This article defends the normative relevance of the representation of non-citizens in democracies. I argue that representation within nation-states constitutes a realistic institutionalisation of the All-Affected Principle, allowing justificatory practices towards non-citizens and establishing political institutions that can realise the ideal of inclusion of all externally affected individuals. I defend electoral, non-electoral and surrogate forms of representation of affected interests that satisfy both the cosmopolitan concern for the equal consideration of interests and the statist defence of the importance (...) of a territorially and civically bounded demos. I assess piecemeal implementations of representation practices, namely reciprocal representation, ombudspersons, self-appointed representatives and deliberative and advocacy groups. Gradual and pluralised means of representation constitute necessary and feasible first steps to consider affected interests and offer an alternative route to an all-or-nothing defence of inclusion as national enfranchisement. (shrink)

This paper considers the question of why the non-citizenship of offenders poses an obstacle to their criminal punishment. Several proposals are rejected, including Antony Duff’s proposal. It is proposed, instead, that governments are not authorized to punish any offender who cannot be attributed with the norm he violates. The government cannot attribute the norm that a non-citizen violates to him, if the non-citizen can raise in his favor the fact that he has no say over the law. Under certain circumstances, (...) such as when they are visiting, non-citizens cannot raise this point, and so can be attributed with the norms they violate. (shrink)

When the brothers Hakob, 13, and Hasmik, 14, had lived in Sweden for 5 years, their applications for residence were rejected, and they were to be deported to Armenia (Dagens Nyheter March 8, 2007,...

In Europe and other regions of the world public debate concerning how many immigrants should be admitted, which rights those admitted should have, and which conditions can be required for access to citizenship is intense and enduring, and these have increasingly become central electoral issues. On the one hand, the harsh treatment of migrants is often a matter of public criticism; on the other hand, states are concerned about problems of welfare, security and social unrest that they have come to (...) associate with large-scale migration. At its most fundamental level, this debate concerns the question of how best to balance particularist principles of democratic self-determination and state sovereignty and universalist principles of individual freedom and human rights. The articles in this special issue examine whether the concept of domination can cast a distinctive light on the normative issues arising in this tension between state sovereignty and universal principles with respect to migration and the position of non-citizens in contemporary liberal democratic states. These issues arise both externally insofar as foreigners are subject to migration controls, and internally insofar as migrants live in states of which they are not full members. The issue thus examines the potential of domination as a concept to bring to bear on issues of migration controls, differential residence statuses and access to membership. (shrink)

The non-citizen is the new ?other?. From popular discourse to political pronouncements and academic research, the non-citizen has become one of the subjects du jour. Among the ranks of the non-citizen, one finds a lesser-known category of people which has yet to be considered seriously by liberal political theory ? the stateless. Thus far, liberal political theory has either ignored this category of persons or subsumed them under the subjects of immigration or refugeehood. The present article challenges this theoretical exclusion (...) in two ways. First, it analyses the treatment of statelessness within the works of three prominent theorists on just membership ? Michael Walzer, Seyla Benhabib and William Barbieri, Jr ? and contends that these authors ignore the stateless as a unique category of non-citizen. Secondly, it explains why statelessness demands a distinct theoretical framework than is currently provided for within liberal political theory. The article contends that just membership questions necessitate not simply looking at who is let in and what naturalization procedures should be extended to them, but also entails examining who has always been on the inside and to whom we need to justify their continued exclusion. (shrink)

Does the concept of domination cast new light on issues that arise in the context of migration and citizenship? If citizenship is a status that provides protection from domination, understood as subjection to arbitrary interference, are non-citizens - whether outside or inside the state - necessarily subject to domination by virtue of being non-citizens? Does domination provide a useful basis for considering the harms that migrants suffer? If non-domination is a value to be promoted in politics, what are (...) the implications for the treatment of migrants and resident non-citizens? This book addresses issues of migration and citizenship within the frame of freedom, in terms of domination, understood as being subject to the threat of arbitrary interference. Coming from a variety of perspectives, the chapters examine the issues of migration controls, differential resident statuses, including temporary workers, refugees and long-term residents, and the conditions for access to citizenship in the light of these concerns. This book was published as a special issue of the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. (shrink)

In recent years, the flow of undocumented labor from the global South to richer nations has increased considerably. Many undocumented women workers find employment as caregivers for the dependent elderly, whose numbers are burgeoning in affluent countries. Here we present a profile of undocumented non-citizen caregivers in the United States and delineate some of the key injustices they suffer. After identifying the causal factors responsible for the flow of undocumented labor from the global South to richer nations like the United (...) States, we discuss the criteria that a theory of transnational justice must meet if it is to address the problem of justice for this population. We argue that Iris Young's "social connection" model of responsibility is a promising approach for helping to correct the injustices suffered by undocumented, non-citizen caregivers. (shrink)

This chapter is an investigation of the morality of medical deportation, the practice of returning undocumented migrants, despite their ill health and/or injuries, to their countries of origin. In Sect. 16.1, I look more closely at the nature of medical deportation. In Sect. 16.2, I argue that understanding the morality of medical deportation requires nonideal theory. In Sect. 16.3, I outline contractualism as a nonideal theory. In Sect. 16.4, I apply contractualism to medical deportation and make the case that, first, (...) there are in principle some cases in which medical deportation is morally permissible but, second, the standards that must be met in cases of morally permissible medical deportation are very high. In Sect. 16.5, I consider stakeholders other than the patient and the medical care facility and examine the ways in which effects on them might render medical deportation morally impermissible. I conclude that real-world cases of morally permissible medical deportation are rare at best, and there is little prospect of this situation changing. (shrink)

