Showing papers in "Ethics & International Affairs in 2005"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that much of what Thomas Pogge says about our duty toward developing countries is false and that the global order not only does not harm the poor but can plausibly be credited with the considerable improvements in human well-being that have been achieved over the last 200 years.
Abstract: A central theme throughout Thomas Pogge's pathbreaking World Poverty and Human Rights is that the global political and economic order harms people in developing countries, and that our duty toward the global poor is therefore not to assist them but to rectify injustice. But does the global order harm the poor? I argue elsewhere that there is a sense in which this is indeed so, at least if a certain empirical thesis is accepted. In this essay, however, I seek to show that the global order not only does not harm the poor but can plausibly be credited with the considerable improvements in human well-being that have been achieved over the last 200 years. Much of what Pogge says about our duties toward developing countries is therefore false.
223 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the present situation, on the radical inequality between the bottom half of humankind, suffering severe poverty, and those in the top seven, whose per capita share of the global product is 180 times greater than theirs (at market exchange rates).
Abstract: Mathias Risse discusses whether the global system of territorial sovereignty that emerged in the fifteenth century can be said to harm the poorer societies. This question is distinct from the question I raise in my book—namely, whether present citizens of the affluent countries, in collusion with the ruling elites of most poor countries, are harming the global poor. These questions are different, because present citizens of the affluent countries bear responsibility only for the recent design of the global institutional order. The effects of the states system as it was shaped before 1980, say, is thus of little relevance to the question I have raised. A further difference is that whereas Risse's discussion focuses on the well-being of societies, typically assessed by their GNP per capita, my discussion focuses on the well-being of individual human beings. This difference is significant because what enriches a poor country (in terms of GNP per capita) all too often impoverishes the vast majority of its inhabitants, as I discuss with the example of Nigeria's oil revenues (pp. 112–14).My focus is then on the present situation, on the radical inequality between the bottom half of humankind, suffering severe poverty, and those in the top seventh, whose per capita share of the global product is 180 times greater than theirs (at market exchange rates). This radical inequality and the continuous misery and death toll it engenders are foreseeably reproduced under the present global institutional order as we have shaped it. And most of it could be avoided, I hold, if this global order had been, or were to be, designed differently. The feasibility of a more poverty-avoiding alternative design of the global institutional order shows, I argue, that the present design is unjust and that, by imposing it, we are harming the global poor by foreseeably subjecting them to avoidable severe poverty.
217 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, international engagement with the unfolding crisis in Darfur tells us about the impact of the Iraq war on the norm of humanitarian intervention, and is a global consensus about a "responsibility to protect" more or less likely?
Abstract: What does the world's engagement with the unfolding crisis in Darfur tell us about the impact of the Iraq war on the norm of humanitarian intervention? Is a global consensus about a "responsibility to protect" more or less likely? There are at least three potential answers to these questions. Some argue that the merging of strategic interests and humanitarian goods amplified by the intervention in Afghanistan makes it more likely that the world's most powerful states will act to prevent or halt humanitarian crises. Others insist that the widespread perception that the United States and its allies "abused" humanitarian justifications to legitimate its invasion of Iraq has set back efforts to build a global consensus about humanitarian action. A third group argues that the "responsibility to protect" inhibits the potential for abuse and, as a result, consensus is likely to strengthen post-Iraq for precisely this reason. Through a detailed study of the international engagement with Darfur, I suggest that the latter two arguments have merit but need to be adjusted. I argue that the humanitarian intervention norm has changed in two subtle ways. First, while the strength of the norm itself has not changed, the credibility of the United States and U.K. as "norm carriers" has been significantly undermined. Second, while the "responsibility to protect" has been invoked to support international activism, it has also re-legitimated anti-interventionist arguments.
199 citations
TL;DR: The need-based view as mentioned in this paper argues that the rich have a strong and extensive set of duties to come to the assistance of the global poor: duties that are grounded in the neediness of the poor.
Abstract: It would be rather unusual for someone to argue publicly that the world's rich have no obligations at all with respect to the global poor. Many, however, claim that the obligations of the affluent countries are both fairly weak and minimal. This claim is typically arrived at via two premises: one is normative, the other factual. The normative premise asserts that while we are under a strict obligation not to harm others, the obligation to benefit people who we have not harmed is rather weak (and is, for instance, best left to private charitable efforts rather than government action or institutional reform). The factual premise is that the affluent are not, individually or collectively, harming the world's poor by causing their poverty (p. 12). Following Thomas Pogge, I will sometimes refer to this view simply as “libertarianism.” According to a second view, which I shall call the “need-based” view, we have a very strong and extensive set of duties to come to the assistance of the global poor: duties that are grounded in the neediness of the poor. In its most pure form, this view rejects altogether the ethical significance of the distinction between harming and failing to help. On a morally demanding version of the need-based view we have duties of assistance to anyone who is worse off than us, not merely those who are severely in need.
