What liberals should tolerate internationally

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on what liberal states should tolerate outside their borders. This requires definitions of `liberalism,´ `toleration,´ and `state.´ In the first section of this paper, I briefly indicate how I use those and other terms necessary to the discussion and introduce the normative principle I take liberals to be committed to. In the second section, I continue clearing the path for the rest of my discussion. In the rest of the paper, I draw conclusions about what liberals should tolerate outside their state that I believe follow from the proffered definitions and principles. I limit myself to interference aimed at providing humanitarian aid, but do so in a way that is meant to provide resources for thinking about other sorts of interventions. In the third section, I consider humanitarian interventions done with the permission of the other state and will point toward a toleration-based view; here we are really talking about non-toleration of suffering. In the fourth section, I consider humanitarian interventions done without the permission of the other state; here we are talking about non-toleration of a state that harms its residents. I consider an objection in section five.     

Cracking the whip: the deliberative costs of strict party discipline

ABSTRACT

This article explores the deliberative costs incurred when political parties rely on strict discipline to attain unity. I begin with a brief discussion aimed at clarifying the notion of strict party discipline. The second section explores how such discipline affects the formation, expression and reception of dissenting views. In the third section, I go on to outline two approaches towards deliberation in Parliament: the epistemic approach and the political justification approach. I argue that the impact of strict party discipline on dissenting views entails costs on legislative deliberation conceptualised in either way. The fourth section highlights how intra-party deliberation could potentially mitigate the deliberative costs outlined in this article. Finally, I turn to the implications of my analysis for assessing party discipline, and then I take a closer look at the case of India’s anti-defection law, demonstrating why the deliberative costs outlined in this article are particularly severe there.     

Lingua franca and linguistic territoriality. Why they both matter to justice and why justice matters for both

The bottom line of my book Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World (Oxford University Press, 2011, paperback 2015) can roughly be captured in the combination of two recommendations: that the democratization of competence English as a lingua franca should be fostered in Europe and elsewhere and that language communities should be allowed to protect their language against the invasion of English and other powerful languages by imposing their own language in public communication and public education within some territorial boundaries. Most of my critics attack one or the other of these recommendations and some question some of the presuppositions of my whole approach. In this response, I try to refute some of these critiques by clarifying my claims or spelling out my arguments, and I make whatever concessions I believe are required.     

Cultural Pluralism: A Response to Seglow's Critique

I examine Seglow's critique (Politics 17(3) 1997) of my assessment of Parekh's theory of operative public values (Politics 16(3) 1996). This examination has four main stages: (a) the rejection of crucial aspects of Seglow's interpretation of my argument, (b) the rejection of his claim that my argument is logically committed to certain other specific positions which I do not support, (c) the rejection of his claim that I my argumentative strategies are misleading, (d) the consideration of possible similarities and disagreements between our respective positive positions on cultural pluralism.     

The Decision Not to Furl the Confederate Flag in My Classroom

Over the last year and a half, a number of scholars, pundits, and journalists have criticized college campuses for coddling students by constructing environments that protect them from offensive opinions and evidence that disconfirms their prior attitudes. In this article, I suggest two pedagogical techniques that can help students encounter and digest evidence that may go against their preconceived worldviews and opinions: teaching rational versus irrational thought and quantitative research design and critique. Guiding undergraduates through empirical studies on sensitive topics and encouraging them to critique their findings in a rational, academic manner can help ease them into more reasoned and less reactionary discourse about race, gender, religion, politics, and any other controversial topic in today’s contentious climate. I use my own experience teaching students research design in the months following a race-related murder to illustrate the effectiveness of this method in an extreme circumstance.     

Public affairs in Hungary today: summarized through the eyes of a practitioner

This is not an academic overview on public affairs in Hungary, as this has already been written very well by many others. I would like to share my views and experience as a practitioner and give a quick insight into how public affairs is regarded in my country and how it developed after the change of the political system in Central and Eastern Europe. I will refrain from explaining what public relations or public affairs entails as I think this is unnecessary for anyone reading this. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Migration and justice: a reply to my critics

In this response to six critics, I begin by clarifying the sense in which my approach to the issue of immigration is ‘realistic’. I also explain why a realistic approach must place immigration in a nation-state context, although without treating it as primarily reparative for historic injustice. I suggest that it is implausible to regard global equality of opportunity, as opposed to global sufficiency, as setting limits to national self-determination. I then defend my use of the distinction between refugees and economic migrants to frame the discussion of immigration against the charge that all migrants are potentially vulnerable to the decisions of admitting states, since these may determine the fate of their life-projects. And I also defend the claim that, in the case of refugees, justice requires only that each state should discharge its fair share of the burden of admitting them; doing more than this would require popular consent. Finally, I consider the case of irregular migrants, and explain in what sense they have taken unfair advantage of other potential migrants; I defend offering a conditional amnesty to people in this category.     

