P

Pacifism
TRISTIN S. HASSELL
Department of Philosophy, Oakland University,
Rochester, MI, USA

Pacifism, as broadly conceived, is a commitment to the

making of peace. Pacifism is rooted in the Latin word
pacificus, which is a synthesis of pax (peace) and facere
(to make). Therefore, pacifism ought not to be confused
with passivism. Passivism is defined by inactivity. Pacifism, on the other hand, requires an activity the pursuit
of, labor toward, or institution of, peace. Yet, pacifism is
not a homogeneous concept. There are as many kinds of
pacifism as there are definitions of peace, strategies for
making it, and adherents to it.
The moral worth of peacemaking as an activity
has historical roots in religion. In the West, pacifism
originates in Christianity with Jesus claim in his Sermon
on the Mount: blessed are the peacemakers (pacifists). The
word used by Jesus in the gospel of Matthew is the Greek
word eirenopoios, which is a synthesis of eirene (peace) and
poiesis (to make). In the East, pacifism is rooted in the
Indian notion of ahisma, which translates as avoid violence. From its advent in the Vedas (a body of ancient
Indian sacred texts), the notion of ahisma (nonviolence)
has had a lasting impact on Hinduism, Buddhism, and
Jainism and the cultural locations of each. Yet, Jesus
exhortation to peacemaking and the Vedic virtue of nonviolence raise similar problems of definition. In the first
case, one needs to define the peace that must be made;
in the second case, one needs to define the violence that
must be avoided. The problem with these terms (and
indeed all words) is that they only make sense within
a specific cultural and linguistic context.
A moral commitment to nonviolence requires a
standard by which to judge what is moral, and a reason
that violence contravenes that standard. Furthermore, it is
not at all clear what constitutes violence. How can
a person avoid violence if one does not know what it is?
Indeed, the philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek

has argued that everything is violence (i.e., something

which causes injury or harm). According to Zizek, there
are three types of violence: objective, subjective, and
symbolic. Symbolic violence is the coercive and dominating power of language its internal bias. Subjective violence is the murder, rape, war, or revolution the obvious
and visible violence. Objective violence is the invisible
violence of the normal. It is the violence of the status
quo the ordinary violence that sustains division,
inequality, and weakness. While subjective violence is
a response to and an eruption out of objective violence,
it is a violence nonetheless. If Zizek is correct and everything is violence, then there are two questions that must be
asked: (1) how can a person begin to avoid it? and (2) is all
violence equal? If everything is violence then violence is
unavoidable; yet, for most people the prohibition against
violence is the prohibition against unjust violence. The
commitment to nonviolence does not exist in a vacuum.
Not only does nonviolence require a prior definition of
violence, but also a standard of moral judgment; indeed,
the exhortation to nonviolence is both affirmed and
qualified by a prior conceptuality of justice. It is precisely
for this reason that not all violence is equal. There is
a difference between a fistfight, a war, and a genocide.
A distinction that is both quantitative and qualitative.
While a fistfight, a war, and a genocide differ in degree
(i.e., how much violence is occurring), they also differ in
kind (i.e., the nature of the activity which is causing
harm). In a fistfight, one might talk about intentions and
desert; in the case of war, whether it is just or unjust; yet,
there is no viable account of a just or deserved genocide.
Similarly, there is linguistic and conceptual confusion
over what constitutes the peace that pacifists are trying to
make. There are four different notions of peace that provide varying accounts of what the possibilities and limitations of peacemaking are: peace as enslavement, peace as
exhaustion, peace as satisfaction, and peace as being. Peace
as enslavement is the peace that results from subjugation.
This kind of peace is the result of nonresistance to tyranny,
that is, pacification. Historical examples of this are the Pax
Romana (the period of peace that followed military domination by the Roman empire) and the idea of the good
slave in the antebellum United States. Similarly, peace as

Deen K. Chatterjee (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Justice, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5,

# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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Pacifism

exhaustion requires prior violent conflict. In this definition of peace, enemies have either: inflicted sufficient
harm on one another, making conflict no longer sustainable, or they have been forced to reject conflict because
its continuation would result in mutual annihilation. In
both cases, violence is abandoned but the desire (or intention) to harm the other party remains. The tentative
nature of this peace has been described as a cold war,
which is the designation given to the pseudo-peaceable
conflict that occurred between the United States and the
Soviet Union, beginning in the 1940s and lasting until the
early 1990s. Conversely, peace as satisfaction describes
a situation in which the desires of society (and the individuals in it) have been realized. Yet, violence, and indeed
war, can be justified on this approach as a means of
securing that satisfaction a position known as just policing. If the desires of all the members of society have been
satisfied, then society is assumed to be just. A person who
infringes upon the desires of others in such a society
is unjust and in need of correction (i.e., justification).
Finally, peace as being is rooted in religious accounts of
the transcendent, claiming that peace is something more
than the absence of violence it claims that peace has
a positive ground in reality. In Judaism peace is rest,
a participation in Gods Sabbath; in Buddhism peace is
the habitual process by which a person transforms their
being from struggle to tranquility; in Christianity it is
participation in the very being of a God who is infinite
peace. In each of these religions, peace is conceptualized
as the result of getting beyond the violence and limitations
of the material in order to transform the possibilities
of existence.
The variety of pacifisms mirrors the diversity of normative theories about moral judgment making: consequentialist, deontological, and virtue-based; moreover,
the varieties of pacifism and nonviolence each adopts
a peculiar definition of justice, violence, and peace, and
all are forced in to answering questions about who it is
that pacifism applies to and under what circumstances. Is
the commitment to make peace (or avoid violence)
a universal obligation, or is it something which individuals
have a choice about? Religious persons and conscientious
objectors sometimes take vows to renounce violence, yet
such promises are individually elected. Critics of vocational pacifism ask: if pacifism is correct for one should
it not be considered correct for all? Another set of questions that the pacifisms must answer has to do with applying the general concept peacemaker to concrete places
and times. Are there times when violence as a last resort is
allowable (for instance, in the preservation of ones own

life)? Who gets to decide this, and what is the standard for
making such a judgment? Are certain kinds (or degrees) of
violence off limits? Just war theorists and pacifists usually
disagree on how to answer these questions; however, one
common exception to this has to do with the use of
nuclear weapons. For many just warriors and pacifists,
nuclear weapons are too uncontrollable and indiscriminate to use, even as a last resort. Similarly, some pacifists
make exceptions when it comes to protecting the weak,
themselves, or their families. For such pacifists, defending
the weak does not create violence; it ends violence.
Consequential pacifism begins with an objective study
of individual cases. In this approach, one is concerned
with making judgments based on necessity and efficiency
rather than justice or an absolute commitment to peace.
Whether some violence is just, or whether peace is ontologically better than violence never enters the moral calculus. This kind of pacifism is not the starting place of
moral decision making, but the result of such decisions.
When one calculates the consequences of violence versus
peace in situation X, the consequential pacifist will argue
that pacifism effectively generates better outcomes than
does violence. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. are
often cited as examples of effective peacemakers who
were able to organize their followers around a commitment to nonviolence, thereby creating positive social
change. Furthermore, the consequential pacifist argues
that any short-term benefits of violence are usually
overshadowed by long-term harms. Often pacifism is
adopted as a rule for sustainable social change. Yet, it is
always conceivable to the consequential pacifist that situations will occur in which violent exceptions need to be
made in order to expedite preferred outcomes. An example of this will be the pacifist who believes that fighting
fascism in WWII was necessary, albeit distasteful. Critics
of this position ask what the criteria for judging best outcomes is, and whether objectivity in such decision making
is ever possible.
Conversely, absolute pacifism grounds itself in a
commitment to the sanctity of life and the moral status
of persons. This view, following Kant, argues that all
persons have a duty, obligation, or universal imperative
to treat all persons as ends and never simply as the means
to an end. Whereas consequential pacifism began with
a prior conception of what constituted a good outcome,
absolute pacifism begins with a prior conception of what
constitutes a person. The absolute pacifist believes that
violence has at least the potential to destroy personhood,
and so must be absolutely rejected. Absolute pacifism is
often couched in the language of natural human rights, or

Pacifism

divine command. Sometimes, distinctions are made

between kinds of violence. A maximum version of absolute pacifism would reject all coercion and violence, often
including the killing or mistreatment of animals, and
harm done to the environment. Minimal versions of absolute pacifism reject in every case only violences that irrevocably destroy human persons: murder, war, genocide, etc.
There are two kinds of virtue-based pacifism: those
that identify nonviolence as a virtue, and those that see
peacemaking as the telos (the purpose or end) toward
which all other activities are directed. Both virtue theories
are primarily concerned with the character of the persons
who act, and only secondarily, with what actions those
persons do. In the former approach, pacifism is a virtue,
an attribute that helps persons attain the goal of their
life. The telos of a knife is to cut and a good knife cuts
well; the virtue that helps the knife make this possible is
sharpness. For Buddhists, nonviolence (ahisma) is a virtue
that makes Enlightenment possible. In the latter approach,
peacemaking is not a virtue it is the telos the positive goal
toward which human life is directed. On this approach,
much time is spent uncovering what virtues are necessary
if persons are to be good peacemakers. Once the character
of a good peacemaker is uncovered, the means for training
individuals to be that kind of person needs to be developed. Alasdair MacIntyre (following Aristotle) argues that
this process is only possible within specifically defined
communities, and occurs through the telling of stories,
the sharing of practices, and the location of oneself
within the historical tradition from which ones telos
arises. For MacIntyre, people do what they do out of
habit, rather than by choice, and so a person needs to be
educated in which habits are the right kind of habits to
have. A practical example of the kind of education that
MacIntyre describes is the catechism, apprenticeship,
or boot camp that seeks to make possible new kinds of
persons the Christian, bricklayer, and soldier, respectively. Examples of the kind of virtue pacifism that asserts
peacemaking as telos are the historical (and sometimes
contemporary) Anabaptists (Amish, Hutterites, Mennonites, Bruderhof, etc.) and Quakers.
The variety of pacifisms corresponds not only to normative theories of ethics, but to normative theories of
social and global justice: retributive, restorative, and distributive. In the case of retributive justice, the pacifist
understands penalization as a strategy for peacemaking
by its inverse, deterrence. Rather than focus on justice as
measure-for-measure (lex talionis) redress, the pacifist
hopes that appropriate retribution will secure a future
social peace by deterring violence in the first place.

Of particular interest to pacifists are nonviolent forms of

retribution such as the use of economic sanctions on the
global stage, the most famous case of which is the US
embargo of Cuba as punishment for its failure to pursue
free-market capitalism and democratization. In the case of
restorative justice, the pacifist hopes to heal the wound of
a prior violence. This therapeutic approach focuses on
mediating the harms of injustice (between offenders and
victims) rather than policing an impersonal social contract. An example of restorative justice at work is South
Africas Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by
Nelson Mandela as a response to injustices of apartheid,
the purpose of which was to expose the scope and variety
of racial injustice in order to avoid historical revision, and
thereby ensure that such violences never recur. Another
area in which pacifists have contributed to conversations
about global restorative justice is in the condemning of
discrimination based upon gender, sex, sexual orientation,
and disability, as unacceptable social violences that must
be exposed and rejected in the interest of justice and
peacemaking. Distributive justice deals primarily with
the allocations of goods within society and between societies. Here the pacifist is concerned primarily with the
problems and possibilities of economic violence. The pacifist often focuses not simply on the equality of distribution, but the reason and method by which inequality
exists. As in other theories of global justice, the pacifists
interest in just distribution is not simply intranational but
international; for instance, growing skepticism over the
viability of for-profit health care in the USA (in lieu of
vast disparities in wealth) mirrors global skepticism over
whether free-market capitalism can reconcile disparities
in the quality, and availability, of health care between rich
countries and poor countries. Finally, it should be noted
that pacifists understand peacemaking not simply in
moral and personal terms, but as a crucial component to
any constitution of global justice, which rejects violence as
the ground of social relation.

Related Topics
Collective Responsibility
Gandhi, Mahatma
Global Contractarian Justice
Global Distributive Justice
Human Rights
King, Martin Luther, Jr.
Punishment
Retributive Justice
Truth Commissions
War, Just and Unjust

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Pandemics

References
Kant I (2009) Fundamental principles of the metaphysics of morals (trans:
Abbott TK). Merchant Books, New York
Macintyre A (1984) After virtue, 2nd edn. University of Notre Dame,
Southbend
Yoder JH (1992) Nevertheless: the varieties of religious pacifism (revised
and expanded edition). Herald, Waterloo
Zizek S (2008) Violence. Picador, New York

Pandemics
WAYNE B. HANEWICZ
Department of Humanities/Philosophy, Utah Valley
University, Orem, UT, USA

Overview: What Is a Pandemic and What

Are the Issues
Pandemics are, and will continue to be, global! Communication, transportation, multinational research, technology development, and multinational or multicultural
conflict assure that we will all suffer together if we do
not understand the inherent global nature of pandemics
in the twenty-first century. The very idea of a pandemic
seriously challenges our notions of sovereignty and
nationalism, the conditions for human freedom, and the
responsibilities and liberties necessary for human growth
and happiness. It is by no means assured that democratic
ideals and democratic governance itself will survive the
ordeal of a pandemic.
A pandemic (from Greek pan all + demos people)
refers to an infectious or contagious, not necessarily communicable, disease that spreads across extensive and
national geography, and whose growth curve over time
exceeds normal expectations. The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies three conditions necessary for
the existence of a pandemic:
Emergence of a disease new to a population
Agents infect humans, causing serious illness
Agents spread easily and sustainably among humans
The Black Plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, the Spanish
Flu of 19181919, and more recently HIV and the 2009 flu
pandemic are representative examples; there remains
some disagreement over the pandemic nature of cancer
or heart disease.

The Major Issues

In addition to the obvious administrative, technological,
economic, and social problems presented by pandemics,

there is a wide range of ethical issues endemic to pandemics, including:

Prevention, paternalism, and collective safety
Quarantine policy, individual freedom, and collective
protection
Information privacy, transparency, and an informed
collective
Proportionality and equity
Protecting
communities
from
unjustified
stigmatization
The allocation of limited resources is virtually unavoidable in pandemic circumstances, and it is the foundation
for most of the moral issues related to pandemics. It is
inevitable that society in general, and individual healthservice providers in particular, will have to make hard
moral decisions regarding the allocation and use of limited
resources.
An influenza pandemic, which would last from weeks
to months, will most certainly demand decisions regarding personnel and material resource allocation well
beyond the point of triage; health-service providers will
be affected in ways for which they may not have prepared. Many of them may know the general principles
of mass casualty triage but have insufficient training or
experience in applying ethical reasoning or value assumptions to clinical situations with individual people
(pandemicethics.org).
Most people are of the opinion that society has
a duty to plan for such disasters by assuring that there
is sufficient equipment, supplies, and trained personnel
to address the enormous demands that a pandemic
will present and to provide the range of services
necessary to minimize the collateral damage from a
pandemic. The demands on the all public service systems
will be enormous and, for the most part, outside the
experience of many providers. Medical first-responders
and emergency room personnel are typically practiced
in the operational and ethical judgments involved in
mass casualty plans, but many who work in healthcare policy and planning lack such familiarity and
experience.
While there may be disagreement over the classification of the recent Swine Flu as a full-blown pandemic,
the world nevertheless experienced the same shortage
of vaccine, availability of adequate health facilities and
services, disruption in distribution, worker illness, and
travel restrictions that a more classical pandemic
would present. Such circumstances fuel public panic and
civil disorder that will exacerbate a service system already
laden with unexamined moral assumptions.

Pandemics

Balancing provider loyalties to family versus provider

duties to citizens and communities is unavoidable. The two
groups that typically are assigned highest priority to
receive drugs and similar support are patients with the
greatest clinical need and providers with the greatest risk
of exposure. At the onset of an influenza pandemic, providers would face a very personal ethical decision about
their duty to serve contagious patients versus their concerns for personal safety and duties to their own families
and others for whom they have responsibility. The distinction between us and them is a boundary that can
lead to vulnerability and abandonment of those most in
need (Ameisen). How do we avoid the morphing of this
distinction into a strategy of exception that justifies
arbitrariness? In a social context where individualism,
suspicion, and defiance prevail, nothing allows us to be
assured of a unanimously shared concern for the common
good (Hirsh).
If care providers do not understand or are unclear
about the ethics behind mass casualty plans, the service
provision process may either slowdown or even breakdown. Ultimately, if a mass casualty response plan gets
caught up in ethical conflicts at the bedside, it risks losing
the very efficiency for saving lives that is the reason for
altering triage and care practices in the first place.
How do we decide who should get what, and for how
long, under conditions of limited resources? The most glaring ethical decisions would surface when considering
how to treat overwhelming numbers of patients with
scarce and diminishing medical resources. With insufficient resources, potentially life-saving treatments such as
highly specialized drugs (e.g., antiviral) or ventilators
would have to be allocated to fewer than the number of
patients who would need them.
The shortage of mechanical ventilators can be a particularly troublesome issue. The withholding or withdrawing of a ventilator usually indicates a decision with
immediate life-and-death consequences. Should older
patients be deprived of this technology in favor of younger
patients? How do we choose which critically ill patients
would be given a chance for survival on a ventilator and
which would be consigned to a high likelihood of dying in
a very short time?
Even that decision, however, does not meet the prospect of removing a patient from a ventilator perhaps
against the patients or the familys wishes merely
because he or she is not improving rapidly or benefiting
enough to justify continued use of a scarce resource. Do
we treat patients as ends in themselves or do we maximize
the odds of anothers survival whose prognosis is already
more optimistic? Which is the greater good?

The problem can be conceived broadly in terms of

distributive justice: What is the just or the most just
way to distribute scarce resources? It can also be conceived
more narrowly in terms of utilitarianism: How can I serve
the most with the fewest resources? The common good
is often perceived as a relatively weak abstraction compared to the real life and death struggles of a specific
individual. The driving goal of mass casualty response
plans is to save the largest number of lives with the
resources available. These plans are based upon utilitarian
ethics and focus on the big picture, on serving a greater
good, which may not be in the best interests of any
one person.
On the other hand, in the heat of the moment one
or another form of moral absolutism, including variations
of religious absolutism, may provide the motivation
for a particular decision regarding a particular person
at a particular moment. For example, a utilitarian ethic
foundation for mass casualty plans characteristically
allows for patients who either demand an excess of precious resources, or who will likely die regardless of the
resources devoted to their care, to be given low priority
for treatment or even set aside to die. Yet, this course of
action would be morally reprehensible to any clinician (or
patient or family) in the mindset of normal standardof-care circumstances.
How to prepare providers for such a judgment?
Where, if any, can we find room for any kind of Kantian,
or deontological, ethics? What would the Kantian moral
imperative specifically require? Loyalty? Integrity? Equity?
Transparency? Citizen Empowerment? How do we
account for global variations in cultural values when
such values are founded on different, even competing,
moral theories?
What can we expect in the short- mid-term future?
Even as I write this entry we are witnessing yet
another very powerful earthquake in Chile (just a few
months after a similar event in Haiti), and the world is
still recovering from the enormous tsunami off the
coast of Japan. These incidents will be instructive to us
as we work to provide adequate social services and
health care.
Currently, another Bird Flu virus (H5N1) shows
potential for pandemic lethality. It has moved from
Southeast Asia to Central Asia, the Middle East,
Africa, and Europe (including Great Britain). Humans in
close contact with birds have contracted the virus,
and human-to-human transmission appears already to
be possible.
Future pandemic threats may come from either unfamiliar or ill-considered sources, including:

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Pareto Optimality

Environmental disasters from accidental or illconsidered actions;

Biological (e.g., genetic engineering) research
activities;
Biological and chemical terrorism;
Natural disasters or evolutionary changes.
Specific biological threats, all of which carry their own
moral challenges, can come in the form of Swine flu, Avian
Flu, Pandemic Flu, Anthrax, Botulism, Plague, Smallpox,
Tularemia, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE),
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), West Nile Virus, and Monkeypox
Virus.
It will be interesting to see how our actions do justice
to our morals. Pandemics are a stark challenge to the
ethics in a global world!

Related Topics
Act-Consequentialism
Care Ethics
Essential Medicines, Access to
Ethical Globalization Initiative (EGI)
Global Distributive Justice
Global Public Health
Health and Health Care
Killing and Letting Die
Paternalism
Pharmaceutical Justice
Rule-Consequentialism
Utilitarianism
Virtue Ethics

References
Ameisen JC (2006) A pandemic influenza preparedness plan promoting
the values of mutual aid, responsibility and solidarity. Pandemic,
Ethics and Society No. 1, October 2006
Hirsch E (2006) Engaging ethics in view of a pandemic influenza.
Pandemics, Ethics and Society vol 1, October 2006
http://www.pandemicethics.org
Mann J (2006) Taking a stand. Pandemics, Ethics and Society No. 1,
October 2006 (Editorial)
Pandemic Influenza Ethics Initiative. US Department of Veterans Affairs,
Emergency Management Strategic Health Care Group. http://www.
ethics.va.gov/
The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) http://
www.cidrap.umn.edu/
World Health Organization (2005, Revised) WHO pandemic phase
descriptions and main actions by phase: staff discussion forums on
ethics issues in pandemic influenza preparedness. US Department of
Vet Affairs, Emergency Management Strategic Health Care Group
WHO Pre-decisional draft guidance: meeting the challenge of pandemic
influenza: ethical guidance for VHA leaders and clinicians

Pareto Optimality
WILLIAM B. T. MOCK
The John Marshall Law School, Chicago, IL, USA

Meaning and History

Pareto optimality is an analytic tool for assessing
social welfare and resource allocation developed by Italian
economist Vilfredo Pareto (18481923), a pioneer in the
study of distributional efficiency. An allocation is considered Pareto optimal if no alternative allocation could
make someone better off without making someone else
worse off.
More technically, two varieties of Pareto optimality
are recognized: strong Pareto optimality (SPO) and weak
Pareto optimality (WPO). With SPO, any change will
make at least one party worse off. With WPO, any change
will make at least one party no better off, but may not
make any party worse off. Thus, any SPO situation is also
WPO, but not every WPO situation is also SPO. In other
words, a SPO situation is optimal in the strong sense
that any change would make matters worse, at least for
someone, whereas a WPO situation is optimal in the
weaker sense that a change may fail to make the situation
better for everyone.
Free market and laissez faire advocates posit that
Pareto optimality can best be achieved by using the invisible hand, a metaphor for self-interested economic efficiency introduced by Scottish enlightenment economist
Adam Smith (17231790). According to this theory,
Pareto optimal outcomes should be achieved within
a marketplace marked by perfect competition, informational transparency, elimination of unallocated externalities, and governmental non-intervention.

Relevance to Social Justice

In a Pareto optimal allocation, particularly one that is
SPO, there are no further benefits that can be wrung out
of the system painlessly, that is, without inflicting a cost
upon someone. However, if the benefits of a proposed
reallocation exceed the concomitant costs, a Pareto superior allocation can be achieved through the use of transfer
payments (such as by taxing the reallocation winners in
order to compensate the losers), so long as net benefits
remain larger than transaction costs. Thus, the search for
Pareto optimal distributions may provide an economic
rationale for government intervention. The opportunity
for efficient redistribution applies to issues ranging from

Paris Peace Conference

placement of a landfill (where garbage providers may need

to compensate landfill neighbors) to international allocation of the benefits of trade liberalization (where nations
benefitting from lower trade barriers may need to compensate nations hurt by lower barriers).
Similarly, the search for Pareto optimal allocations
requires systems to account for market-distorting externalities, such as environmental pollution of the global
commons. For example, pollution taxes and fisheries regulation may improve market efficiency and help achieve
Pareto optimality.
Finally, there is an important distinction to be drawn
between Pareto optimality as a tool and as a value judgment. Used properly, Pareto optimality is excellent at
identifying situations in which all available value has
been captured. However, the fact that a given allocation
is Pareto optimal does not mean that it satisfies normative
conditions of fairness or justice. Thus, highly unbalanced
wealth distributions may be Pareto optimal, if there is no
way to make the poor better off without diminishing the
wealth of the rich, but this provides the starting point for
a normative debate on maximizing social and global welfare, rather than the end point.

Related Topics
Free Trade
Global Justice
Sen, Amartya

References
Chapman B (1982) Individual rights and collective rationality: some
implications for economic analysis of law. 10 Hofstra Law Review
455. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1156881
Olson M (2000) Power and prosperity: outgrowing communist and
capitalist dictatorships
Parsons T (1937) The structure of social action, Vol. 1. Marshall, Pareto,
Durkheim

Paris Peace Conference

HARRISON HIBBERT
Department of Philosophy, Purdue University, West
Lafayette, IN, USA

Following the armistice of World War I, the Paris Peace

Conference comprised a number of meetings held among

the Allied and Associated Powers, beginning in January

1919 and leading up to the Treaty of Versailles in June. The
negotiations were not only to determine what measures
should be taken against the Central Powers but also to
establish an international political structure with a view
toward peaceable global relations such that future wars
might be prevented. While many have since criticized
certain ideological and political aspects of the proceedings,
particularly in hindsight of the failure to prevent or adequately respond to circumstances leading up to World
War II, scholars also recognize the Peace Conference as
a decisive moment in world politics and likewise in the
discourse of global justice. Two points in particular bear
this out.
The first of these concerns the creation of the League
of Nations. The situation in postwar Europe presented
the leaders of the Allied and Associated Powers an opportunity to actualize the idea of an international community whose unifying doctrine would be one of mutual
recognition with respect to the self-determination of
peoples and nations. Accordingly, the foremost principles of the League were collective security for member
nations and the protection of state sovereignty, both
of which depended equally on multilateral cooperation
and communication. By emphasizing the authority of
peoples more so than that of governments, as regards
the political determination of their respective territories and affairs, the League of Nations advanced legal
and moral principles of an unprecedented transnational
order.
The second point has to do with the role afforded to
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the proceedings of the Conference. Among the rules of the conference, which were drawn up at the plenary meeting on
January 18, 1919, there was included for private groups
and individuals to present petitions which, after being
compiled by the Secretariat General, were then to be
distributed among government delegates. The influence
of NGOs at the Peace Conference was of greater account
in some domains than it was in others the International
Labour Organization (ILO), for instance, provided full
participation rights for NGO delegates but what stands
out as most noteworthy here is that international cooperation among sovereign states undertook to represent
interests of non-state actors.
M. Clemenceau, honoring the words of U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson, said of the Peace Conference in his
plenary address, this is the first occasion on which
a delegation of all civilized peoples of the world has been
seen assembled.

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Partiality

Related Topics
Democratic Nation Building
Democratic Peace Theory
Foreign Policy
Global Democracy
Global Governance
League of Nations
Liberal Internationalism
Political Autonomy

References
Charnovitz S (2003) The emergence of democratic participation in global
governance (Paris, 1919). Ind J Glob Leg Stud 10:4577
Macmillan M (2003) Paris 1919. Random House, New York

Partiality
STEPHEN NATHANSON
Department of Philosophy, Northeastern University,
Boston, MA, USA

Partiality appears to be the primary obstacle to global

justice. Advocates of global justice appeal to an impartial
perspective that emphasizes the moral equality of all
human beings. They see this equality as the basis for
a moral duty to give equal consideration to the needs
and interests of all people. This impartialist perspective,
however, flies in the face of the immense psychological
power of partiality, which is evident in the widespread
tendency to care more about some people rather than
others and the normally greater motivation to act on
behalf of people and groups we care most about rather
than people and groups who are distant strangers. This
partiality is not only psychological; it is also supported by
common moral beliefs, according to which people have
both a special right and a special duty to act on behalf of
those whom they love and care about.
Because there are many different objects of partialist
feelings, there are many different forms of partiality. Egoists are partial to themselves, while parents may be partial
to their children, racists partial to members of their own

race, and patriots and nationalists to their own country.

All forms of partiality, however, stand together in rejecting
the extreme impartiality that globalism seems to require.
Globalism, however, is not the only perspective that is
in tension with partiality. Each of the many partialist
attitudes can clash with the rest. Some of these competing
forms of partialism appear in Table 1.
Apart from the extreme poles of egoism and globalism,
all of the other partialities face criticism from two sides,
those who say they are too narrowly partialistic and those
who say they are not partialistic enough.
The importance of the contrast between partiality and
impartiality is highlighted in the title of Thomas Nagels
book Equality and Partiality. According to Nagel, we lack
morally acceptable political ideals because we do not know
how to reconcile two separate, competing perspectives
within ourselves. The first perspective is impersonal and
leads to an impartial view of all people as having equal
moral status. The second is personal and gives rise to
strongly partialist motivations to favor ourselves and people with whom we have special relationships. According to
Nagel, we cannot reject either of these perspectives, but we
do not know how to do justice to both of them.
Nagels powerful formulation of the partiality/impartiality problem is misleading in two respects. First, it
understates the great psychological power of partiality.
Nagel sees partialist and impartialist motivations as
roughly equal, competing human tendencies. Typically,
however, partiality is a stronger motivator of human
behavior. Second, Nagel overlooks the fact that partiality
can vary in both scope and intensity. The partiality of the
egoist differs from that of the patriot because the egoists
concerns are narrower in scope, focusing only on the
interests of the self. Patriots, by contrast, care for the
members of a national group, but their concern for these
people varies in intensity. Patriots are not equally partial to
all of their fellow citizens; they generally care more about
their friends and family than about fellow citizens who are
not near and dear.
These variations among types of partiality provide a
clue to resolving the problem of doing justice to the
competing visions that arise from the impersonal and
the personal perspective. What is needed is a view that
allows us to retain our personal, partialist concerns while

Partiality. Table 1
Egoism

Near-and-dear-ism

Racism and/or religionism

Patriotism/nationalism

Globalism

Partiality
to self

Partiality to loved ones,

family, and friends

Partiality toward groups based on

membership and emotional ties

Partiality toward ones state Impartial concern

or national group
for all people

Partiality

also acting in accord with the impartial recognition of the

equal worth of all.
Globalists often aim not for reconciliation but for
the rejection of partiality. This can be seen in the criticisms of patriotism made by the Russian writer and
thinker Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy strongly denounced patriotism, charging that patriotism cannot be a virtue because
it is contrary to the central values of religion and morality. Patriotism, he says, denies the equality of all people
and promotes the goal of one nation (ones own) dominating all others. Patriotic partiality is a vice and
should give way to impartial concern for all people.
This view is echoed in Peter Singers call for a global,
antinationalist ethic. Singer argues that our current,
twenty-first century problems are so intertwined that
they cannot be resolved by a system of nation-states, in
which citizens give near-exclusive loyalty to their own
nation-state and ignore the needs, interests, and claims of
people in the larger global community.
Most people, however, see themselves as having special
duties to their own country and will reject globalism if it
requires forsaking patriotic loyalty. The only thing that
patriots and globalists seem to agree on is that patriotic
loyalty and concern for global justice are incompatible
with one another.
This either/or view rests on the assumption that
patriotic partiality and globalist impartiality cannot be
reconciled. As a result, we have no choice but to opt for
one of the two attitudes displayed in Table 2.
While global universalism seeks to promote the good
of all people, patriotism, as described in Table 2, requires
exclusive concern for one country and its people. An
implication of this exclusive concern is that anything
goes in the pursuit of the nations well-being. Whether it
is in the context of war or economic competition, this form
of patriotism aims to make the nation as well off as possible
while showing no regard for other nations or people.
While this attitude is not uncommon, especially in
times of crisis, it is not the attitude of most patriotic
people. Most people recognize the humanity of people in
other countries. When there are natural disasters, both
individuals and nations often respond in a humane way,
providing assistance for others in dire need. In addition,
Partiality. Table 2
Patriotism

Global universalism

Exclusive concern for ones

own country and its citizens

Equal concern for all people

Unconstrained promotion of
the national good

Promotion of the good of

all people, not countries

many people are horrified by acts of war, such as massive

killing and raping of innocent civilians, and they do not
want their own countries to engage in these actions.
These facts show that any adequate description of
patriotism must recognize that there are different forms
of patriotism. Table 3 distinguishes between two forms of
patriotism. What Table 2 labeled patriotism is now
called extreme patriotism, and an additional form of
patriotism that incorporates some degree of impartiality
is labeled moderate patriotism.
According to the moderate patriotic view, there is
nothing wrong with partiality toward ones own country,
but how one acts on this felt partiality is morally
constrained by a recognition of the equal humanity of
others. The upshot is that patriots can be specially
concerned to promote their countrys good while acknowledging that promoting the nations interests must be
done in morally acceptable ways. They reject the extreme
patriots view that the national interest can be pursued in
a completely unconstrained manner.
Moderate patriotism seeks to solve the reconciliation
problem by rejecting both global universalisms pure
impartialism as well as the excessive partiality of extreme
patriotism. What it accepts is a form of limited or
constrained partiality that gives special status to pursuing
the good of ones own nation while showing respect and
concern for non-compatriots. It does this, for example, by
recognizing moral limits on how wars are fought and by
helping people in other countries who face natural
disasters or other forms of extreme deprivation.
Moderate patriotisms reconciliation effort faces criticism from both sides. Extreme patriots, communitarians,
and others with intense commitments to particular groups
criticize its effort to balance partiality with universality.
These critics argue that moderate views dangerously
weaken the strong commitment that people should have
to their own country. Global universalists are equally
Partiality. Table 3
Extreme
patriotism

Moderate
patriotism

Global
universalism

Exclusive concern
for ones own
country and its
citizens

Special (but not

exclusive) concern
for ones own
country and its
citizens

Equal concern
for all people

Unconstrained
promotion of the
national good

Promotion of the
national good by
morally acceptable
means

Promotion of the
good of all
people, not
countries

811

812

Partiality

critical. They claim that once moderate patriots acknowledge the equal value of all persons, they no longer have any
basis for partiality and cannot justify any special
commitment to promoting the good of their own country
rather than the good of all people.
Moderate patriots respond to critics by arguing that
all of these various views must be evaluated so as to see
which is most reasonable, and they stress that there is
no reason to be limited to a choice between the most
extreme positions. This overall strategy is strengthened
by noting that global universalism can also take extreme
and moderate forms. Table 4 shows a broader range of
choice by adding a moderate globalist option.
It illuminates several points. First, it shows that both
extreme globalism (as described here) and extreme patriotism share common flaws. While extreme patriotism fails
to recognize any moral obligations to anything but the
nation and its citizens, extreme globalism fails to recognize
any legitimacy to patriotic partiality and rejects any constraints on the pursuit of its impartialist goals. As a result,
its stated commitment to the rights of all people could
coexist with the use of brutal, unconstrained means
against people who oppose globalisms goals.
Second, the table highlights the features that moderate
patriotism and moderate globalism share. Just as moderate patriots recognize constraints on the pursuit of
national goals, moderate globalists recognize that people
who value their own communities can have a legitimate
interest in preserving them. For this reason, as they
pursue their globalist vision, moderate globalists will
not ruthlessly destroy these communities or their shared
forms of life and will accept moral constraints on the
means by which they promote their goals.
The strategy of moderating and constraining both
partialist and impartialist perspectives opens up the possibility of reconciling partiality and impartiality. In doing
so, it raises new challenges that require specifying more
concretely the implications of these moderate positions.
Responding to these challenges reveals that moderate

patriotism itself can be divided into different forms, thus

giving rise to subspecies of moderate patriotism.
All forms of moderate patriotism recognize some obligations to people who are not compatriots. By accepting
moral constraints on how their country pursues the national
interest, they recognize at least some negative duties toward
non-compatriots. These negative duties forbid the killing,
injuring, enslaving, or plundering of other peoples as means
of promoting the national interest. Thus, they rule out wars
of aggression and conquest as legitimate.
Moderate patriots may differ among themselves, however, on the subject of whether they have positive moral
duties to non-compatriots. Some moderate patriots will
recognize positive duties to people who are victims of
natural or social disasters or who suffer severe deprivation
because of weak economic development. Other moderate
patriots will accept only negative duties to other countries
and their people. In their view, they have a negative duty
not to harm non-compatriots, but they have no positive
duty to provide aid or assistance to them.
Moderate patriots may also disagree about the
strength of these duties. Some moderate patriots might
believe that these duties apply only when compliance
requires little or no sacrifice. Others may think that duties
to non-compatriots continue to apply even when compliance requires a high degree of sacrifice.
The differences between these views can be seen by
applying them to environmental issues, global poverty,
and war. Moderate patriots who hold the little or no
sacrifice view will not accept environmental policies
that do any harm to their country economically, even if
rejecting these policies will cause serious harm to people in
other countries. They will also favor global economic
assistance only if it is at a very low cost for their country,
and they will reject compliance with humanitarian laws of
war if compliance makes it more difficult for their country
to achieve victory in a war.
Moderate patriots who accept that acting morally
toward non-compatriots may come at a high price will

Partiality. Table 4
Extreme patriotism

Moderate patriotism

Moderate globalism

Extreme globalism

Priorities

Exclusive concern for ones Higher priority for

own country and its
ones own country;
people
genuine but lesser
concern for others

Equal concern for all people but

recognition of legitimate
partiality for ones own country
and its citizens

Equal concern for all people

and hostility to any type of
partiality toward ones own
nation and its citizens

Constraints on pursuit
of goals

No moral constraints on
the pursuit of national
goals

Morally constrained pursuit of

globalist goals

No moral constraints on the

pursuit of globalist goals

Morally constrained
pursuit of national
goals

Partiality

favor compliance with global duties even if requires

significant economic sacrifices or increases the chances
of being defeated in a war. They might even believe that
their country should lose a war if the only way to win
requires large-scale attacks against enemy civilians or
other serious violations of human rights.
These examples make clear that distinguishing between
extreme and moderate views is only the first step toward
developing a full ethic of limited partiality. Different people
will want to balance the demands of partiality and impartiality in different ways, even if they agree that the extreme
partialist and impartialist views are defective.
This gives rise to a question about the method that
might be used to determine the strength of the duties that
moderate patriots have to non-compatriots. Is there a way
to tell which of these different moderate views is correct?
How can progress be made toward greater specificity in
understanding of the ethic of moderate patriotism and
other forms of partiality that aim to operate in morally
legitimate ways?
One strategy for determining the limits of moderate
patriotic partiality is to step backward and to ask why
patriotic partiality is justified at all. One answer starts by
accepting an impartialist moral perspective that recognizes the equal worth of all people. It then claims that it
is in the interests of all people to have various forms of
partiality recognized and permitted. For example, virtually everyone would agree that human life would be much
less good if partiality toward friends and family were
forbidden. These forms of partiality are morally permitted
because of their widespread benefits to all people.
Can a similar claim be made about countries? Are people
generally better off if partiality toward national groups is
permissible? This question could be approached from
a variety of philosophical perspectives. Social contract theorists might ask whether rational people selecting rules of
behavior would support the permissibility of acting partially toward ones own country. Kantians might ask what
type of patriotism is consistent with viewing all people as
members of a kingdom of ends. Rights theorists might ask
what rights people have to act on behalf of groups they care
about, and rule utilitarians could ask whether recognizing
a moral code that allows people to be specially concerned
about their own countries would lead to greater overall
good for everyone. Each of these approaches would begin
with impartial moral standards in order to determine
whether rules that justify partiality are justified.
A description of a rule utilitarian approach will illustrate how such methods might be pursued. Utilitarians
begin with an impartial commitment to giving equal
weight to the interests of all people and to achieving the

greatest overall good for people, whatever nation they

might belong to. They then argue that accepting moderate
patriotic principles is a reasonable way to implement this
globalist ideal because these principles create an efficient
division of labor approach. This strategy rests on the
idea that more good can be done overall if people focus on
smaller units rather than trying to benefit all of humanity.
One reason to follow the slogan think globally, act
locally is that peoples knowledge of societies in distant
places with different customs and values is limited. By
contrast, people can deal more effectively with problems
that are closer to home because they understand them
better. Second, even if everyone were purely benevolent,
multiple attempts to benefit everyone are likely to conflict
with one another. As a result, benevolent, would-be
helpers will get in each others way.
Robert Goodin calls this approach the assigned
responsibility model for justifying patriotic duties. Patriotic duties are justified not because ones own countrymen are more important or superior to others but rather
because global goals can best be achieved by dividing the
task. Partiality, according to this view, is justified because
the division of labor is an effective means of achieving
a general goal.
This rule utilitarian argument provides both a justification for patriotism as well as a criterion for setting limits
on the extent of permissible partiality. It rules out, for
example, the partiality of extreme patriotism because that
form pursues the national interest at the expense of others.
More concretely, this approach rules out the extreme
partialist view that alls fair in love and war. Instead, it
will support rules of war that permit countries to defend
themselves while prohibiting wars for unjust causes and the
use of excessively destructive means of fighting.
The same point seems to follow about global economic concerns. While countries may promote their
own economic well-being, they may not be indifferent to
the impact of their economic policies on others. A form of
patriotism that is justified by a rule utilitarian argument
will not permit wealthy nations to be indifferent to the
plight of poor ones because the goal of the division of
labor is to achieve overall well-being. That goal will not be
achieved by unconstrained pursuit of the national interest,
whether in the conduct of war or the pursuit of economic
prosperity. Nor will it be achieved by a morality that
frees countries from moral duties whenever compliance
results in costs to a countrys well-being. As with personal
morality, the morality of nations sometimes will require
that sacrifices be made.
This argument sketch illustrates how one could begin
with a global, impartial goal of maximizing the well-being

813

814

Paternalism

of all people, move then to a justification for partialist

attitudes and institutions as the most effective way of
achieving this goal, and then derive the positive and negative duties to other peoples and nations that individual
countries and their citizens have. If this strategy succeeds,
it would solve the problem of determining the limits of
patriotic partiality and would reconcile partialist duties
with the globalists impartial concern for all.
Finally, this reconciling approach clarifies the politics
of partiality and impartiality. The simplest translation of
globalist attitudes into reality would be some type of world
government. Yet, the prospect of such a government is
deeply threatening to many people. It raises the specter
of a distant, all-powerful government over which individuals and current political groups have little control.
Reasonable globalists who support the idea of a world
government will see the path toward this goal as a gradual
process, one that involves the creation of some global
institutions that existing states will join or recognize. An
institution like the International Criminal Court, for
example, fits with global ideals because it makes it possible
to enforce restrictions on the powers of national officials
to violate universal human rights.
Since moderate patriots recognize moral limits on the
means by which countries may promote their interests,
they too can support international laws that prohibit
human rights violations and international courts that
can enforce these laws fairly. In fact, there are many policy
initiatives that globalists favor (e.g., efforts to combat
global poverty, limit the dire effects of war, or prevent
damage to the environment) that can be supported by
moderate patriots. In this way, the reconciliation project
can succeed both in theory and in practice.
If globalists seek to abolish states or prohibit giving
any priority to ones own nation, then moderate patriots
will oppose them. But many of the policies and institutional reforms that globalist promote do not require the
abolition of states or the prohibition of national loyalties.
This makes it possible for globalists and moderate patriots
to be political allies who are reconciled in practice even if
they differ in theory.

Related Topics
Compatriot Partiality Thesis
Cosmopolitan Justice
Duties to Non-Compatriots
Global Egalitarianism
Global Impartiality Thesis
Global Justice
Liberal Nationalism
Nationalism

Patriotism
Rule-Consequentialism
Singer, Peter

References
Brock G, Brighouse H (eds) (2005) The political philosophy of cosmopolitanism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Goodin R (1988) What is so special about our countrymen? Ethics
98:663686
MacIntyre A (1984) Is patriotism a virtue? In: Primoratz I (ed) Patriotism.
Humanity Books, Buffalo
Nagel T (1991) Equality and partiality. Oxford University Press, New York
Nathanson S (1993) Patriotism, morality and peace. Rowman &
Littlefield, Lanham
Nussbaum M (1996) For the love of country. Beacon, Boston
Primoratz I (ed) (2002) Patriotism. Humanity Books, Buffalo
Scheffler S (2001) Boundaries and allegiances. Oxford University Press,
New York
Singer P (2002) One world. Yale University Press, New Haven
Tamir Y (1993) Liberal nationalism. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Tolstoy L (1968) On patriotism. In: Tolstoys writings on nonviolence and
civil disobedience. New American Library, New York

Paternalism
JUDITH WAGNER DECEW
Department of Philosophy, Clark University, Worcester,
MA, USA

Paternalism is generally defined as a person or group, or

most commonly a government, restricting ones individual liberty for ones own good, or to prevent one from
harming oneself. This liberty-limiting principle is
contrasted with John Stuart Mills famous Harm Principle,
that a government is only justified in interfering with
individual liberty to prevent harm to others. Despite multiple ambiguities associated with Mills harm principle,
most endorse it in some form or another, whereas paternalism is a far more controversial principle.
John Stuart Mill famously rejects paternalism, except
in the case of children, minors, or those not yet with the
maturity of their faculties. In the first chapter of his book
On Liberty (1859), Mill explicitly states his harm principle
and then defends his anti-paternalistic stance on these
following reasons:
1.

2.

The only purpose for which power can be exercised

over a person against his or her will is to prevent harm
to others.
To exercise power over an adult person in a civilized
community for the sake of the persons own good,
however understood, is not justified.

Paternalism

3.

One can be persuaded or nudged for doing what is

good for that person, but one cannot rightfully be
compelled to do it against ones will.

Few have agreed with Mill that paternalism for adults

is always unacceptable. H. L. A. Hart and others have
endorsed some paternalism, although most concur it cannot be boundless. There are plenty of laws in the USA that
are justified by paternalistic reasoning, although many
appear to have additional justifications such as to prevent harm to others and to prevent offense to others and
thus it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the most
central arguments for such laws. Examples of laws that
seem to have primarily paternalistic justifications include
laws requiring the use of seat belts and motorcycle helmets, laws restricting suicide, laws requiring prescriptions
for medications, laws forbidding swimming at public
beaches when no lifeguards are on duty, among others.
Thus, most commentators agree that unrestricted
paternalism gives governments far too much authority
over individual decisions and liberty, and few would
endorse restricting all risky behavior such as rock
climbing, hang gliding, racing sports cars, and more,
to protect one from harming oneself. The challenge,
therefore, is to find a principle or set of principles for
determining when paternalism by government can be
defended and when it is unnecessary. In his wellknown essay, Paternalism (1971), Gerald Dworkin has
presented a thoughtful and provocative set of conditions
for distinguishing those cases when paternalism is justified, a proposal meant to strike a middle ground between
total rejection of paternalism and unrestricted paternalistic legislation that allows governments excessive power
over individuals.
Dworkins proposal is that paternalism can be justified
in three sorts of cases: (1) when decisions one is making
are such that they will produce irreversible harm, such
as decisions to take drugs that are physically or psychologically addictive and thus destructive of ones mental
and physical capacities; (2) when ones decisions are
made under extreme psychological and sociological pressure, such as decisions to commit suicide that are often
made when an individual is not thinking clearly and
calmly about the nature of the decision; and (3) when
decisions involve dangers not sufficiently understood or
appreciated by the decision-maker, such as smoking cigarettes when one is not adequately informed of the carcinogenic dangers, or when one may know the facts but
either discounts them or is unable to resist in spite of
them. Dworkins defense of these conditions for justifying
paternalism is persuasive: he believes paternalism is

compelling in cases where it promotes an individuals

ability to rationally carry out his or her decisions. The
underlying idea, then, is to restrict individual liberty
in decision-making only in cases where one is not in
a fully rational state, in order to allow one to return to
being a fully autonomous decision-maker with the freedom to make ones own decisions without governmental
interference.
While Dworkins defense for his conditions for
allowing paternalism is generally appealing, his descriptions of the three types of cases when paternalism is
justified are ultimately both vague and malleable. What
counts as irreversible harm, and when is a decision dangerous enough to be destructive of ones capacities? Who
decides when an individual is not thinking clearly and
calmly enough about his or her decisions? How does one
draw the line between decisions made when one fully
comprehends and appreciates the dangers, and decisions
where there is inadequate understanding? Nevertheless, it
seems Dworkins general defense is sensible and his point
is correct, namely that paternalism seems justified only
when used to restore an individual to a state where the
individual can be fully able to be a rational and autonomous decision-maker.
The question then arises, how can this theory be
applied globally? When is a government justified in
exercising paternalism beyond its own borders? If international paternalism can be justified, then to what extent
is the practice acceptable? As in the case of governmental
power over its own citizens, however, these questions are
difficult to answer because it is so hard to determine when
paternalism is the only, or the foundational, basis for
global paternalistic intervention. Some cases of international intervention are reasonably clear. Relief efforts in
Haiti by the USA and other countries are largely justified
on grounds of benevolence rather than on the basis of
doing what is best for the Haitian people even if the latter
paternalistic argument is also true.
Other global intervention is more complicated, however. It is common to hear that the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan are justified because the reason for warfare
is for the good of the Iraqi and Afghan people, to help
them restore stability in their countries by assisting them
in setting up their own governments. Yet it is clear that
these wars are also justified by national security interests,
and that the US government believes more stability in the
regions will lead, for example, to better control over terrorist activities aimed at the USA.
If Dworkins guidelines for justified paternalism are
applied globally, then it seems international paternalistic
intervention is indeed justified when it is used to assist

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Patriarchy

other countries to develop their own selected government

and governing institutions so that they can make their
own autonomous decisions in global affairs. But the problem remains whether it is possible to determine which
cases of intervention satisfy that criterion. The rhetoric
surrounding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan makes it
clear that it is not uncommon for paternalistic arguments
to be given as lip service for global intervention. In other
words, claims to be doing what will be in the best interests
of another country are offered repeatedly, when in fact
the real justifications for the global intervention are
national security or the desire for more global power for
the intervening nation.