174 citations
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TL;DR: The central contention of as discussed by the authors is that a just cause for war is a wrong that is of a type that can make those responsible for it morally liable to military attack as a means of preventing or rectifying it.
Abstract: The central contention of this essay is that a just cause for war is a wrong that is of a type that can make those responsible for it morally liable to military attack as a means of preventing or rectifying it. This claim has many implications that conflict with assumptions of the currently orthodox theory of the just war. Among the implications explored in the text are that the requirement of just cause is logically and morally prior to all the other requirements of a just war, that this requirement governs all phases of a war and not just the resort to war, that it is thus impermissible to continue to fight a war once the just cause or causes have been achieved, that it is impermissible to fight at all in a war that lacks a just cause, that just cause is a restriction on the type of aim that may be pursued by means of war and is not a matter of scale, that a war that lacks a just cause may be morally justified even if it is not just, and that a belligerent can pursue both just and unjust causes in the same war, which may then have elements or phases that are just and other elements or phases that are unjust.
135 citations
TL;DR: The war in Iraq has renewed the passionate humanitarian intervention debate as mentioned in this paper, and humanitarian intervention is again on the forefront of world politics. But this in a world not always willing or ready to join in that fight.
Abstract: The war in Iraq has reignited the passionate humanitarian intervention debate. President George W. Bush surprised many observers in his second inaugural address when he promised to oppose tyranny and oppression, and this in a world not always willing or ready to join in that fight. Humanitarian intervention is again on the forefront of world politics.
128 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that conceiving injustice to poor women in poor countries primarily as a matter of their oppression by illiberal cultures presents an understanding of their situation that is crucially incomplete, which distorts Western theorists comprehension of our moral relationship to women elsewhere in the world and so of our theoretical task.
Abstract: Western moral and political theorists have recently devoted considerable attention to the perceived victimization of women by Non-western cultures. In this paper, I argue that conceiving injustice to poor women in poor countries primarily as a matter of their oppression by illiberal cultures presents an understanding of their situation that is crucially incomplete. This incomplete understanding distorts Western theorists comprehension of our moral relationship to women elsewhere in the world and so of our theoretical task. It also impoverishes our assumptions about the intercultural dialogue necessary to promote global justice for women.
78 citations
TL;DR: Pogge as mentioned in this paper argues for a causal contribution principle, which holds that we are morally responsible for world poverty because and to the extent that we have caused it, and also argues that our obligations not to harm others apply universally and are stronger than the obligations we have to provide aid.
Abstract: In his provocative book World Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge employs two distinct argumentative strategies. The first is ecumenical: Pogge makes powerful arguments for redressing world poverty that aim to appeal to persons with divergent views regarding its causes, and also for the nature and extent of our obligations to the global poor. This is an extremely important part of his book: World Poverty and Human Rights argues that on any reasonable moral theory and across a wide range of views of the ultimate causes of world poverty, we will be seen to have obligations to the world's poor. Pogge's ecumenical argument shows that one does not have to accept a principle of global equality of resources in order to conclude that we have a general obligation to aid other human beings in severe need. I will discuss this strategy of argument at the end of my essay.In his second and main argumentative strategy, Pogge defends a distinctive normative and empirical perspective. For, at the heart of the book is the thesis that we in the developed countries have special obligations to end world poverty because we have significantly contributed to its existence. Pogge argues for a causal contribution principle, which holds that we are morally responsible for world poverty because and to the extent that we have caused it.Pogge also argues that our obligations not to harm others apply universally and are stronger than the obligations we have to provide aid. In fact, on Pogge's view global justice involves solely this negative duty—a duty not to inflict harm on others. The central innovation of the book is to defend a normative premise typically associated with libertarianism—that we have strong duties not to harm but only weak duties to benefit people we have not harmed—and conjoin it with an empirical claim to generate an argument for radical global redistribution.Although there is much else of interest in World Poverty and Human Rights, particularly Pogge's specific policy proposals to diminish global poverty, the causal contribution thesis and the identification of a duty not to harm as the fundamental principle of justice arguably form its intellectual core and central innovations. In this comment, I will critique both Pogge's use of the causal contribution principle as well as his attempt to derive all of our obligations to the global poor from the need to refrain from harming others.
