Political Obligation

In this article I assert that deliberative democratic theory, as articulated by Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Benhabib, explicitly fails to live up the demands of its discourse-ethical foundation when we examine undocumented immigrants who live in any given nation. In the case of undocumented immigrants, there is a gap which exists between a moral imperative to include those affected by a norm in discourse, and legal structures which actualize this imperative. I offer the following account in an effort to show (...) how one might bridge this gap. First, virtual representation of undocumented interests by the citizens of a bounded community is not sufficient to correct the dilemma of deliberative democracy. Second, I will claim that the rhetorical power of personal testimony from marginalized individuals is required for a responsible judgment in discourse. Finally I will discuss practical forums for this participation which can potentially solve the dilemma of deliberative democracy. Through direct confrontation with those who are unjustly marginalized, we can cross the divide that exists between a moral imperative to respect the undocumented and a legally-recognized right to participate in discourse. (shrink)

In this paper we examine a nation’s obligations to report infectious diseases under the World Health Organization’s new International Health Regulations. We argue that acceptance of the Regulations signals a concrete turn to cosmopolitan citizenship in the area of health. But we also show that the new global health regime and its economic consequences raise ethical tensions for both the conceptualization and practice of cosmopolitanism. Specifically: 1) using global public heath as a lens makes visible how current conceptions of cosmopolitan (...) theory are not truly in conversation with those who are the subject of their concern; and, 2) focusing on global public health illustrates the limits of present cosmopolitan citizenship. In matters of virulent pathogens, nations are required to be good global citizens by protecting citizens of other states in the absence of a framework by which other states bear some of the costs that such global citizenship demands. (shrink)

ABSTRACTReceived wisdom in most democracies is that voting should be seen as a political freedom that citizens have a right to exercise at their discretion. But I propose that we have a duty to vote, albeit a duty to vote well: with knowledge and a sense of impartiality. Fulfillment of this obligation would contribute to the epistemic advantages of democracy, and would thereby instantiate the duty to promote and support just institutions.

Le rôle de l’Etat face aux catastrophes naturelles est examiné en fonction des critères d’ efficacité et de liberté. Les bureaucraties d’assistance face aux désastres ont des points communs, mais aussi d’importantes différences, avec celles de la santé publique. Certains programmes gouvernementaux faits pour assister les victimes de catastrophes naturelles ont des effets pervers en créant plus de souffrance, et d’autres entretiennent activement les comportements irresponsables. Le rôle de l’Etat en tant que coordinateur des efforts d’assistance est justifié, mais il (...) se trouve qu’il n’est pas logiquement nécessaire.The role of the state in responding to natural disasters is examined with an eye to questions of both efficacy and liberty. Disaster relief bureaucracies have some similarities to, but important differences from, welfare relief bureaucracies. Some government programs designed to assist the victims of natural disasters have perverse effects of creating more suffering, and others actively foster irresponsible behavior. The role of the state in coordinating relief efforts is justified, but turns out not to be logically necessary. (shrink)

Aux Etats-Unis les gouvernements des Etats tout autant que le gouvernement fédéral jouent un rôle important dans le traitement des effets des sinistres naturels. Le gouvernement fédéral subventionne l’assurance-inondations pour les individus, les entreprises privées et les gouvernements d’Etats et locaux, et il affecte des fonds sur une base ad hoc pour reconstruire après de très importants sinistres naturels tels que de fortes inondations ou des tremblements de terre. Les gouvernements des Etats réglementent l’assurance-seïsme et l’assurance-ouragan en imposant à l’ensemble (...) des assurances et à certains de leurs utilisateurs de subventionner d’autres assurés. Cet article analyse les diverses formes d’implications gouvernementales dans l’assistance des sinistres et évalue de manière critique les arguments normatifs pour ces formes de participations et de réglementations. Il propose que le gouvernement fédéral se retire du marché de l’assurance-inondation et que les gouvernements des états arrêtent de réglementer les marchés d’assurance privés qui obligent des gens à subventionner l’assurance pour d’autres.Government at both the state and federal level in the United States has an extensive role in dealing with the effects of natural disasters. The federal government provides subsidized flood insurance to private individuals, businesses, and state and local government, and it appropriates f unds on an ad hoc basis for rebuilding after highly visible natural disasters such as large floods and earthquakes. State governments regulate earthquake insurance and hurricane insurance in ways that force the insurance industry and some of its customers to subsidize other policyholders. This essay details the various forms of government involvement in disaster assistance and critically evaluates the normative arguments for these forms of government involvement and regulation. It proposes that the federal government should withdraw from the flood insurance market and that state governments should stop regulating private insurance markets in such a way that some people are forced to subsidize insurance for others. (shrink)

The useful publication of Judith N Shklar's final undergraduate lectures at Harvard provides an opportunity to take a careful look at her reflections on political obligation, a matter always of gre...