The debate between legal constitutionalists and critics of constitutional rights and judicial review is an old and lively one. While the protection of minorities is a pivotal aspect of this debate, the protection of disenfranchised minorities has received little attention. Policy-focused discussion—of the merits of the Human Rights Act in Britain for example—often cites protection of non-citizen migrants, but the philosophical debate does not. Non-citizen residents or ‘denizens’ therefore provide an interesting test case for the theory of rights as trumps (...) on ordinary representative politics. Are they the ultimate success story of the human rights framework? Or was Michael Walzer correct to describe government of denizens by citizens as a modern form of ‘tyranny’? This paper argues that neither liberal rights theorists nor democratic republicans provide a coherent response to the existence of denizens. Liberal rights theorists overstate the extent to which a politically powerless status can secure individual rights, while democratic republicans idealise the political process and wrongly assume that all those affected by laws are eligible for political participation. The paper outlines an alternative model for assessing the accountability of states to their non-citizen population, informed by the republican ideal of non-domination. It identifies gaps in state accountability to denizens–such as where there is inadequate diplomatic protection—and argues that these gaps are particularly troubling if their exit costs of leaving the state are high. (shrink)

BackgroundDecisions about appropriate treatment at the end of life are common in modern healthcare. Non-treatment decisions (NTDs), comprising both withdrawal and withholding of (potentially) life-prolonging treatment are in principle accepted in Norway. However, in practice they may give rise to significant moral problems for health professionals, patients and next of kin. Here, patient values must be considered. It is relevant to study the moral views and intuitions of the general population on NTDs and special areas of contention such as the (...) role of next of kin in decision-making.MethodsElectronic survey to members of a nationally representative panel of Norwegian adults. Respondents were presented with vignettes describing patients with disorders of consciousness, dementia, and cancer where patient preferences varied. Respondents answered ten questions about the acceptability of non-treatment decision making and the role of next of kin.ResultsWe received 1035 complete responses (response rate 40.7%). A large majority, 88%, supported the right of competent patients to refuse treatment in general. When an NTD was in line with the patient’s previously expressed preferences, more respondents tended to find NTDs acceptable. More respondents would accept NTDs for themselves than for the vignette patients. In a scenario with an incompetent patient, clear majorities wanted the views of next of kin to be given some but not decisive weight, and more weight if concordant with the patient’s wishes. There were, however, large variations in the respondents’ views.ConclusionThis survey of a representative sample of the Norwegian adult population indicates that attitudes to NTDs are often in line with national laws and guidelines. However, the high variance among the respondents and relatively large weight given to next of kin’s views, indicate a need for appropriate dialogue among all stakeholders to prevent conflicts and extra burdens. Furthermore, the emphasis given to previously expressed opinions indicates that advance care planning may increase the legitimacy of NTDs and prevent challenging decision-making processes. (shrink)

This article discusses Philip Pettit’s neo-republicanism in light of the criterion of self-sustenance: the requirement that a political theory be capable of serving as a self-sustaining public philosophy for a pluralist democracy. It argues that this criterion can only be satisfied by developing an adequate politics of virtue. Pettit’s theory is built around the notion of freedom as non-domination, and he does not say much about the virtues of citizens or the policies the state may employ to encourage their (...) development. In order to explain the motivation to comply with republican laws that promote non-domination, Pettit relies on the phenomenon of civility and the mechanism of the intangible hand. But to understand what underlies an adequate level of robust civility one needs to focus on the more basic phenomenon of personal virtue. Policies that aim to promote non-domination should take into account the need to cultivate virtue among citizens, as well as the full range of conditions that favor its exercise. (shrink)

If a state commits injustice, who is responsible for compensating its victims and safeguarding against future wrongdoing? Do the state’s citizens bear this responsibility? Do they all bear it equally? Avia Pasternak's and Holly Lawford-Smith's recent books address these pressing questions. Each book represents a thought-provoking attempt to derive an account of citizen responsibility for state wrongs from an account of state agency understood as group agency. Though the books demonstrate the promise of this approach to produce action-guiding advice (...) for real policymakers, they also demonstrate its limitations—in particular, its lack of attention to social structures. Here, I argue that Pasternak's and Lawford-Smith's views would be enriched by further engagement with the literature on structural injustice, which takes individuals’ perpetuation of social systems (not their implication in acts of group agency) as a central source of their remedial obligations. Through critical engagement with Pasternak and Lawford-Smith, I illustrate how a structural injustice framework could yield more attractive conclusions than a group agency framework in certain cases, better explain non-culpable forms of citizen responsibility, and allow us to theorize citizen responsibility for state action without making questionable claims about the metaphysics or social ontology of group agency. (shrink)

Contributing to the naturalistic virtue ethics tradition, Natural Citizens applies recent work in the life sciences to develop a form of ethical naturalism that aspires to be non-reductive yet empirically responsible.

"International and domestic laws commonly hold states responsible for their wrongdoings. States pay compensation for their unjust wars, and reparations for their historical wrongdoings. Some argue that states should incur punitive damages for their international crimes. But there is a troubling aspect to these practices: States are corporate agents, comprised of flesh and blood citizens. When the state uses the public purse to finance its corporate liabilities, the burden falls on these citizens, even if they protested against the (...) state's policies, did not know about them, or entirely lacked channels of political influence. How can this "distributive effect" of state-level responsibly be justified? The book develops an answer to this question, which revolves around citizens' participation in their state. It argues that citizenship can be a type of massive collective action, where citizens willingly orient themselves around the authority of their state, and where state policies are the product of this collective action. While most ordinary citizens are not to blame for their participation in their state, they nevertheless ought to accept a share of the remedial obligations that flow from their state's wrongful policies. However, the distributive effect cannot be justified in all states. Specifically, in non-democratic states most citizens are not participating in their state in the full sense, and should not pay for their state's wrongdoings. This finding calls then for a revision of the way we hold states responsible in both the domestic and international levels"--. (shrink)