64 citations
TL;DR: In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, two images come to mind: the Statue of Liberty and a newspaper photograph of a young woman in New York taken during the global demonstrations against the war as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: When I think of the challenges facing international society in the wake of the invasion of Iraq, two images come to mind. The first, a work of postcard art, depicts a screenprint of the Statue of Liberty, with a twist. In the place of her striking face and radiating crown appears a decidedly masculine image: that of a helmeted marine, grim and tight-jawed, a cigarette poking insolently from his lips. The caption reads, in bold white capitals on black, “PEACE,” and beneath it another phrase, asterisked: “conditions apply.” The second is a newspaper photograph of a young woman in New York taken during the global demonstrations against the war in February 2003. She has been called out of the march by the photographer and stands, at once defiant and bewildered, against a row of mounted police. Rugged up against the winter cold, she holds a placard upon which she has written a question: “Perpetual war for perpetual peace?”
64 citations
TL;DR: Pogge as discussed by the authors argued that the role that benefiting from injustice plays in determining our duty to work toward reforming unjust practices and mitigating their harmful effects is best understood in terms of compensation.
Abstract: Contrasting his own position with that of those who conceive the moral challenge of global poverty in terms of a positive duty to help, Thomas Pogge suggests that “we may be failing to fulfill our stringent negative duty not to uphold injustice, not to contribute to or profit from [emphasis added] the unjust impoverishment of others” (p. 197). We should conceive of our individual donations and of possible institutionalized initiatives to eradicate poverty not as helping the poor but “as protecting them from the effects of global rules whose injustice benefits us and is our responsibility” (p. 23, emphasis added). Pogge also claims that such activities should be understood in terms of compensation: “The word ‘compensate’ is meant to indicate that how much one should be willing to contribute toward reforming unjust institutions and toward mitigating the harms they cause depends on how much one is contributing to, and benefiting from, their maintenance” (p. 50, emphasis added).In characterizing wrongful involvement in an unjust social order and the compensatory duties that arise from it, Pogge refers to the terms contribution/responsibility as well as to benefit/profit (the latter are used interchangeably). The first of these factors is unobjectionable: we can take it for granted that there is a negative duty not to contribute to injustice and that those who are responsible for harmful institutions should compensate their victims. I want to raise doubts, however, about the role that Pogge assigns to benefiting from injustice in the determination of our duties toward the victims of injustice. I shall do so by challenging his claim that there is a negative duty not to benefit from injustice, and that the role that benefiting from injustice plays in determining our duties to work toward reforming unjust practices and mitigating their harmful effects is best understood in terms of compensation.
47 citations
TL;DR: Burke's opponents, he says, deploy "notoriously vague" and "fear-soaked rhetoric" as they "scandalously" mimic the ICISS report's title (p. 76), and he calls the war against Saddam Hussein an "unimaginable break" with existing norms as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: There is much that is interesting in Anthony Burke's essay. Unfortunately, Burke is unable to resist hyperbolic language and too readily substitutes rhetorical onslaught for compelling argument. For example, those he criticizes as being neo-imperialists in liberal internationalist clothing are many times over said to present “disturbing” or “disturbing indeed” arguments. We are told that liberty is a “hermaphrodite”; that the war on terrorism constitutes “the democracy that slaughters, the liberator that tortures” (p. 73), as if Abu Ghraib is standard policy rather than aberration and the deaths of civilians intentional rather than a tragic unintended consequence of fighting. Burke's opponents, he says, deploy “notoriously vague” and “fear-soaked rhetoric” as they “scandalously” mimic the ICISS report's title (p. 76). Citing Jurgen Habermas, he calls the war against Saddam Hussein an “unimaginable break” with existing norms (pp. 75, 76). This suggests that there are “imaginable breaks,” but we do not know anything about the criteria he is applying. Reserving sunny language for his own proposed alternatives, Burke blasts the idea of state sovereignty itself as “violent and exclusivist,” and “linger[ing], like a latent illness, in the very depths of modern cosmopolitanism” (p. 74). These excesses are distracting and cloud the observations in his essay that are perceptive and deserve serious consideration.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that transnational democracy provides the basis for a solution to the problem of the "democratic circle" -that in order for democracy to promote justice, it must already be just-at the international level.
Abstract: I argue that transnational democracy provides the basis for a solution to the problem of the “democratic circle”-that in order for democracy to promote justice, it must already be just-at the international level. Transnational democracy could be a means to global justice. First, I briefly recount my argument for the “democratic minimum.” This minimum is freedom from domination, understood in a very specific sense. Employing Hannah Arendt's conception of freedom as “the capacity to begin,” the form of nondomination sufficient for the democratic minimum is the capability to initiate deliberation and thus democratic decision-making processes. My point in developing this argument further concerns the political form of a transnational polity: its citizens enjoy the democratic minimum as members of various demoi. In the case of the European Union, this leads to a potential for democratic domination. I call this the demoi problem, a difficulty that holds for any multilevel polity, for bounded as well as transnational political communities. Second, I argue that such domination is overcome so long as the capacity to initiate deliberation is distributed among various units and various levels. The democratic minimum could fail to obtain not only because individuals or groups are dominated by nondemocratic means, but also because they are dominated democratically to the extent that the demos of one unit lacks the normative power to initiate deliberation and thus is subordinated to others.
Journal Article•
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the present situation, on the radical inequality between the bottom half of humankind, suffering severe poverty, and those in the top seven, whose per capita share of the global product is 180 times greater than theirs (at market exchange rates).
Abstract: Mathias Risse discusses whether the global system of territorial sovereignty that emerged in the fifteenth century can be said to harm the poorer societies. This question is distinct from the question I raise in my book—namely, whether present citizens of the affluent countries, in collusion with the ruling elites of most poor countries, are harming the global poor. These questions are different, because present citizens of the affluent countries bear responsibility only for the recent design of the global institutional order. The effects of the states system as it was shaped before 1980, say, is thus of little relevance to the question I have raised. A further difference is that whereas Risse's discussion focuses on the well-being of societies, typically assessed by their GNP per capita, my discussion focuses on the well-being of individual human beings. This difference is significant because what enriches a poor country (in terms of GNP per capita) all too often impoverishes the vast majority of its inhabitants, as I discuss with the example of Nigeria's oil revenues (pp. 112–14). My focus is then on the present situation, on the radical inequality between the bottom half of humankind, suffering severe poverty, and those in the top seventh, whose per capita share of the global product is 180 times greater than theirs (at market exchange rates). This radical inequality and the continuous misery and death toll it engenders are foreseeably reproduced under the present global institutional order as we have shaped it. And most of it could be avoided, I hold, if this global order had been, or were to be, designed differently. The feasibility of a more poverty-avoiding alternative design of the global institutional order shows, I argue, that the present design is unjust and that, by imposing it, we are harming the global poor by foreseeably subjecting them to avoidable severe poverty.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the claim that responsibility for world poverty should be conceived in terms of a violation of negative duties, and argue that positive duties are relevant to our answers to both questions.
Abstract: In World Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge presents a range of attractive policy proposals-limiting the international resource and borrowing privileges, decentralizing sovereignty, and introducing a “global resources dividend”-aimed at remedying the poverty and suffering generated by the global economic order. These proposals could be motivated as a response to positive duties to assist the global poor, or they could be justified on consequentialist grounds as likely to promote collective welfare. Perhaps they could even be justified on virtue-theoretic grounds as proposals that a just or benevolent person would endorse. But Pogge presents them as a response to the violation of negative duties; this makes the need for such remedial policies especially morally urgent-on a par with the obligations of killers to take measures to stop killing. In this essay, I focus on the claim that responsibility for world poverty should be conceived in terms of a violation of negative duties. I follow Pogge in distinguishing two questions (p. 134): What kind of duties (positive or purely negative?) would we be subject to in a just global society where everyone fulfilled their duty and there was no significant risk of injustice? And what kind of duties (positive or purely negative?) do we face given that our global society falls short of the just society? I tackle these questions in reverse order below. I argue, in contrast to Pogge, that positive duties are relevant to our answers to both questions…
TL;DR: The question of the legitimacy of preventive war has been at the center of the debate about the proper response to terrorism and the legitimacy in the Iraq War as mentioned in this paper. But neither side is precisely correct.
Abstract: The question of the legitimacy of preventive war has been at the center of the debate about the proper response to terrorism and the legitimacy of the Iraq War. One side has argued that preventive war is a legitimate and necessary tool for nations to use in defense against terrorists; the other side has claimed that war is permissible only in self-defense, and that therefore the preventive use of military force is unjustified both legally and morally. In this essay I attempt to clarify the terms of this debate by demonstrating that neither side is precisely correct. Both under Just War Doctrine and common sense morality, preventive war is indeed justifiable, so long as it satisfies the basic requirements for going to war such as necessity and proportionality. However, under the current international law regime governed by the United Nations Charter, the use of preventive international force is restricted to the Security Council alone. Individual nation states are permitted to use international force only in self-defense. The rise of international terrorism does not by itself change this situation; preventive force against terrorist organization is permissible and appropriate, but it must be authorized by the Security Council in order to be legitimate. Only if the Council proved wholly ineffective in exercising its authority would the right to preventive war revert to individual nations. For all the shortcomings of the United Nations, however, I argue we have not reached a state of total breakdown of international authority sufficient to justify a return to the legitimacy of unilateral preventive war.
TL;DR: In this paper, the ecological effects of having fewer children or reducing their consumption are examined and the authors argue that individual lifestyle choices to make a difference can be linked to efforts aimed at changing the nature of capitalist economies.
