Arash Abizadeh

A proposed measure of voting power should satisfy two conditions to be plausible: first, it must be conceptually justified, capturing the intuitive meaning of what voting power is; second, it must satisfy reasonable postulates. This paper studies a set of postulates, appropriate for a priori voting power, concerning blockers (or vetoers) in a binary voting game. We specify and motivate five such postulates, namely, two subadditivity blocker postulates, two minimum-power blocker postulates, each in weak and strong versions, and the added-blocker postulate. We then test whether three measures of voting power, namely the classic Penrose-Banzhaf measure, the classic Shapley-Shubik index, and the newly proposed Recursive Measure, satisfy these postulates. We find that the first measure fails four of the postulates, the second fails two, while the third alone satisfies all five postulates. This work consequently adds to the plausibility of the Recursive Measure as a reasonable measure of voting power.

Following Andrew Jason Cohen, Lucia Rafanelli construes toleration to consist in not merely limiting one’s interference with others’ behaviour, but doing so because of a principled commitment to respecting others’ independent choices. I argue that this conflates toleration with distinctly liberal ideals such as freedom of conscience or autonomy. This conflation not only impoverishes our conceptual vocabulary by using ‘toleration’ to label concepts or phenomena for which there are already perfectly good words, it also renders non-liberal conceptions or theories of toleration nonsensical by definitional fiat. This in turn risks making the historical emergence of theories and practices of toleration on purely prudential grounds – namely, reasons of state – unintelligible. Even though this does not, I think, compromise Rafanelli’s substantive normative conclusions about interference, it does raise important questions about the proper relation between contemporary political theory and the history of political thought.

One of the central assumptions of ancient Greek ethics is that human beings have a single supreme and ultimate good – eudaimonia or “well‐being” – which includes and integrates all other final goods into an account of the good life. Thomas Hobbes was a eudaimonist who held that felicity is an overarching good giving coherence to a valuable life; he therefore agreed with the Epicureans that it is good to forgo lesser pleasures for greater future ones. Hobbes held that felicity consists primarily in the mental pleasures that arise from anticipating the satisfaction of one's desires. Hobbes was proposing a reforming definition for “good” firmly grounded in his substantive theory of what goodness consists in and of what makes it the case that something has that property. The anticipatory pleasure raised in everyone's mind by the prospect of peace and its pleasures is a potential basis for agreeing about what to call good.

According to the democratic borders argument, the democratic legitimacy of a state's regime of border control requires granting foreigners a right to participate in the procedures determining it. This argument appeals to the All-Subjected Principle, which implies that democratic legitimacy requires that all those subject to political power have a right to participate in determining the laws governing its exercise. The scope objection claims that this argument presupposes an implausible account of subjection and hence of the All-Subjected Principle, which absurdly implies that all domestic laws subject foreigners to their requirements. I argue that this objection misconstrues the logical structure of the legal requirements enshrined in domestic laws: domestic laws typically enshrine narrow-scope, not wide-scope, legal requirements. To be sure, some state laws do subject foreigners to their requirements, and the All-Subjected Principle conditions democratic legitimacy on granting foreigners some say in determining them. But the best reading of the Principle does not have such general expansionary implications.

The transition away from the highly intolerant and persecutory regimes of late-medieval and early-modern Europe was facilitated by four important developments. First, Europeans learned that social order and cohesion are threatened less by diversity than by intolerance of it. Second, the traditionally paternalist vision of the state’s role was called into question by a new valuation of the individual conscience and consequently of individual liberties. Third, the assumption that the meaning of symbols is objectively determined was replaced by the recognition that symbols are intersubjectively determined by convention. Fourth, Europeans began to distinguish two senses of publicity: visibility and representativeness. The tenacious hold of these four assumptions is illustrated by laws of laïcité, which harken back to the medieval mindset on all four counts.

The current literature standardly conceives of voting power in terms of decisiveness: the ability to change the voting outcome by unilaterally changing one’s vote. I argue that this classic conception of voting power, which fails to account for partial decisiveness or efficacy, produces erroneous results because it saddles the concept of voting power with implausible microfoundations. This failure in the measure of voting power in turn reflects a philosophical mistake about the concept of social power in general: a failure to recognize that an agent can exercise individual social power with others’ assistance, in virtue of the group’s collective power, sometimes even when she could not unilaterally scuttle the group’s collective power. I therefore develop a conception of efficacy that admits of degrees and defend a Recursive Measure of voting power that takes partial efficacy into account.

