follow from attachment-based claims, and the limits we should impose on such claims. We hope to clarify how and why attachment matters in the discourse on resource rights by presenting three challenges to Armstrong’s theory. First, we question the normative basis for certain attachment claims, by trying to distinguish more clearly between different kinds of attachment and other kinds of claims. Second, we highlight the need to supplement Armstrong’s account with a theory of how to weigh different attachment claims so as to establish the normative standing that different kinds of attachment claims should have. Third, we propose that sustainability must be a necessary requirement for making attachment claims to natural resources legitimate. Based on these three challenges and the solutions we propose, we argue that attachment claims are on the one hand narrower than Armstrong suggests, while on the other hand they can justify more far-reaching rights to control than Armstrong initially considers, because of the particular weight that certain attachment claims have.
The paper analyses the interrelationship between Armstrong’s egalitarian theory and his treatment of the ‘attachment theory’ of resources, which is the dominant rival theory of resources that his theory is pitched against. On Armstrong’s theory, egalitarianism operates as a default position, from which special claims would need to be justified, but he also claims to be able to incorporate ‘attachment’ into his theory. The general question explored in the paper is the extent to which ‘attachment’ claims can be ‘married’ to an egalitarian theory. The more specific argument is that a properly constrained attachment theory is more plausible than Armstrong’s egalitarian theory. Armstrong’s paper also criticizes attachment and improvement accounts as justifying permanent sovereignty over resources. This paper argues that neither of those arguments aim to justify the international doctrine of permanent sovereignty.
This paper argues that land and resource rights are often essential in overcoming colonial inequality and devaluation of indigenous populations and cultures. It thereby criticizes global welfare egalitarians that promote the abolition of national sovereignty over resources in the name of increased equality. The paper discusses two ways in which land and resource rights contribute to decolonization and the eradication of the associated inequality. First, it proposes that land and resource rights have acquired a status-conferring function for (formerly) colonized peoples so that possession of full personhood and relational equality is partially expressed through the possession of land and resource rights. Second, it suggests that successful internal decolonization depends on access to and control over land and resources, especially for indigenous peoples.
In Justice and Natural Resources: An Egalitarian Theory (2017), Chris Armstrong proposes a version of global egalitarianism that – contra the default renderings of this approach – takes individual attachment to specific resources into account. By doing this, his theory has the potential for greening global egalitarianism both in terms of procedure and scope. In terms of procedure, its broad account of attachment and its focus on individuals rather than groups connects with participatory governance and management and, ultimately, participatory democracy – an essential ingredient in the toolkit of green politics and policy-making. In terms of scope, because it does not commit itself to any particular moral framework, Armstrong’s theory leaves the door open for non-human animals to become subjects of justice, thus extending the realm of the latter beyond its traditionally anthropocentric borders. I conclude that these greenings are promising, but not trouble-free.
A reply to my critics
(2021)
It is a real pleasure to reply to so many thoughtful and probing responses to my book. In what follows, I will focus on six key themes that emerge across the various pieces. Some of them call into question core commitments of my theory, and in those cases I will try to show what might be said in its defence. Quite a number of the critics, however, present what we might call expansionist arguments: though they endorse some of the arguments I make, that is – or pick up some of its key concepts – they seek to push them in new and interesting directions. I will suggest that many of those arguments look likely to be successful, though I will also express caution about one or two of them. I doubt, however, that I will be the final judge of their success. Early on in the book I express the hope that it might provide a set of conceptual tools capable of advancing discussions about resource justice more broadly, even for scholars who reject my own idiosyncratic approach. Having made that gambit, I cannot now claim to have a monopoly on the use of the tools in question. Witnessing the use that others have already made of them has been a refreshing and rewarding experience.
This paper uses a novel account of non-ideal political action that can justify radical responses to severe climate injustice, including and especially deliberate attempts to engineer the climate system in order reflect sunlight into space and cooling the planet. In particular, it discusses the question of what those suffering from climate injustice may do in order to secure their fundamental rights and interests in the face of severe climate change impacts. Using the example of risky geoengineering strategies such as sulfate aerosol injections, I argue that peoples that are innocently subject to severely negative climate change impacts may have a special permission to engage in large-scale yet risky climate interventions to prevent them. Furthermore, this can be true even if those interventions wrongly harm innocent people.
Chris Armstrong argues that attempts at justifying special claims over natural resources generally take one of two forms: arguments from improvement and arguments from attachment. We argue that Armstrong fails to establish that the distinction between natural resources and improved resources has no normative significance. He succeeds only in showing that ‘improvers’ (whoever they may be) are not necessarily entitled to the full exchange value of the improvement. It can still be argued that the value of natural and improved resources should be distributed on different grounds, but that the value of improvements should be conceived differently.
This paper argues first that Armstrong is led to see natural resources primarily as objects of consumption. But many natural resources are better seen as objects of enjoyment, where one person’s access to a resource need not prevent others from enjoying equal access, or as objects of production, where granting control of a resource to one person may produce collateral benefits to others. Second, Armstrong’s approach to resource distribution, which requires that everyone must have equal access to welfare, conceals an ambiguity as to whether this means equal opportunity for welfare, or simply equal welfare – the underlying issue being how far individuals (or countries) should be held responsible for the use they make of the resources they are allocated. Third, when Armstrong attacks arguments that appeal to ‘improvement’ as a basis for claims to natural resources, he treats them as making comparative desert claims: if country A makes a claim to the improved resources on its territory, it must show that their comparative value accurately reflects the productive deserts of its members compared to those of countries B. But in fact, A needs only to make the much weaker claim that its members have done more than others to enhance the value of its resources. Overall, Armstrong’s welfarist approach fails to appreciate the dynamic advantages of allocating resources to those best able to use them productively.
