A Society of Individuals

Dialogue ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-619
Author(s):  
DAVID GAUTHIER
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Utility Maximization ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Pareto Optimization ◽  
Individual Member ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
The Right ◽  
Equal Citizenship ◽  
Interaction Problem ◽  
Adult Member

In “A Society of Individuals,” I sketch a society that has no good of its own, no social end, but exists to enable each individual member better to pursue his own good, facilitating cooperation, and resolving the basic Interaction Problem (exemplified by the Prisoner’s Dilemma): that utility-maximization and Pareto-optimization are sometimes incompatible. The orthodox defend the rationality of maximization; I defend Pareto-optimization. I argue that if (per impossible) we could determine the features of our society by prior agreement we would agree to a Society of Individuals, and that we would agree ex ante to some social practice or institution is the best possible justification of it holding for us.I then sketch some of the main features of the Society. In doing this I assume that members of the Society are not all adherents of contractarianism, but may hold any of a number of reasonable views, which the Society must seek to accommodate. I consider how several alleged rights, such as a right to resources, fare in the Society. And I conclude with the idea that contractarianism, in arguing that each adult member of society enjoys equal citizenship, must afford each the right to participate in choosing and dismissing governments. We may then think the emergence of a Society of Individuals is democracy’s fulfillment.

When the State Speaks, What Should It Say?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Brettschneider
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
The State ◽  
Hate Groups ◽  
New Approach ◽  
State Action ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
The Right ◽  
Equal Citizenship ◽  
The Ideal

How should a liberal democracy respond to hate groups and others that oppose the ideal of free and equal citizenship? The democratic state faces the hard choice of either protecting the rights of hate groups and allowing their views to spread, or banning their views and violating citizens' rights to freedoms of expression, association, and religion. Avoiding the familiar yet problematic responses to these issues, this book proposes a new approach called value democracy. The theory of value democracy argues that the state should protect the right to express illiberal beliefs, but the state should also engage in democratic persuasion when it speaks through its various expressive capacities: publicly criticizing, and giving reasons to reject, hate-based or other discriminatory viewpoints. Distinguishing between two kinds of state action—expressive and coercive—the book contends that public criticism of viewpoints advocating discrimination based on race, gender, or sexual orientation should be pursued through the state's expressive capacities as speaker, educator, and spender. When the state uses its expressive capacities to promote the values of free and equal citizenship, it engages in democratic persuasion. By using democratic persuasion, the state can both respect rights and counter hateful or discriminatory viewpoints. The book extends this analysis from freedom of expression to the freedoms of religion and association, and shows that value democracy can uphold the protection of these freedoms while promoting equality for all citizens.

Ambiguity and long-run cooperation in strategic games

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Rojas ◽  
Damián Vergara
Keyword(s):  
Prisoner's Dilemma ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Parametric Model ◽  
Strategic Games ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Noncooperative Equilibrium ◽  
Ex Ante

Abstract We study the effects of ambiguity on long-run cooperation in infinitely repeated strategic games. Using a simple parametric model of ambiguity, we study conditions for sustaining cooperative equilibria in the long-run. We apply our framework to the prisoner’s dilemma and duopoly models. We find that (i) ambiguity may affect the game’s structure eventually making the noncooperative equilibrium ex ante preferred; (ii) higher levels of ambiguity make long-run cooperation less likely since it makes punishment schemes less effective; and (iii) large levels of ambiguity may preclude the possibility of mutually beneficial long-run agreements, even when cooperation is beneficial from an ex ante perspective.

Jury Service and Women's Citizenship before and after the Nineteenth Amendment

2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gretchen Ritter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Nineteenth Amendment ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Jury Service ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Right ◽  
Equal Citizenship

The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution had surprisingly little impact on women's citizenship or the American constitutional order. For seventy-two years, from 1848 until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, suffrage was the central demand of the woman rights movement in the United States. Women demanded the right to vote in the nineteenth century because they believed it would make them first class citizens with all the rights and privileges of other first class citizens. Both normatively and instrumentally, the suffragists believed that voting would secure equal citizenship for women by raising their civic status and allowing them to assert their political interests. Yet in many ways women were more politically efficacious in the years just prior to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment than they were afterward. Further, their ability to claim rights from the courts and legislatures, on the basis of their new status as voting citizens, was limited.

