Below you will find details of my published work. Clicking the titles will take you to the final published versions. These are often behind paywalls, however, so where possible I have also included an open link to download earlier 'preprint' versions. Alternatively, please email me and I'll be happy to send you a copy: [email protected]
Abstract: Various political realists claim the superior ‘action-guiding’ qualities of their way of approaching normative political theory, as compared to ‘liberal moralism’. This paper subjects that claim to critique. I first clarify the general idea of action-guidance, and identify two types of guidance that a political theory might try to offer – ‘prescriptive action-guidance’ and ‘orienting action-guidance’ – together with the conditions that must be met before we can understand such guidance as having been successfully offered. I then go on to argue that if we take realist understandings of political psychology seriously, then realist attempts to offer action-guidance appear to fail by realism’s own lights. I demonstrate this by means of engagement with a variety of different realist theorists.
Abstract: By the standards of most normative accounts of states’ obligations toward refugees, a majority of states are falling short. One likely reason for this is that public attitudes in potential refugee-receiving states are not sufficiently disposed toward meeting such obligations. One way to talk about such attitudes is in the language of solidarity. In this paper, drawing on Sally Scholz’s tripartite conception, we highlight how solidarity with refugees might be “social,” “civic”, or “political” in character. How can such solidarities come about? They may have several generative sources. One such potential source is rationalist in character: we reason our way to moral commitments to refugees that possess intrinsic motivational force. A second potential source is sentimentalist, wherein solidarity develops by means of the stimulation of our emotions. In this paper, however, we focus on institutions as a third potential route to solidarity, arguing that institutions can engender or undermine solidarity, both in general terms, and with reference to solidarity with refugees in particular. We thus seek to contribute to the literature on cross-border solidarity by theorizing a relatively neglected potential source.
Abstract: This paper argues that the process of deriving legitimacy criteria for political institutions ought to be sensitive to features of the political context in which that process is to occur. The paper builds on Allen Buchanan’s ‘Metacoordination View’ of legitimacy, which we explicate in the first section. While sympathetic to Buchanan’s practical approach, we believe the idea of a metacoordination process to be underspecified across two dimensions, which we explain in the second section: (i) constituency and (ii) normativity. Both dimensions admit of differing specifications. In the third section, we suggest that how best to fill in these dimensions in any one instance depends upon the political context in which the metacoordination process is to occur. We highlight three relevant elements of a political decision context – criticality, institutional time point, and motivational landscape – and illustrate their significance by way of reference, respectively, to the World Health Organization, the European Economic and Monetary Union, and the Bank of International Settlements. The ‘context-dependence’ of the metacoordination process, and therefore of legitimacy, entails the possibility that institutions that are similar, even identical, in terms of their nature and function may nevertheless be held to differing legitimacy criteria in differing political contexts.
Abstract: There exists a longstanding debate over the global institutional implications of Immanuel Kant's political philosophy: does such a philosophy entail a federal world government, or instead only a confederal ‘league of nations’? However, while the systematic nature of Kant's tripartite ‘doctrine of right' is well recognised, this debate has been conducted with all but exclusive focus on ‘international right' in particular. This article, by contrast, brings ‘cosmopolitan right' firmly into view. It proceeds by way of engagement with the two Kantian arguments made in defence of a ‘league of nations’ in discussion of international right, each of which appeals to aspects of states’ supposed ‘personhood’: the first appeals to states’ distinctive moral personality; the second to states’ physical manifestation. The article considers what happens when we assess these arguments not just in light of the demands of international right, but also in light of cosmopolitan right, and thus in light of public right more comprehensively. The answer is that such arguments cannot succeed as full defences of a league of nations. Indeed, when we assess such arguments with cosmopolitan right in view, they point instead – either tentatively or definitively – in the direction of world government.
