Hans Kelsen refused to develop a democratic theory of the basic norm. Given that he expounded a strong distinction between law and politics as two separate scientific disciplines he consistently argued against any attempt to politicize legal science and corrupt its object of cognition. As a result, there has been very little discussion of the basic norm in relation to his democratic theory. This article attempts to fill this gap by tracing the relationship between the basic norm and democracy in (...) Kelsen’s legal and political writings. More precisely, it maps Kelsen’s seminal distinction between autonomy and heteronomy onto his reflections on constitutional making and probes the anti-democratic implications of his theory of the basic norm as they undermine the normative foundations of democratic theory. The article concludes by addressing the question of whether it is possible to articulate a theory of the democratic ground norm, of democratic foundings with a normative content, by proposing the idea of an immanent, performative basic norm as the source of validity of a democratic constitutional order. (shrink)

Although the modern age is often described as the age of democratic revolutions, the subject of popular foundings has not captured the imagination of contemporary political thought. Most of the time, democratic theory and political science treat as the object of their inquiry normal politics, institutionalized power, and consolidated democracies. The aim of Andreas Kalyvas' study is to show why it is important for democratic theory to rethink the question of its beginnings. Is there a founding unique to (...) democracies? Can a democracy be democratically established? What are the implications of expanding democratic politics in light of the question of whether and how to address democracy's beginnings? Kalyvas addresses these questions and scrutinizes the possibility of democratic beginnings in terms of the category of the extraordinary, as he reconstructs it from the writings of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt and their views on the creation of new political, symbolic, and constitutional orders. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 26, Issue 3, Page 384-390, September 2019.

This essay examines the political trials through which, according to Machiavelli's Discourses, republics should punish magistrates and prominent citizens who threaten or violate popular liberty. Unlike modern constitutions, which assign indictments and appeals to small numbers of government officials, Machiavelli's neo-Roman model encourages individual citizens to accuse corrupt or usurping elites and promotes the entire citizenry as political jury and court of appeal. Machiavellian political justice requires, on the one hand, equitable, legal procedures that serve all citizens by punishing guilty (...) parties and discouraging retaliatory reprisals, including foreign intervention. On the other hand, frankly acknowledging the power disparities that exist in every republic, Machiavelli outlines how political trials enable pro-plebeian magistrates and populist reformers to thwart patrician-generated smear campaigns and oligarchic conspiracies. (shrink)

There is much disagreement among many commentators of Hannah Arendt's work about whether her contributions to politics and philosophy contain a clandestine version of decisionism or, by contrast, represent an explicit attempt to break away from the elements of voluntarism, arbitrariness, and irrationality, which are considered to be inherent to any theory of the decision. Despite the many disagreements that set apart these two interpretations of Arendt, however, there is a common presupposition that both share. They are in agreement concerning (...) the decision: it is a threat and a vice, intrinsically dangerous and potentially totalitarian in nature, which ought to be expelled from any theory of politics with a normative content. As a result, the terms of the debate pertain solely to whether Arendt was a (crypto-) decisionist and not to the nature and evaluation of the decision as such. This paper argues, contrary to Arendt's critics, that although elements of a theory of the decision can be found scattered throughout many of her writings, she was nonetheless unswerving in her opposition to decisionism. But unlike her defenders, it also argues that had Arendt built on these elements to elaborate a systematic theory of the decision, she would have avoided many of the flaws and inconsistencies that plague her concept of politics. (shrink)

Contemporary Anglo-American political thought is witnessing a revival of theories of deliberative democracy. The principle of public argumentation, according to which the legitimation of a general norm is predicated upon a rational and open dialog among all those affected by this norm, constitutes their common underlying assumption. This assumption is itself grounded in the metatheoretical claim that arguing is the defining activity of a demos of free and equal members. Habermas' well-known formulation of communicative or discursive democracy represents one of (...) the earliest, most discussed, and indeed most emblematic versions of the existing models of deliberative democracy. It is here, I believe, that Castoriadis' political theory can prove exceptionally important as it provides a starting point and a solid ground for articulating one of the most incisive and convincing critiques of the limits and flaws of communicative democracy. Although Castoriadis himself never directly discussed deliberative democracy as such, we can try to approximate from various parts of his work what he might have thought about, especially when it comes to Habermas' model. (shrink)

McCormick, John, Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology (reviewed by Andreas Kalyvas); Caldwell, Peter, Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law: The Theory and Practice of Weimar Constitutionalism (reviewed by Andreas Kalyvas); Dyzenhaus, David, Legality and Legitimacy: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, Hermann Heller (reviewed by Andreas Kalyvas); Cristi, Renato, Carl Schmitt and Liberal Authoritarianism: Strong State, Free Economy (reviewed by Andreas Kalyvas).