Responsibility of a Member state of an International Organization: Where Will It End? Comments on Article 60 of the ILC Draft on the Responsibility of International Organizations

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esa Paasivirta
Keyword(s):  
Member State ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Individual Member ◽  
Individual Member State ◽  
General Rules ◽  
The Right ◽  
International Law Commission ◽  
The Eu

AbstractThe paper addresses the issue of possible responsibility of a member state for acts of an international organization of which it is a member. This particular issue forms part of the on-going work of the International Law Commission of establishing rules for the responsibility of international organizations. The particular challenge is posed by possible “responsibility gaps”, i.e. situations where a state might avoid compliance with its own obligations by prompting the organization of which it is a member to act instead. The paper compares the ILC approach, approaching the issue by way of trying to establish general rules of responsibility (“secondary rules”) and the practice of the EU, which has addressed the issue by tailor-made solutions in the context of specific treaties (“primary rules”). The latter approach is more flexible as it allows individual solutions pertinent to particular circumstances and treaty regimes so as to ensure that either the organization itself or its member state is responsible, depending whichever is genuinely responsible. The paper concludes that the ILC work is progressing in the right direction as it narrows down the possibilities where a member state can be held responsible to cover only situations bordering abuse, rather than more open-ended standards for individual member state responsibility, which can open the door for unpredictable results.

scholarly journals Nationalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Umut Özkırımlı
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Equal Citizenship

Nationalism is the belief that the interests and values of a particular nation are prior to, and often superior to, those of others. Etymologically, the origins of the term can be traced back to the Latin word natio, or “something born,” which was used by Romans to refer to a community of foreigners. It is commonly believed that in its modern sense of “love for a particular nation,” the term was first used in 1798. Nationalism refers to both an ideology and a political movement. In the context of the French Revolution, nationalism has come to be associated with the more inclusive idea of popular sovereignty based on shared and equal citizenship. Later, under the impact of German Romantic thought, it has also been connected to exclusivist notions of ethnic and cultural distinctiveness. As a political movement, nationalism has often entailed the fusion of these two ideals, presupposing a world composed of “nation-states” in which, at least in theory, each nation has a right to a state of its own, later called the principle of national self-determination. Nationalism has outlived the expectations of a great many thinkers, both on the right and the left, who predicted its imminent demise, and reasserted itself as a powerful tool for mobilization in the wake of the end of the Cold War, inspiring or energizing a vast array of political projects, from independentism and isolationism to authoritarianism and populism. Despite attempts to pool sovereignty in supranational or transnational bodies, mostly to counter the corrosive and uneven impact of globalization, nationalism remains the fundamental organizing principle of interstate order and the ultimate source of political legitimacy. For many, it is also the taken-for-granted context of everyday life and a readily available cognitive and discursive frame to make sense of the world that surrounds them.

scholarly journals Making Access to Government Data Work

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-83
Author(s):  
Mireille Van Eechoud
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Individual Member ◽  
Member States ◽  
The Public ◽  
Eu Directive ◽  
Public Record ◽  
Government Data ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Eu

The EU Directive on Re-use of Public Sector Information of 2013 (the PSI Directive) is a key instrument for open data policies at all levels of government in Member States. It sets out a general framework for the conditions governing the right to re-use information resources held by public sector bodies. It includes provisions on non-discrimination, transparent licensing and the like. However, what the PSI Directive does not do is give businesses, civil society or citizens an actual claim to access. Access is of course a prerequisite to (re)use. It is largely a matter for individual Member States to regulate what information is in the public record. This article explores what the options for the EC are to promote alignment of rights to information and re-use policy. It also flags a number of important data protection problems that have not been given serious enough consideration, but have the potential to paralyze open data policies. 

The Indeterminacy of Rawls’s Principles for Gender Justice

John Rawls ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 237-248
Author(s):  
M. Victoria Costa
Keyword(s):  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
First Principle ◽  
Arbitrary Power ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Fair Equality Of Opportunity ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Right ◽  
Equal Citizenship ◽  
Sexual And Reproductive Rights

Feminists disagree about whether or not Rawls’s account of free and equal citizenship is an emancipatory ideal for women, and whether or not the application of the two principles of justice would suffice to dismantle relationships of domination that affect women’s lives. This chapter argues that there is no clear and uncontroversial application of Rawls’s principles of justice that supports those feminists who give affirmative answers to these questions. Regarding the first principle, one unsettled question is whether it protects sexual and reproductive rights, including the right to abortion. Regarding the second principle, there is indeterminacy due to the need to balance the requirements of fair equality of opportunity with parental rights. Moreover, the difference principle’s focus on the maximization of income and wealth for the worst off makes room for policies that do this while still leaving some women exposed to the arbitrary power of others.

