The dependence of socio-political stability on the emotional expectations of voters is investigated. For this, a model of a socio-political system consisting of a society of voters and a democratically elected politician is considered. The neuropsychological model of the voter takes into account his emotional expectations. The social stability is guaranteed by the expectations of positive emotions of all voters. Socio-political stability means both the social stability and the re-election of politician. One type (...) of voter is a Progressist who seeks to fulfil his desires. It is shown that for the socio-political stability of the Progressist society, is enough a supportive environment. Another type of voter—a Phobic works in a fearful environment. It is shown that for the socio-political stability of the Phobic’s society, regular impacts that support their phobias are sufficient. As an example, emotional expectations, socio-political stability and information management in Eastern Europe are considered. The management of phobias in a weak economy is investigated. It is shown that in the absence of regular impacts supporting phobias a Phobic turns into a Progressist. Then the socio-political system becomes unstable with a weak economy and growth limits. The classification of the main social threats and phobias is given. The socio-political consequences of creating phobias, including corporate psychopaths and toxic leaders, are examined. Ways are proposed to resolve the contradiction between increased consumption and growth limits without the use of phobias, using high humanitarian technologies. (shrink)

Public reason liberalism includes an ideal of political stability where justified institutions reach a kind of self-enforcing equilibrium. Such an order must be stable for the right reasons — where persons comply with the rules of the order for moral reasons, rather than out of fear or self-interest. John Rawls called a society stable in this way well-ordered. In this essay, I contend that a more sophisticated model of a well-ordered society, specifically an agent-based model, yields a richer (...) and more attractive understanding of political stability. An agent-based model helps us to distinguish between three concepts of political stability — durability, balance, and immunity. A well-ordered society is one that possesses a high degree of social trust and cooperative behavior among its citizens (durability) with low short-run variability (balance). A well-ordered society also resists destabilization caused by noncompliant agents in or entering the system (immunity). Distinguishing between these three concepts complicates the necessary reformulation of the idea of a well-ordered society. Going forward, public reason theorists must now distinguish between types of assurance, specify heretofore unknown aspects of reasonable behavior, and reconceive of the nonideal preconditions for forming a stable, ideal social order. (shrink)

Tekst je prosireno obrazlozenje predlozene teme projekta koja se bavi mogucnoscu prihvatanja i stabilizacije liberalnih obrazaca distribucije u drustvima u tranziciji. Srbija je u ovom pogledu iz niza razloga poseban slucaj. Liberalizacija ovih drustava je uvek neizvestan proces jer zavisi od dve vazne pretpostavke. Prva je olicena u paradoksu ovakvog vida tranzicije koji se sastoji u postojanju ili nepostojanju politickih poticaja da se neke sfere zivota osamostale od procesa politickog odlucivanja. Druga je da liberalizacija moze biti samo destruktivna. Naime, minimalni (...) ucinci liberalizacije, uspostavljanje obrazaca odgovornosti i javne sfere, mogu u svom krajnjem ishodu imati neliberalne ucinke. No, pored svega, stabilnost liberalnih poredaka pociva upravo na otvorenoj mogucnosti stalnog preispitivanja i korigovanja obrazaca raspodele koji su ugradjeni u institucionalne mehanizme ovih drustava. (shrink)

Many fear that climate change will lead to the collapse of civilization. I argue both that this is unlikely and that the fear is potentially harmful. Using examples from recent disasters I argue that climate change is more likely to intensify the existing social order—a truly terrifying prospect. The fear of civilizational collapse is part of the climate crisis; it makes us fear change and prevents us from imagining different social relations which is necessary if we are to survive the (...) coming disasters and prevent further escalation. Using affect theory, I claim that our visions of the future affect our ability to act in the present. Rather than imagining a terrifying societal breakdown, we can look at how communities have survived recent disasters to get an image of what we need to expand upon to prepare for the future. (shrink)

Currently the dominant interpretation of Hobbes in the field of moral and political philosophy is as a social contract theorist: that he legitimates moral rules and sovereign power by arguing that we would agree we are better off obeying a sovereign than living in a state of nature, and that we are best off if that sovereign is an absolute monarch. There are interesting alternatives to this reading of Hobbes—Warrender’s divine-command interpretation and Boonin-Vail’s virtue theory interpretation, to name just (...) two—but it is not my purpose here to debate their relative merits. Rather, I want to comment on one of the main features of the social contract view, namely, the means of maintaining political stability. (shrink)