Abstract: Environmentalists argue that we need to reduce population and consumption to protect the environment, and that this is something we can all do by individually choosing to have smaller families and buying fewer products. This article questions the ecological effects of such choice. When people have fewer children or reduce their consumption, they save money. What they then do with this money is crucial to the consequences of their actions. If they place it in conventional financial mechanisms, such as banks or stocks, they merely shift the locale of environmental harm since these mechanisms, within a capitalist economy, redeploy savings into further investment and productivity. For individual lifestyle choices to make a difference, environmentalists must find ways of linking such choices to efforts aimed at changing the nature of capitalist economies. If we had effective public policies that redistributed income, forced polluters to pay for the harm they cause, mandated more environmentally friendly technologies, and reduced the workday in the richer parts of the world, we could alter the way we live our material lives.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the possibilities for developing a realist-informed normative framework for humanitarian intervention in the context of the post-September 11 international concern with transnational threats.
Abstract: Since the September 11 attacks, a new security agenda has swept aside much of the old sensitivity and apathy about intervening in “failing” states. The war on terror has redefined “governance” from concentrating on issues of economic viability and popular rights to a focus on the capacity of states to generate sufficient “order” to deter or capture the agents of the new transnational security threats: terrorists, smugglers, money launderers, the carriers of zoonotic disease. As part of this process, the governance standards of other states became part of Western states' own security agendas, generating new, self-interested incentives for aid and intervention. In this article, I explore the possibilities for developing a realist-informed normative framework for humanitarian intervention in the context of the post–September 11international concern with transnational threats.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the traditional principle of discrimination offers no clear, morally relevant, line between those who fight and those who do not, and that a distinction of this sort should be maintained, although one that will restrict tactics in war far more than is normally recognized.
Abstract: Just war theorists contended that weapons are illegitimate unless they can be used in such a way so as to distinguish combatants from noncombatants. Contemporary international legal theory also draws heavily on the principle of discrimination. The Geneva Convention (IV), as interpreted in the Second Protocol of 1977, says: “The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack…Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited.” In both the Just War tradition and contemporary international law, the main justification for such a principle has to do with noncombatant immunity, the idea that only those who are combatants can legitimately be attacked in war. The principle of discrimination also relies on the idea that it is possible to distinguish, in a morally significant way, those classes or groups of people who participate in wars from those who do not. The categories of “civilian” or “soldier,”“combatant” or “noncombatant,” are thought to be stable. Yet, the case of the naked soldier taking a bath challenges such stability in a way that illustrates the serious conceptual and normative problems with identifying such social groups. In this paper I argue that, because of these problems, the traditional principle of discrimination offers no clear, morally relevant, line between those who fight and those who do not. Nonetheless, I argue that a distinction of this sort should be maintained, although one that will restrict tactics in war far more than is normally recognized.
TL;DR: In this paper, a German Constitutional Court Case which denied long-term resident aliens voting privileges in local and district-wide elections was examined, focusing on one such set of cosmopolitan norms concerning the crossborder rights of immigrants within the context of the European Union.
Abstract: The period since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 has witnessed the rise of an international human rights regime. There has been a shift in international law from state-based treaty obligations to cosmopolitan norms whose subject is individuals and their rights and entitlements under international law. Along with the rise of cosmopolitan norms, conflicts between enactments by states, often through democratic legislatures, of laws and practices that may contradict these norms, has also intensified.The article focuses on one such set of cosmopolitan norms concerning the crossborder rights of immigrants within the context of the European Union. By examining a German Constitutional Court Case which denied long-term resident aliens voting privileges in local and district-wide elections, it illuminates the “paradox of democratic legitimacy.” The rights of foreigners and aliens are an intrinsic aspect of the self-understanding of a democratic people. The demos can alter the boundaries differentiating it from nonmembers. The line between citizenship and alienage can be renegotiated through processes of democratic iterations. Cosmopolitan norms can become guidelines informing the will and opinion formation of democratic peoples.
TL;DR: In a recent issue of Ethics & International Affairs, Allen Buchanan and Robert Keohane argued that the preventive use of military force may be justified in some circumstances as mentioned in this paper, but they took issue with their argument.
Abstract: Preventive intervention, though an old practice, has recently come under widespread discussion due to concerns about international terrorism and the potential availability to rogue states or terrorists of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). With the 2003 war in Iraq, the Bush administration made preventive intervention part of United States military policy. In a recent issue of Ethics & International Affairs, Allen Buchanan and Robert Keohane argued that the preventive use of military force may be justified in some circumstances. In this essay I take issue with their argument.
TL;DR: Fernando R. Tesón as mentioned in this paper replies to Terry Nardin's critique of the work of as mentioned in this paper, and proposes a solution to the problem of the "missing link".