- ‘Are the People Thinking What Miller’s Thinking?’, in the Critical Exchange 'Who Cares What the People Think? Revisiting David Miller's Approach to Theorising About Justice', Contemporary Political Theory 71(1) (2018): 69-104.
Abstract: David Miller’s methodological approach to theorising about justice, articulated most explicitly in Principles of Social Justice (1999) but informing his work up to and including the recent Strangers in Our Midst (2016), takes people’s existing beliefs and sentiments – ‘what the people think’ – to play a fundamental constitutive role in the development of normative principles of justice. In this critical exchange, Alice Baderin, Andreas Busen, Thomas Schramme and Luke Ulaş subject differing aspects of this methodology to critique, before Miller responds.
Abstract: Can states become committed and competent agents of cosmopolitan justice? The theory of ‘statist cosmopolitanism’ argues that they can: their citizens can be turned towards a commitment to cosmopolitan principles and actions by moral entrepreneurs constituting a ‘cosmopolitan avant-garde’, and can be sustained in their commitment to those principles by their pre-existing attachment to the state as a political community. Taking cosmopolitan principles as axiomatic, this paper subjects statist cosmopolitanism to critique. First, I question the scale of the transformation that a cosmopolitan avant-garde can engender given the complexity of the causal chains the avant-garde seek to elucidate, as well as the countervailing potency of the state itself which reinforces particularistic attitudes in its citizens. Second, I argue that even if, contra my preceding argument, the cosmopolitan avant-garde were to be successful, states would find it desirable to federally integrate in order to be better able to realise their cosmopolitan commitments. Such integration is compatible with statist cosmopolitanism’s motivational theory, even if not its institutional vision. Finally, I re-characterise the cosmopolitan avant-garde as agitators for the transcendence, rather than just transformation, of the state system.
Abstract: Various cosmopolitan theorists offer global institutional prescriptions intended to be understood as residing conceptually between a system of separate domestic states and a federal world state. In this article I assess such ‘intermediary’ models, and claim that they are an unprofitable mix of idealism and misplaced pragmatism: they are ostensibly illustrations of future-oriented institutional ideals, and yet they are infused with concessions to present-day reality. In some cases, the concession is merely rhetorical: we are offered world state visions in intermediary clothing. In other cases, the concession is substantive, with the ironic result that intermediary models are in fact less feasible than the idea of a world state which intermediary theorists quickly reject. The overall aim of the argument is not to fully defend the idea of a world state, but rather only to demonstrate that there are reasons, from a cosmopolitan perspective, to consider a world state superior to intermediary models.
Abstract: Cosmopolitans, if they are interested in seeing their principles realised, must hope that persons worldwide can become motivated to act in accordance with what those principles demand. But although it is important that genuinely moral motives are developed, we should not ignore the potential pragmatic value of self-interested motives to the realisation of cosmopolitan ends. This article considers three such motives: economic self-interest, prudent self-interest and democratic self-interest. I argue that in each case, usefully harnessing these motivations implies or requires global political integration that amounts to ‘world government’. This argument has the effect of reinforcing the already popular view that realising cosmopolitan principles entails global political integration. For those who already endorse that view, my argument will act as supporting evidence; by contrast it represents a challenge to those cosmopolitans who have remained ambivalent about, or indeed have explicitly rejected, the need for global political integration.
Abstract: This paper argues that the two models of collective responsibility David Miller presents in National Responsibility and Global Justice do not apply to nations. I first consider the 'like-minded group' model, paying attention to three scenarios in which Miller employs it. I argue that the feasibility of the model decreases as we expand outwards from the smallest group to the largest, since it increasingly fails to capture all members of the group adequately, and the locus of any like-mindedness becomes too abstract and vague to have the causal force the model requires. I thereafter focus on the 'cooperative practice' model, examining various ways in which the analogy Miller draws between an employee-led business and a nation breaks down. In concluding I address the concern that my arguments have worrying consequences and suggest that, on the contrary, the rejection of the idea of national responsibility is a positive move.