Introduction
(2021)
This article examines whether restrictions on access to welfare rights for EU immigrants are justifiable on grounds of reciprocity. Recently political theorists have supported some robust restrictions on the basis of fairness. They argue that if EU immigrants do not immediately contribute sufficiently to the provision of basic collective goods in the host state, restrictions on their access to the welfare state are justified. I argue that these accounts of the principle of reciprocity rely on an ambiguous conception of contribution that cannot deliver the restrictions it advocates. Several strategies open to those advocating reciprocity-based restrictions are considered and found wanting. This article defends that verdict from a number of objections.
The concept of solidarity has been receiving growing attention from scholars in a wide range of disciplines. While this trend coincides with widespread unsuccessful attempts to achieve solidarity in the real world, the failure of solidarity as such remains a relatively unexplored topic. In the case of the so-called European Union (EU) refugee crisis, the fact that EU member states failed to fulfil their commitment to solidarity is now regarded as established wisdom. But as we try to come to terms with failing solidarity in the EU we are faced with a number of important questions: are all instances of failing solidarity equally morally reprehensible? Are some motivations for resorting to unsolidaristic measures more valid than others? What claims have an effective countervailing force against the commitment to act in solidarity?
Populists in the EU often call for restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights. These calls are often demagogic and parochial. This paper aims to show what exactly is both distinct and problematic with these populist calls from a normative point of view while not necessarily reducible to demagogy and parochialism. The overall aim of the paper is not to argue that all populists call for such restrictions nor to claim that all calls for such restrictions are populist. The purpose of the paper is rather humble. It only aims to show that populist calls for restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights are characterised by two normatively problematic arguments that target two different subsets of the citizenry: what I dub for the purpose of this paper the moralists and the immoralists. It is the way populists address these two subsets of the citizenry, as well as the fact that they could simultaneously appeal to the concerns of both groups, that makes populist approaches to welfare rights both conceptually distinct to other approaches as well as potentially politically appealing to a more diverse population of voters.
This paper critically engages the legal and political framework for responding to democracy and rule of law backsliding in the EU. I develop a new and original critique of Article 7 TEU based on it being democratically illegitimate and normatively incoherent qua itself in conflict with EU fundamental values. Other more incremental and scaleable responses are desirable, and the paper moves on to assess the legitimacy of economic sanctions such as tying access to EU funds to performance on democratic and rule of law indicators or imposing fines on backsliding states. I hold such sanctions to be a priori legitimate, and argue that in some cases economic sanctions are even normatively required, given that EU material support of backsliding member states can amount to material complicity in their backsliding. However, an economic conditionality mechanism would need to be designed to minimize unjust and counterproductive effects. One way to pursue this could be to complement sanctions against the backsliding government with investment for prodemocratic actors in that state.
Recent developments in Hungary and Poland have made democratic backsliding a major issue of concern within the European Union (EU). This article focuses on the secondary agents that facilitate democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland: the European People’s Party (EPP), which has continually protected the Hungarian Fidesz government from EU sanctions, and the Hungarian ruling party Fidesz, which repeatedly promised to block any EU-level sanctions against Poland in the Council. The article analyses these agents’ behaviour as an instance of transnational complicity and passes a tentative judgment as to which of the two cases is normatively more problematic. The analysis has implications for possible countervailing responses to democratic backsliding within EU member states.
This article argues that populism, cosmopolitanism, and calls for global justice should be understood not as theoretical positions but as appeals to different segments of democratic electorates with the aim of assembling winning political coalitions. This view is called democratic realism: it considers political competition in democracies from a perspective that is realist in the sense that it focuses not first on the content of competing political claims but on the relationships among different components of the coalitions they work to mobilise in the pursuit of power. It is argued that Laclau’s populist theory offers a sort of realist critique of other populists, but that his view neglects the crucial dynamics of political coalition-building. When the relation of populism to global justice is rethought from this democratic realist angle, one can better understand the sorts of challenges each faces, and also where and how they come into conflict.
This article sheds light upon the role of the audience in the construction and amendment of populist representative claims that in themselves strengthen representative-represented relationships and simultaneously strengthen ties between the represented who belong to different constituencies. I argue that changes in populist representative claims can be explained by studying the discursive relationship between a populist representative and the audience as a conversation in which both poles give and receive something. From this perspective, populist representative claims, I also argue, can be understood as acts of bonding with the intended effect of constituting ‘the people,’ and inputs from the audience can be seen as conversational exercitives. Populist appeals therefore may change when the audience enacts new permissibility facts and signals to populist representatives that there is another way to strengthen relationships between several individuals belonging to otherwise-different constituencies.
A link between populism and social media is often suspected. This paper spells out a set of possible mechanisms underpinning this link: that social media changes the communication structure of the public sphere, making it harder for citizens to obtain evidence that refutes populist assumptions. By developing a model of the public sphere, four core functions of the public sphere are identified: exposing citizens to diverse information, promoting equality of deliberative opportunity, creating deliberative transparency, and producing common knowledge. A wellworking public sphere allows citizens to learn that there are genuine disagreements among citizens that are held in good faith. Social media makes it harder to gain this insight, opening the door for populist ideology.
Current work on populism stresses its relationship to nationalism. However, populists increasingly make claims to represent ‘the people’ across beyond national borders. This advent of ‘transnational populism’ has implications for work on cosmopolitan democracy and global justice. In this paper, we advance and substantiate three claims. First, we stress populism’s performative and claimmaking nature. Second, we argue that transnational populism is both theoretically possible and empirically evident in the contemporary global political landscape. Finally, we link these points to debates on democracy beyond the state. We argue that, due to the a) performative nature of populism, b) complex interdependencies of peoples, and c) need for populists to gain and maintain support, individuals in one state will potentially have their preferences, interests, and wants altered by transnational populists’ representative claims. We unpack what is normatively problematic in terms of democratic legitimacy about this and discuss institutional and non-institutional remedies.