Any liberal democratic state must honour religious and cultural pluralism in its educational policies. To fail to honour them would betray ideals of freedom and toleration fundamental to liberal democracy. Yet if such ideals are to flourish from one generation to the next, allegiance to the distinctive values of liberal democracy is a necessary educational end, whose pursuit will constrain pluralism. The problem of political education is therefore to ensure the continuity across generations of the constitutive ideals of liberal democracy, (...) while remaining hospitable to a diversity of conduct and belief that sometimes threatens those very ideals. Creating Citizens addresses this crucial problem. In lucid and elegant prose, Professor Callan, one of the world's foremost philosophers of education, identifies both the principal ends of civic education, and the rights that limit their political pursuit. This timely new study sheds light on some of the most divisive educational controversies, such as state sponsorship and regulation of denominational schooling, as well as the role of non-denominational schools in the moral and political development of children. Oxford Political Theory presents the best new work in contemporary political theory. It is intended to be broad in scope, including original contributions to political philosophy, and also work in applied political theory. The series will contain works of outstanding quality with no restriction as to approach or subject matter. The series editors are David Miller and Alan Ryan. (shrink)

Beginning in the 20th century, scientific research came to be dominated by a growing class of credentialed, professional scientists who overwhelmingly displaced the learned amateurs of an earlier time. By the end of the century, however, the exclusive realm of professional scientists conducting research was joined, to a degree, by “citizen scientists.” The term originally encompassed non-professionals assisting professional scientists by contributing observations and measurements to ongoing research enterprises. These collaborations were especially common in the environmental sciences, where citizen scientists (...) participated in counting wildlife and measuring environmental conditions. Later, patient groups began to play a more active role in supporting clinical trials and collecting health records from affected individuals. (shrink)

In Politics of Friendship Jacques Derrida reveals the core of Carl Schmitt's thinking concerning the political: “If thepolitical is to exist, one must know who everyone is, who is a friend and who is an enemy, and this knowing is not in the mode of theoretical knowledge but in one of apractical identification.”Nevertheless, the enemy, who actually isidentified, is not Carl Schmitt's real enemy. On the contrary, the identified enemy is his friend to the extent that it constitutes by exclusion (...) what is most important to Schmitt: the existence of the political, and thereby, the Volk. Schmitt's real enemy is, as I try to demonstrate in this article, anyone who is not identified, the anonymous “natural existence of groups of individuals who just happen to live together” (Schmitt). In Schmitt's Nazi-period this anonymous individual got a concrete—although still non-identified—content: an assimilated Jew. And although Schmitt thought that he was a Christian thinker, in the end of this article I argue that the very first assimilated Jew was indeed St Paul, and that his doctrine of the “life in Christ” can be taken as a point of departure for thinking politics beyond enemies and exclusion. (shrink)

Citizen attitudes and opinions form an important driving force for improvements in the ethical status of farm animals in society. Hence, it is important to understand how attitudes to farm animals vary in society and what factors, mechanisms and social processes influence the development of these attitudes. In this study we examine the relative importance of socio-demographic background, animal related experiences and social-equality attitudes in the formation of attitudes to farm animals in Finland. The research is based on a nationwide (...) survey. Our research findings suggest that female gender, young age, urban residency, a non-farming background and social-equality attitudes are linked to greater concern for farm animals. A farming background, valuing social equality, and gender have the strongest connections to farm animal attitudes, followed by age and place of residence. Having a companion animal and education level have a relatively modest connection to attitudes to farm animals. In order to accumulate comparative evidence of social-group differences in attitudes to farm animals, further research should continue to develop improved indicators for attitudes to farm animal welfare and rights. Moreover, explanations for social-group differences in citizen attitudes to farm animals should be subjected to further empirical testing. (shrink)

BackgroundIn this article, we address questions regarding how people consider what they do or do not consent to and the reasons why. This article presents the findings of a citizen forum study conducted by the University of Geneva in partnership with the Geneva University Hospitals to explore the opinions and concerns of members of the public regarding predictive oncology, genetic sequencing, and cancer. MethodsThis paper presents the results of a citizen forum that included 73 participants. A research tool titled "the (...) mechanics of consent" was designed for this study. This tool is a table encouraging participants to reflect on social and research actors, types of data, and desired levels of control while sharing different types of data with different actors. Participants’ discussion that led to the completion of each table were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using thematic analysis.ResultsThe results are a compilation of responses from the mechanics of consent tool divided into two sections; the first presents quantitative results of collective responses regarding attitudes to consent to donate their data. The second section present qualitative findings emerged from the discussion amongst participants.DiscussionChoice and control of personal data is crucial for the public to be able to decide who and how to trust. Key information to be disclosed to potential research participants shall include information about potential risks and benefits; who will be accessing and using their data; as well as assurances that their choice will be respected. Furthermore, researchers ought to make sure they are trustworthy, by acting in a competent, reliable, and honest manner. Governance systems ought to be better equipped to address ethical issues raise by the growing presence of non-traditional research actors, consent of exchanges of data via digital devices and online activity such as social media and fairness of data trading. Finally, informed consent is one of the various elements that contribute to conducting ethical research. More needs to be done to strengthen governance and ensure adequate protection of research participants, particularly to address issues related to predictive health analytics. (shrink)

