-
1A Function-Sensitive Approach to the Political Legitimacy of Global GovernanceBritish Journal of Political Science 50 (3): 1001-1024. 2020.
-
12The Practical Turn in Political TheoryEdinburgh University Press. 2018.The first systematic analysis of current debates surrounding the role of practice in political theory Should social and political practices should play a role in the justification of normative political principles? In several sub-domains of political theory, theorists have suggested that practices constrain principles in various ways. This book joins five key debates in the current theoretical literature that have been largely taking place in isolation and identifies common strands of argument a…Read more
-
3Political Legitimacy for Our World: Where is Political Realism Going?Journal of Politics 80 (2). 2018.
-
54Practice-dependence and epistemic uncertaintyJournal of Global Ethics 13 (2): 187-205. 2017.A shared presumption among practice-dependent theorists is that a principle of justice is dependent on the function or aim of the practice to which it is supposed to be applied. In recent contributions to this debate, the condition of epistemic uncertainty plays a significant role for motivating and justifying a practice-dependent view. This paper analyses the role of epistemic uncertainty in justifying a practice-dependent approach. We see two kinds of epistemic uncertainty allegedly playing th…Read more
-
78Human Rights Do Not Make Global DemocracyContemporary Political Theory 10 (4): 463. 2011.On most accounts of global democracy, human rights are ascribed a central function. Still, their conceptual role in global democracy is often unclear. Two recent attempts to remedy this deficiency have been made by James Bohman and Michael Goodhart. What is interesting about their proposals is that they make the case that under the present circumstances of politics, global democracy is best conceptualized in terms of human rights. Although the article is sympathetic to this ‘human rights approac…Read more
-
Democratic Requirements and Trade-offs in a Transnational ContextIn E. Erman & A. Uhlin (eds.), Legitimacy Beyond the Nation-State?, Palgrave Macmillan. 2010.
-
48Reconciling communicative action with recognition: Thickening the ‘inter’ of intersubjectivityPhilosophy and Social Criticism 32 (3): 377-400. 2006.There is an underlying idea of symmetry involved in most notions of rationality. From a dialogical philosophical standpoint, however, the symmetry implied by social contract theories and so-called Golden Rule thinking is anchored to a Cartesian subjectobject world and is therefore not equipped to address recognition at least not if recognition is to be understood as something happening between subjects. For this purpose, the dialogical symmetry implied by Habermas' communicative action does a…Read more
-
8'Democratic Agents' and 'Agents of Democracy' in Multilayered GovernanceIn Eva Erman & Ludvig Beckman (eds.), Territories of Citizenship, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 60. 2012.
-
166Three Failed Charges against Ideal TheorySocial Theory and Practice 39 (1): 19-44. 2013.An intensified discussion on the role of normative ideals has re-emerged in several debates in political philosophy. What is often referred to as “ideal theory,” represented by liberal egalitarians such as John Rawls, is under attack from those that stress that political philosophy at large should take much more seriously the nonideal circumstances consisting of relations of domination and power under which normative ideals, principles, and ideas are supposed to be applied. While the debate so f…Read more
-
12Political Equality in Transnational DemocracyPalgrave-Macmillan. 2013.This book is about the status of political equality under global political conditions. The overall aim is to revitalize the debate on the status of political equality in transnational democracy.
-
53What is wrong with agonistic pluralism?: Reflections on conflict in democratic theoryPhilosophy and Social Criticism 35 (9): 1039-1062. 2009.During the last couple of decades, concurrently with an increased awareness of the complexity of ethical conflicts, political theorists have directed attention to how constitutional democracy should cope with a fact of incommensurable doctrines. Poststructuralists such as Chantal Mouffe claim that ethical conflicts are fundamentally irreconcilable, which is indeed a view shared by many liberal theorists. The question of whether ethical conflicts are in principle irreconcilable is an important on…Read more
-
50Multiple citizenship: normative ideals and institutional challengesCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 15 (3): 279-302. 2012.Institutional suggestions for how to rethink democracy in response to changing state responsibilities and capabilities have been numerous and often mutually incompatible. This suggests that conceptual unclarity still reigns concerning how the normative ideal of democracy as collective self-determination, i.e. ?rule by the people?, might best be brought to bear in a transnational and global context. The aim in this paper is twofold. First, it analyses some consequences of the tendency to smudge t…Read more
-
38Why Democracy Cannot Be Grounded in Epistemic PrinciplesSocial Theory and Practice 42 (3): 449-473. 2016.In recent years, philosophers influenced by Peirce's pragmatism have contributed to the democracy debate by offering not simply a justification of democracy that relies on epistemic as well as moral presumptions, but a justification on purely epistemic grounds, that is, without recourse to any moral values or principles. In a nutshell, this pragmatist epistemic argument takes as its starting-point a few fundamental epistemic principles we cannot reasonably deny, and goes on to claim that a numbe…Read more
-
Review Essay: Discourse Theory, Intercultural Dialogue, and Human RightsHuman Rights Quarterly 36 (4). 2014.
-
In Search for Democratic Agency in Deliberative GovernanceEuropean Journal of International Relations 19 (4). 2013.
-
9Territories of CitizenshipPalgrave-Macmillan. 2012.A comprehensive exploration of theories of citizenship and inclusiveness in an age of globalization. The authors analyze democracy and the political community in a transnational context, using new critical, conceptual and normative perspectives on the borders, territories and political agents of the state.
-
4Political Legitimacy in the Real Normative World: The Priority of Morality and the Autonomy of the PoliticalBritish Journal of Political Science 45 (1): 215-233. 2015.
-
30How practices do not matterCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (1). 2019.
-
88Why Political Realists Should Not Be Afraid of Moral ValuesJournal of Philosophical Research 40 459-464. 2015.In a previous article, we unpacked the so-called “ethics first premise”—the idea that ethics is “prior” to politics when theorizing political legitimacy— that is denied by political realists. We defended a “justificatory” reading of this premise, according to which political justification is irreducibly moral in the sense that moral values are among the values that ground political legitimacy. We called this the “necessity thesis.” In this paper we respond to two challenges that Robert Jubb and …Read more
-
Book review: The Crisis of the European Union, by Jürgen HabermasEuropean Political Science 11. 2012.
-
On Goodhart's Global Democracy: A CritiqueEthics and International Affairs 22 (4). 2008.In this critique of Michael Goodhart's "Human Rights and Global Democracy," Eva Erman argues that Goodhart has reconceptualized democracy and therefore does not offer a better understanding of the relationship between human rights and global democracy
-
47What not to expect from the pragmatic turn in political theoryEuropean Journal of Political Theory (2): 1474885114537635. 2014.The central ideas coming out of the so-called pragmatic turn in philosophy have set in motion what may be described as a pragmatic turn in normative political theory. It has become commonplace among political theorists to draw on theories of language and meaning in theorising democracy, pluralism, justice, etc. The aim of this paper is to explore attempts by political theorists to use theories of language and meaning for such normative purposes. Focusing on Wittgenstein's account, it is argued t…Read more
-
117Practices and Principles: On the Methodological Turn in Political TheoryPhilosophy Compass 10 (8): 533-546. 2015.The question of what role social and political practices should play in the justification of normative principles has received renewed attention in post-millennium political philosophy. Several current debates express dissatisfaction with the methodology adopted in mainstream political theory, taking the form of a criticism of so-called ‘ideal theory’ from ‘non-ideal’ theory, of ‘practice-independent’ theory from ‘practice-dependent’ theory, and of ‘political moralism’ from ‘political realism’. …Read more
-
Stockholm UniversityProfessor
Stockholm, Sweden
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |