-
178We Make Our Own History, but in Circumstances of Other People’s Choosing: Intercultural Materialism in Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything (review)Contemporary Political Theory. forthcoming.I consider how The Dawn of Everything deals with the question of whether cultural ideation can help explain social change in ways that do not posit non-material causal factors. I submit that the answer has to do with how each culture is materially impacted by other cultures, and how this leads to socio-political differentiation under similar environmental and technological conditions. In a nutshell, a culture’s ideation is a material constraint for other cultures that come into contact with it. …Read more
-
484Critical Responsiveness: How Epistemic Ideology Critique Can Make Normative Legitimacy Empirical AgainSocial Philosophy and Policy. forthcoming.This paper outlines an empirically-grounded account of normative political legitimacy. The main idea is to give a normative edge to empirical measures of sociological legitimacy through a non-moralised form of ideology critique. A power structure’s responsiveness to the values of those subjected to its authority can be measured empirically and may be explanatory or predictive insofar as it tracks belief in legitimacy, but by itself it lacks normative purchase: it merely describes a preference al…Read more
-
289Fact-Centric Political Theory, Three Ways: Normative Behaviourism, Grounded Normative Theory, and Radical RealismPolitical Studies Review. forthcoming.In the last two decades Anglophone political theory witnessed a renewed interest in social-scientific empirical findings—partly as a reaction against normative theorizing centred on the formulation of abstract, intuition-driven moral principles. This brief paper begins by showing how this turn has taken two distinct forms: (i) a non-ideal theoretical orientation, which seeks to balance the emphasis on moral principles with feasibility and urgency considerations, and (ii) a fact-centric orientati…Read more
-
Noumenal Power, Reasons, and Justification : A Critique of ForstIn Ester Herlin-Karnell & Matthias Klatt (eds.), Constitutionalism Justified: Rainer Forst in Discourse, Oxford University Press, Usa. 2019.
-
656Ideology Critique Without Morality: A Radical Realist ApproachAmerican Political Science Review 117 (4): 1215-1227. 2023.What is the point of ideology critique? Prominent Anglo-American philosophers recently proposed novel arguments for the view that ideology critique is moral critique, and ideologies are flawed insofar as they contribute to injustice or oppression. We criticize that view and make the case for an alternative and more empirically-oriented approach, grounded in epistemic rather than moral commitments. We make two related claims: (i) ideology critique can debunk beliefs and practices by uncovering ho…Read more
-
349How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Political NormativityPolitical Studies Review. forthcoming.Do salient normative claims about politics require moral premises? Political moralists think they do, political realists think they do not. We defend the viability of realism in a two-pronged way. First, we show that a number of recent attacks on realism, as well as realist responses to those attacks, unduly conflate distinctively political normativity and non-moral political normativity. Second, we argue that Alex Worsnip and Jonathan Leader-Maynard’s recent attack on realist arguments for a di…Read more
-
20The public uses of coercion and force (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2021.The Kantian project of achieving perpetual peace among states seems (at best) an unfulfilled hope. Modern states' authority claims and their exercise of power and sovereignty span a spectrum: from the most stringently and explicitly codified-the constitutional level-to the most fluid and turbulent-acts of war. The Public Uses of Coercion and Force investigates both these individual extremes and also their relationship. Using Arthur Ripstein's recent work Kant and the Law of War as a focal point,…Read more
-
957Our contention is that while what may be termed woke capitalism is the result of real changes in both the material structure of capitalism and its ideological superstructure, those are not changes pulling in the same direction. The main material development is the consolidation of the shift from a quasi-deterministic to a more pronouncedly probabilistic nexus of class and race. But it is unclear that this makes much difference to the material prospects of the vast majority of people of color or …Read more
-
20Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times, written by McQueen, AlisonHobbes Studies 33 (2): 188-191. 2019.
-
230Review of Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times by Alison McQueen (review)Hobbes Studies. forthcoming.
-
596Must Realists Be Pessimists About Democracy? Responding to Epistemic and Oligarchic ChallengesMoral Philosophy and Politics 8 (1): 27-49. 2021.In this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning p…Read more
-
257State Legitimacy and Religious Accommodation: The Case of Sacred PlacesJournal of Law, Religion and State. forthcoming.In this paper we put forward a realist account of the problem of the accommodation of conflicting claims over sacred places. Our argument takes its cue from the empirical finding that modern, Western-style states necessarily mould religion into shapes that are compatible with state rule. So, at least in the context of modern states there is no pre-political morality of religious freedom that states ought to follow when adjudicating claims over sacred spaces. In which case most liberal normative …Read more
-
923Property, Legitimacy, Ideology: A Reality CheckJournal of Politics. forthcoming.Drawing on empirical evidence from history and anthropology, we aim to demonstrate that there is room for genealogical ideology critique within normative political theory. The test case is some libertarians’ use of folk notions of private property rights in defence of the legitimacy of capitalist states. Our genealogy of the notion of private property shows that asking whether a capitalist state can emerge without violations of self-ownership cannot help settling the question of its legitimacy, …Read more
-
611Financial Power and Democratic LegitimacySocial Theory and Practice 48 (1): 115-140. 2022.To what extent are questions of sovereign debt a matter for political rather than scientific or moral adjudication? We answer that question by defending three claims. We argue that (i) moral and technocratic takes on sovereign debt tend to be ideological in a pejorative sense of the term, and that therefore (ii) sovereign debt should be politicised all the way down. We then show that this sort of politicisation need not boil down to the crude Realpolitik of debtor-creditor power relations—a conc…Read more
-
117Being realistic and demanding the impossibleConstellations 26 (4): 638-652. 2019.Political realism is characterised by fidelity to the facts of politics and a refusal to derive political judgments from pre- political moral commitments. Even when they are not taken to make normative theorising impossible or futile, those characteristics are often thought to engender a conservative slant, or at least a tendency to prefer incremental reformism to radicalism. I resist those claims by distinguishing between three variants of realism—ordorealism, contextual realism, and radical re…Read more
-
63Introduction: Justice, Legitimacy and DiversityCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 15 (2): 101-108. 2012.No abstract
-
475The twilight of the Liberal Social Contract? On the Reception of Rawlsian Political LiberalismIn Kelly Becker & Iain D. Thomson (eds.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015, Cambridge University Press. 2019.This chapter discusses the Rawlsian project of public reason, or public justification-based 'political' liberalism, and its reception. After a brief philosophical rather than philological reconstruction of the project, the chapter revolves around a distinction between idealist and realist responses to it. Focusing on political liberalism’s critical reception illuminates an overarching question: was Rawls’s revival of a contractualist approach to liberal legitimacy a fruitful move for liberalism …Read more
-
103Is this what democracy looks like?Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (1): 1-14. 2022.ABSTRACT This essay is a critical study of Jason Brennan's Against Democracy. We make three main points. First, we argue that Brennan's proposal of a right to competent government only works if one considers the absence of government a viable proposition, something most of his opponents are not prepared to do. Second, we suggest that Brennan's account of competent decision-making is blind to forms of oligarchic power that work against the very ideals of justice and epistemic virtue that competen…Read more
-
583Noumenal Power, Reasons, and Justification: A Critique of ForstIn Ester Herlin-Karnell & Matthias Klatt (eds.), Constitutionalism Justified, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.In this essay we criticise Rainer Forst's attempt to draw a connection between power and justification, and thus ground his normative theory of a right to justification. Forst draws this connection primarily conceptually, though we will also consider whether a normative connection may be drawn within his framework. Forst's key insight is that if we understand power as operating by furnishing those subjected to it with reasons, then we create a space for the normative contestation of any exercise…Read more
-
