Explaining Secessionism: What Do We Really Know About It?

In this thematic issue we discuss what we really know about the explanations for secessionism. Over the last few decades, an increasing number of new analyses on secessionism have appeared, regarding both its normative and its empirical dimensions. We can distinguish at least three types of research questions that categorise the current analyses of secessionism: normative, explanatory, and pragmatic. Political theorists work mainly on the moral and political right to unilaterally secede, answering questions such as “under what conditions” this right is legitimate and “who” has this moral right (Requejo & Sanjaume-Calvet, 2015; Sanjaume‐Calvet, 2020). Despite the importance of normative theories, these approaches do not provide explanations for secessionism, although most of them are built on implicit explanations of these phenomena. The field of explanatory theories of secession focuses mainly on the individual and/or aggregate preconditions and variables that correlate (or not) with the presence (or absence) of secessionist movements in specific territories. Through our general guiding question—”what do we really know about the explanations for secessionism?”—we try to disentangle the current explanations of secessionism by using empirical analyses, combining comparative politics and case studies. We bring together several different analytical perspectives, from political economy, nationalism, electoral behaviour, and institutional studies. Beyond these empirical perspectives, the issue puts forward some normative implications based on what we know and what we do not know about the existence of secessionist claims.

Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics

This chapter is one of the initial contributions to philosophy’s virtue ethics-situationism debate, referencing psychology’s person-situation debate to argue that traditional conceptions of character and virtue in philosophical moral psychology are empirically inadequate. The chapter also examines the normative implications of this argument, defending a revisionary position: ethical thought would be best served by reduced reliance on traditional notions of character. This conjunction of empirical and normative theses later became known as character skepticism.

A Framework for the Study of Persuasion

Persuasion is a vital part of politics—who wins elections and policy disputes often depends on which side can persuade more people. Given this centrality, the study of persuasion has a long history with an enormous number of theories and empirical inquiries. However, the literature is fragmented, with few generalizable findings. I unify previously disparate dimensions of this topic by presenting a framework focusing on actors (speakers and receivers), treatments (topics, content, media), outcomes (attitudes, behaviors, emotions, identities), and settings (competition, space, time, process, culture). This Generalizing Persuasion (GP) Framework organizes distinct findings and offers researchers a structure in which to situate their work. I conclude with a discussion of the normative implications of persuasion. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 25 is May 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

THE INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DISEMBODIMENT AND CHANGES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL BORDERS AS THE NORMATIVE IMPLICATIONS OF THE USE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

Основанный на концепции британского экзистенциального психолога Р. Лэйнга конструкт невоплощенности в интернете (Н. В. Коптева, А. Ю. Калугин, Л. Я. Дорфман) посредством одноименной методики сопоставляется с системообразующим последствием нормативного применения интернета – изменением психологических границ в методике их оценки (МИГ-ТС-2) Е. И. Рассказовой, В. А. Емелина, А. Ш. Тхостова. Выявлены взаимосвязи измерений невоплощенности в интернете с параметрами изменения психологических границ, которые могут свидетельствовать о том, что искусственное технологическое разделение между ментальным Я и физическим телом пользователя создает предпосылки путаницы на границе между Я и не Я. Расширение и размывание границ интернет-пользователя усиливают его виртуализацию и соответствующие ей переживания деперсонализации, утраты реальности независимо от того, оправдывает или не оправдывает технология его ожидания достижимости и контролируемости окружающих людей, объектов и информации. Мотивация предпочтения интернета, связанная с возможностями, которые открывают независимость от физического тела и измененные границы, в значительной мере совпадает. Простота и легкость развоплощенного технологического способа бытия в расширенных, размытых границах придают привлекательность сети и объясняют связь невоплощенности с интернет-зависимостью, которую можно представить как искажение нормативного технологического развоплощения в случае проблемной пользовательской активности. In the present study we compare the construct of disembodiment on the Internet (N. V. Kopteva, A.Ju. Kalugin, L.Ya. Dorfman) based on the clinical conception by the British existential psychologist R. Laing and measured by the same-name technique to the framework consequence of the normative use of the Internet - changes of the psychological borders (E. I. Rasskazova, V. A. Emelin and A. Sh. Tkhostov) assessed by MIG-TS-2 technique. We identified the relationship between measurements of disembodiment and parameters of changes of psychological borders which may indicate that artificial technological split between the mental self and the physical body of a user creates conditions for confusion on the boundary between self and non-self. Expansion and blurring of the borders of an Internet user reinforces virtualizationinduced experiences of depersonalization and loss of reality regardless of whether the technology meets their expectations of availability and controllability of other people, objects and information or doesn’t. Motivation of Internet preference due to the opportunities that independence of the physical body and changes of boundaries present mostly follows the same pattern. Simplicity and easiness of the disembodied technological way of being within the expanded blurry borders makes the Web attractive and explains the relationship between the disembodiment and Internet addiction which can be viewed as distortion of normative technological disembodiment in cases of problematic user’s activity.

Godly Diversions and Gifted Teachers: Learning Joyful Stewardship from the Birds and the Lilies with Søren Kierkegaard

In Matthew 6 and Luke 12, Christ instructs his listeners to consider the “birds of the air” and “lilies of the field.” For Martin Luther, this instruction essentially amounts to a reprimand: as human beings are naturally dominant over non-rational animals, Christ’s instruction to learn from these creatures is intended to elicit guilt and shame. Against this backdrop, I explore a fundamentally different interpretation in Søren Kierkegaard’s “Godly,” “Upbuilding,” and “Christian” discourses with normative implications for humanity’s reciprocity with other animals.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND SOCIAL COERCION

ABSTRACT Much legal and philosophical work has been devoted to discussing the importance of protecting freedom of expression from legislative curtailment by the state. That state-centric focus has meant that the ways that wider social phenomena can stifle freedom of expression have, with a notable exception, escaped sustained philosophical attention. The paper reflects on the nature of socially coercive restrictions on free expression and offers an account of how it is appropriate to respond to such forms of social coercion. First, it considers a range of social costs pertaining to expression and argues that such costs can constitute meaningful restrictions on the freedom to express. Second, it reflects on the normative implications concerning that threat to free expression and defends two related moral duties citizens have to refrain from being complicit in unjustified social coercion—a duty of expressive toleration and a duty of respect for expressive agency.

Political Equality and Political Sufficiency

The distinction between equality and sufficiency, much discussed in the distributive justice literature, is here applied to democratic theory. Overlooking this distinction can have significant normative implications, undermining some defences and criticisms of political equality, as I show by discussing the work of three prominent democratic theorists: Thomas Christiano, David Estlund, and Mark Warren. Most importantly, Christiano sometimes defends egalitarian conclusions using sufficientarian premises, or worries about inequality in situations where insufficiency is also part of the problem; inequality above the level of sufficiency is not always as troubling. Estlund makes the reverse error. He attacks rather than defends political egalitarianism, but insufficiency seems to explain some of his concerns. Nonetheless, I show that political egalitarians may need to specify a sufficientarian threshold, to avoid levelling-down objections. Democratic theorists should thus take seriously the distinction between political equality and political sufficiency. More generally, political theorists and philosophers should be aware of omitted variable bias and interaction effects due to conceptual stretching arising from under-theorised distinctions in their thought experiments.

Environmental justice in interdisciplinary perspective

Empirical research on environmental justice often simplifies normative implications, and ethical investigations in these fields often lack real-world complexity. A new working group bridges these gaps.