Sovereignty and Complex Interdependence

Even as democratic sovereignty and globalization are increasingly seen as incompatible in theory, this chapter argues that, in some important realms, they are proving compatible in practice. As tariffs have fallen to negligible levels, trade agreements among rich countries have come to focus on reconciling regulatory differences. In many sectors, novel forms of cooperation have emerged that allow trade partners deliberately to investigate and learn from one another’s practices, eventually recognizing the equivalence of regimes that are not strictly identical—and in the process extending domestic political oversight to relations among states while often heightening domestic accountability. The emergent institutions of regulatory equivalence suggest a practical, if partial, possibility for realizing Kant’s “negative surrogate” or federation of democratic republics, growing incrementally through voluntary association, as a substitute for a global state.

Accountability in an Era of Celebrity

While great progress has been made in regards to sexual violence and accountability, Martha C. Nussbaum argues that the culture of celebrity remains a significant hurdle. In this chapter, Nussbaum traces the historical evolution and progress of the law and social norms concerning sexual violence. Identifying the obstacles and complexities that have faced those fighting for justice, she shows how working women, feminist lawyers, and recently the #MeToo movement have pushed forward the frontier of accountability. While history provides reason for hope, a recalcitrant problem remains: lack of accountability for celebrities and sports stars. Given the big money and structures of power behind the culture of celebrity, Nussbaum argues that the public must rise up and express outrage in order to bring about change.

Deliberation and University Governance

In the United States, historical oppression and discrimination have barred certain groups based on their gender, race, religion, sexuality, and socioeconomic class from full participation in higher education. While there has been a long history of protest and pressure to diversify, progress has been mixed. After a recent wave of protests at Brown University, Richard M. Locke faced the task of developing a realistic and coherent university plan for addressing concerns and demands. Implementing insights from Joshua Cohen’s work on deliberation, Locke led a process that resulted in one of the most ambitious university diversity and inclusion action plans in the country. In this chapter, Locke describes the process undertaken and seeks to generalize from the experience at Brown to argue that collective deliberation can be an effective model for how universities can address an array of complex issues faced today.

Saving Democracy from Ourselves

Though we all depend upon democracy, each of us in our public and civic roles is motivated to act in ways that deplete its sustaining conditions. In this chapter, Archon Fung proposes that one part of the solution to this problem is a thicker professional and civic ethics. The argument has three components. The first is a basic account of democratic governance that advances procedural and output legitimacy. In order to produce legitimacy, however, democracy has five sociopolitical “underwriting” conditions: commitment to process over outcome, social coherence, a spirit of compromise, responsive government, and epistemic integrity. Finally, different kinds of actors—politicians, media professionals, and citizens—have powerful self-interested motives to pollute “the commons” of democracy. Each of these role-specific discussions develops a set of ethical commitments that actors should adopt to sustain democracy instead of undermining it.

Rousseau and the Meaning of Popular Sovereignty

Contemporary democratic politics in many nations is characterized by a double anxiety concerning elite and “populist” capture of the political process. While the elitism concern points to the need to reassert popular sovereignty, the “populism” concern might be thought to contradict this. Drawing critically on Rousseau’s political theory, Stuart White develops and defends a normative conception of popular sovereignty that emphasizes the properly active and deliberative character of the popular sovereign. He sketches how this kind of popular sovereignty might be instituitionalized under contemporary conditions, and indicates how this potentially can address both concerns over elitism and populism.

Collective Reason or Individual Liberty

Can a government of the people and by the people also be a government for the people? In this chapter, Assaf Sharon questions the deliberative democratic attempt to bring democracy and liberalism into a unified normative framework. On the standard view, democracy and liberalism are distinct ideas that give rise to competing normative demands. Democracy is the institutional realization of sovereignty by the people. Liberalism is committed to the protection of individual liberties. Deliberative democrats claim that liberal commitments are entailed by their democratic ideal; to deny an individual’s liberties would be to exclude her from public decision-making. Sharon raises concerns by pointing out that public deliberation requires a widely shared democratic ethos, the creation and maintenance of which might require suppressing intolerant, non-egalitarian, and anti-democratic sensibilities. Given that such suppression stands to violate individual liberties, Sharon concludes that government by collective deliberation might be incompatible with a robust commitment to individual liberties.

Toward a Political Philosophy of Human Rights

Is there a human right to be governed democratically? And what are the considerations that might ground such a right? These are the questions raised in Joshua Cohen’s 2006 article, “Is There a Human Right to Democracy?” In this chapter, Annabelle Lever articulates her reasons for discomfort with its central claim, that while justice demands democratic government, the proper standard for human rights is something less. She explains that these reasons for discomfort are occasioned less by the thought that democracy may not be a human right than by the very significant gaps in our understanding of rights which debates about the human rights status of democracy exemplify.

Without the Loving Strains of Commitment

What will ensure that persons abide by the moral demands imposed on them by a normative theory of justice? Rawls believed that these demands, which he called “strains of commitment,” will not be betrayed when undertaken by rational agents under reasonable conditions. Christopher Lebron argues that we are not so dependable; facts such as regret, bias, and poor critical judgment are central to the human condition and threaten to undermine the fulfillment of justice. Given the complexity of our moral lives, Lebron argues that love can play an important ethical role in upholding justice. Focusing specifically on racial justice, he brings James Baldwin’s notion of philia into the conversation about strains of commitment and argues that it is a potent resource for achieving stability and a lasting justice. He concludes by discussing the role love can play in bending the arc of the moral universe increasingly toward justice.

Exploitation in International Trade

It is only in recent years that philosophers of global justice have given direct and sustained attention to the subject of international trade. An important line of division in this small but growing body of work lies between accounts of justice in trade that focus on the idea of exploitation and accounts that do not. The aim of this chapter is to critically examine this debate, in order to get clearer on the nature and role of exploitation in the morality of international trade. Helena de Bres argues that, although concerns of exploitation are well founded and urgent in this domain, any account of justice in trade that centers on those concerns will be problematic. Our duties in relation to the international trading regime are better framed in terms of broader and deeper injustices that are not, fundamentally, a matter of unfair advantage-taking.

Introduction

The introduction to this collection of essays by leading academic scholars in the field of contemporary political philosophy presents the main themes of the book as these relate to, and are inspired by, the work of Joshua Cohen. As described, the book is divided into three parts. Part I, with chapters by Archon Fung, Assaf Sharon, and Stuart White, explores ways of reinvigorating democracy. Part II, with chapters by Christopher Lebron, Richard Locke, and Martha Nussbaum, tackles ways of confronting injustice. Part III, with chapters by Helena De Bres, Charles Sabel, and Annabelle Lever, offers principles for an interdependent world. There is also a brief afterword by Joshua Cohen and a list of his publications.