Offending the One Percent: Seven Arguments Against Distributive Desert

The belief that people morally deserve the income they acquire in the market is both powerful and deep-rooted. Nevertheless, most political philosophers are skeptical of the idea that market income is morally deserved. There is thus a large and uncomfortable chasm between the philosophical mainstream and the actual public. The purpose of this article was to inject new intellectual effort in closing this gap. The goal is the ambitious one of a comprehensive demolition of the notion of distributive desert. To this end, I put forward seven critical arguments. Four of them are common in the literature. Since these have been adequately discussed elsewhere, I mention them here briefly and only for completeness. The core of the article focuses on three original arguments. Overall, my aim is to show that, taking these arguments together, the case against distributive desert is conclusive.     

The evolution of an Asia‐Pacific policy community in Australia

Australian Labor governments have, in recent times, become particularly active in shaping the form and content of regional forums where outstanding economic and security issues can be semi‐publicly aired. An increasing number of analysts have characterized this activist role with APEC and CSCAP as a manifestation of ‘intellectual leadership’, and have explained this evident concern with the promotion of common understandings (and hence the possibility of rules) as the natural stance of ‘middle powers’. This paper surveys the means by which Australia's Labor governments came to engage in these regional dialogues; the arguments that have facilitated that engagement; and the individuals who have played leading roles in articulating those arguments. It concludes with brief observations about the possible trajectory of these two regional dialogues, and reference to some of the obstacles they might pose for future Australian governments.     

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.     

The ideal and reality of epistemic proceduralism

The complex debate about proceduralism in deliberative democratic theory is important for understanding alternative models for bridging theory and practice. In this article, I contrast Jürgen Habermas’ model of epistemic proceduralism with that of David Estlund. I begin by locating the differences between them in terms of contrasting interpretations of Rousseau’s idea of the general will. On this basis, I set out two competing models of democratic proceduralism – an instrumental conception and a constitutive conception – and show how Estlund’s critique of Habermas’ procedural theory of ‘deep deliberative democracy’ mistakenly presupposes that Habermas is committed to an instrumental conception. After clarifying the role of Habermas’ ideal speech situation, I explicate and defend a Habermasian model of reflexive epistemic proceduralism. I conclude by considering the implications of this model for understanding the relationship between normative theory and empirical research.     

Travelling with vehicular ideas: The case of the third Way

In all the various debates around Anthony Giddens's Third Way sequence, few attempts have been made to characterize its logic and impact as a type of discourse, a certain mode of ideas-work. The first dimension of this paper involves deploying Thomas Osborne's categories to depict the Third Way as a ‘vehicular’ idea, with the intellectual style of Giddens himself correlatively framed as that of a new sort of ‘mediator’. In these terms, the essential inclusiveness and indeterminacy of the Third Way series of texts is illustrated, and the issue of what counts as ideas ‘success’ in the vehicular mode is broached. Second, in line with the inherent mobility of vehicular ideas, I identify the keynote shifts in Third Way thinking over time, including the sociological register that it occupies, its pragmatism and its relationship to New Labour politics. In a third phase, the article takes up questions about the role of the critical intellectual today and the practical, though not theoretical, recovery of ‘ideology-critique’ in appraising ideas like the Third Way. The scope and limits of the very notion of ‘vehicularity’ itself are central to this discussion.     

The Lockean Case for Religious Tolerance: The Social Contract and the Irrationality of Persecution

John Locke's non-religious arguments for tolerance are often seen as inadequate. He is criticized for: (1) failing to give reasons in support of a strict separation between the roles of church and state; and (2) wrongly insisting that the coercion of belief is irrational. I argue that once we understand Locke's arguments for tolerance within the context of his social contract framework, his non-sectarian arguments can circumvent such criticisms. Lockean arguments for tolerance are thus stronger than typically supposed.     

Dworkin on external skepticism and moral permissions

This article discusses Ronald Dworkin’s first objection against what he calls external moral skepticism, the view that denies truth-value to moral judgments. According to that objection, an external skeptic denies that substantive moral judgments can be true. But, at the same time, the objection goes, what follows from the skeptical view is that all actions are morally permissible, which is in itself a substantive moral judgment. We call this ‘the self-defeating argument.’ We argue that the objection’s success depends on how we interpret the idea of moral permission, an issue Dworkin does not clearly resolve. Against his objection, we advance two different arguments. First, once we learn what role the idea of moral permission plays in morality, we can see that any plausible view of some agent’s moral permission must acknowledge its complex character, and that the existence of a moral permission must have some impact on the balance of moral reasons for other agents. On this understanding, it is false that it follows solely from external skepticism that everything is permissible. Second, we argue that even if permissions have a simple character, not a complex one, they are plausible only when framed within a moral constellation of rights and obligations. So understood, it is, again, false that it follows from external skepticism that everything is permissible.     