A common criticism of global institutions is that their rules disproportionately favor the political and economic interests of powerful states over those of weaker states. This dissertation consists of three essays that each deal with a specific application of the criticism. In the first essay, I examine the question of whether international human rights law should include a human right to democracy. Joshua Cohen and Charles Beitz offer two kinds of argument for thinking that it should not. First, protecting a (...) human right to democracy would permit outsiders to intervene in domestic political arrangements in objectionable ways. Second, democracy presupposes a conception of persons as equals that cannot be shared internationally. I argue that both these arguments would prove too much: they would rule out from the human rights corpus rights that clearly seem to be human rights. Building on this conclusion, I offer a positive argument for recognizing a human right to democracy. In the second essay, I explore the objection that global economic institutions sustain unacceptable degrees of inequality. On one skeptical response, the rules of global economic institutions are justifiable insofar as states have consented to them. I argue that specific features of global economic institutions make this view implausible. I then articulate several reasons for thinking that inequalities sanctioned by global economic institutions are objectionable. It turns out that the prominent philosophical debate on whether Rawlsian egalitarianism should be globalized addresses one but not the other of these reasons. In the third essay, I examine the practice of universal jurisdiction, which allows states to exercise jurisdiction over a narrow range of international law violations regardless of where, by whom, or against whom the violations occur. On the standard justification for this exceptional category of jurisdiction, what makes the exception justifiable is the moral heinousness of the relevant violations. This justification, I argue, can explain neither the narrow subject matter nor the expansive scope of universal jurisdiction. I offer an alternative justification on which universal jurisdiction is justifiable as a way of filling enforcement gaps to which some but not other international legal norms are prone. (shrink)

Social innovations are usually understood as new ideas, initiatives, or solutions that make it possible to meet the challenges of societies in fields such as social security, education, employment, culture, health, environment, housing, and economic development. On the one hand, many citizen science activities serve to achieve scientific as well as social and educational goals. Thus, these actions are opening an arena for introducing social innovations. On the other hand, some social innovations are further developed, adapted, or altered after the (...) involvement of scientist-supervised citizens in research and with the use of the citizen science tools and methods such as action research, crowdsourcing, and community-based participatory research. Such approaches are increasingly recognized as crucial for gathering data, addressing community needs, and creating engagement and cooperation between citizens and professional scientists. However, there are also various barriers to both citizen science and social innovation. For example, management, quality and protection of data, funding difficulties, non-recognition of citizens’ contributions, and limited inclusion of innovative research approaches in public policies. In this volume, we open theoretical as well as empirically-based discussion, including examples, practices, and case studies of at least three types of relations between citizen science and social innovation: domination of the citizen science features over social innovation aspects; domination of the social innovation features over the citizen science aspects; and the ways to achieve balance and integration between the social innovation and citizen science features. Each of these relationships highlights factors that influence the development of the main scales of sustainability of innovations in the practice. These innovations are contributing to a new paradigm of learning and sharing knowledge as well as interactions and socio-psychological development of participants. Also, there are factors that influence the development of platforms, ecosystems, and sustainability of innovations such as broad use of the information and communications technologies including robotics and automation; emerging healthcare and health promotion models; advancements in the development and governance of smart, green, inclusive and age-friendly cities and communities; new online learning centers; agri-food, cohousing or mobility platforms; and engagement of citizens into co-creation or co-production of services delivered by public, private, non-governmental organizations as well as non-formal entities. (shrink)

For the past two decades, philosophers of religion have paid close attention to the debates on public reason taking place within the context of political philosophy. Some thinkers claim that religious arguments should play a very limited role in political discourse, as this would amount to a politically sanctioned imposition of religious beliefs on people with different religious or non-religious worldviews. Others claim that excluding religious reasons would lead to an unfair exclusion of religious citizens from democratic processes. Underlying (...) these positions is a highly problematic idea of what it means to be a religious citizen. On the one hand, religious citizens are conceptualized as highly self-reflective theologians. Others instead imagine religious citizens to be wholly incapable of such self-reflection and of distinguishing between public and non-public spheres. In my article I attempt to criticize these underlying assumptions and point towards a more nuanced conception of the religious citizen. (shrink)

Background Citizen science and models for public participation in health research share normative ideals of participation, inclusion, and public and patient engagement. Academic researchers collaborate in research with members of the public involved in an issue, maximizing all involved assets, competencies, and knowledge. In citizen science new ethical issues arise, such as who decides, who participates, who is excluded, what it means to share power equally, or whose knowledge counts. This article aims to present an ethics framework that offers a (...) lens of understanding and heuristic guidelines to deal with ethical issues in citizen science. -/- Methods We conducted seven case studies between 2015 and 2021 to attune and validate the ethics framework for the context of citizen science. The cases related to studies with older adults, people with a psychiatric vulnerability, people dependent on community care, people who are unemployed or living in poverty or both, and young adults with respiratory disease. -/- Results Ethics in citizen science reaches beyond the ethical issues in traditional biomedical and health research. It entails more than following procedures about informed consent and privacy and submitting a proposal to a Medical Research Ethics Committee. Ethics in citizen science relates to everyday ethical issues during the study, including relational and moral complexities concerning collaboration, sharing power, and democratic decision-making. Dealing with these issues requires ethics work of researchers. This entails seeing ethically salient issues and reflecting on everyday ethical issues. Ethics work consists of seven features: framing work, role work, emotion work, identity work, reason work, relationship work, and performance work. All are relevant for researchers in citizen science. -/- Conclusions Ethical issues in citizen science often relate to power differentials, partnership, and collaboration between academics and non-academics. The ethics framework prepares researchers for the work needed in citizen science to act responsibly and offers a heuristic guide to reflect on ethics. Reflection on ethics is a pathway towards ethical citizen science, especially if researchers collaboratively reflect in partnership with non-academics who are subject to the moral issue. (shrink)

Environmental ethics should be understood as a radical project that challenges the limits of contemporary ethical and political expression, a limit historically defined by the concept of the citizen. This dominant model of public being, frequently justified in terms of a formal or procedural rationally, facilitates an exclusionary ethos that fails to properly represent our concerns for the non-human world. It tends to regard emotionally mediated concerns for others as a source of irrational and subjective distortions in an otherwise rationally (...) ordered ethicopolitical community. In doing so it underestimates the important role played by 'structures of feeling', those culturally variable patterns of emotionally mediated responses, that provide the (shifting) grounds for all ethical experience, motivation, communication and interpretation. An alternative model of political expression more suitable to an environmental ethic, the denizen, is suggested. (shrink)