It is widely thought that if one cannot effect outcomes without others’ assistance, then one has agential power to effect those outcomes only if one has power over those whose assistance one requires. The corollary is that someone who just happens to find herself amongst people who share her preferences and would be disposed to help effect her preferred outcomes, but over whom she has no power, is lucky, but not thereby more powerful. This view is false. It ignores the independent force of the power of numbers: the agential social power enjoyed by someone who finds herself amongst others disposed to act in concert with her, even if she has no power over them. The power of numbers is the power one may have in virtue of one’s position in social structures that shape preferences. It is the power enjoyed by members of persistent majorities. It is the power of whites in European and European-settler societies in virtue of their position in these societies’ racial structures. Sure, those with numbers on their side are lucky; but that’s just to say they are lucky to be powerful.

The majoritarian conception of democracy implies that counter-majoritarian institutions such as federalism—and even representative institutions—are derogations from democracy. The majoritarian conception is mistaken for two reasons. First, it is incoherent: majoritarianism ultimately stands against one of democracy’s core normative commitments—namely, political equality. Second, majoritarianism is premised on a mistaken view of power, which fails to account for the power of numbers and thereby fails to explain the inequality faced by members of persistent minorities. Although strict majority rule serves the democratic values of political agency and equality as interpreted by a set of formal conditions, an adequate conception of power shows why in real-world conditions formal-procedural inequalities, instantiated by counter-majoritarian institutions such as federalism, are sometimes required to serve democratic equality.

There are two rival conceptions of power in modern sociopolitical thought. According to one, all social power reduces to power-over-others. According to another, the core notion is power-to-effect-outcomes, to which even power-over reduces. This article defends seven theses. First, agential social power consists in a relation between agent and outcomes (power-to). Second, not all social power reduces to power-over and, third, the contrary view stems from conflating power-over with a distinct notion: power-despite-resistance. Fourth, the widespread assumption that social power presupposes the capacity to overcome resistance is false: social power includes the capacity to effect outcomes with others’ assistance. Fifth, power-with can be exercised via joint intentional action, strategic coordination and non-strategic coordination. Sixth, agential social power is best analysed as a capacity to effect outcomes, with the assistance of others, despite the resistance of yet others. Seventh, power-over and power-with are not mutually exclusive: each can ground the other.

The centrality of glory, contempt, and revengefulness to Leviathan’s account of war is highlighted by three contextual features: Hobbes’s displacement of the traditional conception of glory as intrinsically intersubjective and comparative; his incorporation of the Aristotelian view that revengefulness is provoked by expressions of mere contempt; and the evolution of his account between 1640 and 1651. An archeology of Leviathan’s famous chapter thirteen confirms that Hobbes’s thesis throughout his career was that disagreement is the universal cause of war because prickly, glory-seeking humans view its expression as a sign of contempt: although Leviathan abandons Hobbes’s previous argument that war is primarily rooted in vainglorious individuals pursuing domination, Leviathan’s ‘glory’ argument for war is a descendent of the older ‘comparison’, not ‘vanity’, argument.

The two traditional justifications for bicameralism are that a second legislative chamber serves a legislative-review function (enhancing the quality of legislation) and a balancing function (checking concentrated power and protecting minorities). I furnish here a third justification for bicameralism, with one elected chamber and the second selected by lot, as an institutional compromise between contradictory imperatives facing representative democracy: elections are a mechanism of people’s political agency and of accountability, but run counter to political equality and impartiality, and are insufficient for satisfactory responsiveness; sortition is a mechanism for equality and impartiality, and of enhancing responsiveness, but not of people’s political agency or of holding representatives accountable. Whereas the two traditional justifications initially grew out of anti-egalitarian premises (about the need for elite wisdom and to protect the elite few against the many), the justification advanced here is grounded in egalitarian premises about the need to protect state institutions from capture by the powerful few and to treat all subjects as political equals. Reflecting the “political” turn in political theory, I embed this general argument within the institutional context of Canadian parliamentary federalism, arguing that Canada’s Senate ought to be reconstituted as a randomly selected citizen assembly.

Our public debate over secularism has suffered from a kind of amnesia about the historical genesis of the modern, secular, and tolerant state. The transition away from the highly intolerant and persecutory regimes of late-medieval and early-modern Europe was greatly facilitated by four important developments. First, Europeans learned that social order and cohesion are threatened less by diversity than by intolerance of diversity. Second, the traditionally paternalist vision of the state’s role was called into question by a new valuation of the individual conscience and consequently of individual liberties. Third, the assumption that the meaning of symbols is objectively determined was replaced by the idea that symbols are intersubjectively determined by convention. Fourth, Europeans began to distinguish two senses of publicity: visibility and representativeness. The proposed Charter of Quebec values harked back to a medieval mindset on all four counts.

One way to evaluate electoral rules is instrumental: we ask what effects they tend to produce. A second way is constitutive: we ask what kinds of values they embody, or whether the procedures they effect respect people's rights or moral status. A third way is genetic: we ask by what procedure the electoral rules were adopted. I shall argue that in judging the value or the legitimacy of electoral rules, we must consider not only (1) the values they serve instrumentally and (2) the values, rights, or statuses they embody or respect, but also (3) the procedure by which they were chosen. I argue, moreover, that the best way to choose electoral rules in representative governments is on an ongoing basis via a randomly selected citizen assembly whose decisions are binding independently of any appeal to referenda.

