Annabelle Lever

SciencesPo, Paris
  •  1594
    Should Voting Be Compulsory? Democracy and the Ethics of Voting
    with Annabelle Lever and Alexandru Volacu
    In Andrei Poama & Annabelle Lever (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy, Routledge. pp. 242-254. 2019.
    The ethics of voting is a new field of academic research, uniting debates in ethics and public policy, democratic theory and more empirical studies of politics. A central question in this emerging field is whether or not voters should be legally required to vote. This chapter examines different arguments on behalf of compulsory voting, arguing that these do not generally succeed, although compulsory voting might be justified in certain special cases. However, adequately specifying the forms of …Read more
  •  182
    This paper looks at Alexander Guerrero’s epistemic case for ‘lottocracy’, or government by randomly selected citizen assemblies. It argues that Guerrero fails to show that citizen expertise is more likely to be elicited and brought to bear on democratic politics if we replace elections with random selection. However, randomly selected citizen assemblies can be valuable deliberative and participative additions to elected and appointed institutions even when citizens are not bearers of special kno…Read more
  •  9
    Elections are generally considered the only way to create a democratic legislature where direct democracy is not an option. However, in recent years that assumption has been challenged by individuals who claim that lotteries are a democratic way of selecting people for office, elections are aristocratic or oligarchic, not democratic, and that elections as we know them are inadequate if true democracy is prioritized. In opposition to this wave, my paper argues that the assertions made to support …Read more
  •  19
    Democracy: Should We Replace Elections with Random Selection?
    Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 56 (2): 136-153. 2023.
    The aim of this paper is to explore the claim that lotteries are more democratic than elections. The paper starts by looking at the two main forms of equality that give lotteries their democratic appeal: an individually equal chance to be selected for office, and the proportionate representation of groups in the legislature. It shows that they cannot be jointly realized and argues that their egalitarian appeal is more apparent than real. Finally, the paper considers the democratic reasons to val…Read more
  •  52
    Privacy Rights and Democracy: A Contradiction in Terms?
    Contemporary Political Theory 5 (2): 142-162. 2006.
    This article argues that people have legitimate interests in privacy that deserve legal protection on democratic principles. It describes the right to privacy as a bundle of rights of personal choice, association and expression and shows that, so described, people have legitimate political interests in privacy. These interests reflect the ways that privacy rights can supplement the protection for people's freedom and equality provided by rights of political choice, association and expression, an…Read more
  •  85
    L’article de Nathalie Heinrich sur les « petits malentendus transatlantiques, paru sur Telos le 9 février, soulève quelques questions qui méritent réflexion. Si les « cultural studies » ont leurs défauts, il faut prendre au sérieux leur réflexion sur le naturel, le construit et l’arbitraire, qui bouscule différentes traditions, d’Aristote à Marx et ouvre sur de nouvelles exigences de justice.
  •  115
    Equality and Constitutionality
    In Richard Bellamy & Jeff King (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory, Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.
    What does it mean to treat people as equals when the legacies of feudalism, religious persecution, authoritarian and oligarchic government have shaped the landscape within which we must construct something better? This question has come to dominate much constitutional practice as well as philosophical inquiry in the past 50 years. The combination of Second Wave Feminism with the continuing struggle for racial equality in the 1970s brought into sharp relief the variety of ways in which people can…Read more
  •  165
    This article develops an intuitive idea of proportionality as a placeholder for a substantive conception of equality, and contrasts it with Ripstein’s ideas, as presented in an annual guest lecture to the Society of Applied Philosophy in 2016. It uses a discussion of racial profiling to illustrate the conceptual and normative differences between the two. The brief conclusion spells out my concern that talk of ‘proportionality’, though often helpful and, sometimes, necessary for moral reasoning, …Read more
  •  4
    Ideas That Matter: Democracy, Justice, Rights (edited book)
    with Debra Satz
    Oup Usa. 2019.
    The essays in this volume take off from themes in the work of eminent philosopher and political scientist Joshua Cohen. They center around three central ideas: democracy, confronting injustice, and formulating political principles and values in an interdependent world.
  • Ideas That Matter: Justice, Democracy, Rights (edited book)
    with Debra Satz
    Oxford University Press. 2019.
  •  238
    Le mot 'race': un débat français?
    Analyse, Opinion, Critique 32 (31.5.19). 2019.