What comes first,democracy or human rights?

Minimalists about human rights hold that a state can have political legitimacy if it protects a basic list of rights and democratic rights do not have to be on that list. In this paper, I consider two arguments from Benhabib against the minimalist view. The first is that a political community cannot be said to have self-determination, which minimalists take to be the value at the heart of legitimacy, without democracy. The second is that even the human rights protections minimalists take to legitimize institutions cannot be had without democracy. These rights can only be adequately interpreted and specified for any social context if the interpretations and specifications result from democratic processes. Here, I bring out some important problems with these arguments and so conclude that they do not represent a robust case for rejecting minimalism.     

Why is there no securitisation theory in the Korean nuclear crisis?

Despite the fact that the Korean nuclear crisis is one of the most protracted security issues in the world, the research analysing the crisis from the perspective of securitisation theory is curiously absent. This article attempts to pin down some distinguishing features of South Korea’s securitisation of the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, thereby investigating why one rarely sees the implications of securitisation theory in the way that the Copenhagen School theorists would suggest. Borrowing the key components of securitisation theory—existential threats, referent objects and extraordinary measures—this article suggests three elusive characteristics of the South Korean actors’ speech acts as sources highlighting the dilemma. To make the article’s arguments clearer, I hold Floyd’s classification of securitisation theory, which separated the securitisation process into two different stages: securitising move and security practice. While acknowledging the importance of the differences between illocution and perlocution in a securitisation process, this article takes this logic one step further by suggesting the limits of the perlocutionary effect in making the securitisation process complete.     

Rejoinder to mead

As I understand him, Mead makes two arguments. First, he argues that relying on reasoning from general principles to answer practical questions of public management can be misguided if the policy analyst deliberately or inadvertently ignores available evidence. Of course he is right. As the purpose of the symposium was to invite public management scholars to use general principles to decide on the relative merits of mandatory and voluntary workfare, however, the authors, who are not experts in welfare reform, cannot be faulted for being unfamiliar with the evidence. It was their intellectual approaches to the problem that I sought to broach.     

Why should we care about competition?

Abstract

Most people believe that competitive institutions are morally acceptable, but that there are limits: a friendly competition is one thing; a life or death struggle is another. How should we think about the moral limits on competition? I argue that the limits stem from the value of human sociability, and in particular from the noninstrumental value of a form of social connectedness that I call ‘mutual affirmation.’ I contrast this idea with Rawls’s account of social union and stability. Finally, I show how these ideas provide the basis for a powerful argument in favour of social provisions for public goods: for example, a strong public health care system moderates the stakes in labour market competition, preventing the competition from descending into a life or death struggle.     

Beyond reason: the philosophy and politics of immigration

In this paper, I critically address the role of arbitrary and contingent features in philosophical debates about migration. These features play a central role, and display the importance of ‘unreason’ in the debate and the limits of rational criticism. Certain elements of political thought have to be taken as given, as essential starting points or indispensable building blocks. As such, they cannot be exposed to rational criticism. Political arrangements such as national borders, nation-states and national identities constitute these building blocks, and justify coercive borders in order to sustain them. If we are to subject these arrangements to critical examination, then we move beyond the limits of liberal political philosophy. I examine theorists who take this kind of approach to the ethics of immigration: Michael Blake, Samuel Scheffler and David Miller. I argue that such approaches ask us to balance arbitrary and contingent features of the political world against the non-contingent moral equality of the migrant. If we are to recognize the migrant as an equal reason-giver in the moral contestation of borders, then we are compelled to theorize beyond these limits, and to theorize instead about a global community of equals, a post-national world made up of transnational belonging.     

Can Democracy Cope?

The success story of democracy over the twentieth century has given way to doubts in the twenty‐first, as democracies struggle to cope with difficult wars, mounting debts, climate change and the rise of China. This essay uses intellectual history to explain the link between long‐term democratic success and short‐term democratic failure. It distinguishes three distinct views of what can go wrong with democracy, and identifies the third (which I call ‘the confidence trap’, an idea that originates with Tocqueville) as the key to understanding our present predicament. Democratic success creates blind spots and a reluctance to tackle long‐term problems. I use this idea to explain and put in context Fukuyama's claims about the end of history, and to examine the link between democratic failure and market failure.     