Humankind is currently confronted with a critical challenge that determines its very existence, not only on an individual, racial, or national level but as a whole species: the fight against climate change and environmental degradation. To win this battle, humanity needs innovations and non-linear thinking. Nature has long been a substantial information source for unthinkable discoveries that save human lives. The paper suggests that by understanding the nature, emergence, and mechanism of serendipity, the survival skill of humans, humanity can capitalize (...) on it to learn from nature and generate nature-based innovations that can address the climate and environmental degradation crises. In the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) proliferation, AI will be a vital tool providing navigational and useful information to leverage the power of serendipity in climate and sustainability science. However, an eco-surplus culture that incorporates core values pertaining to nature and sees environmental sustainability as the conscience of the times needs to be built to direct and control the immense power of AI-leveraged serendipity. Insights applied in this paper are drawn from the book titled “A New Theory of Serendipity: Nature, Emergence and Mechanism”. (shrink)

Citizen science (CS) has been presented as a novel form of research relevant for social concerns and global challenges. CS transforms the roles of participants to being actively involved at various stages of research processes, CS projects are dynamic, and pluralism arises when many non-professional researchers take an active involvement in research. Some argue that these elements all make existing research ethical principles and regulations ill-suited for guiding responsible CS conduct. However, while many have sought to highlight such challenges from (...) CS, few have discussed principles per se providing the foundation for regulations. In this article we will investigate the possibilities of midlevel principlism in guiding responsible CS conduct. Principlism has the potential of accommodating many of the concerns taken to reduce the relevance of existing principles. (shrink)

Drawing on face-to-face and online ethnographic, survey and interview data with participants in distributed computing projects around the world, this book sheds light on the organizational and social structures of voluntary distributed computing projects, communities and teams, with close attention to questions of motivation in projects that offer little or no traditional forms of reward, either financially or in terms of participants' careers. With its focus on non-market, non-hierarchical cooperation, this book is a case study of networked individuals around the (...) world who are part of a new social production of information. (shrink)

Science is one of the most important forces in contemporary society. The most reliable source of knowledge about the world, science shapes the technological possibilities before us, informs public policy, and is crucial to measuring the efficacy of public policy. Yet it is not a simple repository of facts on which we can draw. It is an ongoing process of evidence gathering, discovery, contestation, and criticism. I will argue that an understanding of the nature of science and the scientific process (...) should be the central goal for scientific literacy, rather than a grasp of specific facts. With this understanding of science as a backdrop, the paper then turns to modes for citizen engagement with science. This paper articulates different ways citizens can engage with science, including four avenues for legitimate contestation of scientific claims. I then look more closely at contestation of science on the basis of values. That science can be legitimately contested by non-experts on a range of grounds means that science communication should not just aim at getting citizens to accept scientific claims, but rather to engage in a more robust two-way conversation about science. (shrink)

Science is one of the most important forces in contemporary society. The most reliable source of knowledge about the world, science shapes the technological possibilities before us, informs public policy, and is crucial to measuring the efficacy of public policy. Yet it is not a simple repository of facts on which we can draw. It is an ongoing process of evidence gathering, discovery, contestation, and criticism. I will argue that an understanding of the nature of science and the scientific process (...) should be the central goal for scientific literacy, rather than a grasp of specific (often disciplinary) facts. With this understanding of science as a backdrop, the paper then turns to modes for citizen engagement with science. This paper articulates different ways citizens can engage with science, including four avenues for legitimate contestation of scientific claims. I then look more closely at contestation of science on the basis of values. That science can be legitimately contested by non-experts on a range of grounds means that science communication should not just aim at getting citizens to accept scientific claims, but rather to engage in a more robust two-way conversation about science. (shrink)

Citizens' juries are commended as a new technique for democratising health service reviews. Their usefulness is said to derive from a reliance on citizens' rational deliberation rather than on the immediate preferences of the consumer. The author questions the assertion of critical detachment and asks whether juries do in fact employ reason as a means of resolving fundamental disagreements about service provision. He shows that juries promote not so much a critically detached point of view as a particular (...) evaluative framework suited to the bureaucratic idiom of social welfare maximisation. Reports of jury practice reveal a tendency among juries to suppress by non-rational means the everyday moral language of health care evaluation and substitute for it a system of thought in which it can be deemed permissible to deny treatment to sick people. The author concludes that juries are chiefly concerned with non-rational persuasion and because of this they are morally and democratically irrelevant. Juries are no substitute for voting when it comes to protecting the public from zealous minorities. (shrink)

In Public Reason Confucianism, Kim Sungmoon presents a perfectionist theory that is based on a partially comprehensive Confucian doctrine but is non-sectarian, since the doctrine is widely shared in East Asian societies. Despite its attractiveness, I argue that this project, unfortunately, fails because it is still vulnerable to the sectarian critique. The blurred distinction between partially and fully comprehensive doctrines will create a loophole problem. Sectarian laws and policies may gain legitimacy that they do not deserve. I further defend political (...) Confucianism, which is regarded by Kim as an inadequately intelligible form of Confucianism. Kim assumes a too narrow understanding of intelligibility. Although political Confucianism may not be politically intelligible, it is civically intelligible, i.e. it is culturally intelligibly different from other political theories in terms of its implications in citizens’ actions in civil society. In light of civic intelligibility, the distinctiveness of political Confucianism should not be underestimated. (shrink)

