One Concept of Liberty

In this paper I argue in favour of a single conception of liberty, that picked out by Berlin as negative liberty. However, Berlin's defence of liberty so understood seems to rest on a view not open to the moral realist.
The first half of the paper explains this and suggests an alternative defence compatible with such a moral position. The defence rests on an account of why we value freedom. In the second half of the paper this negative conception is defended against recent criticism from Charles Taylor. His appeal to qualitative distinctions within freedom is queried, as is the conception of the self that seems required for his outlook.     

Fact-sensitive political theory

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to argue for the importance of attention to facts in normative theorising. I discuss the problems that arise from both not displaying such attention (as some idealists do) and from doing so in the wrong way (as, for example, realists do). I propose a different brand of theorising – fact-sensitive political theory, which aims to avoid these two problems by paying attention to key facts while retaining a solid normative anchoring in abstract normative principles. The merit of abstract vs. non-abstract reasoning is that the normative debate is not torn between two distinct ends of a spectrum in the way the idealist–realist debate is. By contrast, the locus of the investigations is vertical in the sense that abstract and concrete normative discussions are given equal status and can co-exist compatibly. One of the main differences between abstract and concrete normative principles is whether abstract or concrete facts are considered necessary for the determination of the normative principles. The fact-sensitive account of normativity is neither realist nor non-ideal: it is an ambitious and demanding normative theory that contains both abstract and concrete normative reasoning. The fact-sensitive account of political theory meets the two criteria set out in this article: to integrate concrete and empirical facts about the subject matter and to subject the selection of facts to theoretical and methodological discussion and justification.     

Signs of Anthropomorphism: The Case of Natural History Television Documentaries

This article employs Peirce's triadic concept of the sign, and Deleuze's theory of the image-movement to propose a social semiotic account of the ways in which visual signs in British and US natural history anthropomorphicise 'nature'. Peirce's semiotic is employed to critique both realist and relativist accounts of anthropomorphism. Although there may be a causally indexical relation between photographic signs and object, the fact that all signs are constituted by a three-way relationship between sign, object, and interpretant means that natural history documentaries, like the scientific texts that purportedly inform them, are ineluctably anthropomorphic. Deleuze's account of the image-movement is employed to explain why, far from being a dispassionate capturing of 'any-instants-whatsoevers', natural history image-movements organise movement in ways that are mediated by the semiotics of the natural history genre. As such, image-movements also constitute a form of anthropomorphism.     

Proportionality and Self-Interest

This paper offers a justification of the principle of military proportionality that is based in considerations of self-interest. By offering such a justification, I hope to vindicate the principle on the basis of the least controversial argument available. The war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 is used as a case study. Part 1 surveys recent work on military proportionality and suggests that the importance of this principle has increased in the age of asymmetrical warfare. Part 2 considers and rejects the traditional realist concerns about proportionality. Part 3 offers a realist rationale for adhering to the principle.     

Rethinking the epistemic case against epistocracy

ABSTRACT

In this article, I focus on arguments which suggest that disenfranchising persons on the grounds of incompetence is likely to produce epistemically sub-optimal decisions. I suggest three ways in which such arguments can be strengthened. First, I argue that they can be untethered from the controversial ‘best judge’ principle, according to which each person is the best judge of his or her own interests. Second, I suggest that epistemic arguments against epistocracy are currently insensitive to the nature of the groups that would be excluded on the grounds of incompetence. Such arguments would remain unchanged were epistocracy to disenfranchise privileged persons rather than already disadvantaged persons. I argue that a stronger critique of epistocracy ought to focus on distinctive epistemic obstacles faced by socially privileged persons. Third, I argue that current epistemic critics of epistocracy ignore how its basis for exclusion entails consequences that are relevant to our assessment of its justifiability. Their criticisms would, for instance, remain the same had this exclusion been brought about in a random manner. Instead, I emphasise the deliberative costs that follow from the exclusion of disadvantaged groups qua incompetent.     

Crisis of political parties and representative democracies: rethinking parties in associational,experimentalist governance

The contrast between the normative functions of political parties in representative democracies and their empirical working is stark and rapidly increasing. This article starts from a sober, realist account of the empirical state of affairs and from structural problems of democracy and participations – in terms of limits of time, information, qualification and relevant expertise – that have to be acknowledged by any realist–utopian proposal of alternatives beyond the exclusive alternative of ‘thin, realist democracy’ or emphatic ‘strong, participatory, direct, or mass democracy’. We can do better. My search for institutional alternatives looks not for the replacement of political parties but for their relief. Many, not all, of their normative tasks can be shared with other functional networks, associations and organizations. In exploring such a new division of political labour I draw on older debates and designs of associative democracy and on recent discussions to democratize expertise and to expertise democracy in order to address urgent societal problems of high-risk decisions under conditions of extreme complexity, contingency, unpredictability and uncertainty and deep contestedness of our knowledge, problems that turn out to be unmanagable by party politics and representative democracy.     