1337Consensus, Compromise, Justice and LegitimacyCritical Review of Social and International Political Philosophy 16 (4): 557-572. 2013.Could the notion of compromise help us overcoming – or at least negotiating – the frequent tension, in normative political theory, between the realistic desideratum of peaceful coexistence and the idealistic desideratum of justice? That is to say, an analysis of compromise may help us moving beyond the contrast between two widespread contrasting attitudes in contemporary political philosophy: ‘fiat iustitia, pereat mundus’ on the one side, ‘salus populi suprema lex’ on the other side. More speci…Read more
-
84Justice, Legitimacy, and Diversity: Political Authority Between Realism and Moralism (edited book)Routledge. 2012.Most contemporary political philosophers take justice—rather than legitimacy—to be the fundamental virtue of political institutions vis-à-vis the challenges of ethical diversity. Justice-driven theorists are primarily concerned with finding mutually acceptable terms to arbitrate the claims of conflicting individuals and groups. Legitimacy-driven theorists, instead, focus on the conditions under which those exercising political authority on an ethically heterogeneous polity are entitled to do so.…Read more
-
66The exemption that confirms the rule: Reflections on proceduralism and the uk hybrid embryos controversyRes Publica 15 (3): 237-250. 2009.This paper provides an interpretation of the licensing provisions envisaged under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 as a model for a rule and exemption-based procedural strategy for the adjudication of potential ethical controversies, and it offers an account of the liberal-democratic legitimacy of the procedure’s outcomes as well as of the legal procedure itself. Drawing on a novel articulation of the distinction between exceptions and exemptions, the paper argues that such a rule…Read more
-
39Consensus, compromise, justice and legitimacyCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 16 (4): 557-572. 2013.
-
922Legitimacy and Consensus in Rawls' Political LiberalismIride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 27 37-56. 2014.In this paper I analyze the theory of legitimacy at the core of John Rawls’ political liberalism. Rawls argues that a political system is well grounded when it is stable. This notion of stability embodies both pragmatic and moral elements, each of which constitutes a key desideratum of Rawlsian liberal legitimacy. But those desiderata are in tension with each other. My main claim is that Rawls’ strategy to overcome that tension through his theory of public justification is ultimately unsuccessfu…Read more
-
1146Pluralism Slippery Slopes and Democratic Public DiscourseTheoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 60 (137): 29-47. 2013.Agonist theorists have argued against deliberative democrats that democratic institutions should not seek to establish a rational consensus, but rather allow political disagreements to be expressed in an adversarial form. But democratic agonism is not antagonism: some restriction of the plurality of admissible expressions is not incompatible with a legitimate public sphere. However, is it generally possible to grant this distinction between antagonism and agonism without accepting normative stan…Read more
-
355Reality and imagination in political theory and practice: On Raymond Geuss’s realism (review)European Journal of Political Theory 9 (4): 504-512. 2010.Can political theory be action-guiding without relying on pre-political normative commitments? I answer that question affirmatively by unpacking two related tenets of Raymond Geuss’ political realism: the view that political philosophy should not be a branch of ethics, and the ensuing empirically-informed conception of legitimacy. I argue that the former idea can be made sense of by reference to Hobbes’ account of authorization, and that realist legitimacy can be normatively salient in so far as…Read more
-
376Understanding Religion, Governing Religion: A Realist PerspectiveIn Cécile Laborde & Aurélia Bardon (eds.), Religion in Liberal Political Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2016.Cécile Laborde has argued that the freedom we think of as ‘freedom of religion’ should be understood as a bundle of separate and relatively independent freedoms. I criticise that approach by pointing out that it is insufficiently sensitive to facts about the sorts of entities that liberal states are. I argue that states have good reasons to mould phenomena such as religion into easily governable monoliths. If this is a problem from the normative point of view, it is not due to descriptively inad…Read more
-
University of AmsterdamRegular Faculty
University of St. Andrews
PhD, 2008
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |