•  478
    International Political Theory Meets International Public Policy
    In 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
  •  424
    Who owns it? Three arguments for land claims in Latin America
    with Gerhard Øverland
    Revista 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
  •  325
    Do We Impose Undue Risk When We Emit and Offset? A Reply to Stefansson
    Ethics, 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
  •  307
    Associative Duties, Global Justice, and the Colonies
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 37 (2): 103-135. 2009.
    No Abstract
  •  248
    Redistribution (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
  •  231
    The Feasible Alternatives Thesis: Kicking away the livelihoods of the global poor
    with Gerhard Øverland
    Politics, 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
  •  231
    Is Global Institutional Reform a False Promise?
    Cornell International Law Journal 39 (3): 523-536. 2006.
  •  227
    How Much for the Child?
    with Gerhard Øverland
    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
  •  224
    A Critical Notice of Economic Statecraft: Human Rights, Sanctions, and Conditionality, by Cécile Fabre
  •  219
    Can 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
  •  213
    This book helps readers identify feasible and morally plausible reforms of global institutional arrangements and international organizations.
  •  149
  •  134
    Offsetting and Risk Imposition
    Ethics 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
  •  125
    Responsibility for structural injustice: A third thought
    Politics, 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...
  •  111
    Supererogation and Optimisation
    with Seth Lazar
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 1-16. forthcoming.
  •  102
    Moral Judgment and the Duties of Innocent Beneficiaries of Injustice
    Review 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
  •  101
    Sovereign Debt, Human Rights, and Policy Conditionality
    Journal 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
  •  99
    Do Democratic Societies Have a Right to Do Wrong?
    with Gerhard Øverland
    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
  •  94
    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
  •  82
    Fairness in Sovereign Debt
    with Lydia Tomitova
    Ethics 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
  •  78
    Applying the contribution principle
    Metaphilosophy 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
  •  72
    International Trade and Labor Standards: A Proposal for Linkage
    with Sanjay Reddy
    Columbia 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.
  •  58
    A Puzzle of Enforceability: Why do Moral Duties Differ in their Enforceability?
    with Emily McTernan
    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
  •  49
    Scepticism about Beneficiary Pays: A Critique
    Journal 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