In Defence of Politics

In this, my inaugural lecture, I wanted to sing out in praise of politics! This seemed such a good idea twelve months ago, but now in the wake of even more stories about MPs not declaring foreign trips and former ministers demanding ‘cash for access’ the idea of trying to defend politicians and praise politics suddenly seems like a very bad idea. And yet it is exactly because politics is held in such low esteem that the lecture is so important. Democratic politics matters because it achieves far more than we generally give it credit for. I want to rediscover the essence and arguments of Bernard Crick's classic book In Defence of Politics because its arguments are more appropriate today than when they were first published in 1962.     

Contempt,Community, and the Interruption of Sense

In the early modern period, contempt emerged as a persistent theme in moral philosophy. Most of the moral philosophers of the period shared two basic commitments in their thinking about contempt. First, they argued that we understand the value of others in the morally appropriate way when we understand them from the perspective of the morally relevant community. And second, they argued that we are naturally inclined to judge others as contemptible, and that we must therefore interrupt that natural movement of sense-bestowal in order to value others in the morally appropriate way. In this paper I examine in detail the arguments of Nicolas Malebranche and Immanuel Kant concerning the wrongness of contempt, emphasising the ways in which they depend on conceptions of community and of the interruption of moral sense-bestowal. After showing how each of these arguments fails to comprehend the nature and the wrongness of contempt, I argue that we can find the resources for a more adequate account in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, and specifically in his reflections on ontology and on the meaning of community.     

The rights of (future) humans qua humans

Human rights are rights held “simply in virtue of humanity.” In unpacking this claim, we find that theories of human rights disclose (1) something about what we understand a minimally decent human life to be and (2) who we consider to belong within a community of rights-bearers. In this article, I address two interrelated questions: When and why do future persons have standing as rights-bearing members of a shared moral community? Are the rights held by future generations best expressed in the “greening” of existing rights or in a new distinctly environmental right? I argue that human rights theorists miss an important element of the human qua human if they take ecological embeddedness to be contingently rather than necessarily relevant to human rights. I therefore argue that there are reasons to favor a new distinctly environmental human right.     

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.     

Minority rights and the dialectics of the nation: Otto Bauer’s theory of the nation and its contributions to multicultural theory and globalization

Conclusion This article analyzed Otto’s Bauer idea of the nation and assessed its meaning and significance qua liberal nationalism and the expansion of national minority rights in Europe. It argued that Bauer's formulation of the same rights for all minorities exposed certain limitations of multicultural theory, namely the failure of liberal multicultural theorists to adequately address the consequences of special minority rights and the potentially transformative role of labor in liberal societies that necessarily seek to be inclusive. Further, Bauer's idea of cultural autonomy raised important and relevant implications for advancing national minority rights in Europe. In particular, his initiative exposed possible ways to promote the social of cultural rights of EU Charter on Fundamental Rights. Given this and the EU's commitment to labor rights, it is curious that Bauer’s theory has not received the attention it deserves. Indeed, even if Bauer's ideas prove somewhat non-conventional by liberal standards, it is still important that we see his ideas as serving some elemental purpose in linking the advancement of national values and sentiment with the EU goal of integration.     

O,The Roast Beef of Old England! Brexit and Gastronationalism

‘Gastronationalism’ is the idea that there are distinctive and authentic national food cultures that are threatened by the forces of globalisation. It is a myth: there are no unique or authentically distinctive national culinary cultures. But the idea of gastronationalism is a powerful one that can have important political effects, as Brexit shows. In this article, I chart the rise of British food with regard to Britain’s historical relationship with Europe and the EU. I consider how different understandings of British food culture—one more nativist, one more cosmopolitan—have played a symbolic role in the debate on Brexit, before considering the broader relationship between contemporary populist nationalism and gastronationalism.     

Liberal Nationalism: an Irresponsible Compound?

In this century there has been a deep concern about the dangers of nationalism. Many of those who have expressed such concerns have been liberals. Yet, ironically, in the last decade, there has been a resurgence of interest in the idea of nationalism from within liberal thought—thus giving rise to the compound term 'liberal nationalism'. Having situated liberal nationalism in a broader historical context, this paper critically reviews the arguments of liberal nationalism in the work of Neil MacCormick, David Miller and Yael Tamir. It concludes by drawing a distinction between the pragmatic and ethical significance of nationalism. This distinction neither entails a denial of the role of nationalism nor a defence of liberalism. It attempts to sever the connection between nationalism and ethics. Nationalism may be inevitable for the present, but it is not a virtue to be promoted.