Democratic theory claims that the exercise of political power is legitimate only to the extent that it conforms to the will of the people; cultural nationalism claims that it is legitimate only to the extent that it conforms to the pre-political culture of the nation. But democracy and cultural nationalism both face a parallel problem: How to determine the boundaries of the collectivity that is supposed to legitimize political power? This problem explains why democracy is disposed to collapse into cultural nationalism, and cultural nationalism into ethnic nationalism.

Samuel Scheffler has recently argued that some relationships are non-instrumentally valuable; that such relationships give rise to “underived” special responsibilities; that there is a genuine tension between cosmopolitan egalitarianism and special responsibilities; and that we must consequently strike a balance between the two. We argue that there is no such tension and propose an alternative approach to the relation between cosmopolitan egalitarianism and special responsibilities. First, while some relationships are non-instrumentally valuable, no relationship is unconditionally valuable. Second, whether such relationships give rise to special responsibilities is conditional on those relationships not violating certain moral constraints. Third, these moral constraints arise from within cosmopolitan egalitarianism itself. Thus the value of relationships and the special responsibilities to which they give rise arise within the parameters of cosmopolitan egalitarianism itself. The real tension is not between cosmopolitan equality and special responsibilities, but between special responsibilities and the various general duties that arise from the recognition, demanded by cosmopolitan egalitarianism, of a multiplicity of other basic goods. Indeed, even the recognition of special relationships itself gives rise to general duties that may condition and/or weigh against putative special responsibilities

According to a subjectivist theory, normative reasons are grounded in facts about our desires. According to an instrumentalist theory, reasons are grounded also in facts about the relevant means to desired objects. These are distinct theories. The widespread tendency to conflate the normativity of subjective and instrumentalist precepts obscures two facts. First, instrumentalist precepts incorporate a subjective element with an objective one. Second, combining these elements into a single theory of normative reasons requires explaining how and why they are to be combined. I argue that the most plausible justification for combining the two elements—which appeals to a theory of well‐being—exposes the inadequacy of the instrumentalist theory: The grounds required to justify the instrumentalist combination are also grounds for the normativity of prudential precepts and with them practical reasons that may have no internal connection to an agent's conative, motivational states.

Reading Hobbes in light of both the history of ethics and the conceptual apparatus developed in recent work on normativity, this book challenges received interpretations of Hobbes and his historical significance. Arash Abizadeh uncovers the fundamental distinction underwriting Hobbes's ethics: between prudential reasons of the good, articulated via natural laws prescribing the means of self-preservation, and reasons of the right or justice, comprising contractual obligations for which we are accountable to others. He shows how Hobbes's distinction marks a watershed in the transition from the ancient Greek to the modern conception of ethics, and demonstrates the relevance of Hobbes's thought to current debates about normativity, reasons, and responsibility. His book will interest Hobbes scholars, historians of ethics, moral philosophers, and political theorists.

Even though Fichte's Reden an die deutsche Nation arguably constitutes one of the founding texts of nationalist political thought, it has received little scholarly attention from English-speaking political theorists. The French, by contrast, have a long tradition of treating Fichte as a central figure in the history of political thought, and have given considerable attention to the Reden in particular. While the dominant French interpretation, which construes the Reden as a non-ethnic cultural nationalist text, provides a welcome corrective to those who impute unmediated ethnic nationalism to Fichte, it is ultimately flawed for missing the text's crypto-ethnic character. While Fichte officially defines nationality in terms of language and culture, his linguistic-cultural nationalism ultimately collapses into ethnic nationalism. This collapse, signalled by his appeals to Abstammung and Abkunft, is propelled by the fact that, ultimately, the appeal to language and culture is incapable of securing immortality, which is the supposed source of its motivational power for Fichte

The susceptibility of Habermas' socio-political theory to the charge of motivational impotence can be traced to a problem in the way in which he conceives of discursive practical reason. By implicitly constructing the notion of discursive rationality in contrast to, and in abstraction from, the rhetorical and affective components of language use, Habermas' notion of discursive practical reason ends up reiterating the same binaries — between reason and passion, abstract and concrete, universal and particular — that provide the tacit parameters used by his critics to motivate the charge of impotence. Habermas' project of reconciling social integration and political rule with freedom can succeed only by rebuilding his discourse -ethical theory of politics upon a notion of discursive practical reason that overcomes these philosophy/rhetoric binaries common to both camps. Key Words: communicative action • constitutional patriotism • discourse ethics • Jürgen Habermas • practical reason • rhetoric

The question of whether or not a closed border entry policy under the unilateral control of a democratic state is legitimate cannot be settled until we first know to whom the justification of a regime of control is owed. According to the state sovereignty view, the control of entry policy, including of movement, immigration, and naturalization, ought to be under the unilateral discretion of the state itself: justification for entry policy is owed solely to members. This position, however, is inconsistent with the democratic theory of popular sovereignty. Anyone accepting the democratic theory of political legitimation domestically is thereby committed to rejecting the unilateral domestic right to control state boundaries. Because the demos of democratic theory is in principle unbounded, the regime of boundary control must be democratically justified to foreigners as well as to citizens, in political institutions in which both foreigners and citizens can participate.