Theorists of political obligation have long devoted special attention to civil disobedience, establishing its pride of place as an object of philosophical analysis, and as one of a short li...

While many are born into prosperity, hundreds of millions of people lead lives of almost unimaginable poverty. Our world remains hugely unequal, with our place of birth continuing to exert a major influence on our opportunities. -/- In this accessible book, leading political theorist Chris Armstrong engagingly examines the key moral and political questions raised by this stark global divide. Why, as a citizen of a relatively wealthy country, should you care if others have to make do with less? Do (...) we have a moral duty to try to rectify this state of affairs? What does 'global justice' mean anyway - and why does it matter? Could we make our world a more just one even if we tried? Can you as an individual make a difference? -/- This book powerfully demonstrates that global justice is something we should all be concerned about, and sketches a series of reforms that would make our divided world a fairer one. It will be essential introductory reading for students of global justice, activists and concerned citizens. (shrink)

ABSTRACTI argue that Iris Marion Young’s concept of political responsibility is well suited for transnational feminism analyses. Young’s work reveals the intersections of ethical, social, and political theory; her model of political responsibility articulates a view of shared social and political responsibility for the structural conditions of exploitation and domination. Young’s theory of political responsibility provides an account that views responsibility for social injustice as both deeply personal, and shared. She argues that we can only discharge our political responsibility by (...) engaging with others in collective actions that seek to change unjust situation and institutions. I argue that Young’s model of political responsibility, because of its focus on structural injustice, provides a more nuanced account of global justice than either a human rights framework, or a cosmopolitan framework. Because Young’s theory of political responsibility focuses on structural injustice we can use it to analyze inequalities and asymmetries of power with respect to gender and in terms of structural injustice. (shrink)

This chapter examines what role new behaviour-modification policies – commonly known as “nudges” – might play in cultivating virtues. At first sight, they would appear to be ruled out as a candidate means; but, by offering a more nuanced analysis, the chapter argues that some nudges have virtue-cultivating properties. It distinguishes between two kinds of nudges – 'automatic-behavioural' and 'discernment-developing' – and shows that what divides them is the ability of the latter, which the former lacks, to play an ecological-educative (...) role in developing the virtue of practical reason, which is required for the other virtues too. It thus provides an answer to the question of whether virtue-cultivating nudges are possible, while remaining neutral on whether virtue cultivation is, or under what conditions it could be, a legitimate aim of liberal-democratic states. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Must a society aim indefinitely for continued economic growth? Proponents of economic growth advance three central challenges to the idea that a society, having attained high levels of income and wealth, may justly cease to pursue further economic growth: if environmentally sustainable and the gains fairly distributed, first, continued economic growth could make everyone within a society and globally, and especially the worst off, progressively better off; second, the pursuit of economic growth spurs ongoing innovation, which enhances people’s opportunities and (...) protects a society against future risks; and third, continued economic growth fosters attitudes of openness, tolerance, and generosity, which are essential to the functioning of a liberal democratic society. This article grants these challenges’ normative foundations, to show that, even if one accepts their underlying premises as requirements of justice, a society may still justly cease to aim for economic growth, so long as it continues to aim for and realize gains on other dimensions. I argue that, while continued economic growth might instrumentally serve valuable ends, it is not necessary for their realization, as a society can achieve these ends through other means. (shrink)

Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for most federally funded public benefits programs with few exceptions such as emergency medical assistance and nutrition assistance for women and children. This paper defends the view that a liberal society should provide greater access to undocumented immigrants to public benefits programs and responds to an important economic objection that a state should be able to prioritize the needs of its own members who contribute to these programs. This paper specifically addresses empirical and moral versions of (...) this objection. It also distinguishes between two kinds of public benefits. Certain public benefits, such as social security, may reflect an agreed-upon distribution of public goods, to which people are entitled based on their membership or contribution. Other public benefits, such as nutrition assistance, are set aside primarily to help people based on their need. In the latter case, it is not membership or contribution, but need or which need is greater, that supplies justification for the distribution of these benefits even when resources are limited. (shrink)