The fact remains: Party ID moderates how voters respond to economic change

Recent research suggests that party identification biases voters' economic perceptions in general, but that all voters respond to economic change at the same rate. This implies that voters update their economic perceptions in parallel and are able to hold governments to account. But this has two problems. First, it contradicts evidence of partisan-motivated information processing. Second, parallel-updating does not imply unbiased information processing and is normatively less appealing than if partisans' economic perceptions were to converge at economic extremes. In this article, I argue instead that party identification does moderate how voters' economic perceptions respond to economic change. I test my argument on data from one ordinary and one extraordinary period in Britain's recent economic history using competing Bayesian multilevel ordered-logit models. I show that economic change does lead to changes in voters' economic perceptions. But I also show that party identification moderates this process. As such, voters update their economic perceptions along separate, not parallel, paths.     

Introduction to Kirchheimer

Mainly through examining an essay by Iris Marion Young on policy and treatment for pregnant drug users, I compare the feminist ethic of care with the ethics of Michel Foucault, which, I argue, are founded upon the value of freedom. I find several contradictions in Young's work. She criticizes universalization, but does not avoid it herself; she espouses the value of freedom, yet wants the other to conform to her own values. I argue that the problem lies in Young's liberal-humanist understanding of freedom and its relation to ethics. Foucault's understanding of freedom is a sounder base for an ethics, and this provides needed support for the concept of caring. It also yields new perspectives on social problems such as drugs.     

Denunciatory technology: forging publics through populism and secrecy

This paper theorizes contemporary institutionalized forms of denunciation, or what I call ‘denunciatory technologies’. Denunciatory technologies are mechanisms that allow citizens to report one another to the state for a wide range of wrongdoing, such as welfare fraud. The scarce literature on such initiatives relies heavily on concepts of neoliberalism to explain their emergence and operation. I first argue that a focus on neoliberalism fails to recognize these technologies as a sophisticated type of statecraft that promotes public sensibilities. I then offer a more robust account of denunciatory technologies. Rather than relying on an analysis of neoliberalism, I argue that these technologies fuse the policing of political criminals like the ‘welfare cheat’ to the very notion of ‘public good’, and refract vertical populist energies back onto the population. I conclude that, through such technologies, publics become an integral tool in their own governance.     

Vigilantes,gangsters, and alcohol: clashing citizenship regimes in postwar Guatemala

In this volatile moment in Latin America, when relations between the state and citizens are in flux, people at the margins of society draw on various notions of citizenship in social conflicts over proper behavior and the common good. I examine an intergenerational conflict over the legality of alcohol in an indigenous village in Guatemala to show how its protagonists creatively recombine different aspects of the various citizenship regimes that they have encountered. Elders have formed vigilante justice groups to combat the youth they consider gangsters. While the vigilantes draw upon a discourse of obligation to justify their actions, the generation below them counters with a language of rights. Some argue that citizenship is less meaningful in contexts where state power is ambiguous and extralegal violence is commonplace. I argue that in such contexts, it is not that citizenship does not have meaning, but rather that its meaning is intensely contested.     

Culture and Relativism

The meanings and implications of cultural relativism have been debated for decades. Reprising this debate, Roger Sandall offers a pointed critique of the anthropological concept of culture and identifies relativism as the internal and corrosive enemy of the open society. I challenge his reading of our predicament. Considering the work of Franz Boas and his debts to the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, I distance the social science concept of culture from positions—the rejection of standards of truth, beauty, and morality; the belief that cultural value systems and practices are all equally true (or untrue); the valorization of primitivism—that are not intrinsic to it. Next, I consider the use of culture in the “philosophy of primitivism” and its meanings in multiculturalism and identity politics. I argue that many ostensibly relativist claims are used to serve non-relativist agendas, or hide universalistic claims in unstated but essential premises and background assumptions. Rather than a world dominated by relativism, where cultural differences are held to be inviolable and cross-cultural judgments have been rendered impossible, I see something like the reverse. Our problem is not that we overvalue cultural differences but that we underestimate them. Even in our multiculturalism, we imagine a sameness of outlook and aspiration, an unwitting projection of ourselves in the end.

On claims of culture and duties of recognition in democratic states

One important way in which individuals and groups express their ideas and principles, and present their proposals and demands, is in the language of identity or difference. They argue that what they value and what they deserve are related to their distinctive identities. Working within the framework of a political theory of recognition, I argue in this article that particular cultural communities may have reasonable expectations that their distinctive identities receive public recognition, and that others may therefore have good reasons to give those identities such recognition. To be specific, I contend that there are distinct and complementary ways in which the state and its citizens should respond to identity-related demands for public recognition. Using terms introduced by Axel Honneth, I argue that the state should give ‘public attention’ to some cultural communities, and that citizens should show one another ‘well-meaning attention’. I conclude that both these forms of attention can be justified by reference to a new, fourth principle of recognition, so long as this is understood as a principle of political inclusion rather than one of cultural recognition.     