Many fear that climate change will lead to the collapse of civilization. I argue both that this is unlikely and that the fear is potentially harmful. Using examples from recent disasters I argue that climate change is more likely to intensify the existing social order—a truly terrifying prospect. The fear of civilizational collapse is part of the climate crisis; it makes us fear change and prevents us from imagining different social relations which is necessary if we are to survive the (...) coming disasters and prevent further escalation. Using affect theory, I claim that our visions of the future affect our ability to act in the present. Rather than imagining a terrifying societal breakdown, we can look at how communities have survived recent disasters to get an image of what we need to expand upon to prepare for the future. (shrink)

This article examines the excitement that Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments generated in France during the French Revolution, focusing particularly on the writings of political theorists, participants and commentators such as the abbé Sieyès, Pierre-Louis Rœderer, the Marquis de Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy Condorcet, who were dismayed at their political opponents’ use of Rousseau, and looked to Smith for an understanding of the passions that was compatible with democratic sovereignty and representative government. In the political (...) context of the early 1790s, clarifying the concept of natural sociability, which Rousseau had rejected, but Smith and Helvétius, in different ways, each regarded as indispensible to a society dependent on advanced division of labour, became a central concern in the public lectures delivered by Pierre-Louis Rœderer as the Terror took hold. ☆ My thanks to Emma Rothschild, Michael Sonenscher, Brian Young and other participants in the History of Political Thought Seminar, Oxford, and The Hexagonal Forum, Cambridge, where earlier versions of this paper were presented and helpfully discussed. I’m also grateful for comments on an earlier draft from Carolina Armenteros, Clare Jackson, Duncan Kelly, Michael Sonenscher and Richard Whatmore. (shrink)

Constitutional pluralism has become a principal model for understanding the legal and political structure of the European Union. Yet its variants are highly diverse, ranging from moderate “institutional” forms, closer to constitutionalist thinking, to “radical” ones which renounce a common framework to connect the different layers of law at play. Neil MacCormick, whose work was key for the rise of constitutional pluralism, shifted his approach from radical to institutional pluralism over time. This paper reconstructs the reasons for this shift—mainly (...) concerns about political stability that also underlie many others' skepticism vis-à-vis radical pluralist ideas. It then seeks to show why such concerns are likely overdrawn. In the fluid, contested space of postnational politics, a common, overarching frame is problematic as it might inflame, rather than tame, tensions. Leaving fundamental issues open along radical pluralist lines may help to work around points of highly charged contestation and provide opportunities for resistance from less powerful actors. (shrink)

An attractive form of social stability is realized when the members of a well-ordered society give that society’s organizing principles their free and reflective endorsement. However, many political philosophers are skeptical that there is any requirement to show that their principles would engender this kind of stability. This skepticism is at the root of a number of objections to political liberalism, since arguments for political liberalism often appeal to its ability to be stable in this (...) way. The aim of this paper is to address skepticism about the stability condition by putting forward a novel defense of it. My defense builds on the claim that stable principles are necessary to secure the full autonomy of those who live under them. (shrink)

Threats to the stability of liberal democracies are of obvious contemporary import. Concern with stability runs through John Rawls’s work. The stability that concerned him was that of fundamental terms of cooperation. Rawls long believed that the terms which would be stable were his two principles, but he eventually conceded that even a well-ordered society was more likely to be characterized by “justice pluralism” than by consensus on his own conception of justice. Contemporary liberal democracies, too, are (...) divided about what justice demands. I believe Rawls’s treatment of stability can help us understand the conditions under which fundamental terms of cooperation can be stable under non-ideal conditions such as ours. But because Rawls never worked through the consequences of his concession, his view needs to be developed before we can draw on it. Rawls’s treatment makes use of elementary game theory. Thus in _Theory of Justice_ he said -- and in _Political Liberalism_ he implied -- that stability would result from citizens with a sense of justice “playing” strategies which combined for what was, in effect, a Nash equilibrium. I argue that his concession requires a new conception of stability and implies that Rawls cannot appeal to a Nash equilibrium to show how stability would be maintained. His concession therefore forces open a troubling gap in his analysis. I fill that gap by proposing a weaker equilibrium concept that serves Rawlsian purposes. I conclude with what this project suggests for challenges facing the fragile liberal democracies of our own time. (shrink)