As academic literatures and political demands, global justice and populism look like competing ways of diagnosing and addressing neoliberal inequality. But both misunderstand neoliberalism and consequently risk reinforcing rather than undermining it. Neoliberalism does not just break down political and social hierarchies, but also relies on and sustains them. Unless populists recognize this, they will find that assertions of sovereignty do more to reinforce neoliberalism and reproduce its hierarchies than to resist them. Recognizing neoliberalism as not simply corrosive of solidarity but also producing its own affective ties suggests that global justice advocates need to develop a critique of individual attitudes that egalitarian liberals have often seen as private and been hesitant to judge. In short, if either populism or global justice hope to take advantage of neoliberalism’s failures to advance an egalitarian politics, they need to reckon more carefully with their own entanglement with neoliberalism’s hopes and hierarchies.
This article examines whether autonomy as an educational aim should be defended at the global scale. It begins by identifying the normative issues at stake in global autonomy education by distinguishing them from the problems of autonomy education in multicultural nation-states. The article then explains why a planet-wide expansion of the ideal of autonomy is conceivable on the condition that the concept of autonomy is widened in a way that renders its precise meaning flexibly adjustable to a variety of distinct social and cultural contexts. A context-transcendent, core meaning of autonomy remains in place, however, according to which a person is only autonomous if she relates to the values and goals that direct her life in a way so that she sees them as her own and is able to identify and critically assess her principal reasons for action. Finally, the article addresses two challenges to the global expansion of autonomy education: the objection that autonomy is presently not the most important educational aim and the objection that global autonomy education is a form of cultural imperialism. It finds both objections wanting.
Introduction
(2020)
As a result of globalization, the number of people living outside of their countries of origin is on the rise. Among them are children of primary and secondary school age of varying socio-economic backgrounds. This article addresses the education-related challenges that children in such circumstances face. I first identify two principles – an educational adequacy principle and a presumption of responsibility on the part of a host country for meeting children’s educational
needs – which are widely employed to guide national policy decisions on educational content and the distribution of educational resources. I then discuss a number of problems that students living abroad face which, I argue, policies devised on the basis of these principles either systematically overlook or, in some cases, exacerbate. Finally, I offer two alternative principles – a cosmopolitan revision of the first and a replacement for the second with a focus on collective responsibility – designed to promote education policies better suited to a globalized world which might help to alleviate the barriers to success commonly encountered by children learning abroad.
This paper examines and rejects two normative justifications for low-fee private schools (LFPS), whose expansion throughout the Global South in recent years has been significant. The first justification – what I shall call the ideal thesis – contends that LFPS are the best mechanism to expand access to quality education, particularly at the primary level, and that the premise of their success is that they reject educational equality and state intervention in educational affairs, traditionally associated with public schools, embracing instead educational adequacy and unregulated markets for education. Against this thesis, the paper argues that an ideal educational arrangement must not do away with educational equality and some degree of state interference. The other justification for LFPS – the secondbest thesis – contends that although LFPS do not represent the ideal state of affairs, they nonetheless bring us a step closer to the ideal of universal primary education; they are a ‘realistic’ approximation to that goal. Against the second-best thesis, the paper argues that this justification commits the approximation fallacy: by deviating from the ideal educational arrangement LFPS may obstruct rather than facilitate its achievement.
This contribution develops a defence of a universalist conception of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) against three prominent critiques, which are, among others, put forward by postcolonial scholars. The first critique argues that GCE is essentially a project of globally minded elites and therefore expressive both of global educational injustices and of the values and lifestyles of a particular class or milieu. The second critique assumes that GCE is based on genuinely ‘Western values’ (e.g., in the form of a conception of human rights or conceptions of rationality or the self), which are neither universally accepted nor universally valid and therefore unjustly forced on members of non-Western cultures and societies. GCE, according to this critique, is assumed to be another version of the educational justification of a hegemonic and unjust global Western regime. The third critique focuses on the epistemological preconditions of GCE. It assumes that GCE relies on a particular, culturally embedded ‘Western epistemology,’ which perpetuates historically grown global educational and epistemic injustices by dominating and subjugating alternative epistemological approaches. With respect to the first critique I argue that it is to a certain extent sociologically plausible, but wrong when it is applied to the educational and political legitimacy of GCE. The second critique overestimates the consensus within the ‘Western tradition’ and underestimates the transnational dissemination of universalist ideals and values as well as its own reliance on universalist validity claims. I argue that in order to provide a plausible criticism of historically grown global educational and political injustices, it is imperative for GCE to integrate central insights provided by the postcolonial critique, without giving up on universalist ideals and values. The third critique is, according to my argumentation, based on flawed epistemological assumptions, which do not withstand critical scrutiny. Instead of identifying epistemic and scientific claims as the expressions of a particular ‘culture’ or geographical location (the ‘West’), I defend the position that philosophical and scientific research should ideally be conceived as a democratic and universalist project, whose emancipatory potential can only be realized on the basis of a universalist epistemology.
This paper explores how University as social entity has great potential to confront epistemic injustices by expanding epistemic capabilities. To do this, we primarily follow the contributions of scholars such as Miranda Fricker and José Medina. The epistemic capabilities and epistemic injustice nexus will be explored via two empirical cases: the first one is an experience developed in Lagos (Nigeria) using participatory video; the second is a service learning pedagogical strategy for final year undergraduate students conducted at Universidad de Ibagué (in Colombia). The Lagos experience shows how participatory action-research methodologies could promote epistemic capabilities and functioning, making it possible for the participants to generate interpretive materials to speak of their own realities. However, this experience is too limited to address testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. The Colombian experience is a remarkable experience that is building epistemic capabilities among students and other local participants. However, there is a hermeneutical and structural injustice that tends to give more value to disciplinary and codified knowledge at the expense of experiential and tacit knowledge.