Hans Kelsen refused to develop a democratic theory of the basic norm. Given that he expounded a strong distinction between law and politics as two separate scientific disciplines he consistently argued against any attempt to politicize legal science and corrupt its object of cognition. As a result, there has been very little discussion of the basic norm in relation to his democratic theory. This article attempts to fill this gap by tracing the relationship between the basic norm and democracy in (...) Kelsen’s legal and political writings. More precisely, it maps Kelsen’s seminal distinction between autonomy and heteronomy onto his reflections on constitutional making and probes the anti-democratic implications of his theory of the basic norm as they undermine the normative foundations of democratic theory. The article concludes by addressing the question of whether it is possible to articulate a theory of the democratic ground norm, of democratic foundings with a normative content, by proposing the idea of an immanent, performative basic norm as the source of validity of a democratic constitutional order Key Words: Hannah Arendt • basic norm • constitu ere • constitutional making • democracy • immanent norm • Hans Kelsen. (shrink)

The article examines the inaugural encounter of the Greek theory of tyranny and the Roman institution of dictatorship. Although the twentieth century is credited for fusing the tyrant and the dictator into one figure/concept, I trace the origins of this conceptual synthesis in a much earlier historical period, that of the later Roman Republic and the early Principate, and in the writings of two Greek historians of Rome, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Appian of Alexandria. In their histories, the traditional interest (...) in the relationship between the king and the tyrant is displaced by a new curiosity about the tyrant and the dictator. The two historians placed the two figures alongside one another and found them to be almost identical, blurring any previous empirical, analytical, or normative distinctions. In their Greco-Roman synthesis dictatorship is re-described as `temporary tyranny by consent' and the tyrant as a `permanent dictator.' Dictatorship, a venerated republican magistracy, the ultimate guardian of the Roman constitution, is for the first time radically reinterpreted and explicitly questioned. It meets its first critics. (shrink)

Apart from a few exceptions,1 studies of Carl Schmitt in English have not dealt with the legal and constitutional aspects of his work. William Scheuerman's book begins to fill this gap. His work is an important corrective to previous interpretations which, by disproportionally emphasizing the cultural and theological aspects of Schmitt's work, have neglected its central legal character, thus reducing one of the most influential jurists of the 20th century either to a right-wing cultural critic or to a dissatisfied crypto-theologian.2 (...) Among other consequences, this neglect has contributed to disregarding themes that are pivotal to Schmitt's thinking.3 Scheuerman focuses on…. (shrink)

Marcel Gauchet's book is an ambitious study of the rise and demise of religion.1 Written in the tradition of the “grand narratives,” he seeks to reconstruct the multiple linkages between the transformation of religion and the secularization of Western civilization.2 Relying on Max Weber and Cornelius Castoriadis, Gauchet seeks to explain the transition from a religious universe to a preeminently profane world that has broken irrecoverably with its religious past. How, Gauchet asks, did the transition take place? How did the (...) modern world and especially politics succeed in emancipating themselves from God? How was the break with the invisible Other…. (shrink)

This book review considers Andreas Kalyvas and Ira Katznelson's argument that there is less of an intrinsic tension between liberalism and republicanism than has been claimed by various students of the history of modern liberal thought. It fully endorses the authors' directing of our attention to the mode of thinking which is to be seen in their select group of subjects (Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Germaine de Stael and Benjamin Constant). But it balks at (...) their claim that their 'critical junctures' or 'heterogeneous and relational' interpretation of the rise of liberalism is superior to the 'linear' or 'trickle down' approach which sees this rise as a tale of the progressively strengthening influence of the 'giants' of political thought such as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Montesquieu et. al. over lesser thinkers who were more absorbed in 'practical affairs.' The suggestion is made that what the authors take to be 'negotiable' differences of emphasis between the classically liberal and classically republican traditions may in fact be 'existential' oppositions which no single political order could overcome. (shrink)

Using a conviction-based measure, we find that local public corruption exerts a negative effect on the lending activity of US banks. Our baseline estimations show that the difference in public corruption between, for example, Alabama, where corruption is high, and Minnesota, where corruption is low, implies that banks headquartered in the former state grant 0.55% less credit ceteris paribus. Using proxies for relationship lending and monitoring, we also find that these bank characteristics weaken the negative effect of public corruption on (...) lending. These results are robust to tests that address endogeneity, to the use of perception-based measures of corruption, and after controlling for credit demand conditions. In further analysis, we show that these effects are more evident for smaller banks and banks operating in a single state. These findings provide evidence that public corruption could facilitate information asymmetry in the lending market and, thus, could hinder local development by reducing bank credit. (shrink)