Related Topics
Agency, Individual
Agent-Centered Prerogative
Free Trade
Global Resource Distribution
Humanitarian Military Intervention
Imperialism
Political Autonomy
Self-Determination
Third World Resistance

References
Dworkin G (1971) Paternalism. In: Wasserstrom R (ed) Morality and the
law. Wadsworth, Belmont, pp 107126
Dworkin G (2009) Paternalism. In: Zalta EN (ed) The Stanford
encyclopedia of philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/
paternalism/
Mill JS (1859) On liberty. Parker and Son, London
Pope TM (2004) Counting the dragons teeth and claws: the definition of
hard paternalism. Georgia State Univ Law Rev 20:659722
Suber P (1999) Paternalism. In: Gray CB (ed) Philosophy of law: an
encyclopedia, vol II. Garland, New York, pp 632635

Patriarchy
GORDON A. BABST
Department of Political Science, Wilkinson College,
Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA

Many say that there is really only one religion, and it is

patriarchy, because everywhere womens status in all
spheres is less than mens. Patriarchy has evolved from
being a term of primarily religious significance, to one
denoting an overarching social system that privileges one
group, men, and their interests, at the expense of another

group, women, and their interests. One commonality

across connotations is that patriarchy refers to a form of
rule by a privileged person or a group over others who are
subordinate to that one person or group.
Originally, patriarchy referred to the rule of fathers,
the ancient patriarchs in the Abrahamic religious traditions. While the biblical Adam and his rule is sometimes
understood to be the original patriarchy, more commonly
the age of the patriarchs refers to the three patriarchs of
ancient Judaism, namely, Abraham, his son Isaac, and
Jacob, Isaacs son, also named Israel, and from whom the
12 tribes of Israel descended. The biblical tradition holds,
or has been interpreted to hold that women stand in
a different relation to God, who is widely referred to as
God the Father, for reason of their responsibility for the
fall of man owing to original sin, a concept often associated with female sexuality and the weakness of men before
it. Hence, the rule of men over women and the privileging
of the former both in the household and in the public
arena has been grounded in religious teaching, which has
in turn suggested the impossibility of human refutation
and the irreverence of those who would alter a divinely
ordained social structure. Women are to be loving and
obedient wives to their husbands, good and doting
mothers to their children, their proper sphere being the
realm of the family. And, women are to instill the same
understanding and respectfulness in their daughters. The
nontraditional reading of this history suggests that men
have always been envious of the mysterious and awesome
power of womens reproductive capacity, and have sought
to control it and harness it for their own benefit.
Patriarchy in modern usage has come to indicate not
only an unjust social system because of its gender hierarchy,
but also the institutions and structures that maintain that
system. Generally, the important and fairly universal institutions of marriage, where husbands are privileged over
their wives; the military, which historically has excluded
women from service altogether and so from citizenship or
political equality for reason of not being able to serve; and
the priesthood, which until recently has been an all-male
bastion reflecting religious teachings have all supported the
diminution of women before men. Patriarchy, then, is
transcultural and reasoning in the light of traditional social
structures is bound to be tainted by it, or so feminist
scholars and others continue to argue.
In her groundbreaking work The Sexual Contract the
political theorist Carole Pateman argued that even in
modern advanced liberal democracies, the political structure at its core mirrors the family structure, despite social
contract liberalisms apparent emphasis on equality, and
that for this to change all patriarchal relations will need to

Patriotism

be transformed into free relations. That a person on

account of being female is more likely to be subject to
oppression, no matter how well grounded in culture
its justifications may be, is predictably true in a way that
the same statement about men cannot plausibly be
entertained. It is often said that womens work is either
unpaid, or less well paid than mens, and that where
scarcity obtains, women are the last to eat, and the least
empowered to improve their situation.

Related Topics
Equality
Feminist Ethics
Gender Justice

References
Jonasdottir A, Brysono V, Jones K (eds) (2010) Sexuality, gender and power:
intersectional and transnational perspectives. Routledge, London
Lerner L (1987) The creation of patriarchy. Oxford University Press,
New York
Millett K (1970) Sexual politics. Doubleday, New York
Pateman C (1988) The sexual contract. Stanford University Press,
Stanford

Patriotism
KOSTAS KOUKOUZELIS
Department of Philosophy & Social Studies, University of
Crete, Rethymno, Crete, Greece

Patriotism defined as love for ones own country is

mainly characterized by psychological traits of affection,
a sense of identification, and special concern for the wellbeing of patria. It can involve pride in or endorsement of
ones own countrys virtues, although it can just mean
affection just because it is ones own country. Patriotism
can be an important component of ones sense of identity,
and some even think that it is the only realistic scope of
morality itself, undermining the possibility of any kind of
universal or global community and ethics. Common sense
opposes patriotic partiality that may come in conflict
with moral or cosmopolitan impartiality, but as Alasdair
MacIntyre observed, it is not easy to say, especially in our
times of globalization, whether patriotism is indeed a
vice or a virtue. However, patriotism has to be clearly
distinguished from nationalism, although in most cases
the two have been confused and used interchangeably.
Nationalism is usually connected to common ancestry,

race, ethnicity, or culture and strives to take a state

form. It can be aggressive, but it need not be so. On the
other hand, patriotism as love for ones own country
does not by necessity imply, in the above mentioned
sense, homogeneity of any sort, and it is the case that
sometimes a nation can lack a country of its own (e.g.,
Israel for many years).
Patriotism had and still continues to undoubtedly
have a number of fierce critics who object to it as being
either conceptually confused or simply deeply immoral.
People that think patriotism is conceptually confused
argue that it is simply a constructed abstraction or
a figment of imagination, which represents no real ties
between compatriots. Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian
novelist, thought that patriotism is immoral, exactly
because many times it calls for promoting ones own
countrys interests at the expense of all other countries,
even if this would harm them in the long run. More
recently, there have been a number of writers who share
the same attitude equating patriotic favoritism to a kind
of racism (Gomberg) considerations regarding racism
against black people can also be applied here. If people
favor, for example, compatriots in employment at the
expense of immigrants who enter the country because
of international inequality, this discriminates against
them in a morally objectionable way. Nevertheless, the
essential question of how patriotism and moral universalism (or cosmopolitan impartiality) are related, if at all,
is primarily a question concerning the right conception
of patriotism itself and on the related questions of
global justice.
Let us now turn to certain conceptions of patriotism
in order to clarify their connection to global justice,
given that in moral philosophy the debate concerns the
standing of patriotism as a case of reconciling universal
moral claims with particular attachments.
Patriotism can be distinguished into its thick or
communitarian and thin or more liberal versions. In its
extreme communitarian version, patriotism attaches to
a kind of political realism that rejects morality in relations
among countries in favor of mere patriotic self-interest
this having, arguably, its roots in Thucydides and Hobbes.
In its less extreme, albeit robust version, MacIntyre argues
that patriotism is not to be contrasted with morality
because it is the very basis of morality itself, in the sense
that one can be a moral agent only within a certain community. According to him, therefore, justice is fundamentally parochial, not global. On the thin or more liberal
versions of patriotism, though people may defend special
ties to their own country and to their compatriots, they
need not do so on an exclusive basis. Morality allows for

817

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Patriotism

particular attachments and obligations by distinguishing

between different levels. There is a legitimate level of
partiality involved in our relationship with compatriots
just as there is legitimate partiality in our relationships
with family and friends, and we have impartial reasons for
that. Yet, this legitimate partiality to our compatriots
leaves room for moral concerns for the outsiders. Liberal
patriotism, for example, does not require the patriot to
promote his or her countrys interests under any circumstances. In relation to just war theory, liberal patriotism
does not create the obligation for one to fight for ones
country unless the war is just.
Scholars offer a number of reasons favoring patriotic
bias over global impartiality. First, although one may have
equal concern for all humanity, certain considerations of
efficiency speak in favor of compatriotic bias. For instance,
people have a better understanding of the needs of their
fellow citizens and aid can be provided more easily. Second, a cooperative system of mutual benefit forms the
ground of a patriotic bias based on reciprocity. Third,
a comprehensive morality of respect produces a strong
duty for compatriots because it dictates an interest in
creating a framework of social trust. Fourth, special duties
to compatriots are associative duties among equals that
share responsibility in enacting coercive laws. Undue
inequality on the domestic front interferes with common
bonds among citizens, curtailing the effectiveness of collective authority that imposes mutually coercive laws on
fellow citizens, something that does not exist in global
voluntary associations.
Immanuel Kant defends a certain version of cosmopolitan patriotism, something that appeals to contemporary thinkers such as Anthony Appiah. In making an effort
to reconcile patriotic duties to moral cosmopolitanism,
Kant argues that there is no inherent conflict between the
two because:
1. Patriotic duties have to yield to our moral cosmopolitan duties. For example, one should not procure
money for paying taxes by stealing, because that
would be universally unjust.
2. If people fulfill their civic patriotic duties to their
own just republic, they are likely to further the cause
of a league of states and promote perpetual peace.
3. Finally, promoting justice in ones own republic, one
can strive to make it more just in its dealings with
other states.
In the context of our post-national era, and under
pressures from multiculturalism and immigration flows
that de facto dismantle homogeneity, patriotism has to
reinvent itself in order to survive. Such an effort includes

constitutional patriotism, most notably used by Habermas

lately, but also related to the republican tradition (Viroli),
which sees in the constitution the common liberty that
is made possible, enjoyed, and preserved by peoples
union. Constitutional patriotism became especially relevant in the discussions on the European political integration project.
According to Charles Taylor, patriotism is especially
needed nowadays in order to cure the alleged destructiveness of the atomistic thinness that a certain strand of
liberal cosmopolitanism brings to any form of political
community. According to him, patriotism provides a
unity indispensable for creating solidarity among people
and providing motivation to participate in and promote
the common good.

Related Topics
Associative Duties
Compatriot Partiality Thesis
Nationalism
Partiality
Special Obligations

References
Appiah A (1996) Cosmopolitan patriots. In: Nussbaum M et al. (1996)
For love of country: debating the limits of patriotism, ed. Cohen J.
Beacon Press, Boston
Bader V (2005) Reasonable impartiality and priority for compatriots.
A criticism of liberal nationalisms main flaws. Ethical Theory
Moral Pract 8:83103
Gomberg P (1990) Patriotism is like racism. Ethics 101:144150
Goodin R (1988) What is so special about our fellow countrymen? Ethics
98:663687
Kleingeld P (2003) Kants cosmopolitan patriotism. Kant Stud
94:299316
Maclntyre A (1984) Is patriotism a virtue? The Lindley lectures, University of Kansas. In: Beiner R (ed) (1995) Theorizing citizenship.
SUNY, Albany, pp 209228
Miller R (1998) Cosmopolitan respect and patriotic concern. Philos
Public Aff 27(3):202224, Reprinted in Brock G, Brighouse H (eds)
The political philosophy of cosmopolitanism. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, pp 127147
Nathanson S (1993) Patriotism, morality and peace. Rowman &
Littlefield, Lanham
Nussbaum M et al (1996) For love of country: debating the limits of
patriotism, ed. Cohen J. Beacon, Boston
Primoratz I (2009) Patriotism. In: Zalta EN (ed) The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/patriotism
Taylor C (1996) Why democracy needs patriotism. In: Cohen J (ed) For
love of country. Beacon, Boston
Tolstoy L (1987) On patriotism and patriotism or peace? in his writings
on civil disobedience and nonviolence. New Society, Philadelphia,
pp 51123, 137147
Viroli M (1995) For love of country: an essay on patriotism and nationalism. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Pax Natura Foundation

Pax Natura Foundation

RANDALL TOLPINRUD
Pax Natura Foundation, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

While wars over the centuries among nations have ravaged the human population, an undeclared war has also
been raging against the natural world. This conflict,
according to the Pax Natura Foundation, while complex
and difficult to define, in many ways now appears to
constitute a potentially far more serious threat to the
long-term survival of life on Earth as we know it. Reports
of mass destruction continue to come from ecologists,
biologists, meteorologists, and concerned individuals
from many disciplines. On the front lines of this conflict
are the decline of clean air and water, the relentless
restructuring of the atmosphere and climate, the clearing
of the rainforests, the destruction of the coral reefs, the
random restructure of natural gene pools, and a host of
other violent acts against nature.
The Pax Natura Foundation promotes peace with
nature by empowering local communities to preserve
the environment while stimulating local economic
growth. Pax Natura achieves this by directing capital
from industrialized nations to developing nations in an
effort to promote sustainable development by rewarding
good stewardship of tropical rain forest lands. The Foundation espouses a new bill of rights for the environment by
acknowledging the sovereignty of natural law governing
living systems and our direct dependence upon these
systems. Rather than building walls for conservation at
the expense of the poor in the developing world, the
Foundation rewards indigenous peoples and local communities for the protection of natural systems so important to the preservation of life.
Ecology suggests that human rights are predicated
upon the rights of all living systems and until such recognition is institutionalized in human awareness, the survival of species diversity, including the human, will
remain in doubt. Pax Natura holds that the right to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is not an ideal in the
abstract. Fairness, as a definition of global justice, presupposes sustainability. The rights of future generations
to water, food, and shelter, if compromised by the present
generations destruction of these living systems, constitute an infringement and violation of basic human rights.
But above and beyond the rights of human beings, the
rights of all species, foundational to life itself, must be
brought into the debate.

The collective congruency and history of public life

within the human family is inadequate as a model for any
comprehensive theory of global justice. Climate change
and mass species extinction demand a reassessment of this
notion. The ecological crisis shows that global justice or
fairness cannot be limited to political and cultural boundaries between peoples and nations. There are no boundaries in the natural world. The Pax Natura example thus
suggests that global environmental justice is the new universal and philosophical moral imperative.
Sustainability, as a derivative of global environmental
justice, has little to do with the natural resource asset base
of the planet preserved for future generations. Sustainability is the goal of development expressed within and
through natural laws. Natural law is the system of nature,
the universal law of causality. Pax Natura argues that
human conduct in the pursuit of any type of sustainability
only becomes possible when derived from the intrinsic
rationality of the universe as a whole and not in opposition to it. What is called the green development revolution, supported by Pax Natura, is a manifestation of
this principle.
The debate on holism versus reductionism in modern
physical theory is illustrative of the challenges facing this
new theory of justice. The discovery of ecology suggests
that the system of nature is non-reductive and that part
and whole are mutually inclusive in the natural world. The
wolf in Yellowstone, the flying bats in American Samoa,
the honeybee, or ubiquitous leaf-cutter ants in the tropics,
each play pivotal roles in the web of life according
to biologists. The Pax Natura theory of global justice
tacitly recognizes the tapestry of this existence and the
inherent rights and necessity of every stitch in its making
and continuation. Peace with nature is thus an ideal
founded upon the growing scientific consensus of the
interdependence of all living systems.
Applying this theory of justice to perhaps one of the
most challenging issues of our time, Pax Natura, in conjunction with the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC), recognizes and has quantified the environmental services that standing tropical
forests provide to the planet in regulating greenhouse
gas emissions, the principal driver of climate change. As
deforestation primarily in the tropics accounts for nearly
20% of all global-warming emissions, stopping their
destruction is essential to prevent further rising temperatures. By rewarding small to medium size landowners in
tropical countries for the environmental services their
forests provide to the planet as a whole, Pax Natura is
acknowledging our mutual interdependence and demonstrating a new level of international cooperation in solving

819

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Peace Education

this challenge. Peace with nature, as this model suggests, is

now an imperative to insure not only our own survival but
the survival of countless life forms on planet Earth.

Related Topics
Basic Rights
Biodiversity
Crimes Against Peace
Development Ethics
Environmental Justice
Environmental Sustainability
Foreign Policy
Global Citizenship
Global Justice
Indigenous Peoples
World Bank (WB)

References
Caufield C (1991) In the rainforest. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
FONAFIFO: Over a Decade of Action (2005) A Costa Rican national
forestry financing fund INAOTERRA Editores, S.A.
Goodall J, Berman P (1999) Reason for hope: a spiritual journey. Soko,
Eastbourne
Hoy T, Rawls concept of justice as political: a defense against critics,
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Poli/PoliHoy.htm.
Newman A (2002) Tropical rainforest: our most valuable and endangered
habitat with a blueprint for its survival into the third millennium.
Checkmark Books, New York
Tattenbach F (2009) Programmatic project for the payment for environmental services mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions through
avoided deforestation of tropical rainforests on privately owned
lands in high conservation value areas of Costa Rica, central volcanic
range conservation area, Costa Rica. FUNDECOR, Costa Rica
Wilson EO (1998) Consilience, the unity of knowledge. Alfred A. Knopf,
New York

Peace Education
MARY LEE MORRISON
Pax Educare, Inc., Central Connecticut State University,
Hartford, CT, USA

Peace education is the pedagogical effort to create a more

peaceful and sustainable world. Peace education is a direct
corollary of education, defined as the processes involved in
the transfer of knowledge, values and social norms within
a culture, not limited to formal schooling. Peace education
embodies both processes and philosophical principles.
The philosophical principles include nonviolence, respect

for life and compassion in the face of those with whom we

disagree, dialogue, cooperation, problem solving, and the
effective use of democratic principles to maximize individual and collective freedom. The process involves teaching the skills, attitudes, and values associated with a world
where caring, affirmation, and enough for all are goals.
Other skills include anger management, listening and
dialogue, solving disagreements without resorting to violence, and transforming prejudice.
Peace in this context is more than the absence of
violence. Peace, in its most positive aspects, embraces the
idea of justice for all, environmental sustainability, and the
eradication of those structure that are at the root of insecurity, including poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and lack
of access to the basic necessities for life, including clean
water and housing. In the contemporary world, understandings of peace vary from country to country and
within different cultural contexts. Many people think of
peace as tranquility or as the absence of war. But peace
is a positive concept that implies much more than the
absence of war. As a necessary condition for human survival, peace implies that human beings resolve conflicts
without using force and it represents the ideal in evolution
of human interactions. Peace has both negative and positive connotations. In its negative sense (this does not
mean that peace itself is negative), it means the stopping of
war and violence. But in its positive and holistic sense,
peace implies standards of justice and equity, living in
balance with nature and providing meaningful citizen
participation in the structures of government and society.
It means enough for everybody and includes notions of
caring, concern and compassion, as well as reconciliation
and forgiveness. Peace begins within the individual and
extends outward.
The word education comes from the Latin word
educare, to lead out. Peace education seeks to draw out
from individuals those instincts to live more peacefully
with others. This conceptual basis implies working peacefully from within, transforming ourselves and working to
transform our outer world. Peace educators believe that
each of us carry the seeds of peace within us. We hold our
own inner kernel of knowledge seeking, which can be
called our inner teacher. When our inner teacher connects with the inner teacher of another or others, we have
the basis for dialogic encounter that can change each of us
for the better. Each of us carries the potential for making
social change. We need our inner potential tapped and
affirmed to do so. Peace education affirms the highest
potential of each of us. Thus, it is relational, based and
rooted in the building of learning communities. Peace

Peace Education

education seeks to build upon the philosophy of nonviolence to help individuals understand the role that violence
plays in our lives, so ubiquitous in todays world.
Peace educators believe that the way we teach is as
important as what we teach. This includes the idea of
educating for peace, not just education about peace. This
notion implies that action is involved, as well as transformation and social change. The kind of education that
builds peace is that which affirms each of us and our
capacity both to learn and to make changes. Change
begins, in the processes of education, by changing the
underlying social structures and modes of thinking that
create violence. Education, which is hierarchical and
which relies overly on a banking model, where teachers
feed students information, devoid of tapping into the
inner learner/teacher and bereft of dialogic encounters,
can stultify creativity and reduce the potential for the
inner knowledge to create spaces for making change.
Peace educators believe that hearing and sharing stories
can be transformative. Learning in spaces that feel safe
and building community are optimal for developing
peace skills.
Peace education assumes that conflict is ubiquitous,
that it should not be avoided, but addressed in ways
that promote understanding, tolerance, and transformation. Conflict is necessary to produce both individual
and social change. The role of peace educators is to
point out both the value of and the risk of conflict and
social change. Gandhis satyagraha pointed the way to
a different manner of people being with each other in
colonial India. His followers were willing to submit
themselves to the violence inflicted upon them by the
British, believing that through their suffering and nonviolent resistance they could win the hearts and minds of
their opponents. Martin Luther King applied Gandhis
principles to issues of civil rights in the USA. Nonviolent
strategies can sometimes, in the short run, produce violence, such as what happened when blacks and whites
who sat together at the lunch counters in the South were
beaten and jailed. The goal, however, of nonviolence is
long-term transformation through the application of its
principles and the winning over of the hearts and minds
of ones opponents.
Peace education in practice varies throughout the
world, from culture to culture. What the pedagogy and
activities have in common is the idea of transforming
conflict into something positive and sustainable so that
our world will continue to grow and flourish. In short,
peace education seeks to make and build peace through
pedagogy.

821

Cultures of Peace
In 2000 UNESCO and the United Nations declared the
years 20012010 the Decade for a Culture of Peace and
Nonviolence for the Children of the World. This initiative
began with the signatures of all of the living peace Nobel
laureates. The United Nations Educational and Scientific
Organization (UNESCO) was founded on the principle
that, since wars begin in the minds of people, education is
central to creating and building world peace, using processes which can be termed the defenses of peace.
According to the UNESCO monograph that set the
stage for the Decade, adopted in 1995, the purpose of
the initiative was to promote activities consistent
with the values, attitudes and modes of behavior based
on nonviolence and respect for the fundamental rights of
all people. Activities in response to the Culture of Peace
initiative have now sprung up throughout the world in
celebration of the power of peace-building and against so
much in our world that stands for a culture of war.
The appeal of the Nobel laureates to the heads of
states to create the Culture of Peace initiative asked
that nonviolence be taught at every level of our societies
to make the children of the world aware of the real,
and practical meaning and benefits of nonviolence in
their daily lives. Signatories included Shimon Peres,
Aung San Suu Kyi, Elie Weisel, the Dalai Lama, and
Oscar Arias. The precepts of the Culture of Peace Program include:
Power as defined as active nonviolence
People being mobilized not against an enemy but to
build mutual understanding
Democratic processes to replace vertical and hierarchical power structures and authority
Secrecy by those in power to be replaced by the free
flow of information
Male-dominated cultures to be replaced by cultures
based on power sharing among women, men, and
children
Women as empowered, womens cultures as centers of
peace-building to replace structures which glorify
activities traditionally associated with men, war making, and war preparations
Exploitation of the environment, closely associated
with war, to be replaced by cooperative sustainability
Peace as seen as nonstatic and active
At the midpoint of the Decade, in 2005 and again at
the end, in 2010, the United Nations General Assembly
called for world reports from civil society groups and
organizations, commenting on their progress toward the

822

Peace Education

goals of the international decade. These reports are available online.

Closely allied with the Decade for a Culture of Peace is
the International Decade for Education for Sustainable
Development (20052014), in recognition of the global
challenges facing our world, including increased greenhouse gases and climate change, and the concomitant deep
social and economic issues. Sustainable development is
defined as seeking to meet the needs of the present without
compromising those of future generations. UNESCO recognizes sustainable development as a vision of development that encompasses human populations, animal and
plant species, ecosystems, natural resources which integrates concerns such as the fight against poverty, gender
equality, human rights, education for all, health, human
security, and intercultural dialogue. Education for sustainable development aims to help people to develop the
attitudes, skills, and knowledge to make informed decisions for the benefit of themselves and others, now and in
the future, and to act upon these decisions.
The language of the Earth Charter, in its Preamble, is
compelling. The Earth Charter is a document, born out of
a decades-long grass-roots and global process, which
stands as a paradigm for our time and has within it the
values and principles we need for a sustainable future. The
preamble reads We stand at a critical time in Earths
history, a time when humanity must choose its future.
As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and
fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great
promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the
midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms
we are one human family and one Earth community with
a common destiny. The Earth Charters 16 principles are
grouped into 4 precepts: Respect and Care for the Community of Life, Ecological Integrity, Social and Economic
Justice, and Democracy, Nonviolence and Peace. These
precepts are the very essence of what it means to educate
for peace. To implement these, we must have a change of
mind and heart. And we must do it within community
and within a network of relationships. The process of
building it is as important as the final product.

Foundations for Educating for Peace

Peace educators believe that how we come to know what
we know largely determines how we act on that knowledge. Therefore, who and what sets the stage for students
values, worldviews and interests, and the capabilities to
take up the challenge to build a better world is very
important. Families, as the first educators, are critical to
whole-child development. Modern educational philosophers see the importance of recreating a home-like and

nurturing atmosphere within classrooms and other teaching arenas. Families are not always peaceful. Yet, within
virtually all families lies the kernel of love and caring
which can set the stage for future growth. There are
certain inputs which can influence children to grow up
with the confidence and skills needed to create the conditions for social change. Some of these include positive
reinforcement, adequate knowledge base, cultural values
and beliefs, family influence, peer associations, the media,
and community involvement. Healthy role models are
important, including family members, teachers, and
mentors.
The environment in which a student learns is very
important. Teachers have a crucial role to play in creating
learning spaces conducive to peacemaking and peacebuilding and to help students develop an ethos of compassion and nonviolence. Peaceful classrooms are characterized
by an openness to learn, a willingness to share, and the
attitude that the good of the whole is more important
than individual wants and needs. This is, in essence, what
good families encourage as well. Competition, while not
eliminated in classrooms, is de-emphasized. Moral sensitivities to others is encouraged.

Concepts of Peace Education

The following are examples of the various concepts with
which peace educators engage. Curricula and courses vary.
Some schools have separate peace education programs.
Many integrate these concepts into already existing curricula and classroom practices. The hidden curricula of
a school, the overall classroom climate, and school/organization ethos and the nature of support for positive
relations between students and staff are seen as important
as what is taught. The curricula include:
The history of peace education and peace studies
The history of and current issues in human rights
The history and philosophical issues in war and warmaking
Violence: its causes and effects
The United Nations system
Disarmament
Nonviolence and conflict resolution
Reconciliation
Cultures of peace
Spiritual practices of peace
Global sustainability: the three pillars of peace and
justice, economic development (promoting economic
justice and alleviating world poverty), and maintaining
a healthy planetary environment
Issues of gender in peacemaking

Peace Education

Peace education empowers people with the knowledge

and skills to create a safe and healthy world, teaches the
values of love, compassion, honesty, truth, and reverence for
all life and confronts violence in its many forms by teaching
about its causes and providing knowledge of alternatives.
Peace educators approach the learning of peace
through three different strategies of peace. These are
peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peace-building. Using
peacekeeping, schools may use violence prevention strategies to maintain order. These might include the use of
security guards and strict policies on suspension and
expulsion in the case of violent acts. Peace through
strength assumes that humans are prone to violence and
what is needed is a strong defense, a show of arms, and
a balance of power. Global military structures are based on
this strategy. It is used frequently as a justification for
defensive and, lately, offensive global war.
Peacemaking strategies include instruction in conflict
resolution and mediation skills to teach the management
of differences in healthy ways. Diplomacy and negotiation,
locally, nationally as well as on an international scale fall
under this strategy. A principle underlying peacemaking is
that governments and institutions have the responsibility
to address egregious human rights violations and to insure
equal access to the basic needs for human life. National
boundaries must, at times, be considered permeable.
A world body, such as the United Nations, is empowered,
through its associated organizations and conventions and
treaties, to insure these basic rights are maintained.
Peace-building is the fostering of attitudes and the
desire among young people to understand the root causes
of violence and to view nonviolent strategies as important
ways to move forward into the future. Peace-building
promotes positive peace, actively seeks to avoid violence
and fosters cooperation, communication, and, in short,
love as a mode of operation. Peace-building is peace
through justice. Assumptions underlying peace-building
include the principle of enough for everyone and that it
is the responsibility of those with more resources to share
with those who have less. Humanitarian efforts which give
direct aid as well as addressing the underlying structural
issues of inequity and its root causes are examples of
peace-building. Peace-building is peace through transformation, rejecting violence in all of its forms: physical,
sexual, psychological, and structural. Peace through transformation ultimately relies on human interaction and
human connectedness.

The History of Peace Education

These contemporary, Western views on peace education
reflect the evolution of the concept from the beginnings

of the current peace research movement, beginning in

the 1940s and 1950s. Early on, peace education was seen
as the process of propagating the findings of peace
research, which began in the decades following World
War II, with the establishment of various peace research
institutes.
However, the roots of peace education in the USA go
back much further, to the work of nineteenth century
women reformers such as Jane Addams and Fannie Fern
Andrews. The International Peace Research Association
(IPRA), founded in 1965 and its North American counterpart, The Consortium on Peace, Research, Education
and Development (COPRED), founded in 1970, were
both an outgrowth of work done by the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom, founded by
Jane Addams. Both IPRA and COPRED were founded as
linking and connecting organizations, two key conceptual
elements in educating for peace.
These later ideas of peace education, including its
relational and transformational potential, arose partly as
a result of the womens movement and its influence on
the field of peace studies. Feminists in the USA were
concerned, during the 1970s and 1980s, about the emphasis in the peace movement, largely dominated by males, on
the technical aspects of the arms race, to the neglect of
the more human and personal consequences of violence,
including violence toward women. Peace began to be seen
as including essential concepts of relationships, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and inter-global. Different ways of
looking at connectedness and its relationship to nurturance, and womens ways of processing cognition and
morality provided the groundwork for the work of such
peace thinkers as Elise Boulding, Betty Reardon, Birgit
Brock-Utne, and Sara Ruddick. Thus, peace education,
in its holistic sense, includes not only skill building and
philosophical principles, but, in addition, it cannot be
separated conceptually from the whole idea of networking and connecting like-minded people in mutually
productive, constantly interacting processes of teaching
and learning.
There are differences in definition between peace
education and peace studies. The latter, in short, is
seen as one kind of peace education, is taught in higher
institutions of learning, with a focus on the study of
peace and war as concepts. Peace studies is inherently
interdisciplinary. The study of peace began in earnest
after World War II, as research institutes and university
programs sprang up both in Europe, in Asia in the wake
of Gandhis efforts, and in the USA. This trend continues
as peace studies programs on campuses are growing
exponentially.

823

824

Peace Versus Justice

Related Topics
Chodosh, Hiram
Dispute Resolution
Environmental Sustainability
Gandhi, Mahatma
Global Citizenship
Human Rights
International Organizations
King, Martin Luther, Jr.
Poverty
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

References
Boulding E (2000) Cultures of peace: the hidden side of history. Syracuse
University Press, Syracuse
Brock-Utne B (1985) Educating for peace: a feminist perspective.
Pergamon, New York
Earth Charter Initiative. http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/content/
Harris I, Morrison ML (2003) Peace education. McFarland, Jefferson
Noddings N (2005) Educating citizens for global awareness. Teachers
College Press, New York
Reardon B (2008) Comprehensive peace education. Teachers College
Press, New York
Ruddick S (1989) Maternal thinking: toward a politics of peace. Beacon,
Boston
Salomon G, Cairns E (2010) Handbook on peace education. Psychology,
New York
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization:
Culture of Peace Initiative. http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.phpURL_ID=37083&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
World Report on a Culture of Peace. http://decade-culture-of-peace.org/

Peace Versus Justice

KENNETH A. RODMAN
Department of Government, Colby College, Waterville,
ME, USA

The peace versus justice debate centers on how societies

emerging from political violence and repressive rule
should address human rights abuses committed in the
past. The strongest advocates of international criminal
justice claim that there is a moral and legal duty to prosecute the perpetrators of the gravest international crimes
as defined by international law and that acting on this duty
is necessary to deter the recurrence of those crimes and
consolidate post-conflict peace. Pragmatic critics warn of
the potentially destabilizing consequences of insisting on
prosecution when negotiation is the most viable means of

political change and those accused of criminal violence

still retain significant power. Other critics go further in
advocating non-retributive approaches to post-conflict
justice because of the purported impact of prosecution
in exacerbating intercommunal divisions and impeding
reconciliation. These debates have been at the heart of
controversies surrounding the growth of institutions for
international justice, particularly the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC).
The contemporary peace versus justice debate is
part of an older controversy over whether one should
pardon or punish ones enemies in the aftermath of war.
The former position is often associated with President
Abraham Lincolns amnesty proclamation during the
American Civil War as a means of facilitating postwar
reconciliation between North and South. The latter position is associated with the Nuremberg trials of key
Nazi leaders in the aftermath of the Second World War.
The assumption underlying Nuremberg was that Nazi
Germany engaged in criminal violence that is, aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity which mandated legal retribution. It is important to note, however,
that Nuremberg also represented a model of reconciliation
between Germany and the countries with whom it went
to war, but that was to be achieved by differentiating
Germanys former political system which would be
purged and its leaders prosecuted from the German
people, who would be subjected to a relatively benign
occupation designed to transform it into a liberal
pacific democracy in order to reintegrate it into the international system.
In theory, Nuremberg was designed as a precedent in
the international communitys approach to criminal violence, and it was followed by the negotiation of international treaties that mandated penal sanctions for genocide
and war crimes. In practice, however, there were few cases
in which countries undergoing transitions from war or
dictatorship opted for prosecution from the end of the
Second World War through the 1990s. The dominant
approach toward peacemaking by the UN and other mediators was to forge as broad a consensus as possible behind
a negotiated solution regardless of the past behavior of the
protagonists. That was because parties to these conflicts
often had bloody hands and bringing their leaders to
justice would have required a military solution. As a result,
once an agreement was reached, the UN would provide
neutral peacekeepers as a means of building confidence on
the part of the parties to disengage. This invariably
involved formal or de facto amnesties, which accompanied
UN peace operations in Namibia, Mozambique, Haiti, El
Salvador, and Guatemala. Such amnesties were legitimized

Peace Versus Justice

by Article 6(5) of the Second Protocol to the 1949 Geneva

Conventions (1977), which called for the broadest possible amnesty to be granted to those who have participated
in the armed conflict at the end of hostilities.
The same pattern characterized transitions to democracy from dictatorship or other forms of repressive rule.
If the democratization process was initiated by the old
regime (e.g., Spain in the mid-1970s) or the result of
a negotiated transition (e.g., South Africa in the mid1990s), amnesties would almost always be part of the
new social compact. That is because the transition was
dependent on the cooperation of politicians associated
with the abuses of the prior regime and their cooperation
was necessary to make the transition work. Insistence on
prosecution, by contrast, would create an incentive for
them to hold on to power. In some cases, amnesties were
accompanied by non-retributive forms of justice the
best-known example of which is South Africas Truth
and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in which amnesty
was conditioned on full disclosure of political crimes.
Nonetheless, legal accountability was subordinated to
pragmatic bargaining.
Many of these practices were criticized by proponents of
international criminal justice as a derogation from a duty to
prosecute the most serious abuses of human rights. In the
1990s, this view was given greater support by three developments that built on the Nuremberg precedent. First, the
UN Security Council established ad hoc international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (1993) and Rwanda
(1994), mandating prosecution of the architects of ethnic
cleansing in the Balkans and the genocide in Rwanda as
a prerequisite to peace and reconciliation. Second, several
states (mostly in Europe) enacted universal jurisdiction
laws which allowed national courts to prosecute perpetrators of international crimes even if there was no connection
to those states territory or nationals. This enabled foreign
courts to step in when national proceedings were blocked
by domestic politics, the most famous example of which
was the Spanish indictment of former Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet, which led to his arrest in Great Britain
in 1998 and the subsequent extradition controversy. Finally,
in 1998, 120 states voted in favor of the Rome Statute,
which created the International Criminal Court (ICC),
the first permanent tribunal designed to hold individuals
criminally accountable for genocide and other atrocity
crimes. Many human rights advocates saw these developments as part of a new emerging norm demanding accountability for international crimes as an integral part of any
transitional process.
An important milestone in the evolution of the international norms regarding the role of criminal justice in

peace processes was the 1999 Lome Peace Accord that was
designed to end the civil war in Sierra Leone. As with past
UN peace efforts, it included a blanket amnesty for all of
the parties including the Revolutionary United Front
(RUF), a rebel group that had abducted thousands of
children as soldiers in a campaign of mutilation, and
terror against the civilian population in order to control
the countrys diamond resources. In response to pressure
from human rights organizations, the UN Secretary
Generals Special Representative to the talks withheld recognition of the amnesty insofar as it covered international
crimes a position that became official UN policy thereafter. In 2002, this view was upheld by the Special Court
for Sierra Leone a hybrid court of national and international judges set up in negotiations between the government and the UN General Assembly when it ruled that
Lome did not present a bar to prosecution because a
government cannot grant amnesty for serious violations
of international law.
Proponents of international criminal justice justify
their insistence on prosecution as part of peace agreements
in part based on the duty to prosecute mandated by
international treaties that criminalize the worst abuses and
international human rights law, which provides victims
a right of redress. Amnesties or non-retributive transitional mechanisms are viewed as abrogations of a states
obligations that the international community must refuse
to recognize, and if possible, prosecute in foreign courts or
international tribunals.
Proponents of a duty to prosecute also argue that
acting on this duty as consistently and uncompromisingly
as possible will have superior consequences for peace
than non-retributive alternatives. First, an unwavering
commitment to prosecute even in an ongoing war
maximizes the deterrent impact of law, both on the parties
in an armed conflict and to others who might contemplate
the use of criminal means to achieve their ends. Second,
trials are indispensable in consolidating post-conflict
peace. That is because they individualize guilt in criminal
leaders rather than allowing victim communities to collectivize it in entire groups, thereby promoting reconciliation between communities by breaking the cycle of
violence and revenge that perpetuates violence. They stigmatize and incapacitate the worst abusers, thereby reducing their ability to disrupt a post-conflict settlement.
Criminal accountability for past crimes is also necessary
to establish the rule of law in post-conflict societies.
Amnesties, by contrast, send the message that criminal
actors can return to violence without any consequence.
In the Sierra Leone case, for example, within 6 months
of signing Lome, the RUF violated the agreement and

825

826

Peace Versus Justice

returned to political violence, thereby demonstrating the

precariousness of peace without justice.
Pragmatic approaches to international criminal justice
take issue with the consequentialist case for a principled
duty to prosecute. First, they assert that the causal relationship between prosecution and a peaceful post-conflict
order is not axiomatic. Successful transitions have not
always involved criminal justice nor has amnesty necessarily set the stage for a return to political violence. For
example, the amnesties associated with Spains pacto del
olvido and South Africas TRC were necessary to reassure
elites of the Franco and apartheid regimes while contributing both to peaceful change and to rights-respecting
democratic political systems. And in contrast to the experience in Sierra Leone, two of the UNs most successful
peacekeeping operations Namibia and Mozambique
both included amnesties despite allegations of attacks on
civilians by all sides during each countrys civil war. By
contrast, Rwanda had extensive prosecutions at both the
national and international level, but its post-conflict situation has been characterized by increasing authoritarianism at home and intervention abroad in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo.
Second, pragmatists contend that decisions about
prosecution have to account for the political context in
which trials would have to take place. If those responsible
for criminal violence (governments or insurgents) retain
significant power and negotiation is the most viable
means of conflict resolution, prosecution is likely to
prolong an ongoing war or dissuade a tyrannical regime
from stepping down. As a result, mediators need to give
priority to expedient bargaining over the duty to prosecute even if the end result condones a significant degree
of impunity. The same is true of post-conflict arrangements in which political and legal institutions of the
new regime are likely to be weak relative to the residual
power of those responsible from criminal violence. Insistence on prosecution could lead to a violent backlash
against the transition. Therefore, pragmatists recommend waiting until the post-conflict transition consolidates before moving toward prosecution in contrast to
the views of legalists, who view prosecution as a means of
consolidating the transition.
Beyond the expediency argument, some critics of
international criminal law contend that amnesties or
non-retributive forms of justice may have superior consequences for some of the values that prosecution is
designed to promote. Whereas proponents of trials see
them as necessary for societal reconciliation, critics contend that trials are often divisive, as the accused use them
as a political platform for an us versus them discourse

that is likely to entrench divisions between communities.

By contrast, non-retributive truth commissions particularly those like the TRC where amnesty is conditioned
on a full confession of political crimes create an incentive for perpetrators to acknowledge the past, thereby
creating a less contested history of the abuses of the old
regime. In addition, there are some circumstances where
agreement on the past is impossible for example, the
transition from the Franco dictatorship in Spain in the
mid-1970s or the post-communist transitions in Eastern
Europe in the early 1990s. In such cases, amnesties may
be necessary for transitional democracies to focus on the
future. Proponents of the duty to prosecute would
argue that these are conflict resolution practices from
an earlier era that have been rendered obsolete by the
development of international accountability norms.
Critics respond that this view discounts the diversity of
transitional processes and the need for flexibility in
applying the accountability mechanisms most appropriate to each case.
While international criminal law has evolved in the
direction of the duty to prosecute, pragmatic considerations have played a role in some international judicial
rulings and the provisions of treaties. For example, in the
Yerodia case (2002), the International Court of Justice
(ICJ) held that a Belgian court had to rescind its arrest
warrant for an incumbent Congolese foreign minister
even though the charge was incitement to genocide
because absolute immunity from prosecution in foreign
courts is necessary for diplomats and heads of state to
represent their countries abroad in negotiations. Article
16 of the Rome Statute allows the Security Council
to suspend any criminal investigation for renewable
12-month periods if it determines that prosecution
hinders its mandate to maintain international peace and
security. It is important to note that neither legal position
endorses impunity. The ICJ ruling held that immunities
can be overridden by an international tribunal (as
opposed to a national court) and would expire after leaving office (as was the case with Pinochet). Article 16 allows
the Security Council to postpone prosecution for a fixed
period of time, not grant an amnesty. In other words, both
acknowledge the need to accommodate the new international law of justice and accountability to the classical view
of international law as a means of facilitating diplomacy
between sovereign states.

Related Topics
Duty to Prosecute
International Criminal Court (ICC)
International Criminal Justice

Perpetual Peace

References
Bass G (2004) Jus post bellum. Philos Pub Aff 32:384412
Bassiouni MC (2004) Justice and peace: the importance of choosing
accountability over realpolitik. Case Western Reserve Law J Int Law
35(2):191204
Robinson D (2003) Truth commissions, amnesties, and the international
criminal court. Eur J Int Law 14(3):481505
Sikkink K, Lutz L (2001) Justice cascade: the evolution and impact of
foreign human rights trials in Latin America. Chic J Int Law 2:133
Snyder J, Vinjamuri L (2004) Advocacy and scholarship in the study of
international war crimes tribunals and transitional justice. Ann Rev
Polit Sci 7(1):345362

Perfect Justice
Rawls, John
Sen, Amartya

Perpetual Peace
DON E. SCHEID
Department of Philosophy, Winona State University,
Winona, MN, USA

Peace among states assumes the concept of an international community, which, in turn, is a fundamental perspective that underlies the idea of global justice. The quest
for perpetual peace has been pursued through peace
movements and world congresses, moral and religious
teachings, the arts and education, international diplomacy, economic arrangements, treaties and international
law, and even through revolution and war. Peace has also
been sought through the production of peace plans, and
the phrase perpetual peace is commonly associated with
various blueprints for establishing permanent peace
among states.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of such peace plans have
been proposed through the centuries. This entry briefly
identifies only a very small sampling of the more prominent peace plans proposed in Europe and North America
from the late Middle Ages to 1900. The plans fall into two
categories: schemes for peace in Europe and schemes for
peace worldwide. All the plans assume that the problem of
war can be solved by some kind of institutional arrangement among states.
Antecedents to the idea of everlasting peace go back at
least to Hellenistic and early Roman times, with Stoic

827

moral conceptions of a universal humanity and universal

natural law, and with the Roman jus gentium, or common
law of all peoples of the empire combined with the notion
of universal Roman citizenship. The Pax Romana and the
later Holy Roman Empire inspired or served as models for
early proposals for arrangements thought to be conducive
to perpetual peace.

Dubois
Pierre Dubois (or du Bois) (c.1250c.1320) studied at the
University of Paris and became a successful lawyer at
Coutances in Normandy. He was an advocate in royal
legal cases and an adviser to Philip le Bel (Philip IV the
Fair, king of France). In the contest between Philip IV and
Pope Boniface VIII, Dubois sided completely with Philip
and published a series of anticlerical pamphlets in support
of independent, secular monarchy.
In his most important work, De Recuperatione Terrae
Sanctae (Of Recovery of the Holy Land) (c. 1306), Dubois
imagines a time when the Pope gives up his temporal
possessions to the king of France, and the French king
oversees a congress of all the princes of Europe. Once
reorganized by France, Christian Europe would then able
to undertake a crusade to reconquer the Holy Land.
Dubois urges the Christian sovereigns, led by France,
to form a Republic governed by a Council of the rulers (or
their representatives). The Pope is to have the power to call
together the Council, to choose its president, and to initiate reforms. The Council will decree that no Catholic
may take up arms against another Catholic, and it will rule
on all situations that threaten peace. Dubois recognizes
that wars in Italy and Germany may be necessary to
establish this congress.
Dubois also proposes an International Court of Arbitration, and he may have been the first to do so. All
members of the Christian Republic pledge to take their
disputes to this tribunal. The arbiters are chosen by the
Council. If parties to a dispute do not accept the decision
of the court, the arbiters forward the record to the Pope
who makes the final decision. If a member of the Republic
fails in his obligations or refuses to submit to a decision of
the court, he can incur papal excommunication. The other
members then are required to suspend commercial trade
with him. If necessary, military sanctions may be taken by
the European army that is constituted of troops from all
the member countries.

Dante
In De Monarchia (Of Monarchy) (c. 1310), the great Italian
poet, Dante Alighieri (12651321), argues for a worldwide
empire under the two swords of separate religious and

828

Perpetual Peace

secular authorities. In part, a defense of imperial independence from papal control, Dantes work essentially presents
a vision of world peace. He imagines all the kingdoms of the
world united under one overarching, secular monarchy.
Wars are the main obstacle to the pursuit of humankinds
highest vocation on earth, namely, knowledge and the life of
reason. Allowing for variation of municipal laws and for
some local government, Dante maintains that humanity
can achieve peace and earthly blessedness if the basic
norms of the divinely inspired Roman law (Corpus Juris)
are enforced by a world monarch.

Podiebrad
After the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, King
of Bohemia, Georg von Podiebrad (14581471), with his
advisor Antonius Marius (or Marini), around 1459, proposed a Europe-wide league of states to abolish war among
the sovereigns in Christendom and to form a coalition of
forces to expel the Turk. Podiebrad had the proposal, an
extremely detailed draft treaty of 21 articles, distributed to
all the courts of Europe. He hoped the treaty would go into
effect in 1464, but it remained a mere proposal.

Cruce
Duboiss work (De recuperatione Terre Sancte) was written
about 1306, but it did not appear in print until 1611. A few
years later, in 1623 and 1624, Emeric Cruce (15901648)
published his important work: Le Nouveau Cynee ou
Discours des Occasions et Moyens destablir une Paix
generale, & la Liberte du Commerce par tout le Monde
(The New Cyneas or Discourse of the Occasions and
Means to Establish a General Peace, and the Liberty of
Commerce Throughout the Whole World). The title refers
to Cyneas (or Cineas) who was an adviser to the belligerent King Pyrrhus of Epirus (c. 300 BC) but who was
himself known for his emphasis on peace. Cruce was
a Catholic priest or monk, taught at a college in Paris,
and became a French political writer.
According to Cruce, wars are undertaken for honor,
profit, reparation for some wrong, or for adventure and
fortune. Religion might be added to this list, but Cruce
thinks it serves mainly as a pretext for war and is not a
fundamental motive. In any case, he presents strong arguments for religious toleration. He goes on to argue in
some detail that the four motives for going to war fail as
justifications for war. He then turns to consider the conditions for lasting peace. Cruce notes that, although history is
filled with war, there have been long periods of peace, especially the Pax Romana. Thus, lasting peace is possible.
Cruce sees a states internal conditions as important
for international peace. He develops a vast array of social

and economic reforms, both within and between states.

He addresses taxation and monetary questions, projects
for the unemployed and poor, education of the youth, and
so on. He recognizes that international commerce makes
countries more interdependent and thus reduces the likelihood of wars. Commerce discourages war and, at the
same time, benefits from peace. He favors international
free trade. He proposes a universal currency and standardized weights and measures. He urges specific projects for
the construction of roads, bridges, and canals. He invites
all the European states to unite in an effort to suppress the
Barbary pirates.
Cruce envisions all the world governments voluntarily
joining together to form a permanent Council of Representatives for maintaining world peace. He specifically
mentions the inclusion of India, China, Persia, Ethiopia,
Morocco, and the West Indies, as well as the Turks and all
the European states. The Council will be in continual
session. When conflicts arise, the whole assembly will act
as arbiters in a Court of Arbitration, its decision determined by majority vote. As all governments have an interest in the punishment of rebels, a sovereign can receive
assistance from the other sovereigns if he ever faces an
internal rebellion.
The Council of Representatives will have a common
military force made up of forces supplied by the individual
member states. Cruce allows for military sanctions for
members who refuse to submit to decisions of the Council
or Court, but he does not believe this will often be necessary. If a prince were to rebel against a decree, he would be
disgraced in the eyes of all the other rulers, and peer
pressure would cause him to accept the decree.
Unlike Dubois and Dante, Cruces sole motive for
establishing his league is to achieve world peace. He does
not have any further motive like creating a united front
against the Turk or separating secular authorities from
papal control. Near the end of his essay, Cruce writes:
We seek a peace, which is not patched up, nor for
3 days, but which is voluntary, equitable, and permanent:
a peace which gives to each one what belongs to him,
privilege to the citizen, hospitality to the foreigner, and
to all indifferently the liberty of travel and trading.