According to Philip Pettit, we should understand republican liberty, freedom as ‘non-domination,’ as a ‘supreme political value.’ It is its commitment to freedom as non-domination, Pettit claims, that distinguishes republicanism from various forms of liberal egalitarianism, including the political liberalism of John Rawls. I explain that Rawlsian political liberalism is committed to a form of non-domination, namely, a ‘political’ conception, which is: (a) limited in its scope to the ‘basic structure of society,’ and (b) ‘freestanding’ in nature (that is, compatible (...) with the ‘fact of reasonable pluralism’). I show that the political conception of non-domination is an integral part of political liberalism through an exploration of the kind of citizenship education that political liberalism mandates for all students. Such an education would impart to future citizen the skills and knowledge necessary for them to realize republican freedom vis-à-vis their political institutions, their workplaces, and, by means of an enforceable ‘right of exit,’ the various associations to which they might belong. (shrink)

Panarchy is a normative political meta-theory that advocates non-territorial states founded on actual social contracts that are explicitly negotiated and signed between states and their prospective citizens. The explicit social contract, or a constitution, sets the terms under which a state may use coercion against its citizens and the conditions under which the contract may be annulled, revised, rescinded, or otherwise exited from. Panarchy does not advocate any particular model of the state or social justice, but intends to (...) encourage political variety, innovation, experimentation, and choice. With its emphasis on explicit social contracts, Panarchy offers an interesting variation on traditional social contract theories. Today, Panarchist political thought is particularly relevant and interesting in the context of globalization, increased international migration, the weakening of national sovereignty, the rise of the internet "cloud" as a non-territorial locus of political and protopolitical social networks that are not geographic, the invention of cryptocurrencies that may replace national currencies, and the rise of urban centers where people of many different political identities live and work together. This is the first volume to bring together key philosophically and politically interesting yet often overlooked Panarchist texts. From the first published translation of de Puydt seminal 1860 article to contemporary Silicon Valley political theory, the volume includes Panarchist texts from different eras, cultures and geographical regions. The amassed wealth of theoretical insight enables readers to compare different texts in this tradition of political thought and distinguish different streams and varieties within this political tradition, in comparison with Cosmopolitanism, Contractarianism, and Anarchism. (shrink)

This article defends a novel type of institutionalized mass deliberation: Citizen Duty. Citizen Duty would legally require every citizen to engage in one day of diverse, moderated political deliberation prior to major elections. This deliberation would realize a variety of benefits, including wiser electoral decisions and a more respectful electoral process, while avoiding the dangers of citizen deliberation. A comparison with jury duty and with non-deliberative alternatives suggests that Citizen Duty’s substantial economic and liberty costs are justified. Finally, an examination (...) of citizen attitudes towards politics and deliberation suggests that Citizen Duty is not as quixotic as it first appears. (shrink)

In its January 20th, 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the United States Supreme Court ruled that certain restrictions on independent expenditures by corporations for political advocacy violate the First Amendment of the Constitution, which provides that “Congress shall make no law […] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Justice Kennedy, writing for the 5-4 (...) majority, held that “[b]y suppressing the speech of manifold corporations, both for-profit and non-profit, the Government prevents their voices and view-points from reaching the public and advising voters on which person or entities are hostile to their interests” (Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission 558 U.S. 38-9 (2010); emphasis added). Much of the language of the opinion, and some of its reasoning, as this passage illustrates, presupposes that corporations are agents capable of speech, and that it is (at least in part) in the light of this that limitations on political advocacy by corporations are prohibited by the Constitution. -/- While there are other strands in the argument, they are interwoven with the conception of the corporation as agent and speaker, with its voice and its viewpoints. The dissenters on the court objected on precisely this point (among others). Justice Stevens wrote sarcastically in his dissent, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, that “[u]nder the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech” (558 U.S. 33 (2010)). Justice Sotomayor suggested in oral argument that the Court’s century-old practice of treating corporations as persons rests on a conceptual mistake. -/- My concern in this essay is not with the question whether the restrictions violate the Constitution. There are many issues that bear on this which will be outside the scope of my discussion. My concern is with the proper conceptual framework for understanding the agency of corporations and corporate speech, and the role that conceptions of these play in the background of the majority’s reasoning. The issue is legal, but it also has philosophical, conceptual and semantic aspects. It will be the latter aspects, and their potential to shed light on legal reasoning, that are my main focus. An adequate framework requires saying what properly speaking the corporation is, how agency is expressed through the corporation, whose agency it is, centrally whether the corporation is an agent or person in its own right, and in what sense it can be said to be capable of speech. I draw on recent work in collective action theory, particularly with respect to the semantics of collective action sentences (Ludwig 2007) and the analysis of the proxy agency in collective action (Ludwig 2014), to show (i) that corporations are neither genuine agents nor (therefore) capable of engaging in genuine speech, (ii) that consequently the First Amendment does not apply to corporations per se, and (iii) that a better understanding of the mechanisms of corporate agency casts doubt on more indirect arguments for extending the First Amendment to “corporate speech” as well. (shrink)

Political liberalism, conceived of as a response to the diversity of conceptions of the good in multicultural societies, aims to put forward a proposal for how to organize political institutions that is acceptable to a wide range of citizens. It does so by remaining neutral between reasonable conceptions of the good while giving all citizens a fair opportunity to access the offices and positions which enable them to pursue their own conception of the good. Public educational institutions are (...) at the center of the state’s attempt to foster both of these commitments. I argue that recent empirical research on the role that non-cognitive dispositions (such as assertiveness) play in enabling students to have access to two important primary goods – opportunities for higher education and desirable jobs – creates a distinctive challenge for a liberal egalitarian education in remaining neutral with respect to conceptions of the good while promoting equal opportunity. (shrink)