Climate change is more than a discrete issue demanding political attention and response. A changing climate permeates political life as material processes of planetary change reverberate in our bodies, affecting subterranean processes of attention and evoking bodily responses at and below the threshold of awareness. By way of example, I explore the register of bodily feeling to raise the possibility that proliferating anomalies in atmospheric, oceanic, and seismic activities are entering into subliminal experiences of time and confounding embodied expectations of (...) how the future is likely to flow from the past. The essay concludes with a preliminary discussion of how micropolitical strategies to amplify visceral experiences of climatic changes might valuably contribute to larger programs for climate action. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

This article investigates the relationship between distributive injustice and political obligation within the confines of the fair-play theory of political obligation. More specifically, it asks ho...

This paper takes a unique approach to framing the political obligation social media companies like Twitter and Facebook have in a democratic society by casting the public sphere as a common-pool resource. Over the last decade or so much of our civic discourse has moved to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. This paper argues that just as citizens have an obligation to one another, social media companies have an obligation to promote agonistic forms of civic, political discourse (...) through their algorithms. This algorithmic obligation that social media companies have must be reconciled with social media companies’ formulation of their fiduciary shareholder obligations. We posit that a commons based view of social media discourse allows these companies to make both a democratic health and fiduciary interest argument. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that with regard to the President, the Emoluments Clause is not law. I argue for this on the basis of two premises. First, if something is a law, then it has a legal remedy. Second, EC does not have a legal remedy. This premise rests on one or more of the following assumptions: EC does not apply to the President; if EC were to apply to the President, it does not provide a remedy; or, if (...) EC were to apply to the President and have a remedy, it is not law because it is vague. The conclusion that EC does not apply to the President has a practical upshot. As a practical matter, President Trump’s worldwide business tentacles and his refusal to put his business assets into a blind trust does not violate EC and, arguably, does not violate federal conflict-of-interest law. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to discuss Kant’s concept of juridical state as the foundation of the contemporary rule of law. Therefore, the article tries to answer two questions: (1) what character can be attributed to Kant’s concept of juridical state taking into account the obligations arising from it; (2) can the analysis of the Kantian juridical state have any impact on the contemporary understanding of the rule of law and if so, what can this impact be. In order (...) to accomplish this task, moral presuppositions of Kant’s juridical state are discussed, according to the commonly accepted view that Kant’s political philosophy is closely linked with his moral and ethical reflection. Then, two interpretations of Kant’s juridical state – the liberal one and the authoritarian one – are analysed. The crucial difference between these interpretations lies in establishing the circumstances in which the duty of obedience to state power should be carried out. Then, Kantian juridical state is compared with two ways of understanding the rule of law – the material one and the formal one – in order to evaluate whether the rule of law should be considered as continuity of or rupture with the Kantian concept. (shrink)

Instead of the question, ‘do we have an obligation to obey the law?,’ we should first ask the more modest question, ‘do we have reasons to obey the law?’ This paper offers a new account of the notion of the content-independence of legal reasons in terms of the grounding relation. That account is then used to mount a defense of the claim that we do indeed have content-independent moral reasons to obey the law (because it is the law), and that (...) these reasons, very plausibly, often amount to an obligation to so act. (shrink)

If medical complicity is understood as compliance with a directive to act against the professional's best medical judgment, the question arises whether it can ever be justified. This paper will trace the contours of what would legitimate a directive to act against a professional's best medical judgment (and in possible contravention of her oath) using Joseph Raz's service conception of authority. The service conception is useful for basing the legitimacy of authoritative directives on the ability of the putative authority to (...) enable subjects to comply better with reasons that already apply to them. Hence, the service conception bases the legitimacy of practical authority on a certain kind of greater knowledge or expertise. This helps to focus the conundrum regarding complicity on the clash of expertise between the medical expert and the governing body tasked with coordinating behaviour and otherwise devising rules for the social good. The ethical dilemma presented by a hypothetically legitimate directive to act against a professional's best medical judgment also serves to highlight the moral dimension of one's duty to obey a legitimate authority. (shrink)