Abstract: Fernando R. Tesón replies to Terry Nardin's critique
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TL;DR: Pogge as mentioned in this paper argued that the role that benefiting from injustice plays in determining our duty to work toward reforming unjust practices and mitigating their harmful effects is best understood in terms of compensation.
Abstract: Contrasting his own position with that of those who conceive the moral challenge of global poverty in terms of a positive duty to help, Thomas Pogge suggests that “we may be failing to fulfill our stringent negative duty not to uphold injustice, not to contribute to or profit from [emphasis added] the unjust impoverishment of others” (p. 197). We should conceive of our individual donations and of possible institutionalized initiatives to eradicate poverty not as helping the poor but “as protecting them from the effects of global rules whose injustice benefits us and is our responsibility” (p. 23, emphasis added). Pogge also claims that such activities should be understood in terms of compensation: “The word ‘compensate’ is meant to indicate that how much one should be willing to contribute toward reforming unjust institutions and toward mitigating the harms they cause depends on how much one is contributing to, and benefiting from, their maintenance” (p. 50, emphasis added). In characterizing wrongful involvement in an unjust social order and the compensatory duties that arise from it, Pogge refers to the terms contribution/responsibility as well as to benefit/profit (the latter are used interchangeably). The first of these factors is unobjectionable: we can take it for granted that there is a negative duty not to contribute to injustice and that those who are responsible for harmful institutions should compensate their victims. I want to raise doubts, however, about the role that Pogge assigns to benefiting from injustice in the determination of our duties toward the victims of injustice. I shall do so by challenging his claim that there is a negative duty not to benefit from injustice, and that the role that benefiting from injustice plays in determining our duties to work toward reforming unjust practices and mitigating their harmful effects is best understood in terms of compensation.
TL;DR: Barndt as mentioned in this paper argues that the absence of the rule of law within the state and the lack of tolerant cooperation within civil society may be two sides of the same coin in contexts of deep socioeconomic inequality.
Abstract: the unequal application of the law to citizens deserves disproportionately more attention than the social or economic inequalities that divide them. The absence of the rule of law within the state and the absence of tolerant cooperation within civil society may well be two sides of the same coin in contexts of deep socioeconomic inequality. Debate continues over whether meaningful legal equality can be established among citizens who occupy vastly unequal socioeconomic positions. As such, it is unclear why achieving legal equality is a more feasible goal than achieving the right kind of civil society in the types of situations Armony describes. Leaving these stones unturned, Armony recommends that domestic and international democratizers focus on reducing legal inequality by “creating an effective rule of law in new democracies” (p. 195) and “democratizing the state” (p. 215). He suggests, for example, that alliances be forged between parts of the state with “more democratizing potential” and elements of civil society (p. 215). Yet it seems donors cannot simply switch from funding civil society to funding the rule of law: Armony notes that “the withdrawal or lessening of international support, coupled with domestic political development, can give rise to or encourage civil society organizations that advocate violence or utilize nationalistic sentiment to advance an antidemocratic agenda” (p. 219). So what is to be done? I would suggest that the seeds of a different strategy for civil-society assistance are implicit in Armony’s discussion. He admits late in the book, “There are numerous . . . examples in Latin America and other regions of democratic forms of collective action in civil society. But for every ‘successful’ link between civil society and democracy, one can identify a ‘mixed’ or ‘failed’ link too” (p. 205). Because Armony’s argument traces the failures of civil society to deepseated social problems, such as inequality, it is ill equipped to explain the occasional emergence of effective organizations from the morass of apparently intolerant human rights NGOs. Nonetheless, his findings point toward how such exceptions might be encouraged: aid donors might promote cooperation between civil associations from different classes and social statuses, rather than focusing their efforts on funding those NGOs whose members already have the ability to compete effectively for international resources. By doing so, they might help to overcome the divided nature of civil society in unequal democracies. In sum, The Dubious Link moves well beyond earlier critiques of civil society— which focused on the pernicious effects of Nazis, of militias, and of prison gangs—and raises provocative questions about the nature of “good” civil society. By challenging conventional wisdom, the book makes a valuable contribution to ongoing debates about the conditions under which democracy can be expected to function well. In doing so, it opens up promising new avenues for research into the links between deep social inequalities and the practice of democracy. —William T. Barndt Princeton University
TL;DR: Lee offers a probing and fair minded critique of our effort to show that the preventive use of military force could be justified if the decision to undertake preventive action was reached through an appropriate institutional process as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Steven Lee offers a probing and fair minded critique of our effort to show that the preventive use of military force could be justified if the decision to undertake preventive action was reached through an appropriate institutional process Our responses to his thoughtful criticisms will help to clarify both the moral-philosophical arguments and the institutional proposal presented in our earlier paper
TL;DR: Hironaka as discussed by the authors considers three potential solutions to resolving civil wars in weak states: colonialism, international aid, and secession, and concludes that dividing weak states fails to address the root cause of conflict, state weakness, and may simply result in creating two new entities with smaller economies, weaker resources, and even greater dependency on foreign aid.