Arguments from stability for liberal nationalism rely on considerations about conditions for the feasibility or stability of liberal political ideals and factual claims about the circumstances under which these conditions are fulfilled in order to argue for nationalist conclusions. Such reliance on factual claims has been criticised by among others G. A. Cohen in other contexts as ideological reifications of social reality. In order to assess whether arguments from stability within liberal nationalism, especially as formulated by (...) David Miller, are vulnerable to a comparable critique, the rationale for their reliance on factual claims is discussed on the basis of a number of concerns in John Rawls’s political liberalism. The concern with stability in liberal nationalism differs from stability in Rawls’s work, mainly because of the stronger non-ideal or ‘realist’ focus of the former. In so far as the ‘realism’ of arguments from stability for liberal nationalism is recognized, they are not vulnerable to the reification charge. But if the arguments are construed as realist, this at the same time makes for other tensions within liberal nationalism. (shrink)

After World War II political science, especially comparative politics, was transformed by a "scientific revolution." Harry Eckstein, an influential spokesman in the revolution's forefront, went on to make a great variety of contributions in subsequent decades. These eleven essays, written over thirty years, cover the major issues in comparative politics, from civil war to "civic inclusion"—that is, "the tendency over time to include in politics, in workplace decision-making, in education, and in other institutional realms, people previously excluded from participation." (...) Eckstein also deals with political science as a field: how it relates to political practice, how it developed in the prewar period, and how it emerged from the first postwar reshaping. In this first collection of his work, Eckstein reflects on the issues and events—his personal experiences as a refugee from Nazi Germany and as an observer of European politics and cultures—that underlie and unify his thinking. _Regarding Politics_ presents in one powerful volume the career of one of the leading comparative political scientists of our times. (shrink)

Money performs its economic functions best when its value remains stable over time. This Article explores how that desideratum was achieved, or not achieved, under five identifiable monetary regimes in economic history. Transitions from one regime to another resulted from the demands of economic growth, which some regimes met better than others. The modern fiat money regime is optimal in most economic respects. Whatever amount of money needed to accommodate growth can be supplied at minimal costs. But political control (...) over money creation can be used to increase the short-term control over economic resources of those in power and their constituents. When such debasements of money have occurred, the political economy of every regime interfered with achieving optimal long-term economic outcomes by unleashing inflation. How might the modern fiat money regime avoid that result? (shrink)

Prior to his renewed incumbency, as the fourth Prime Minister ofMalaysia, Mahathir Mohamad was able to remain in power for amore prolonged period compared to his predecessors. He was actively involvedin galvanizing political action immediately after the independence of Malaysiaand did not abandon active politics until his 2003 resignation. Under Mahathir’sleadership and guidance, Malaysia made remarkable economic and politicalprogress. He oversaw many innovations in the fledgling democracy and wasable to develop the country due to his exceptional leadership qualities. His (...) styleand attitude towards engaging with problems, particularly his stance during theAsian Monetary Crisis in 1997, was highly criticized by some, and labelled asdictatorial. This stigma did not detract him from the path he considered rightfor Malaysia, and under his leadership he garnered worldwide appreciation forhis national efforts and success in overcoming the economic crisis. Mahathiris undeniably an excellent case study as a prime minister, as well as a highly productive person. He contributed to a better understanding of modernMalaysia and his own tenure as PM in a series of books and articles. One ofthe significant aspects of his political heritage is his influential charisma andleadership. In all of his undertakings he has attracted both passionate supportand hatred from friends and foes, but his political footsteps have always beencertain and directed toward Malaysia’s national wellbeing. Mahathir is apolitician with sharp views on many issues and he was profoundly brave inverbalising them in the public arena, within Malaysia and internationally. Hisclear posture and speeches without fear made him a world-embracing politicalpersonality. This descriptive research study adopts a qualitative approach toanalyse historical information, documents, memoirs and articles, and books tobetter understand the leadership of Mahathir. (shrink)

In the 1970s, both Denmark and Norway passed abortion legislation that is still the basis for the regulation of abortion in these countries. The legislation was fairly liberal with abortion on demand until 12 weeks of gestation and a permission system for later abortions. This article provides a brief history of the developments leading up to these political compromises and an analysis of the reasons why they have proved remarkably stable. It ends by looking at some factors that may (...) now destabilize 50 years of stable compromise about abortion. (shrink)