This paper addresses the phenomenon of climate-induced displacement. I argue that there is scope for an account of asylum as compensation owed to those displaced by the impacts of climate change which needs only to appeal to minimal normative commitments about the requirements of global justice. I demonstrate the possibility of such an approach through an examination of the work of David Miller. Miller is taken as an exemplar of a broadly ‘international libertarian’ approach to global justice, and his work is a useful vehicle for this project because he has an established view about both responsibility for climate change and about the state’s right to exclude would-be immigrants. In the course of the argument, I set out the relevant aspects of Miller’s views, reconstruct an account of responsibility for the harms faced by climate migrants which is consistent with Miller’s views, and demonstrate why such an account yields an obligation to provide asylum as a form of compensation to ‘climate migrants.’
This paper discusses two possible difficulties with Catherine Lu’s powerful analysis of the moral response to our shared history of colonial evil; both of these difficulties stem from the rightful place of shame in that moral response. The first difficulty focuses on efficacy: existing states may be better motivated by shame at the past than by a shared duty to bring about a just future. The second focuses on equity: it is, at the very least, possible that shame over past misdeeds ought to be brought into the conversation about present duties, in a manner more robust than Lu’s analysis allows.
In Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics Catherine Lu endorses the idea that those who contribute to the reproduction of structural injustice have responsibilities to address that injustice (Lu, 2017). However, in the book, Lu does not explore the grounds and justification for recognising such a responsibility. In order to address this deficit, this paper proposes that those likely to contribute to the reproduction of structural injustice, in the future, have precautionary duties, in the present, that require them to take action aimed at preventing their future contribution. It is proposed that these ‘collectivization duties’ (Collins, 2013) require them to act responsively with a view to forming a collective that can end the structural injustice in question. This account recommends a collective-action solution alongside recognising that each socially connected agent is obliged to act. However, it does not entail that amorphous groups bear responsibilities and is appropriate in its attribution of blame, thus avoiding both Nussbaum’s (2011) critique of perpetually forward-looking accounts and the ‘agency objection’ (Wringe, 2010).
This article analyzes and criticizes the temporal orientation of Catherine Lu’s theory of colonial redress in Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics. Lu argues that colonial historic injustice can, with few exceptions, justify special reparative measures only if these past injustices still contribute to structural injustice in contemporary social relations. Focusing on Indigenous peoples, I argue that the structural injustice approach can and should incorporate further backward looking elements. First, I examine how Lu’s account has backward-looking elements not present in other structural injustice accounts. Second, I suggest how the structural injustice approach could include additional backward-looking features. I presuppose here, with Lu, that all agents connected to an unjust social structure have a forwardlooking political responsibility to reform this structure, regardless of their relation (or lack thereof) to victims or perpetrators of historic injustice. However, I suggest that agents with connections to historic injustice can occupy a social position that makes them differently situated than other agents within that same structure, leading to differences in how these agents should discharge their forward-looking responsibility and differentiated liability for failure to do so. Third, I argue that Lu obscures the importance of rectifying material dispossession. Reparations, pace Lu, can be justified beyond a minimum threshold of disadvantage. Theorists of settler colonialism and Indigenous scholars show how the dispossession of Indigenous land can be seen as a structure that has not yet ended. I conclude by arguing that rectification can be a precondition for genuine reconciliation.
Structural alienation: Lu's structural approach to reconciliation from within a relational framework
(2019)
In Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics Catherine Lu argues that structural reconciliation, rather than interactional reconciliation, ought to be the primary normative goal for political reconciliation efforts. I suggest that we might have good reason to want to retain relational approaches – such as that of Linda Radzik – as the primary focus of reconciliatory efforts, but that Lu’s approach is invaluable for identifying the parties who ought to bear responsibility for those efforts in cases of structural injustice. First, I outline Lu’s analysis of reconciliation, where she argues for the normative priority of structural approaches within the global political sphere, and propose that it will be useful to identify whether or not a relational account could instead identify underlying structural injustices. Second, I examine one particular relational account of reconciliation (based on Radzik’s account of atonement) and argue that this type of account brings to light underlying structural injustices of the kind Lu is concerned with. Finally, I identify an issue for relational accounts in identifying relevant responsible parties for reconciliation before returning to Lu’s structural account to address this gap.
Traditionally, in deciding whether some strategy or action in war is proportionate and necessary and thus permissible both international law and just war theory focus exclusively on civilian deaths and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. I argue in this paper that any argument that can explain why we should care about collateral killing and damage to infrastructure can also explain why collateral displacement matters. I argue that displacement is a foreseeable near-proximate cause of lethal harm to civilians and is relevant for proportionality and necessity calculi. Accepting my argument has significant consequences for what we are permitted to do in war and for what obligations we have towards refugees that result from our actions in war.
Moral refugee markets
(2018)
States are increasingly paying other states to host refugees. For example, in 2010 the EU paid Libya €50 million to continue hosting the refugees within its borders, and five years later Australia offered Cambodia $31.16 million to accept asylum seekers living in Naru. These exchanges, which I call ‘refugees markets,’ have faced criticism by philosophers. Some philosophers claim the markets fail to ensure true protection, and are demeaning, expressing just how much refugees are unwanted. In response, some have defended refugee markets, claiming they can ensure refugees have protection and are not demeaned. I argue that many markets do demean refugees, and therefore have moral costs, but can still be all-things-considered preferable to alternative schemes if they protect refugees more than these alternative schemes.
This essay develops, within the terms of the recent New York Declaration, an account of the shared responsibility of states to refugees and of how the character of that responsibility effects the ways in which it can be fairly shared. However, it also moves beyond the question of the general obligations that states owe to refugees to consider ways in which refugee choices and refugee voice can be given appropriate standing with the global governance of refuge. It offers an argument for the normative significance of refugee’s reasons for choosing states of asylum and linked this to consideration of a refugee matching system and to refugee quota trading conceived as responsibility-trading, before turning to the issue of the inclusion of refugee voice in relation to the justification of the norms of refugee governance and in relation to the institutions and practices of refugee governance through which those norms are given practical expression.