Decision period and Duverger's psychological effect in FPTP elections: Evidence from India

The plurality rule creates incentives that can divert the vote from the third parties. I argue that the process that converts such Duvergerian incentives into the Duvergerian outcomes has a temporal dimension: both strategic and non-strategic voters need time to form and communicate their preferences over candidates. To examine this connection, I capitalize on the institution of phased voting in India. I treat the timing of the district vote as the endpoint of the campaign period in the district and evaluate its effect on the vote for the leaders and the third parties, the third parties’ vote share, and the vote concentration. I find a positive effect of campaign period duration on the extent of the observed strategic behaviors in the district.     

Contemporary Conservatism, Human Nature, and Identity: The Philosophy of Roger Scruton

In this article I examine the role that the concept of human nature plays within the conservative philosophy of Roger Scruton. I argue that it is of fundamental importance for his approach to conservatism, as well as showing the influence on his views of Hegel and Wittgenstein. However, such an approach can cause many problems for the conservative, and I argue that Scruton's use of a theory of human nature to justify particular social arrangements makes his approach resemble the methods of e.g socialism and liberalism, precisely those theories he wishes to attack for being based on abstract theories of human nature.     

Fairness to non-participants: a case for a practice-independent egalitarian baseline

Proponents of practice-dependent egalitarianism argue that egalitarian duties and entitlements only apply among participants in morally relevant practices. In this paper, I argue that these views are implausible because they allow for objectionable treatment of non-participants. I show that it is impossible, on the basis of practice-internal considerations alone, to determine the extent to which the pursuit of practices can permissibly limit the opportunities of non-participants. There are opportunities beyond the current holdings of practices to which no one has a privileged claim (such as unowned natural resources), and the distribution of which is a matter of justice. A just distribution of such unowned distributive goods, though, requires a practice-independent distributive baseline. I further show that such a baseline can only be egalitarian because all alternative baselines face serious objections. From this I conclude that any plausible theory of distributive justice must accept some form of equal practice-independent distributive entitlements.     

The scientific foundation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models

DSGE-models provide a coherent framework of analysis. This coherence is brought about by restricting acceptable behavior of agents to dynamic utility maximization and rational expectations. The problem of the DSGE-models (and more generally of macroeconomic models based on rational expectations) is that they assume extraordinary cognitive capabilities of individual agents. In addition, these models need a lot of ad-hoc assumptions to make them fit the data. I argue that we need models that take into account the limited cognitive abilities of agents. One can introduce rationality in such models by assuming “trial and error“ learning. I propose such a model and I analyze its implications.     

A Party of a Different Color? Race,Campaign Communication,and Party Politics

Although studies have examined the contents of party images and the impact of those images on candidate evaluations, we do not have an understanding of the conditions that lead to party image change. In this article, I examine the impact of racialized campaigns on perceptions of individuals' party images. Moreover, I explore the factors that mediate the campaigns' effects. I argue that the success of a strategy's ability to alter party images depends on the strength of the individuals' extant party images. Using the 2000 Republican National Convention as a case study, I find that party images are indeed malleable. Further, I find that race, party identification, and education mediate party image change.     

Interpretation after Kant

Abstract

After tracing the rise in interest in the phenomenon of interpretation to events in the early post-Kantian period, I argue that this development is highly relevant to understanding contemporary philosophy's methodological status and its relation to fields such as science and literature. I argue that much of recent philosophy is best understood in terms of an "interpretive turn" that has now provided philosophy with a modest but valuable and distinctive role. I illustrate the procedure of philosophy in this key by critically appropriating ideas about interpretation advanced by Harold Bloom and Richard Rorty, and by using hints about the role of history that arise from discussions of Kant's notion of genius.     

Governing Campus Speech: a Bottom-Up Approach

I review arguments favoring bans on problematic speech (e.g., hate speech) on campus. Contrasting such calls for top-down regulation, I explore the potential for a “bottom-up approach” to campus speech governance to address vexing concerns pertaining to campus speech without violating free speech and academic freedom principles. I examine the political economy and epistemological dynamics inherent within the two forms of governance. I argue that, relative to a centralized top-down approach, a decentralized bottom-up approach to speech governance avoids political dynamics that bend toward the inappropriate use of power. Further, I argue that a bottom-up approach leaves the discursive space contestable, and therefore more open to new discovery and correction. Recognizing that a bottom up approach is no panacea, I also consider open questions and concerns that warrant further inquiry.