-
478International Political Theory Meets International Public PolicyIn Chris Brown & Robyn Eckersley (eds.), Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory, Oxford University Press. pp. 480-494. 2018.How should International Political Theory (IPT) relate to public policy? Should theorists aspire for their work to be policy- relevant and, if so, in what sense? When can we legitimately criticize a theory for failing to be relevant to practice? To develop a response to these questions, I will consider two issues: (1) the extent to which international political theorists should be concerned that the norms they articulate are precise enough to entail clear practical advice under different empiric…Read more
-
443Who Should Pay for the Damage of the Global Financial Crisis?In Ned Dobos Christian Barry & Thomas Pogge (eds.), Global Financial Crisis:The Ethical Issues, Palgrave. 2011.
-
424Who owns it? Three arguments for land claims in Latin AmericaRevista de Ciencia Politica 37 (3): 713-736. 2017.Indigenous and non-indigenous communities in Latin America make land claims and support them with a variety of arguments. Some, such as Zapatistas and the Mapuche, have appealed to the “ancestral” or “historical” connections between specific communities and the land. Other groups, such as MST in Brazil, have appealed to the extremely unequal distribution of the land and the effects of this on the poor; the land in this case is seen mainly as a means for securing a decent standard of living for m…Read more
-
325Do We Impose Undue Risk When We Emit and Offset? A Reply to StefanssonEthics, Policy and Environment 25 (3): 242-248. 2022.ABSTRACT We have previously argued that there are forms of greenhouse gas offsetting for which, when one emits and offsets, one imposes no risk. Orri Stefansson objects that our argument fails to distinguish properly between the people who stand to be harmed by one’s emissions and the people who stand to be benefited by one’s offsetting. We reply by emphasizing the difference between acting with a probability of making a difference to the distribution of harm and acting in a way that worsen’s so…Read more
-
307Associative Duties, Global Justice, and the ColoniesPhilosophy and Public Affairs 37 (2): 103-135. 2009.No Abstract
-
248Redistribution (substantive revision)Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2018.When philosophers, social scientists, and politicians seek to determine the justice of institutional arrangements, their discussions have often taken the form of questioning whether and under what circumstances the redistribution of wealth or other valuable goods is justified. This essay examines the different ways in which redistribution can be understood, the diverse political contexts in which it has been employed, and whether or not it is a useful concept for exploring questions of distribut…Read more
-
231The Feasible Alternatives Thesis: Kicking away the livelihoods of the global poorPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 11 (1): 97-119. 2012.Many assert that affluent countries have contributed in the past to poverty in developing countries through wars of aggression and conquest, colonialism and its legacies, the imposition of puppet leaders, and support for brutal dictators and venal elites. Thomas Pogge has recently argued that there is an additional and, arguably, even more consequential way in which the affluent continue to contribute to poverty in the developing world. He argues that when people cooperate in instituting and uph…Read more
-
231Is Global Institutional Reform a False Promise?Cornell International Law Journal 39 (3): 523-536. 2006.
-
227How Much for the Child?Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (1): 189-204. 2013.In this paper we explore what sacrifices you are morally required to make to save a child who is about to die in front of you. It has been argued that you would have very demanding duties to save such a child (or any adult who is in similar circumstance through no fault of their own, for that matter), and some examples have been presented to make this claim seem intuitively correct. Against this, we argue that you do not in general have a moral requirement to bear more than moderate cost to save…Read more
-
224Critical Notice of Economic Statecraft: Human Rights, Sanctions, and Conditionality, by Cécile Fabre (review)Mind. forthcoming.A Critical Notice of Economic Statecraft: Human Rights, Sanctions, and Conditionality, by Cécile Fabre
-
219Can Withdrawing Citizenship be Justified?Political Studies 64 1055-1070. 2016.When can or should citizenship be granted to prospective members of states? When can or should states withdraw citizenship from their existing members? In recent decades, political philosophers have paid considerable attention to the first question, but have generally neglected the second. There are of course good practical reasons for prioritizing the question of when citizenship should be granted—many individuals have a strong interest in acquiring citizenship in particular political communiti…Read more
-
213Global institutions and responsibilities: achieving global justice (edited book)Blackwell. 2005.This book helps readers identify feasible and morally plausible reforms of global institutional arrangements and international organizations.
-
149Ethical Consumerism: A Defense of Market VigilantismPhilosophy and Public Affairs 46 (3): 293-322. 2018.
-
134Offsetting and Risk ImpositionEthics 132 (2): 352-381. 2022.Suppose you perform two actions. The first imposes a risk of harm that, on its own, would be excessive; but the second reduces the risk of harm by a corresponding amount. By pairing the two actions together to form a set of actions that is risk-neutral, can you thereby make your overall course of conduct permissible? This question is theoretically interesting, because the answer is apparently: sometimes Yes, sometimes No. It is also practically important, because it bears on the moral status of …Read more
-
125Responsibility for structural injustice: A third thoughtPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 20 (4): 339-356. 2021.Some of the most invidious injustices are seemingly the results of impersonal workings of rigged social structures. Who bears responsibility for the injustices perpetrated through them? Iris Marion...
-
102Moral Judgment and the Duties of Innocent Beneficiaries of InjusticeReview of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (3): 671-686. 2017.The view that innocent beneficiaries of injustice bear special duties to victims of injustice has recently come under attack. Luck egalitarian theorists have argued that thought experiments focusing on the way innocent beneficiaries should distribute the benefits they’ve received provide evidence against this view. The apparent special duties of innocent beneficiaries, they hold, are wholly reducible to general duties to compensate people for bad brute luck. In this paper we provide empirical ev…Read more
-
101Sovereign Debt, Human Rights, and Policy ConditionalityJournal of Political Philosophy 19 (3): 282-305. 2011.International policies often make the conferral of aid, debt relief, or additional trading opportunities to a country depend upon its having successfully implemented specific policies, achieved certain social or economic outcomes, or demonstrated a commitment to conducting itself in specified ways. Such policies are conditionality arrangements. My aim in this article is to explore whether conditionality arrangements that would make the conferral of debt relief depend on whether the debtor countr…Read more
-
99Do Democratic Societies Have a Right to Do Wrong?Journal of Social Philosophy 42 (2): 111-131. 2011.Do members of democratic societies have a moral right that others not actively prevent them from engaging in wrongdoing? Many political theorists think that they do. “It is a feature of democratic government,” Michael Walzer writes, “that the people have a right to act wrongly—in much the same way that they have a right to act stupidly”. Of course, advocates of a democratic right to do wrong may believe that the scope of this right is limited. A majority in a democratic society, for example, may…Read more
-
94The regulation of harm in international trade: a critique of James's Collective Due Care principleCanadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (2): 255-263. 2014.In his important recent book, Aaron James has defended a principle ? Collective Due Care ? for determining when a form of economic integration is morally objectionable because it causes unjustified harm (including unemployment, wage suppression and diminished working conditions). This essay argues that Collective Due Care would yield implausible judgements about trade practices and would be too indeterminate to play the practical role for which it is intended
-
82Fairness in Sovereign DebtEthics and International Affairs 21 (s1): 41-79. 2007.When can we say that a debt crisis has been resolved fairly? An often overlooked but very important effect of financial crises and the debts that often engender them is that they can lead the crisis countries to increased dependence on international institutions and the policy conditionality they require in return for their continued support, limiting their capabilities and those of their citizens to exercise meaningful control over their policies and institutions. These outcomes have been viewe…Read more
-
78Applying the contribution principleMetaphilosophy 36 (1-2): 210-227. 2005.When are we responsible for addressing the acute deprivations of others beyond state borders? One widely held view is that we are responsible for addressing or preventing acute deprivations insofar as we have contributed to them or are contributing to bringing them about. But how should agents who endorse this “contribution principle” of allocating responsibility yet are uncertain whether or how much they have contributed to some problem conceive of their responsibilities with respect to it? Leg…Read more
-
72International Trade and Labor Standards: A Proposal for LinkageColumbia University Press. 2008.In this book, Christian Barry and Sanjay G. Reddy propose ways in which the international trading system can support poor countries in promoting the well-being of their peoples.
-
69Do Parental Licensing Schemes Violate the Rights of Biological Parents?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (3): 755-761. 2017.
-
58A Puzzle of Enforceability: Why do Moral Duties Differ in their Enforceability?Journal of Moral Philosophy 19 (3): 1-25. 2021.When someone is poised to fail to fulfil a moral duty, we can respond in a variety of ways. We might remind them of their duty, or seek to persuade them through argument. Or we might intervene forcibly to ensure that they act in accordance with their duty. Some duties appear to be such that the duty-bearer can be liable to forcible interference when this is necessary to ensure that they comply with them. We’ll call duties that carry such liabilities enforcement-apt. Not all duties seem to be enf…Read more
-
49Scepticism about Beneficiary Pays: A CritiqueJournal of Applied Philosophy 34 (3): 282-300. 2017.Some moral theorists argue that being an innocent beneficiary of significant harms inflicted by others may be sufficient to ground special duties to address the hardships suffered by the victims, at least when it is impossible to extract compensation from those who perpetrated the harm. This idea has been applied to climate change in the form of the beneficiary-pays principle. Other philosophers, however, are quite sceptical about beneficiary pays. Our aim in this article is to examine their cri…Read more
Acton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
PhilPapers Editorships
Justice |