Abstract: lengthy civil wars. All countries have to follow similar blueprints, but because thresholds are too distant for weak states, their leaders are likely to turn to corruption and human rights abuses to prevent their downfall. The structural weakness of such states provides the rationale for new domestic challengers to arise, fueling endless conflict. Indeed, all too often the international community develops models that focus on what weak states ought to do rather than what they can do. After such a provocative read, one can only regret that the short and gloomy policy implications are hastily developed in the last three pages. Hironaka considers three potential solutions to resolving civil wars in weak states: colonialism, international aid, and secession. Colonialism is quickly dismissed as politically incorrect—although in the recent and ongoing political projects in East Timor, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Iraq, one might recognize the revival of a milder colonialism as international tutelage. International development aid is deemed to be on the right track due to its recent focus on rule of law and institution building, but based on its poor historical track record, it is also promptly shoved aside. Secession is also rejected on the grounds that the idea of it is not mainstream in world politics—but mainly because dividing weak states fails to address the root cause of conflict, state weakness, and may simply result in creating two new entities with smaller economies, weaker resources, and even greater dependency on foreign aid. Thus the issue remains unanswered: if the international system is the unwilling architect of protracted warfare, what should be done about it? —Caty Clément Harvard University
TL;DR: Agrawal as mentioned in this paper traces how rural communities came to be willing and active agents of decentralized environmental regulation and to embrace principles of forest conservation, and demonstrates that dispersing power, knowledge, and regulation can lead to changes in the way people understand their place and actions in relation to something they define as the environment.
Abstract: scenarios about the environment would do well to pick up a copy of Environmentality. This book, an engaging and groundbreaking investigation of environmental politics and how people come to care for the environment, while not a call to arms, signals that change may already be on the way. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and archival research of forest protection in forty villages of Kumaon in northern India, Arun Agrawal, an associate professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Michigan, traces how these rural communities came to be willing and active agents of decentralized environmental regulation and to embrace principles of forest conservation. He demonstrates that dispersing power, knowledge, and regulation— and thereby creating more “intimate” forms of regulation—can lead to changes in the way people understand their place and actions in relation to something they define as “the environment.” This shift toward localizing regulatory power, which is taking place in more than fifty countries by Agrawal’s count, is a message of hope for the environment and for humankind. Agrawal’s thesis and approach are signaled by his carefully chosen title.“Environmentality”gestures at Michel Foucault’s later work on governmentality, which aimed to “understand and describe how modern forms of power and regulation achieve their full effects not by forcing people toward state-mandated goals but by turning them into accomplices” (p. 217). “Environmentality,” a term of Agrawal’s own invention, refers to the creation of environmental subjects along with the emergence of the “environment” as a domain that requires regulation and protection. The Kumaon region in the Himalayas is the site of the fabled Chipko movement, which began in 1973 when villagers organized for the restoration of forest rights, and which quickly spread throughout India. Agrawal’s interest is not in the movement, however, but in an earlier historical development: the creation of village-level forest councils. An outgrowth of political negotiations following widespread and sometimes violent village uprisings in the 1920s against the British colonial state’s creation of forest reserves, the forest councils now number over 3,000 and constitute one of the oldest surviving attempts to secure public participation in the preservation of forests. In his detailed historical account of the events leading to the creation of the reserves by the colonial state during 1911–16, Agrawal describes the application of a “new technology of government”—policy tools for environmental management—to bring the forests under central control in order to sustain the supply of timber and its products, which by the second half of the nineteenth century had become an increasingly important source of state revenue. Initially, government technology to protect the forests relied solely on the classification and use of statistics to characterize forests, thereby creating an environmental sphere as a “domain fit for government” (p. 58). The imposition of new rules rendered illegal many of the subsistence practices of shifting cultivators, graziers, villagers, and local merchants, and existing rules were enforced more strictly. The locals who relied on forests for their livelihoods perceived these policies as a
TL;DR: The notion of distributive subsidiarity was first proposed by Kuper as discussed by the authors, who argued that the distribution of wealth globally is a matter to be settled by the democratic polity consisting of the whole world population.