Political violence is a major impediment to Nigeria's national development. With the restoration to democratic rule in May 1999, high expectations were raised that the new democratic dispensation would resolve the risk of Nigeria's political violence, while speeding the country's economic and social transformation. It's worrying that since democratic rule returned, Nigeria has experienced a degree of unprecedented political violence that has crippled the efforts of national development. The fundamental thrust of this paper is to investigate the incidence of Nigeria's (...) political violence and assess its national development consequences. The paper shows that political violence dissuades domestic and foreign investment in our economy, triggers government loss of revenue and resources, and results in the election of unqualified representatives to the detriment of the country's economic and social progress. This paper proposes reducing wages paid to political office holders, and politicians should strive to achieve national unity instead of growing religious and ethnic tensions. Lastly, National resources should also be equitably distributed by the government. (shrink)

It is a common charge that treaties, perhaps especially recent treaties relating to economic activity, provide unreasonable restrictions on the sovereignty of the state parties. While this charge has been made most forcefully by smaller states, it is sometimes raised with justification by larger states or state-like bodies such as the E.U. as well. When a tribunal judging a dispute on an economic treaty tells a state that it may no longer make decisions such as to accept or reject genetically (...) modified foods, allow internet gambling, or produce generic drugs for domestic consumption, the citizens of the state may rightfully think they have lost important aspects of sovereignty to bodies that do not have legitimate authority to govern. This, in turn, makes negotiating treaties, despite their obvious value, much harder than it otherwise would be, leading to decreased cooperation and the forgoing of potentially significant gain. In this paper, I argue that by importing certain ideas from contract theory to the interpretation of treaties, these worries may be significantly reduced. Contracts have the seemingly paradoxical ability to increase the autonomy of the signers by allowing them to bind themselves to perform certain future actions. But, the ability of contracts to perform this function would be greatly reduced if the only possible remedy for breach were specific performance. Yet, an analogous approach to treaties is common among many important theorists of international law, who demand the equivalence of specific performance in the case of treaties. I will show how importing ideas from contract law can help ensure that treaties, especially economic treaties, are sovereignty-enhancing for states in a way that is similar to the way that contracts may be autonomy-enhancing for individuals, and will show that importing these elements from contract law will strengthen, not undermine, the legitimacy and fairness of international law. (Please download the full paper from SSRN at the link on this page). (shrink)

Delmas successfully guides us to reconsider the traditional “wisdom” of civil disobedience. She also makes a strong case for expanding the notion of political obligation, which has been narrowly construed as mere obedience, to encompass a duty to resist. Principled disobedience, either civil or uncivil, includes a wide range of tools to tackle different forms of injustice, such as education campaigns, peaceful protests, graffiti street art, whistleblowing, vigilante self-defense, and political riots. We may question to what extent the violent disobedience (...) can be justified, as it is always good to be careful about violence that risks harming the innocent, but other forms of civil or uncivil disobedience may rightly be demanded in realistic circumstances. As I see it, these, along with the general warning to not unwittingly serve the status quo by dismissing social movements merely because of “incivility” and the proposal of the civic virtues of vigilance and open-mindedness, are significant contributions to the literature and could also benefit a politically interested general audience greatly. (shrink)

A dominant belief in political philosophy is that states must be entitled to authorize the use of coercion in order to justifiably coerce its subjects. Call this view the entitlement view. On this view, for a state to justifiably coerce its subjects, a necessary condition is that it is entitled to authorize the use of coercion. Sceptics hold the entitlement view. However, they deny that states are entitled to authorize the use of coercion. This denial informs their views regarding the (...) permissible use of political power. Skeptics believe that nearly all uses of political power is impermissible. In this paper, I present a challenge to the skeptical view that nearly all uses of political power is impermissible. I also present a view on the justification of certain uses of political power that is an alternate to the entitlement view. My alternate view allows me to demonstrate that a state can engage in permissible uses of political power over a broad range of domains without possessing any entitlements. (shrink)

Joseph Raz’s theory of authority has become influential among moral, political, and legal philosophers. This article will provide an overview and accessible explanation of the theory, guiding those coming to it for the first time as to its theoretical ambitions within the wider issues of authority, and through its intricacies. I first situate the theory among philosophical examinations of authority, and then explain the theory itself in detail.

Several noted political theorists have argued that a state can be legitimate even if it does not generate in its citizens an obligation to obey the law. I argue that this claim is false. All plausible analyses of political legitimacy either build in the concept of political obligation, or else incorporate claims that require some account of political obligation. In either case, political legitimacy is possible only when a state successfully generates in its citizens an obligation to obey the law.

The authors articulate a global public standard for the normative legitimacy of global governance institutions. This standard can provide the basis for principled criticism of global governance institutions and guide reform efforts in circumstances in which people disagree deeply about the demands of global justice and the role that global governance institutions should play in meeting them.