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15Institutional Operability: Outward Rule-Following, Inward Role-PlayingAnalyse & Kritik 45 (2): 325-347. 2023.Institutional operability refers to the normative conditions governing the exercise of power of office that makes an institution work. Because institutional action occurs by the interrelated actions of the officeholders, a focus on institutional operability requires the analysis and assessment of the officeholders’ conduct in their institutional capacity. This article distinguishes two perspectives on operability: ‘outward’ and ‘inward.’ The outward view emphasizes predefined instructions for ef…Read more
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13The interactive wrong of political corruption: A reply to Warren, Santoro and FabreEuropean Journal of Political Theory. forthcoming.In this response essay, Ceva and Ferretti reply to their critics and clarify some key aspects of their book. Specifically, the discussion starts by elaborating on the notion of an ethics of office accountability, explaining that the specification of institutional norms of officeholders behaviour is the result of practices of officeholders' interaction (including democratic practices) and reflection. The second theme is the responsibility for political corruption. The authors emphasise the import…Read more
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11La sfida della corruzione politica all’etica pubblica. IntroduzioneRivista Italiana di Filosofia Politica 4 5-17. 2023.The article presents political corruption as a problem of public ethics of institutions. It first explains the theory of institutional action that underlies the conception of political corruption as a deficit of “office accountability”. Having clarified the officeholders’ duties in their institutional capacity, it portrays political corruption as an “internal enemy” of public institutions. A discussion follows of the normative implications for an approach to anti-corruption based on the officeho…Read more
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121Framing the Role of Envy in Transitional JusticePassion: Journal of the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotion 1 (1): 68-84. 2023.This article offers a conceptual framework for discussing the role of envy within processes of transitional justice. Transitional justice importantly includes the transformation of intergroup dynamics of interaction in the aftermath of societal conflicts and upheavals. Such transformation aims to realise “interactive” justice in transitional justice by reshaping belief and value systems, and by moulding emotional responses between the involved parties. A nuanced understanding of the emotions at …Read more
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4Book Review: Political Corruption. The Underside of Civic Morality, by Robert Alan Sparling (review)Political Theory 49 (1): 145-149. 2021.
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13Inherent Tolerance of the Democratic ProcessJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 23 (3). 2023.Recent attempts at making sense of toleration as an ideal of political morality have focused on how liberal democratic institutions generate political arrangements that protect people’s freedom to “live their life as they see fit.” We show how these views rely on a one-dimensional interpretation of the liberal democratic political project. In so doing, they underestimate an important “interactive” dimension. This dimension concerns what it means for liberal democracies to realize toleration as a…Read more
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23Individual Responsibility under Systemic Corruption: A Coercion-Based ViewMoral Philosophy and Politics 10 (1): 95-117. 2023.Should officeholders be held individually responsible for submitting to systemically corrupt institutional practices? We draw a structural analogy between individual action under coercive threat and individual participation in systemic corruption, and we argue that officeholders who submit to corrupt institutional practices are not excused by the existence of a systemic coercive threat. Even when they have good personal reasons to accept the threat, they remain individually morally assessable an…Read more
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18Upholding public institutions in the midst of conflicts: the threat of political corruptionEthics and Global Politics 14 (3): 1961379. 2021.Scholars and international organizations engaged in institutional reconstruction converge in recognizing political corruption as a cause or a consequence of conflicts. Anticorruption is thus generally considered a centrepiece of institutional reconstruction programmes. A common approach to anticorruption within this context aims primarily to counter the negative political, social, and economic effects of political corruption, or implement legal anticorruption standards and punitive measures. We …Read more
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14Automating anticorruption?Ethics and Information Technology 24 (4): 1-14. 2022.The paper explores some normative challenges concerning the integration of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms into anticorruption in public institutions. The challenges emerge from the tensions between an approach treating ML algorithms as allies to an exclusively legalistic conception of anticorruption and an approach seeing them within an institutional ethics of office accountability. We explore two main challenges. One concerns the variable opacity of some ML algorithms, which may affect public…Read more
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20Theories of whistleblowingPhilosophy Compass 2020 (15): 2-10. 2019.“Whistleblowing” has entered the scholarly and the publicdebate as a way of describing the exposure by the memberof an organization of episodes of corruption, fraud, or generalabuses of power within the organization. We offer acritical survey of the main normative theories ofwhistleblowing in the current debate in political philosophy,with the illustrative aid of one of the epitomic figures of awhistleblower of our time: Edward Snowden. After conceptuallyseparating whistleblowing from other form…Read more
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The many facets of procedural justice in legal proceedingsIn Meyerson Denise, Catriona Mackenzie & Therese MacDermott (eds.), Procedural Justice and Relational Theory: Empirical, Philosophical, and Legal Perspectives, Routledge. 2021.
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13Institutional rules, roles, and the dynamics of public powerJurisprudence 13 (3): 443-448. 2022.What makes public institutions normatively distinctive, if anything? Is there a sense in which the privatisation of the public function corrupts such distinctiveness? If such a sense is there, what...
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209 The Public Ethics of WhistleblowingIn Edward Hall & Andrew Sabl (eds.), Political Ethics: A Handbook, Princeton University Press. pp. 193-212. 2022.
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46Second‐personal authority and the practice of democracyConstellations 29 (4): 460-474. 2022.Constellations, EarlyView.