    Les deux articles d’Eric Fassin, et la réponse de mon collègue Alain Policar, apportent intelligence et lucidité sur un sujet difficile, et un débat pénible que l’on peine à voir dans la polémique de Marianne (n° 1152,2-18 avril), ni malheureusement dans quelques articles sur ces sujets parus dans l’Obs. Pour une non-française, il n’est pas toujours facile de comprendre une lutte, plutôt qu’un ‘débat’, autour du mot ‘race’, qui semble spécifiquement française, mais où néanmoins les idées et text…Read more
  •  150
    Is public policy ethics possible and, if so, is it desirable? This twofold question can – and sometimes does — elicit a smile or a frown. The smile implies that ethical theorizing rests on a naïve idea of policy-making; the frown implies that there is something tasteless or incongruous in expecting philosophy to engage with problems of policy and with the political bargaining and compromise that policy-making often involves. These reactions – familiar to many working in this academic discipline…Read more
  •  116
    Luck Egalitarianism (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 5. 2016.
    This brilliant and challenging book provides an overview and defence of 'luck egalitarianism', one that helpfully connects debates on luck egalitarianism to debates on what aspects of our lives egalitarians should try equalise (the 'equality of what?' debate/the debate on the 'metric' of equality) and on what respect, if any, it makes sense to see each other as equals. The book illuminates different conceptions of luck, as found in the philosophical literature, clarifies the difference between t…Read more
  •  14
    Feminism, democracy and the right to privacy
    Minerva - An Internet Journal of Philosophy 9 (1). 2005.
    This article argues that people have legitimate interests in privacy that deserve legal protection on democratic principles. It describes the right to privacy as a bundle of rights of solitude, intimacy and confidentiality and shows that, so described, people have legitimate interests in privacy. These interests are both personal and political, and provide the grounds for two different justifications of privacy rights. Though both are based on democratic concerns for the freedom and equality of …Read more
  •  198
    Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy (edited book)
    Routledge. 2019.
  •  189
    Democratic epistemology and democratic morality: the appeal and challenges of Peircean pragmatism
    with Clayton Chin
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 22 (4): 432-453. 2017.
    Does the wide distribution of political power in democracies, relative to other modes of government, result in better decisions? Specifically, do we have any reason to believe that they are better qualitatively – more reasoned, better supported by the available evidence, more deserving of support – than those which have been made by other means? In order to answer this question we examine the recent effort by Talisse and Misak to show that democracy is epistemically justified. Highlighting the s…Read more
  •  432
    Towards a Political Philosophy of Human Rights
    In Debra Satz & Annabelle Lever (eds.), Ideas That Matter: Justice, Democracy, Rights, Oxford University Press. 2019.
    Is there a human right to be governed democratically – and how should we approach such an issue philosophically? These are the questions raised by Joshua Cohen’s 2006 article, ‘Is There a Human Right to Democracy?’ – a paper over which I have agonised since I saw it in draft form, many years ago. I am still uncomfortable with its central claim, that while justice demands democratic government, the proper standard for human rights is something less. But, as I hope to show, the reasons for that di…Read more
  •  587
    'Privacy, Private Property and Collective Property'
    The Good Society 21 (1): 47-60. 2012.
    This article is part of a symposium on property-owning democracy. In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argued that people in a just society would have rights to some forms of personal property, whatever the best way to organise the economy. Without being explicit about it, he also seems to have believed that protection for at least some forms of privacy are included in the Basic Liberties, to which all are entitled. Thus, Rawls assumes that people are entitled to form families, as well as person…Read more
  •  325
    Democracy and Security
    In Adam D. Moore (ed.), Privacy, Security and Accountability: Ethics, Law and Policy, Rowman & Littlefield International. 2015.
    This chapter is concerned with the role of democracy in preventing terrorism, identifying and apprehending terrorists, and in minimizing and alleviating the damage created by terrorism.1 Specifically, it considers the role of democracy as a resource, not simply a limitation, on counterterrorism.2 I am mainly concerned with the ways in which counterterrorism is similar to more familiar forms of public policy, such as the prevention of crime or the promotion of economic prosperity, and so nothing …Read more
  •  828
    The new frontiers in the philosophy of intellectual property lie squarely in territories belonging to moral and political philosophy, as well as legal philosophy and philosophy of economics – or so this collection suggests. Those who wish to understand the nature and justification of intellectual property may now find themselves immersed in philosophical debates on the structure and relative merits of consequentialist and deontological moral theories, or disputes about the nature and value of p…Read more
  •  330
    Privacy: Restrictions and Decisions
    In Steven Scalet and Christopher Griffin (ed.), APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Law, . pp. 1-6. 2013.