Online controlled experiments, also known as A/B tests, have become ubiquitous. While many practical challenges in running experiments at scale have been thoroughly discussed, the ethical dimension of A/B testing has been neglected. This article fills this gap in the literature by introducing a new, soft ethics and governance framework that explicitly recognizes how the rise of an experimentation culture in industry settings brings not only unprecedented opportunities to businesses but also significant responsibilities. More precisely, the article (a) introduces a (...) set of principles to encourage ethical and responsible experimentation to protect users, customers, and society; (b) argues that ensuring compliance with the proposed principles is a complex challenge unlikely to be addressed by resorting to a one-solution response; (c) discusses the relevance and effectiveness of several mechanisms and policies in educating, governing, and incentivizing companies conducting online controlled experiments; and (d) offers a list of prompting questions specifically designed to help and empower practitioners by stimulating specific ethical deliberations and facilitating coordination among different groups of stakeholders. (shrink)

The impact of large digital corporations on our freedom is often lamented but rarely investigated systematically. This paper aims to fill this desideratum by focusing on the power of social media corporations and the freedom of their users. In order to analyze this relationship, I distinguish two forms of freedom and two corresponding forms of power. Social media corporations extend their users’ freedom of choice by providing many new options. This provision, however, comes with the domination by these corporations because (...) it is based on their power of uncontrolled interference. Users could escape this domination through exit. One reason why they do not choose this option is that they would lose the benefits associated with the network effects provided by social media services. A second reason is that the power of social media corporations runs so deep that they are able to manipulate the autonomous decision-making processes of their users. Users are provided with many new avenues for authentic self-presentation on social media. By using them, however, users need to conform to a web interface that is designed by corporations to undermine self-control. Through these two mechanisms, corporations are able to promote an interest in users to present themselves on their platforms. Insofar as this works, they secure the users’ compliance to their domination through subjectivation. This double conjunction of choice and domination, on the one hand, and autonomy and subjectivation, on the other, makes the case that the very power of corporate social media stems from their intrinsic connection to genuine practices of freedom. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a regularity theory of causation. The theory aims to be reductive and to align with our pre‐theoretic understanding of the causal relation. We show that our theory can account for a wide range of causal scenarios, including isomorphic scenarios, omissions, and scenarios which suggest that causation is not transitive.

The conflict in Iraq has been portrayed as “ethnic” civil war, a radically different conflict from “ideological” wars such as Vietnam. We argue that such an assessment is misleading, as is its theoretical foundation, which we call the “ethnic war model.” Neither Iraq nor Vietnam conforms to the ethnic war model's predictions. The sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni militias is not simply the outcome of sectarian cleavages in Iraqi society, but to an important extent, a legacy of U.S. occupation. (...) On the other hand, although Vietnam was a society riven by ethnic cleavages, the Vietnam War also fails to conform to the ethnic war model. We show that there is no necessary overlap between ethnic conflict and ethnic war. Some ethnic conflicts evolve into ethnic wars, and others develop dynamics virtually indistinguishable from those of ideological civil wars. We suggest that the state's role is essential in transforming conflicts into either ethnic or irregular wars. We conclude with an analysis of the current situation and future prospects in Iraq. (shrink)

Sartre’s account of the emotions presupposes a conception of human nature that is never fully articulated. The paper aims to render such conception explicit and to argue that frustration occupies a foundational place in Sartre’s picture of affective existence.

We aim to devise a Ramsey test analysis of actual causation. Our method is to define a strengthened Ramsey test for causal models. Unlike the accounts of Halpern and Pearl ([2005]) and Halpern ([2015]), the resulting analysis deals satisfactorily with both over- determination and conjunctive scenarios.

ABSTRACT I discuss Nadia Urbinati's argument by highlighting an alternative dimension of populism, one that departs from the same assumptions but reaches a different understanding: populism as an antisystem electoralist strategy, one that is part of the technology of democratic competition.

Als Philosoph steht Schleiermacher noch immer im Schatten seiner Zeitgenossen und auch seiner theologischen Werke. Das Buch will seinen eigenständigen Beitrag zur Klassischen Deutschen Philosophie sichtbar machen. Gefragt wird, worin das philosophische Gravitationszentrum der einschlägigen Texte, Entwürfe und Vorlesungen Schleiermachers besteht, mit welchen theoretischen Mitteln er dabei operiert und welche Stellung er in der philosophischen Bewegung seiner Zeit einnimmt. Als zentral erweist sich der Individualitätsgedanke, der aus einer eigenständigen, kritischen Aneignung Kants und Spinozas resultiert. Mit dieser Konzeption begegnet Schleiermacher Friedrich (...) Schlegel auf Augenhöhe und leistet einen eigenständigen Beitrag zur frühromantischen Philosophie, deren grundlegende Positionen er in seinen philosophischen Vorlesungen in Halle (1804-1806) und Berlin (seit 1808) kritisch durcharbeitet und systematisiert. Dies bringt Schleiermacher, wie schon den frühen Friedrich Schlegel, trotz aller gravierenden Unterschiede vielfach in die Nähe Hegels, so dass sich sein Verhältnis zu den philosophischen Zeitgenossen höchst komplex gestaltet. Schleiermacher erweist sich als eigenständiger Denker auf dem gemeinsamen Boden der Klassischen Deutschen Philosophie. (shrink)