Most academic papers on ethics in pandemics concentrate on the duties of healthcare professionals. This paper will consider non-professional healthcare workers: do they have a moral obligation to work during an influenza pandemic? If so, is this an obligation that outweighs others they might have, e.g., as parents, and should such an obligation be backed up by the coercive power of law? This paper considers whether non-professional healthcare workers—porters, domestic service workers, catering staff, clerks, IT support workers, etc.—have an obligation (...) to work during an influenza pandemic. It uses data collected as part of a study looking at the attitudes of healthcare workers to working during a pandemic to suggest the philosophical arguments explored. These include: being in a position to do good, the ethics of work, competing obligations to family members and in particular to children and the obligations of citizens in a state of national emergency. We also look at whether compulsory measures are justified to support a national health service during a health emergency. We conclude that even if they are, compulsion should not be restricted to non-professionals who happen to be working in the health service at the time. Rather, compulsion involving a larger pool of people with the relevant skills and abilities is more equitable. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper assesses to what extent the neo-Republican accounts of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit adequately capture the nature of political liberty at Rome by focusing on Cicero's analysis of the libera res publica. Cicero's analysis in De Republica suggests that the rule of law and a modest menu of individual citizens’ rights guard against citizens being controlled by a master's arbitrary will, thereby ensuring the status of non-domination that constitutes freedom according to the neo-Republican view. He also (...) shows the difficulty of anchoring an argument for citizens’ full political participation in the value of non-domination. While Cicero believed such full participation was essential for a libera res publica, he, like other elite Romans, argued for participation on the basis of liberty conceived as the space to contend for and enhance one's social status. The sufficiency of the rule of law and citizens’ rights for securing a status of non-domination taken together with their insufficiency for ensuring a libera res publica suggests that neo-Republican accounts of liberty do not fully capture the idea as articulated in Cicero's Republicanism. (shrink)

Plusieurs commentateurs – incluant certains théoriciens des droits des animaux – ont soutenu que les animaux non humains ne peuvent pas être considérés comme des membres du dèmos parce qu’il leur manque les capacités critiques d’autonomie et d’agentivité morale qui seraient essentielles à la citoyenneté. Nous soutenons que cette inquiétude est fondée sur des idées erronées à propos de la citoyenneté, d’une part, et à propos des animaux, d’autre part. La citoyenneté requiert la maîtrise de soi et la sensibilité aux (...) normes partagées, mais ces capacités ne devraient pas être comprises en un sens indûment intellectualisé ou idéalisé. Des études récentes sur l’agentivité morale montrent que les relations civilisées entre les citoyens sont largement fondées, non pas dans la réflexion rationnelle et l’assentiment à des propositions morales, mais dans des comportements intuitifs, irréfléchis et habituels qui s’enracinent dans une gamme d’émotions prosociales (l’empathie, l’amour) et de dispositions prosociales (coopération, altruisme, réciprocité, résolution de conflits). Cinquante ans de recherches éthologiques ont démontré que plusieurs animaux sociaux – particulièrement les animaux domestiques – partagent le type de dispositions et de capacités rendant possible le civisme quotidien. Une fois que nous élargissons notre conception de la citoyenneté pour inclure une compréhension plus riche des bases des relations civiques, il devient évident que les animaux domestiques et les humains peuvent être les co-créateurs d’un monde moral et politique commun. Nous n’avons rien à craindre, et beaucoup à gagner, à les accueillir comme membres du dèmos. (shrink)

What is immediately strange about Sartre’s controversial preface to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is its mode of address. To whom is this preface written? Sartre imagines his reader as the colonizer or the French citizen who recoils from the thought of violent acts of resistance on the part of the colonized. Minimally, his imagined reader is one who believes that his own notions of humanism and universalism suffice as norms by which to assess the war for independence in (...) Algeria and similar efforts at decolonization. Sartre’s address to his audience is direct and caustic: “What does Fanon care whether you read his work or not? It is to his brothers that he denounces our old tricks”. At one point, he seems to take his implied readers aside, addressing the preface to them directly. (shrink)

The Cameron government has recently negotiated a deal with the EU which permits the UK to restrict access to in-work benefits for recent EU migrants in the first four years of residence. Withdrawing access to in-work benefits will lead to significant inequalities in pay between British workers and their EU equivalents working at the same job, in the same general situation. The proposal has been widely decried as discriminatory. Is it? I do not, in this article, ask the legal question: (...) Does it violate anti-discrimination norms implicit in the treaties? Rather, I will ask the moral question underlying the legal one: Would, say, Polish citizens denied in-work benefits that British citizens receive be victims of wrongful discrimination? This question deserves consideration not simply because it will help us to evaluate some of the central concerns at stake in the Brexit debates but also because it will allow us to explore the role of norms against discrimination according to nationality within the EU, to address the nature of the European commitment to freedom of movement, and, in the reverse direction, to better understand our own moral commitment to anti-discrimination norms. (shrink)

This article tries to contextualise the formulation of Islamic laws with regards to contemporary dynamics of non-Muslim leadership in the government. It particularly addresses the religious deliberation of the traditionalist Muslim organisation, the Nadhlatul Ulama/NU, and its youth organisation, the Gerakan Pemuda Ansor. The construction of Islamic laws in contemporary Indonesia tells an insightful viewpoint in Islamic-laws making and delivers multiplicity in Islamic interpretation. Despite the fact that these two organisations are of the same organisation, the NU, their formulation of (...) Islamic laws with regards to non-Muslim leadership demonstrates a different and contrasting opinion. While the national board of the NU through its national congress in 1999 argues against non-Muslim leadership, the national religious deliberation board of the Ansor in 2017 issues a legal opinion that approves non-Muslim leadership. As this article argues, the different opinions between these two institutions develops particularly because of different construct in defining Islam and democracy in the largest Muslim country Indonesia. They differ in reconciling istinbat of two principles of Islamic laws ; al-sabit and al-mutahawwil. It further argues that the national board of the NU particularly sees the prohibition of non-Muslim leadership as al-sabit, an unchanged dictum, whereas the Ansor considers it al-mutahawwil as looking at the Indonesian state constitution that does not discriminate its citizens based on religion. Thus, making Islamic laws accords to the state constitution. (shrink)