Despite women’s increased labor force participation, household divisions of labor remain highly unequal. Properly implemented, gender egalitarian political interventions such as work time regulation, dependent care provisions, and family leave initiatives can induce families to share work more equally than they currently do. But do these interventions constitute legitimate uses of political power? In this article, I defend the political legitimacy of these interventions. Using the conception of citizenship at the heart of political liberalism, I argue (...) that citizens would accept political interventions aimed at protecting the ‘genuinely available option’ to enact gender egalitarian lifestyles. More strongly still, I argue that under certain circumstances, citizens would insist on the enactment of political interventions to protect this option. According to political liberalism’s constraints on legitimacy, this insistence renders these interventions not only legitimate but positively mandatory. It is legitimate for a state to exercise power to preserve the genuinely available option to enact a gender egalitarian lifestyle, and under certain circumstances, it is illegitimate for a state to fail to do so. (shrink)

This volume offers a history of the role of exile in the Greek city-state in the period c. 404-146 BC, from the end of the Peloponnesian War to the Roman conquest of the Greek world.

John Rawls argued in A Theory of Justice that “justice as fairness…is likely to have greater stability than the traditional alternatives since it is more in line with the principles of moral psychology”. In support, he presented a psychology of moral development that was informed by a comprehensive liberalism. In Political Liberalism, Rawls confessed that the argument was “unrealistic and must be recast”. Rawls, however, never provided a psychology of moral development informed by a specifically political liberalism, (...) leaving it at a disadvantage with respect to comprehensive liberalism itself. I argue that no coherent account is available. But, because Rawls’s Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, along with its implied stricture against “indoctrination in the pejorative sense,” is a creature of ideal rather than non-ideal theory, the deficiency is far less significant than many would assume. In non-ideal circumstances -- such as ours -- political liberalism does not disallow, and in fact requires, compulsory, free early education informed by the best available comprehensive liberal philosophy. (shrink)

Despite great advances in recent scholarship on the political philosophy of John Rawls, Rawls’s conception of stability is not fully appreciated. This essay aims to remedy this by articulating a more complete understanding of stability and its role in Rawls’s theory of justice. I argue that even in A Theory of Justice Rawls maintains that within liberal democratic constitutionalism judgments of relative stability typically adjudicate decisively among conceptions of justice and is committed to more deeply than (...) to the substantive content of justice as fairness. This essay thus emphasizes the continuity of Rawls’s thought over time and motivates the position that Rawlsian stability is as philosophically significant and distinctively Rawlsian as justice as fairness itself. (shrink)

The topic of moral diversity is not only prevalent in contemporary moral and political philosophy, it is also practically relevant. Moral diversity, however, poses a significant challenge for moral theory building. John Thrasher, in his discussion of public reason theory, which includes social contract theory, argues that if one seriously considers the goal of moral constructivism and considerations of representation and stability, then moral diversity poses an insurmountable problem for most public reason theories. I agree with Thrasher that (...) moral diversity poses a significant challenge for orthodox multistage social contract theories. In fact, I even add a further problem for such theories under the assumption of deep moral diversity. Nevertheless, I argue that my recently developed multilevel social contract theory overcomes these problems. I focus on some of the underexplored features of this theory to show that multilevel social contract theory offers one conceptually coherent and plausible way to render social contract theory viable and relevant for modern diverse societies. (shrink)

In Hume's dialogue with the Hobbesian-Mandevillian "selfish system" of morals, Hume seems to reject its conclusions in morals, but accept them in politics. No skeptic of moral claims like Mandeville, Hume sought to ground objective moral standards in his moral sentiment philosophy, yet, like Mandeville, Hume argued that in political life human beings act based largely on self-interest and a limited generosity. I argue that Hume, however, is ultimately ambivalent about the selfish system's conclusions in politics. He puts forth (...) both a nonmoral and a moral solution to the problem of cohesion in modern liberal states. First, he agrees with the selfish system's nonmoral tactic of channeling the self-interest of citizens through well-constructed institutions toward salutary ends. Second, arguing that the first solution is insufficient for the health of a political regime, Hume seeks to expand the limited moral sense of citizens through moral and aesthetic education and through an empowerment of local politics. Hume's second solution is a means within liberalism to combat its own tendencies toward the dissolution of communal ties and the creation of conditions ripe for the emergence of "sensible knaves.". (shrink)

In this work Antonio Rosmini considers the fundamental criterion governing the foundation, development and disintergration of every society or association. He shows how this criterion serves to validate or condemn activity undertaken by government.

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.