Sully
Maximilien de Bethune Sully (15601641) was a close and
loyal associate to Henry IV of France (Henry of Navarre)
and, throughout his life, served in many ministerial roles.
During retirement, he wrote his Memoires ou Economies
Royales (Memoirs or Royal Economies) (1638) wherein
he presented the Grand Dessein (Grand Design), a plan
for the European federation of all Christian nations.

Perpetual Peace

He attributed this Grand Design to Henry IV, although

some scholars believe it to be Sullys own invention.
The Grand Design is intended to reestablish the religious unity of Christendom and to expel the unbelievers
from Europe. It is also designed to neutralize the dominating power of the House of Hapsburg in Europe. The
Grand Design was never realized, despite serious attempts
to have negotiations on the plan among the royal courts of
Europe.
A number of elements in the Grand Design are similar
to earlier plans. There will be a General Council consisting
of representatives from all European governments. It is
to be a permanent organization that deliberates on all
matters of common interest (political, civil, religious),
especially those that might lead to conflict. The General
Council determines who among its own membership is
to serve on a Court of Arbitration when disputes arise
between member states. If parties to a dispute do not
submit to the decision of the Court, then armed force
may be used. This military force is made up of contributions from the allied powers and is under the command of
the General Council.
By far, the most unique feature of the Grand Design is
the reorganization of Europe into 15 roughly equal states.
As things are, the states of Europe are extremely unequal in
territory and natural resources. Under these circumstances, there cannot be any balance of power, without
which there is little chance of maintaining peace. The
reality of differing nationalities is also a source of unrest.
Therefore, the map of Europe must be redrawn with an eye
to equalizing, to the extent possible, territorial size and
natural resources, while also attending to friction between
nationalities. With these considerations in mind, Sully
delineates 15 specific dominions. Religious differences
are another source of tension, so three churches will be
admitted on an equal footing: Catholic, Lutheran, and
Calvinist one of the three to be the official religion in
each newly drawn dominion.

Penn
William Penn (16441718) was a committed Quaker who
seriously considered the problems of war and peace.
Encouraged by a reading of the Grand Design of Henry
IV, he worked out a plan for the United States of Europe.
Penn had studied law and had drawn up the constitution
for his colony in America, so he was well qualified for the
task. In his Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of
Europe (1693), he puts forth the idea of a European Dyet,
Parliament, or Estates.
As Penn sees it, peace depends on justice, which, in
turn, depends on government. Accordingly, the peace of

829

Europe will require some overall government. Penn proposes a general parliament to establish rules of justice
for the princes to observe in their dealings with each
other. All disagreements between sovereigns that cannot
be settled by private embassies will be brought to the
parliament. Decisions of the parliament will be determined in a three-fourths vote by secret ballot. If a sovereign refuses to abide by a judgment of the Parliament, the
other members would unite to compel submission. Contrary to purely pacifist principles, Penn allows for the
coercive use of the leagues armed forces. Damages may
also be levied.
Penn addresses many procedural details in his plan.
The number of delegates from each state is to be determined in proportion to its economic value as established
by its revenues of land, exports, imports, and taxes. In all,
there will be about 90 delegates. All decisions require a
supermajority. Representatives for each sovereignty should
be present until all business is finished, on pain of great
penalties. Abstentions should not be allowed. The sessions should be in Latin or French.
Among other advantages of peace, Penn notes that the
reputation of christianity will be greatly improved in
the eyes of infidels. All the wars of christians are scandalous in their being contrary to the christian ideal the
Prince of Peace taught. In this regard, the clergy in Europe
should become active in promoting the idea of a European
parliament.

Saint-Pierre
Charles-Irenee Castel, Abbe de Saint-Pierre (16581743)
was born in the castle of Saint-Pierre-Eglise near
Cherbourg in Normandy. He attended Jesuit colleges in
Caen and Paris, took minor Orders, and was appointed
Abbe de Tiron. He was elected to the Academie Francaise
(French Academy) in 1695.
The Projet pour rendre la paix perpetuelle en Europe
(Project for Bringing About Perpetual Peace in Europe) is
Saint-Pierres most important work and is more extensive
than earlier European peace plans, though, in many
respects, it is similar to that of Cruce. First published in
1712, the Projet went through several revised and enlarged
editions. An abridged edition, Abrege du Projet de Paix
Perpetuelle en Europe (Abridgement of the Project for
Perpetual Peace in Europe), also written by St. Pierre,
was published in 1729 and 1737. As with earlier plans,
Saint-Pierres idea is to establish a permanent league of
states, a Grand Alliance, to guarantee a lasting peace
in Europe. He cites Germany, the Helvetian States
(Switzerland), and the Corps of the United Provinces
(Netherlands) as examples of successful federations.

830

Perpetual Peace

Although Saint-Pierres goal is perpetual peace, which

he sees as essential for human happiness, he promotes his
peace plan by appealing to the self-interests of the sovereign families of Europe. He does not make any particular
use of religious or moral appeals but, instead, repeatedly
offers a kind of cost-benefit analysis of the many advantages
that will accrue to each of them. There will be security
against the devastations of foreign and civil wars. They
will be guaranteed the preservation of their sovereignty
and their hereditary states for their successors. There will
be great savings in military expenses, along with considerable increases in commercial profits. Being free from war
and the preparations for war, states will be able to attend to
the improvement of their legal system, education, and other
social institutions. The sovereigns will have a means for
settling disputes without the risk or expense of war, and
the enforcement of treaties will be guaranteed.
While intellectuals such as Leibniz, Voltaire, Kant, and
Saint-Simon were all familiar with Saint-Pierres Projet,
it was Rousseau who undertook a critical exposition
of Saint-Pierres work. In 1754, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(17121778), arranged with the nephew of Saint-Pierre
to edit the vast volume of the Abbes writings on his Grand
Alliance. The work never progressed beyond two relatively
brief treaties, both written in 1756: Extrait du Projet
de Paix Perpetuelle de Monsieur lAbbe de Saint-Pierre
(Excerpt of the Project for Perpetual Peace of Monsieur
Abbe de Saint-Pierre), and Jugement sur la Paix Perpetuelle
(Judgment on the Perpetual Peace). Rousseau believed
that, once established, Saint-Pierres Grand Alliance
could achieve an abiding peace in Europe. The main
point of Rousseaus critique was that Saint-Pierres
Grand Alliance could not be established in the first place.
[T]he very princes who would defend it with all their
might, if it once existed, would resist with all their might
any proposal for its creation. Saint-Pierres mistake was to
assume that men are motivated by their intelligence rather
than by their passions, to assume perfect rationality in
men, instead of taking them as they are. (For fuller
account, see the entry on Perpetual Peace: Abbe de
Saint-Pierre in this encyclopedia).

Cloots
Anacharsis Cloots (Jean-Baptiste du Val-de-Grace, baron
de Cloots) (or Baron von Klotz) (17551794), was born at
the castle of Gnadenthal (Western Prussia) to a Prussian
noble family. Although a German, young Cloots received
a French education in Paris. After 2 years at the Military
Academy of Berlin, he left Prussia at the age of 20 and
traveled throughout Europe for some years. He returned
to Paris in 1789 where he enthusiastically espoused the

principles of the French Revolution and contributed articles to the newspapers and periodicals. Being heir to
a great fortune, he contributed money to the revolution.
He became a French citizen and was elected a member of
the National Convention where, as one of the deputies, he
voted for the death of Louis XVI. Cloots himself later
succumbed to the guillotine after being falsely accused
of having taken part in a conspiracy against the French
Republic.
In 1792, he wrote La Republique universelle ou Adresse
aux tyrannicides (The Universal Republic or Address to
Tyrannicides), in which he proposes a Universal Republic.
This Universal Republic is not a league of independent
states, however, but instead a confederation of individuals, a world government. It will make one state out of
the whole population of the earth; all borders separating nations will be declared nonexistent. Only this harmony of individual wills can establish a perpetual peace,
Cloots believes.
Cloots is for erasing all divisions of nationality and
social class and any other distinctions that contribute to
a narrow provincialism. I am for an absolute leveling, he
says, for the destruction of all barriers which thwart the
interests of the human family. It is hardly possible, he
believes, to achieve general happiness in a state where
there are strongly demarcated social classes, and it is
even more difficult to achieve happiness for humanity if
we allow the existence of separate national units.
The Universal Republic is to be created, at least in
the first stage, by gradually extending the boundaries of
France by the voluntary incorporation of foreign states.
The name France would be dropped, as would the
names of all other nation-states.
There will be a legislative body of 1,5002,000 delegates who shall represent the sovereign human race. This
Assembly shall elect an Executive Council that is subordinate to the Assembly. Judiciary power shall be vested in
tribunals similar to those presently existing. The Universal
Republic will be divided into Departments that will
enjoy limited self-government concerning economic welfare and the administration of such things as the care of
roads, schools, hospitals, and jails.
Cloots argues for religious tolerance and maintains
that religious freedom shall be guaranteed to all citizens
in the Universal Republic. He also writes of the many
economic advantages to be realized once the world
government is in place.

Kant
In 1795, the great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant
(17241804), published his tract Zum ewigen Friede:

Perpetual Peace

Ein philosophischer Entwurf (Toward Eternal Peace:

A Philosophical Outline).
Following Hobbes, Kant maintains that the state of
nature is one of war, both open hostilities and the
continuous threat of them. The mere suspension of hostilities is not the same as peace; true peace must be
established through a legal system. Kant envisions three
levels of legal order: the constitution of the state, the rights
of states in relation to each other, and the rights of world
citizenship of individuals.
The essence of Kants plan is expressed in three Definitive Articles. The first Article provides that the constitution of every state should be republican, meaning a
government in which the executive and legislative functions are separate, and in which laws are made with the
consent of the citizens represented in a legislature. Because
consent of the citizens is needed to go to war, republican
states will not often choose war, as it is the citizens themselves who must shoulder the costs of war with their
money and their lives.
The second Definitive Article proposes that a league of
peace (foedus pacificum) be formed, a federation of all
independent states. Unlike Penn, Saint-Pierre, and other
earlier writers, Kant does not give any details as to the
structure or workings of this federation (Volkerbund), but
he clearly is not advocating a world government. This
federation will not have any powers beyond those necessary for securing the international rights of states and
keeping the peace between states.
The third Definitive Article calls for a cosmopolitan
right of hospitality. This accords all individual persons
legal status as world citizens by establishing the right
of every person to travel freely and visit any foreign country. (For fuller account, see the entry on Perpetual Peace:
Kant in this encyclopedia).

Bentham
The English philosopher, jurist, and founder of the utilitarian school, Jeremy Bentham (17481832), promoted
the idea of perpetual peace in Europe with a proposal for
an international tribunal. His Plan for a Universal and
Perpetual Peace is Essay IV of a work on the principles of
international law. It was written about 1789 but not
published until 1839.
Benthams plan is set out in 14 propositions. He calls
for renouncing colonies, and reducing navies and armies.
He argues strenuously for government transparency, and
inveighs against secret negotiations and secret treaties.
He is also against special treaties granting commercial
preferences or restricting trade, believing instead in the
utility of free trade.

831

In Proposition XIII, Bentham proposes a common

court of judicature to decide disputes between states. To
this end, he proposes a diplomatic assembly with two
deputies from each state, a Congress or Diet that will act
as a tribunal. The proceedings of the Congress should be
public. He thinks military sanctions undesirable and
impractical, and he would like to see them replaced by
political or economic sanctions. Nevertheless, he allows
that decrees of the Congress might sometimes have to be
enforced by a contingent of military forces furnished by
the several states. But he expects that parties to a dispute
normally will voluntarily submit to the decision of the
tribunal. He believes the force of public opinion will
prove sufficient when the decision is widely circulated
through a free press.
Bentham thinks that if Great Britain and France can
agree on the propositions he outlines, other states will join
in as a matter of course, and perpetual peace can be
achieved. He argues that his plan is not visionary, for
surely a European fraternity can exist as well as the
German diet, the Swiss league, and the American federation.

Ladd
William Ladd (17781841), who founded the American
Peace Society in 1828, propounded a scheme for peace in
his work, An Essay on a Congress of Nations (1840).
Ladd proposes, first, a congress of all Christian and
civilized nations who choose to send ambassadors for the
purpose of settling the principles of the law of nations by
mutual treaty and of devising plans for the preservation of
peace. Second, he proposes a Court of Nations to arbitrate
or judge disputes between states. He sees the Helvetic
(Swiss) Union as a good model.
Each state may send as many delegates as it wishes
to begin forming the Congress of Nations, but each state
delegation will have only one vote. The Congress is to limit
itself to the relations between states and is forbidden to
intervene in the domestic affairs of states. The first business of the Congress will be to concentrate on four main
efforts: (1) to define the rights of belligerents toward one
another in war, to lessen the frequency of war, and to
promote its termination; (2) to settle the right of neutrals;
(3) to agree on measures useful to mankind in a state of
peace; (4) to organize the Court of Nations.
The Court of Nations will be merely advisory, taking
cases referred to it by mutual consent of the parties
involved in a dispute. The Court will not have any power
to enforce its decisions. Cases would be judged by interpretation of existing treaties and by the laws passed by the
Congress of Nations. Where treaties and international
law fail to establish the issue, the case will be decided by

832

Perpetual Peace

principles of justice and equity. The Court is also authorized to provide mediation where war already exists.
Like Bentham, Ladd believes public opinion will
enforce both decisions of the Congress and rulings of the
Court. Ladds plan was widely circulated in the USA and
Europe and introduced at a number of peace conferences
in the 1840s and 1850s.

James Lorimer
James Lorimer (18181890) was a Scottish jurist and
professor of public law at the University of Edinburgh.
His scheme, written in 1884, was set out in the second
volume of his work, The Institutes of the Law of Nations:
a Treatise of the Jural Relations of Separate Political
Communities.
His project calls for a treaty to which all European
states are invited to become a party. First, there is to be
an agreement on arms reduction. The parties will reduce
proportionally their national forces to what is necessary for
municipal purposes, but so as to preserve the relative power
of each state. Second, there will be an undertaking to establish a federal government somewhat like the federal government of the USA. This government will consist of
a legislature, a judicature, an executive, and an exchequer.
The legislature is to consist of a Senate and a Chamber
of Deputies. Each of the six great powers (Germany,
France, Russia, Austria, Italy, and England) is to send five
senators and 15 deputies. The smaller states are to send
a number proportional to their international importance as determined by the great powers. The senators,
appointed for life, each have one vote. The deputies also
have one vote each.
There is to be an executive bureau of 15 members: five
senators chosen by the Senate and ten deputies chosen by
the Chamber of Deputies, including at least one representative from each of the great powers. Elections are to be
held annually, but members can be re-elected. The bureau
is to elect a president from among its own members. The
presidents assent is required for any measure adopted by
a majority of both houses. If his assent is twice refused, the
measure is submitted to the Bureau and can become law if
adopted by a majority of its members.
This international government does not address any
national issues or any colonial or extra-European problems not involving questions of peace and war between
European states. On the other hand, civil wars are within
the jurisdiction of the federation, as are all claims for
territorial changes within Europe.
The Judicial Tribunal has both civil and criminal
branches. Judges are appointed by the Bureau. There are
to be 14 judges and a president, six of whom at least must

be chosen from the six great powers. Like the senators, the
judges are appointed for life. The civil branch is competent
to hear all questions of public international law and the
legislative enactments of the international government.
The Bureau is to appoint an attorney-general who may
institute civil suits in the name of the international government. The attorney-general also serves as the public
prosecutor of international crimes. There will be an international bar, to which members of the legal bars of the
several states may be admitted by the Judicial Tribunal.
Any act of war by a state without the consent of the
international government, or the levying of troops beyond
the force assigned to it by the treaty of disarmament is to
be treated as an act of international rebellion. There is to
be a small standing force, supplied by the separate states, at
the disposal of the international government for the purpose of enforcing order. It is under the orders of the
president and responsible to the legislature.
Virtually all the peace plans provide for some mechanism for mediating or arbitrating disputes between states,
but there is otherwise much variation. For some, the peace
sought is Euro-centric, for others it is worldwide (Dante,
Cruce, Cloots, Kant, Ladd). Most consider military coercion as a necessary means of enforcement; but Bentham
and Ladd rely on public opinion. Cruce and Saint-Pierre
are keen to see social and economic improvements
within, as well as between, states; but only Kant requires
a particular form of government (i.e., republican) for all
states. From the 1700s through the 1800s, the customs of
nations begins to solidify into international law. Accordingly, there is a gradual shift from reliance on diplomatic
negotiation, mediation, and arbitration to a more juridical
approach to the settlement of disputes, wherein a court
applies international law. This shift is clearly seen in Ladd
and Lorimer, but it is also suggested earlier in Penns
proposal for a Parliament to establish rules of justice.
The long train of peace plans culminates in a series of
remarkable developments in the twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries, most prominently:
League of Nations (1919).
United Nations (UN), with its International Court of
Justice (ICJ) (1945).
European Union (EU) (1993), with its European
Court of Human Rights (ECHR) (1998).
International Criminal Court (ICC) (2002).

Related Topics
Global Citizenship
Global Governance
Perpetual Peace: Abbe de Saint-Pierre

Perpetual Peace: Abbe de Saint-Pierre

Perpetual Peace: Kant

Political Cosmopolitanism

References
General Books
Aksu E (ed) (2008) Early notions of global governance: selected
eighteenth-century proposals for perpetual peace. University of
Wales Press, Cardiff
Hemleben SJ (1943) Plans for world peace through six centuries. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Hinsley FH (1963) Power and the pursuit of peace. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge
Souleyman EV (1941) The vision of world peace in 17th and 18th century
France. Putnams Sons, New York
Specific Works
Balch TW (ed and trans) (1909) The new Cyneas of Emeric Cruce. Cornell
University Library: digital collections. Allen, Lane and Scott,
Philadelphia
Bentham J (1839) The principles of international law. http://www.laits.
utexas.edu/poltheory/bentham/pil/pil.e04.html
Dante A (1957) On world-government (trans: Schneider HW). BobbsMerrill, Indianapolis
de Saint-Pierre ML (2008) An abridged version of the project for perpetual peace, ed. Pace R (trans: Depasquale C). Midsea Books, Valletta
Kant I (1983) Perpetual peace and other essays (trans: Humphrey T).
Hackett, Indianapolis/Cambridge
Ladd W (1840) An essay on a congress of nations. Whipple and Damrell,
Boston. http://books.google.com
Penn W (1693) An essay towards the present and future peace of Europe
by the establishment of an European Dyet, parliament, or estates.
In: Murphy AR (intro and annot) (2002) The political writings of
William Penn. Liberty Fund, Indianapolis. http://files.libertyfund.
org/files/893/0479_LFeBk.pdf
Rousseau J-J (1917) A lasting peace through the federation of Europe and The
State of War. Constable, London. http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1010
Rousseau J-J (1920) LEtat de Guerre and Projet de Paix Perpetuelle.
G. P. Putnams Sons, New York/London

Perpetual Peace: Abbe de

Saint-Pierre
DON E. SCHEID
Department of Philosophy, Winona State University,
Winona, MN, USA

The Projet pour rendre la Paix perpetuelle en Europe

(Project for Bringing about Perpetual Peace in Europe),
by Abbe de Saint-Pierre, is an important forerunner in the
conception of a European Union. It is far more extensive
than earlier European peace plans. First published in 1712,

833

the project went through several revised and enlarged

editions. An abridged edition, Abrege du Projet de Paix
Perpetuelle en Europe (Abridgement of the Project for
Perpetual Peace in Europe), also written by Saint-Pierre,
was published in 1729 and 1737. This entry is derived from
the abridged edition.
Charles-Irenee Castel, Abbe de Saint-Pierre (1658
1743) was born in the castle of Saint-Pierre-Eglise near
Cherbourg in Normandy. At age nine, he entered the
Jesuit school at Rouen. Later, he attended Jesuit colleges
in Caen and Paris. He took minor Orders and was
appointed Abbe de Tiron. The stipend he received from
this abbey, together with an inheritance from his family
estate, enabled him to lead the life of a writer and social
critic. He frequented the salons of Madame de la Fayette
and Marquise Henri de Lambert in Paris. He was elected to
the Academie Francaise (French Academy) in 1695.

Projects
Saint-Pierre can be seen as a representative of ideas of the
Enlightenment, including a faith in human progress.
Addressing nearly every conceivable issue of social concern, his writings were usually in the form of a project or
plan to promote some social good. Besides his peace plan,
his projects included, for example, plans concerning equitable taxation, public education and the education of
women, abolition of privileges and hereditary titles, public
hospitals, and formation of a European navy to eradicate
the Barbary pirates.
The Abbe criticized Louis XIV for waging war merely
for the sake of glory and often in breach of treaty. In 1718,
he published Discours sur la Polysynodie (Discourse on
the Councils) in which he criticized the late French king
for his despotic rule and championed the replacement
of appointed ministers by elected councils. Because of
this publication and other criticisms of the reign of Louis
XIV, Saint-Pierre was expelled from the French Academy
in 1718.

Project for Perpetual Peace in Europe

Saint-Pierre was secretary to Melchior de Polignac, a
French plenipotentiary at the Congress of Utrecht, which
ended the War of the Spanish Succession and marked the
end of the wars of Louis XIV. As secretary to the French
minister, Saint-Pierre most likely witnessed negotiations
on the Treaty of Utrecht (17121713). This series of negotiations and the preceding years of incessant war undoubtedly led him to develop his project on perpetual peace.
Saint-Pierre became well known all over Europe for advocating his project. The Abbes plan for perpetual peace in
Europe inspired, or at least greatly influenced, any number

834

Perpetual Peace: Abbe de Saint-Pierre

of later schemes for peace. Intellectuals such as Leibniz,

Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, and Saint-Simon all took the
project seriously, although some were critical of it.

Preliminary Remarks and Causes of War

As with earlier plans, Saint-Pierres basic idea is to establish a permanent league of states, a Grand Alliance, that
will guarantee a lasting peace in Europe. The Abbe points
out that families in an orderly country enjoy the rule of
law. They may have disputes and lawsuits with each other,
but they do not fear greater misfortunes like murder and
pillage by armies. With sly irony, he notes that the sovereign families of Europe have not yet agreed to form themselves into such a civil society. Without a permanent
league, past experience shows that periods of peace are
no more than temporary truces.
He remarks that in recent years, people have begun to
read of Henry the Greats (Henry IV of France) Grand
Design (by Sully), and have begun to regard a perpetual
European congress as a real possibility. He insists that
the sort of league he proposes is no fantasy, and he cites
Germany, the Helvetian States (Switzerland), and the
Corps of the United Provinces (Netherlands) as examples
of successful federations.
Saint-Pierre enumerates causes of war that he believes
will be eliminated with the creation of his Grand Alliance.
To begin, there are problems with treaties. Most concessions and promises in peace treaties are made under
duress, so ceding parties are not committed to keeping
their promises. The fundamental problem is that there is
no permanent authority on earth to enforce treaties.
Contracting parties may break their agreements with
impunity. When a dispute arises between sovereigns,
there is no recourse to settle the dispute except by force
of arms. With the Grand Alliance, there would be an
authority and mechanism for enforcing treaties.
Among other causes, Saint-Pierre observes that the
disputed succession of a sovereign can lead to war.
Another cause is that, like all men, princes are sensitive
to personal insults and, when angry, seek vengeance. Most
importantly, sovereigns are often motivated by the apparent profits of conquest.

The Fundamental Treaty

In his Abrege, Saint-Pierre considers five articles to be
essential for a fundamental treaty that should be signed
by the European sovereigns (taken from the 12 fundamental articles set out in his original project).
The First Article asserts that a perpetual alliance
shall exist among the sovereigns to make peace unalterable
in Europe. The sovereigns will be continually represented

by their deputies in a perpetual Congress in a free city.

Saint-Pierre suggests Utrecht as an appropriate site. He
lists 24 European sovereignties that are to be represented
in the Congress. Each sovereignty, regardless of size or
power, will have one vote.
Membership in the Alliance of all 24 sovereignties will
be compulsory and irrevocable, because there is no hope
of perpetual peace unless all join. If a sovereign refuses to
join, the Grand Alliance will declare him a future disturber of the tranquility of Europe and will consider him
an enemy of the Alliance. The Alliance will have armed
forces (Fourth Article) to coerce a reluctant sovereign to
join the new order.
The Second Article provides that each sovereignty
shall contribute financially to the common expenses of
the Grand Alliance in proportion to its individual wealth.
This contribution shall be settled monthly by the deputies.
The Third Article requires that all members of the
Alliance officially renounce resorting to arms to settle
their disputes and agree to resort, instead, to conciliation.
In addition to standing committees (political, diplomatic, economic, and war), temporary Committees of
Reconciliation will be formed specifically to reconcile conflicts between sovereigns. These committees are to consist
of commissioners nominated by the Congress by majority
vote. If a Committee of Reconciliation cannot resolve a
dispute through mediation, recourse to arbitration by
the Congress as a whole is then obligatory. Parties to the
dispute are bound to accept the decision of the Congress.
The Fourth Article provides for a common military
force. Each sovereignty will be required to contribute
soldiers to the army of the Alliance. The commanderin-chief of the army is appointed by the Congress and
answerable only to the Grand Alliance.
If a member refuses to carry out a ruling of the Congress or any decision of the Grand Alliance, or negotiates
treaties or prepares for war without the Alliances authority, the Alliance shall take up arms against him until he has
implemented the relevant regulation or decision, or until
he is deposed or destroyed. The Alliance forces may also be
used to put down any rebellion within a state at the request
of that sovereignty.
Finally, the Fifth Article stipulates that these five key
articles may not be altered except by unanimous vote of all
the members of the Alliance.

Status Quo
As Saint-Pierre envisions it, the Grand Alliance guarantees
the status quo of the individual states and will not be
concerned with the government or the internal affairs of
any member. The Alliance will employ its whole strength

Perpetual Peace: Abbe de Saint-Pierre

to guarantee that the hereditary sovereignties remain

hereditary and that governments that are elective remain
elective. Each member state will be guaranteed the territory it presently possesses as based on the terms of the
latest treaties. The sovereignties shall not be allowed to
make any exchange of territory between themselves, except
with the consent of the Alliance.

Military Drawdown
Once all the sovereignties of Europe have joined in the
Grand Alliance, the necessity for military forces to protect
themselves from each other will disappear. At that time, all
the members will disarm, but each sovereignty may still
maintain roughly 6,000 soldiers of its own. Commissioners of the Alliance will prevent an arms buildup within
Europe by carrying out a review of each members troops
twice a year.

Development of Commerce
Saint-Pierre repeatedly contrasts the cost of war with the
profits of peacetime commerce. He points to many projects a sovereign might undertake to facilitate commerce
once freed from military expenses, such as improving
roads, building bridges, and digging canals. He also
proposes various measures to be taken by the Alliance.
For instance, the Alliance is to establish chambers of
commerce in different towns, with deputies authorized
to reconcile disputes that arise between subjects of different sovereignties in cases of value above 10,000 livres.
There should also be development of uniform weights,
measures, and currency throughout Europe.

Conquest and Reputation

The temptation of conquest is one of Saint-Pierres recurring concerns. He argues that conquests are usually far
more costly than they are worth. The unanticipated length
of the war, the cost of occupation, and the interruption of
commerce must all be counted. The Abbe also mentions
the probabilities of success and failure; so if the costs of
failed attempts are added to the ledger, the expense of
successful conquests is even greater.
Connected with conquest is the question of reputation. Admittedly, to simple minds, a prince enhances his
reputation and glory by conquering his enemy. But SaintPierre challenges this crude notion of reputation. Princes
are blinded by misguided praise from their flatters. A man
is worthy of esteem only when he is helpful to others
and in proportion to the courage and intelligence he
evinces in surmounting obstacles. The Abbe acknowledges
that Attila and Tamerlan overcame great difficulties to
satisfy their avarice; but they were in no way virtuous

835

nor, consequently, glorious. Such men are loathsome in

the eyes of their victims and in the eyes of truly virtuous
and disinterested persons. On the other hand, for a prince
to secure perpetual peace and justice for his people would
enhance his true glory.

General Approach and Argument

Perpetual peace itself is Saint-Pierres goal. He does not
intend the Grand Alliance as a way of reestablishing the
Holy Roman Empire or as a means of freeing up military
resources so Europe can expel the Turk goals some
earlier writers embraced.
Although the goal is perpetual peace and its benefit is
increased happiness for everyone in Europe, the plan is
addressed exclusively to the sovereigns. Saint-Pierre promotes his peace plan by appealing directly to their longterm self-interest. He does not make any particular use of
religious or moral appeals. Instead, he repeatedly offers
a kind of cost-benefit analysis of the many advantages that
will accrue to the sovereigns.
There will be a guarantee against the devastations of
foreign and civil wars. Each state will be guaranteed its
sovereignty, and each sovereign and his family will be
guaranteed continued possession of its sovereignty.
There will be great savings in military expenses, along
with concomitant increases in commercial profits. Being
free from war and the preparations for war, states will be
able to use their resources for the improvement of their
legal system, education, and other social institutions.
Sovereigns will have a means for settling disputes without
the risk or expense of war, and the enforcement of future
treaties will be guaranteed.
Saint-Pierre believes that all these considerations will
move the sovereigns to voluntarily join together in the
Grand Alliance. He does not believe (as some did) that
one last, great war would be necessary to unite all of Europe.

Related Topics
European Union (EU)
Perpetual Peace
Perpetual Peace: Kant
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

References
Aksu E (ed) (2008) Early notions of global governance: selected eighteenth-century proposals for perpetual peace. University of Wales
Press, Cardiff
de Saint-Pierre, LAbbe M (2008) An abridged version of the project for
perpetual peace (trans: Depasquale C, Pace R). Midsea Books,
Valletta, Malta
Hemleben SJ (1943) Plans for world peace through six centuries.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago

836

Perpetual Peace: Kant

Perkins ML (1953) The Abbe de Saint-Pierre and the seventeenthcentury intellectual background. Proc Am Philos Soc 97(1):6976
Perkins ML (1960) Voltaire and the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. Fr Rev
34(2):152163
Riley P (19741975) The Abbe de St. Pierre and Voltaire on perpetual
peace in Europe. World Aff 137(3):186194
Souleyman EV (1941) The vision of world peace in seventeenth
and eighteenth-century France. G. P. Putnams Sons, New York

Perpetual Peace: Kant

DON E. SCHEID
Department of Philosophy, Winona State University,
Winona, MN, USA

Immanuel Kant (17241804) wrote a number of essays

touching on the topics of war and peace. This entry covers
his most famous work on peace, Zum ewigen Frieden:
Ein philosophischer Entwurf (Toward Eternal Peace:
A Philosophical Outline), often translated as Toward
Perpetual Peace, first published in 1795. Some speculate
that Kant was moved to write his essay because of
the Peace of Basel, which included a peace treaty
between France and Prussia on April 5, 1795, that
allowed France to annex much of the Rhineland and
proposed calling for a pan-European peace conference. In reaction to the principles of the treaty and
hopeful of a more peaceful political climate, Kant may
have been moved to publish his ideas for achieving
lasting peace. Kant offered his essay to his publisher in
August 1795.
Kants is the most sophisticated peace plan to come
out of the Enlightenment. It is clear from Kants Lectures
on Ethics and his later essays relating to war and peace
that he was familiar with earlier peace plans, especially
those of Saint-Pierre and Rousseau. Kant argues that universal and lasting peace requires that all states become
republics (democracies) and form a worldwide federation, while individuals are accorded legal status under
international law.
He opens his essay by referring to a Dutch
shopkeepers satirical sign that had the inscription eternal
peace with a picture of a graveyard, the implication
being that eternal peace can be obtained only with
death and is never to be had in this life. Kant contends,
to the contrary, that perpetual peace in this world is
a possibility. He presents his essay in the manner of
diplomatic documents of his time, setting out six
preliminary and three definitive articles, followed by

two supplements. In a second edition in 1796, he adds

two appendices.

The Preliminary Articles

"

No treaty of peace that secretly reserves issues for a future

war shall be held valid.

Such reservations would mean that the treaty is merely

a truce. A true peace treaty, Kant says, nullifies all existing
causes for war. There must be agreement to eliminate all
old claims that have caused conflict; mental reservations
(reservatio mentalis) about some item of contention
that a party will revive at the first opportunity will not
do. Kant complains of the mental reservations and the
casuistry Jesuit scholars practice on public contracts later
in his second appendix.
It is difficult to imagine a peace treaty in which neither
party harbors any secret reservations, as Kant seems to
require. Injustices, whether real or merely perceived, inevitably arise as both causes and results of war. The losers
in a war may agree to what they must, but they will nurse
hopes that, at some future date, they will regain lost
territory or correct other injustices suffered in the war.
"

No independent state, be it large or small, may be

acquired by another state by inheritance, exchange, purchase, or gift.

Kants point is that a state is not a possession

(partrimonium) to be owned by some prince or ruling
family like a piece of real estate. To regard the state in
this way is inconsistent with the concept of the original
social contract. Rather, a state is a society of people.
He warns against the European practice of acquiring
states through family alliances by marriage. Kant maintains that, while the right to rule can be inherited (e.g., via
hereditary monarchy), the state cannot be inherited. In
these cases, a state acquires a ruler, but the ruler does not
acquire the state.
This provision is clearly implied by Kants moral principle of never treating persons merely as means (e.g., as
slaves or serfs that go with the land); and it would seem to
lead to a principle of self-determination in international
relations.
"

Standing armies (miles perpetuus) shall be gradually

abolished altogether.

Like many writers of the period, Kant is suspicious of

standing armies. He believes the presence of a standing
army in one country is a provocation for military buildup
in neighboring countries in other words, an arms
race. The financial burden this demands of each country

Perpetual Peace: Kant

eventually becomes greater than that of a short war. Consequently, to end the burdensome costs, standing armies
become the cause of wars.
Moreover, paying men to kill or be killed (i.e., mercenaries) appears to use them as mere machines, which is
inconsistent with the rights of humanity. Voluntary military service by the citizens for homeland defense (i.e.,
citizen militias) is something quite different, he thinks.
"

No national debt shall be contracted in connection with

foreign affairs of the state.

Kant believes it acceptable for a state to seek both

internal and external loans for basic investments in the
national economy, such as the improvement of roads and
the like. But he is against a state increasing its national
debt in order to build its war chest. Paying for everincreasing military expenses on credit makes going to
war too easy. Hence, forbidding such foreign debt must
be a preliminary article for perpetual peace.
"

No state shall forcibly interfere with the constitution and

government of another state.

This is a well-recognized general rule of international

law: there is to be no interference with the internal affairs
of another state. Kant says, Such interference would be an
obvious offence and would render the autonomy of every
state insecure (Humphrey trans. 1983, p. 109). His concern is that violating this rule would set a dangerous
precedent leading to more wars.
Kant considers the case of civil war, wherein a country
is divided in two and each party claims the right to govern
the whole country. If a foreign power were to give aid to
one side, technically it would not violate this rule. Kant
reasons that the two parties are in a state of anarchy in
relation to each other; hence, the aid by a foreign nation
to one of the parties cannot be considered interference in
the constitution of the other party. Nevertheless, as long as
the internal conflict is not yet decided, foreign powers
should not interfere, because to do so would violate the
rights of an independent people to sort out their own
internal problems.
"

No state at war with another shall permit such acts of

war as shall make mutual trust impossible during
some future time of peace. Such acts include the use of
Assassins (percussores) or Poisoners (venefici), breach
of surrender, instigation of treason (perduellio) in the
opposing nation, etc.

Certain dishonorable methods and tactics must be

forbidden because they undermine the minimum trust
necessary to conclude a peace treaty between warring

837

parties. Moreover, once these despicable acts come

into use, they carry over into peacetime practice and
undermine a states integrity, thus destroying the trust
necessary for any continuing peace.
Kant believes that if no meaningful peace can ever
be achieved, then hostilities eventually could become
a war of extermination (bellum internecinum), resulting
in a perpetual peace in the graveyard of humanity as
a whole. Such a war must absolutely be prevented and,
thus, the means that lead to it.
These Preliminary Articles refer to existing practices
that undermine any chance of real peace. Kant does not
think lasting peace will result, however, merely by stopping these practices. Rather, the articles are preliminary in
the sense that their implementation would prepare
a favorable climate for the further steps necessary in the
long-term project of building perpetual peace. Kant maintains that Articles 1, 5, and 6 should be implemented
immediately. The others (2, 3, and 4) may be implemented
gradually, as circumstances permit, but cannot be put
off indefinitely.

The Definitive Articles

Kant prefaces his Definitive Articles with an important
paragraph and footnote in which he summarizes his political philosophy. Following Hobbes, Kant maintains that
peace is not natural for humans. The natural state is one
of war, both open hostilities and the continuous threat
of them. Because the mere suspension of hostilities does
not provide the security of true peace, the state of peace
must be established. That is to say, peace does not happen
automatically when hostilities cease; it must be secured
through the establishment of a legal system, peace being
the ultimate purpose of law.
In the footnote, Kant insists that the mere presence of
another in the state of nature, whether an individual or
a people, is itself a threat. Hence, one may compel others
either to enter with him into a state of civil law or to
remove themselves from his surroundings. Accordingly,
Kant formulates the postulate: All men who can mutually
influence one another must accept some civil constitution (Kant 1983: 112). He envisions three levels of legal
order: the constitution of the state, the rights of states in
relation to each other, and the rights of world citizenship
for individuals.
"

The civil constitution of every state should be republican.

By republican, Kant has in mind a constitutional

arrangement under which power is exercised according
to well-defined rules and the executive power is separate
from the legislative. The legitimacy of a republican

838

Perpetual Peace: Kant

government derives from the people, and laws are made

with the consent of the citizens as represented in a legislature. Kant distinguishes republicanism from democracy,
which today would be expressed by distinguishing representative democracy from direct democracy. The opposite of republican government is a despotic one in which
all power is concentrated and no real restraints exist. He
cites the despotism of a ruler who executes laws that he
himself has made. Kant maintains that only the republican form of government is compatible with the original
social contract in that it respects the freedom and equality of all citizens.
A republican government is best for peace because the
consent of the citizenry is required for the state to go to
war. Citizens, Kant believes, will only rarely consent to war
when they consider the costs they would face: citizens
must do the fighting, pay the expenses of the war, repair
the wars devastation, and shoulder the burden of continuing military expenses.
By contrast, under non-republican forms of government, it is easy for a prince to declare war. Kant says, Here
the ruler is not a fellow citizen, but the nations owner,
and war does not affect his table, his hunt,. . . his court
festivals,. . . Thus, he can decide to go to war for the most
meaningless of reasons, as if it were a kind of pleasure
party, and he can blithely leave its justification. . . to his
diplomatic corps,. . . (Kant 1983: 113).
"

The right of nations shall be based on a federation of free

states.

Kant does not give any details as to the structure or

workings of this federation (Volkerbund), but he is not
advocating a world government (Volkerstatt). States are in
an anarchistic state (state of nature) in relation to each
other. The rationale for their uniting in a federation is the
same as that for individuals in the state of nature coming
together to form a state, namely, to put themselves under
the rule of law for mutual security.
Kant criticizes the idea of the law of war because war
is the antitheses of law. The codes formulated by Grotius,
Pufendorf, and Vattel cannot have the slightest legal force,
according to Kant, because states do not stand under any
common external constraint. Such codes simply provide
the rhetoric for justifying wars. Yet the fact that states
at least render lip service to the idea of law suggests
there is a higher moral propensity in humans, even if it
is still dormant.
In the present lawless environment, states can press for
their rights only by waging war, as there is no prospect for
a determination of right from an independent tribunal.
Each state is forced by circumstance to be judge in its own

case. Strictly speaking, neither party in a war can be

declared unjust, because that presupposes a judgment of
right by an independent tribunal. A war of punishment
(bellum punitivum) is also inconceivable, since there is
no legally established relation of superior and inferior
between the warring parties. Nevertheless, victory in war
does not determine right. Since reason condemns war as
a means of determining right, Kant insists that seeking
peace is an absolute moral duty.
Unfortunately, although a peace treaty (pactum pacis)
may put an end to some particular war, it cannot end the
general anarchistic condition. Hope of a perpetual peace
can be secured only by way of a contract among states.
Therefore, Kant argues, a federation (foedus pacificum)
among states must be formed. This federation would not
seek the kind of powers possessed by states but only those
necessary for the maintenance of each states freedom.
The sole purpose of the federation is to keep the peace.
The individual states would retain all their sovereign rights
except the right to make war, which, Kant asserts, is not
really a right in any case.
Kant points out that it is meaningless to insist that
states have rights but, at the same time, admit that there is
no mechanism other than war to determine those rights. If
there is to be no more war, and if the rights of states are to
be secured, then there must be some kind of global federation of states. He conceives that the federation of states
will begin with a nucleus of a few states and then, by
example, encourage other states to join, until membership
in the federation is universal.
Reason indicates that the only way states can emerge
from their lawless condition of war is to give up their
savage (lawless) freedom, just as individuals do, and establish a universal civil society (civitas gentium). But, Kant
laments, states do not wish to do in practice what is correct
in theory. The concept of a world government is inconsistent with the idea of states having their independence,
their sovereignty. Accordingly, so that all is not lost,
instead of the positive idea of a world republic, they
must adopt the negative surrogate of an enduring federation that prevents war. Kant says a federation can
prevent wars and curb the tendency to hostilities; but,
nevertheless, there always will be some danger of a war
breaking out.
"

Cosmopolitan right shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality.

Kants proposal accords individual persons legal status

as members of the world order. It is limited to conditions
of universal hospitality, however. Kant conceives of hospitality as the right of a foreigner to travel freely and to

Perpetual Peace: Kant

visit countries without being treated in a hostile manner.

This right makes international commerce possible. He
allows that a state may turn foreigners away; but so long
as they behave peaceably, they may not be treated as
enemies. Kant says a foreigner cannot claim the right to
be a permanent resident (Gastrecht), but the right to visit
(Besuchsrecht) belongs to everyone.
Kant bases this right on the original common ownership of the earths surface when no one had a greater right
to a particular place on earth than anyone else. Possibly,
Kants thinking is that once nation-states formed up and
established legal regimes over their defined territories, the
universal right of permanent residency anywhere on earth
was lost, but the right to visit anywhere on earth was
retained by all persons as a kind of residual right.
Kant criticizes European colonialism as grossly
inhospitable. People have a right to visit foreign countries and to open commercial relations, but they do not
have a right to subjugate the native inhabitants. He notes
that foreign soldiers were sent to East India under the
pretext of merely establishing trading posts; but this led
to subjugation of the natives, incitement of various Indian
states to wars among themselves, famine, insurrection,
treachery, and other evils. Kant harshly criticizes the
European countries use of slavery in the Sugar Islands
(West Indies). He approves the policy of China and
Japan of permitting, after experience with such guests,
only one European nation, the Dutch, to enter under strict
conditions.

First Supplement: On the Guarantee of

Perpetual Peace
Perpetual peace, Kant asserts, is insured by processes of
nature (social forces) that permit harmony to emerge
among humans through their discord and even against
their wills. This paradoxical thesis is expressed in a
number of Kants writings, especially in his essay, Idea
for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose
(1784). Kants idea of everlasting peace and his philosophy
of history are linked.
Kant notes that animosities and war have driven
people to separate themselves and to populate all regions
of the world, even inhospitable regions. Warlike people,
for instance, forced other groups to emigrate to other parts
of the world. Kant says two further means which nature
has for maintaining the separation of peoples are different
languages and religions, and these dispose people to
mutual hatred and pretexts for war. On the other hand,
Kant recognizes that war has also forced humans to
establish legal relationships. Apart from discord among
individuals (which requires people to leave the state

of nature and enter into a social contract), war and the

threat of war force individuals to band together in lawlike relationships (i.e., states) for mutual protection from
outside groups.
Every state (or its ruler) would dominate the entire
world if it could. But natural animosities dispose men to
mutual hatred and war, which keep peoples apart. Thus,
these warlike animosities protect people from a universal
despotism. Nature has pushed humanity to higher stages
of culture through the competitive dynamics of war. Kant
believes that the growth of culture, and progress toward
agreement of principles, can eventually lead to mutual
understanding and true peace. The long-term effect of
the antagonism humans have toward each other, their
unsocial sociability as Kant calls it, is to force them to
live under law. Because nature drives human progress
through a diversity of cultures and national characters,
the best legal arrangement is a federation that recognizes
different states and not a world government that fuses
everyone into a single state.
Kant disputes the claim that a republican form of
government can be instituted only among a nation of
angels. Indeed, Kant asserts, the problem is solvable even
for a society of devils, if only they are rational. The problem does not require the moral improvement of humans.
It requires only that they compel each other to enter into
a juridical state where laws have power so that, even if they
are not morally good, they are nevertheless compelled to
be good citizens.
In addition, there is a common interest in trade, but
trade cannot coexist with war. Kant remarks that commercial interests may be the most reliable in forcing states to
pursue the noble cause of peace. Wherever war threatens
to break out, states will try to head it off through mediation, just as if they were permanently leagued for that
purpose. Kant concludes that one can identify enough
social forces at work to reasonably believe that perpetual
peace is possible, though it cannot be predicted with
certainty. Because peace is possible, it becomes our
moral duty to work toward bringing it about.

Second Supplement: Secret Article for

Perpetual Peace
Kant urges government authorities to consider the advice
of philosophers and other thinkers on issues concerning
political policy, war, and peace. Although it may seem
humiliating for political leaders to seek instruction from
their subjects, they should do so. They can secretly
receive the advice of their subjects by simply allowing
them to speak and write freely and publicly. In this way,
the advice will be available to them.

839

840

Perpetual Peace: Kant

Kant does not think that philosophers should be

kings, or kings philosophers, as Plato advocated, because
power inevitably corrupts a persons free judgment. That
kings should permit philosophers to speak and write publically, however, is indispensable to the enlightenment of
their affairs.

Appendix I: On the Disagreement

Between Morals and Politics in Relation
to Perpetual Peace
Morality is the totality of rules that tell us what we ought
to do. But morality is also practical in the sense that its
rules require only what we can do; to prescribe something
that we literally cannot do would be absurd. Consequently,
Kant argues, there cannot be any conflict between politics
as an applied doctrine of law and morals as a theoretical
doctrine of law.
Kant addresses what might be considered a politicalrealist objection to his project for perpetual peace. While
admitting that, theoretically, we can do what we ought to
do, the practical man (Praktiker) asserts that, human
nature and the nature of states being what they are, people
will never do all that is necessary to achieve perpetual
peace. First, getting people to live under a lawful regime
(the state) itself requires coercion to enforce the laws.
Second, once a state is established, it will not allow itself
to be subjected to the judgment of other states in
determining how it should enforce its rights against
them. Moreover, the nature of a state is always to seek to
increase its power. Therefore, all theoretical plans for civil,
international, and cosmopolitan rights are empty and
impractical ideals. By contrast, prudence would counsel
basing political practice on empirical principles of human
nature and power politics.
Kant answers that unless morality is entirely nonexistent, politics and the concept of right must be compatible,
and public law must be understood as a limiting condition
on power politics. The main problem, according to Kant,
is that the assumption that human nature is incapable of
attaining perpetual peace becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy by recommending principles of power politics that are
contrary to right and thus make progress impossible.
The supposedly practical man assumes he can ignore the
idea of right and solve his political problems empirically,
basing his solution on experience of the constitutions
that have been most lasting. But, Kant objects, empirical
investigation of the historical record is not enough
for determining what is best. All forms of government
have sometimes produced prosperity and justice and
sometimes the opposite. Still more uncertainty arises in
the area of international law, a form of law based on

treaties worked out by ministers with secret reservations

for their violation.
Constitutions and their reforms must be evaluated
against the ideal of moral right. Kant avers it will take
true moral courage for political leaders to hold to this
goal. This will consist mainly in detecting and squarely
challenging the principles of alleged political prudence,
which provide excuses for all transgressions of what is
right by an appeal to the weaknesses of human nature.

Appendix II: On the Agreement Between

Politics and Morality Under the
Transcendental Concept of Public Right
Kant claims that politics and morality can come together
in law. Law, by its very nature, implies publicity; and
every claim of right must be amenable to publicity.
This provides us with a moral criterion, which Kant
presents as the transcendental formula of public right:
"

All actions that affect the rights of other men are wrong if
their maxim is not consistent with publicity.

For example, if my maxim (rule of action) cannot

be openly divulged without at the same time defeating
my purpose (i.e., I must keep my intention a secret if
I am to succeed), then it contains an injustice. Kant
notes that this formula is only a means of recognizing
what is not right. We cannot conclude, conversely, that
whatever maxims are compatible with publicity are
therefore right.
Kant gives examples of the application of his publicity
principle. First, he considers whether a people may rightfully use rebellion to overthrow the oppressive power of
a tyrant. Kant maintains it is wrong for subjects to pursue
their rights in this way. His argument seems to be that
a right of rebellion cannot be publically proclaimed in
a states constitution; thus, rebellion would be unjust.
Three other examples concern international law.
(1) Can a state break its promise to another state?
(2) May lesser powers together preemptively attack a
greater power whose increasing strength is causing anxiety? (3) May a larger state subjugate a smaller state whose
presence threatens it? In all these cases, Kants answer is
in the negative, because the intended actions would be
countered and thwarted if not kept secret.
The more secretive a states practices and policies are,
the less it will be able to inspire the trust that genuine
negotiations and lasting peace require. The duplicity of
secretive politics would be defeated if the maxims
of politics were made public. With this in mind, Kant
proposes another transcendental and affirmative principle
of public right:

Pharmaceutical Justice
"

All maxims that require publicity (in order not to fail of

their end) agree with both politics and morality.