In European law, "non-contractual liability arising out of damage caused to another" is one of the three main non-contractual obligations dealt with in the Draft of a Common Frame of Reference. The law of non-contractual liability arising out of damage caused to another â?? in the common law known as tort law or the law of torts, but in most other jurisdictions referred to as the law of delict â?? is the area of law which determines whether one who has (...) suffered a damage, can on that account demand reparation â?? in money or in kind â?? from another with whom there may be no other legal connection than the causation of damage itself. Besides determining the scope and extent of responsibility for dangers of one's own or another's creation, this field of law serves to protect fundamental rights in the private law domain, that is to say horizontally between citizens inter se. Based on pan-European comparative research which annotates the work, this book presents model rules on liability. Explanatory comments and illustrations amplify the policy decisions involved. During the drafting process, comparative material from over 25 different EU jurisdictions has been taken into account. The work therefore is not only a presentation of a future model for European rules to come, but also provides a fairly detailed indication of the present legal situation in the Member States. (shrink)

The republican project of freedom as non-domination commits the State to endowing citizens with the resources and attitudes necessary to both apprehend domination and abstain from dominating others. This, some have argued, renders it incompatible with political liberalism, which eschews the promotion of personal liberal virtues, being derived independently of any 'comprehensive doctrine'. Republican freedom is therefore depicted as penetrating deeper, in its application, into intimate and 'private' spheres. I argue, through a Rousseauist interpretation of Rawls's social contract, that (...) its 'political' stricture need not, however, preclude any socially transformative, emancipatory role. Thus, the promotion of freedom as non-domination is compatible with the 'modelled constraints' of Rawls's original position. Far from transgressing the 'political' limits of State power, the goods associated with non-domination may instead be seen as necessary to the realisation of 'moral personality'—independently of the 'final ends' for which it may be exercised. (shrink)

For several decades, the international community has criticized Turkey for failing to uphold the human rights and freedoms of its citizens and for not realizing the principles of non-discrimination and equality within its borders. As Turkey’s European Union candidacy proceeds, religious groups such as the Alevis claim to face discrimination and violations of their human rights and freedoms by the Turkish state. The Justice and Development Party debated the Alevis’ problems and structured the Alevi Initiative, which conducted relevant workshops (...) and discussions. Alevi arguments regarding their places of worship and the state’s religious education policy were identified as their main challenges. Alevis argued that the state’s policies on religious education and places of worship discriminated against them and violated their human rights. Through several human rights law cases before domestic and international tribunals, Alevis requested fulfillment, protection, and assurance of their human rights and freedoms. Several court decisions agreed that Alevis’ human rights and freedoms were being violated. However, the challenges and demands of Alevis still persist, as they contend that they have not succeeded in gaining the human rights and freedoms as required in contemporary Turkey under the JDP government. (shrink)

The current UK policy for the distribution of scarce vaccination in an influenza pandemic is ethically dubious. It is based on the planned outcome of the maximum health benefit in terms of the saving of lives and the reduction of illness. To that end, the population is classified in terms of particular priority groups. An alternative policy with a non-consequentialist rationale is proposed in the present work. The state should give the vaccination, in the first instance, to those who are (...) at risk of catching the pandemic flu in the line of their duties of public employment. Thereafter, if there is not sufficient vaccine to give all citizens equally an effective dose, the state should give all citizens an equal chance of receiving an effective dose. This would be the just thing to do because the state has a duty to treat each and all of its citizens impartially and they have a corresponding right to such impartial treatment. Although this article specifically refers to the UK, it is considered that the suggested alternative policy would be applicable generally. The duty to act justly is not merely a local one. (shrink)

This article explores the values that should be promoted in civic education for democracy and also how the promotion of values can be non-coercive. It will be argued that civic education should promote the values of reasonableness, mutual respect and fairness, but also that only public, political reasons count in attempting to justify the content of civic education. It will also be argued that the content of civic education may legitimately be broader than this, including but not restricted to the (...) values of autonomy, integrity, magnanimity, truthfulness and generosity. At the same time, if civic education is seen merely as a means to shape and form future citizens, then the promotion of values in civic education will be a coercive imposition on children and young people. If the promotion of values instead is to be non-coercive it must be defended with reasons that children and young people should be able to accept. (shrink)

Democratic legitimacy is often grounded in proceduralist terms, referring to the ideal of political equality that should be mirrored by fair procedures of decision-making. The paper argues (§1) that the normative commitments embedded in a non-minimalist account of procedural legitimacy are well expressed by the ideal of co-authorship. Against this background, the main goal of the paper is to argue that structural forms of epistemic injustice are detrimental to the overall legitimacy of democratic systems. In §2 I analyse Young’s notion (...) of political powerlessness and claim that in structurally unjust social contexts members of powerless groups often are not properly acknowledged as functioning members of the polity, hence being jeopardized in their ability to develop part of their personal identity. In §III, I define gerrymandering as an example of political disempowerment that involves an epistemic harm for oppressed citizens, namely, to be prejudicially excluded from the community of epistemic trust. My thesis is that being epistemically disempowered has a negative impact on the way in which citizens understand themselves as political actors, since they suffer a lack of social recognition that may impede a proper development of their reflexive agency. In §IV, I discuss the proposal of granting epistemic privilege to members of oppressed groups, given their specific experience of social injustices. I introduce two concerns about this proposal, one morally grounded and one pragmatically oriented. Finally, in §V, I briefly sketch some institutional remedies that can be employed in order to politically fight systemic forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)