Since the 1990s, political theorists studied the impact of digital media on the public sphere. These debates extensively employ Arendt’s theory of the public sphere to evaluate whether social media meets the expectations and criteria set forth in her account. This common approach rests on a methodological assumption that is itself not critically examined: it asserts that one should start with a clear understanding of what political action ‘truly’ is and only then attend to its potential relation with (...) technology. However, this article identifies two issues with this approach: it overlooks the complex interplay between technology and political action, and struggles to adapt Arendt’s pre-digital era theory to digital environments. Nonetheless, I argue that Arendt’s phenomenological methodology (i.e., how she develops her political theory) does offer an effective starting point to explore the changing relationship between politics and technology in the contemporary public sphere. This approach begins with an exploration of the technological conditions shaping political action rather than with a pre-established notion of political action. I demonstrate how this methodological blueprint can be expanded with a postphenomenological framework to bring Arendt’s political theory into the digital age, revealing how digital technologies continuously re-stabilize the intentional structure of political action. (shrink)

This article examines Aristotle’s theory of ‘factional conflict’ (stasis) in Book 5 of the Politics and claims that it is mainly directed against the a-historical account of constitutional change Plato develops in the Republic. Aristotle’s investigation of the causes of stasis is oriented towards the normative political goal of stabilizing political orders and preventing their ‘change’ (metabolê) into different ones. This article argues that the constitution Aristotle calls ‘polity’ (politeia) constitutes his solution to the challenge of stabilizing democracies (...) and oligarchies. The paper also aims at elucidating Aristotle’s conception of an empirical political science, his political realism, and the method he applies in conjunction with it in the ‘empirical’ Books of the Politics (Book 4 through 6). (shrink)

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls’s first argument for the inherent stability of a well-ordered society seeks to establish that citizens of such a society would come to share the same or similar senses of justice. In his late work, Rawls significantly revised his second argument for stability, but he repeatedly pronounced himself satisfied with the first. However, the pluralism that so drastically reoriented Rawls’s mature theory also creates destabilizing forces absent in Theory. These destabilizing forces suggest (...) that a shared sense of justice among citizens will be more difficult to achieve. This paper examines Rawl’s late theory in detail to reconstruct how Rawls, despite his stated satisfaction, addressed the destabilizing effects of pluralism through revisions to his first argument for stability. It argues that in his late theory Rawls no longer claims that a well-ordered society could achieve inherent stability. Instead, a more fragile stability is achieved through a disciplined commitment to publ... (shrink)

John Rawls argued in A Theory of Justice that ‘justice as fairness … is likely to have greater stability than the traditional alternatives since it is more in line with the principles of moral psychology'. In support, he presented a psychology of moral development that was informed by a comprehensive liberalism. In Political Liberalism, Rawls confessed that the argument was 'unrealistic and must be recast'. Rawls, however, never provided a psychology of moral development informed by a specifically (...) class='Hi'>political liberalism, leaving it at a disadvantage with respect to comprehensive liberalism itself. I argue that no coherent account is available. But, because Rawls’s Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, along with its implied stricture against 'indoctrination in the pejorative sense', is a creature of ideal rather than non-ideal theory, the deficiency is far less significant than many would assume. (shrink)

This chapter summarizes briefly what John Rawls meant by stability, the role it plays in Theory of Justice (TJ), and the outline of his main strategies for showing that a well‐ordered society based on his principles of justice would be relatively stable. It presents comments on Rawls's use of developmental moral psychology in support of his claim that societies based on justice as fairness would be relatively stable. The chapter discusses Rawls's conception of self‐respect, its role in his arguments (...) for justice as fairness, and whether it is subject to a certain Kantian objection that echoes in our contemporary political culture. It argues that if Rawls's turn to an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines as the basis of stability in Political Liberalism (PL) was well motivated, then why not quietly bypass the earlier work on a sense of justice and self‐respect simply as an acknowledged failure. (shrink)

This article examines Aristotle’s theory of ‘factional conflict’ in Book 5 of the Politics and claims that it is mainly directed against the a-historical account of constitutional change Plato develops in the Republic. Aristotle’s investigation of the causes of stasis is oriented towards the normative political goal of stabilizing political orders and preventing their ‘change’ into different ones. This article argues that the constitution Aristotle calls ‘polity’ constitutes his solution to the challenge of stabilizing democracies and oligarchies. The (...) paper also aims at elucidating Aristotle’s conception of an empirical political science, his political realism, and the method he applies in conjunction with it in the ‘empirical’ Books of the Politics. (shrink)

