Republican Demoicracy

Scott Linger13th March 2014

Centre for Political Theory and Global JusticeDepartment of Politics

The Point of Political Theory

Swift and White:

● ‘One of the most useful roles for political theorists…is that of using their conceptual skills and sensitivity to morally significant distinctions to help social scientists ensure that they are focusing their empirical investigations on the right – the normatively relevant – phenomena’.

Political theorists’ work should therefore be seen as a contribution to the democratic process. As regards feasibility, they inform us that:

● ‘Theorists should not allow political constraints, or the results of social science, to corrupt their reflection on ultimate principles’.

The purpose of the political theorist is therefore to clarify concepts, interrogate claims about collective organisation, and to argue for particular principles.

Globalisation

Whilst the concept of globalisation has been the subject of much debate, across a range of disciplines, and its causes are still largely disputed, it is possible to suggest the emergence of consensus on its fundamental features.

Scheuerman argues that theorists have converged on five key rudiments of globalisation:

1.deterritorialisation;

2.interconnectedness;

3.speed of social activity;

4.that it is long-term;

5.and that it is a multi-pronged process.

Developing a Typology

I have been predominantly focused on developing my literature review through a number of general clusters, and critiquing the broad positions.

So far I have focused on developing four, though obviously this is open to revision and some are only now being constructed and so will have less information.

The four clusters are:

1.Left Liberal Institutionalism,

2.Right Liberal Institutionalism,

3.Cosmopolitan Democracy,

4.Transnational Stakeholder Democracy.

A Theory of Justice

Preamble:Before discussing the clusters, it is worth mentioning that much of the Liberal Institutionalist theorising occurs within a Rawlsian framework, as a response or amendment to Rawls' statement that:

●‘I shall be satisfied if it is possible to formulate a reasonable conception of justice for the basic structure of society conceived for the time being as a closed system…’

●‘…It is natural to conjecture that once we have a sound theory for this case, the remaining problems of justice will prove more tractable in the light of it.’

An analysis of his theory beyond this point is not necessary here, it just serves as a starting point.

Cluster 1: Extreme Left Institutionalism

Beitz:

● Respect for state autonomy is not a fundamental right, but a derivative of the more basic principles of justice.

● States participate in a global scheme of social cooperation, comprised of economic, political and cultural relationships.

● This interdependence is evidenced by the transnational movement of people, communications, trade, aid and foreign investment.

Pogge:

● Dispense with the closed-system assumption, since it is patently false in light of interdependence and increased globalisation.

● Adopt a single global original position; the rest of Rawls’ domestic theorising about justice proceeds as intended but at a global level.

● Arbitrary inequalities to be bracketed behind the veil of ignorance, one of which is nationality, and the appropriate principles are to be chosen.

Cluster 1: Moderate Left Institutionalism

Sangiovanni:

● Believes that ‘shared participation in the authorship and reproduction [of institutions]’, conditions the extent of duties of justice.

● Claims that ‘equality is a demand of justice only among citizens…of a state’ because it is citizens who secure the conditions necessary for each to pursue their own life plans.

Moellendorf:

● Considers duties of justice as associational: existing between persons with a moral duty of equal respect to co-members where:

(1) the association is relatively strong,(2) is largely (individually) non-voluntary,(3) significantly rules the various relationships of their public lives,(4) and is governed by norms subject to (collective) human control.

Cluster 2: The Law of Peoples

A constructivist procedure is premised on the closed-system assumption; each 'people' is to be viewed as a self-contained system in which persons are expected to live their entire life.

●Peoples (as organized by their government) are free and independent. Their freedom and independence is to be respected by other peoples.●Peoples are equal and parties to their own agreements.●Peoples have the right of self-defence but no right to war.●Peoples are to observe a duty of non-intervention.●Peoples are to observe treaties and undertakings.●Peoples are to observe certain specified restrictions on the conduct of war (assumed to be in self-defence).●Peoples are to honour human rights.●Peoples have a duty to assist other peoples living under conditions that prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime.

Cluster 2: Extreme Right Institutionalism

Nagel‘…we are joined together with certain others in a political society under

strong centralized control. It is only from such a system, and from our fellow members through its institutions, that we can claim a right to democracy, equal citizenship, nondiscrimination, equality of opportunity…’

● What gives rise to these fully associative rights is the invocation of the individual’s will; the state acts, and coerces individuals, in their own name.

● The state makes demands of its citizens, and in return they are owed positive obligations of justice;

● This does not exhaust the moral world. There are duties to others that hold regardless of our associative relationships. Such duties include basic rights against violence, slavery, and coercion.

Cluster 2: Moderate Right Institutionalism

Blake‘The legal system is coercive, and thus stands in prima facie conflict with the liberal principle of autonomy.’

Freeman‘Nothing comparable to the basic structure of society exists on the global level…nothing comparable to the basic structure of society can ever stably endure on a global level.’

Risse‘Those redistributive duties that hold among fellow citizens are not a product of the presence of coercion per se, but rather of a coercive enforcement of property within an association shaped by these legal and political aspects of immediacy.’