Kant argues that if public well-being is attained only by

rules that are publicized, then these rules must harmonize
with public right.
Whatever one may think of Kants arguments and
examples, it should be noted that Kants insight is incorporated in present international treaty law. The United
Nations Charter in Article 102 requires the registration of
every treaty and every international agreement entered
into by a Member of the United Nations.
In brief, Kants vision is this. Just because humanity
has never had perpetual peace, does not mean it is
impossible any more than the fact that humans never
before flew in a balloon. Humanity can progress, but it
must figure out for itself how to do so through its use of
reason. Unless empirical evidence proves that perpetual
peace is absolutely impossible, the moral imperative
requires us to act as if we can achieve it. But peace, no
less than war, must be worked at. The best way to approach
closer and closer to perpetual peace (if never achieving
perfect peace) is to form a federation of republican states
under a legal regime that also recognizes the legal rights of
individuals in relation to foreign states.

Related Topics
Democratic Peace Theory
Global Citizenship
Global Constitutionalism
Global Governance
Kant, Immanuel
Perpetual Peace
Perpetual Peace: Abbe de Saint-Pierre
Political Cosmopolitanism

References
Kants Writings
Kant I (1971) Kants political writings, ed. Reiss H, (trans: Nisbet HB).
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Kant I (1983) Perpetual peace and other essays (trans: Humphrey T).
Hackett Pub, Indianapolis/Cambridge
Kant I (1999) Metaphysical elements of justice, 2nd edn. (trans: Ladd J).
Hackett Pub, Indianapolis/Cambridge
Commentaries: Books
Friedrich CJ (1948) Inevitable peace. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA
Gallie WB (1979) Philosophers of peace and war. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge
Kant I (2006) Toward perpetual peace and other writings on politics,
peace, and history, with essays by: Waldron J, Doyle MW,

841

Wood AW, ed. Kleingeld P, (trans: Colclasure DL). Yale University

Press, New Haven/London
Teson FR (1998) A philosophy of international law. Westview Press,
Boulder
Tuck R (1999) The rights of war and peace: political thought and
the international order from Grotius to Kant. Oxford University
Press, Oxford
Articles
Bourke J (1942) Kants doctrine of perpetual peace. Philosophy
17(68):324333
Davis KR (1991) Kantian publicity and political justice. Hist Philos Q
8(4):409421
Hocking WE (1924) Immanuel Kant and the foreign policies of nations.
Advoc Peace Justice 86(7):414424
Hurrell A (1990) Kant and the Kantian paradigm in international
relations. Rev Int Stud 16(3):183205
Waltz KN (1962) Kant, liberalism, and war. Am Polit Sci Rev
56(2):331340

Persecution
Amnesty International
Gay Rights
Human Rights
Human Rights Watch
Torture

Pharmaceutical Justice
NICOLE HASSOUN
Department of Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Introduction
Most of the worlds health problems afflict poor countries and their poorest inhabitants (WHO 2004). There
are many reasons for this. One of these reasons is that
the poor have limited access to essential drugs and technologies. The philosophical literature on pharmaceutical
justice focuses, primarily, on this problem. Much of the
philosophical literature, moreover, focuses on ways of
dealing with the negative impacts of the World Trade
Organizations Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPS) agreement (Hollis and Pogge 2008; Buchanan
et al. 2009. For broader interdisciplinary literature on the
topic, see: Abramowicz 2003; Danzon and Towse 2003;
Faunce and Nasu 2008; Goodwin 2008).

842

Pharmaceutical Justice

The TRIPS Agreement

Intellectual property rights encourage the development
of new drugs and technologies. Unfortunately, these
rights also prevent many of the poorest from securing
important drugs and technologies that already exist
(Dutfield 2008). If AIDS drugs are under patent, for
instance, this may make it nearly impossible for poor
people to obtain AIDS treatment. The TRIPS agreement
requires countries to extend the kinds of patent protection common in developed countries to all patented
products, even those developed elsewhere (Bbattacbarya
2008).
The TRIPS agreement does allow some exceptions.
Countries are sometimes allowed, for instance, to issue
compulsory licenses on essential medicine that allow them
to make or import such products without approval by the
company holding the patent (Dutfield 2008). The WTO
also lets pharmaceutical companies offer drugs at different
prices for different markets. So, proponents of the TRIPS
agreement conclude that it captures the benefits of intellectual property rights for future generations without violating the human rights of those in present generations
(Abbott 2004). Opponents of TRIPS argue that, in practice, countries do not have the flexibility they need to
provide for the basic health needs of their populations
(Dutfield 2008). Nor do they believe that industries will
help these countries to do so. Furthermore, they object
that there are many provisions similar to those in the
TRIPS agreement appearing in other trade agreements.
Institutional changes may be necessary to protect individuals ability to secure essential drugs and technologies
(Dutfield 2008).

Restructuring the Rules of Trade

Several authors have argued that there are reasons to
restructure the incentives pharmaceutical companies face
to get them to extend access on essential drugs and technologies to the poor (Flory and Kitcher 2004; Hollis and
Pogge 2008; Buchanan et al. 2009). Some have come up
with practical proposals to restructure these incentives
(Hollis and Pogge 2008; Buchanan et al. 2009). Most of
the traditional alternatives either help the poor access
existing drugs and technologies or encourage research on
and development of new drugs and technologies that
benefit the poor.

Proposals for Extending Access on Existing

Drugs and Technologies
One way of lowering the cost of existing drugs and
technologies is via differential pricing (Danzon and
Towse 2003). Pharmaceutical companies might offer

drugs at different prices for different markets. Another

option is compulsory licensing. Countries can issue
licenses to produce and/or import these products without
approval by the company holding the patent (Goodwin
2008). Yet, a third way of lowering the cost of existing
drugs and technologies is to return to the pre-TRIPS
situation where foreign patents were primarily recognized
and enforced only in developed countries.
Unfortunately, pharmaceutical companies have
resisted differential pricing (Kanavos et al. 2004). They
have little incentive to lower their prices for the poor. It
is hard to prevent reimportation of cheaper versions of
identical drugs across borders, even with different packaging. Most pharmaceutical products are small and easy to
hide. So, it is not likely that differential pricing will be
pursued widely enough to ensure that the poor can access
the essential drugs and technologies they need (Danzon
and Towse 2003).
Similarly, companies have resisted compulsory licensing. When South Africa passed its Medicines Act, many of
the big pharmaceutical companies sued because the
act encouraged generic competition for AIDS medicines
(Barnard 2002). It was only after protracted negotiations,
and a great deal of negative media attention, that the
pharmaceutical companies withdrew their lawsuit. But
South Africa did not go on to import generic AIDS medicines (Barnard 2002). At the behest of pharmaceutical
companies, other countries have been singled out in the,
so-called, 301 Reports of the US Trade Representative
for not being aggressive enough in enforcing foreign
intellectual property rights and have, thus, faced the threat
of trade sanctions. The US has also used bilateral trade
agreements and diplomatic and political pressures to
undermine countries that produce generic medicines
and/or consider importing them (Oxfam 2002, cited in
GHW 2005: 106).
Worse, countries without their own manufacturing
capacity may not be able to secure the drugs they need
even if they do issue compulsory licenses (Barnard 2002).
Few poor countries have their own manufacturing capacity and, under the TRIPS agreement, it may become more
difficult for those without manufacturing capacity to
access generic drugs (Barnard 2002; Steinbrook 2007).
The TRIPS agreement requires countries like India, Brazil,
and Thailand that export many generic drugs to developing countries to extend patent protection to essential
drugs and technologies. Countries that want to export
essential drugs and technologies will also have to issue
compulsory licenses to do so. So far, only one country
(Canada) has agreed to export drugs under a compulsory
license (WTO 2007). Though, given the complexity of

Pharmaceutical Justice

international and Canadian law, Canadian companies

were yet to export a single pill 3 years after issuing the
license (Goodwin 2008).
Finally, there was a large social movement, backed
even by the then pope John Paul II to prevent implementation of the TRIPS agreement (Martin 2002). Ultimately,
it failed, although the agreement was amended to
make it easier to compulsory license essential drugs and
technologies (WTO 2007). Pharmaceutical companies
want control over the drugs they develop in every
market. So, it is unlikely that we will be able to return to
a pre-TRIPS agreement situation.

Proposals that Encourage R&D on Neglected

Diseases
Alternatives that encourage R&D on essential drugs and
medications for neglected diseases include prize funds
and grants (Abramowicz 2003). Agencies or individuals
might, for instance, agree to buy a certain number of doses
from any company that develops a malaria vaccine at a set
price. Alternately, they might give grants for research on
neglected diseases.
Both alternatives have problems. Neither takes full
advantage of the efficiency the free market offers. The
agencies offering prize funds or grants have to decide
what neglected diseases or problems they want to address
and there may be better ways to help the poor. They
also have to decide how much a given intervention is
worth. These decisions are likely to be associated with
substantial inefficiencies due to incompetence, corruption, lobbying by companies and patient groups, and
gaming (Pogge 2007). Furthermore, the outside experts
and bureaucrats do not know what can be done most
efficiently with each companys resources.
There are probably ways of ameliorating the problems
with some of above proposals and each is likely to have
some positive impact. Nevertheless, other proposals also
merit consideration.

Proposals in the Philosophical Literature

Thomas Pogges proposal has received the most discussion
in the philosophical literature (although he is not the first
to come up with an idea along these lines). Pogge suggests
creating a Health Impact Fund, a second (voluntary) patent system. Under this system, pharmaceutical companies
would not be given a limited monopoly for their inventions. Rather, inventors would be rewarded based on
how much their inventions contribute to ameliorating
the global disease burden (GDB). Inventors would have
an incentive to invest in whatever R&D, infrastructure
improvements, pricing systems, or donation programs

would make the most impact on the GDB. They might

even price their drugs below the marginal costs of production to capture a greater reward from this alternative
patent scheme. The scheme would give inventors an
incentive to collaborate with, rather than protest
against, generic companies, country governments, and
nongovernmental organizations trying to alleviate the
GDB. Further, Pogges patent system would not create an
incentive for companies to prefer drugs that treat the
chronic diseases or disorders of affluent patients. Rather,
companies would have an incentive to invest in those
drugs that prevent the most death and alleviate the most
suffering. Pogge says that the cost of the plan might peak
at around $45$90 billion. With all the worlds countries
participating, $45 billion amounts to 0.1% and $90 billion
to 0.2% of the global product. In a more recent version of
the proposal with Aidan Hollis, he revises the estimate
downwards to 6 billion (Hollis and Pogge 2008). On
Pogges proposal, companies would have a reason to invest
in whatever research they believe will most cost-effectively
reduce the GDB (Pogge 2007).
Pogges proposal raises several questions. First, it is
not clear how we might attribute reductions in the GDB
to an inventors efforts. Although a new drug or investment in infrastructure might help ameliorate a disease,
things nongovernmental organizations or other country
governments are doing, independent of the investor,
may contribute more. It is not clear how we can prevent
investors from receiving undue credit and investors have
incentive to claim credit where it is not due. Finally,
Pogges proposal would require significant public investment, and depends on the goodwill of developed-country
taxpayers or donors who have historically done little to
help the global poor.
Allen Buchanan, Tony Cole, and Robert Keohane have
also come up with a proposal. They want to create a Global
Institute for Justice in Innovation that would impact
pharmaceutical companies as well as other innovative
firms. One of the Institutes functions would be to provide
prizes and grants for justice-promoting innovations. Its
primary function, however, would be to issue (limited)
compulsory licenses for innovations that are diffusing
at less than optimal rates for enhancing justice (where
justice requires respecting basic rights and liberties and
ameliorating extreme deprivation). The optimal level,
they suggest, is that at which marginal cost equals
marginal demand what a competitive market would
supply. Companies would be compensated at rates
between the price they could secure with monopolistic
practices and the rates they could secure on the free market
(Buchanan et al. 2009).

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Pharmaceutical Justice

This proposal raises several interesting philosophical

as well as practical questions. Philosophically, it is not
clear that the proposal will do enough. Justice may
demand that certain innovative products be disbursed
more quickly than even a competitive market would
allow. Subsidies for essential drugs and technologies may,
for instance, be in order. There are also questions about
who should pay the costs of diffusing these innovations
(though, all of the proposals discussed here are contentious in this way for they all imply different distributions
of the costs of providing these sorts of innovations). Practically, it is not clear that it is feasible to create such an
institution since every innovative company with market
power would have an incentive to resist its genesis (despite
reputational benefits). Particular decisions would also be
extremely contentious and the agency might have to contend with significant political pressures. Furthermore, it is
not clearly technically feasible for such an organization to
monitor all innovations in an impartial way. Few compulsory licenses have been issued through the WTO and there
is little reason to believe this is because such licenses are
not necessary (Goodwin 2008). Finally, it is not clear that
their proposal will be better (with regard to the requirements of justice) than the WTOs provisions as their
proposal would require more compensation to companies and multilateralism than the WTO currently requires
for issuing compulsory licenses. This might make such
licenses even more difficult to secure.
Even if neither Pogge nor Buchanans proposals for
restructuring the incentives pharmaceutical companies
face are likely to succeed, there are a host of alternatives
in the interdisciplinary literature on the topic that merit
consideration. Some suggest better prediction of demand
for medicines for neglected diseases (Levine et al. 2008).
Others encourage developing countries to form alliances
with each other and reform their patent offices (Yu 2008;
Drahos 2008). Yet others endorse international organizations move toward promoting new drug development
(Lerner 2008). Some even suggest changing university
licensing practices to allow greater access to the fruits of
university research (Evans 2008).
Pursuing this last line of thought, it may be possible to
implement a package of Fair Trade and Investment strategies to encourage pharmaceutical companies to extend
access on essential drugs and technologies to the poor
(Hassoun 2007, 2011). The idea is to rate pharmaceutical
and biotechnology companies based on how their policies
impact poor peoples access to essential drugs and technologies. The best companies, in a given year, will be Fair
Trade certified and be allowed to use a Fair Trade label on
their products. Highly rated companies then have an

incentive to use the label to garner a larger share of the

market as those engaged in trade and investment often
prefer to purchase Fair Trade goods and invest in Fair
Trade companies. If even a small percentage of consumers
or doctors would prefer Fair Trade products, the incentive
to use this label could be substantial. Moreover, socially
responsible investment companies could include in their
portfolio Fair Trade certified companies. Finally, having
a Fair Trade certification system for pharmaceutical and
biotechnology companies would open the door to all
kinds of fruitful social activism including boycotts of
poorly rated companies, lobbying of insurance companies
to include Fair Trade products in their formularies, and so
forth. One possibility is a Fair Trade Licensing Campaign.
Because pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies
rely, to a large extent, on university research and development, universities might make it a condition of the sale
of their licenses that companies that agree to abide by
Fair Trade standards. In short, there is a lot of room for
creative thinking about pharmaceutical justice in practice
as well as theory.

Other Issues
If pharmaceutical justice is narrowly construed, it is not
the most important issue in the literature on poverty and
public health. For, even if drugs and technologies are
widely available at low prices, that does not mean poor
people will be able use them. Health infrastructure and
access to health workers, decent food, and water are often
necessary for people to access and benefit from drugs and
technologies. Several of the above proposals (e.g., the
Health Impact Fund) might, however, be modified to
give companies incentives to address these problems.
There are also many other proposals intended to address
these problems.
Further, there are a host of issues unrelated to TRIPS
that merit consideration under the label Pharmaceutical
Justice. These problems include drug counterfeiting
(which can lead people to consume unsafe substances),
high prices (even in rich countries), declining creativity
in pharmaceutical development, as well as questionable
marketing and research practices (amongst others). Marcia
Angell argues, for instance, that pharmaceutical companies
are producing fewer innovative and important drugs, while
increasing investment in advertising campaigns and university researchers. As a result, they are distorting research
incentives and doctors are prescribing more expensive,
unnecessary drugs (Agnell 2004).
Nor is the TRIPS agreement the only trade agreement
that constrains access to essential drugs and technologies.
The Sanitary and Phytosanitary, Technical Barriers to

Pluralism

Trade, and potential service agreements may do so, for

instance.
Philosophers have just started to consider pharmaceutical justice, but there are certainly many issues in the area
that merit significant attention.

Acknowledgments
Material from this article also appears in the following:
Hassoun, N. (2007). Global health impact: a basis for
labeling and licensing proposals. Carnegie Mellon University Working Paper; Hassoun, N. (2011). Globalization
and global justice: shrinking distance, expanding obligations. Manuscript under contract with Cambridge
University Press. The author would like to thank Brad
Monton for helpful comments.

Related Topics
Bioprospecting and Biopiracy
Duties to the Distant Needy
Essential Medicines, Access to
Global Justice
Global Public Health
Medical Justice
Pogge, Thomas
Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property

References
Abbott F (2004) Are the competition rules in the WTO TRIPS agreement
adequate? J Int Econ Law 7(3):687703
Abramowicz M (2003) Perfecting patent prizes. Vanderbilt Law Rev
56(1):114236
Agnell M (2004) The truth about the drug companies: how they deceive us
and what to do about it. Random House, New York
Barnard D (2002) In the high court of South Africa, Case No. 4138/98: the
global politics of access to low-cost AIDS drugs in poor countries.
Kennedy Inst Ethics J 12(2):159174
Bbattacbarya R (2008) Are developing countries going too far on TRIPS?
A closer look at the new laws in India. Am J Law Med 34:395421
Buchanan A, Cole T, Keohane R (2009) Justice in the diffusion of innovation. J Polit Philos. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.
1467-9760.2009.00348.x/full
Danzon P, Towse A (2003) Differential pricing for pharmaceuticals: reconciling access, R&D and patents. Int J Health Care Finance Econ
3(3):183205
Drahos P (2008) Trust me: patent offices in developing countries.
Am J Law Med 34:151174
Dutfield G (2008) Delivering drugs to the poor: will the TRIPS amendment help? Am J Law Med 34:107124
Evans G (2008) Strategic patent licensing for public research
organizations: deploying restriction and reservation clauses to promote medical R&D in developing countries. Am J Law Med
34:175223
Faunce A, Nasu H (2008) Three proposals for rewarding novel health
technologies benefiting people living in poverty: a comparative

analysis of prize funds, health impact funds and a cost-effectiveness/competitive tender treaty. Public Health Ethics 1(2):146153.
http://phe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/phn013v1
Flory J, Kitcher Ph (2004) Global health and the scientific research agenda.
Philos Public Aff 32(1):3665
Global Health Watch (GHW) (2005) Global health watch 20052006: an
alternative world health report. Zed Books, New York
Goodwin P (2008) Right idea, wrong result Canadas access to medicines
regime. Am J Law Med 34(4):567584
Hassoun N (2007) Global health impact: a basis for labeling and licensing
proposals. Carnegie Mellon University Working Paper
Hassoun N (2011) Globalization and global justice: shrinking distance,
expanding obligations. Manuscript under contract with Cambridge
University Press
Hollis A, Pogge T (2008) The health impact fund, making new medicines
accessible for all: a report of incentives for global health. http://www.
keionline.org/blogs/2008/11/27/trade-off-innov-access/. Accessed
Feb 2011
Kanavos P, Costa-i-Font J, Merkur S, Gemmill M (2004) The economic
impact of pharmaceutical parallel trade in European Union member
states. Special research paper LSE health and social care. London
School of Economics and Political Science, London
Lerner J (2008) Intellectual property and development at WHO and
WIPO. Am J Law Med 34:257277
Levine R, Pickett J, Sekhrf N, Yadav P (2008) Demand forcasting for
essential medical technologies. Am J Law Med 34:225255
Martin HEMD (2002) Intervention by the Holy See at the World Trade
Organization. 20 Dec 2002. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/
secretariat_state/documents/rc_seg-st_doc_20021220_martin-wto_en.
html. Accessed Feb 2011
Pogge T (2007) Intellectual property rights and access to essential
medicines. Global policy innovations. Carnegie Council for International Affairs, New York. http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/
policy_library/data/FP4. Accessed Feb 2011
World Health Organization (WHO) (2004) World health report 2004.
World Health Organization, Geneva
World Trade Organization (WTO) (2007) TRIPS and public health:
Canada is first to notify compulsory license to export generic
drug. WTO, Geneva. http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news07_
e/trips_health_notif_oct07_e.htm. Accessed Feb 2011
Yu P (2008) Access to medicines, BRICS alliances, and collective action.
Am J Law Med 34:345394

Pluralism
TRACEY NICHOLLS
Department of Philosophy, Lewis University,
Romeoville, IL, USA

Pluralism, in a political context, is best understood as an

attempt to respect diversity of religious belief and cultural
expression and, at the global level, different models of
governance. Different states, or groups within a society,
may share an overall commitment to, for instance,

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Pluralism

a functional international order or a flourishing nationstate but nonetheless diverge on questions of how best to
regulate what they consider to be their internal affairs.
Underpinning pluralism, then, is the belief that selfdetermination is a fundamental value.
At the level of nation-states, pluralism is deployed as
a response to diversity in two ways: cultural pluralism and
legal pluralism. Cultural pluralism is the respect for differences most familiar to those of us who live in societies
claiming multicultural identities. In order to achieve harmony without resorting to a possibly regressive demand of
assimilation, societies embrace the view that different
cultural traditions are valuable in themselves. We see this
respect for diversity most frequently in open, or liberal,
societies, those in which it is considered inappropriate for
government to foreclose individual choice by promoting
a particular notion of the good life.
Legal pluralism has historically been justified by cultural pluralism. Because we have adopted an attitude of
respect for diverse cultures, we are prepared to accept legal
codes and institutions that parallel dominant or mainstream codes without disrupting the national order.
Clear examples of legal pluralism can be found in the
coexistence of the civil law tradition that the province of
Quebec inherited as a former French colony with the
English common law tradition that governs noncriminal
law in the rest of Canada, and in the growing use of Native
American/First Nations sentencing circles for aboriginal
offenders.
When pluralist commitments are enacted on a global
level, we see elements of both types of pluralism, in the
acknowledgment of different customs and in the acceptance of a multiplicity of institutions. However, engaging
other state actors in a spirit of liberal openness that does
not pass judgment on the differences they exhibit can
strain the demands of justice. If we understand justice to
be grounded in a commitment to the equal moral value of
every human life as is unambiguously the case in, for
instance, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR) we encounter some apparently intractable
problems in attempts to practice both pluralism with
respect to states and justice with respect to persons. How
can we reconcile traditional practices of female circumcision with the UDHRs defense of rights to security of
person, freedom from torture, and equal treatment of
genders? How can we reconcile the lack of state-funded
schools and hospitals in very poor countries like Haiti with
the UDHRs stipulation that access to education and
health care are basic human rights?
This tension between moral universalism as the voice
of global justice and the pluralism that states choices and

traditions and their right of self-determination demands

of us can be drawn out in at least two ways. The first is
through the definitional critique of pluralism produced by
commentators on Isaiah Berlins value pluralism. This
critique asks whether and how pluralism can be distinguished from relativism, whether pluralisms insistence
that there is more than one single right answer commits
it to uncritical acceptance of all ways of life as equally valid.
Defenders of pluralism would seem to have open to them
a response that ties acceptance of diversity to John Stuart
Mills harm principle: They can endorse multiple good
choices without having to accept those such as genital
mutilation or subhuman misery that can be identified as
harms to others.
A related way of understanding the tension between
justice and pluralism is to pose the more concrete question
of whether acceptance of pluralism necessarily demands
that we lower our standards of obligation to others: for
example, our duty to reduce distributional inequalities
between states. Perhaps the most well-known and influential attempt to address this question can be found in
John Rawls last book The Law of Peoples (1999). Rawlsian
social contract theory evolved from its initial conception
of a well-ordered society in which citizens arrived at
a consensus about the principles and institutions of justice
(fairness) to the overlapping consensus of Political Liberalism, which takes notice of the broad plurality of individual conceptions of the good consistent with a liberal
society. However, when Rawls extends his theorizing to the
global level, his law of peoples concentrates on groups, not
individuals, and emphasizes toleration over both the normative individualism of his early Theory of Justice and the
liberal pluralism that he subsequently defended. Once he
moves away from the view that pluralism involves a consensus on rights consistent with liberalisms focus on the
individual even as it leaves room for difference in how
those rights are justified, he seems to retreat to a notion of
order among peoples that deliberately refrains from dictating substantive rights and resource redistribution to
decent nonliberal peoples. Critics charge that this results
in a less demanding standard of rights and entitlements at
the global level than what Rawls endorses at the state level.
An alternative, deliberately less programmatic approach
is taken by Amartya Sen in his latest book The Idea of
Justice. Sen argues for a similar pluralism with respect to
public reasoning at both the state and global levels but
rejects the need for what he calls transcendental institutionalism (a focus on perfected theories and institutions)
in favor of a comparative assessment of the injustices
that immediately confront us. This too is a pluralism of
sorts: a drawing of attention to the need for diversity in

Pogge, Thomas

solutions for what is wrong now, rather than what the

right might look like later.
Both these views stress negotiation as the process
through which consensus can be constructed among states,
and insist that successful negotiation can only occur in
a context of respect for different viewpoints. While they
leave open some questions of what we must do when state
interests diverge, they are nonetheless important reminders
that pluralisms emphasis on self-determination is itself an
element of global justice.

Related Topics
Harm Principle
Law of Peoples
Liberal Pluralism
Liberalism
Mill, John Stuart
Public Reason
Rawls, John
Relativism
Self-Determination
Sen, Amartya
Social Contract
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

References
Berlin I, Hardy H (eds) (1990) The crooked timber of humanity: chapters
in the history of ideas. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Habermas J (1992) Between facts and norms. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Lafont C (2009) Pluralism and global justice. http://iis-db.stanford.edu/
evnts/5887/Lafont_12.4.09.pdf. Accessed 20 Apr 2010
Martin R, Reidy D (eds) (2006) Rawlss law of peoples: a realistic utopia?
Blackwell, Malden
Mill JS, Rapaport E (eds) (1978) On liberty. Hackett, Indianapolis
Rawls J (1996) Political liberalism. Columbia University Press, New York
Rawls J (1999) The law of peoples. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA
Sen A (2009) The idea of justice. Belknap, Cambridge, MA
Taylor C, Gutmann A (eds) (1992) Multiculturalism and The politics of
recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton

Pogge, Thomas
CHRISTOPHER HEATH WELLMAN
Department of Philosophy, Washington University in
St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
CAPPE, Charles Sturt University, Australia

Thomas Pogge is one of John Rawlss most prominent

former students, and he was the first to have turned

his sustained attention to international justice. Pogges

association with Rawls merits mentioning at the outset
because Pogge owes his remarkable vision of global justice
in large part to the fact that he has been standing on the
shoulders of Rawls.
Rawlss work on justice includes significant innovations at every turn, but the most famous element is his
egalitarian difference principle, which allows social institutions to generate socioeconomic inequality only to the
extent that this benefits the worst off. One standard means
of utilizing Rawlss machinery in the pursuit of international justice, then, has simply been to argue that this
difference principle should be applied globally, so that
global institutional arrangements may generate socioeconomic inequality only insofar as this is maximally
beneficial to the worlds poorest people. Given Pogges
early work, one might expect him to develop this line of
thought. Interestingly, though, this is not the approach he
has taken. Rather than egalitarianism, the most important
lesson Pogge learned from Rawls is the centrality of institutions. Let me explain.
Whereas theorists have typically conceived of ethics
in exclusively interactional terms, Rawls was revolutionary (in the United States, at least) for appreciating that
institutions must also be subjected to scrutiny. Consider
poverty, for instance. Traditionally, theorists have understood themselves to have only two options regarding the
poor: One might insist that the rich have a duty to assist
the poor, or one must conclude that there is nothing
unjust about the situation. Breaking free of this false
dichotomy, Rawls suggested that we should also question
whether social institutions can be redesigned to leave
fewer people in poverty. And if we could, then perhaps
justice requires us to work toward these preferable institutions. The key to appreciating Pogges work, then, is to
understand the two ways in which he was ahead of the
pack. First and most obviously, when virtually everyone
else in the discipline presumed that justice applies principally, if not exclusively, to the institutional order of
a bounded state, Pogge insisted that it was pertinent
also to the design of global institutional arrangements.
Less obviously but just as important, whereas most of us
were content to debate (in largely interactional terms)
our individual and collective duties to provide aid to
poor foreigners, Pogge grasped the wisdom of Rawlss
insight that we must focus first and foremost on the
desirability of the relevant institutions. Put bluntly, the
discipline has only recently come to understand what
Pogge has been arguing for decades: The most important
moral questions of our time concern supranational
institutions.

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Pogge, Thomas

Pogges account of human rights provides a clear

example of his focus on social institutions. Before Pogge,
almost everyone assumed that rights must be cashed out
in interactional terms. If there is a human right against
torture, for instance, then this just means that everyone
has a duty to refrain from using, and from inducing others
to use torture. If my neighbor tortures me in her basement, for instance, then she violates my human right. In
contrast to this, Pogge urges us to conceive of human
rights institutionally. According to this way of thinking,
whether or not my human right not to be tortured is
respected depends principally upon the effectiveness of
the institutions my society has put in place to ensure its
constituents freedom from torture. No state can realistically be expected to guarantee that none of its constituents
will ever be tortured, but if a state does a sufficiently
good job protecting its citizens against torture, then
each constituents human right is fulfilled. As a number
of critics have pointed out, Pogges approach has the
curious implication that Janes human right not to
be tortured can be respected even if she is tortured. Imagine that Jane is a Norwegian who is tortured by a neighbor, for instance. Because Pogge understands human
rights in institutional rather than in interactional terms,
and because Norways institutions satisfactorily protect
Norwegians against the threat of torture, Pogge must
conclude that, even though Jane has been tortured, she
has not had any of her human rights violated. Pogge
acknowledges that this conclusion is counterintuitive
and has since retreated from his earlier contention that
human rights must be analyzed solely in terms of institutions. In the second edition of World Poverty and Human
Rights (2008), he now more modestly asserts only that,
whatever interactional component one endorses, no theory of human rights can be adequate unless it also features
a suitable institutional component.
A second example of Pogges institutional analysis
is his provocative claim that people in wealthy Western
liberal democracies (such as Western Europeans) are currently harming the worlds poor (like those in sub-Saharan
Africa). It is routinely acknowledged that Europeans
have historically treated Africans unjustly (via slavery and
colonization, for instance), but it seems far-fetched to
suppose that the average German, say, is currently doing
anything to make the typical Nigerian worse off than
she would otherwise be. Pogge insists, however, that a
sufficient attention to the relevant institutions confirms
his judgment.
It is striking that Pogge would take this tack, because
institutions are often cited for their role in systemic

poverty, but typically these institutions are invoked to

excuse rather than to indict rich foreigners. In particular,
it is becoming increasingly popular to blame the eviscerating poverty in Africa, say, on their corrupt and oppressive domestic governments and then to conclude that,
given such bad governance, there is very little outsiders
can do to help. Indeed, it has become fashionable to worry
not merely that foreign aid will be wasted but that external
funds will be co-opted by brutal dictators who will use
these resources to fortify their tyrannical rule over their
powerless constituents. In short, affluent individuals and
states should be excused from funding so-called aid agencies, because we cannot be certain that these donations
will not ultimately do more harm than good.
Without denying that much blame should be directed
at domestic kleptocrats, Pogge urges us to recognize the
ways in which international institutions facilitate and
exacerbate the corruption perpetuated by national institutions. In particular, Pogge is critical of the resource
and borrowing privileges, which allow illegitimate
political leaders to sell natural resources and to borrow
money in the name of the country and its people. In
Pogges analysis, these resource and borrowing privileges
that international society extends to oppressive rulers of
impoverished states play a crucial causal role in perpetuating this absolute poverty. Whats more, Pogge maintains
that these privileges are no accident; they persist because
they are in the interest of the wealthy states. The resource
privilege helps guarantee a reliable supply of raw materials
for the goods enjoyed by the members of wealthy states,
and the borrowing privilege allows the financial institutions of wealthy states to issue lucrative loans. It may seem
that such loans are good for developing states too, but
Pogge argues that, in practice, they typically work quite
to the contrary: Local elites can afford to be oppressive
and corrupt, because, with foreign loans and military aid,
they can stay in power even without popular support. And
they are often so oppressive and corrupt, because it is, in
light of the prevailing extreme international inequalities,
far more lucrative for them to cater to the interests of
foreign governments and firms than to those of their
impoverished compatriots. (Pogge 2008: 295, n. 238)
Thus, without denying that local leaders are often guilty
of the most egregious crimes, Pogges analysis of the international institutions shows how the worlds poor are not
merely suffering because we are doing too little to help,
they are being actively and wrongly harmed by a system
of global political and economic arrangements that is
disproportionately shaped by and for wealthy Western
societies.

Pogge, Thomas

While theorists have largely been receptive to Pogges

institutional approach to human rights, there has been
a great deal of resistance to his contention that the global
rich are actively harming the global poor. This is likely due
in part to the fact the argument for the latter is more
elaborate and complicated, but I suspect that it is also
because we feel personally threatened by its implications.
After all, if Pogge is right, then the typical contemporary
American is morally tantamount to an average lawabiding white person in the antebellum South who, while
she may not have personally owned slaves, indirectly contributed to the upholding of slavery and profited from the
cheap goods made available by this unspeakably unjust
institution. Whats more, if Pogge is right about the need
to focus on pernicious institutions rather than (solely) our
individual interactions, then it is hard not to feel impotent. After all, even if you and I worked around the clock,
what chance is there that either of us could discernibly
improve the existing geopolitical landscape?
It is important to appreciate, though, that Pogges
institutional approach is not nearly as demanding as one
might initially think. It does not require us to disassociate
from all institutions that harm others, nor does it even
require us to fix the harmful institutions to which we
contribute. More minimally, it requires only that so long
as we contribute to the design or imposition of unjust institutions, we compensate for our fair share of the avoidable
deprivations they produce and make reasonable efforts
toward institutional reform. Meeting the first of these
requirements allows an average citizen in Nazi Germany,
who chose to remain there and contribute to the states
economy, to escape wrongdoing by doing enough toward
protecting the victims of the Nazi state (Oscar Schindler).
In contrast to the Nazi case, where few even among the
privileged elite had any plausible opportunities to support
institutional reform, such opportunities abound for the
affluent participants in todays world economy, or so
Pogge believes.
It is worth stressing that Pogge has not merely called
our attention to the ways in which our current international institutions are unjust; the main emphasis of his
latest work is to offer concrete proposals as to how we
might make the world a better, more just place. His idea of
a Global Resource Dividend has rightly attracted much
attention, but here I would like to highlight his more
recent proposal to establish a Health Impact Fund.
This fund is motivated by Pogges recognition of the
massive avoidable suffering that occurs because the pharmaceutical market as currently regulated provides companies with insufficient incentive to spend the hundreds of

millions of dollars necessary to develop, test, and then

produce products to treat diseases, like malaria, which
primarily afflict the worlds poor. To rectify this, Pogge
suggests supplementing the reward of patent-protected
monopolies with a Health Impact Fund, financed by governments, from which pharmaceutical companies would
be rewarded to the extent that their products reduced
global morbidity and mortality. Companies would be
free to choose how each of their products would be
rewarded but would not be able to receive both rewards.
In order to qualify one of its products for health impact
rewards, a company would have to agree to sell this product at the lowest feasible cost of production and distribution. If enough money were committed to this fund, then
pharmaceutical companies would for the first time have
sufficient financial incentives to develop and deliver products designed specifically to help those living in absolute
poverty, like those in sub-Saharan Africa.
Thomas Pogge has been assessing the justness of
existing international institutions for decades. Initially,
his views were dismissed out of hand. Today, however,
few deny that justice applies also to supranational institutional arrangements, and theorists are steadily coming to
appreciate his (Rawlsian) insight about the centrality of
institutions. As these trends continue, we will increasingly
understand the force of Pogges arguments. And when we
do, more and more of us will come to recognize that
justice requires us to work toward reforming the resource
and borrowing privileges and to replacing harmful institutional arrangements with more defensible constructions
like the Health Impact Fund.

Related Topics
Global Distributive Justice
Global Justice
Human Rights
Poverty
Rawls, John
Sovereignty

References
Hollis A, Pogge T (2008) The health impact fund: making new medicines accessible for all. Incentives for Global Health, New Haven.
www.yale.edu/macmillan/igh
Pogge T (1989) Realizing Rawls. Cornell University Press, Ithaca
Pogge T (2007) John Rawls. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Pogge T (2008) World poverty and human rights, 2nd edn. Polity,
Cambridge
Pogge T (2010) Politics as usual: what lies behind the pro-poor
rhetoric. Polity, Cambridge
Pogge T et al (2005) Symposium on world poverty and human rights.
Ethics Int Aff 19:183

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Political Allegiance

Political Allegiance
KENNETH HENLEY
Department of Philosophy, Florida International
University, Miami, FL, USA

To express allegiance to something is to affirm its

authority and evince a deep sense of respect for that
authority. Political allegiance is often assimilated to
political obligation. But political obligation is tightly
focused upon the individuals duty to obey the law it is
deontological. Political allegiance concerns the individuals more encompassing loyalty to the polity a larger
personal fidelity, a matter of virtuous sentiment (unless
political allegiance is considered vicious, as in anarchism).
We speak of owing allegiance to a particular nation in
much the same way that we speak of owing allegiance
to a close friend or spouse. In part, the personal and
affective elements of political allegiance reflect the personal relation of vassal and lord, subject and monarch
found in feudal polities.
However, even in modern constitutional democracies
the nation itself, replacing the monarch, is personified:
a being with whom exists a personal relationship of loyalty
on the side of subject or citizen, and nurturing protection
on the side of the nation. Ancient Athens lacked a monarch toward whom personal allegiance was due, so in
Platos Crito the personification of the Laws is crucial to
Socratess expression of allegiance, going deeper than his
mere acceptance of contractual obligation to obey the law:
the Laws are like his parents, deserving respect for all they
have done in rearing and educating him. The standard
reading of the Crito, however, interprets the larger argument as a version of social contract. And on contract
accounts such as John Lockes, allegiance requires express
consent to the government, while mere obligation to obey
the law can be based upon tacit consent indicated by
continuing residence.
David Hume rejects both Lockean contract and divine
right of the sovereign as the basis of allegiance, instead
arguing for a plurality of potentially conflicting sources
of allegiance. A Humean perspective emphasizes that
most people are born into allegiance, and reared into a
particular polity, thus acquiring a sentiment of allegiance
to that polity. Stable, effective government requires
allegiance, Hume argues, and government functions to
promote both private and public interests; extreme failure
in this function may abrogate allegiance. The object of
allegiance is problematic only in unusual circumstances,

and then there is no single principle that clearly grounds

a particular allegiance.
In Humes time, problems of allegiance arose from
civil upheaval and questionable dynastic succession. Now
problems arise because of immigration, dual citizenship,
and questions concerning the impact upon national allegiance of the membership of the nation in supranational
organizations (such as the European Union). Accepting
dual citizenship arguably indicates a states recognition
that political allegiance does not require absolute deontological subjection: the sentiment of allegiance can be felt
toward more than one nation. But such duality of allegiance will likely continue to be the exception rather than
the rule. It seems unlikely that any secondary sentiment of
allegiance to organizations such as the European Union
will diminish the primary national allegiance. But it can be
argued that devolution of political power within European
nations to smaller, subordinate and more homogeneous
political entities is more likely to diminish robust allegiance to the nation-state. The United Nations neither
seeks nor expects political allegiance from individuals
across the world, and so the idea of political allegiance to
a world order seems unlikely for the foreseeable future.

Related Topics
Anarchy
Citizenship
Cosmopolitanism
Locke, John
Nationalism
Patriotism
Political Obligation
Social Contract

References
Hume D (1978) A treatise of human nature. Oxford University Press,
Oxford, Book 3, Part 2, Sect. 810. Selby-Bigge LA (ed)
Locke J (1960) Two treatises of government, with introduction by
P Laslett. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Plato (1959) Crito in Plato: the last days of Socrates (trans: Tredennick H).
Penguin, New York

Political Authority
HELE`NE LANDEMORE
Department of Political Science, Yale University,
New Haven, CT, USA

Political authority is a distinct form of authority by

contrast, for example, with parental or divine authority,

Political Authority

in that it is, historically at least, attached to the power

of governments and their various extensions (such as the
laws, officials, courts, the police etc.). Political authority
is also a variety of the larger category of practical authority (which includes parental and divine authority).
A practical authority is an authority that gives us reasons
for action by contrast with a theoretical authority, such
as a knowledgeable friend or an expert, who gives us
reasons for beliefs.
Specifically, political authority is the power held by
a political entity to require action and claim obedience to
its rules. This power can be either de facto or de jure
(normative). De facto political authority is the actual
ability of a political entity to rule and be obeyed. De jure
or normative political authority is the moral power, or
right, of a political entity to claim obedience to its laws
and orders.
Normative authority is also sometimes defined as
justified or legitimate authority, in contrast to mere de
facto authority, whose claims to authority need not be
morally supported. However not all authors agree that
justification and legitimacy are related to or support the
normativity of authority (e.g., Simmons 2001). Some have
argued that a de facto political authority can be legitimate
without having normative authority and conversely can
have normative (that is, justified) authority without being
legitimate. There are thus several aspects to the concept of
authority that need to be disentangled:
De facto authority
De jure or normative authority
Claims to authority
And then, furthermore:
Justified authority
Legitimate authority
The relationship between these aspects is not entirely
settled. It has been argued, however, that de jure authority
always requires some degree of de facto authority, that a de
facto authority will always claim to have de jure authority,
and that claims to de jure authority need not correspond
to either de facto or de jure authority (Raz 1986). Further,
while Simmons divorce legitimacy and justification, and
thus legitimate authority from justified authority, for most
authors these latter concepts are roughly interchangeable.
What follows assumes this interchangeability.
Legitimacy understood here as normative legitimacy
(by contrast with mere descriptive legitimacy, which
refers to the subjects beliefs about a given entity rather
than the reality of this entity) can be defined as one of the
properties of a normative authority in contrast to a merely

851

de facto authority (although it is not always clear whether

legitimacy is supposed to create normative authority or
simply add to it). As such, legitimacy is often used as
a shorthand for normative authority. On some views,
however, legitimacy is better defined as the liberty-right
to take actions. A liberty-right stands in contrast to the
claim-right that authority represents in the eyes of some
authors (in the sense that legitimacy makes no claim of
obedience on people, whereas authority does). Such
views generally presuppose that legitimate authority is
related to legitimate coercion. The remainder of this
entry will remain agnostic as to whether authority entails
the right to coercion.
The sources of legitimacy have varied throughout
history, from divine right to tradition to popular consent
to international law. While actual (express or tacit) popular consent became the major source of political legitimacy (as well as de facto and on some readings normative
authority) with the social contract theorists such as
Grotius, Hobbes, and Locke, it has been abandoned by
most contemporary theorists as implausible in the context
of large nation-states in which populations cannot be
plausibly said to have ever consented to the rule they
find themselves under. Alternative sources of legitimate
authority at the domestic level have thus been proposed
including:
The instrumental benefits provided to individuals by
the political entity claiming legitimate authority
Public reason
Democratic approval
Associative obligations
The principle of fair play
The natural duty to support just institutions
According to Razs well-known service conception of
authority, the legitimacy (equivalent for him to the normative authority) of a given political entity essentially
arises from the ability of this entity to make its subjects
more likely to abide by reasons that already independently
apply to them than if they followed their own judgment
(Raz). Consent as well as identification with the laws may
add to the legitimacy of a given authority but they are not
sufficient as such to generate it. Other theorists have
argued that only the intrinsic, rather than instrumental
value of a given political institution gives it legitimacy. For
Rawls, for example, it can be argued that political power is
legitimate only when it is exercised in accordance with
a constitution (written or unwritten) that expresses
the ideal of public reason. The standard of legitimacy is
here procedural, rather than substantive. For others still,
from Rousseau to Habermas, the legitimacy of the laws

852

Political Authority

is intimately connected with the democratic nature of

the decision procedures. Popular participation, along
with some substantive requirements, is thus necessary
for rational-legal legitimacy. Here again, the standard of
legitimacy is essentially procedural.
Finally, in a different vein, Ronald Dworkin has proposed to ground normative authority in the obligations
arising from our membership in certain associative communities. In the same way that friendships and family
affiliations can generate obligations, so can belonging to
genuine political communities. Such obligations generate the relevant form of political authority, independently of ones consent or the existence of a consensus
on principles.
Other sources of legitimate political authority can be
found in theories of political obligation, at least if one
accepts that there is a correlation between the duty to obey
a given entity and the right to rule of that given entity.
Thus, some authors emphasize as sources of obligations
(and correlative legitimate authority) the principle of fair
play, according to which we have a duty to contribute
our fair share to the provision of a public good if other
people have contributed to it and we have benefited
from their contribution. Other theorists emphasize as
well, or instead, the existence of a natural duty to support just institutions. On that view, the reason to support just institutions is not so much that it benefits us
but that it benefits others and that we have a duty of
justice to do our part in providing such benefits. Finally,
recent contemporary theorists have sought to combine
these different principles (or others) into multipleprinciple theories. Many theorists also consider that
only democratic governments can properly be legitimate
or at least that democratic entities have a special kind
of authority.
The question of political authority is thus a complex
one. It becomes even thornier when one moves away from
the familiar context of nation-states toward the larger and
still largely uncharted context of international relations. If
political authority is a concept primarily relative to the
existence of a government and its various extensions, one
might first ask whether it makes sense to talk about the
global political authority of any existing institution in
the absence of a world government. Many people have
argued, though, that international institutions such as
the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the
International Monetary Fund, along with multiple international treatises and conventions, do count as de facto
authorities on the global level. Such institutions are indeed
akin to governments in that they, like governments, issue
rules and claim obedience to them.

The question is then: Can any (existing or future)

global institutions claim legitimate authority and if so,
on what basis? Can, for example, the authority of the
International Monetary Fund or the United Nations
General Assembly be accounted for in the same way as
the authority of national governments? While many
authors have assumed, with different implications with
respect to the claims of global justice, that there cannot be
any meaningful concept of legitimacy outside the context
of nation-states (Beitz 1979; Nagel 2005; Pogge 2008), the
trend seems to be toward a reconceptualization of the
problem of legitimacy at the global level, although not
necessarily along the argumentative lines mentioned
earlier in the domestic context. On the face of it, there
is no reason why the previously mentioned sources of
legitimacy could not be used to support the normative
authority of global institutions. The provision of services
(coordination and cooperation functions as well as general
epistemic reliability), public reason, democratic approval,
associative obligations at the global level, the duty of fair
play, and the natural duty to support just institutions
could possibly legitimize de facto global authorities and
generate obligations for citizens of the world with respect
to these global authorities, in the same way as they do
for national citizens with respect to national institutions.
Interestingly, however, there currently exist only two main
approaches to the question of international legitimacy.
Only the second of which seems compatible with some
preexisting conceptions of the first one is based on the
actual consent of states or well-ordered peoples, the
other on the interests and rights of individuals.
On the first, state-centered approach, international
society is understood as domestic society writ large, with
states playing the roles occupied by persons in domestic
society. On that view, one of the most important criteria
of international legitimacy is the actual consent of
states or Rawls (1999) well-ordered peoples. The social
contract ideal of consent, out of fashion at the level of
nation-states, thus seemingly makes a comeback at the
global level, presumably because the number of countries
(fewer than 200) and their institutional longevity makes
consent more meaningful at this scale than at that of
billions of short-lived human beings. One important
question raised by this approach is: Can global institutions
such as the IMF or the United Nations be normatively
authoritative on the basis of the actual consent of the
governments they claim a right to rule over, if these governments themselves lack normative authority with
respect to their own subjects? Further, what happens in
cases where national and global institutions hold competing claims to authority?

Political Autonomy

On the second approach cited above, developed

by Allen Buchanan, states or peoples consent is neither
necessary nor sufficient for political legitimacy, whether
national or global. The focus is instead, at both levels, on
individual rights and interests and how well protected
those are under the entities claiming normative authority.
Buchanan lists three criteria that must be met in order for
a political entity to be legitimate:
1. A minimal internal justice requirement: in their treatment of the individuals over which they claim authority, the entities recognize and uphold basic human
rights and rule in a minimally democratic way.
2. A criterion of procedural justice: the entities claiming
authorities need to be formed in the right way, excluding usurpation.
3. A minimal external justice requirement: entities
claiming authority need to meet certain conditions
about how political entities should interact with one
another.
Notice that this second approach, unlike the first,
is probably compatible with, although never explicitly
related to, some preexisting conceptions of authority
at the domestic level, such as the service conception or
the natural duty of justice conception.
The current paucity of normative theories of global
political authority contrasts with the abundance of the
realist literature on international relations, for which the
national interest trumps almost anything and might
largely make right. The predominance of the realist
literature reflects the fact that existing global institutions
do, in fact, face a deficit of legitimacy. Even if there is
widespread agreement that global institutions are necessary for both instrumental reasons (to solve global coordination, cooperation and other collective problems that
cannot be solved at the level of nation-states) and intrinsic
reasons (to embody the values of justice, fairness, and
equality on a global scale), there is still widespread disagreement about which particular institutions are necessary (a World Parliament, a World Government, a World
Supreme Court?) and what rules they should issue and
follow (one man, one vote?). As a result, whatever authority current global institutions have, it is more de facto than
normative. What are now needed are both new modes of
global governance and a new conceptualization of the
legitimacy of institutions wielding power and claiming
authority on a global scale.