The issue of statelessness poses problems for the statist (or nationalist) approach to the philosophy of immigration. Despite the fact that the statist approach claims to constrain the state’s right to exclude with human rights considerations, the arguments statists offer for the right of states to determine their own immigration policies would also justify citizenship rules that would render some children stateless. Insofar as rendering a child stateless is best characterized as a violation of human rights and insofar as some states have direct responsibility for causing such harm, the problem of non-refugee stateless children points to greater constraints than most statists accept on states’ right to determine their own rules for membership. While statists can ultimately account for the right not to be rendered stateless, recognizing these additional human rights constraints ultimately weakens the core of the statist position.
While global justice theorists heatedly discuss the responsibilities of the affluent and powerful, those states which can legitimately be seen as victims of global injustice have seldom, if ever, been considered as duty bearers to whom responsibilities can be attached. However, recognising agents whose options are constrained not only as victims, but also as duty bearers is necessary as a proof of respect for their agency and indispensable to mobilise the type of action required to alter global injustices. In this article, I explore what responsibilities state officials of dominated states have. I argue that they have the responsibility to resist domination in the name of the dominated states members. While under particular circumstances this responsibility gives rise to a duty to engage in acts of state civil disobedience, under other circumstances state officials of dominated states ought to resist domination in an internal, attitudinal way by recognising themselves as outcome responsible agents.
Fair Trade is under fire. Some critics argue, for instance, that there is no obligation to purchase Fair Trade certified products and that doing so may even be counter-productive. Others worry that well-justified conceptions of what makes trade fair can conflict. Yet others suggest that the common arguments for Fair Trade cannot justify purchasing Fair Trade certified goods, in particular. This paper starts by sketching one common argument for Fair Trade and defends it against this last line of criticism. In particular, it argues that we should purchase Fair Trade certified goods because doing so benefits the poor even though there are other ways to alleviate poverty. It then considers how other common arguments for Fair Trade fare in light of similar criticism and concludes that they may well succeed.
Political realists claim that international relations are in a state of anarchy, and therefore every state is allowed to disregard its moral duties towards other states and their inhabitants. Realists argue that complying with moral duties is simply too risky for a state’s national security. Political moralists convincingly show that realists exaggerate both the extent of international anarchy and the risks it poses to states who act morally. Yet moralists do not go far enough, since they do not question realism’s normative core: the claim that when national security is really at risk, states are allowed to disregard their moral duties. I contend that there is at least one moral duty that states should not disregard even if their inhabitants are at risk of death by military aggression: the duty to reduce extreme global poverty. The reason is that even granting that national security is about securing individuals’ right to life, global poverty relief is about that as well.
There are longstanding calls for international organizations (IOs) to be more inclusive of the voices and interests of people whose lives they affect. There is nevertheless widespread disagreement among practitioners and political theorists over who ought to be included in IO decision-making and by what means. This paper focuses on the inclusion of IOs’ ‘intended beneficiaries,’ both in principle and practice. It argues that IOs’ intended beneficiaries have particularly strong normative claims for inclusion because IOs can affect their vital interests and their political agency. It then examines how these claims to inclusion might be feasibly addressed. The paper proposes a model of inclusion via representation and communication, or ‘mediated inclusion.’ An examination of existing practices in global governance reveals significant opportunities for the mediated inclusion of IOs’ intended beneficiaries, as well as pervasive obstacles. The paper concludes that the inclusion of intended beneficiaries by IOs is both appropriate and feasible.
This article outlines a new approach to answering the foundational question in democratic theory of how the boundaries of democratic political units should be delineated. Whereas democratic theorists have mostly focused on identifying the appropriate population-group – or demos – for democratic decisionmaking, it is argued here that we should also take account of considerations relating to the appropriate scope of a democratic unit’s institutionalized governance capabilities – or public power. These matter because democratically legitimate governance is produced not only through the decision-making agency of a demos, but also through the institutionally distinct sources of political agency that shape the governance capabilities of public power. To develop this argument, the article traces a new theoretical account of the normative and institutional sources of collective agency, political legitimacy, and democratic boundaries, and illustrates it through a democratic reconstruction of the classical body politic metaphor. It further shows how this theoretical account lends strong prescriptive support to pluralist institutional boundaries within democratic global governance.
The democratic boundary problem raises the question of who has democratic participation rights in a given polity and why. One possible solution to this problem is the all-affected principle (AAP), according to which a polity ought to enfranchise all persons whose interests are affected by the polity’s decisions in a morally significant way. While AAP offers a plausible principle of democratic enfranchisement, its supporters have so far not paid sufficient attention to economic participation rights. I argue that if one commits oneself to AAP, one must also commit oneself to the view that political participation rights are not necessarily the only, and not necessarily the best, way to protect morally weighty interests. I also argue that economic participation rights raise important worries about democratic accountability, which is why their exercise must be constrained by a number of moral duties.
Personalized campaign styles are of increasing importance in contemporary election campaigns at all levels of politics. Surprisingly, we know little about their implications for the behavior of successful candidates once they take public office. This paper aims to fill this gap in empirical and theoretical ways. It shows that campaign personalization results in legislative personalization. Legislators that ran personalized campaigns are found to be more likely to deviate in roll call votes and to take independent positions on the floor. These findings result from a novel dataset that matches survey evidence on candidates’ campaign styles in the 2009 German Federal Elections with the legislative behavior of successful candidates in the 17th German Bundestag (2009–2013). Combining data from the campaign and legislative arenas allows us to explore the wider consequences of campaign personalization.