Borders and Coercion

Abizadeh:‘States today, including self-proclaimed liberal states, use coercion

against foreigners on a massive and ongoing basis to prevent them from entering their territory at will.’

1. The system of borders today determines who can live where, obviously affecting the autonomy of persons who wish to relocate;

2. Clearly, therefore, one state’s political and legal institutions can directly coerce non-nationals in an immediate and pervasive way;

3. Those subject to state border control seem to require inclusion within the domestic distributive system through their compliance with immigration laws.

Borders conflict with an individual’s autonomy as it is their compliance with their own coercion which enables the state to provide social justice within its borders.

Cluster 3: Cosmopolitan Democracy

Globalisation and Democracy:

● Global markets and transnational corporations operate in a way that can render national governments powerless to constrain them.

● If the essence of democracy is self-governance, and national governments can no longer guarantee the expressed preferences of their citizens, then democracy is called into question.

McGrew:

● Argues this has prompted the emergence of an expansive international non-governmental organisation (INGOs) movement.

● These groups seek to articulate the concerns of individuals worldwide.

● But there are concerns about their own democratic credentials.

Cluster 3: Held, Archibugi, & Habermas

Held:‘We live with a challenging paradox – that governance is becoming increasingly a multilevel, intricately institutionalised and spatially dispersed activity, while representation, loyalty and identity remain stubbornly rooted in traditional ethnic, regional and national communities.’

Archibugi:‘Conflicts over competence that arise as a result of the different levels of governance must be solved within the domain of a global constitutionalism and referred to jurisdictional bodies.’

Habermas:‘[the European Union must] transition from intergovernmental agreements to a common political existence under a constitution…it would aim toward a common practice of opinion- and will-formation, nourished by the roots of a European civil society, and expanded into a Europe-wide political arena.’

Cluster 4: Transnational Democracy

Bohman:‘Non-domination is the capability to create and to be a full member of any such scheme. [This freedom as the capacity to begin] can then be further operationalized in two ways:’

1.in terms of the capacity of citizens to initiate deliberation in order to amend the basic normative framework;

2.in terms of the capacity to set an item on an open agenda and thus to initiate joint, public deliberation.’

●Bohman further considers inclusion in indefinite cooperative schemes as a form of domination.

●Thus globalisation can be considered as destructive to many political communities by undermining the capacity of those who are nonvoluntarily included in such plans to contest authority.

Republicanism

A Dynamic TypologyThis republican theory sees domination as 'routinised into the systemic logics of social systems that are oriented toward forming a culture of legitimate authority around oligarchic or elite imperatives and interests.’

● This republican critique seeks to evidence that, ‘individuals can be so constituted by the institutions and culture to accept, tolerate, see as legitimate and even value a condition of domination.

● Domination is therefore a question not simply of interference, but of the constitution of individuals.

● The concern with freedom from domination therefore shifts from intentional subjection, to the systems within which domination can arise.

Summary and Moving Forward

Thesis Aims:

●Explore Thompson’s Dynamic Typology of Domination. Context?●Identify the correlative positive powers required by individuals to avoid domination and meaningfully exercise their deliberative capacities.●Domination across borders: a stakeholder or affectedness principle.●Offer a plausible account of a deliberative demoicracy.

Next Steps:

●Outline other potential contenders for theories of integration.●Analysis to highlight the various forms of domination which can occur across each of the pure sites, and their intersections.●With these potential sites of domination identified, development of a typology of the powers necessary to avoid these forms of domination.●Development of a deliberative demoicratic framework for integration.

Combining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester

Bibliography

Archibugi, Daniele. ‘Cosmopolitan Democracy: a Restatement’, Cambridge Journal of Education 42 (2012), pp. 9-20.

Beitz, Charles R. Political Theory and International Relations (West Sussex: Princeton University Press, 1999).

Beitz, Charles R. The Idea of Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Bohman, James. ‘Republican Cosmopolitanism’, Journal of Political Philosophy 12 (2004), pp. 336-352.

Bohman, James. Democracy across Borders: From Demos to Demoi (London: MIT Press, 2007).

Habermas, Jurgen. The Postnational Constellation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001).

Held, David. ‘Cosmopolitanism: Globalisation Tamed?’, Review of International Studies 29 (2003), pp. 465-480.

Held, David. ‘Restructuring Global Governance: Cosmopolitanism, Democracy and the Global Order’, Millennium Journal of International Studies 37 (2009), pp. 535-547.

Nagel, Thomas. ‘The Problem of Global Justice’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 33 (2005), pp. 113-47.

Parker, Owen. Cosmopolitan Government in Europe: Citizens and Entrepreneurs in Postnational Politics (Oxon: Routledge, 2013).

Pogge, Thomas. World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002).

Rawls, John. Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

Rawls, John. ‘The Law of Peoples’, Critical Inquiry 20 (1993), pp. 36-68.

Sangiovanni, Andrea. ‘Solidarity in the European Union’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 33 (2013), pp. 213-241.

Thompson, Michael J. ‘Reconstructing Republican Freedom: A Critique of the Neo-Republican Concept of Freedom as Non-Domination,’ Philosophy and Social Criticism 39 (2013), pp. 277-298.

Questions?