Related Topics
Buchanan, Allen
Cosmopolitanism

853

Democratic Legitimacy
Global Justice
Human Rights
Political Obligation
World Government

References
Beitz C (1979) Political theory and international relations. Princeton
University Press, Princeton
Buchanan A (2003) Justice, legitimacy, and self-determination: international relations and the rule of law. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Christiano T (2004) Authority. In: Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/authority/
Cohen J, Sabel C (2006) Extra rempublicam nulla justitia? Philos Public
Aff 34(2):147175
Held D (1995) Democracy and the global order. Stanford University
Press, Paolo Alto
Nagel T (2005) The problem of global justice. Philos Public Aff
33(2):113147
Peter F (2010) Political legitimacy. In: Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legitimacy/
Pogge T (2008) World poverty and human rights. Polity, Cambridge
Rawls J (1999) The law of peoples. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Raz J (1986) The morality of freedom. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Simmons J (2001) Justification and legitimacy: essays on rights and
obligations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Political Autonomy
FRED E. FOLDVARY
Civil Society Institute, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara,
CA, USA

Autonomy means not under the control of another; the

control is a matter of degree. Global justice, transcending
both country boundaries and culturally based ethics,
implies that not just minority groups but all persons
individually have a human right to a significant degree
of autonomy.
Political autonomy exists when a group of persons or
a territory are self-governing, thus not under the control
of a higher level of government. Complete autonomy
consists of an independent state, but there are autonomous regions that have a degree of self-governance greater
than the rest of the country.
For example, in the USA and Canada, many Indian
nations have autonomy from both the federal and state
governments in their reservation territories. Sales in
Indian country are not subject to the state or provincial
sales tax, and the state laws on gambling do not apply to

854

Political Constructivism

the Indian land. However, this autonomy is limited since,

for example, in the USA, the residents of Indian nations
are subject to federal income taxes.
The states of the USA are sovereign, endowed with
political autonomy under the federal structure of the
Constitution. The federal and state governments have
parallel sovereignty.
Political autonomy is typically sought for when a
region of a country has a significantly different culture
than that of the majority. Autonomy helps to preserve the
language and culture of the people, and it allows the
residents to better provide the public goods that they
prefer. Autonomy is often a political compromise between
independence and complete integration.
An example of political autonomy is the Basque region
in Spain. The Basques are an ethnic group with their own
non-Indo-European language. The Spanish part consists
of two autonomous governments, the Statutory Community of Navarre and the Autonomous Community of the
Basque Country. A movement for full independence has
involved acts of violence.
Greenland, which was governed as a province of
Denmark, was granted home role in 1979. In 2008, the
residents of Greenland voted for greater self-governance.
In 2009, Greenlanders upgraded their status from
hjemmestyre (home rule) into selvstyre (self-rule).
In the UK, the Isle of Man, located between Great
Britain and Ireland, is a self-governing British Crown
Dependency. Its foreign relations are handled by the government of the UK. The Channel Islands Guernsey and
Jersey are also autonomous British Crown Dependencies.
In many cases, countries have legislated autonomy
in form but not in substance. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had autonomous republics and autonomous oblasts that were not really self-governing. In the
1993 Russian constitution, there are 21 republics with
populations that are ethnically non-Russian. They have
their own parliaments, but their self-governance has
reportedly lessened under president Putin.
China has autonomous regions with hypothetically
greater legislative authority than the provinces, but in
practice, their self-governance is quite limited. Tibet, for
example, is an autonomous region, but many Tibetans
have considered themselves to be dominated by the Han
Chinese. Hong Kong currently has a large degree of autonomy under China, as it has retained its own economic
system and currency.
Some advocates of global justice propose that any
group of people have a moral right to political autonomy.
But to be consistent, partial or complete secession should
apply to all persons equally, so that those who do not wish

to be part of the autonomous area should have the right to

remain a citizen of the old realm, or else to form an
autonomous group within the new realm. In this view,
global justice ultimately implies the individual right to
chose ones governance so long as it does not infringe on
the autonomy of others.

Related Topics
Communities
Moral Legitimacy
Secession

References
Autonomy, special issue (Vol. 20, No. 2, 2003) of Social Philosophy &
Policy
Christman J, Anderson J (eds) (2005) Autonomy and the challenges to
liberalism: new essays. Cambridge University Press, New York
Dworkin G (1988) The theory and practice of autonomy. Cambridge
University Press, New York
Klaus A, Brandts J (2007) Political autonomy and independence: theory
and experimental evidence. Working paper, Unitat de Fonaments de
lAna`lisi Econo`mica, Barcelona, Spain. http://pareto.uab.es/wp/
2007/68907.pdf
Larmore C (2008) The autonomy of morality. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge
Lindley R (1986) Autonomy. Humanities Press International, Atlantic
Highlands, NJ
May T (1994) The concept of autonomy. American Philosophical Quarterly 31(2):13344
Richardson H (2003) Democratic autonomy: public reasoning about the
ends of policy. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Schneewind JB (1998) The invention of autonomy. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge
Young R (1986) Autonomy: beyond negative and positive liberty.
St. Martins Press, New York

Political Constructivism
PETER MURRAY
Department of Philosophy, University at Albany,
State University of New York, Albany,
NY, USA

Constructivism in moral philosophy is a metaethical thesis about the production and defense of moral principles.
While constructivisms in general give some account of the
objectivity of moral judgments, this thesis opposes the
realist thesis, which holds that the correctness of moral
judgments depends on their correspondence, in some way,
with an independent order of moral facts or values.
Instead, for the constructivist, the correctness of moral

Political Constructivism

principles depends on whether they were constructed

via an appropriate procedure of practical reason that
incorporates the relevant elements of proper reasoning.
In this way, constructivism marks out a middle ground
between moral skepticism and realism by retaining a
conception of objectivity while rejecting the claim that
moral facts or values exist independently of moral agents.
Different forms of constructivism incorporate different
procedures, and may stem from differing conceptions of
practical reason. Constructivist accounts have been developed for a variety of purposes, from a comprehensive
moral constructivism that applies universally to a political
constructivism developed for purposes of determining the
requirements of social or global justice.
Perhaps the most well-known moral constructivist
is Kant (1785), although whether Kant is actually a constructivist is a matter of contemporary debate. On the
constructivist reading, Kants Categorical Imperative
defines a procedure for determining objectively correct
normative moral principles. Kants political account in
The Metaphysics of Morals (1797) may also be understood
as a constructivist account. For Kant, the correct system of
private right the system of institutions of property,
contract, and what Ripstein (2009) calls status relations
like that of parent to child or doctor to patient is
determined by a procedure of selection rather than by
correspondence to some independent moral realm. If the
reading of Kant as a constructivist is correct, then for him,
every correct normative moral principle is to be understood as the outcome of a procedure of deliberation
defined by the Categorical Imperative. In this way, the
view is a comprehensive moral view, encompassing all of
our various roles and activities.
John Rawls, by contrast, endorses a form of political
constructivism rather than a comprehensive moral constructivism. His project from A Theory of Justice through
Political Liberalism and The Law of Peoples is to find the
conception of justice most suitable to serve as the fair
terms of a scheme of social cooperation for a liberal democratic people. These fair terms find expression through
the basic structure of society, including its basic political,
legal, economic, and social institutions. The basic structure serves as the set of background conditions against
which all other social activities are pursued. It defines, for
example, a set of basic political and civil liberties together
with mechanisms for their application and enforcement,
a scheme of property rights, and perhaps a system of
competitive markets within which citizens engage in the
varied activities that constitute a full life. The basic structure, then, for Rawls, is the subject of primary importance
from the perspective of justice.

In a liberal democratic society, citizens are seen as free

and equal and the coercive power of the government is
understood as the exercise of their collective power. We
are, without choice, subject to the structure of the basic
institutions we do not get to choose our own individual
system of property rights or our own individual political
system. Rawls idea is that in order for these institutions to
legitimately bind us, their design must be justifiable to
us as reasonable and rational citizens. Just so, in order for
an exercise of the governments coercive power to be
legitimate, it must be done in accord with a system of
institutions that conform to this same standard. The conception of justice that Rawls seeks is to serve as the source
of these public justifications regarding the design of the
basic structure.
In liberal democratic societies, we see a pluralism of
comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral conceptions that are associated with different and sometimes
incompatible sets of final ends. Rawls holds that, in virtue
of their recognition of the burdens of judgment, reasonable citizens recognize that other citizens comprehensive
views, though incompatible with their own, may yet be
reasonably endorsed. This fact of reasonable pluralism
complicates the task of finding the correct conception of
justice. If we look to our own comprehensive views as the
source of the justification of a conception of justice, then
other citizens might reasonably reject that justification. In
order for a conception of justice to be adequate for political purposes in a liberal democracy, we need some way of
defending it that does not rely on even reasonable comprehensive views, about which there is unavoidably reasonable disagreement. Political constructivism is Rawls
answer to this requirement.
Political constructivism is a method of producing
and justifying moral principles for a particular purpose:
a political purpose. Rather than relying on a comprehensive religious or philosophical view, political constructivism asks what principles of justice citizens would accept in
their capacity as reasonable and rational. One sense in
which justice as fairness is a social contract view is given
by the idea that political principles are derived from an
ideal of agreement among reasonable and rational citizens.
Rawls conceptual device to help us find these principles is
the original position. Parties in the original position are
situated in a position of equality, and conceived of as
rational. The norms of reasonability are built into the
design of the original position, including, for example,
the veil of ignorance. The idea is simply to make the
identification of the correct political principles for citizens
who are both rational and reasonable, a task that is complex and difficult, more tractable. Rawls version of

855

856

Political Constructivism

political constructivism is the method of using the original

position to produce and defend principles of justice, but it
is possible that reasonable principles of justice could be
developed from initial positions that build in different
reasonable constraints and assumptions, or that different
sets of principles could be chosen from the original position. These would also be forms of political constructivism, but tied to reasonable liberal conceptions of justice
other than justice as fairness.
Rawls does not claim that the correct principles of
justice can only be justified by the constructivist method,
but rather that the correct principles of justice for a liberal
democratic people can be represented as the outcome of
such a procedure. Different citizens with different reasonable comprehensive views will disagree as to the full
defense of political justice, and even of liberalism itself.
A religious person may hold that the principles of justice,
in the end, are grounded on Gods will that his people be
free, while a Kantian might justify them on the basis of
their importance to realizing an ideal of full moral autonomy. Political constructivism begins with ideas and values
that are found in the public political culture, including,
centrally, the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation
between free and equal, reasonable and rational citizens.
That principles can be defended as the object of agreement
among parties that are modeled in accord with these
ideas and values indicates that they can be acceptable
from within any broader comprehensive doctrine that,
for its own reasons, also endorses these ideas and values.
Thus, the outcome of a political constructivist procedure
is a conception of justice appropriate for an overlapping
consensus of reasonable comprehensive views in a liberal
democracy. These views, while substantially different in
many ways, are capable of overlapping in their acceptance
of a reasonable conception of justice, insofar as these views
are themselves reasonable and can ground acceptance of
ideas found in the public political culture of the liberal
democracy. The political conception of justice that can
be represented as the outcome of the constructivist
procedure is then a kind of module that can be plugged
into different, and incompatible, comprehensive views
and defended from within each view in terms of its own
comprehensive moral values.
At the level of global justice, Rawls uses another similar
constructivist procedure. This time, however, the problem
is not about the correct principles for the evaluation of the
basic structure, but about the correct standards and principles to regulate interactions between peoples who
already have established just (or mostly just) structures
of basic institutions. Rawls thinks of just peoples he
avoids the terms state as capable of being both

reasonable and rational, but no people has a reason of

justice to give up their particular political process or
system of property rights, so the question of the correct
such system worldwide is out of place. If there is or were to
be a global basic structure with the relevant features analogous to the domestic one, then the question of international justice would reduce to the question of domestic
justice. Since the problem is conceived by Rawls as being
importantly different from the problem of domestic justice, he uses a different constructivist method adapted to
address it, which he calls the second original position. It is
still an ideal position, and the parties are ideal, just, liberal
democratic peoples. Their interests are in maintaining the
viability and justice of their existing institutional structure
over time.
There is one more instance of the constructivist
method in the Law of Peoples, this time to show that
what Rawls calls decent societies could also accept the
Law of Peoples agreed to in the second original position,
where the parties were liberal peoples. The context is the
question of toleration for non-liberal peoples under
what conditions could liberal peoples count as full members in the society of peoples any non-liberal peoples? One
requirement is that the non-liberal people must be able to
accept in good faith the same international standards of
right and justice accepted by the liberal peoples. This is
what the final application of constructivism is meant to
show to be possible: Rawls argues that under the same
conditions that apply to liberal peoples in the second
original position, parties who are non-liberal but decent
could accept the Law of Peoples. If the application of
constructivism is done correctly, this result means that
any real people that is decent, reasonable, and rational
could also accept the Law of Peoples, though this does
not in any way imply that some existing state meets these
requirements.
In the sphere of global justice, the import of the idea
of political constructivism is that the foreign policy of
a liberal democratic people must be justifiable to that
people, and also justifiable to other reasonable peoples.
This latter claim that other peoples are owed a moral
duty of justification for ones own peoples foreign policy
may seem too strong to some, especially to so-called
realists who reject any claim that morality governs global
relations. But the claim is here based on the idea that
fellow peoples, just as with fellow citizens, have the capacity to be both reasonable and rational in the exercise of
their collective decision making. Because other peoples
have the capacity to freely make reasonable, collective
decisions, we have a duty of respect and tolerance for
those decisions. Political constructivism is a method of

Political Cosmopolitanism

working out and defending what it is that respect and

tolerance require of us in this global sphere, designed to
produce an account that is justifiable to any reasonable
and rational person, or people.

Related Topics
Cosmopolitanism
Decent Society
Global Democracy
Global Distributive Justice
Political Liberalism
Rawls, John
Toleration/Tolerance, Liberal Principle of
Wide Reflective Equilibrium
World Government

References
Cohen G (2008) Rescuing justice and equality. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge
Freeman S (2006) The law of peoples, social cooperation, human rights,
and distributive justice. Soc Philos Pol 23(1):2968
Freeman S (2007) Rawls. Routledge, New York
Kant I (1785) Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals (trans: Gregor M).
Cambridge University Press, New York, 1997
Kant I (1797) The metaphysics of morals. (trans: Gregor M) Cambridge
University Press, New York, 1996
Rawls J (1980) Kantian constructivism in moral theory. J Philos
77:515572
Rawls J (1999) The law of peoples with the idea of public reason
revisited. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Rawls J (2005) Political liberalism, expanded edn. Columbia University
Press, New York
Ripstein A (2009) Force and freedom: Kants legal and political philosophy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Scanlon T (1982) Contractualism and utilitarianism. In: Sen A (ed)
Utilitarianism and beyond. Cambridge University Press, New York,
pp 103128

Political Cosmopolitanism
ALYSSA R. BERNSTEIN
Department of Philosophy, Ohio University, Athens,
OH, USA

Political cosmopolitanism, as the term is used in this entry,

refers to a family of conceptions of justice, each of which is
based on some form of moral cosmopolitanism. Such
conceptions of justice typically delineate morally required
or (im)permissible international or global uses of the
powers of political, legal, and/or economic institutions,

and accordingly ascribe rights and duties to individual

and/or collective moral agents. Thus, the subject matter
of this entry overlaps what Simon Caney (2010) terms
political cosmopolitanism (which refers to proposals
and arguments for global, supra-state, or international
political and legal institutions), as well as what he terms
justice-based cosmopolitanism (which refers to cosmopolitan conceptions of civil and political justice as well as
distributive justice). This entrys subject matter also overlaps four of the five cosmopolitan themes delineated by
Held and Brown (2010).
Held and Brown describe cosmopolitanism since
Immanuel Kant (17241804) as both a moral and a
political project that addresses questions about how
to implement cosmopolitan principles by reforming institutions and designing new ones. They explain that most
cosmopolitans address issues at the interface between
moral cosmopolitanism and its practical institutional
application, and they delineate five interrelated themes:
(1) global justice cosmopolitanism, (2) cultural cosmopolitanism, (3) legal cosmopolitanism, (4) political
cosmopolitanism, and (5) civic cosmopolitanism.
Global justice cosmopolitanism addresses questions
about what is owed to others as a matter of justice, and
cultural cosmopolitanism considers questions about how
to foster a condition of global justice in a culturally pluralistic world, while legal, political, and civic cosmopolitanism address, respectively, questions about international
law, global governance, and the construction of cosmopolitan citizenship. According to Held and Brown, all
five of these cosmopolitan themes are influenced, directly
or indirectly, by Immanuel Kants moral and political
philosophy.
The literature of political cosmopolitanism since the
1970s has come to encompass debates on a wide range of
topics. These include global poverty and distributive justice, duties to (non-)compatriots, cosmopolitan structures of global governance, and (most recently) climate
justice. The most influential cosmopolitan theorists have
written mainly about cosmopolitan conceptions of distributive justice; the debate on this topic is the central
focus of this entry.
During the past four decades, many philosophers considering the moral duties of those who are in a position to
take action to alleviate global poverty have discussed the
arguments developed by Peter Singer about what charity
and beneficence require and about responsibility for harm
or suffering. Singer (1972, 2002, 2004) argues that everyone has a duty to help people in dire need, no matter
where they are, with money saved by not spending on
luxuries. He further argues that we are responsible for

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harms that we could have prevented but did not, and that
we are responsible for suffering that we merely allowed to
happen as much as for suffering that we directly caused.
Singers argument for the duty to help others anywhere
who are in dire need thus does not depend on any assumption that the people in wealthy countries are causally
responsible for the poverty of the people in poor countries; he aims to show that there is an obligation to help all
of the worlds needy people regardless of shared histories
or special relationships.
Similarly, cosmopolitans such as Kok-Chor Tan (2004,
2010) and Caney (2005, 2010) aim to establish relationship-independent duties to help all of the worlds needy
people. They support liberal egalitarian principles of distributive justice and argue that the same principles of
justice apply both domestically and globally because all
individuals are entitled to equal respect and concern.
Versions of cosmopolitanism that depend, unlike Tans
and Caneys, on shared histories of interaction or relationship, assumptions about causal responsibility, or shared
institutions or practices have been developed by theorists
such as Charles Beitz (1979/1999), Thomas Pogge (1989,
2008), and Darrel Moellendorf (2002, 2009). These cosmopolitans contend that principles of distributive justice
apply only when individuals bear certain types of relation
to one another. Believing that economic relations, such
as those involved in the economic integration brought
about by globalization, constitute relations of the relevant types, they infer that egalitarian principles of justice
now apply globally.
Tan (2004) argues that since commitment to equal
respect and concern generates John Rawlss two principles
of domestic social justice (Rawls 1971), and since everyone
is entitled to equal respect and concern (all individuals
worldwide, not only citizens within bounded groups),
therefore Rawlss two principles of domestic social justice
apply globally: a just global scheme of institutions would
be regulated by Rawlss difference principle and would
ensure global equality of opportunity.
Caney (2010) says that the best argument in favor of
his own version of cosmopolitanism, which he calls
humanity-centered, starts from the widely shared,
strong conviction that persons should not fare worse in
life because of morally arbitrary characteristics, examples of which include, he says, their ethnicity, class, or
religion; and that distributive justice should be blind to
such features. From this conviction, Caney infers that
persons should not face worse opportunities because of
nationality or citizenship. Therefore, he rejects what he
calls the interdependence-based version of cosmopolitanism propounded by Moellendorf. Caney contends that

Moellendorf s arguments about national boundaries show

not only that they are morally arbitrary but also that the
boundaries of economic systems are equally so. If ones
place of birth is morally arbitrary as Moellendorf says,
then surely, Caney declares, ones birth into one scheme
of economic institutions rather than another is also
arbitrary and thus also should not affect ones life prospects. To ascribe differential entitlements to people
because they are members of different economic systems
is, he says, to penalize some for morally arbitrary reasons.
Being a member of any particular system or scheme is
just one further deep contingency, says Caney, who
credits this phrase to Pogge.
Tans and Caneys versions of cosmopolitanism are
based on luck egalitarianism, which is the view that there
is injustice in economic distribution when inequality of
goods reflects lucky or unlucky circumstances of various
kinds, instead of such things as the degrees of arduousness
of different peoples labors, or peoples varying preferences
and choices with respect to income and leisure. Tan
(2008a) offers an extended defense of his version of luck
egalitarianism. Jon Mandle (2009) offers a sophisticated
argument against both Tans and G.A. Cohens luck egalitarian views.
Beitz (1975) points out that the question of whether
citizens of relatively affluent countries have obligations
of justice to share their wealth with the poor in other
countries does not pose special theoretical problems for
utilitarians such as Singer, since utilitarians hold that utility-maximizing calculations need not respect national
boundaries and regard the distinction between obligations
of humanitarian aid and obligations of social justice as
a second-order distinction justifiable only if it serves to
maximize utility. Beitz bases his own cosmopolitan argument not on any utilitarian conception of justice but
on (his interpretation of) the contractarian conception
presented by Rawls (1971), and addresses the question
about wealth-sharing obligations by arguing that Rawlss
principles of justice ought to apply not to a nation-state
only, but instead globally. According to Beitz (1975, 1979),
the derivation of the principles of justice for the law
of nations in Rawls (1971) would be correct, although
incomplete, if that derivation did not depend on the
assumption that societies are self-sufficient cooperative
schemes. This assumption is false, Beitz asserts, for there
exists a system of interdependence comprising an international division of labor, a system of world trade, and
international financial and monetary institutions. Furthermore, he argues, this system of interdependence
imposes burdens on poor and economically weak
countries that they cannot practically avoid, and their

Political Cosmopolitanism

participation in the global economy on the only terms

available involves a loss of political autonomy. Therefore,
he concludes, national boundaries can no longer be
regarded as the outer limits of social cooperation, and
purported principles of domestic justice will be genuine
principles of justice only if they are applicable to the entire
global scheme. Beitz argues, agreeing with suggestions
already made by several others (including David Richards,
Brian Barry, and T.M. Scanlon), that the two principles of
Rawlss conception of domestic social justice, suitably
reinterpreted, can and should be applied globally. Pogge
(1989) develops a similar position. Rawls and several
others including Mandle (2006, 2009) offer rebuttals to
these arguments.
Michael Blake (2002), disagreeing with all cosmopolitans who hold that egalitarian principles of distributive
justice apply globally, argues that although there is an
obligation to remedy absolute deprivation, wherever in
the world it may be, legal coercion is a precondition for
a concern with relative deprivation. Taking a state to be
a territorial monopoly on the (legitimate) use of coercive
force, which broadly determines and directs the lives of all
who live within the jurisdiction of its legal system, Blake
says that the nature of what a legal system can do to all and
only its own citizens grounds a requirement of justification to specifically those citizens. According to the liberal
principle of autonomy that Blake endorses, egalitarian
distributive justice is relevant to the justification of state
coercion of individuals through criminal and civil law
because such coercion must be justifiable to everyone
whose lives are constrained by that legal and political
system. Respect for compatriots with inferior life prospects generates a requirement to address their disadvantages when justifying their coercion, by demonstrating
that no alternative arrangement or form of the coercive
institutions would have made the least advantaged any
better off, in terms of life prospects or opportunities.
Thus, according to Blake, liberalisms impartial concern
with autonomy leads to a concern with relative economic
deprivation only among compatriots.
Thomas Nagel (2005) argues (somewhat tentatively, as
he says) that humanitarianism morally requires only
a global minimum, and only the existence of states can
generate more-demanding duties of socioeconomic justice. In a sovereign state, there is a special presumption
against arbitrary inequalities in treatment of persons subject to the rules of the legal and political system, not only
because these rules are coercively imposed, but also, Nagel
emphasizes, because the persons subject to them are putative joint authors of the system. Membership in a political
society involves engagement of the will, and political

authority is exercised in the name of the participants in

the general will; this complex fact, Nagel argues, creates
the special presumption against arbitrary inequalities
in the treatment of the members by the system. Given
that the state exercises sovereign power over its citizens
and in their name, those citizens have an associative obligation of justice toward each other, to be carried out
through the legal, social, and economic institutions
made possible by sovereign power, he contends. Moreover,
Nagel claims, the other-regarding motives that support
adherence to just institutions when they exist do not
provide clear guidance where the enabling conditions for
such institutions do not exist. Nagel characterizes the
international relationships that bear on material wellbeing as mere economic interaction, and regards such
interaction as an inappropriate site for claims of justice.
Denying any obligation to enter into the strong political
relations with others that would generate demanding
duties of socioeconomic justice, and contending that the
enabling conditions for just global institutions do not
exist, Nagel concludes that the requirements of justice do
not apply to the world as a whole, although they may apply
if and when the world comes to be governed by a unified
sovereign power.
Cohen and Sabel (2006) agree with Blake and Nagel on
the point that principles of political morality must be
sensitive to the various circumstances of human engagement and the different types of relation for which the
principles are formulated. To this extent, Cohen, Sabel,
Blake, and Nagel all reject (non-relational) cosmopolitanism. However, Cohen and Sabel disagree with Nagels
strong statism, contending that it is now a mistake to
assign the state so fundamental a role in political morality.
Cohen and Sabel challenge Nagels view that the duty of
justice is an associative obligation which we owe only to
those with whom we stand in a strong political relation
and that there is no obligation to enter into such special
relations. They argue that justice requires both procedural
and substantive inclusiveness, and suggest that competing
conceptions of global justice be understood as advancing
alternative accounts of the kinds of respect and concern
that inclusion requires.
Andrea Sangiovanni (2007) explicitly endorses moral
cosmopolitanism, but argues that justice requires limiting
the range of permissible social inequalities only among
members of the same state. Noting that coercion-based
accounts, such as those defended by Blake and Nagel, hold
that state coercion is a necessary condition for egalitarian
justice, Sangiovanni argues against them by denying this.
Granting that shared participation in the authorship and
reproduction of the state puts people in a special relation

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to each other that they do not have with those outside the
states borders, and granting also that coercion, private
law, and taxation are important factors in explaining
why obligations of egalitarian justice are limited to the
state, Sangiovanni argues that equality is a relational ideal
of reciprocity among those who support and maintain the
states capacity to provide basic collective goods (including principally protection from physical attack, and maintenance and reproduction of a stable system of property
rights and entitlements). However, Sangiovanni emphasizes, his reciprocity-based internationalism does not presuppose the existence of the modern state, although it
does take states currently to be the agents ultimately
responsible for provision of the basic collective goods
necessary for developing and acting on a plan of life. He
simply contends that, although other possible organizational forms might be better at providing basic collective
goods, until such organizations arise, the demands of
distributive equality hold only within state borders.
Mandle (2006, 2009), too, denies that the arguments
supporting liberal egalitarian principles of distributive
justice for domestic society entail similar or identical
global principles. Like Blake, Nagel, Sangiovanni, and
Richard Miller (discussed below), Mandle denies that
economic relations alone are sufficient to constitute relationships of the relevant types. He argues that justice
requires respect for basic human rights and also requires
that nobody be subordinated to anyone elses arbitrary
choices, but he denies that justice requires promoting
a pattern of equal distribution of economic goods. What
justice requires, he says, is that we use egalitarian standards when we design our basic institutions, including the
structure of our property rights as well as our political
institutions: a scheme of property rights must be selected
through a just political mechanism, and satisfying the
non-subordination requirement of justice entails an egalitarian standard. Schemes of property rights are not purely
conventional, since they must respect the requirements of
justice; nevertheless, Mandle argues, property rights are
essentially indeterminate and incomplete outside of
a legitimate political and legal system that can specify
them, apply them to particular cases, and enforce those
judgments. In Mandles view, if there were a global political structure that had the ability to specify, apply, and
enforce rights, it would be subject to an egalitarian standard of evaluation; however, justice does not require
a global political order, and unless and until such an
order exists, there is no occasion to demand egalitarian
distributive justice on a global scale.
Mandles conception of justice includes important
cosmopolitan elements, principally the universality of

human rights and the duties of justice associated with

them. However, it diverges from what he terms strong
cosmopolitanism, which holds that the same principles of
justice that should be applied within a society ought also
to be applied globally. Mandle (2006) defends, he says,
a moderate cosmopolitanism, which supports strengthening international political institutions without eliminating national attachments and loyalties. Mandle (2009)
also defends, he says, a form of what Cohen and Sabel
(2006) call weak statism, which holds that the existence
of a state is necessary and sufficient to trigger the highly
demanding norms of egalitarian justice (in their terminology, strong statism is the view that the existence of
a state is necessary and sufficient to trigger norms beyond
humanitarianisms moral minimum).
The account developed by Richard Miller (1998, 2010)
of the distinctive moral significance of political ties among
compatriots claims that politically active citizens, taking
part in coercively imposing terms of self-advancement on
fellow citizens, can show them respect only by seeking to
improve the situation of those with the worst life prospects. Miller argues that citizens have a duty to cultivate
social trust as a basis for civic cooperation, and also argues
that fulfilling this duty requires showing special concern
for disadvantaged compatriots. Disagreeing with Blake
about the grounds of international obligations to remedy
absolute deprivation, Miller (2010) argues that obligations
to advance interests of needy people in all developing
countries derive not only from requirements of transnational beneficence, such as those that play a role in Blakes
argument, and not only from international economic
relations of the kinds emphasized by cosmopolitans
like Beitz, Pogge, and Moellendorf, but also from other
kinds of international or transborder relations and power
inequalities such as those Miller discusses. According to
Millers relational perspective, current international
relationships generate demanding duties, often duties of
fairness, which are utterly different from our duties of
mere humanitarian assistance. Miller notes that Beitz,
Pogge (in his earlier writings), and Moellendorf base
their conceptions of global justice on the view that duties
to help the disadvantaged worldwide can be inferred from
duties to help ones compatriots, which they take to
include special duties toward disadvantaged compatriots.
These cosmopolitan theorists all claim, Miller says, that
the mere fact of economic interdependence sustains a
demanding duty to help the disadvantaged. Disagreeing
with this claim, he argues that facts of interaction going
beyond economic interaction, primarily including political interaction, ground the demanding duties to help
disadvantaged compatriots. Compatriots needs have

Political Cosmopolitanism

political priority, according to Miller, although this priority is not unconditional. He argues that now, in the actual
global situation, priority must be given to the vast unmet
transnational responsibility that has been generated not
only by international economic interdependence but also
by morally important international ties of other kinds.
Miller (2010) characterizes his own view as quasicosmopolitan. It resembles cosmopolitan views, he
explains, in holding that there is a large, demanding
responsibility on the part of people in developed countries
to advance the interests of needy people in all developing
countries, and also in holding that the ultimate goal of
global justice mirrors in a significant way the ultimate goal
of domestic justice. According to Miller, both are goals of
civic friendship, which take different forms because of the
different circumstances. The goal implicit in Millers rejection of transnational relations of exploitation, inequity,
and negligent harm is, he says, a world in which mutual
reliance across borders is based on mutual trust among
self-respectful participants in genuine cooperation. Such
a goal can be regarded as cosmopolitan, Miller thinks;
however, as he emphasizes, his view is not cosmopolitan
if this is understood to require a single global standard of
distributive justice or a global extrapolation of principles
of domestic justice.
According to Margaret Moore (2010), Caneys as well
as many other versions of cosmopolitanism assume or
presuppose that justice is universal in scope and that
therefore the site of justice is universal and principles
of justice must be global. Moore cautions that this may not
be the right way to approach questions about justice,
because although we can often confidently identify injustices, it is less clear what justice is. People can reasonably
disagree, Moore says, about whether principles of justice
should be strictly egalitarian, or instead prioritarian (giving priority to the worse off), or else focused on avoiding
serious deprivation (understood in absolute terms). Different people and different political communities might
reasonably arrive at different answers to the question of
which principles of justice should guide the making of
laws and policies in their society, and this is one of the
reasons, Moore argues, why collective self-government is
so important: Justice is not fully determinate from
a universal perspective, and political communities allow
people to cocreate and implement justice among
themselves.
Cosmopolitan theorists pondering the morally important international or global political and economic relationships generated by globalization have raised questions
about how best to structure institutions and practices of
global governance. Beitz (2005) notes that most

discussions of global distributive justice during the last

two decades of the twentieth century were framed as if the
most important practical consequence of taking justice
seriously would be a requirement to advocate large
increases in intercountry transfer payments. He notes
that he himself had previously (1979) envisioned largely
indigenous processes of economic development
supplemented by foreign aid and international economic
reforms; now, he says, he has come to see this as
a confusion of a part for the whole. Although international
transfers can influence the global distribution of advantages, they are less significant by any measure, he says, than
other forces that are potentially open to political manipulation, such as private capital flows, the rules of the trade
system, and the system of international property rights.
Principles of justice should, Beitz contends, apply to these
and all other economic, legal, and political institutions
and practices that influence the global distribution of
advantages.
Pogge (2008) argues that the current international
institutional order is unjust, that wealthy and powerful
countries and their citizens cause great harms by imposing
this order coercively, and that they have duties to mitigate
and compensate for these harms as well as to reform the
order. He proposes an institutional understanding of
human rights, according to which such rights justify
moral claims directly against the institutions and shared
practices of which the claimant is a part and indirectly
against those who support these institutions. In Pogges
view, an institutional design is unjust if it foreseeably
produces massive avoidable human rights deficits, and
an institutional order harms people when its design can
be shown to be unjust by reference to a feasible alternative
design. He claims that whenever people are involved in
upholding any coercive institutional order, they share
responsibility for official disrespect of human rights
within, or produced by, that order. Pogges widely
discussed proposals for reforming significant aspects of
the global order aim to eradicate severe poverty, reduce the
huge incidence of avoidable mortality and morbidity in
poor countries, and promote the spread of democratic
values and practices. Pogges proposals include a Global
Resources Dividend, reforms of the international resource
privilege and the international borrowing privilege, and
ways to stabilize fledgling democratic orders.
David Helds version of cosmopolitanism focuses on
global governance and democratic values. In 1992, he
argued for extending democratic institutions across state
borders and creating a democratic cosmopolitan global
order. In 1995, he argued for recasting and strengthening
democracy, both within and across preestablished borders,

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Political Cosmopolitanism

and advocated enacting democratic public law in the

wider global order, as cosmopolitan law. Held contended
that a democratic cosmopolitan global order must be
structured by a division of powers and competences at
different levels of political interaction, and must involve
linkages, both vertical and horizontal, among distinct
domains of authority. Similarly, Pogge argued in 1992
for global institutional reforms dispersing governmental
authority and patriotic sentiment, both vertically and
across a plurality of nested territorial units.
In Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities (2010), Held
explains that globalization has increased not only mutual
interconnectedness but also vulnerability, and argues that
the resulting political problems generate imperatives to
formulate common standards to be embodied in common
institutional arrangements. He notes that since democracy
pulls toward self-organization of activity in delimited
territories, while globalization pulls toward creation of
new, dense forms of transborder interaction, it is not
immediately clear how such transborder interactions can
be brought under democratic control and rendered
accountable; however, he contends, political ideas and
mechanisms that were developed with reference to particular communities and spaces must be reinvented for
a global age. Held argues that democratic public laws
legitimate rules and conflict-resolution procedures can
and should constitute a framework in which cultural
diversity and individual difference can flourish in
a public life marked by discussions, debates, and shared
deliberations. Emphasizing the importance of acknowledging that the human associations in which we already
live are multilayered, Held does not advocate a single
global community organized on democratic and cosmopolitan principles, but instead favors seeking new procedures and mechanisms that would enable democracy to
flourish at various levels. His approach to political life, he
says, champions self-determination and freedom from
domination and arbitrary power. Accordingly, he advocates not only accessible, open public fora, but also fair
conditions for economic cooperation and competition, to
be achieved by a reframing of market forces according to
cosmopolitan standards.
Since 1945, Held (2010) notes, cosmopolitan initiatives have transformed the sovereign states system in
a number of important respects; however, since these
efforts have focused on checking abuses of political
power, not economic power, there does not yet exist
a cosmopolitan structure for market regulation and economic accountability. Held contends that it is necessary to
restructure the market by building bridges between international economic law and human rights law, between

commercial law and environmental law, between state

sovereignty and transnational law, and between cosmopolitan principles and cosmopolitan practices. In his view,
cosmopolitan standards require efforts to reduce the economic vulnerability of many developing countries by,
among other things, eliminating debt, reversing the outflow of capital assets from the poorest countries to the
richest, creating new development-focused economic
facilities at the World Bank, the IMF and the UN, and
shifting priorities from military expenditure to the alleviation of severe need.
Held (2010) takes no position in the debates among
political philosophers about global principles of distributive justice, luck egalitarianism, or precisely how to justify
duties to (non-)compatriots, nor does he discuss these
debates; furthermore, unlike most other cosmopolitan
theorists, he says little about Rawlss conception of international justice. When discussing socioeconomic justice,
Held argues for the fulfillment of urgent need and the
avoidance of serious harm, and leaves these ideas vague
enough to be compatible with a variety of positions. The
economic measures he advocates could arguably accomplish initial steps toward international or global justice as
conceived by Beitz, Pogge, Moellendorf, Tan, and Caney,
as well as by Cohen and Sabel, Mandle, Miller, and Rawls.
As Tan (2008b) explains, the forces of globalization
have posed challenges to the deliberative democratic ideal,
which requires that collective decisions meet the condition
that the individuals affected by them be able reasonably to
consent to them. He considers the case for cosmopolitan
democracy (citing primarily Held 1995, 2000) and finds it
insufficiently practical and realistic. Instead he favors
global democracy conceived as international democracy,
which builds on existing national-level democratic institutions. Noting that this approach resembles that of
Rawlss global theory of justice (see the entry Law of
Peoples), Tan says that his rejection of cosmopolitan
democracy is not a rejection of cosmopolitan justice. The
best available approach to global democracy is, he argues,
a democracy of nationally rooted democracies, which
would preserve and build on the preconditions for deliberative democracy and provide a realistic solution to the
global democratic deficit.
This entry has surveyed some of the discussions
among political theorists and philosophers about global
poverty and distributive justice, duties to (non-)compatriots, and cosmopolitan structures of global governance.
Important questions of justice relating to global climate
change are addressed by several cosmopolitan or quasicosmopolitan theorists including Caney, Miller,
Moellendorf, Henry Shue, and Singer. Few moral or

Political Ecology

political philosophers have written much about climate

change until recently, but now the literature is growing
rapidly. (See the entry on Climate Justice in this
encyclopedia).

Related Topics
Beitz, Charles
Caney, Simon
Compatriot Partiality Thesis
Cosmopolitan Democracy
Cosmopolitanism
Democracy, Deliberative
Democracy, Transnational
Global Basic Structure
Global Contractarian Justice
Global Democracy
Global Egalitarianism
Global Governance
Human Rights
Humanitarian Aid
Justice and Reciprocity: Local and Global
Law of Peoples
Liberalism
Luck Egalitarianism
Miller, Richard
Moellendorf, Darrel
Moral Cosmopolitanism
Nagel, Thomas
Pogge, Thomas
Tan, Kok-Chor

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Tan K (2004) Justice without borders: cosmopolitanism, nationalism, and
patriotism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Tan K (2008a) A defense of luck egalitarianism. J Philos 105(11):665690
Tan K (2008b) Global democracy: international, not cosmopolitan. In:
Chatterjee D (ed) Democracy in a global world: human rights and
political participation in the 21st century. Rowman and Littlefield,
New York
Tan K (2010) Poverty and global distributive justice. In: Bell D (ed) Ethics
and world politics. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Political Ecology
MICHAEL MINCH
Department of Philosophy/Humanities, Utah Valley
University, Orem, UT, USA

Political ecology is the study of the intersection and

relationship between the political, broadly understood,
and environmental and ecological phenomena. Political,

863

864

Political Ecology

economic, social, and cultural forces affect, and are

affected by, ecological and environmental trends. Because
human institutions penetrate the natural world, and
nature (changed and unchanged by human activity)
affects human life and institutions, this complex and
dynamic relationship has everything to do with global
justice. Although the term political ecology was coined
by Frank Thone in 1935, and revived by Eric R. Wolf
in 1972, there exists no agreed-upon definition or
conception of the field. Political ecology is, and must be,
interdisciplinary and far ranging, and this fact keeps
simple and uniform definitions in check. Political ecology
is, in part, constituted by and concerned with, political
economy, cultural ecology, social ecology, green
socialism, environmental sociology, development ecology,
anthropology, biology, geography, environmental ethics,
agriculture, political theory and political science, and
matters of governance, government, policy, and law. It is
also concerned with conservation, wilderness, forests,
deforestation, desertification, biodiversity, energy,
technology, consumption, sustainability, environmental
destruction, animal ethics, anthropocentricism, the
relationship between ecological exploitation and poverty,
human welfare, resources, environmental justice, and
other matters of concern to ecologists, environmentalists,
and policymakers.
Political ecology engages concern for sustainable
politics. This concern leads to exploration of the state,
democracy, participation, and power. Many political
ecologists conclude that without stronger forms of
participatory democracy, international political and
economic cooperation, and some forms of global
democracy and governance, nature will continue to be
exploited and ruined beyond sufficient retrieval, and
a sustainable future will elude us. Political ecology worries
about the exploitative power of global capitalism and its
partner, globalization. Many political ecologists argue that
the forms of democracy needed for a healthy relationship
between humankind and other kind must include
representation for nature. Perhaps the biosphere itself,
and, for example, oceans, nonhuman animals, species,
the climate, riparian areas, estuaries, watersheds,
ecosystems, and habitats, should have political representation in democratic forums.
The consensus among those who work not only in
political ecology, but in the social sciences, is that the
environment needs to be addressed concomitantly with
human institutions. The scope, range, and depth of
relationships between human actors and nature call for
interdisciplinarity and recognition of interpenetrating
complexity between human and natural environments.

Political ecology engages the environment in numerous

ways, from large cultural and transnational domains (e.g.,
concerns about climate change or the spread of diseases),
to the exercise of political power (e.g., questions of
resource allocation, and degrees and kinds of acceptable
pollution, despoilation, and impoverishment), to the
natural (e.g., what to make of, and do about, species
eradication or rainforest depletion). Further, the very
concept of nature is contested. It is not always clear what
is natural and what is humanly constructed. Human
animals are able to powerfully manipulate and change
nature. Because it is in our nature, or natural, for us to
do so, is the creation of, say, concrete and carbon
emissions, unnatural? This is at once a political and an
ecological question. One sees how difficult it would be to
define political ecology, and how unnecessary it is to do so.
The foregoing gestures toward the fecundity of
political ecology, and the intellectual and moral demands
it places upon us. The Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Delaware, USA, and the
Center for Political Ecology in Santa Cruz, California,
are two valuable resources. The latter publishes the
journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism and the Bureau of
Applied Research in Anthropology at the University
of Arizona (USA) publishes the Journal of Political Ecology,
which is also valuable for those working in political
ecology.
Political ecology is intrinsically related to global
justice. Because duties of justice toward human beings
cannot be separated from nature, considerations of nature
itself become necessary when determining what we owe to
other persons. Goods and opportunities are distributed
among the earths peoples with arresting asymmetry.
Insofar as the planet and its resources are finite, the
distribution of resources must be finite. Consideration of
the distribution of resources invoke concerns of justice.
If all persons are to have sufficient access to resources and
goods, determined by moral criteria (however derived),
will all persons have the resources and goods they are
willing to accept? More bluntly, will the richest among us
use and distribute the earths bounty with sufficient care
and restraint so as to allow the poor among us their fair
share? Will we indeed, can we construct political,
social, and economic systems capable of both distributive
and environmental justice?
Human engagement with, and use of, the biosphere
creates profound despoilation and hazard. Unhealthy air,
water, and food, for example, is of greatest danger and
consequence to the poorest among us. As climate change
takes place, sea levels rise, and agricultural zones move, the
poor are most threatened. We find hazardous waste

Political Economy

disposal most often in poor communities. Poor people are

most willing, because most in need, to do the dangerous
work that imposes a cost to their health. In various ways,
our callous treatment of nature and the callous treatment
of vulnerable people go hand in hand. The least powerful
people among us suffer the consequences of environmentally damaging policies and practices most.
Moreover, justice is increasingly theorized as
a relationship not only between and among persons but
between persons and nature. Truly global justice is
a matter of planetary justice a matter of what moral
obligations we may owe not only to humankind but also
to other kind. Questions about the moral considerability
of all biota, and of natural phenomena beyond biota, are
increasingly being explored. Increasingly, philosophers
and environmentalists argue that nature has claims
of justice upon homo sapiens, the planets one species
constituted by moral agents.
Politics and ecology are inseparable and
interpenetrating phenomena. Because justice is at once
a moral and a political concept, we cannot maintain
ethical relationships to nature without politics, and
doing justice for other persons cannot be done apart
from nature. The human impact on our planet is too
vast, pervasive, and powerful for isolated and individual
conduct to arrest ecological crisis. Only political cooperation (and some measure of coercion) can create hope for
a sustainable future. It is becoming ever more clear that
justice in respect to peoples and justice in respect to nature
cannot be separated.

Related Topics
Capitalism
Collective Responsibility
Common Good
Corporate Social Responsibility
Democracy, Deliberative
Ecofeminism
Environmental Justice
Environmental Protection
Environmental Racism
Environmental Regulations
Environmental Sustainability
Global Justice
Global Public Goods
Global Public Health
Global Warming
Greenpeace
Intergenerational Justice
Obligation to Future Generations
Sustainable Development

865

References
Biersack A, Greenberg J (2006) Reimaging political ecology. Duke
University Press, Durham
Brio A (2005) Denaturalizing ecological politics: alienation from nature
from Rousseau to the Frankfurt School and beyond. University of
Toronto Press, Toronto
Dryzek J (2005) The politics of the earth: environmental discourses.
Oxford University Press, Oxford
Eckersley R (1992) Environmentalism and political theory: toward an
ecocentric approach. State University of New York Press, Albany
Eckersley R (2004) The green state: rethinking democracy and
sovereignty. The MIT, Cambridge, MA
Fischer F, Maartin H (eds) (1999) Living with nature: environmental
politics as cultural discourse. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Forsyth T (2003) Critical political ecology: the politics of environmental
science. Routledge, London
Gorz A (1980) Ecology as politics. Black Rose, Montreal
Gundersen A (1995) The environmental promise of democratic
deliberation. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison
ONeill J (1993) Ecology, policy and politics: human well-being and the
natural world. Routledge, London
Palaeologu M (2010) Green politics, green economics. Black Rose Books,
Montreal
Paulson S (2005) Political ecology across spaces, scales, and social groups.
Rutgers University Press, Piscataway
Peet R, Watts M (2004) Liberation ecologies. Routledge, London
Pepper D (1993) Eco-socialism: from deep ecology to social justice.
Routledge, London
Plumwood V (2002) Environmental culture: the ecological crisis of
reason. Routledge, London
Robbins P (2004) Political ecology: a critical introduction. Blackwell,
Malden
Roussopoulos D (1993) Political ecology. Black Rose, Montreal
Thone F (1935) Nature rambling: we fight for grass. The Science
Newsletter 27/717:14
Wolf E (1972) Ownership and political ecology. Anthropological
Quarterly 45(3):201205
Zimmer K, Bassett T (2003) Political ecology: an integrative approach to
geography and environment-development studies. The Guilford,
New York

Political Economy
FRED E. FOLDVARY
Civil Society Institute, Santa Clara University,
Santa Clara, CA, USA

The science of economics was called political economy

until the mid-1800s. Economists such as Adam Smith
analyzed the economies of countries or polities, as
reflected in the title of Smiths 1776/1976 work The Wealth
of Nations. The term economie politique originated in
France in 1615 with the book Traite de leconomie politique
by Antoine de Montchretien. Henry George (1898), the

866

Political Economy

last of the classical economists, called his last book The

Science of Political Economy. The highly influential British
economist John Marshall (1891) titled his influential
book Principles of Economics, and henceforth the term
economics has been used for the whole subject.
The political economy term now applies more specifically to the application of economics to governance
and politics. In this context, political economy can be
applied to a policy to judge global justice outcomes such
as the distribution of wealth.
In its narrower contemporary meaning, the field of
political economy is also called public choice. Economics
divides choice into private and public ones. A private
choice is made just for ones self, such as what to eat for
lunch. A public choice is a choice made for others as well as
oneself, such as when one votes in an election. Topics in
political economy include the incentives and actions of
voters, of elected officials, and bureaucrats. Thus public
choice can be applied to topics of global justice to analyze
how and why the choices of voters and government officials affect equity and human flourishing.