Do We Need a Liberal Theory of Minority Rights? Reply to Carens,Young, Parekh and Forst

In their perceptive critiques of my recent book on Multicultural Citizenship , Iris Young, Joseph Carens, Bhikhu Parekh and Rainer Forst raise a number of interesting and important issues. In this short response to their critiques, I focus on two of them. First, whereas I tried to draw a sharp distinction between immigrants and national minorities, my critics argue that we should think of ethnocultural groups on a more fluid continuum. Second, whereas I tried to ground a theory of minority rights on specifically liberal principles, my critics argue that such an approach is unduly intolerant of non-liberal ethnocultural groups. In response to these challenging questions, I try to both clarify and strengthen the positions I outlined in my book.     

The Sympathetic Formation of Reason and the Limits of Science

I develop an interpretation of reason using the thought of David Hume and Adam Smith. I contend that reason in Hume and Smith can plausibly be interpreted as a kind of sensation. Reason is a sensation in that it is a sentimental conception of the relationship between two objects that impels certain interpretations. Reason is developed sympathetically in experiential contexts that not only guide but constitute reason’s operation. I comment on Hume’s talk of reason in his Treatise of Human Nature to build my interpretation. I use Smith’s work in The Theory of Moral Sentiments to develop an understanding of the sympathetic formation of reason. I briefly integrate my interpretation with talk of confirmatory bias in psychology and behavioral economics. I conclude by considering implications for scientific conversation.     

Migrants’ inhabiting through commoning and state enclosures. A postface

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I deploy the framework of commons as social systems which I have developed in my last book Omnia Sunt Communia to interpret the debate developed in this issue, enquire on the relationship between commons and citizenship, and ground the question of migrants’ inhabiting on the theory of commoning.     

The Obligation to Contribute to Discretionary Public Goods

The principle of fairness, first introduced by H. L. A. Hart in 1955, is able to support a workable theory of political obligation upon liberal premises. In a previous paper, 'Presumptive benefit, fairness, and political obligation', I argued that the principle can establish general obligations to cooperate in the provision of 'presumptive public goods' (that is, public goods that are indispensable to the typical member of society). Because a wider range of governmental services is necessary for the provision of presumptive goods, the principle also supports obligations to support 'discretionary public goods' (goods that are desirable but not indispensable). The 'indirect argument' developed in this paper counters the criticisms of my previous paper presented by A. John Simmons in 'The anarchist position: a reply to Klosko and Senor'.     

Taking the Measure of Congress: Reply to Chiou and Rothenberg

e-mail: binder{at}gwu.edu Chiou and Rothenberg raise important questions about how tomeasure key concepts in the study of legislative stalemate inthe U.S. Congress. In challenging my choice of measures to capturebicameral differences, Chiou and Rothenberg argue that my findingsare the artifact of measurement error. In this reply, I reviewthe hurdles involved in measuring policy views over time andacross institutions and suggest that the preferred measure ofChiou and Rothenberg falls short for measuring bicameral differences.Second, I assess the extent to which measurement choices affectthe robustness of my findings about the determinants of gridlock.Drawing on new measures and model specifications, I show thatmy results are robust to alternative specifications. I concludewith an assessment of the broader challenges posed by how wemeasure critical concepts in the study of congressional performance.     

Limitations of the KISS Principle and a Strong Organizational Society: A Rejoinder to Wollebæk and Selle

In their discussion of my article, Dag Wollebæk and Per Selle agree with my central point that changes in the institutional and socio-political context are likely to affect the engagement-values relation over time, and that more theoretical and empirical research is required to better understand the underlying connections. They then highlight a number of weaknesses in my empirical analysis. First, they criticize the operationalization of the isolated–connected distinction I borrow from Paxton, and point to the scope of engagement as a way of ‘keeping it simple’. Second, they express disbelief in the apparent strength of the correlations at the individual level compared to the aggregate level in my analysis, and assert that an ‘organizational society of broad scope’ is primary. In this rejoinder, I briefly discuss both comments.     

Reflections on Public Choice

My 2002 presidential address to the PublicChoice Society consisted of three parts.The first had to do with the business ofthe Society's 2002 meeting and plans forthe Nashville meeting, and has beenomitted. This essay begins with the secondsection of that talk, in which I identifywhat I call the classic books ofPublic Choice, and then discuss what I viewas common misconceptions about PublicChoice. The next section of this essaysurveys five of the most importantempirical puzzles in Public Choice theory(three of them taken from the work ofAnthony Downs), and my own attempts overthe years to come to grips with thesepuzzles. I should note that, despite mycourtesy appointment in UCI's EconomicsDepartment, in this essay I write primarilyfrom the perspective of a politicalscientist – albeit, one with lots offriends who happen to beeconomists.     