This article discusses freedom of movement under the lens of shifting boundaries of membership and traces the tension between the political and the economic rationale of European integration. It first reflects on the normativity of free movement and links it to the foundations of modern democratic citizenship. Subsequently, it discusses the role of free movement in the construction of EU citizenship and argues that the genesis in market integration casts a long shadow which hinders EU citizenship's potential to fully display the logic of political and social equality. Under current conditions of huge wealth discrepancies between member states, the prevailing form of horizontal integration necessarily brings about a tension between mobility and solidarity, which in turn creates a barrier for further developing EU citizenship. It is concluded that strengthening an intra‐European dimension of solidarity is needed in order to substantiate the right to move as an equal European citizenship right.
Let me start with a reminiscence: a few weeks ago, I was sitting in one of my preferred cafés in Paris, le Café Odéon- Théâtre de l’Europe, a vivid place near the Jardin de Luxembourg in the heart of the university quarter. I realised that the waiter was wearing a shirt with the letters "Defend Paris", which he explained to be a statement against the forces that make Paris an uneasy place to live, a defiance against the powerful and social injustice. With a mixture of rebellion and idealism, he added that he understands himself as part of a "Reclaim Your City" Movement, thus representing what is central for urban citizenship today: a republican defence against forces that make a metropolitan city a trademark to be sold to people who can afford it, but increasingly less a home for ordinary people who want to live in the city. Walking through the streets, passing a small jewelry shop, a place of distinguished understatement showing a picture of Meghan Markle wearing "rose"-earrings displayed in the window, the term "zombie urbanism" came to my mind – a term used by Jonny Aspen, professor at the Institute of Urbanism and Landscape in Oslo (See Bjerkeset and Aspen (forthcoming 2020) and here), to describe a cliché-like way of dealing with urban environment by developers and designers – a "staged urbanism", in which urban features are used as a means for selling, marketing and branding. This kind of city-marketing can prove quite successful: whereas the burning of Notre Dame mobilised hundreds of millions of donations within a short period of time, the burning of the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro soon after, extinguishing 200 years of documentation of cultural memory, mobilised only 225.000 Euros (state 1.4.2019). ...
Questo saggio descrive il progetto ambizioso del costituzionalismo moderno e lo distingue dalla mera giuridicizzazione del potere pubblico. Esso mostra le sfide del costituzionalismo derivanti dalla perdita di identità del potere statale e del potere pubblico. Il saggio afferma la persistenza della necessità di regolare il potere pubblico, indipendentemente dal fatto che sia esercitato dalle autorità statali o da organizzazioni internazionali. Tuttavia, esso solleva dubbi sul fatto che il potere pubblico frammentato a livello internazionale possa essere regolato in modo tale da soddisfare le richieste del costituzionalismo. È in corso una giuridicizzazione che manca delle caratteristiche fondamentali del costituzionalismo. Come realizzare una compensazione in questo senso resta una domanda aperta.
Journalisten fragen, Politiker antworten. Kurz nach Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges, im November 1914, hat der Strafrechtler und Völkerrechtler Franz von Liszt auf Fragen des Chefredakteurs Helmer Key vom "Svenska Dagbladet" in Stockholm geantwortet – in bemerkenswert enger Anlehnung an die alte konservative Theorie von der deutschen Friedfertigkeit, die erst durch die Einkreisungspolitik Eduards VII. zur Wehrhaftigkeit habe werden müssen.
Iring Fetscher hat das maschinenschriftliche Dokument auf einer Auktion entdeckt und erworben. Wir drucken es auf den folgenden Seiten als Faksimile mit dem Kommentar von Iring Fetscher zu Fragen und Antworten im Deutschen Herbst 1914.
Die Allgegenwärtigkeit des Begriffs der Menschenrechte in politischen Kontexten kann leicht übersehen lassen, dass der rechtsphilosophische, rechtstheoretische und praktische Streit um die genaue Bestimmung, Begründung und Kodifizierung dieser »Rechte« alles andere als beigelegt ist. Der notorische Dissens zwischen Philosophen und Juristinnen und sogar Theologen steht in einem seltsamen Missverhältnis zur Selbstverständlichkeit, mit der politische Akteure die Notwendigkeit dieser oder jener außenpolitischen Handlung durch Bezug auf die Menschenrechte rechtfertigen. ...
L’arrêt Lüth – 50 ans après
(2019)
Même 50 ans plus tard, l’arrêt Lüth, rendu par la Cour constitutionnelle fédérale le 15 janvier 1958, n’a rien perdu de son actualité. Il confère durablement à la liberté d’expression un rang primordial pour le débat public démocratique et marque le point de départ du développement d’une dogmatique des droits fondamentaux spécifiquement allemande, à l’origine d’un renforcement des compétences et de la puissance particulières de la Cour constitutionnelle fédérale. Les raisons qui expliquent l’approche particulière de résolution de conflits entre droits suivie dans l’arrêt Lüth ne laissent pas présager un abandon de cette jurisprudence, abandon qui ne serait d’ailleurs ni souhaitable ni réaliste.
The relationship between past and present has been the subject of controversial debates in historical research time and again. In 2013, to give a prominent example, Philip Alston in a review essay discussed the issue of "Does the past matter?" with regard to a debate on the origins of human rights. The debate was dedicated to the controversial question of "[h]ow far back can we trace the genealogy of today’s international human rights system". In this review, I would like to rephrase this question to ask instead to what degree the present matters for historical writing. Other than in the work of Alston, this is not meant as a question on the contingency and path-dependence of history, but rather as a reflection on how historians describe and evaluate the past and what role knowledge of the present may have in this context. ...
Neuere Geschichten des Völkerrechts zeichnen sich dadurch aus, dass sie das Recht und dessen Wirksamkeit nicht losgelöst von sozialen und historischen Kontexten betrachten. In seinem beeindruckenden Buch "Frieden durch Recht?" über den Friedensschluss nach dem ersten Weltkrieg zeigt Marcus M. Payk (vgl. die Rezension in diesem Band), dass das Recht zwar über eine eigene Form und Logik verfügt, dessen Bindungswirkung aber nicht ohne dessen Kontexte verstanden werden kann. ...