Public Choice Theory

In a large election, the probability of one vote deciding the
outcome is close to zero. The benefit of a well-informed
vote is, mostly to the rest of the community, what economists call a positive externality. Unless a person has
a keen interest in the government, the voter remains
rationally ignorant, since any significant time spent in
studying the issues would have little instrumental effect,
with little chance of changing the outcome, and the benefits are mostly to others. Citizens vote from a sense of
moral duty or sympathy with a political party or feeling
good about being part of the process, but the typical voter
knows little about the candidates and issues, especially
when confronted with a long ballot and complicated
propositions.
A major theorem of political economy is about the
positions candidates take in seeking votes. If there is some
issue with a distribution of opinions, the candidates seek
to obtain the approval of the median voters. For example,
if the issue is how much to spend on the military, the
median voter has the position in which half the voters
want more spending and half want less. With a singlepeaked preference distribution, the candidates will move
their position on the issue to match that of the median
voter. If there are two major political parties, voters on the
fringes get ignored.
The candidates in mass democracy need campaign
funds, creating an inherent demand for money in politics.
They obtain some funds from individuals, but much of the

supply is provided by special interests in exchange for

favors, privileges, and subsidies. Economists call the pursuit of such transfers rent seeking. Rent originally
meant the income from land, but since a landowner does
not create land, and since the rent of land comes from the
communitys public works and commerce, land rent does
not derive from the exertions of the title holder.
Economists generalized the term rent to economic
rent, meaning a return not needed to put a factor into its
most productive use. Since the transfers gained by special
interests are a political favor, economists applied the term
economic rent to that subsidy, hence rent seeking. The
special interests have an incentive to seek these rents
when the benefits are concentrated in a few recipients.
Since the costs are thinly spread out among consumers
and taxpayers, they have little incentive to become
informed and organize to oppose these transfers. For
example, quotas on sugar imports benefit a few owners of
large sugar farms, while the cost of higher prices for sugar is
thinly spread over all the consumers, so that it is not worth
the cost for a typical consumer to find out how much extra
one is paying, let alone to organize and oppose this.
Legislators are able to enact their special-interest legislation by trading votes, a process called log rolling,
from logs that are rolled down a hill, striking other logs.
In the USA, contributions to candidates are required to be
reported, and The Center for Responsible Politics provides
information on who provides and receives campaign
funds on their web site.

Problems of Democracy
Restrictions on campaign spending by special interests
have not stopped rent seeking, which has been expanding
in every election. The problem is inherent in the structure
of mass democracy. Two remedies are suggested by political economists: greater constitutional constraints on government power, and decentralizing governance and
voting. James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, in their
1962 book The Calculus of Consent, propose, collective
activity be organized in small political units to minimize
rent seeking.
Democracy also has inherent problems that cast doubt
on the existence of a general will of the people. The French
political scientist Condorcet (1785) showed how, when
there is an election among three outcomes and there is
a sequence of votes between two of them, it is possible that
there is no single outcome from majority voting. Social
choice can be intransitive: given a choice between A, B,
and C, if A is preferred to B, and B is preferred to C, it
is possible for a vote between A and C to favor C rather
than A. This is called the Condorcet voting paradox.

Political Forgiveness

The economist Kenneth Arrow (1951) went even further, proving that no voting system can satisfy a set of rules
that establishes a general will; this conclusion is called the
Arrow impossibility theorem.
Economics offers an alternative to majority yes-no
voting for propositions, called demand revelation. In
this method of social choice, the participants state the
most that they are willing for a public good. If the total
stated value is greater than the cost, the good is provided,
and each person pays a predetermined share of cost. If
anyones stated value changes the outcome, that person
has to pay a tax equal to the sum of the net losses borne by
all the others. However, demand revelation is not feasible
for the selection of governing officials.
The very structure of mass democracy makes it difficult to enhance global justice. The injustice inherent in the
tyranny of the majority (the median voter), the tyranny of
minorities (special interests), and the absence of a general
will can be remedied to some extent by constitutional
constraints on political power, decentralizing governance,
and using demand revelation. But such reforms too have
to overcome public choice problems.

Related Topics
Capitalism
Collective Choice
Democracy, Constitutional
Majoritarianism

References
Arrrow K (1951) Social choice and individual values. Wiley, New York
Buchanan JM, Tullock G (1962 [1965]) The calculus of consent.
University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI
Caporaso JP, Levine DP (1992) Theories of political economy. Cambridge
University Press, New York
Center for Responsible Politics. http://www.opensecrets.org
Cohn T (2010) Global political economy: theory and practice, 5th edn.
Pearson Longman, White Plains, NY
Condorcet, M de (1785) Essay on the application of analysis to the
probability of majority decisions. De Limpremerie Royale, Paris.
Available in French at: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k417181/
f4.image.pagination
George H (1879) Progress and poverty. Robert Schalkenbach Foundation,
New York. Downloadable from http://www.henrygeorge.org/
pcontents.htm
George H (1898) Science of political economy. Robert Schalkenbach
Foundation, New York
Marshall A (1891 [1920] [1961]) Principles of economics. Macmillan,
New York
Montchretien, A de (1615) Traicte de lEconomie Politique. 1st edn.
Rouen, France
Prasad M (2006) The politics of free markets: the rise of neoliberal
economic policies in Britain. University of Chicago Press, France,
Germany, and the United States

867

Pressman S (1999) Encyclopedia of political economy, ed. OHara PA,

Routledge, London and New York
Smith A (1776/1976) The wealth of nations, vol 1 and 2, Cannan E.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Political Forgiveness
PAUL M. HUGHES
Department of Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts,
University of Michigan-Dearborn, Dearborn, MI, USA

Forgiveness is commonly thought to imply overcoming

hard feelings occasioned by and directed toward another
person who has wronged you. As such, forgiveness is
paradigmatically interpersonal and serves such ends as
restoring a relationship with a wrongdoer, or moving
beyond such negative emotions as resentment (for the
victim) or guilt (for the perpetrator). But forgiveness
may be constituted as well by such overt behavioral performances as waiving a financial debt or saying I forgive
you, neither of which is necessarily grounded in nor
expressive of any feelings whatsoever.
It is this latter sense of forgiveness that best explicates
the concept of political forgiveness, an umbrella notion
that has emerged over the past quarter century to describe
the many recent governmental efforts to apologize and
seek to atone for such large-scale historical wrongs as
slavery, official systems of racial segregation, the dispossession of indigenous populations of their lands and cultural heritage, campaigns of ethnic cleansing, and other
instances of global injustice. Perhaps the most well-known
example of political forgiveness is the South African Truth
and Reconciliation effort of the 1990s which sought to
reconcile victims and perpetrators of apartheid. Other
examples of political behavior, aimed in part at achieving
some form of forgiveness or reconciliation in an effort to
achieve some measure of global justice, include Australias
sorry book, which records citizens remorse over
a former government policy mandating the forced
removal of aboriginal children from their natural parents
in the name of cultural assimilation, President Clintons
apology to African Americans and subsequent proposals
by scholars and policy makers of reparations for slavery,
and Northern Irelands 1998 Good Friday Agreement and
the peace process initiated thereby.
Political forgiveness may also target lesser wrongs, as
when a government official pardons criminal actions
motivated by racist attitudes in an exercise of clemency

868

Political Freedom

in order to illustrate the power and value of restorative

as opposed to retributive justice. And political forgiveness
may be tendered not as a response to wrongdoing, but
instead as part of a different restorative program, as when
one nation forgives the debt of another in an effort to
assist the debtor nation in returning to economic viability.
In general, the aforementioned instances of political
forgiveness are a combination of morally important gestures some of which seem close to interpersonal forgiveness while others do not. On the one hand, such efforts
may help victims, bystanders, and perpetrators of global
injustices come to terms with their pain and guilt, or, by
offering amnesty to wrongdoers in exchange for the truth
about their roles in wrongdoing, help ensure that a dark
period in a nations history is remembered in the name of
preventing future similar wrongdoings. On the other
hand, political forgiveness is by its nature public, and
involves the respective parties at least knowing of, if not
participating in, the effort. Such is not the case in all forms
of interpersonal forgiveness. And apology, also a common
element of many instances of political forgiveness, is only
sometimes a prelude to or a foundation for interpersonal
forgiveness. Political forgiveness is, thus, best regarded as
somewhat analogous to interpersonal forgiveness, though
many differences between the two remain.
In sum, acts, policies, and programs of political forgiveness have become important tools for responding to
large-scale national and international injustices. Indeed,
political forgiveness has now become part and parcel of
a conception of global justice in which the victims of
moral atrocities receive their due.

Related Topics
Charity
Duties, Determinate and Indeterminate
Duties, Perfect and Imperfect
Duties, Positive and Negative
Rectificatory Justice
Reparations
Restorative Justice
Transitional Justice
Truth Commissions

References
Bazeman G, Schiff M (eds) (2001) Restorative community justice: repairing
harm and transforming community. Anderson Press, Cincinnati
Biggar N (2008) Forgiving enemies in Ireland. J Relig Ethics 36(4):559579
Digeser PE (2001) Political forgiveness. Cornell University Press, Ithaca
Radzik L (2009) Making amends: atonement in morality, law, and politics.
Oxford University Press, Oxford

Scarre G (2004) After evil: responding to wrongdoing. Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot

Shriver D Jr (1995) An ethic for enemies: forgiveness in politics. Oxford
University Press, New York
Tutu B (2000) No future without forgiveness. Doubleday, New York

Political Freedom
Falk, Richard
Liberal Pluralism
Political Autonomy
Political Representation
Recognition, the Politics of

Political Idealism
RAFA WONICKI
Department of Philosophy and Sociology,
University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

Political idealism as one of the contemporary currents in

the theory of international relations came into being at the
beginning of the twentieth century. The main theses which
are typical for political idealism are:
1. There is rather a convergence of states interests than
their divergence on supranational level.
2. Foreign policy should remain in agreement with the
catalogue of moral values.
3. International law and its observance is the most effective instrument of achieving durable peace.
4. International organizations, apart from international
law and world public opinion, should be the main
instrument of stabilization of the global politics.
Supporters of political idealism believe in at least one
of the points mentioned above.
Historically, the rise of political idealism was closely
related to the outbreak of the World War I the first war
ever waged on global scale. In order to mobilize all available forces against dominating (from the nineteenth century) militaristic and nationalistic world view, it was
needed to appeal to more idealistic ideology. At that
time, one of the people who had a vision of a better,
postwar world order and offered such positive ideology
in international relations was the president of the USA
Thomas Woodrow Wilson, who presented his 14-point

Political Idealism

program in January 1918, delivering his famous address to

the Congress. Wilsons goal was to make the world a more
democratic and safer place. This aim he argued could be
achieved by creating the new international order.
This new international order would create the world
based on collective security and equilibrium of powers.
States would accept the principle according to which security of a single given country lies in the interests of all other
countries. States would have limited military forces just
enough to assure their internal safety. They should be
assessed with the same ethical criteria as individuals and
it would be in their best national interest to obey the
system of international law. Wilson appealed to the states
to give up secret diplomacy and to put the international
covenants and agreements forward to public assessment.
He postulated reduction of weaponry and the removal of
any remaining obstacles to free trade. What is more
important, he promoted the idea of self-determination
of the nations and proposed creating universal union of
states. This last postulate resulted in creation of the League
of Nations.
Unfortunately, political idealism of the beginning of
the twentieth century did not lead to peaceful international cooperation. The League of Nations proved helpless
when confronted with the expansionist foreign policy of
force presented by Germany, Italy, and Japan. Despite the
fact that numerous countries signed the Brian-Kellogg
pact (1928) regarding prohibition of war (except for the
defensive actions, a part of Just War theory), the mentioned states stepped out from the League of Nations and
led to the start of WW II. Just after the WW II and after
creation of the United Nations and proclamation of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), idealists
hopes for progress in international relations once again
revived.
The next level of harmonizing world politics took
place after the end of the cold war (1991). Again, idealistic
dream of achieving perpetual peace was reinforced. The
famous expression of such hopes was the text by Francis
Fukuyama, the political thinker announcing the end of
history, that is, the triumph of liberalism over all other
ideologies because he claimed liberal democracies are
more stable internally and more peaceful in their external
relations. This idealistic hope of the 1990s was
undermined by the 9/11 terrorist attack on World Trade
Center.
From the political science point of view, the aim of
political idealism is to reject the idea of political realism
(realpolitik) that the international interests are always
conflicted, thus no peaceful and just progress of international relations is possible. Idealists negate such

understanding of international relations. They also admit

that there are other, equally important entities like transnational economic companies or international
nongovernmental organizations (i.e., Amnesty International, Greenpeace), which play a very important role in
contemporary global politics. The idealistic approach
assumes that high politics, concentrated on hard power
as the most effective way of achieving states goals, has
stopped to be seen as profitable. One of the reasons is that
during the war both sides have in most cases more
losses than profits. Another reason is that economic cooperation could be more profitable for all sides than military
conquest. Taking those into consideration, hard power
should be replaced by soft power and low politics focused
on multilateral agreements and economic exchange.
From the philosophical point of view, the main component of political idealism is liberal theory of ethics and
politics. It is based on liberal concept of human beings.
According to it, people are born reasonable and good.
Thus, political idealists believe in goodness of human
nature (anthropological optimism). They also claim that
people can live together peacefully and can solve their
problems through negotiations. So, whenever they use
their reason in domestic and international relations, they
are able to create the organizations (state or international)
which serve the public good. What is more, from the
perspective of political idealism, states are described as
reasonable and just actors within international scene.
Political idealism is also characterized by an Enlightenment idea of the progress of the law and belief in the
development of gradually more harmonious interests
among individuals and states on supranational level (historical optimism). It means that for idealists, relations
between states are seen as basically peaceful. They concentrate on finding the elements which integrate states and
reject elements which could divide them, trying to reduce
the possible conflicts of interests to the level which does
not threaten their mutual security. For example, wars are
not understood as the inherent feature of the global community or politicians not averse to use peaceful means to
solve problems. If conflicts happen, they are explained as
aberrations. Hence, even if we occasionally experience
wars or tense relations among states, idealists think that
creating just international law and just international institutions decreases probability of global conflicts.
Simultaneously, the supporters of political idealism
stress the need of introducing international morality
(human rights standard) which should be recognized as
just by all countries and introduced to the international
law. This international morality could then become more
important than the states own right to sovereignty.

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Political Leadership

Moreover, idealism promotes the idea of limiting the

states and politicians actions through subordinating
them to international organizations and international
law. This way the particular political interests accomplished earlier by means of military actions would be
restricted.
Political idealists promote the conduct of foreign policy on justice and human rights standards. These standards
are believed to be broadly shared or rationally justified
through the process of negotiation. Generally, political
idealists claim that politics and ethics do not have to be
separated. What is more, values and ideals can and should
influence political relations. Politicians and governments
should take such values and ideals into consideration while
making political and diplomatic decisions. This kind of
thinking can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy
because Greek philosophers postulated the unity of theory
and praxis, ethics and politics (e.g., Platos concept of
state). Political idealists assume that just global relations
can shape our political reality.
Three other elements of political idealism are worth
mentioning. First, the state is seen in a similar way as
a human being (domestic analogy). So, states are equal,
as are individuals, and they have common interests, which
could make them support actions based on cooperation
on global scale as profitable for all sides. Second, many
political idealists share confidence in free trade as an
integrated, peace-bringing mechanism, which step by
step builds a just world order, bringing mutual benefits
to all involved regardless of their territorial size, natural
resources, or military force. Third, political idealism has
often been supported by research on the causes of wars,
which reveals that democracies do not wage wars against
one other (democratic peace thesis).
One contemporary version of political idealism is political cosmopolitanism that responds to the normative
demands of human rights and global impartiality by denying special redistributive requirements toward co-nationals.
In general, cosmopolitans negate the priority of state in
international relations without opposing the idea or the
viability of national states. For them, however, imperatives
of global impartiality trumps the demands of co-national
partiality in matters of justice, so they do not support
disparate standards of distributive justice for insiders and
outsiders. Needless to say, political cosmopolitanism has
sparred a vigorous debate on the role of justice in international relations in todays globalized world.

Related Topics
Cosmopolitan Justice
Cosmopolitanism

Foreign Policy
Political Idealism
Political Liberalism
Soft Power

References
Baylis J, Smith S, Owens P (eds) (2008) The globalization of world
politics. An introduction to international relations. Oxford University
Press, Oxford
Brown C, Nardin T, Rengger N (eds) (2002) International relations in
political thought. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Doyle MW (1986) Liberalism and world politics. Am Polit Sci Rev
80(4):11511169
Frost M (1996) Ethics in international relations. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge
Gandhi MK (2011) Non-violent resistance (satyagraha). Dover, Mineola
Hall HJA, Paul TV (eds) (1999) International order and the future of
world politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Held D (2010) Cosmopolitanism: ideals and realities. Polity, London
Held D, McGrew A (eds) (2002) The global transformation reader. Polity
Press, Cambridge
Herz J (1951) Political realism and political idealism. University of
Chicago Press, Chicago
Jackson R, Srenson G (2003) Introduction to international relations.
Oxford University Press, Oxford

Political Leadership
Gandhi, Mahatma
Political Authority

Political Legitimacy
DOUGLAS PALETTA
Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, PA, USA

Political legitimacy fundamentally concerns why a

government has the right to coercively impose and enforce
laws. Usually, this complex right enjoyed by the government is related to why individuals have an obligation to
abide by the laws of a particular government. The fact that
a law is just or effective may give us some reason to abide
by it, but neither of these reasons in itself justifies
a government in coercively enforcing its citizens to follow
it. Consider the United States and Iraqi constitutions.
Both secure certain basic rights, but the Iraqi constitution
affords a right to unionize that the United Statess does
not. Even if each countrys set of rights is just, both

Political Legitimacy

constitutions cannot simultaneously apply to a particular

individual. Determining that the constitutions are just
does not address to whom each constitution applies. Political legitimacy addresses the question of why the laws
of the United States apply to Americans and not to Iraqis.
Or, in the context of new states, an account of political
legitimacy will describe the conditions the Iraqi government must satisfy in order to legitimately enforce its new
laws with the power of the state.
While political legitimacy always concerns the coercive
power of the state, the idea can be understood in two ways.
Some theorists use the term political legitimacy to describe
why a government has coercive authority. Others invoke
political legitimacy to justify that coercive authority. The
descriptive use of political legitimacy accounts for why
people believe that a government has the right to impose
sanctions on them. The justificatory use addresses
a slightly different question. It attempts to account for
why and whether governments actually are entitled to
that right. In either case, political legitimacy should be
distinguished from two related concepts: political power
and political authority. The Taliban had the power to
enforce its edicts, but having the power alone does not
settle whether they could use that power legitimately.
Political authority is more closely related to political legitimacy. Political authority describes who or what has the
moral authority to impose and coercively enforce laws;
political legitimacy accounts for why they have the
authority.
The challenge of providing criteria for political legitimacy comes from appropriately determining the scope of
the right to impose laws. The criteria must be sufficiently
broad to explain why the state has a right to impose laws
on most, if not all, of its citizens. If a government only has
the right to enforce laws on a few of its citizens, it cannot
successfully govern. However, the criteria must be sufficiently narrow as to limit the states authority to the people
it governs. Otherwise, the account of political legitimacy
may lead to conflicts where both the United States and
Iraq have the right to impose their conflicting laws. Finally,
the criteria that provide the appropriate scope to the
states authority must be morally significant. That is, the
criteria should explain why states have the right to use
coercive authority.
Though what criteria serve as the basis of legitimacy is
subject to ongoing debate, several candidates have
emerged. Social contract theorists emphasize the importance of consent as the basis for political legitimacy. Analogous to promising, on this view the government has the
right to coerce people because they submitted themselves
to the government. Since most people do not explicitly

submit themselves to a government, a modified consent

view contends that the fact that you would consent when
faced with the option is sufficient to grant the government
legitimacy. In addition to consent theory, other proposed
criteria include the government coming about through an
accepted procedure, reflecting the political life of its people, being efficient in the enforcement of laws, promoting
its citizens interest or a natural duty to abide by the laws
of any just government.
Domestically, establishing criteria for legitimacy provides a basis for assessing the relationship between citizens
and the state. When do subgroups in a country, like the
Kurds or Irish, have the right to rebel? Is the legitimacy of
a state constrained by human rights? Each of these questions depends on what gives a government or state the
exclusive right to use coercive force. For instance, if legitimacy is grounded in efficiency, then no one, including the
Kurds or Irish, has the right to rebel against an efficient
state. Alternatively, if individuals have a natural duty to
abide by a just government, then a governments right to
coercively enforce the law depends on its ability to secure
certain basic rights. Michael Walzer refers to legitimate
relations between citizens and a state as internal legitimacy
and contrasts it with the idea of external legitimacy
(Walzer 1980). Where internal legitimacy concerns relationship of right between citizens and the state, external
legitimacy concerns a states right to be free from foreign
interference. Citizens stand in a different relationship to
a state than foreigners. This difference in standing may
lead to different criteria for internal and external legitimacy. Given this distinction, a state may be internally
illegitimate, giving the people the right to rebel, while
being externally legitimate, having a right against
intervention.
The emergence of international institutions raises new
questions about legitimacy. Some international institutions, like the World Trade Organization (WTO) or
world court, attempt to adjudicate and enforce rules that
apply internationally. Determining whether the WTO can
legitimately impose sanctions may be more complicated
than determining the legitimacy of domestic states.
Assessing the international institutions legitimacy
involves assessing what gives it a right to impose sanctions
on states and, given the pervasive influence such decisions
will have on individuals, whether having legitimate
authority over a state also grants legitimate authority
over that states citizens. Adjudicating legitimate relationships between these three levels, the citizen, state, and
international institutions, has further implications on
international interventions, such as the NATO bombing
of Serbia. In order to assess the legitimacy of such

871

872

Political Liberalism

interventions, an account needs to be given for both the

limits of the legitimate authority of a state and what, if any,
institutions can legitimately impose or enforce international rules. Much of the debate in the global justice
literature centers on the question of political legitimacy
of international interventions.

Related Topics
Fair Trade
Free Trade
International Organizations
Political Authority
Political Obligation

References
Buchanan A (2002) Political legitimacy and democracy. Ethics 112:
689719
Nagel T (2005) The problem of global justice. Philos Public Aff 33:113147
Simmons AJ (1999) Justification and legitimacy. Ethics 109:739771
Walzer M (1980) The moral standing of states. Philos Public Aff 9:
209229

Political Liberalism
SHAUN PATRICK YOUNG
McLaughlin College and York Centre for Practical Ethics,
York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

In the latter part of the twentieth century, a number of

political theorists began to argue that traditional conceptions of liberalism such as those offered by John
Locke, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill were no
longer able to respond satisfactorily to the challenges
associated with securing justice amidst the increasing plurality of competing, conflicting, and often incommensurable and irreconcilable beliefs present in contemporary
constitutional democracies. Effectively addressing those
challenges, it was suggested, would require (1) a redrawing
of the boundaries of liberal concern so as to better distinguish between matters of public and private interest
between the political and the nonpolitical; and (2) a focus
on securing a consensus on a framework for regulating
and mediating only the former. The school of thought
associated with this line of argument has come to
be known as political liberalism, the most famous
(contemporary) proponent of which is John Rawls, author
of the architectonic text Political Liberalism (PL) (1993/
1996/2005).

According to Rawls, a purely political liberalism is

animated by a freestanding conception of justice, one
that is not derived from any particular (controversial)
metaphysical or epistemological view and limits its application to matters of public import that is, issues that
affect all members of the polity, such as decisions
concerning voting and property rights and religious
toleration, what Rawls characterizes as constitutional
essentials and issues of basic justice. Rawls and other
political liberals concluded that only by adopting such
a neutral, bracketed approach can one hope to develop
a conception of justice that provides the opportunity for
all (reasonable) individuals to pursue and potentially realize their chosen vision of the good life. And only by doing
so is it possible for a conception of justice to secure and
maintain the free and willing support of the majority of
the citizenry that is, an overlapping consensus and, by
extension, provide the foundation for a just and stable
society.
Unsurprisingly, Rawlss purely political conception of
liberalism attracted significant attention, generating both
celebratory and critical responses. Among the criticisms
articulated was one that had first appeared more than
20 years earlier, following the publication of Rawlss first
book A Theory of Justice (1971) (Theory): namely, that
Rawls failed to address in a meaningful sense the issue of
global justice. A number of commentators complained
that it remained frustratingly unclear whether Rawls
believed that his purely political conception of justice
could be applied with equal success to the international
realm. The conception of justice championed in
both Theory and PL is premised upon the idea of
a closed society, a society that does not interact in any
manner with other societies. Though Rawls accepted that
a conception of justice must (eventually) address the
issue of just relations with other societies, he maintained
that it is quite appropriate indeed, necessary to
forsake any concern with issues of global justice until
after one has developed a viable conception of domestic
justice.
By the time PL was published, Rawls had already
begun to consider how his conception of justice might
be applied to the realm of international law and politics.
His initial thoughts were first presented in the form of an
Oxford Amnesty Lecture entitled The Law of Peoples,
which was subsequently published as part of an edited
collection entitled On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty
Lectures 1993. One of the (principal) stated aims of that
lecture/essay was to explain how one could use Rawlss
conception of political liberalism as a basis for developing
a viable conception of global justice.

Political Liberalism

Dissatisfied with the underdeveloped character of the

argument presented in the lecture/essay and, subsequently, its vulnerability to misinterpretation, Rawls continued to work to develop a more detailed and satisfactory
version of his argument, which was published under the
same title as a book in 1999. Both the essay and the
subsequent book generated significant interest, which, in
turn, begat a substantial (and continually increasing)
volume of commentary and analysis.
The nature of the relationship between The Law of
Peoples (LP) and PL is captured in various of Rawlss
remarks presented in the former. For example, he emphasizes that his conception of political liberalism provides
the framework within which he develops his Law of Peoples. He also notes the similarity of purpose that animates
LP and PL, observing that, while the latter is intended to
demonstrate the possibility of establishing and sustaining
a just liberal society, the former is meant to explain how
a just world society might be realized. Hence, in
a fundamental sense, the difference between the two is
primarily a matter of scope.
However, it is also true that the difference in scope
produced other noteworthy divergences. For example,
whereas the conception of political liberalism articulated
in PL concerned itself with reasonable people who
affirm the fundamental principles of constitutional
democracy, and considered any individuals external to
such a category to be of interest only as potential sources
of political instability that must be effectively managed,
the version presented in LP is significantly less narrow in
its focus. Rawlss proposed Law of Peoples requires that
equal consideration be given to all decent peoples that
is, those who abstain from aggressive behavior and whose
legal system respects certain basic human rights and
affirms a common conception of the good many
of whom might oppose the establishment of a constitutional democracy. Similarly, in Theory and PL, Rawls
insists that a viable conception of (domestic) justice
must embrace the belief that the only legitimate inequalities are those that benefit the least advantaged members of
society Rawlss difference principle. He explicitly
rejects the idea of incorporating such a principle into his
proposed Law of Peoples. Rather, he suggests that the
relevant assistance provided by the difference principle is
encompassed in his Law of Peoples in the proposed duty of
assistance that well-ordered (i.e., liberal and/or decent)
societies have to help burdened societies establish the
institutions needed to become full members of a global
society of peoples.
To date, the response to Rawlss proposed Law of
Peoples has been primarily critical in character. In

873

particular, many analysts have taken issue with what they

believe to be Rawlss undesirable modesty in terms of the
conditions that must be satisfied as evidenced in the two
above-noted differences if one is to be accepted
within the proposed global society of peoples. However,
there have also been theorists, such as Thomas Pogge,
Charles Beitz, and Partick Hayden, who have worked
within Rawlss general framework to develop what
they believe to be more attractive conceptions of global
justice.
In the final analysis, the degree to which Rawlss conception of political liberalism can serve as an adequate
foundation for a viable and attractive conception of global
justice will undoubtedly continue to be a matter of debate,
at least for the foreseeable future.

Related Topics
Aid to Burdened Societies
Consensus/Justification
Decent Society
Difference Principle
Duties of Assistance
Global Difference Principle
Global Justice
Kant, Immanuel
Law of Peoples
Locke, John
Rawls, John
Realistic Utopia
Social Contract

References
Beitz C (1979) Political theory and international relations. Princeton
University Press, Princeton
Beitz C (2000) Rawlss law of peoples. Ethics 110:669696
Hayden P (2002) John Rawls: toward a just world order. University of
Wales Press, Cardiff
Kant I (1991) Political writings, edited with an introduction and notes
by Reiss H (trans: Nisbet HB). Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge
Locke J (1960) Two treatises of government, with introduction by
Laslett P. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Mill JS (1974) Utilitarianism, on liberty, essay on Bentham: together with
selected writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin, edited and
with an introduction by Warnock M. New American Library,
New York
Pogge T (1994) An egalitarian law of peoples. Philos Public Aff
23:195224
Rawls J (1971) A theory of justice. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA
Rawls J (1993/1996/2005) Political liberalism. Columbia University Press,
New York
Rawls J (1999) The law of peoples. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA

874

Political Obligation

Political Obligation
STEPHEN L. ESQUITH
Residential College in Arts and Humanities, Michigan
State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

Political Obligations of Obedience and of

Participation
The entry on political obligation by Richard Dagger in the
online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy begins with
a clear and concise definition: To have a political obligation is to have a moral duty to obey the laws of ones
country or state. This obligation of obedience presupposes the existence of a legal order that deserves the
obedience of its subjects, that is, all those subject to
the law, not just the citizens who make it. Leaving aside
for the most part the claim that there is a natural duty to
obey the law, political obligations of this kind can be
incurred through consent (including formal contracts
and less formal promises) or by virtue of benefits
a subject may receive under the laws of the subjects state
or country.
In contrast to these Lockean political obligations of
obedience, there are also political obligations of participation. These are not moral duties to obey the laws of the
state but rather, as Michael Walzer and Carole Pateman
have argued following Rousseau, they are moral responsibilities to other participants who share in common political practices. These responsibilities are sometimes
referred to as associative obligations and cover a range of
practices from electoral politics to cooperative activities
within civil society. Political obligations of participation,
like obligations of obedience, are assumed to be responsibilities that one has to ones fellow citizens within ones
own state or country (the domestic assumption). They are
also assumed to be individual obligations and not obligations incurred by groups or institutions (the individual
assumption). Both of these assumptions should be scrutinized critically.

Global Political Obligations

Global political obligations, like global justice more generally, do not depend upon the existence of a sovereign
global state capable of enforcing its own laws. As multilateral institutions and international organizations have
debated and acknowledged the moral duties of states and
other institutions to obey the laws, declarations, and
treaties that cover and connect their separate populations,
the idea of global political obligations of obedience has

begun to take shape and in some cases take hold. The

creation by treaty in July 2002 of the International Criminal Court is an example of how states, international
organizations, and corporations have formed a political
body authorized to adjudicate complaints.
Similarly, with the growth of a global civil society,
group and institutional moral responsibilities to aid and
intervene in emergency situations as well as assist in longterm development projects have multiplied. For example,
Medecins Sans Frontie`res was once the exception that
proved the rule, but now almost every professional association is prepared to act . . .Without Borders if the
situation demands it. This is also true of drug cartels and
arms traders; they also constitute a part of global civil
society in which it makes sense to talk about moral
responsibilities to fellow members. In cases such as these,
the moral responsibilities are no less dicey but remain
palpable.
Like the moral duties that individuals and institutions
have to obey the laws of their own country or state, the
duties entailed by global political obligations of obedience
are certainly defeasible, not absolute. Sometimes they are
relatively weak, and in some cases they are more binding
and more difficult to ignore. Similarly, global political
obligations of participation will vary from association to
association and from one network of interdependence to
another. However, that does not mean these global political obligations of obedience or participation are meaningless or of no practical importance. It depends on the
situation, as it does with any obligation, political or otherwise. We can ask the same questions of institutional
global political obligations that we ask about individual
domestic political obligations. That is, what are the moral
grounds of global obligations of obedience and participation, and how strong can and should they be?

Obedience and Consent

George Klosko, as part of a continuing conversation with
A. John Simmons and Christopher H. Wellman, uses
consent as an ideal type to assess other competing grounds
for domestic political obligations of obedience. Ideally, he
argues, consent justifies a moral duty to obey the laws of
ones country or state when (1) the laws of the state are
generally consented to (if not unanimously approved);
(2) the obligations that are incurred are of limited force
and can be overridden or dissolved; (3) the range of
obligations can be as comprehensive as the democratic
majority wishes; and (4) the obligations bind individuals
to the particular country or state they feel closest. Klosko
then asks how well do the other competing grounds for
a domestic political obligation of obedience come to

Political Obligation

meeting these four criteria (generality, defeasibility, comprehensiveness, and particularity). His answer is that
political obligations that are grounded in cooperative
practices based on fair rules of play are the ones that
come closest to the consent ideal, but other ways of incurring domestic political obligations of obedience also are
important. Because there are insufficient instances of
actual consent-based political obligations, the best
grounds for domestic political obligations of obedience,
according to Klosko, are based on a principle of fairness,
supplemented by considerations of what he calls our natural duties to others and the value of public services for the
common good. This combination of fairness, natural
duty, and commitment to the common good, he argues,
best satisfies the four criteria for a domestic political
obligation of obedience embodied by ideal consent. It is
worth noting in passing, as Dagger and others have
pointed out, it is not clear how different natural duties
of obedience are to duties based on the value of fair play, at
least in the way that Klosko defines natural duty.
One way to extend this theory of domestic political
obligation to global political obligation is to ask if there is
a comparable global ideal of consent that can be used as
the benchmark for assessing the grounds of global political
obligations of obedience. Kloskos first criterion (generality) does seem important on the global level. If moral
obligations to obey laws and treaties regulating ones
relationship to others outside ones own country or
state are to exist, then some indication of consent seems
appropriate, whether it is the explicit act of signing or
ratifying a treaty or the tacit acceptance that comes with
the enjoyment of international trade and security
agreements.
Thomas Pogges critical assessment of the benefits and
costs of what he calls the international borrowing privilege
and the international resource privilege could be the
grounds for political obligations of lenders and buyers,
not just borrowers and sellers, to obey rules of global
justice. Accepting the benefits of such international rules,
even if the rules have not been officially signed or ratified,
seems to be at least as binding a form of tacit consent as
living within the boundaries of a country and following its
laws. In the case of the privileges that Pogge argues rich
countries afford to poorer countries, the costs include not
just an unfair transfer of resources from poor to rich but
also an incentive for corruption and military rule in the
poorer countries. Arguably, rich countries have a moral
duty to obey international laws prohibiting international
privileges such as these because of the unjust benefits the
rich receive as well as the harm done to the subjects of
poorer countries.

875

Participation and Membership

Another way to approach global political obligations is
through global civil society and the groups and associations that constitute it. Klosko rejects this as the basis for
domestic political obligation of obedience, but on its face
it seems a plausible criterion for global political obligations of participation.
According to Yael Tamir, associative obligations
(sometimes referred to as obligations of membership)
are based on the feeling of belonging that individuals
may have to their political society because of the role
they play within it. These role-based obligations avoid
the vagaries of voluntary consent and the issue of whether
benefits are freely chosen. However, associative obligations
as grounds for obedience have problems of their own. It is
not clear why a feeling of belonging should be the basis of
political obligation, since intensity of feelings may not be
a good indicator of the moral value of an obligation.
Perhaps even more worrisome is what critics have called
the character of the association. If one feels a sense of
belonging to a political party or organized pressure
group dedicated to violence and discrimination, does
one have a legitimate political obligation to obey the
rules of the party or support the groups position?
It is unlikely that membership alone can suffice as
a ground for obligations of obedience. If an obligation of
obedience is a moral duty to obey the rules of ones
political association, then it can hardly be moral to obey
immoral rules just because one is a member of the association. How openly a member should dissent (and can be
held morally responsible for not dissenting) depends upon
the opportunities for protest, resignation, and ultimately
emigration without reprisals. It is certainly possible to
imagine counter-examples in which a member of an association has the obligation to dissent and remain in the
association because leaving the association would do more
harm than good. This is what is called playing the role of
the loyal opposition, but such loyalty presupposes certain
judgments about the relative moral character of the
existing association and its rivals.
The same holds true for global associative obligations.
Simply because one feels a sense of belonging to an international nongovernmental organization that one contributes to or a sense of belonging to a multilateral political
organization whose meetings one attends as a delegate,
these feelings of belonging cannot override moral deficiencies in the character of the association.

Institutional Responsibilities
Can an argument be made for grounding global political
obligations in the associations in which institutions

876

Political Obligation

participate? To answer this question, it is helpful to compare more carefully individual and institutional political
obligations of participation. While institutions should not
be treated as if they were individual moral persons, they do
participate in global civil society and in some cases do
have moral responsibilities to others with whom they
participate.
We can distinguish between two types of political
obligations of participation. First-order participatory
obligations are obligations to respect the political rights
of others, such as freedom of speech, association, and
assembly, or the obligation to vote or respect the rights
of due process of others. They also include public or
military service and other forms of mutual political support in times of emergencies and natural disasters, such as
obligations to evacuate dangerous areas or vaccinate ones
children. Some of these obligations will be legally binding,
such as those governed by constitutional protections of
speech and administrative and executive orders restricting
freedom of movement and residence during civil emergencies, but not all first-order political responsibilities
have to be. For example, at certain times and in certain
democratic countries the political obligation to serve in
the military or to vote in elections has been voluntary.
In contrast to these first-order political obligations of
participation, second-order political obligations of participation are obligations that persons accept rather than
obligations that others hold them to. For example, the
political obligation to take an interest in the integrity of
the political process by studying the issues, listening to
opposing views, and formulating an informed view of
ones own is a second-order political obligation. It presupposes the value of certain first-order political obligations, but one can still be politically obligated in this
second-order sense even if ones right to vote has been
suspended, say, during martial law or some other civil
emergency.
The second-order political obligation to prepare oneself (and members of the next generation) to be informed
and tolerant participants in the political process is
a general second-order political obligation of participation. It is not limited to particular elections or political
controversies, nor is it limited to individual human
beings. There is, at least in a society committed to becoming more democratic, a general obligation for individual
persons and groups to participate in good faith with other
persons in the periodic assessment of the effects of the
distribution and exercise of power and wealth on the
quality of democratic life. Call it taking stock of the body
politic. Thomas Jeffersons belief that a constitutional convention should be held once every 19 years so that each

generation can write its own constitution has some kinship to this idea. Those who are engaged in the production
of wealth and power and who will be responsible for using
it well, he believed, periodically should revise the political
rules under which they live.
There is also a different kind of second-order political
obligation of participation, the specific second-order
political obligation of persons to participate in the design
of fair procedures for organizing the benefits that continue
to accrue from past immoral practices. This is an obligation to fellow members to correct the legacy of tainted
benefits by participating in the creation of a special charter
or treaty, not a general constitutional convention.
Not all persons have the same obligation for designing
fair procedures for redirecting this flow of tainted benefits.
Injured parties and neutral mediators will play certain
roles; persons who have enjoyed these tainted benefits but
who cannot be ignored in the design of new procedures will
play other roles. Take, for example, the problem lustration,
that is, what role members of former communist regimes
ought to play in particular phases of the post-1989 democratic transitions in Eastern Europe. Institutions, not just
individuals, may have this kind of participatory obligation,
and in many of these cases the obligation extends beyond
the boundaries of a single country or state.
Consider the domestic case first. Industrial corporations that have benefited financially and politically from
immoral practices such as the use of forced labor have an
obligation to reset the political system on a moral and
equal footing. This may begin with a moral responsibility
to apologize to the descendants of forced laborers who
have suffered from the legacy of slavery. More seriously, it
may warrant a kind of institutional lustration in which
corporations that have profited immorally from and
supported past unjust political regimes are suspended
from political lobbying and their officers, past and present,
prohibited from holding appointed or elected political
positions.
The moral responsibilities of corporate citizens to
other citizens can also transcend national boundaries.
For example, insurance companies licensed in one state
may have a moral responsibility to the descendants of
deceased policy holders who lived in other states for
fraudulent immoral practices committed in the past but
continue to affect the political lives of the descendants of
the original policyholders down to the present. These
effects can be financial, but they can also leave a social
stigma that affects the value of political membership of the
descendants. Again, apologies can remedy some of this
harm, but more tangible reimbursement and compensation may be necessary in order to create greater political

Political Representation

equality and the sense of trust needed for political

dialogue.
Corporate citizenship too often can be a slogan that
dresses up tax deductible corporate giving as charity and
at the same time obscures the more systematic corrupting
role that corporations play in politics. Corporations certainly have a moral duty to obey the law (i.e., a political
obligation of obedience), but they also have moral responsibilities as participants in global politics to remedy past
wrongs that continue to affect the value of political
participation for others and the present balance of political power even when their acts have not risen to the level
of an illegal act.

877

Political Realism
Compatriot Partiality Thesis
Liberal Nationalism
Lifeboat Ethics
Political Liberalism

Political Reconciliation
Political Forgiveness
Truth Commissions

Related Topics
Corporate Social Responsibility
Dower, Nigel
Global Citizenship
Global Civil Society
Global Public Sphere
International Criminal Court (ICC)
Jefferson, Thomas
Locke, John
Pogge, Thomas
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
Tamir, Yael
Walzer, Michael
World Citizenship

References
Beran H (1987) The consent theory of political obligation. Croom Helm,
London
Blackmon DA (2008) Slavery by another name: the re-enslavement of
black people in America from the civil war to world war II.
Doubleday, New York
Dagger R (2000) Membership, fair play, and political obligation. Polit
Stud 48:104117
Dower N (2003) An introduction to global citizenship. Edinburgh
University, Edinburgh
Gilbert M (2006) A theory of political obligation. Oxford University,
New York
Kaldor M (2003) Global civil society: an answer to war. Polity, Malden
Klosko G (2005) Political obligations. Oxford University, New York
Pateman C (1979) The problem of political obligation: a critical analysis
of liberal theory. Wiley, New York
Pogge TW (2002) World poverty and human rights. Polity, Malden
Simmons AJ (1979) Moral principles and political obligations. Princeton
University, Princeton
Tamir Y (1993) Liberal nationalism. Princeton University, Princeton
Walzer M (1970) Obligations: essays on disobedience, war, and citizenship. Harvard University, Cambridge
Wellman CH, Simmons AJ (2005) Is there a duty to obey the law?
Cambridge University, New York
Wolin SS (2008) Democracy incorporated: managed democracy and the
specter of inverted totalitarianism. Princeton University, Princeton

Political Representation
MICHAEL ALLEN
Department of Philosophy, East Tennessee State
University, Johnson City, TN, USA

Political representation is a problematic term in global

justice debates. It is problematic for at least two reasons.
On the one hand, most discussion of such representation
remains linked to the territorially bounded nation state,
but at a time when globalization has occasioned some
considerable erosion of state sovereignty. On the other
hand, attempts to apply the concept of representation
beyond the borders of the nation state, in terms of state
majoritarianism in the UN, prove to be normatively undesirable and have failed to win the support of leading
theorists of global justice. In what follows, I first sketch
the standard conception of political representation within
the nation state, noting that this conception may be
accommodated by a scheme of transnational democracy
that takes into account the erosion of sovereignty consequent on globalization. I then consider the difficulty of
extending this familiar conception beyond state borders
according to the model of state majoritarianism. Finally,
I turn to an alternative conception of representation as
a contestable practice of claim-making, linking this to
certain features of transnational democracy.

Hannah Pitkin: Re-Presentation

Within the borders of the nation state, political representation is typically conceived in the terms devised by
Hannah Pitkin (1967), as re-presentation or making present again. According to Pitkin, the most useful way of

878

Political Representation

thinking about representation is as a substantive acting

for others. This is preferable to merely formal authorization or accountability to others, which says nothing about
what goes on during the act of representation. It is also
preferable to descriptive standing for others in light of
a correspondence or connection between the representative and the represented, such as class, ethnicity, or
religion. Indeed, for Pitkin, the greater virtue of substantive acting for is that it properly captures the activity of
the representative in representing others. Indeed, this
should be conceived in terms of a delegatetrustee relationship, in which the representative either acts on the
mandate of the represented, or independently of such
a mandate so as to promote the interests of the represented
as the representative sees best.
Regardless of what side one takes in the mandateindependence controversy, acting for is the most widely
accepted conception of political representation within the
nation state. In the context of concern for global justice,
however, the question obviously arises as to what sense can
or should be made of this conception beyond the borders
of such a territorially defined political community, in
which the relationship of delegation and trusteeship is
the exclusive right of citizens. Theorists of globalization
frequently point out that Pitkins conception of acting
for presupposes a symmetry, or congruence, of power
relations between representatives and the represented.
After all, within the modern constitutional-democratic
state, those representatives who fail to fulfill a mandate
or misjudge the interests of the represented may expect to
encounter electoral defeat and loss of power at the hands
of the latter partner in the relationship. But this symmetry
of power relations within the state has been, at least partly,
undermined with globalization and the emergence of new
power-asymmetries transcending state borders. Such
asymmetries emerge, for instance, with the increasing
ability of international financial institutions to dictate
terms of global cooperation to states, as well as multinational corporations to evade state power by capital flight
and outsourcing. The result is a serious decrease in the
ability of representatives at the level of the nation state to
authoritatively act for the citizens they represent as exclusive trustees of their particular interest.
In light of such trans-state asymmetries of power,
advocates of transnational democracy argue that national
democracies based on representative institutions,
according to Pitkins model, should be seen as only one
level in a multi-leveled scheme of governance. Such institutions of national democracies play an important part of
any such scheme, providing a context for popular

democratic control over issues that continue to operate

principally on the national level. But do representative
institutions otherwise contribute to a further democratization of the international domain of politics? Transnational democrats are skeptical about the possibility of such
a contribution, stressing the role of global publics and civil
society actors challenging the power of international
financial bodies and multinational corporations. This
indeed is a role they understand as contestatory rather
than representative. Democracy above the state level is
thus conceived by transnational democrats as being
entirely detached from any current model of representation. Others, who themselves are more skeptical of this
conceptual detachment, argue that democratization of the
international domain can mean only the promotion of
more national democracies with representative institutions. For their part, skeptics of democracy without
representation stress that representative institutions at
the state level have at least been demonstrated to check
such internal calamities as famine, drought, and civil war.
Both parties in this dispute, however, concede that the
concept of representation has only a fairly limited application to issues operating above the level of the nation
state. I next consider the difficulties arising from any
strenuous attempt to extend representation beyond the
state by appeal to the proposal for state majoritarianism
at the UN.

Problems with Globalizing the Majority

Principle of State Representation
At the intergovernmental level, the representatives of
nation states discuss issues that are of properly global
concern, reaching multilateral decisions, or at least fostering informal norms of cooperation that emerge as incomplete or unsystematic responses to the rapid pace of
globalization. Nonetheless, intergovernmental organizations are frequently criticized for being inadequately democratic and representative, despite their commitments to
principles of public accountability, rule of law, and formal
equality between member states. Indeed, the UN, in particular, has been widely criticized on the ground that its
governing structure is heavily biased toward its most
powerful and wealthiest member states, failing to give
fair representation of the perspectives of its least powerful
and poorest members. Not only does the veto power
enjoyed by its Security Council contradict any pretense
to inclusive representation of the interests of all member
states but also, in its General Assembly, those states whose
populations total no more than 5% of the worlds entire
population effectively dispose of the Assemblys majority,

Political Representation

leaving the remaining 95% without any effective

representation for their interests and concerns.
One response to such radical asymmetries of power
within the governing structure of the UN consists in the
call for a system of state majoritarianism. This may be
understood by analogy to the principle of one person,
one vote, without any discriminatory weighting of votes
on the basis of class, race, or religion, at the national level
of representative democracy. Indeed, a state majoritarian
system would entail the principle of one state, one vote,
without regard for size of population, wealth, or military
capacity, as a condition for the legitimacy of decisions
reached at the intergovernmental level. Such a bold proposal would establish a strict equality of representation for
all UN member states. But it is not at all clear that strict
representational equality, in the above sense, would
genuinely contribute to any further democratization of
international politics. After all, the UN does not require
that its various member states should themselves be
national democracies with popular representative institutions. To this extent, votes weighted non-discriminatorily
in a state majoritarian system might not be cast by representatives who appropriately act for those whom they
represent nationally, whether by mandate or best judgment of the representeds interests. In these cases at least,
state representatives do not, in Pitkins language, actually re-present anything. A state majoritarian system
would simply aggregate the nonrepresentative preferences
of autocrats and despots, weighting these equally with the
preferences of peoples able to hold their democratically
elected representatives to account in a delegatetrustee
relationship.