Abstract: 123 raises important questions. For example, if migration is restricted by law anywhere in the world, what is the appropriate democratic constituency for the sovereign agent empowered to restrict immigration for a given territory—only those already living there or all who have an interest in access to the opportunities there? Can distributive subsidiarity countenance any sovereign agent that commands military capabilities of global reach while excluding a subset of the world’s population from its democratic constituency? What about the sovereign power to institute coercive redistributive institutions? The idea of distributive subsidiarity could suggest that the distribution of wealth globally is a matter to be settled by the democratic polity consisting of the whole world’s population. Yet if all these powers of the state were truly consigned to the democratic constituency comprising all affected by them, the consequence could be an unweildy global jurisdiction concentrating many of the most significant sovereign powers at the top. It may be possible to specify the idea of distributive subsidiarity in a way that lays this worry to rest, but both the feasibility and the attractiveness of Kuper’s model will turn on the specifics. In the fourth part of the book, “Transforming Global Institutions,” Kuper advances a number of concrete institutional reforms that could move us incrementally toward his proposed ideal. He suggests, for example, that certain appropriately qualified IGOs and NGOs be given standing before existing international judicial bodies; that some be given voting rights in the UN General Assembly; and that some NGOs be given indirect representation in the UN Security Council. Noting that they can sometimes wield more influence than foreign governments in conflict-prone regions, Kuper even suggests that transnational corporations should have Security Council representation. These reform proposals will not make it onto the agenda overnight, but they are clearly feasible and warrant consideration. If the overarching institutional model proposed by Kuper remains provisional in many matters, its normative foundations are elaborated in detail and rigorously defended. The most significant and fully developed of these is a novel conception of democratic representation, which Kuper calls “representation as responsiveness.” It is presented with an eye to the global context, but this conception stands on its own as a contribution to democratic theory, and as a rival to prominent deliberative-democratic accounts. In sum, Democracy Beyond Borders lays out an intriguing model of global governance; grounds it in a developed and substantial theory of democracy; and proposes some concrete reforms that are worth serious consideration. —Eric Cavallero Tulane University
TL;DR: Kahn as mentioned in this paper argued that traditional liberal theory does not provide an adequate account of the meaningful world that gives rise to it, and offered a portrait of liberal political culture that better does justice to that culture's actual workings.
Abstract: themselves to be living in a foreign country of late. Indeed, since September 11, 2001, they have witnessed their politicians and their fellow citizens respond to the external threat of terrorism in ways they find not simply wrong but contrary to hitherto shared assumptions about the acceptable boundaries of political discourse and action. On closer inspection, however, the crisis of liberalism has been on the horizon for a long time, perhaps even since the 1970s, as liberalism began its slow decline just as its principal “theorists,” such as John Rawls, emerged. By the 1990s, anticipated by academic communitarianism, religion as a persistent form of cultural belonging had solidified its rude reappearance in public life. The aftermath of September 11 suggests that American liberalism’s challenges have only begun. Paul W. Kahn, an unorthodox Yale law professor whose basic project is to introduce political and legal thinkers to the richer methods of humanists, writes that the real difficulty is that liberals also rely on a long tradition and an encumbering set of commitments—but are unable to see that they do so. Making the reality of liberalism visible, Kahn argues, will help its partisans understand the world of politics the September 11 trauma only made seem new. Kahn’s project of “putting liberalism in its place” does not mean rejecting it, but rather exploring the larger worldview it really is— usually unbeknownst to those who most passionately espouse it. But this book provides an image of liberalism so different from the one its partisans have customarily entertained that it is doubtful they will easily accept it. Kahn begins with an analysis of the conceptual “architecture” that makes liberalism possible, one he thinks also makes familiar attacks on it equally and endlessly possible. For Kahn, human reasoning and language are both dependent on locale and tradition and also afford the possibility of rising above them. This “antinomy,” which is to be found at every level of linguistic complexity, from the individual sentence to the narrative tradition, explains how the possibility of the autonomous liberal subject came about and why it is forever precarious. But only a “genealogy” of how liberalism came to be actualized in real history—Kahn’s historical strategy here and throughout is to contrast classical and modern times—reveals how modern liberalism took on its specific identity. (The book’s focus is only on American liberalism, saving comparative study of different variants of liberalism for future work.) Having argued that traditional liberal theory—preeminently in Rawls’s work— does not provide an adequate account of the meaningful world that gives rise to it, Kahn goes on to offer a portrait of liberal political culture that better does justice to that culture’s actual workings. He focuses on replacing the contractual vision of the will in liberal thought with one rooted in collective togetherness, which always includes the potential for self-sacrifice. Kahn in turn locates the basis for collectivity in the power of eros to ground human coexistence, whether in the family or in the polity. Under liberalism, for example, the family maintains its power, albeit one confined to a “private” realm. But this confinement of eros to something antecedent to or hidden from politics, Kahn says, ignores that love frames public meaning and provides the public