A feed of the 10 latest articles from Political Philosophy
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Should political theorists engage in ethnographic fieldwork? This paper offers a new argument in favor of adopting an ethnographic sensibility: it helps ‘democratize’ political theory in two ways. First, ethnographic sensibility enables theorists to demonstrate democratic respect for individuals or communities by incorporating their voices and practices into theory. Political theory has been [...]
Theoretical and empirical work provides us with multiple models for explaining why people perpetrate or are complicit in injustice, and a familiar taxonomy distinguishes models of injustice which appeal to common or collective individual psychologies from those which utilize social practices, institutions, and status. In recent years, a well-known fictional wrongdoing with historical [...]
I defend a security-based account of how the state should address intimate partner violence. Protection of basic security against violence must have a high priority in liberalism. Violence in intimate relationships is a widespread threat to security; indeed, intimate relationships create vulnerabilities to violence and hence involve security risks. While it is often assumed that [...]
This article develops the concept of “vindictive tolerance” to describe a political pathology in which the language and institutional apparatus of tolerance, rights, and the rule of law are weaponized to punish opponents. Working from a liberal egalitarian, respect based account of toleration and in critical dialogue with Marcuse’s notion of “repressive tolerance,” it argues that [...]
Some of the most intuitive and deeply held objections to paternalism point to autonomy. A central claim is that paternalism is objectionable even if it improves people’s lives, because it does not treat people as adults or with respect. To know whether paternalism violates autonomy, we need to specify what kind of paternalism is involved; identify the right conception of [...]
Markets are often portrayed as amoral realms of self-interest, yet empirical evidence shows that people in market societies consistently act morally. What explains the discrepancy? I argue that market participants tend to exhibit behaviors that track moral principles (respect, reciprocity, and self-respect), which constitute the minimal morality of markets. However, through a process of [...]
Some theorists maintain that democracy is a condition in which citizens have authority over matters of common concern. But just what kind of authority citizens have proves difficult to describe. Understood strongly—say, as a claim to deference—this authority is obviously overly demanding. But understood more weakly, as a claim to consideration, it is not demanding enough. Thus I identify a [...]
Contemporary power is often opaque. People may be made vulnerable by arrangements whose sources and mechanisms are difficult to identify. This article argues that opaque power raises a problem of political legibility: agents need some practically usable account of what makes them vulnerable, how that vulnerability is sustained, and where challenge might be directed. Such accounts can be [...]
Philosophers of migration claim asylum seekers’ location is normatively arbitrary. They claim it is irrelevant whether asylum seekers are inside or outside their own state, and that it does not matter whether they are encountered at sea, in a refugee camp, or after crossing into another state. Such locational differences may have pragmatic relevance, but they don’t track anything normative. I…
This article responds to an argument in this journal by Monaghan who contends that creating “territory” is a crucial part of a just urban environment but claiming “turf” – claiming and attempting to enforce exclusionary control over urban space – is unjust. This article argues that Monaghan’s argument is a bit too quick. When we understand the way cities, as emergent systems, can produce [...]
This article introduces and begins to defend a relational account of the connection between dignity and recognition. First, I argue that a relational account offers a robust alternative to familiar inherent and conferralist conceptions while integrating key insights of both accounts. Second, while the ideological functions of dignity have been considered by skeptics of dignity, the connection…