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34Whistleblowing, or the Resistance to Institutional Wrongdoing from WithinThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 28 53-70. 2021.The article discusses the resort to whistleblowing as a form of resistance to institutional wrongdoing that comes from within an institution. The resort to whistleblowing can take either an individual or an institutional form. As an individual act of resistance, whistleblowing has often been presented as a last resort against institutional wrongdoing whose justification draws on normative arguments for civil disobedience. The institutional form we present in this article shows a nontrivial sense…Read more
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368Ethical Theory and Moral Practice at 24Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (1): 1-3. 2021.This Editorial outlines recent developments in the Journal’s scope, mission and review policy. It also illustrates the range of topics addressed on the pages of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, which is now entering its 24th year.
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1The challenges of dietary pluralismIn Mary C. Rawlinson & Caleb Ward (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Food Ethics, Routledge. pp. 93--102. 2017.
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55Failing Institutions, Whistle‐Blowing, and the Role of the News MediaJournal of Applied Philosophy (3): 377-392. 2020.The paper discusses the normative grounds for recognizing a watchdog role to the news media as concerns the dissemination of information about an institutional failure menacing a well-ordered society. This is, for example, the case of the news media’s role in the diffusion of whistleblowers’ disclosures. We argue that many popular justifications for the watchdog role of the news media (as a ‘fourth estate’; a trustee of the people’s right to know; expert communicator) fail to ground that role in…Read more
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46Political Corruption: The Internal Enemy of Public InstitutionsOxford University Press. 2021."This book discusses political corruption and anticorruption as a matter of a public ethics of office. It shows how political corruption is the Trojan horse that undermines public institutions from within via the interrelated action of the officeholders. Even well-designed and legitimate institutions may go off track if the officeholders fail to uphold by their conduct a public ethics of office accountability. Most current discussions of what political corruption is and why it is wrong have conc…Read more
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23Book Review: Political Corruption. The Underside of Civic Morality, by Robert Alan Sparling (review)Political Theory 49 (1): 145-149. 2021.Political corruption is a contested concept. Both terms in the concept are the object of controversies in political theory, and concern what corruption is and how it is a politically relevant phenomenon. Political corruption has been contested across time, space, cultures, and philosophical traditions. Usually, political corruption is assumed to involve an exchange between a private corruptor and a public official who pursues her personal interest by abusing her power of office. While this accou…Read more
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42Teaching and Learning Guide for: Theories of whistleblowingPhilosophy Compass 15 (4). 2020.This is a support piece to the Philosophy Compass article "Theories of Whistleblowing." It gives indications for some essential bibliography helpful to design a teaching module on the justification of whistleblowing.
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713Theories of whistleblowingPhilosophy Compass 15 (1). 2020.Whistleblowing” has entered the scholarly and the public debate as a way of describing the exposure by the member of an organization of episodes of corruption, fraud, or general abuses of power within the organization. We offer a critical survey of the main normative theories of whistleblowing in the current debate in political philosophy, with the illustrative aid of one of the epitomic figures of a whistleblower of our time: Edward Snowden. After conceptually separating whistleblowing …Read more
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54Political corruption as a relational injusticeSocial Philosophy and Policy 35 (2): 118-137. 2018.The corruption of public officials and institutions is generally regarded as wrong. But in what exactly does this form of corruption consist and what kind of wrong does it imply? Recent proponents of the “institutionalist approach” to political corruption have concentrated on those occasions when incentive structures distract institutions from their essential purpose and weaken public trust. The corruption of individual public officials has been less relevant to their work, except for when it le…Read more
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32The good of toleration: changing social relations or maximising individual freedom?Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 23 (2): 197-202. 2020.In this paper, I take issue with Peter Balint’s recent account of the value of toleration as an instrument for securing freedom-maximising outcomes in pluralistic societies. In particular, I question the extent to which the ideal of toleration can be entirely reduced to someone’s intentional withholding of negative interference whose value lies in the protection of individual negative freedoms. I argue that couching the value of toleration entirely in these freedom-maximising terms fails t…Read more
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61Dimensions of ResponsibilityEthical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (4): 771-773. 2018.This Editorial to the 20th Anniversary Issue of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice outlines key challenges and opportunities arising from the recent explosion of responsibility studies in different areas. The underlying ambition is to counter the trend of fragmenting the philosophical debate around responsibility by bringing together helpful insights on related dimensions. The discussion is organised around three main themes: (1) Accountability, Attributability, Answerability, Liability; (2) Indi…Read more
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61Responsibility for Reason-Giving: The Case of Individual Tainted Reasoning in Systemic CorruptionEthical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (4): 789-809. 2018.The paper articulates a new understanding of individual responsibility focused on exercises of agency in reason-giving rather than intentional actions or attitudes towards others. Looking at how agents make sense of their actions, we identify a distinctive but underexplored space for assessing individual responsibility within collective actions. As a case in point, we concentrate on reason-giving for one's own involvement in systemic corruption. We characterize systemic corruption in terms of it…Read more
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116Personal Trust, Public Accountability, and the Justification of WhistleblowingJournal of Political Philosophy 27 (2): 187-206. 2018.Whistleblowing (WB) is the practice of reporting immoral or illegal behavior by members of a legitimate organization with privileged access to information concerning an alleged wrongdoing within that organization. A common critique of WB draws on its supposed consequence of generating a climate of mutual distrust. This wariness is heightened in the case of external WB, which may lead to weakening public trust in an organization by diminishing its credibility. Accordingly, even the defenders of W…Read more
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34Interactive justice: an introductionCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 22 (4): 454-458. 2019.
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Department of Political Science and International RelationsProfessor
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Geneva, Geneve, Switzerland
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