Are Transnational Social Movements

Representative? Not Re-Presentation but
Depiction
I turn now to the different question of whether the concept of representation may be given an application to the
informal contestatory practices of global publics and civil
society actors. Here transnational democrats point to the
success of such actors in motivating transnational social
movements, ranging from the anticorporate globalization
movement to the global environmental justice movement,
in challenging international financial institutions and
multinational corporations, such as the WTO and Shell.
These successes notably include getting alternative issues
onto the agenda of the WTO, like debt forgiveness for
developing countries, and changing the deep-ocean
dumping practices for obsolete industrial equipment
of the Shell Corporation. According to transnational

democrats, the contestatory practices of such informal

movements are democratic, but without appeal to the
concept of representation within national democracies.
This effective detachment of democracy from representation may be seen clearly in the case of the seminal 1995
Greenpeace protest of the proposed deep-ocean dumping
of the Brent Spar oil storage platform by the Shell Corporation in British territorial waters. Indeed, Greenpeace
bypassed and overrode the British governments substantive acting for the British people in supporting Shells
dumping the platform by reaching an informal agreement
with Shell to dismantle the platform on dry land.
Some critics of transnational democracy, however,
argue that in bypassing the representative institutions of
the British state in order to promote their own environmental justice agenda, Greenpeace simply acted undemocratically. From the perspective of these critics, informal
contestation absent representation is insufficient for
democracy. Democracy cannot ultimately be detached
from the idea of acting for some well-defined constituency, according to Pitkins model. But informal transnational social movements have no such constituency to
whom they are appropriately bound in a delegatetrustee
relationship. One response to this criticism, favored by
most transnational democrats, is to insist that democracy
can indeed be detached from representation: informal
contestation amounts to a different sort of democracy.
Another possibility, however, is to argue that there is
a sense in which transnational social movements may be
construed as representative after all, albeit in a way that is
different from Pitkins acting for. This latter approach
has some initial plausibility to the extent that global
publics and civil society actors, unlike classical tyrants
and despots, do sincerely believe that they are acting in
the interests of others.
Here it is helpful to consider an alternative account of
representation recently developed by Michael Saward
(2006). Indeed, Saward shifts the focus of his own analysis
away from Pitkins concern with the activity of giving
delegated re-presentations of the interests of the
represented. As noted previously, such delegated
re-presentations may be mandated by the represented or
consist of the representatives best judgment of interest of
the former. But either way, in Sawards estimation, the
interests of the represented are always fairly unproblematically given. Consequently, the act of re-presentation
does little more than supply information about the pregiven constituency of the represented. Sawards complaint
against this conception, however, is that it overlooks the
many ways in which a constituency is always actively

879

880

Population Politics

constituted by representatives depicting or framing the

represented in particular ways. Rather than supplying
information about a pre-given constituency, representation is an act of creatively depicting the represented as
having certain defining concerns or interests in common.
To this extent, Saward contends that representatives as
claim-makers may be said to constitute the constituency
through their creative acts of depiction and portrayal.
Here the makers of representative claims could be either
national politicians along with their spin doctors, or rock
star celebrities, like Bono, or global civil society actors,
such as Greenpeace.
On Sawards conception, then, transnational social
movements clearly emerge as politically representative
global actors. Indeed, they emerge as such to the extent
that a global civil society actor could itself be seen as
making a representative claim depicting, and so constituting, the transnational constituency of all who are
affected by global environmental harms: potentially everyone, without regard to national borders. While certainly
not electorally delegated by this emphatically cross-border
constituency as their trustees, all those represented by such
a claim could still reflexively read it back. They can contest
or dispute Greenpeaces claim in further processes of representative claim-making in the global public sphere.
These are processes in which anyone, or any organization
or social movement, able to win a global audience may
offer a contestable claim to represent the constituency
creatively depicted. In this peculiar respect, at any rate,
representation transcends national borders. Transnational
democracy can thus be said to be appropriately representative, in Sawards sense, if not the more familiar sense of
representation developed by Pitkin.

Related Topics
Civil Disobedience, Transnational
Democracy, Transnational
Democratic Legitimacy
Global Civil Society
Global Public
Greenpeace

References
Mansbridge JJ (2003) Rethinking representation. Am Polit Sci Rev 97:4
Marin L (2001) On representation (trans: Porter C). Stanford University
Press, Stanford
Pitkin HF (1967) The concept of representation. University of California
Press, Berkeley
Prendergast C (2000) The triangle of representation. Columbia University
Press, New York
Saward M (2006) The representative claim. Contemp Polit Theory
5(3):297318

Population Politics
JUHA RAIKKA
Department of Behavioural Sciences and Philosophy,
University of Turku, Turku, Finland

The growth of world population raises two kinds of

normative questions. First, there are questions of
intergenerational justice. How should welfare be distributed across generations? What kind of theoretical framework should we construct to deal with future generations?
Second, there are ethical questions of population policy.
Since the determination of the number of people in the
world is partly a matter of individual and social choice, it
is subject to moral evaluation. What are desirable goals of
population policies? Which means are morally acceptable
when striving for them? How should the burden of achieving a demographic goal be distributed? Questions of
intergenerational justice and the ethics of population
policies are interrelated in various ways, but it is important
to note that intergenerational justice concerns current and
future people, that is, people who will live in the future,
while the ethics of population policies concern potential
people, that is, entities that have the potential to become
a person, and possible people, that is, people who will live in
the future if we so decide.
Certain population policies have caused serious social
and moral problems. Eugenics and sterilization were
widely used both in Europe and North America in the
twentieth century. Contraceptives have had unknown
side effects, and women have not been fully informed
of their health risks. Especially in the poor countries,
coercion of women has been a general feature of many
population policies. Control-oriented policies have been
much more common than service-oriented policies.
Compensation payments have linked sterilization and
abortion to poverty, highlighting and increasing social
inequality. Certain policies have led to sex selection and
to the killing of female newborns. These kinds of problems may suggest that active population policies are
morally problematic per se, but a laissez faire population
policy a policy of nonaction may cause serious problems too.
In general, there is relatively good understanding of
what should be done to reduce family sizes in areas of
rapid population growth. Among other things, we may try
to increase social approval of small families; to cut down
childrens opportunities to be productively employed, to
make social security available for the elderly, to reduce the

Population Politics

costs of contraception, to increase knowledge of contraceptive techniques, to improve social standards involved
in the raising of children, to increase the cost of products
used by children, to educate young women, to create wellpaid jobs for young women, to speed up urbanization, and
to impose mandatory education for children where
the cost of this education is partly paid by parents. The
most effective mean to reduce family sizes would be to
eradicate extreme poverty, since poverty causes population growth.
Are coercive population policies ever morally justified?
A received view is that ethically acceptable population
policies let individuals freely decide the number of
their children and that we are permitted to strive for
demographic goals only by policies that are noncoercive.
However, an argument has been made that if there is no
other way to slow down the population growth than to use
directly coercive laws, such laws are morally justified. Those
who sympathize with this view emphasize that population
growth is inconsistent with the ideals of sustainable development and contributes significantly to environmental,
ecological, and social problems in certain areas.
Should we prefer indirectly coercive population policies
to directly coercive ones if we wished to respect procreative rights? Not necessarily. Whether or not an indirect
policy is less problematic than a direct policy depends on
the content of such policies. Suppose that there is a law
(direct policy) that prohibits having more than two
children, but that nothing really happens if one has more
than two children. Compare this law to an economic
deterrent (indirect policy) that in practice makes it inadvisable to have more than two children. In this case the
direct policy is less problematic than the indirect policy.
Consider another example. Suppose there is a law (direct
policy) that prohibits having more than eight children,
and that acting against this law implies heavy penalties.
Compare this policy to an economic incentive (indirect
policy) that in practice makes it impossible to have more
than one child. Again, the direct policy is less problematic
than the indirect policy. Compare now a law that restricts
the number of children in families (direct policy), and an
economic incentive that makes it impossible for poor
people to have children and encourages rich people to
have them (indirect policy). At least from the point of
view of equality, once again the direct policy is less
problematic.
Population theory has generated a number of
philosophical paradoxes and puzzles. They include the
Paradox of Future Individuals (also known as the
Nonidentity Problem) and the Asymmetry View.
A famous puzzle is Derek Parfits reasoning that classical

881

utilitarianism (i.e., the total theory) implies the Repugnant Conclusion. As formulated by Parfit, the repugnant
conclusion is the claim that for any possible population of
at least ten billion people, all with a high quality of life,
there is some larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even
though its members have lives that are barely worth living
(1986). According to (the hedonistic version of) classical
utilitarianism, it is a good thing to maximize happiness as
long as persons happiness exceeds their misery and adds
to the total sum of happiness on Earth. As long as average
happiness declines slowly enough, numbers are encouraged to increase indefinitely no matter how low the
average has fallen. But most of us think that this kind of
overcrowded world is not the ideal world. Therefore, the
total theory should be rejected.
There are many ways to react to Parfits argument. One
can simply reject classical utilitarianism, or one may try to
show that classical utilitarianism does not lead to the
repugnant conclusion, or one may (bite the bullet and)
claim that the repugnant conclusion is not so repugnant.
Overpopulation and birth control are extremely
relevant issues in global ethics, and they have caused
much pain and trouble to individual persons. Philosophical play on population theory has reflected poorly on this
unpleasant fact.

Related Topics
Human Rights
Intergenerational Justice
Poverty
Utilitarianism

References
Carter A (1999) Moral theory and global population. Proc Aristotelian
Soc 99:289313
Hartmann B (1995) Reproductive rights and wrongs. South End, Boston
Kavka GS (1981) The paradox of future individuals. Philos Public Aff
11:93112
McMahan J (1981) Problems of population theory. Ethics 92:96127
Mills C (1999) The ethics of reproductive control. Philos Forum
30:4357
Narveson J (1973) Moral problems of population. Monist 57:6286
Parfit D (1986) Overpopulation and the quality of life. In: Singer P (ed)
Applied ethics. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 145164
Raikka J (2000) Problems in population theory. J Soc Philos 31:401413
Raikka J (2001) Coercive population policies, procreative freedom, and
morality. Philos Geogr 4:6777
Raikka J (2002) The repugnant conclusion and the welfare of actual
people. Theoria 68:162169
Ryberg J, Tannsjo T (2004) The repugnant conclusion, essays on population ethics. Kluwer, Dordrecht
Wissenburg M (1998) The rapid reproducers paradox: population control
and individual procreative rights. Environ Polit 7:7899

882

Positive Duties

Positive Duties
Duties, Positive and Negative

Positive Rights
FRED E. FOLDVARY
Civil Society Institute, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara,
CA, USA

A positive right is an obligation by others to provide some

benefit to the rights holder. A right is a correlative of
a wrong, so if one has a right to something it means that
it is wrong or unlawful for others to negate that right or to
not provide some benefit.
In contrast, a negative right is an obligation by others to
avoid negating some actions and properties of the rights
holders. The right to practice ones religion is a negative
right, since this means that it is wrong or unlawful for others
to prevent such practice. A positive right obliges others to
provide benefits, while a negative right only obliges others
to avoid interfering with someones liberty. Global justice
clearly requires basic negative rights such as the right to not
be restricted in the peaceful and honest practice of religion.
The extent to which global justice requires positive or
negative rights depends on ones theory of moral rights.
Rights can be contractual, legal, or moral. Contracts
usually create positive rights, since each party is obligated
by the agreement to provide the other party with benefits.
Behind the contractual right is the legal negative right to
make binding agreements and the legal positive right to
have it enforced.
Legal positive rights are an obligation by the government to provide benefits. For example, when the law provides a citizen with the right to vote, the government is
legally obligated to facilitate voting; the right to vote is an
example of a legal positive right. In a welfare state, legislation requires the state to provide positive right services
such as education, medical care, retirement income, and
assistance to the poor.
Positive moral rights are a function of some ethic
under which a set of people, the donors, have a moral
obligation to provide benefits to another set, the recipients. These sets can intersect, with some persons being
both donors and recipients.
In the natural law ethic as developed by John Locke
(1690) and other classical liberals, there is one basic moral

command, namely, that one ought not harm others. This

implies that people have the negative right to do whatever
does not harm others. Lockean natural law, and the libertarian ethical philosophy, does not provide for any positive
moral rights, except for the right to vote, the enforcement
of contracts, due process in criminal cases, obligations to
children, and possibly positive rights regarding land. In
classical liberal thought, the purpose of government is to
protect rights, in which case people have a positive right to
the resources required to protect their rights.
A moral problem with positive rights is that they imply
an obligation by others to provide benefits, and there is an
ethical issue as to the moral basis of the obligation. If
people are taxed to provide these benefits, then the taxation could be regarded as a violation of the negative right
to ones labor as property, and thus to ones wages and to
the products of labor.

The Positive Right to Land

In Lockes Second Treatise of Government (1690), Locke
stated that one has the right to appropriate land under the
condition that there be land of equal quality freely available to others. This is called the Lockean proviso. Locke
did not go into detail about what should happen if there is
not such land available. The American economist and
social philosopher Henry George (1879) filled in this gap
by recognizing that when the land of such quality is all
claimed, it will have a market rent, and moral equality
requires that this rent be shared equally.
There is therefore in Georgist moral philosophy a
positive natural right to an equal share of the earths
benefits, which is applied by collecting the land rent. The
rent either provides the source of public revenue, or else it
is distributed in equal shares to the relevant population.
Georgist moral philosophy thus solves the problem of
paying for the benefits implied by positive rights, by
using land rent for public finances. Non-Georgists who
reject this land ethic need to justify taxation by other
arguments.
The principle that it is only immoral to harm others
has to confront the issue of nonfeasance, of doing evil
by avoiding action. The often-used example is passing by
a drowning person, when it is possible to extend a hand
and save that persons life. Is there a moral obligation to do
so? One argument is that one can harm others by nonfeasance, by not doing something positive. The other argument is that while it would be very good to save someone,
and it might be considered shameful to not do so, there is
no moral imperative to do so, and the drowning person
lacks the positive right to be saved.

Post-Colonialism

One can carry such an argument to an extreme, such as

the earth being destroyed unless one does something positive, in which case it is difficult to argue against
the positive right to be saved. But if one has a positive
right to aid others, at the other extreme one becomes
a slave to everyone else, since misfortune is ubiquitous.
The moral middle ground is a matter of circumstantial
judgment.
Of interest to advocates of global justice is The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted
by the United Nations in 1948. It includes both positive
and negative rights. Article 21 declares the positive right to
participate in elections. Article 22 declares that everyone
has a right to social security, which implies that others be
taxed to provide it. Article 23 declares a right to work,
which could be a negative right in obliging others only
to avoid interfering with ones work effort, or it could
be a positive right in which the government must provide
a job if one is unemployed. Article 26 declares
a right to free education, implying that others be forced
to finance it.
The classical liberal position that there are only limited
positive rights does not apply to children. It is a widely
held belief that parents create for themselves a moral obligation to care for their children, and so children have
a positive moral right to such care until adulthood.
If deep global justice would provide both equity and
universal prosperity, eliminating the causes of poverty,
this then would remove the rationale for the state to
provide positive legal rights such as employment and
social security.

Related Topics
Animal Rights
Duties, Positive and Negative
Economic Rights
Georgism
Group Rights
Human Right to Democracy
Indigenous Rights to Land
Locke, John
Natural Rights
Unilateral Rights

References
Berlin I (1958) Two concepts of liberty. In: Berlin I (1969) Four essays on
liberty. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Downloadable from http://
www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/papers/twoconcepts.pdf
Feinberg J (1980) Rights, justice, and the bounds of liberty. Princeton
University Press, Princeton

883

Finnis J (1980) Natural law and natural right. Clarendon, Oxford

George H (1879) Progress and poverty. Robert Schalkenbach Foundation,
New York. Available at http://schalkenbach.org/library/henrygeorge/p+p/ppcont.html
Hart H (1961) The concept of law. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Locke J (1690 [1947]) Two treatises of government, ed. Cook ThI. Hafner,
New York
Machan TR (2001) The perils of positive rights, in The freeman: ideas on
liberty. April, Vol. 51 No. 4. http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-perils-of-positive-rights/
Wellman C (1985) A theory of rights. Rowman & Allanheld, Totowa, NJ

Post-Colonial Feminism
Colonialism
Gender Justice
Post-Colonialism

Post-Colonialism
KATHLEEN J. WININGER
Department of Philosophy & Women and Gender Studies,
University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME, USA

Post-colonialism has emerged as an umbrella term conceptualizing processes of reconstituting economic and
cultural health in the period after colonial occupation.
Post-colonial theories reveal the depth of harm done by
the process of creating a colony and offer models of
reconstituting identity. Although many colonies freed
themselves in struggles foregrounding national identity,
post-colonial theorists are often dissatisfied with accepting
the independent nation state as the real ending to
colonialism. According to most post-colonial theories,
liberation and independence are simplified political
notions that do not capture the depth of the infelicitous
legacy of colonial disruption.

Political Origins
Post-colonialism is a way to theorize about former colonies that have become independent and ostensibly free
from foreign control. After long resistance, most colonies
became independent between the 1950s and 1980s.
Contemporary use of post-colonial descended from its
use as a neutral way to conceptualize the time after
colonization. The post-colonial states were also called
neocolonial, or decolonizing nations, the former denoting

884

Post-Colonialism

that power structures had not shifted following the

colonial period, the latter suggesting that a process of
addressing the social harms of the colonial legacy was
taking place. Not only the nations and their geographic
borders but also the social, economic, and cultural
practices that are the legacy of colonialism became the
object of post-colonial theories.
European imperialism left enduring and very visible
problems for the former colonies. National boundaries
were drawn by colonizers to minimize resistance, not to
facilitate benevolent administration. Colonizers intentionally divided ethnic, cultural and linguistic groups. Within
nations internal displacement further disrupted social
structures, South Africa created Homelands and Locations which took local populations away from traditional
economic and familial support. Political, economic, and
judicial institutions were based on tiered systems of justice
and were weighted against local populations. Therefore,
concrete manifestations of the search for global justice in
former colonies minimally include strategies of redistribution of land and water rights, models of reconciliation, and
reparations for harms sustained.
These external moves toward reparation, which seem
straightforwardly economic and financial, mask an
even deeper and subtler level of harm, which requires
theoretical understandings of the nature of the losses suffered by those living under colonizers. Post-colonial theory
endeavors to expose the depth of the harm by looking at
practices, which were common in the colonizing process,
and by suggesting a variety of strategies to be employed in
rebuilding post-colonial cultures. Although issues of social
justice, reconciliation, and restitution must be considered
in their local contexts, studying common factors in
European colonization illuminates many problems. The
colonizer pits one group against another (divides and
conquers), therefore local ethnic and religious conflicts
are exacerbated. The vanguard of colonization happens
through trade and missionary activity. Trade establishes
a schizophrenic relation with the foreign presence; this is
at once advantageous and hostile. Eventually this contact
results in the loss of land due to purchases, taxation, and
seizure. Missionaries teach local people to devalue their
culture, its spiritual practices, its medicine, its aesthetics,
its languages, its education, and its social structure. The
traders, missionaries, and settlers eventually require the
formal presence of the colonizing nation state and its
armies as they encounter resistance to their programs.

Varieties of Post-Colonial Theory

The successive waves of harm produce corresponding
problems. The colonized subject doubts him or

herself; a divided consciousness is created between the

self inhabiting a local culture and the self translated into
the culture of the colonizer. This brings about
a psychological element of colonization referred to most
notably by the Martinique psychiatrist Frantz Fanon
in Black Skin, White Masks. Kenyan, Ngugi wa Thiongo,
also addresses the psychic damage in literary and political
contexts in Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of
Language in African Literature. The theorists point to the
internalization of the messages of colonizing culture and
to the fact that removal of the colonizer will not remove
this problem. These and other texts (the Tunisia/French
author Albert Memmis The Colonizer and the Colonized
and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivaks Can the Subaltern
Speak?) suggest a post-colonial state where the mind of
the colonized must be galvanized through action into
constructing a post-colonial self. This involves actively
extracting the colonizer from the post-colonial subjects
body and mind. Violent resistance may be employed, as we
see in the examples of Fanon, or transformation may come
through some fairly rigorous process of confronting
oppressors, as in the case of Truth and Reconciliation
Commissions.
Shifting agency happens as those subjected become the
subjects initiating critiques and solutions. The colonized
must become the actors in the critique but also those
proposing the solutions. Thus scholars of particular
colonized regions come to address local issues. An early
example can be found in Palestinian writer Edward Said.
Said is well known for his critique of Orientalism,
a method of diminishing the cultural accomplishments
and complexity of the Middle East and East, which
facilitated the perpetration of gross injustices. Political
force is exposed as acting with the collusion of the unlikely
allies of literature, art, and science. Critiques of the
Orientalist practice demand that the objectivity of
the European arts and sciences be called into question.
Undoing the past requires exposure of injustice but
also a search for justice using local solutions. By returning
to writing in local languages and engaging in art as
a collective process some theorists attempt to constitute
a post-colonial space. These thinkers reject a simple and
romantic solution of a return to a precolonial world.
The sense of external and internal exile or alienation is
itself a common feature of post-colonialisms. Despite
the process of liberation from colonizers vestiges of
colonization remained locked in the colonial psyche,
hence the complex nature of the processes of decolonization. Psychology, anthropology, philosophy, geography,
film, and literary criticism join politics as disciplines
employing post-colonial theory.

Post-Colonialism

Justice in the Post-Colony

Conceptions of social justice are so perverted by
the colonial state that a practice of escaping the colonial
construct involves every aspect of who a person is, what
the educational system is, what the spiritual and
health values are, and of course the more concrete getting
rid of the political and economic structures which were
made to exploit the human and natural resources of the
colony.
Any theory of post-colonial global social justice must
address the enormous injustices that will remain even
decades after the colonizer is removed. In the neocolonial
situation, local people move into the power gaps left by the
colonizer without changing the structure; this exasperates
ethnic tensions caused by colonial power pitting
one ethnic group against another. Sometimes these
conflicts go on for decades (Sri Lanka), in other cases
they seem to spring up suddenly (Rwanda); in any case,
the ethnic and linguistic tensions are there to be
manipulated.
Post-colonialism demands an enormous project of
self-examination, a routing out of the other within,
a questioning of what will allow a person so terribly
harmed to come to a place of peace. Post-colonial theories
are increasingly very complex and abstract because the
movement toward social justice that they recommend
involves undoing extremely complex harms.
Reflecting the diverse disciplines and the depth of
colonial penetration, post-colonialisms vary derived
from the political process of decolonization mentioned
above. Some former colonies engaged in an active process
of decolonization and aimed at changing the social, judicial, and economic structures, such was the aim of Gamal
Abdel Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah, and Julius Nyerere. In
socialist Tanzania, Nyerere tried to build a society in which
all members had equal rights and opportunities and lived
in peace without experiencing or imposing injustice, being
exploited, or exploiting, and in which people could gradually increase their level of material welfare. As in this case,
decolonization models often combined liberal or socialist
European models with local models of justice to make
quick equitable changes. Former colonies whose attempts
to restore justice came about during the cold war encountered the European powers which labeled attempts to
legislate equality as communist or socialist, often ignoring
their indigenous justifications. Political leaders attempting
decolonization had to choose between alliances with
European, which as their colonizers were easy (infrastructures were in place) but problematic trading partners, and
the Soviet or Chinese. They had the divisive forces of the
cold war with which to contend.

885

The idea of the nation state has its roots in European

political theory and was introduced in the colonies but so
too were strategies of liberation whether neoliberal
or socialist. Post-colonialist theories have exposed this
conundrum but also the idea of relying on local solutions
to social and economic problems in these relatively new
states. As a term applying to global justice even the
question of whether post-colonial is referring to a nation
state or other entity is contested. The political scientist Pal
Ahluwalia problematizes the notion of post-coloniality
and emphasizes the changes that post-colonial cultures
have undergone, including changes that have taken place
in nation states and those persisting in a globalized world.
These nation states must enter a global economic
and cultural space in what is economically and perhaps
politically a post nation state world.
Contemporary post-colonial theory inhabits an
increasingly globalized or transnational space. Hence the
suspicion of European nationalist political models of
thought is even more salient. In the face of globalization
and new imperialistic advances, the nation state needs to
consider the cost of contemporary projects that aim only
at economic prosperity. Yet this rejecting of capital
prosperity as a mark of success plays into the hands of
those who reject reparations.

Related Topics
Colonialism
Fanon, Frantz
Gandhi, Mahatma
Indigenous Rights to Land
Mamdani, Mahmoud
Political Reconciliation
Reparations
Third World Resistance
Truth Commissions
Ubuntu

References
Ahluwalia P (2001) Politics and post-colonial theory: African inflections.
Routledge, London
Cesaire A (2001) Discourse on colonialism. Monthly Review Press
(translated from the original published in 1955)
Coronil F (2004) Latin American postcolonial studies and global decolonization. In: Lazarus N (ed) The Cambridge companion
to postcolonial literary studies. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge
Eze ECh (1997) Postcolonial African philosophy. Blackwell, Cambridge
Fanon F (1963) The wretched of the warth. Grove Press, New York
(translated from the original published in 1961)
Fanon F (1967) Black skin, white masks. Grove Press, New York
(translated from the original published in 1952)

886

Poverty

Mamdani M (2001a) Beyond settler and native as political identities:

overcoming the political legacy of colonialism. Comp Studies
Soc Hist 43(4):651664
Mamdani M (2001b) When victims become killers: colonialism, nativism,
and genocide in Rwanda. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Memmi A (1991) The colonizer and the colonized. Beacon Press, Boston
(translated from the original published in 1957)
Spivak G (1988) Can the subaltern speak? Marxism and the interpretation
of culture. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, pp. 271ff
Spivak G (1999) A critique of postcolonial reason. Harvard University
Press, Cambridge
Trinh TM (1989) Woman, native, other. Writing postcoloniality and
feminism. Indiana University Press, Bloomington

Poverty
LYNETTE E. SIEGER
Gallatin School, New York University, New York, NY, USA

Poverty, the deprivation of access to basic needs necessary

for human well-being, is of central concern in the field of
global justice. Each year millions of people die due to
poverty-related causes. Daily billions of people suffer
under povertys crushing weight. The scale and level of
harm merit global attention. The normative groundwork
for concerns over poverty rests on the basic principles of
the right of human beings to life and to live life, as moral
equals, free from undue harms and suffering. Though the
right to life can be construed minimally as freedom from
interference, recent international declarations and treaties
(including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(1948), the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(1976), the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural
Rights (1976), UN Millennium Development Goals
(2000)) extend the right to life to include access to life
enabling goods. Such items include access to food, shelter,
clean water, basic sanitation, health care, clothing, education, work, and political participation.
As dynamic conceptions of the human right to life
developed, traditional measurements of poverty and
well-being failed to capture valuable assessment data.
Though still in use by some organizations, the United
Nations (UN) shed development measures purely in
terms of national income statistics, such as Gross National
Product (GNP), Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and per
capita income, and adopted the Human Development
Index (HDI). The HDI was developed under the lead of
economists Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Sen. It measures
development by the three indicators of life expectancy,

education, and income. In order to avoid neglecting

unequal distribution of development benefits and burdens
within states, HDI measurements are also disaggregated to
look at interstate groups by sex, income, or region, for
example. How wealth is spent or distributed internally
matters to solving problems of poverty.
Sen developed an agent-oriented normative approach
to socioeconomic justice known as the capabilities
approach. In his work Development as Freedom (1999),
Sen argues that development ought to be aimed at maximizing human freedom in order to enable individuals to
live the life that they find valuable. Access to goods does
not capture human well-being because it fails to assess the
capability of persons to transform goods into valuable
functionings. Lack of access to resources is not the sole
cause of poverty. Individual characteristics, such as age,
sex, disability, and proneness to illness, natural environment, and the social conditions, including levels of interstate or intrastate violence, crime rates, civil rights, and
social educational and health systems, play pervasive and
diverse roles in the conversion capabilities of persons.
Persons with disabilities are flagged by Sen as having
especially difficult conversion problems on account of
the disability itself, coupled with the widespread gross
neglect of their unique needs. The disabled and often
their caretakers are the poorest of the poor. Likewise,
women and girls face disproportionate difficulties in
converting goods into functionings. Often sacrificed in
the distribution of nutritional goods or education for the
benefit of males within the family, social deprivation and
discrimination are increasingly difficult to overcome (Sen
2009).
Martha Nussbaum has produced work which centers
on addressing these unique challenges that women face in
distribution and conversion of resources (Nussbaum
2001). What has been referred to as the feminization of
poverty is problematic in both wealthy and poor states,
with especially devastating effects in states where women
have severely restricted social and political rights. Sixty
percent of the one billion poorest people in the world are
women (UNDP 2007 Human Rights Report). Women are
unique targets of poverty due to a variety of reasons,
including health problems associated with pregnancy
and giving birth, economic dependence upon men (especially harmful in the event of abandonment, divorce, or
widowhood), bearing uneven burdens of single parenthood, discriminatory labor and salary practices, exclusion
from political processes and unbalanced political representation, and lack of or disproportionate access to health
care and education. The low social status and endemic

Poverty

poverty of women and children leave them especially

vulnerable to global exploitation, human trafficking, and
slavery (Shelley 2010).
Understanding the complex social dynamics of poverty is necessary in order to determine how best to eradicate poverty. Embedded in the debate are competing
claims as to who is responsible for satisfying basic
human needs. Though there is some overlap, competing
claims can be divided into two camps. One side presumes
the responsibility to prevent, manage, and eradicate poverty as resting with the state, while the other is in favor of
a cosmopolitan approach, placing responsibility on the
shoulders of those with the resources and power to effectively act.
Many theorists hold to traditional statist or communal
positions relating to socioeconomic justice (Miller 1995;
2004; Rawls 1999; Blake 2002; Nagel 2005). Though there
is variation in the details of each theorists position, the
overarching claim of statist approaches is that poverty is
primarily a matter for states to resolve internally. Citizens
stand in unique relation to one another and to the state.
As such the expectation of more stringent obligations of
socioeconomic justice within the state is justified. Global
economic justice is a secondary and more limited concern.
Each ought to give greater consideration to his or her own
co-nationals than to outsiders, and generally humanitarian
assistance from wealthy states to the poorest is seen as
the satisfaction of a moral minimum beyond which giving
is a matter of beneficence and discrimination rather
than duty.
Deen Chatterjee labels the statist/communitarian
position as liberal nationalist because it recognizes liberal values of human rights and equality yet restricts
redistributive requirements of justice to co-nationals
(Chatterjee 2011). The associative account of justice
which leads to unequal treatment for insiders and outsiders, argues Chatterjee, fails to respond to the normative
demand of global impartiality that liberalism requires.
Liberal nationalism cannot normatively stand because it
is constructed around the contingent existence of states.
Should states be replaced by a global order, or some other
system of cooperation, statist reasoning would lose its
footing. As a result, liberal egalitarian demands should
be construed as thick and applicable to all by virtue of
their membership in the human community.
In 1972, Peter Singer made a forceful, and now
famous, utilitarian claim in his essay Famine, Affluence,
and Morality, that the affluent are morally obligated to
aid in global poverty relief without prejudice in favor of
ones co-nationals. Singer argued that we can widely agree

that suffering from poverty and starvation is bad and

painful and as such ought to be avoided. The worlds
affluent possess the means to alleviate or eradicate global
poverty. Drawing then on the assumption that if one can
assist one should, Singer concludes that the affluent
should give all means within their possession to the
point that they are not sacrificing anything of comparable
moral significance. The moral significance of the weight of
a human life against even small luxuries beyond necessity
makes the Singer duty quite demanding.
Thomas Pogge too argues in favor of a cosmopolitan
project toward poverty eradication. Though compatible
with Singer, Pogges argument is distinct in an important
respect. Pogge claims that global poverty is the result of
international institutional rules and structures that perpetuate the favorable status of wealthy and powerful states
over and at the expense of poor and weak states. The
normative force of Pogges argument rests on negative
duties to not cause harm to others. Though positive
duties, such as Singer invokes, are debatable as to the
scope and degree, it is widely accepted across ethical traditions that negative duties are strict and inviolable. Pogge
argues that because the global world order is structured in
such a way that foreseeably and avoidably causes or perpetuates harm against the global poor, the rectification of
harms and the eradication of poverty are a matter of duty
rather than beneficence.
One structural change that Pogge argues would go
a long way toward poverty eradication is the institution
of a global resource dividend (GRD). The GRD entails
shifting property rights to use and sell natural resources
away from the exclusive and unqualified right of states to
belonging to humanity writ large. All persons ought to
have a claim to finite natural resources and as such should
share in part the value that sold resources garner. Pogge
limits the scope of the GRD, allowing states to retain the
right to make decisions about whether and how natural
resources within the states territory are used. The GRD only
grants a share of the economic value of sold resources to the
global poor. Beyond securing basic needs, Pogge argues that
GRD capital should be used to promote goods which enable
the global poor to control and defend their rights autonomously and as equals. Enabling goods would include
developing reading, writing, and professional skills
(Pogge 2002).
The scale and impact of poverty worldwide places it as
the forerunner of urgent global crises. The inability of
a vast number of human beings to live a decent life worthy
of dignity and respect violates the principal human rights
from which all other rights emanate the right to life. If

887

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Preemptive War

the global poverty problem is to be resolved it will require

vigilant evaluation and understanding of the complex
issues of disparate needs and of how to best overcome
such needs with consideration of the influences internal
and external to the state of social and environmental
conditions. Further hurdles to changing the status quo will
involve challenging established patterns of institutional
and individual behavior from the worlds affluent.
Human lives in our global society are linked economically,
socially, culturally, and politically. The causes and consequences of poverty are also globally linked, and so its
eradication will require global action.

Related Topics
Basic Needs
Basic Rights
Development Assistance
Development Ethics
Duties to the Distant Needy
Equality
Fairness
Nussbaum, Martha C.
Pogge, Thomas
Reciprocity
Relativity of Well-Being
Sen, Amartya
Singer, Peter

References
Blake M (2002) Distributive justice, state coercion, and autonomy. Philos
Public Aff 31:321355
Chatterjee D (2011) Reciprocity, closed-impartiality, and national borders: framing (and extending) the debate on global justice (forthcoming Soc Philos Today 2011)
Chatterjee D (ed) (2004) The ethics of assistance: morality and the distant
needy. Cambridge University Press, New York
Miller D (1995) On nationality. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Miller R (2004) Moral closeness and world community. In: Chatterjee D
(ed) The ethics of assistance: morality and the distant needy. Cambridge University Press, New York
Nagel Th (2005) The problem of global justice. Philos Public Aff
33:113147
Nussbaum M (2001) Women and human development: the capabilities
approach. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Nussbaum M (2006) Frontiers of justice. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA
Pogge Th (2002) World poverty and human rights. Polity, Cambridge
Rawls J (1999) The law of peoples. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Sen A (1999) Development as freedom. Knopf, New York
Sen A (2009) The idea of justice. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Shelley L (2010) Human trafficking: global perspectives. Cambridge
University Press, New York
Singer P (1972) Famine, affluence, and morality. Philos Public Aff 1:229244
Singer P (2002) One world: the ethics of globalization. Yale University
Press, London

Preemptive War
FREDERIK KAUFMAN
Department of Philosophy and Religion, Ithaca College,
Ithaca, NY, USA

Preemptive war is a type of anticipatory first strike. It is

often confused with preventive war sometimes intentionally so but there is a sharp difference between the
two, at least officially. The Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (2009) defines
preventive war as a war that is initiated in the belief that
military conflict, while not imminent, is inevitable, and
that to delay would involve greater risk. Whereas
a preemptive attack is defined as an attack initiated on
the basis of incontrovertible evidence that an enemy attack
is imminent. According to the Department of Defense,
then, the difference between preemption and prevention
turns on imminence; for preemption, an enemy attack is
imminent; for prevention an enemy attack is not imminent (The difference between war and attack is irrelevant; otherwise a preemptive war would be conceptually
impossible).
First strike in the face of an imminent threat as the
defining feature of preemption was forcefully expressed in
1842 by Secretary of State Daniel Webster concerning an
attack on a US ship the Caroline by the British. The British
claimed a right to attack the ship in self-defense, even
though the ship posed no immediate threat. Webster
denied that the conditions for self-defense applied, so
the British were not justified in attacking preemptively
because the threat the ship posed was not imminent,
leaving no choice for deliberation or reflection. The idea
of an immediate self-protective response to an imminent
threat has since become the standard interpretation for
legitimate preemptive strikes. (Michael Walzer considered
Websters account of preemption in his influential Just and
Unjust Wars, thereby informing subsequent discussions of
this topic).
Strategic questions aside, the Websterian account seeks
to justify a preemptive attack on grounds of self-defense.
That is, if individual self-defense can be stretched to
accommodate preemptive strikes, presumably so can
wars of self-defense, provided the usual conditions that
justify individual self-defense hold in war (one is not in the
wrong to begin with, one cannot avoid the unjust threat in
some other way, ones response is proportional and
directed at the threat, to name a few). Clearly, the justifiability of Websterian preemptive war depends on the

Preemptive War

justifiability of war in self-defense and whether an anticipatory first strike can be assimilated to self-defense. While
both claims might be questioned, it is typical to reason
from what is morally acceptable at the level of individual
persons to what is morally acceptable in war.
But the Websterian account suggests almost a kind of
self-protective reflex to a threat, as one might duck an
object hurled at ones head there is no time for deliberation, one simply reacts defensively as a last resort. This
implies that anything more deliberative than a selfprotective reflex to a threat is not preemption. It also
suggests a rather narrow conception of the self-protected
by the reaction. So in the context of war, imminent threats
to the nether reaches of a far-flung colonial empire or to
maintaining lucrative business interests abroad would not
count as the self to be protected by preemptive war any
more than one can respond to threats to extensions of
oneself, such as threats to ones car, by preemptive attack
and legitimately call it self-defense. Moreover, since even
those in the wrong with no right to self-defense still
instinctively duck flying objects, the Websterian account
presupposes but does not emphasize the important connection between preemptive strikes and a right to selfdefense, rather than a mere self-protective response with
which anyone might react when faced with imminent
harm.
Walzer thinks that Websters account of preemption is
too restrictive. Preemption is still a form of self-defense,
but according to Walzer the line to be drawn is not at the
point of imminent attack but at the point of sufficient
threat (Walzer 2006). Sufficient threat includes
a Websterian self-protective reflex, but also threats where
one has time for deliberation and choice, as Walzers
example of the Israeli Six Day War is supposed to
demonstrate.
Fine, but is preemption conceptually tied to selfdefense, so that in the absence of a legitimate claim of
self-defense, legitimate preemptive strikes are not possible? Surely, if a state would be justified in striking preemptively, then another state could attack preemptively on its
behalf, just as a third party might strike an unjust attacker
preemptively. There is no obvious moral reason to limit
a right of preemption to the state threatened, though there
might be practical reasons to limit preemptive strikes to
the state under imminent threat. Moreover, if we accept
either Walzers idea of sufficient threat or Websters notion
of imminence as the criterion for preemption, we might
wonder about the possibility of extending preemptive
attacks to include sufficient or imminent threats that are
not grounded in national self-defense. So if humanitarian
intervention is justified, then preemptive humanitarian

intervention would presumably also be justified, as

a third party not directly threatened might attack preemptively to a sufficient threat of, say, genocide. Again, there is
no obvious moral reason to limit preemptive strikes to
national self-defense.
More generally still, it seems that we can adapt
Walzers idea of sufficient threat to whatever would justify
going to war, and thereby justify preemptive war, provided
there is sufficient threat of it transpiring. (Since sufficient
threat is more permissive than imminent threat, if sufficient threat would justify preemption in a particular case,
then imminence would too.) On contemporary just war
theory, the only justification for war is in response to
aggression, so preemption is limited to an extension of
self-defense against aggression. However, if we agree with
St. Thomas Aquinas that those who are attacked, should
be attacked because they deserve it on account of some
fault (Summa, II, question 40) then the range of possible
legitimate grounds for war expands, and with it the possibility of alternative grounds for preemptive wars as well.
It seems that sufficient threat of whatever fault would
justify war would thereby justify preemption in its name.
Whether justified war should be limited to responding to
aggression, as in modern just war theory, or expanded to
include other faults is beyond the scope of this discussion.
But settling that question is crucial to deciding the possible grounds for legitimate preemptive attack other than
self-defense. Also, beyond this discussion are threats more
temporally distant than Walzers sufficiency; this is the
topic for preventive strikes, not preemptive strikes. However, if we recast temporal distance of a threat to the
probability of the threat materializing, we can then agree
with David Luban (2004) that a preventive war is
a preemptive war in which the imminence requirement
is recast from temporal to probabilistic terms.
Because conceptions of global justice require us to
determine when, if ever, going to war is justified, and
because the conditions for justified preemptive strikes
are crucial for just war theory, an adequate understanding
of global justice requires us to determine what counts as
a legitimate preemptive strike.

Related Topics
Preventive War
Walzer, Michael
War, Just and Unjust

References
Crawford N (2003) The best defense: the problem with Bushs preemptive war doctrine. Boston Review (February/March)
Crawford N (2003) The slippery slope to preventive war. Ethics Int Aff
17(1):3037

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Preference-Satisfaction

Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms

(2009) http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary/
Flynn M (2008) First strike: preemptive war in modern history.
Routledge, New York
Galston W (2002) The perils of preemptive war. Philos Public Policy
Quart 22(4):26
Luban D (2004) Preventive war. Philos Public Aff 32:20748
Shue H, Rodin D (2007) Preemption: military action and moral justification. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pb 2010
Walzer M (2006) Just and unjust wars, 4th edn. Basic Books, New York

Preference-Satisfaction
HARRIET E. BABER
Department of Philosophy, University of San Diego,
San Diego, CA, USA

Welfare as Preference-Satisfaction
Consequentialist accounts are traditionally divided into
hedonistic theories, desire (or preferentist) theories, and
objective list theories according to what they take to be the
defining feature of the consequences of action which are to
be pursued, that is, what they take to be of intrinsic value.
According to hedonistic accounts, pleasure alone is intrinsically valuable. Such accounts are subjectivist insofar as
they take a state of affairs to be of value for an individual to
the extent, and only to the extent, that it is pleasureproducing for him. No states of affairs are inherently
valuable.
Objective list theories reject subjectivist accounts of
value holding that some states of affairs are inherently
valuable. Such accounts are typically pluralist, affirming
the intrinsic value of a variety of goods or states of affairs.
Preferentism, also known as the desire theory, is
a subjectivist account of value according to which
well-being is identified with preference-satisfaction.
Well-being on this account is the satisfaction of our
intrinsic preferences, our attaining those states we want
for their own sake rather than merely as a means to
ulterior ends.
States that satisfy our preferences are not typically
subjective. As thought experiments like Nozicks Experience Machine suggest, we do not typically desire pleasure
or other psychological states. Nozick asks us to imagine
that we have the chance to plug into a machine for the rest
of our lives which would deliver the sorts of experiences
we regarded as most valuable or enjoyable tailored to our
own personal preferences. Plugged into the machine,
we may imagine world peace even though we are

completely out of touch with the way the world actually

is experience what it would feel like to have written the
Great American Novel and being lionized by literati at the
Algonquin, have the experience of travel to exotic ports of
call, have whatever experiences would provide us with the
greatest possible pleasure. And, according to the terms of
the thought experiment, we are assured that, once plugged
in, we will never realize that all the blissful experiences we
get are illusory.
Most subjects presented with this thought experiment
say that they would not plug in. We want to do certain
things, Nozick (1974) suggests, not merely to have the
experience of doing them; we want to achieve, not merely
to have the illusion of achievement. Few of us would be
content living in the Matrix or any other fools paradise.
We desire objective states of affairs, beyond immediate
experience, and to the extent that we attain these states
we are, on the preferentist account, better off whether we
are aware of it or not. On the preferentist account, states of
affairs that do not enter into experience, which do not hurt
us or please us, they may nevertheless harm or benefit us.
Preferentism is however a subjectivist account insofar
as states of affairs are of value solely in virtue of our
preferences. No state of affairs is inherently valuable.
States of affairs are valuable for individuals insofar as
those individuals prefer them.

Revealed Preference
Preference on the current account is dispositional: if
I prefer a to b then, ceteris paribus I should be disposed
to choose a over b. If I am not so disposed, even given
suitable ceteris paribus clauses and disclaimers, then it is
hard to see what could be meant by saying that I prefer
a to b.
Economists in particular have equated preference with
choice, understanding preference as hypothetical choice
and choice as revealed preference. Impressed by the logical
positivist program, Paul Samuelson and other economists
eager to put economics on a sound, scientific footing
adopted this account of preference in order to avoid identifying utility with pleasure, happiness, or other publically
inaccessible, unquantifiable psychological states.
Any account that identifies preference strictly with
choice, however, cannot yield a plausible preferentist
account of well-being. We make our choices ignorant of
the consequences of our actions and often unaware of our
alternatives. Most preferentists therefore understand just
those choices that we make when we are duly deliberative
and fully informed of all relevant considerations as expressions of what Harsanyi calls our true preferences those
whose satisfaction contributes to well-being.

Preference-Satisfaction

Preference and Desire

Preference as it figures in the current account of well-being
is not, however, a feely psychological state or even one of
which the agent is necessarily aware. To this extent, it
should not be identified with desire, at least to the extent
that desire is understood as a conscious qualitative state.
Moreover, though preference and desire are often used
interchangeably in articulating the current account of
well-being, two further differences are significant.
First, whereas desire is a binary relation, between an
individual and an object of desire, preference as ordinarily
understood is a ternary relation. An individual does not
merely prefer a bundle of goods or state of affairs: he
prefers it to some other bundle of goods or state of affairs.
Consequently, if an individual is consistent in his preferences, by systematically comparing the objects of his
preferences pairwise, we can determine his preferenceranking. Ideally, an individuals preference-ranking will
be complete, such that for any two objects a and b, either
i prefers a to b or i prefers b to a or is indifferent between
them. In addition, an ideally rational individuals preferences will be transitive, such that for objects a, b, and c, if
i prefers a to b and b to c, then i will prefer a to c.
Secondly, while desiring an object precludes possession, preference does not. I cannot desire a bundle of
goods I possess or a state of affairs which actually obtains
so, to the extent that we identify well-being with desiresatisfaction, understood in this way, there is a sense in
which desires cannot be satisfied: once I attain the object
of my desire, I no longer desire it. Consequently, identifying well-being with desire-satisfaction is problematic:
a cannot make me better off when I desire a because then
my desire is not yet satisfied; it cannot make me better off
when I get it because then I no longer desire it. Preference
does not pose such difficulties since I may prefer an object
I possess to other objects.

your choice because, even though you got the facts right,
you did not anticipate what it would be like to spend your
days in an office park cubicle. Neither of us, arguably, are
better off for having satisfied our preferences.
In response, as noted, well-being, according to most
preferentist accounts, consists in the satisfaction of
informed preferences.

Addiction
Nevertheless, it seems that even when we are fully
informed, we often prefer states of affairs that we know
do not contribute to our well-being. Fully aware of the
consequences, I prefer to smoke. Addiction, weakness of
will, and compulsion lead us to prefer states of affairs we
know are not in our interests.
There are at least two ways in which preferentists can
respond to such cases. First, we may simply rule out
choices that are a consequence of addiction, weakness of
will, or compulsion insofar as they do not reflect our
higher order preferences, those whose satisfaction makes
us better off. I may prefer to smoke, but I prefer not to
prefer to smoke: it is the satisfaction of this latter higherorder preference that contributes to my well-being.
Alternatively, we may question whether the addictions
or compulsions constitute preferences in the requisite
sense. My desire to smoke is not so much a preference as
a feely temptation. Pettit Pettit (1991/2002) distinguishes
preference-satisfaction from preference-relief and, in this
case, my aim in smoking is not to satisfy a desire so much
as to extinguish it. My preference for smoking, if any, is
extrinsic and so smoking per se does not contribute to my
well-being: I smoke solely in order to avoid the unpleasant, distracting desire to smoke and the discomfort of not
smoking.
In either case, we can rule out the satisfaction of those
desires, which arise from addiction or compulsion as
sources of well-being.

Objections
Preferentist accounts of well-being have been subject to
a range of criticisms and have been modified in response
to objections.

Ignorance
In particular, it is objected that individuals are often poor
judges of what is good for them. I may prefer a to b
because I am ignorant or mistaken about the character of
these alternatives or because I do not know what it will be
like to get a. I regret choosing to get a worthless humanities degree: I did not know it would mean years of poverty
and insecurity. You researched the job prospects for various majors and got a saleable business degree but regret

891

Time Issues
Satisfying preferences may be unsatisfying when we
achieve it. Still, even where our preferences do not arise
from addiction or compulsion, when they are informed
and rationally considered, their satisfaction may still fail to
contribute to our well-being insofar as our tastes or interests may change. I may get what I want but find that it is as
ashes in my mouth because I no longer want it. Desire,
indeed, precludes concurrent satisfaction: once I attain the
object of my desire I no longer desire it. Preference does
not. However if having attained a state I once desired I no
longer prefer it then it is not clear when, if ever, I am better
off for having satisfied that preference. On the face of it, it

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Preference-Satisfaction

seems that I never benefit in such a case: I do not benefit

prior to that states obtaining since then my preference is
not satisfied or after my sometime preferred state obtains
since by then I no longer prefer it.
Arguably, however, this sort of case does not pose
insurmountable difficulties for preferentists. We can, if
we wish, stipulate that only concurrent preference satisfaction contributes to well-being, so that preferences
which are satisfied ex post facto do not benefit us. On
this account, just as we restrict preferences that count for
well-being to those which are informed and rationally
considered, we consider only concurrent preference satisfaction as contributing to well-being. Alternatively, we can
grant satisfying preferences we no longer have does contribute to well-being even if it does not make us on net
better off.

Induced Preferences
Critics of preferentist accounts of well-being worry that
preferentists illegitimately ignore the origin of preferences:
where the source of a persons preference is tainted, some
suggests, its satisfaction may not contribute to her wellbeing. The story is familiar. The advertising industry,
a tool of capitalism, manufactures the taste for glitzy
gadgets and designer jeans; patriarchy promotes womens
quest for extreme thinness; neocolonialism induces people
around the world to prefer Western junk food to their
native cuisines. Satisfying such tainted preferences, critics
suggest, does not contribute to well-being.
There at least two reasons why we should be skeptical
about such claims. First, most preferences that are, allegedly, tainted by their origins are also questionable for other
reasons. Glitzy gadgets end up gathering dust: people buy
them on impulse, without becoming fully informed or
engaging in the cool deliberation that preferentists recommend. Designer jeans are status symbols and, as utilitarians note, a widespread taste for such positional goods
undermines overall utility.
In general, where it seems that preferences are tainted
by their origin, it is usually possible to find something else
wrong with them which, arguably, accounts for the intuition that their satisfaction does not contribute to wellbeing. By contrast, where preferences seem good to us, we
do not care about their origins. We applaud antismoking
campaigns and other public service propaganda, and
actively support attempts to instill values into our
children.
Secondly, and perhaps more interestingly, discovering
the origins of our preferences does not lead most of us to
repudiate them or even feel that we ought to. Moralistic
fulminations about the tainted origins of preference for

slimness, or for Western consumer products does not

make women or adolescents in developing countries
change. Arguably, the aversion a few hyper-scrupulous
people feel for tainted preferences is merely a taste no
more than the expression of an idiosyncratic preference
and there is no reason why it should be taken any more
seriously than any other yen, urge or aversion.