In der gegenwärtigen Forschung zu Recht und Kolonialismus zeigt sich ein interessanter Gegensatz: Während das Recht vor allem als ein Instrument kolonialer Machtausübung verstanden wird, erscheinen Juristen, die nach einer Ausbildung an europäischen oder amerikanischen Universitäten in ihre Herkunftsländer zurückkehrten, als zentrale Akteure lokaler Unabhängigkeitsbewegungen, aus denen heraus neue Nationalstaaten entstanden. Dieser Gegensatz wird beispielhaft illustriert durch aktuelle Arbeiten von Turan Kayaoglu zum Legal Imperialism sowie Arnulf Becker-Lorca und seine Figur des Semi-Peripheral Jurist. Das Buch Asian Legal Revivals – Lawyers in the Shadow of Empire erschien 2010 und geht daher nicht direkt auf diese Arbeiten ein, dennoch ist es ein Beitrag dazu, beide Beobachtungen miteinander zu verbinden. Die Rechtssoziologen Yves Dezalay und Bryant G. Garth, die gemeinsam bereits sechs Bücher verfasst oder herausgegeben haben, untersuchen die Rolle von Juristen in der Herausbildung und Legitimation politischer Herrschaft in sieben asiatischen Ländern im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. ...
The study of civilization is one of the core subjects of international legal history. This is no recent development. Jörg Fisch published his seminal work "Die Europäische Expansion und das Völkerrecht" in 1984, the same year in which Gerrit W. Gong presented his renowned "Standard of Civilization". Today, the more recent works by Martti Koskenniemi and Antony Anghie probably represent the most influential research in this field. What all these path breaking works have in common is that they discuss concepts of civilization in international law especially with regard to its function as providing justification narratives for the European/non-European unequal relations, in particular in the 19th century. ...
In China war das europäische Völkerrecht bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts weitgehend unbekannt. Abgesehen von einzelnen Verträgen aus dem 17. und 18. Jahrhundert gab es weder Vertragspraxis noch Völkerrechtswissenschaft. Dies änderte sich erst durch Chinas Kriege mit westlichen Mächten. Die »Barbaren« nutzten ihre militärische Überlegenheit gegenüber China, um durch erzwungene völkerrechtliche Friedensverträge Handelsinteressen zu verwirklichen und halbkoloniale Strukturen zu etablieren. Diese Friedensübereinkommen wurden und werden, als "ungleiche Verträge" überschrieben, vielfach in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur besprochen. ...
Jed Kronckes The Futility of Law and Development – China and the Dangers of Exporting American Law ist ein Buch über das rechtliche Sendungsbewusstsein der Vereinigten Staaten vom neunzehnten bis zur Mitte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Jürgen Osterhammel verwendete den Begriff des Sendungsbewusstseins, um den Kern der Zivilisierungsmissionen in dieser Zeit zu beschreiben. Der bestehe in der "Selbstbeauftragung damit, die eigenen Normen und Institutionen an andere heranzutragen oder gar ihre Übernahme mit mehr oder weniger sanftem Druck zu erzwingen". ...
Internationale Gerichte sollen Konflikte zwischen Staaten befrieden. Dass es dabei nicht immer nur um das Völkerrecht geht, zeigt der Streit zwischen den USA und dem Iran. Die gegenwärtige US-Regierung lehnt den Internationalen Gerichtshof als politisch gelenkt ab – und schadet sich damit vor allem selbst.
Le xviiie est le siècle de la révolution constitutionnelle moderne. Les droits de l’homme et du citoyen y furent proclamés, et le droit ancré dans la démocratie. Les choses ont commencé dans quelques États d’Amérique, leur unification a suivi, mais l’événement à proprement parler dramatique, qui allait faire de la révolution constitutionnelle un événement irréversible, fut la Révolution française de 1789. Revendiquer des constitutions fut l’élément dominant du xixe siècle, tenir la promesse de réaliser les droits de l’homme et la démocratie celui du xxe siècle. L’arc se tend sans peine de 1789 à 1989, et même après, il n’y a pas d’issue visible, pas d’alternative en vue. Même le vent froid de la globalisation n’a pas fait pâlir les espoirs utopiques orientés vers la démocratie et les droits de l’homme. ...
This paper considers the trend towards megaregionalism (TTIP, TPP) that became prominent in the trade domain in the last years of the Obama administration. While megaregionalism has fallen by the wayside since Trump’s inauguration, the underlying rationale for such treaties will most likely reassert itself rather soon. So there are structural issues that need to be discussed from a standpoint of global justice. In all likelihood, megaregionalism is detrimental to global justice. TTIP in particular, or anything like it, might derail any possibility for a trade organization to aid the pursuit of justice at the global level, and any possibility that trade will be used to that end. From the standpoint of global justice one must hope that megaregionalism does not replace WTO multilateralism. The global-justice framework used here is the grounds-of-justice approach offered in the author’s 2012 On Global Justice.
Megaregional trade negotiations have become the subject of heated debate, above all in the context of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In this article, I argue that the justice of the global order suffers from its institutional fragmentation into regime complexes. From a republican perspective, which aspires to non-domination as a guiding principles and idea of global justice, regime complexes raise specific and important challenges in that they open the door to specific forms of domination. I thereby challenge a more optimistic outlook in regime complexes, which paints a positive normative picture of regime complexes, arguing that they enable the enhancement of democracy beyond the state and, consequently, have the potential to reduce the democratic deficit in global governance. By drawing attention to how regime complexes reinforce domination-related injustice, this article contributes an original perspective on megaregionals and to exploring the implications of global justice as non-domination.