The cause of petaloid colouring in ‘Apetalous’ Flowers

1933 ◽  
Vol 49 (328) ◽  
pp. 199-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith R. Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Vascular Anatomy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Central Cylinder ◽  
Individual Member ◽  
Vascular Bundles ◽  
Marginal Vein ◽  
Surface Appearance ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right

SUMMARY The typical dichlamydeous cyclic Dicotyledon is so organised that the petaloid character of the corolla can be regarded as a function of a certain combination of conditions as regards time and space: time, in so far that the petaloid feature occurs at a definite stage in the series of developmental processes, following, as it does, upon the differentiation of a (usually) uncoloured (i.e. green) calyx; space, in that it is exhibited on the set of radii alternating with the radii of the sepals. Penetrating a little below the surface appearance, we find we can express these same relations in terms of the vascular anatomy as follows. Those floral members (again taking the typical case) which receive as midribs the first set of equidistant bundles to leave the central cylinder show sepaloid characters; those similarly receiving as midrib bundles the outgoing strands on the alternate set of radii exhibit petaloid colouring. It is found that the marginal veins of the sepals of such Dicotyledon types arise in two different ways, less frequently as true lateral veins from the midribs, more often either through the detachment from the central cylinder on the alternate radii of trunk cords which dissociate in due course into a petal midrib and twin bundles which enter the adjacent side of the sepal to right and left, respectively, and become the marginal vein of that side; or through the departure of pairs of separate strands within the limits of the corresponding alternate sectors. In typical monochlamydeous cyclic Dicotyledons radial organisation follows the same scheme as in dichlamydeous types, notwithstanding that the perianth here takes the form of a single whorl of structures. Such monochlamydeous types may be divided into two classes. In the one class only the issuing vascular bundles on the corresponding set of radii enter the perianth members. These bundles become the midribs. They may give off lateral veins at any point or may remain unbranched. In either case the individual member is homologous with the individual sepal and is typically green. In the other class each member receives not only the bundle on its own radius but also half the perianth component proper to the alternate radius on each side, either as separate strands or (in gamophyllous types) as undisjoined components of perianth-stamen trunk cords. The first-mentioned bundle becomes the midrib of the tepal, the two others become marginal veins, the one entering the tepal on the right, the other that on the left. In forms belonging to this class the tepals are typically petaloid. Each may be regarded as the counterpart of one sepal of dichlamydeous types + half the neighbouring petal on either side. This equivalence is not infrequently indicated outwardly by the considerable thickness of the tepal members as compared with that of the sepals and petals of the nearest allied dichlamydeous forms. The accompanying drawings were made by Miss D. F. M. Pertz, to whom I desire to express my grateful thanks.

33. Use or threat of force by states

2019 ◽  
pp. 717-748
Author(s):  
James Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Security Council ◽  
Individual Member ◽  
Enforcement Action ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Primary Responsibility ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
The Right ◽  
Self Defence

This chapter discusses international law governing the use or threat of force by states. The UN Security Council has primary responsibility for enforcement action to deal with breaches of the peace, threats to the peace, or acts of aggression. Individual member states have the right of individual or collective self-defence, but only ‘until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security’. However, the practice has evolved of authorizing peacekeeping operations that are contingent upon the consent of the state whose territory is the site of the operations.

scholarly journals Data Protection and the ‘Right to be Forgotten’ in Practice: A UK Perspective

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Townend
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Information Dissemination ◽  
Right To Be Forgotten ◽  
Information Law ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Right ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Selection Of

AbstractWe are in an uncertain and complex period for data protection and privacy in Europe, and especially so in the UK, following the result of the ‘Brexit’ referendum on 23 June 2016. Information law, and data protection in particular, are of increasing concern for those in the business of knowledge sharing and information dissemination: media organizations, academic institutions and libraries. The notion of the ‘right to be forgotten’ is particularly troublesome, as lawyers, archivists, historians and philosophers grapple with the theoretical and practical implications. This article presents a selection of recent European and British policy and legal developments, and discusses how they are changing social practice and citizens’ engagement with information rights.

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