Deliberative multiculturalism in New Labour's Britain

The aim of this paper is to examine the principles that New Labour has employed in its citizenship and multicultural policies in Britain, and to clarify theoretical locations as well as philosophical rationales of those principles. By deliberative multiculturalism, I mean a set of policies and discourses of New Labour about citizenship and multicultural issues, which emphasizes rational dialogue and mutual respect with firmly guaranteed political rights especially for minorities. New Labour tries to go beyond liberal and republican citizenship practice through enhancing deliberation, the origin of which goes back to the British tradition of parliamentary sovereignty. It also attempts to achieve a one-nation out of cultural cleavages, shifting its focus from redistribution with social rights to multicultural deliberation with political rights. I organize my discussion with a focus on the difference between two theoretical concepts: the relationship between cultural rights and individual equality, and the relationship between national boundaries and global belonging. In the concluding section, I explain three positive developments of New Labour's approach and also four limitations it has faced.     

Problem-based learning beyond borders: Impact and potential for university-level human rights education

Abstract

This article outlines a cutting-edge pedagogy I have branded problem-based learning beyond borders, which I have employed in a wide variety of human rights courses and in developing curriculum for two graduate programs in human rights. It involves engaging students, faculty, and community members in real-world problems usually raised by the community members. This pedagogy could be employed successfully in a range of human rights courses and programs but faculty members are often reluctant to adopt a new pedagogy, especially when it involves shifting their pedagogical ethos. So here I offer a number of compelling examples of this pedagogy drawn from my human rights classes, and then I turn to the question of best practices for encouraging other human rights faculty members to adopt such cutting-edge active-learning pedagogies. I end with some practical advice that should be applicable when encouraging faculty to experiment with such innovative pedagogies.     

Democracy and countries with Muslim majorities: a reply and update

My empirical results in Potrafke (2012) confirm past conclusions that Muslim-majority countries are less likely to be democratic. Hanusch takes issue with my results—and by inference with all past empirical results on the relation between Islam and democracy. In his comment on my study, Hanusch indicates that he believes I was using the POLITY IV index. He has not realized, as I made most clear, that the purpose of my study was to show results based on new data from Cheibub et al. (2010). Hanusch claims to have reversed the conclusion that having a Muslim majority is associated with having autocratic government. He establishes his conclusion by excluding the heartland of Islam from the estimation sample. For his estimates, Hanusch moreover uses data that do not appear to exist, at least in the claimed sources. I update my estimates to address issues that Hanusch raises. My new results confirm the conclusion that countries with Muslim majorities are less likely to be democracies. In deriving this result, I do not follow the strategy proposed by Hanusch of excluding from the data sample the countries in the heartland of Islam.     

Do Policies of Multiculturalism Change National Identities?

‘Policies of multiculturalism are often criticised for undermining national identities in one of three ways and in this article I suggest why this is questionable and then point to a more plausible relationship between the two. More specifically, I offer a hypothesis which is that policies of multiculturalism change national identities and I argue that this hypothesis is both theoretically plausible and empirically plausible in at least one instance. This argument is made in three stages and in the first of them I explain what I think policies of multiculturalism and national identities are. In the second stage I present my hypothesis and explain why it is theoretically plausible. In the third stage I use new evidence to suggest why my hypothesis is also empirically plausible in at least one instance. In the final stage I show why a sceptic who might doubt whether my hypothesis is plausible in other instances need not do so.’     

Rivalry between Taiwan and the PRC in Latin America

Latin America and the Caribbean have been a major battleground of the “foreign policy war” between Taiwan and the PRC over international legitimacy, and recognition. This paper analyzes the growing rivalry between China and Taiwan and its implications. The first part of the paper examines the importance of Latin America and the Caribbean for both Beijing and Taipei. The second section explores political aspects of their involvement in the region. The third part assesses how Beijing and Taipei use economic diplomacy to meet their diplomatic objectives in Latin America. The fourth section examines the implications of the increasing rivalry between Taipei and Beijing in the region. This study is supported by a Fulbright scholarship and a faculty development grant from Merrimack College. The views in the paper are entirely mine and should not be ascribed to the institutions acknowledged above. I would like to express my appreciation to Wang Hsiu-chi at Tamkang University in Taiwan who provided me with excellent facilities during my field trip to Taiwan. Author would like to thank Curtis Martin, Lowell Dittmer, Xiaogang Deng, Antonio Hsiang, Tchen Tchiang, Baohui Zhang, Baogang Guo, Guoli Liu, Ping Li, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the International Symposium on National Identity and the Future Cross-Strait Relations, University of Macau, in December, 2004.