    This article forms part of a tribute to Anita L. Allen by the APA newletter on Philosophy and Law. It celebrates Allen's work, but also explains why her conception of privacy is philosophically inadequate. It then uses basic democratic principles and the example of the secret ballot to suggest how we might develop a more philosophically persuasive version of Allen's ideas.
  •  462
    'Democracy and Voting: A Response to Lisa Hill'
    British Journal of Political Science 40 925-929. 2010.
    Lisa Hill’s response to my critique of compulsory voting, like similar responses in print or in discussion, remind me how much a child of the ‘70s I am, and how far my beliefs and intuitions about politics have been shaped by the electoral conflicts, social movements and violence of that period. But my perceptions of politics have also been profoundly shaped by my teachers, and fellow graduate students, at MIT. Theda Skocpol famously urged political scientists to ‘bring the state back in’ to…Read more
  •  259
    Privacy and democracy: what the secret ballot reveals
    Law, Culture and the Humanities 11 (2). 2015.
    : Does the rejection of pure proceduralism show that we should adopt Brettschneider’s value theory of democracy? The answer, this paper suggests, is ‘no’. There are a potentially infinite number of incompatible ways to understand democracy, of which the value theory is, at best, only one. The paper illustrates and substantiates its claims by looking at what the secret ballot shows us about the importance of privacy and democracy. Drawing on the reasons to reject Mill’s arguments for open …Read more
  •  840
    Race and racial profiling
    In Naomi Zack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, Oxford University Press. pp. 425-435. 2017.
    Philosophical reflection on racial profiling tends to take one of two forms. The first sees it as an example of ‘statistical discrimination,’ (SD), raising the question of when, if ever, probabilistic generalisations about group behaviour or characteristics can be used to judge particular individuals.(Applbaum 2014; Harcourt 2004; Hellman, 2014; Risse and Zeckhauser 2004; Risse 2007; Lippert-Rasmussen 2006; Lippert-Rasmussen 2007; Lippert-Rasmussen 2014) . This approach treats racial profiling…Read more
  •  131
    Equality and conscience: ethics and the provision of public services
    In Cecile Laborde & Aurélia Bardon (eds.), Religion in Liberal Political Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2016.
    We live with the legacy of injustice, political as well as personal. Even if our governments are now democratically elected and governed, our societies are scarred by forms of power and privilege accrued from a time in which people’s race, sex, class and religion were grounds for denying them a role in government, or in the selection of those who governed them. What does that past imply for the treatment of religion in democratic states? The problem is particularly pressing once one accepts th…Read more
  •  1534
    Privacy, democracy and freedom of expression
    In Beate Rossler & Dorota Mokrosinska (eds.), The Social Dimensions of Privacy, Cambridge University Press. 2015.
    this paper argues that people are entitled to keep some true facts about themselves to themselves, should they so wish, as a sign of respect for their moral and political status, and in order to protect themselves from being used as a public example in order to educate or to entertain other people. The “outing” - or non-consensual public disclosure - of people’s health records or status, or their sexual behaviour or orientation is usually unjustified, even when its consequences seem to be benefi…Read more
  •  382
    Democracy and Lay Participation: The Case of NICE
    In Henry Kipppin Gerry Stoker (ed.), The Future of Public Service Reform, Bloomsbury Academic Press. 2013.
    What is the role of lay deliberation – if any – in health-care rationing, and administration more generally? Two potential answers are suggested by recent debates on the subject. The one, which I will call the technocratic answer, suggests that there is no distinctive role for lay participation once ordinary democratic politics have set the goals and priorities which reform should implement. Determining how best to achieve those ends, and then actually achieving them, this view suggests, is a…Read more
  •  261
    Must we vote for the common good?
    In Trerise (ed.), Political Ethics, Routledge. 2016.
    Must we vote for the common good? This isn’t an easy question to answer, in part because there is so little literature on the ethics of voting and, such as there is, it tends to assume without argument that we must vote for the common good. Indeed, contemporary political philosophers appear to agree that we should vote for the common good even when they disagree about seemingly related matters, such as whether we should be legally required to vote, whether we are entitled to vote secretly rather…Read more
  •  385
    'Taxation, Conscientious Objection and Religious Freedom'
    Ethical Perspectives 20 (1): 144-153. 2013.
    This is part of a symposium on conscientious objection and religious freedom inspired by the US Catholic Church's claim that being forced to pay for health insurance that covers abortions (the effect of 'Obamacare')is the equivalent of forcing pacifists to fight. This article takes issue with this claim, and shows that while it would be unjust on democratic principles to force pacifists to fight, given their willingness to serve their country in other ways, there is no democratic objection to fo…Read more