Recent trade negotiations such as TTIP include investor protection clauses. Against the background of an analysis of the case for trade, the paper asks whether such clauses can be justified from a normative perspective. More specifically, what is the impact of investor protection on the domestic distribution of the gains from trade between labour and capital, and how should we assess this impact from the perspective of justice? In order to answer this question, the paper develops a series of ideal-type scenarios that reflect the consequences of investor protection on employment on the one hand, and on the distributive conflict between labour and capital on the other. While no claim is made which of these scenarios corresponds to TTIP or other trade agreements, they provide a useful normative framework to analyse such agreements.
nvestor-state-dispute-settlement (ISDS) is an arbitration mechanism to settle disputes between foreign investors and host-states. Seemingly a technical issue in private international law, ISDS procedures have recently become a matter of public concern and the target of political resistance, due to the power they grant to foreign investors in matters of public policies in the countries they invest in. This article examines the practice of ISDS through the lenses of liberal-statist theories of international justice, which value self-determination. It argues that the investor-state arbitration system illustrates how liberal-statist theories of international distributive justice ought to care about relative socioeconomic disadvantage, contra the sufficiency principle that they typically defend. The sufficiency principle draws on a questionable conception of the freedom that self-determination consists in.
Readers of Hannah Arendt’s now classic formulation of the statelessness problem in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism abound at a moment when the number of stateless peoples worldwide continues to rise exponentially. Along with statelessness, few concepts in Arendt scholarship have spawned such a volume of literature, and perhaps none have provoked as much interest outside of the field of philosophy, as ‘the right to have rights.’ Interpreting this enigmatic term exposes the heart of our beliefs about the nature of the political and has important consequences for how we practice politics on a global scale because it implicitly takes plural human beings, and not the citizen, as its subjects. Arendt’s conceptualization of this problem remains unsurpassed in its diagnosis of the political situation of statelessness, as well as its intimate description of the human cost of what she refers to as ‘world loss,’ a phenomenon that the prevailing human rights and global justice discourse does not take into account. And yet, as an alternative framework for thinking about global politics, the right to have rights resists easy interpretation, let alone practical application.
The paper assesses current rising reparations claims for the Maafa/ Maangamizi (‘African holocaust,’ comprising transatlantic slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism) from two angles. First, it explores the connectivity of reparations and global justice, peace and security. Second, it discusses how the claim is justified in international law. The concept of reparations in international law is also explored, revealing that reparations cannot be limited to financial compensation due to the nature of the damage and international law prescriptions. Comprehensive reparations based in international law require the removal of structures built on centuries of illegal acts and aggression, in the forms of transatlantic slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism. Reparations must also lead to the restitution of sovereignty to African and indigenous peoples globally. They are indispensable to halt the destruction of the earth as human habitat, caused by the violent European cultural, political, socio-economic system known as apitalism that is rooted in transatlantic slavery.
From reparations for slavery to international racial justice: a critical republican perspective
(2017)
This paper focuses on demands for reparations for colonial slavery and their public reception in France. It argues that this bottom-up, context-sensitive approach to theorising reparations enables us to formulate a critical republican theory of international racial justice. It contrasts the critical republican perspective on reparations with a nation-state centred approach in which reparations activists are accused of threatening the French republic’s sense of homogeneity and unity, thus undermining the national narrative on the French identity. It also rejects the liberal egalitarian perspective, which itself rejects reparations in favour of focusing on present disadvantages. In so doing, this paper illustrates how the notion of non-domination offers a superior way of conceptualising global racial injustices compared to more traditional distributive outlooks.
If Third World women form ‘the bedrock of a certain kind of global exploitation of labour,’ as Chandra Mohanty argues, how can our theoretical definitions of exploitation account for this? This paper argues that liberal theories of exploitation are insufficiently structural and that Marxian accounts are structural but are insufficiently intersectional. What we need is a structural and intersectional definition of exploitation in order to correctly identify global structural exploitation. Drawing on feminist, critical race/post-colonial and post-Fordist critiques of the Marxist definition and the intersectional accounts of Maria Mies and Iris Marion Young, this paper offers the following definition of structural exploitation: structural exploitation refers to the forced transfer of the productive powers of groups positioned as socially inferior to the advantage of groups positioned as socially superior. Global structural exploitation is a form of global injustice because it is a form of oppression.
Many theories of global distributive justice are based on the assumption that all humans hold common ownership of the earth. As the earth is finite and our actions interconnect, we need a system of justice that regulates the potential appropriation of the common earth to ensure fairness. According to these theories, imposing limits and distributive obligations on private and public property arrangements may be the best mechanism for governing common ownership. We present a critique of the assumption that this issue can be solved within the private–public property regime, arguing that the boundaries of this regime should not be taken for granted and that the growing literature on the democratic commons movement suggests how this can be accomplished. We consider that, if the earth is defined as a common, the private– public property paradigm must be open to questioning, and democratic commoners’ activities should be considered.
All cosmopolitan approaches to global distributive justice are premised on the idea that humans are the primary units of moral concern. In this paper, I argue that neither relational nor non-relational cosmopolitans can unquestioningly assume the moral primacy of humans. Furthermore, I argue that, by their own lights, cosmopolitans must extend the scope of justice to most, if not all, nonhuman animals. To demonstrate that cosmopolitans cannot simply ‘add nonhuman animals and stir,’ I examine the cosmopolitan position developed by Martha Nussbaum in Frontiers of Justice. I argue that while Nussbaum explicitly includes nonhuman animals within the scope of justice, her account is marked by an unjustifiable anthropocentric bias. I ultimately conclude that we must radically reconceptualise the primary unit of cosmopolitan moral concern to encompass most, if not all, sentient animals.
Rezension zu: Fabian Schuppert, Freedom, Recognition and Non-Domination: A Republican Theory of (Global) Justice (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014).