In this working paper, we discuss why researchers and policymakers need to better understand how different theoretical accounts of stability lead to different frameworks of analysis. Though ubiquitously mentioned, stability remains an under-theorized notion in security studies. Expert accounts tend to present stability as a generic description, readily applicable to most political phenomena Ð a stabilized state, a stable region, an unstable society. While seemingly equivocal, such uses exhibit different conceptualizations, exhibiting different features and demanding multiple (...) research programs. To date, most accounts of stability tend to take stability to be an (unconstructed) natural phenomenon or a non-derivative social construction. In this introductory paper, we claim that there is a third way to account for stability that remains unexplored in security studies. Simply put, it involves taking stability to be a derivative social construction (i.e., systemic fallout). We then argue that this alternative account should serve as the theoretical basis for an independent research program within stability studies. (shrink)

The main argument of this article is based on a functional disanalogy, between what I will call ‘international humanity-based law’, constituted by human rights and criminal law, and the domestic rule of law. If we adopt a functionalist approach, the attention has to be focused both on Rule of Law’s pragmatical objective – a reasonable stability – and on its means – formalism and legality, for dealing with indeterminacy. Do international key players share such values, embedded in the Rule (...) of Law’s political project? Does humanity-based international law fulfil the requirements of the Rule of Law? The conclusion of this work is that institutions and mechanism to which usually legal scholars refer when stating that a legal order is a Rule of Law, are almost absent in humanity-based international law. That implies that radical indeterminacy is, in humanity issues, a too strong obstacle for achieving the ideal of the Rule of Law. (shrink)

The link between broad based economic prosperity, political stability and accountable governance is generally acknowledged as a reasonable proposition to explain the wealth and poverty of nations. Although there is continuing debate about what accountable governance actually imply and the degree to which government accountability is related to the democratic nature of the state, there is a broad consensus that political stability is an important precondition for durable development. Modern Ethiopian history is nothing but a story (...) of economic decline, political instability and authoritarian governance. The TPLF/EPRDF regime that has taken power after overthrowing the hated Derge regime in Ethiopia has no democratic credentials especially since the 2005 election debacle. In the absence of democratic legitimacy, the government has hoped to ease public anger and frustration over the unfulfilled expectations of democracy and meaningful ethnic equality, by changing the discourse on governance from democratic accountability to the issue of economic growth. The regime's claim, which seems to be implicitly supported by Western donors, is that it is a "developmentalist state" that can deliver stable governance through its economic achievements rather than through democratic legitimacy. This paper looks at the government's claims carefully and shows that the economic growth figures used to support the government's claims are rather dubious. It also tries to show that even if the growth figures are true, the extent of poverty in the country is too high to generate durable political stability given the hostility the government created among key ethnic and social groups in the country. Furthermore, given the geo strategic location of the country in a very troubled region of the world, Ethiopia's instability is going to have a much broader implication for regional stability. Accordingly, the paper argues for refocusing the debate on democratic accountability in Ethiopia as a necessary condition for durable stability and sustainable development in the country and the larger region. (shrink)

In this work, Paul Weithman offers a fresh, rigorous and compelling interpretation of John Rawls' reasons for taking his so-called 'political turn'.

Political theorists study the attributes of desirable social-moral states of affairs. Schaefer (forthcoming) aims to show that "static political theory" of this kind rests on shaky foundations. His argument revolves around an application of an abstruse mathematical theorem -- Kakutani's fixed point theorem -- to the social-moral domain. We show that Schaefer has misunderstood the implications of this theorem for political theory. Theorists who wish to study the attributes of social-moral states of affairs should carry on, safe (...) in the knowledge that Kakutani's theorem poses no threat to this enterprise. (shrink)

John Rawls pinpoints stability as the driving force behind many of the changes to justice as fairness from A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism. Current debates about Rawlsian stability have centered on the possibility of maintaining one’s allegiance to the principles of justice while largely ignoring how citizens acquire a sense of justice. However, evaluating the account of stability in political liberalism requires attention to the impact of reasonable pluralism on both of these issues. (...) I will argue that the first question of Rawlsian stability – how a child acquires a sense of justice – remains unanswered in Political Liberalism. This fact has been overlooked by Rawls, his defenders, and his critics. The failure to attend to the ways reasonable pluralism undermines Rawls’s own story about a child’s moral development ultimately threatens Rawls’s account of stability in political liberalism – or so I will argue. Despite all of the changes Rawls makes to justice as fairness in order to resolve the stability challenge, Political Liberalism fails to deliver the robust stability Rawls seeks. (shrink)