Although sovereign jurisdictional authority is not itself a kind of property right for Hobbes, it is the object of the sovereign’s (not the state’s) proprietary rights. Jurisdictional authority for Hobbes is foundationally over persons rather than territory, so that the sovereign’s territorial jurisdiction is parasitic on jurisdiction over persons. Territory nevertheless plays a significant role in determining subjects’ political obligations because the sovereign’s ability to protect subjects is necessary for such obligations, and control over space is necessary to protect subjects. Yet Hobbes shows why the modern ideology of the state does not univocally posit the state as an intrinsically territorial entity. There are two traditions here: The Lockean one that, in grounding jurisdictional authority in private dominion over things, portrays the state as intrinsically territorial, and the Hobbesian one that, in deriving property rights from jurisdictional authority, does not.

National Baha’i elections, conducted world-wide without nominations, competitive campaigns, or parties, challenge the emerging consensus that the only truly democratic elections are multiparty elections in which each party’s candidates compete freely for votes. National Baha’i electoral institutions are based on three core values: respect for the inherent dignity of each person, the unity and solidarity of persons collectively, and the justice and fairness of institutions. While liberal political philosophy interprets respect for dignity exclusively in terms of equality and freedom, the Baha’i model interprets dignity to require respect for the equality, freedom, and nobility of each person. The perfectionist focus on nobility helps explain the distinct features of national Baha’i elections and, in particular, the ban on campaigning. In light of ongoing concerns about the character of the electoral process in actually existing democracies, further research into Baha’i elections and their philosophical foundations provides a promising basis for rethinking widely held liberal assumptions about how democratic elections must be conducted.

According to Aristotle, character (êthos) and emotion (pathos) are constitutive features of the process of phronetic practical deliberation: in order to render a determinate action-specific judgement, practical reasoning cannot be simply reduced to logical demonstration (apodeixis). This can be seen by uncovering an important structural parallel between the virtue of phronêsis and the art of rhetoric. This structural parallel helps to show how Aristotle's account of practical reason and deliberation, which constructively incorporates the emotions, illuminates key issues in contemporary democratic theory concerning deliberation at the political level.

The claim that liberal democratic normative commitments are compatible with nationalism is challenged by the widely acknowledged fact that national identities invariably depend on historical myths: the nationalist defence of such publicly shared myths is in tension with liberal democratic theory’s commitment to norms of publicity, public justification, and freedom of expression. Recent liberal nationalist efforts to meet this challenge by justifying national myths on liberal democratic grounds fail to distinguish adequately between different senses of myth. Once this is done (drawing on Arthur Danto’s analytical philosophy of history), it becomes apparent that historical narratives cannot be justifiably shielded from criteria of truth and significance, and that genuinely historical myths are incompatible with liberal democratic political philosophy.

Rousseau initially attempts to secure freedom by grounding political rule in persuasion, rather than coercion. When the spectre of rhetoric undermines this strategy, he is led to ground the volonté générale in the silent and introspective disclosure of the solitary citizen’s inner conscience, which through a sentimentalist transformation of Descartes’s category of bon sens, is recast as an eminently public sentiment. But when rhetorical eloquence turns out to be indispensable to politics, Rousseau turns to republican virtue and the trope of grounding the polity’s freedom in the patrie’s territory and, subsequently, in the citizen’s heart.

Cultural-nationalist and democratic theory both seek to legitimize political power via collective self-rule: their principle of legitimacy refers right back to the very persons over whom political power is exercised. But such self-referential theories are incapable of jointly solving the distinct problems of legitimacy and boundaries, which they necessarily combine, once it is assumed that the self-ruling collectivity must be a pre-political, in-principle bounded, ground of legitimacy. Cultural nationalism claims that political power is legitimate insofar as it expresses the nation’s pre-political culture, but it cannot fix cultural-national boundaries pre-politically. Hence the collapse into ethnic nationalism. Traditional democratic theory claims that political power is legitimized pre-politically, but cannot itself legitimize the boundaries of the people. Hence the collapse into cultural nationalism. Only once we recognize that the demos is in principle unbounded, and abandon the quest for a pre-political ground of legitimacy, can democratic theory fully avoid this collapse of demos into nation into ethnos. But such a theory departs radically from traditional theory.