Human-centered explainable AI (HCXAI) advocates for the integration of social aspects into AI explanations. Central to the HCXAI discourse is the Social Transparency (ST) framework, which aims to make the socio-organizational context of AI systems accessible to their users. In this work, we suggest extending the ST framework to address the risks of social misattributions in Large Language Models (LLMs), particularly in sensitive areas like mental health. In fact LLMs, which are remarkably capable of simulating roles and personas, may lead (...) to mismatches between designers' intentions and users' perceptions of social attributes, risking to promote emotional manipulation and dangerous behaviors, cases of epistemic injustice, and unwarranted trust. To address these issues, we propose enhancing the ST framework with a fifth 'W-question' to clarify the specific social attributions assigned to LLMs by its designers and users. This addition aims to bridge the gap between LLM capabilities and user perceptions, promoting the ethically responsible development and use of LLM-based technology. (shrink)

A great deal of violence in civil wars is informed by the logic of terrorism: violence tends to be used by political actors against civilians in order to shape their political behavior. I focus on indiscriminate violence in the context of civil war: this is a type of violence that selects its victims on the basis of their membership in some group and irrespective of their individual actions. Extensive empirical evidence suggests that indiscriminate violence in civil war is informed by (...) the logic of terrorism. I argue that under certain conditions, that tend to be quite common, such violence is counter productive. I specify these conditions and address the following paradox: why do we sometimes observe instances of indiscriminate violence evenunder conditions that make this strategy counterproductive? I review four possible reasons: truncated data, ignorance, cost, and institutional constraints. I argue that indiscriminate violence emerges because it is much cheaper than its main alternative – selective violence. It is more likely under a steep imbalance of power between the competing actors, and where and when resources and information are low; however, most political actors eventually switch to selective violence. Thus, given a balance of power between competing actors, indiscriminate violence is more likely at early rather than late stages of the conflict. Overall, the paper suggests that even extreme forms of violence are used strategically. (shrink)

Der Band bietet einen systematischen Überblick über das Verhältnis von Literatur und Philosophie. Philosophische, literarische und literaturwissenschaftliche Ansätze kommen gleichberechtigt zu Wort. Die Beiträge loten die Bedeutung von Literatur aus und präsentieren gattungstheoretische Überlegungen zu literarischen Formen der Philosophie. Studien über philosophierende Literatur und philosophische Reflexionen über Literatur beschließen den Band.

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction:the European Union and the Law of Peoples The Argument of Law of Peoples Standards and Grounds for International Stability Human Rights in Federations The Argument of Law of Peoples for Inter‐people Inequality Distributive Justice in Federations Federal and Global Implications Toleration and Stability Reconsidered Acknowledgments Notes.

In this paper, we analyse actual causation in terms of production. The latter concept is made precise by a strengthened Ramsey Test semantics of conditionals: \ iff, after suspending judgement about A and C, C is believed in the course of assuming A. This test allows us to verify or falsify that an event brings about another event. Complementing the concept of production by a weak condition of difference-making gives rise to a full-fledged analysis of causation.

A new and comprehensive look at the reasons behind successful or failed nation building Nation Building presents bold new answers to an age-old question. Why is national integration achieved in some diverse countries, while others are destabilized by political inequality between ethnic groups, contentious politics, or even separatism and ethnic war? Traversing centuries and continents from early nineteenth-century Europe and Asia to Africa from the turn of the twenty-first century to today, Andreas Wimmer delves into the slow-moving forces that (...) encourage political alliances to stretch across ethnic divides and build national unity. Using datasets that cover the entire world and three pairs of case studies, Wimmer's theory of nation building focuses on slow-moving, generational processes: the spread of civil society organizations, linguistic assimilation, and the states' capacity to provide public goods. Wimmer contrasts Switzerland and Belgium to demonstrate how the early development of voluntary organizations enhanced nation building; he examines Botswana and Somalia to illustrate how providing public goods can bring diverse political constituencies together; and he shows that the differences between China and Russia indicate how a shared linguistic space may help build political alliances across ethnic boundaries. Wimmer then reveals, based on the statistical analysis of large-scale datasets, that these mechanisms are at work around the world and explain nation building better than competing arguments such as democratic governance or colonial legacies. He also shows that when political alliances crosscut ethnic divides and when most ethnic communities are represented at the highest levels of government, the general populace will identify with the nation and its symbols, further deepening national political integration. Offering a long-term historical perspective and global outlook, Nation Building sheds important new light on the challenges of political integration in diverse countries. (shrink)