Adaptive Preference: Preference Versus

Capability
Nevertheless, there seem to be a range of cases in which the
origin of preferences is significant, viz. cases of adaptive
preference. Deprived individuals scale down their aspirations to be satisfied with conditions that we should regard
as unsatisfactory. Propaganda and therapy induce people
to accept, and even like, conditions of their lives, which we
should regard as unacceptable. Intuitively, if we have an
interest in promoting individuals well-being, we should
aim to improve the social and material conditions of their
lives to satisfy their prior preferences rather than manipulating their preferences to suit their life circumstances.
The question of adaptive preference has been of special
interest to writers concerned with issues of global justice
who argue that preferentist accounts of well-being fail to
recognize the plight of disadvantaged individuals in poor
countries who have adapted to their circumstances. So,
Martha Nussbaum, telling the stories of poor Indian
women who have accepted their lot in life as inevitable
and wound down their aspirations accordingly, argues that
preferentism cannot provide any rationale for challenging
unjust institutions or working to improve the lives of
individuals who have adjusted to their life circumstances.
The putative cases adaptive preference Nussbaum and
others cite, however, do not suggest that individuals in
deprived circumstances have come to prefer the circumstances of their lives to what we should regard as more
better conditions. Rather she tells stories of individuals
who, on the most plausible interpretation do not prefer
the deprived conditions in which they live to other alternatives but are making the best of a raw deal. Many believe,
incorrectly, that they cannot do any better but, when
shown that what we should regard as prefereable alternatives jump at them showing that they prefer these alternatives. Arguably we regard them as badly off precisely
because they are not satisfying their preferences.
As for the more fundamental question, the inability of
preferentists to distinguish between cases in which individuals preferences are satisfied by changes in their circumstances and those in which they achieve preference
satisfaction by adjusting their preferences to be satisfied by
what is on offer, arguably the difference is not significant.

Preference-Satisfaction

Suppose I am going to spend some time in a place

where the requisites for a normal American diet are expensive and hard to come by. I can pack a supply of frozen
hamburgers, potato chips, and coke to see me through or
I can work to acquire a taste for native food. If the costs are
the same, intuitively, there is no reason to prefer the
former strategy. Our intuition in this kind of case would
not, I think, change if, instead of engaging in a program of
gustatory self-cultivation, I take a pill or submit to neurosurgery to change my tastes in food, providing the costs
and risks of taking the pill or having the operation are the
same as the costs and risks of hauling a supply of junk food
with me.
Moreover, our intuitions hold firm even where changing tastes to suit environmental conditions comes about
through social engineering or propagandizing others
rather than self-cultivation. Suppose the climate is changing so that in the future, without deploying expensive
agricultural technology it will not be possible grow the
kinds of foods that will allow our children to enjoy the diet
to which we are accustomed. In the interests of preference
satisfaction, we can either invest in the technology or train
our children to prefer rice to potatoes and garbanzo beans
to peas. Again, if the costs and risks are the same, there
seems to be no reason why we should invest in technology
to satisfy current tastes rather than changing tastes to suit
a changing environment.
Arguably, we balk at the brainwashing and social engineering projects described in dysutopian fiction because
they effectively restrict desire-satisfaction by minimizing
desire. On the most intuitively plausible version of
preferentism, the more we want and can get the better
off we are thus, where changing individuals tastes provides more options for desire satisfaction, we actively
applaud the project. People intentionally cultivate tastes
for fine wine and high art. Expensive tastes may impose
a burden on society, but most of us believe that selfcultivation promotes individual well-being, providing we
have the means to satisfy our expensive tastes and do not
lose our appreciation for simpler pleasures in the process.
If this is correct then all other things being equal
adapting our preferences, and those of others, to suit life
circumstances is no worse than adapting our environment
to suit preferences: ceteris paribus, wanting what you get is
as good as getting what you want. In any case greed,
insofar as we can satisfy it, is good: the more we want
and can get, the better off we are.

The Paradox of Choice

This is not however uncontroversial. There is some empirical evidence that an extensive range of options for

preference-satisfaction may undermine well-being.

A plethora of options confuses, befuddles and, occasionally, incapacitates consumers facing a bewildering array of
products so that the more choices they have the less likely
they are to be satisfied. Moreover, becoming informed
about the available options and coolly deliberating only
makes things worse as apparently rational choosers striving to maximize preference satisfaction, waste time, effort,
and resources on research and reflection.
Maximizers, who leave no stone unturned in their
quest for maximal preference-satisfaction, are uninformed
and irrational: they do not realize that their time is worth
something, have never heard of opportunity costs, and do
not get the idea that minor differences between available
options may not be worthy of serious consideration. They
have adopted a bad strategy for securing preference satisfaction and, more often than not, fail.
In any case, it is not the availability of many options
but their salience that makes life miserable for Maximizers. While knowing all my options can do damage,
having options cannot. The so-called Paradox of Choice
arises when agents are either ignorant of the relevant
features of the options that present themselves, in particular the costs of search and deliberation, or are weakwilled and cannot resist the temptation to search and
deliberate even if they know better. In the first kind of
case, the agents choices do not represent his true
prefererences since they fail the preferentists requirement
that she be adequately informed and duly deliberative. In
the second, the salience of additional options activates the
Maximizers compulsion to engage in consumer research
she knows is pointless. In either case, the supposed Paradox of Choice poses no insurmountable difficulties for
preferentism. Compulsive comparison shoppers and
befuddled consumers are badly off precisely because they
fail to satisfy their preferences.

Perverse, Altruistic, and Impersonal

Preferences
There are, however, some cases where, critics suggest,
satisfying our preferences does not make us better off.
Some of our preferences are, by their lights, too impersonal to result in benefit to us if satisfied. Others are
altruistic so that their satisfaction benefits others rather
than ourselves. Still others are simply wrong-headed.
Rawls (1971) proposes a case that is supposed to
illustrate what he takes to be a thoroughly wrong-headed
preference: a brilliant Harvard mathematician, fully
informed about the options available to her, who develops
an overriding desire to count the blades of grass on the
lawns of Harvard. This case is, however, contentious and

893

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Preference-Satisfaction

preferentists may respond that assuming the grass-counter

is indeed informed and not acting out of compulsion then
grass-counting is what makes her better off. De gustibus,
that is, whatever floats your boat: pushpin is as good as
poetry, and grass-counting contributes to well-being if
that is what you prefer to do.
Parfit (1984) worries that that some of desires are not
sufficiently wrapped up with our own lives to have
a bearing on our well-being. Suppose, he asks, I meet
a stranger who has what is believed to be a fatal disease
and, my sympathy being aroused, I strongly want this
stranger to be cured. Much later, unbeknownst to me
and long after I have forgotten our meeting, he is cured.
Am I better off insofar as his cure satisfies my preference in
this matter? Parfit thinks not. However this is also contentious. My desire that the stranger be cured is fleeting.
I have experienced innumerable trivial, fleeting yens and
urges during my lifetime. I have craved chocolate, wished
that members of my high school class would discover that
I was more successful than they were and hoped that my
11th grade algebra teacher would break a leg. When these
yens and urges are satisfied, even when satisfied long after
I no longer have the yens and urges, and even if I do not
know that my desires have been satisfied or experienced
the pleasure of realizing that they have I am better off. If
my high school classmates have discovered, to their surprise, that my life has gone better than they had expected,
whether I am aware of that or not, I am better off for it
though only to a trivial degree. Likewise, if the stranger is
cured, long after I had forgotten about him and without
my learning of the cure, I am better off even if only to
a trivial degree.

Putting the Cart Before the Horse?

Are things good for us because we prefer them or do we,
insofar as we are rational and informed, prefer them
because they are good for us? That is the fundamental
question that preference-satisfaction accounts of wellbeing poses. Here our intuitions may vary widely and, to
the extent that our accounts of well-being depend upon
our intuitions, preferentism will remain controversial. If
however we are skeptical about notions of universal
human nature or human flourishing and if we have the
de gustibus intuition that individuals are the final arbiters
of what is in their interests then preferentism is a plausible
account of well-being.

Preferentism and Global Justice

Preferentism, the view that well-being should be understood as preference-satisfaction, gets bad press because it
is associated with assumptions of mainstream economics

that some critics suggest are contrary to progressive egalitarian goals and undermine arguments for promoting
global justice. Neoclassical economics assumes, in particular, that persons are best understood as rational selfinterested choosers who act in the interests of maximizing
their utility, where utility the measure of well-being is
generally understood as preference-satisfaction. Critics
who take the problem of adaptive preference seriously
worry that the satisfaction of preferences deformed by
poverty and oppression does not contribute to the wellbeing of their owners.
For this reason, Martha Nussbaum is highly critical of
all forms of what she calls subjective welfarism, including preferentists identification of well-being with
preference-satisfaction. Nussbaum (1993) holds that
preferentism makes it impossible to criticize unjust institutions and undermines the rationale for promoting
social change in the interests of achieving greater fairness.
Individuals who are oppressed and impoverished, she
suggests, typically suffer from preference deformation.
They are not bothered by the unjust treatment they endure
or the poor conditions in which they live when, according
to Nussbaum, they should be bothered and those
concerned with their well-being should attempt to provide
remedies. Nussbaum seems to imagine a smugly
conservative preferentist dismissing such concerns: You
might find the lives they live intolerable but they dont
mind: theyre used to poverty, domestic violence and
corruption heck, they like it that way. So you arent
doing them any favors by butting in. Their preferences
are satisfied and thats what well-being is all about.
Nevertheless, as indicated earlier in our discussion of
adaptive preference, there is reason to be skeptical about
preference deformation. Even if individuals in deprived
circumstances put up with highly unfavorable conditions,
it does not follow that they prefer them. We elite individuals in affluent countries have ample room for maneuver:
we can make substantial changes in our lives through our
own efforts and, more often than not, get what we want.
So we imagine that individuals who cope with conditions
that are by our standards, profoundly unsatisfactory, without kicking against the goads, are also getting what they
want. Depending on our political ideology, we either infer
that they are getting what is best for them, even if it would
not be best for us, or that what they want is not good for
them and so that preference-satisfaction is not what matters for well-being.
Even if individuals who are badly off do not actively
object to the circumstances of their lives, it does not follow
that they prefer them to what we should regard as better
conditions. They may believe, rightly or wrongly, that they

Preference-Satisfaction

cannot do better, and so that resistance is futile. Arguably,

there is no compelling reason to believe that the deprived
individuals cited by Nussbaum as victims of preference
deformation prefer the conditions of their lives to what
we should regard as better alternatives. Political oppression, social constraints, and poverty restrict women, such
as those Nussbaum and popular writers describe, to
a narrow range of options most of which are low on
their preference rankings. Their acquiescence is not
a consequence of irrational fatalism or low self-esteem
but an expression of reasonable pessimism about their
prospects. According to the preferentist account of wellbeing, they would do better if they had a wider range of
options and so could get goods that rank higher on their
preference orderings, including items of which they are
unaware.
The fundamental confusion that leads progressive
critics to reject preferentism is an inadequate understanding of the revealed preference account which links preference to choice. Understood in the crudest, behaviorist
sense, whatever any individual chooses, in the sense of
voluntarily allowing or pursuing is, ipso facto, what he
prefers to all other alternatives. Voluntariness on this
account is tantamount to choice, and choice is identified
with preference.
But this strict behaviorist account of preference is
remote from our ordinary understanding of preference,
which cannot simply be read off of overt, publicly observable behavior. We observe an agent do an action, a, that
brings about a state of affairs, S. Without reference to
unobservable, subjective states of the agent we can, perhaps, determine that his doing a was voluntary insofar as
he appeared to be conscious and alert (as confirmed by
brain-scanning technology) and no one had a gun to his
head. But without further information about his beliefs,
intentions, goals, and other desires we cannot infer that he
prefers S to other states of affairs.
The agent may not know that doing a will result in S:
he may do a intending to achieve some other state, S
which, given our ordinary understanding of preference, he
prefers to S. Or he may do a in order to achieve S, not
because he prefers S to S or other states of affairs, but
because he believes, correctly or incorrectly, that it is
his least worst alternative: S may be low on his preference-ranking but he may believe, correctly or incorrectly,
that states of affairs that are further up are unattainable.
What a person chooses, given his assessment of the possibilities, may not even be close to what he would ceteris
paribus prefer.
Preferentists assume this ordinary understanding of
preference not the strictly behaviorist revealed-preference

account introduced by Samuelson (1937) in the heyday

of logical positivism, in order to make sense of consumer behavior without appeal to unobservable,
unquantifiable states or events. Given the ordinary understanding preference, what we choose or accept without
protest may not benefit us, since it may not be what we
prefer. Preferentists can, therefore, respond to critics who
allege that preferentism commits one to holding that
everyone is best off with what he voluntarily chooses,
including those individuals who Nussbaum (Sen and
Nussbaum 1993) alleges are victims of adaptive
preference.
Arguably, the preferentist account of well-being,
which identifies welfare with preference-satisfaction, is
precisely what explains why the poor women whose lives
Nussbaum chronicles are badly off. Nussbaums subjects
knuckle under to husbands and put up with bad treatment because they do not see any viable alternatives, other
than begging in the street and they may be right. In
choosing to put up with domestic servitude and abuse
they are not getting what they want in the sense that
matters: even if they are doing as well as they can for
themselves given the constraints, the constraints are
unjust and unwarranted.
It is precisely the preference-satisfaction account of
well-being that explains what is wrong with this state of
affairs. The scope of peoples options varies widely
according to where they were born and other unchosen
states of affairs. Because the options of a great many
people throughout the world are severely constrained,
they choose to pursue outcomes that are the least of all
possible evils rather than positive goods. The preferencesatisfaction account of well-being explains why they are
badly off and, insofar as we have an interest in promoting
greater well-being and fairness, sets the agenda. People are
badly off when they have few options and so cannot satisfy
their preferences. From this perspective, in order to make
people better off and promote global justice, we should
seek to minimize the extent to which unchosen characteristics race, sex, nationality, and the like determine the
kind of lives people live and see to it that people have the
widest possible range of options so that they will be better
able to achieve preference-satisfaction.

Related Topics
Capabilities Approach
Development Ethics
Nussbaum, Martha C.
Relativity of Well-Being
Sen, Amartya
Utilitarianism

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Preventive Diplomacy

References
Broome J (1993) Can a humean be moderate? In: Frey RJ, Christopher M
(eds) Value, welfare and morality. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge
Crisp R (2008) Well-being. In: Edward Zalta N (ed) The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Winter 2008 edn). http://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/win2008/entries/well-being/
Fehige C, Wessels U (eds) (1998) Preferences. Walter de Gruyter,
New York
Hausman DM, McPherson MS (2009) Preference satisfaction and welfare
economics. Econ Philos 25:125
Nozick R (1974) Anarchy, state, and utopia. Blackwell, Oxford
Nussbaum M, Sen A (eds) (1993) The quality of life. Clarendon Press,
Oxford
Parfit D (1984) Reasons and persons. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Pettit P (1991/2002) Decision theory and folk psychology. In: Rules,
reasons, and norms: selected essays. Oxford University Press, Oxford,
pp 192221
Rawls J (1971) A theory of justice. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Samuelson PA (1937) A note on measurement of utility. Rev Econ Stud
4:155161
Stigler GJ, Becker GS (1977) De gustibus non est disputandum. Am Econ
Rev 67:7690
Sumner W (1996) Welfare, happiness, and ethics. Clarendon Press,
Oxford

doctrine has left the just-war theorists wondering whether

the theory itself is in need of a fundamental shift. Though
the just-war doctrine need not be obsolete in the context
of modern warfare contrary to some recent suggestions
one should not expect resolution of todays vexing moral
issues of war and peace by simply appealing to the doctrine
itself. These issues are part of the bigger domain of justice
and human rights in international affairs where the conditions for just-peace come in, without which the
conditions for just-war are incomplete.
This entry sketches an approach that has been called
preventive nonintervention (Chatterjee 2006, 2011)
where the discourse is shifted from the idea of just-war
to that of just-peace. It shows how the shift is intimately
tied to peace and human rights concerns. The idea of justpeace prescribes a very limited role of and justification for
military intervention in a sovereign nation, leaving room
for intervention only in a preemptive sense, either for selfdefense of a nation or for emergency humanitarian operations (and that too only in rare cases), but it makes the
case for preventive use of force a nonissue.

Recent Military Trends

Preventive Diplomacy
Dispute Resolution
Preventive Non-Intervention
Soft Power
War, Just and Unjust

Preventive Non-Intervention
DEEN K. CHATTERJEE
Department of Philosophy, University of Utah,
Salt Lake City, UT, USA

The Just-War Doctrine

The debate on the ethics of war and peace has important
implications for the discourse on global justice. The justwar doctrine, originally devised for traditional wars, has
been the guiding principle for determining whether a war
is just or unjust. However, the doctrine has come under
increasing scrutiny in recent years in response to the
challenges of the twenty-first century military conflicts.
Especially, the growing trend of justifying military
interventions by invoking the principles of the just-war

Recent military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the

prospect of the United States using force in Iran have
raised, in a dramatic way, a host of pressing and difficult
moral and legal questions about the preventive use of
military force in international affairs. These questions
and the corresponding moral and political dilemmas
have severely challenged international law over the issues
of the justification of waging anticipatory wars under the
guise of peace and security. Even when a war is waged in
self-defense in response to an actual or imminent threat,
there could be a principled pacifist or utilitarian stance
against it. But otherwise a war in self-defense though it
can be very messy and costly in terms of death and
destruction does not in itself raise perplexing moral
dilemmas. The just-war doctrine sanctions it and international law endorses it. But all other cases of the so-called
just-war those for the sake of protecting human rights
(rescue wars) and those in the name of self-defense
when the threat is not actual or imminent (preventive
wars) raise difficult moral issues. The recent trend of
justifying preventive war by blurring the distinction
between prevention and preemption with epithets like
gathering threats does not make such wars any less
controversial.

Preventive War
Since the recent war in Iraq, the publication of the National
Security Statement of September 2002, and President

Preventive Non-Intervention

George Bushs 2002 West Point speech, preventive war

has, apparently, become part of official US policy or
doctrine. The thrust of the new direction is framed in
terms of national defense and security. If this is going to
be the likely direction of foreign policy of the United States
or for that matter, the policy directive of other nations
following the lead of the United States then this would
give an open-ended unilateral license to respond militarily,
in the name of just use of force, to any and every development of events in any part of the world based solely on the
internal perception of a nation. The extension of the idea of
self-defense to preventive warfare by blurring the distinction between prevention and preemption invariably leads to
this conclusion.
The Bush doctrine of preventive war potentially ties
the military to an open-ended global commitment in the
name of national security. But the military is already
engaged in a global commitment in yet another way in
the name of humanitarian intervention. The moral imperative of the so-called rescue wars at times allows a coalition
of nations to go against the requirements of international
law by ignoring the mandate of the United Nations. This
trend further adds to the rationale for preventive-war
doctrine: the keeping and deploying of a nations military
force for the safe-keeping of the world. This supposedly
moral cause (after all, every nation has a moral right to
ensure a safe world for self-defense) presumably gives
a nation the moral mandate to bypass international law
by deciding, at its sole discretion, whether any and every
event in the world poses a gathering threat to the nation.

International Law
The potential for the global mandate of every nations
military, along with all other trends of globalization, has
profound implications for international law. The conundrum of whether nations should adhere to the just-war
doctrine and the existing international law or make a new
precedent of illegal but moral intervention is not new in
the context of egregious violation of negative human
rights by a rogue state. Illegal intervention in the name
of a humanitarian cause happened in the NATO bombing
of Yugoslavia in 1999 and in other cases, but nations hide
behind international law in not undertaking military
intervention in the context of a states chronic failure to
enforce basic rights of subsistence. Raising high barriers to
intervention and respecting sovereignty is a sensible idea
in general because it minimizes self-serving military interventions couched in moral rhetoric. If interventions were
permitted in inept or failed states in response to their
ineptitude, then there would be no limit to military operations, posing a grave threat to the stability of world order

897

itself. Consequently, non-interventionism is the general

thrust of the just-war doctrine and international law, with
reluctant interventionism being the practice only in
exceptional cases. However, in todays complicated and
interconnected world where any violent conflict has the
potential of affecting the peace and security of an entire
region if not the stability of the whole world the
doctrine has been extended to apply to the operations of
distant military ventures for humanitarian rescue wars
and at times in the name of preventive self-defense,
broadly conceived, generating doubts among scholars
about the viability of the doctrine itself.

Just-Peace
The conditions for just-peace would require an urgent
commitment to basic rights both negative and positive
and the required institutional reconfiguration in the global
governance that would make the ideal a viable concept. The
focus is on being proactive by striving to secure economic
justice and promoting democratic-political processes. This
is a preventive approach that is essentially noninterventionist. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (2005) gave
the most memorable statement of the condition of justpeace when he commented on the initiative to restructure
the United Nations. He said that the ingredients of enduring global security lie in promoting just development and
comprehensive human rights. As opposed to the evolving
foreign policy trend of deploying a nations military forces
for global safekeeping, the emphasis is placed on securing
the broader project of global justice. Similar concern was
echoed in the largest gathering of Nobel Peace Laureates
ever in the United States recently in Denver in 2006 when
they said that the world is ignoring more serious threats to
humanity as it focuses on the war against terrorism.
The condition for just-peace is in marked contrast to
the condition for just-war. Given that the justice or human
rights components of the just-war doctrine are often
vague, open-ended, and contested, the doctrine is not
immune from manipulation by those resorting to violence
to make them appear legitimate. Besides, various interpretations of international justice may lead to a
corresponding variation in the conception and application of the just-war criteria. Accordingly, the just-war
doctrine needs to be based on a broader theory of international justice that spells out the conditions of just-peace.
One such condition invokes the need for being proactive
on the issues of economic justice and democratic institutional reforms, which makes obsolete the need for preventive use of force either for putative national-security
reasons or for securing human rights for peace and stability. This is how the just-war doctrine can be restored to its

898

Preventive War

original intent, which was to stipulate the moral boundaries of violence in self-defense and in the defense of others
when in both cases the threat is imminent. Regarding the
chronic neglect of positive rights in inept or failed states,
these nations can be offered assistance, but because inept
governments are not required to accept it and are not
forced to see that it goes to the most needy, the importance
of a collaborative and equitable international global order
is all the more evident. The pervasive state-failure to
respond to its citizens broader human needs is now
being recognized as linked to the inequity in the global
order itself.

Preventive Nonintervention
The idea of just-peace and its implications for just-war cut
through several competing paradigms and discourses by
providing a conceptual tool that shifts the debate from
preventive intervention to preventive nonintervention.
For instance, the idea of preventive nonintervention diffuses the conceptual dichotomy between negative and
positive rights, prevention and preemption, and intervention and nonintervention. In addition, the concept of
preventive nonintervention, as sketched here, has the
potential for providing a link between what otherwise
may seem to be conflicting ideals such as democracy and
development, and human rights and security.
Unlike the principled anti-interventionist arguments
of the pacifists, the idea of preventive nonintervention is
anti-interventionist in a contingent sense. It is not necessarily against intervention per se (as for instance
when intervention is the only option for preemptive
reasons), but against the way it usually takes place or
against its feasibility in a complicated and interdependent
world.

Acknowledgments
This chapter draws from Chatterjee, D (2011) Enough
about just war, what about just peace? In: Chatterjee D
(ed) Gathering threats: moral perspectives on preventive
war. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Related Topics
Development Ethics
Human Rights
Humanitarian Military Intervention
Just Peace
Negative Rights
Positive Rights
Preemptive War
Preventive War
War, Just and Unjust

References
Annan K (2005) UN Report, 1 May 2005
Buchanan A (2004) Justice, legitimacy, and self-determination: moral
foundations for international law. Oxford University Press, New York
Chatterjee D (2006) Foreign policy, human rights, and preventive nonintervention. In: Tinnevelt R, Verschraegen G (eds) Between
cosmopolitan ideals and state sovereignty. Palgrave MacMillan, London
Chatterjee D (ed) (2011) Gathering threats: moral perspectives on preventive war. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Coady CAJ (2003) War for humanity: a critique. In: Chatterjee DK,
Scheid DE (eds) Ethics and foreign intervention. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge
Falk R (1999) The challenge of genocide and genocidal politics in an era of
globalization. In: Dunne T, Wheeler NJ (eds) Human rights in global
politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Pogge T (1992) An institutional approach to humanitarian intervention.
Public Aff Q 6(1):89103

Preventive War
RAMON DAS
School of History, Philosophy, Political Science and
International Relations, Victoria University, Wellington,
New Zealand

A preventive war is a war to forestall a potential aggressive

attack that is not imminent, but is projected to materialize
at some relatively distant point in the future. Preventive
war is thus distinguishable from standard cases of collective self-defense in that no aggressive attack has yet
occurred; it is distinguishable from preemptive war (or
anticipatory attack) in that no aggressive attack is even
imminent. Because preventive war does not include this
imminence requirement, it is generally believed to be
much harder to justify on grounds of collective selfdefense than is preemptive war. The main obstacle to
justification is the epistemic uncertainty that attends
even good-faith attempts to accurately forecast distant
future threats. A related problem is the danger that powerful states will abuse the right to wage preventive war,
pursuing their own aggressive military strategy under the
guise of trying to prevent future attacks.
Despite these widely acknowledged justificatory
problems, preventive war has received considerable philosophical attention since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Those attacks, it is often said, underscored
the possibility that terrorists might at some point acquire
weapons of mass destruction for use in future attacks.
According to one line of argument, states must react to
this potential threat by preventing it from ever developing.

Preventive War

By the time a terrorist attack with weapons of mass

destruction is imminent, it is too late. This argument
was explicitly invoked in the Bush administrations
National Security Strategy document of 2002, and was
acted on soon afterward, in the US-led invasion of Iraq.
At present, a similar line of argument is frequently invoked
by Israeli and American officials with respect to Iran,
whose growing nuclear programme is alleged to pose
a future threat to the existence of Israel. More generally,
the US response to the 9/11 attacks, with its preventioncentered rhetoric, has emboldened powerful states around
the world to act in a more aggressively preventive manner
against various perceived threats. The concept of preventive war is thus increasingly relevant to some of the most
pressing problems of contemporary global ethics.

Preventive War and Self-Defense

The idea of collective self-defense is at the heart of most
contemporary discussion about whether preventive war
can be justified. In large part, this reflects the modern
consensus that the only possible just cause for war is selfdefense. However, this is a relatively recent idea, and it has
become a common observation that historical commentators often took a wider view of possible just causes for
war, including preventive war. Thinkers such as Grotius
and Vattel, for instance, believed that even preventive war
could be justified as a means of punishing or avenging
some wrong committed in the past. Despite their differences about what counts as a possible just cause for preventive war, however, historical and contemporary
commentators have tended to agree that the right to
wage preventive war is deeply problematic in practice.
The two main problems are those already mentioned:
epistemic uncertainty surrounding claims about distant
future threats, and the possibility that powerful states will
abuse the right to wage preventive war. Yet, despite the
philosophical consensus that these issues are central to the
justification of actual (past) or possible (future) preventive
wars, philosophical discussion of preventive war rarely
enters into empirical debates that are relevant to the question of justification in particular cases, for example, whether
Irans nuclear programme indeed poses a future threat to the
existence of Israel. Rather, contemporary philosophical discussion has tended to ask whether preventive war, however
unlikely it is to be justified given the world as it is, could be
justified if certain conditions were met, or if a different set
of institutional arrangements were in place. In the recent
literature, this question has generally received an affirmative answer. The question then becomes which conditions
must be met or which institutional arrangements must be
implemented, in order for preventive war to be justified?

899

Much of the contemporary debate can be understood

along these lines.

The Danger of Unilateral Action

The main obstacle to justifying preventive war in the real
world is the likelihood that powerful states will launch
preventive attacks unilaterally, against what they deem
perhaps mistakenly, perhaps insincerely to be serious
future threats to their security. The moral remedy to this
problem is usually thought to involve some requirement
that preventive war be the result of a multilateral decision
or authorization. The rationale for this requirement is fairly
straightforward. Plausibly, a multilateral decision or authorization to wage preventive war both increases the chances
that alleged future threats will be accurately assessed and
decreases the chances that one state will be able to pursue its
own aggressive agenda under the guise of preventive action.
The idea that preventive war is more likely to be
morally justified if it results from a multilateral decision
finds a close parallel in the legal sphere. The legal status of
unilateral preventive war is not in doubt: it is widely held
to be illegal under international law. However, a good case
can be made that at least one form of multilateral preventive action is perfectly legal. In particular, it is fairly clear
that the UN Security Council has the right to authorize
preventive military action if it deems such action necessary to prevent serious threats to the peace. Given this
parallel between moral and legal approaches to preventive
war, it is not surprising that legal questions pertaining to
proper authorization have found their way into the literature on the ethics of preventive war. One widely discussed
proposal along these lines is that Security Council authorization, or possibly some other type of multilateral
authorization, is a necessary condition on morally legitimate preventive action.

Further Problems
Legal justification does not, of course, entail moral justification, and there is no guarantee that preventive military
action authorized by the Security Council would be morally justified. This point reinforces the general consensus
against preventive war. However, recent discussion has
tended to focus on the opposite problem, namely, that
an illegal preventive war might nevertheless be morally
justified. In particular, a widely discussed possibility is that
the UN Security Council, because of a (self-interested)
veto by one of its permanent members, might fail to
authorize an otherwise morally justified preventive war.
Although it is hard to find a clear case of this in recent
decades, there was much concern before the Iraq war (at
least on the part of those who supported it) that France

900

Prima Facie Duties

and Russia were threatening to veto a UN resolution

authorizing the war. At any rate, most would concede the
possibility that an illegal preventive war might nevertheless be morally justified.
One influential recent proposal tries to get around the
problem of the Security Council blocking an otherwise
justified preventive war, by endorsing as an amendment to
existing international law a second option for preventive
war. Specifically, the proposed idea is that, in cases where
Security Council authorization is not forthcoming,
a preventive attack could still be legitimate provided that
it were carried out by a coalition of democratic states.
This coalition would be responsible for justifying its preventive action to the Security Council both before and
after the fact; the rationale behind this latter idea is that
unsatisfactory ex post justifications would discredit future
actions and hence provide an incentive for the coalition to
make a morally and empirically sound case for preventive
war before acting.
This proposal has been criticized on familiar grounds.
In particular, critics have raised doubts that the proposal to
allow a democratic coalition to wage preventive war sufficiently reduces the possibility of inaccurate or self-interested
forecasting of future threats. Limiting the coalition to democratic states seems sensible, but even democratic states may
pursue an aggressive foreign policy. Related, the worlds
relatively few democracies are vastly unequal in military
power. Critics have noted that there are good reasons to
think that powerful democratic states such as the USA
would dominate any democratic coalition tasked with waging a preventive war. They point to the largely democratic
coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 as a prime example.
Preventive war is unlikely to disappear from the world
stage anytime soon. If fears of terrorists or rogue states
acquiring weapons of mass destruction prove to be well
founded, the idea (and possible occurrence) of preventive
war will become even more familiar than it is now. This
real-world possibility combined with the fact that the
concept of preventive war is fraught with moral difficulty
makes it a near certainty that the subject will continue to
occupy a prominent place in the global justice literature
into the foreseeable future.

Related Topics
Afghanistan and Iraq Wars
Crimes Against Peace
Dispute Resolution
Humanitarian Military Intervention
International Law
Just War Theory: Invasion of Iraq
Preemptive War

War Against Terrorism

War, Just and Unjust

References
Buchanan A, Keohane R (2004) The preventive use of force:
a cosmopolitan institutional proposal. Ethics Int Aff 18(1):122
Grotius H (2003) The rights of war and peace: including the law of nature
and of nations, vol 1 (trans: Campbell AC). Elibron Classics, Boston
Kaufmann W (2005) Whats wrong with preventive war? Ethics Int Aff 19:3
Luban D (2004) Preventive war. Philos Public Aff 32:207248
Vattel E (1863) The law of nations (trans: Chitty J). T & JW Johnson & Co,
Philadelphia
Vittoria F (1991) Political writing, ed. Pagden A, Lawrance J. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, MA
Walzer M (1991) Just and unjust wars, 2nd edn. Basic Books, New York

Prima Facie Duties

MICHAEL K. POTTER
Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of Windsor,
Windsor, ON, Canada

Various moral theories have attempted to explain, codify,

and analyze our fundamental duties that is, our most
pressing moral obligations. Naturalistic theories try to
explain duties as they relate to human nature or human
needs. More traditional theories purport to draw duties
from religious or political ideologies, in the service of what
God demands or what our world ought to be.
The apparently simple concept of a duty breaks down
into quite specific variations upon even cursory analysis.
A positive duty is an obligation to act in a certain way.
A negative duty is an obligation to refrain from acting in
a certain way. In their strongest form, both positive and
negative duties oblige us always, absolutely, in every situation. Prima facie duties, on the other hand, are sensitive
to the varying demands of situation and context. Whether
positive or negative, whether an obligation to do or not
do something, a prima facie duty makes its demands on
the face of it, providing reasons to act or refrain from
acting that must be considered seriously in our moral
decision-making, but which recognize the nearly infinite
and certainly unpredictable variety of characteristics that
press upon us in moral situations.
The notion of prima facie duties was popularized by
Scottish philosopher Sir W.D. (David) Ross (18771971),
in The Right and the Good (1930). Rosss theory, a variant
of intuitionism, recognized five prima facie duties: fidelity,
reparation, gratitude, nonmaleficence (avoiding what

Prima Facie Duties

harms, or produces badness), and beneficence (doing

what benefits, or produces goodness). All other duties
can be analyzed back to these five, which are self-evident
to those with mature, well-developed minds who have
given matters of ethics sufficient critical reflection.
The prima facie duties press upon us always, but due to
the messiness and unpredictability of human life, they
sometimes find themselves in contradiction. In each complex situation that brings our prima facie duties into
conflict, some must be prioritized over others, taking
into account all of the features of our situations, everything that is relevant to our decision. Thus the right act is
determined in part by our prima facie duties, in part by the
salient features of our situation, and in part by our acts of
judgment. There is no guarantee there can never be
a guarantee that the decision we make is actually right,
due to the fact that our knowledge of salient characteristics
and our powers of judgment are limited.
Ross was unhappy with the implications of his terminology, for prima facie connotes the sense that these
duties are only superficial, rather than constant and binding, obligations. In response, C.D. Broad (18871971)
advocated replacing prima facie with pro tanto,
which denotes that the duties make acts right given ones
judgment of the situation, but that other contextual particularities may change that status. In The Foundations of
Ethics (1939), Ross also considered abandoning the term
duty for responsibility or fittingness which, he
believed, better captured the spirit of his meaning.
How does this theory apply in practical matters of
global justice? Let us take the quite common (and everrelevant) example of a soldier who, in deciding whether to
obey orders to shoot an enemy combatant, faces a difficult
choice. The duty of nonmaleficence demands that he not
harm others. The duty of fidelity demands that he honor his
promises and commitments, including his commitment to
obey order in the service of his country, orders which may
demand that he fire upon enemy combatants when ordered
to do so. If he feels as though he was taken in benevolently
by the army, which gave him a chance to rise out of poverty
and aimlessness, he may feel doubly bound to do what he is
told by the duty of gratitude. Perhaps, too, the lives of others
are at stake, if not civilians than his fellow soldiers, which
means the duty of beneficence demands he protect them by
shooting the enemy combatant. If he fears the enemy combatant may kill him, he may be bound by the duty of
beneficence to protect himself, for he is no less bound to
act in his own benefit than for the benefit of others.
The example includes not only the applicable duties
but also some of the situational characteristics salient to
the soldiers decision. What should this soldier do? If the

soldiers choice is characterized as one of killing or not

killing, we might understand his situation as follows. To
kill means that the duty of nonmaleficence is violated; but
the duties of gratitude, fidelity, and beneficence will be
satisfied. On the other hand, if he chooses not to kill, the
sets of violated duties and satisfied duties switch places.
Does knowing this help the soldier make a decision? Many
of Ross critics would say no, because the theory provides
little guidance. The decision is left up to the soldier to
make, using his judgment quickly and in stressful circumstances. What is the point of a moral theory, these
critics ask, not unreasonably, but to provide guidance?
Ross would grant that his theory of prima facie duties
does not tell the soldier what he should do, but he would
also note that no matter which decision the soldier makes,
the duty of reparation (and perhaps the duty of justice)
requires that he make amends for the duties he violated. If
he chooses to kill, for instance, he must find a way to make
up for it. In addition, Ross argues that right actions should
promote three simple goods (virtue, pleasure, and knowledge) and the complex good of justice (happiness distributed proportionately to virtue). Yet, again, it is left up to
the soldier to solve the mysteries of how one makes
amends for killing another, to whom such amends must
be made, and what prioritization of duties will be most
likely to bring about the goods that Ross identified.
As a guide for global justice, therefore, prima facie duties
work best when integrated into another moral framework
that provides guidance for action and decision-making,
such as a utilitarian form of rule-consequentialism.
The duties, in this case, would function as rules or principles that, when observed, tend more often than not result
in maximal satisfaction or happiness. When prima facie
duties conflict, one could then appeal to the underlying
principle of utility to resolve the matter. Though some
ambiguity would necessarily remain we can never escape
the need for human judgment this would certainly be an
improvement over some other approaches, such as lifeboat ethics, in guiding our decisions.

Related Topics
Agency, Individual
Altruism
Associative Duties
Beneficence, Principle of
Capital Punishment
Charity
Common Good
Disagreement, Reasonable
Dispute Resolution
Duties of Assistance

901

902

Primary Goods

Duties to Non-Compatriots
Duties to the Distant Needy
Duties, Determinate and Indeterminate
Duties, Perfect and Imperfect
Duties, Positive and Negative
Duty to Prosecute
End of Life Care
Exploitation
Fairness
Global Ethic
Global Justice
Harm Principle
Humanitarian Aid
Intuitionism
Killing and Letting Die
Lifeboat Ethics
Moral Reasoning
Peace Education
Pluralism
Political Autonomy
Population Politics
Responsibility, Individual
Rule-Consequentialism
Torture
Utilitarianism
Violence

References
Lucas JR (1971) Ethical intuitionism II. Philosophy 46:110
Prichard HA (1949/1968) Moral obligation: essays and lectures,
Urmson JO. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Ross WD (1930) The right and the good. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Ross WD (1939) The foundations of ethics. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Stratton-Lake P (1999) Why externalism is not a problem for ethical
intuitionists. Proc Aristot Soc 99:7790
Stratton-Lake P (2002) Ethical intuitionism: re-evaluations. Oxford
University Press, Oxford

Primary Goods
PETER MURRAY
Department of Philosophy, University at Albany,
State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA

The account of primary goods was introduced by Rawls

(1999b) in order to make possible comparisons between
citizens of the advantages conferred on them by a system of
social cooperation. In conditions of reasonable pluralism,
because different citizens have different comprehensive

conceptions of the good, some common standard is

required in order to impartially evaluate and compare social
positions, from the least to the most well-off. Rawls wants to
avoid relying on any particular comprehensive conception
of the good in his account of the primary goods so that these
goods can be recognized as good by any reasonable and
rational citizen. While these goods have a central position in
Rawls account of social justice, the full set of primary goods
is not used in his account of global justice.
Rawls account of the primary goods evolved over time
from his position in A Theory of Justice, where Rawls
defined the primary goods as goods it is rational to want
whatever else one wants, to his mature account in Political
Liberalism. This mature account of the primary goods ties
them to two moral powers that citizens must have in order to
be free and equal participants in a fair system of cooperation:
they must have a capacity for an effective sense of justice and
they must have a capacity for a conception of the good.
Primary goods are those goods that are required in order
for citizens to develop and exercise these two moral powers.
The list of primary goods includes rights and liberties,
opportunities, income and wealth, and the social bases of self
respect, among other things. Rawls uses the full list in his
theory of domestic justice. However, for purposes of global
justice, he relies on a subsection of the primary goods:
human rights. Human rights are a part of the full set of
liberal rights and liberties. They are those rights and liberties
that must be accorded in order for one to be a part of any
system of social cooperation at all. A liberal system of cooperation is conceived of as between free and equal citizens, but
a non-liberal system of cooperation may give preference to
some class of citizens over others. This may be the case, for
example, when only citizens who are members of the state
religion may hold certain positions of authority in a society.
By contrast, a society that includes a system of slavery is not
a system of cooperation of any kind, but is instead simply
rule by force and an embodiment of the right of the stronger.
Three major lines of criticism of Rawls use of primary
goods in his account of global justice are: first, a concern
that Rawls is being inconsistent by using the full set of
liberal rights in the national case, but only the subset of
human rights in the international case. The second is that
some other standard of comparison, such as basic capabilities, should be substituted for primary goods. The
problem with using primary goods as an objective measure of advantage, the objection goes, is that primary
goods are good insofar as they enable us to use our basic
capabilities, but the same share of primary goods will
enable different levels of functioning in persons with different natural ability. Third, and finally, it is often objected
that Rawls list of primary goods fails to be neutral

Prisoners Dilemma

between even permissible conceptions of the good. For

example, including wealth in the list may appear to bias
the principles of distributive justice against ascetic conceptions of the good whose adherents do not value wealth
and require very few material resources.
Although Rawls himself does not make use of the full
range of primary goods in his account of global justice, it
would be possible to develop a cosmopolitan position that
does so. One possibility would be to treat the entire world
as one society, and apply Rawls theory, justice as fairness,
to the institutions of this one-world state. Rawls rejects
this approach because he sees a one-world state as impracticable. In contemporary debate, there is little agreement
about which primary goods should be used for purposes
of a theory of global justice, and even about whether
primary goods should be used at all.

Related Topics
Capabilities Approach
Human Rights
Nussbaum, Martha C.
Rawls, John
Sen, Amartya
Toleration/Tolerance, Liberal Principle of

References
Freeman S (2006) Frontiers of justice: the capabilities approach vs.
contractarianism. (Book review). Tex Law Rev 85:385430
Freeman S (2007) Rawls. Routledge, New York
Mandle J (2000) Whats left of liberalism? An interpretation and defense
of justice as fairness. Lexington Books, Lanham
Nussbaum MC (2006) Frontiers of justice: disability, nationality, species
membership. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Rawls J (1999a) The law of peoples with the idea of public reason
revisited. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Rawls J (1999b) A theory of justice, rev edn. Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, Cambridge
Rawls J (2001) Justice as fairness: a restatement. Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, Cambridge
Rawls J (2005) Political liberalism, exp edn. Columbia University Press,
New York

Prisoners Dilemma
BONGRAE SEOK
Department of Humanities/Philosophy,
Alvernia University, Reading, PA, USA

Prisoners dilemma refers to a game theoretic situation

where the rational pursuit of individual interest generates

suboptimal outcomes. Two players play a nonzero sum

game where they choose between two possible moves,
cooperation (c) and defection (d). The game, in a single
play, is set up in such a way (T>R>P>S) that the payoffs
for mutual cooperation (c/c, payoffs are R/R) are higher
than mutual defection (d/d, payoffs are P/P) but lower
than split decisions, where only one player cooperates and
the other takes advantage of it by defecting (c/d or d/c,
payoffs are S/T or T/S respectively). The dilemma, originally discussed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher,
received its name because the example used by Albert
Tucker involved two prisoners who need to decide individually whether they keep silent (c) or confess their
crimes (d) to reduce their jail times.
What would rational prisoners do in the following
situation? Two prisoners teamed up to rob a bank, got
arrested, and were investigated separately. Due to insufficient amount of evidence, the district attorney offers
a deal. If a prisoner testifies against the other, she will be
free but the other prisoner who keeps silence gets a full jail
time (d/c). If they both confess (d/d), they will get their jail
times longer than what they get if they both keep silence
(c/c). From the perspective of an individual prisoner, it is
always better to defect; if the other prisoner keeps silence
she will be free by defecting (d/c). Even if the other prisoner defects (?/d), it is still better for her to defect (d/d)
because keeping silence (c/d) brings her a full jail time.
The same is true of the other prisoner. The strategy to
defect, therefore, is the best choice for both prisoners
(d/d), but this strategy does not generate the best payoffs;
the payoffs of mutual defection (a rational choice for both
prisoners) are lower than those of mutual cooperation
(i.e., R>P). Because of the suboptimal payoffs, this game
situation becomes a dilemma: if the prisoners act rationally, they end up getting less than what they could have if
they both acted irrationally. Prisoners dilemma, therefore,
is a term for this structural and myopic limitation of
decisions made by rational and self-interested individuals.
From the perspective of distributive justice, this game
theoretical situation demonstrates that the optimal distribution of social resources can be disrupted or endangered
by the rational pursuit of self interest. If individuals
blindly pursue their interests without considering the
collective consequences of their decisions, the common
and collective public good on which the individual interest
itself is partially based will no longer be sustainable.
Historically, Scottish philosopher Adam Smith
(17231790) argued that if rational and self-interested individuals pursue their interest, the whole society will receive
the benefit. He believed in the magical power of the invisible
hand of the system (the free market) that links and

903

904

Prisoners of War

harmonizes individual interest and public interest. Under

the control of the invisible hand, the pursuit of rational selfinterest and the promotion of collective interest are compatible, parallel, and even closely related. This optimism,
one of the driving forces of the capitalist system of economy, is challenged by prisoners dilemma, particularly by its
multiplayer version, the tragedy of the commons.
Hardin describes the challenge (the sharp conflict
between rational self-interest and collective interest) in the
following way: There is a freely accessible grazing land
where the villagers bring their cattle to graze. If one of the
villagers brings her cattle to the land, she can get extra
benefit at the cost of others who do not bring their cattle
but support the maintenance of the land. That is, the benefit
of bringing extra cattle (1) is more than the cost of
supporting the land with the n number of people who
use the grazing space (1/n): 1 > 1/n. Therefore, the decision to bring extra cattle is a rational, individual decision,
but if everyone does the same, they end up losing what they
started with. The result is the overgrazed, barren, and
unsustainable land that negatively affects everyone who
uses it. Since it is every users rational interest to bring as
many cows as possible to the land, preventing the land from
being damaged by overgrazing is almost impossible.
According to Hardin, this is the tragedy that rational and
self-interested human beings ultimately face. Similar tragedies, such as the depletion of public goods and freely accessible social and natural resources, and the misappropriation
and pollution of the public and natural environment, can
be observed in other types of social dilemmas where rational self-interest conflicts with the public interest. Additionally, some of these conflicts occur in a global scale. Global
issues such as sustainable economic growth, environmental
protection, and global climate change require, for their
solutions, international awareness and cooperation.
Social dilemmas such as prisoners dilemma and the
tragedy of the commons ask important questions of justice: How to balance my interest and others interest in
a fair, sustainable, and mutually respectful way? How to
encourage rational and self-interested individuals to promote the public interest? The blind pursuit of rational selfinterest, optimistically observed by Adam Smith but fails
miserably in prisoners dilemma and the tragedy of the
commons, is not the answer. Fair and reciprocal balancing
point of distribution should be pursued and promoted.
According to several studies of human behavior in
public goods game, the introduction of corrective measures (i.e., punishment) effectively reduces the occurrence
of free riders (players who take benefits from their groups
without contributing). In the same context, Robert

Axelrod argues (based on his computer simulation of

prisoners dilemma) that the most successful solution
for repeated prisoners dilemma is tit-for-tat strategy.
In this strategy, a player (A) starts out with cooperation
and then the player imitates the move of the other player
(B) in the previous rounds. If B cooperated in the previous
round, A cooperates but if B defected or cheated in the
previous round, A punishes B by not cooperating or
defecting. Particularly, Tit-for-Tat with forgiveness is
observed to have a better chance of survival and sustainability. This strategy prevents both players from getting
trapped in the cycle of defection by adding a slight probability of cooperation to a players reaction to defection.
The main point of these strategies is to develop wellbalanced combination of revenge (punishment) and forgiveness (encouragement). On the one hand, cheaters and
free riders need to be punished for what they did. Punishment discourages the myopic selfish interest and prevents
it from spreading out to the whole population. On the
other hand, as seen in Tit-for-Tat with forgiveness strategy, cooperation should be encouraged and generously
sustained to prevent the vicious cycle of defection.

Related Topics
Common Good
Composition, Fallacy of
Fairness
Hardin, Garrett
Moral Reasoning

References
Axelrod R (1984) The evolution of cooperation. Basic Books, New York
Axelrod R, Hamilton W (1981) The evolution of cooperation. Science
211:13901396
Fehr E, Gachter S (2000) Cooperation and punishment in public goods
game. American Economic Review 90:980994
Hardin G (1968) The tragedy of the commons. Science 162:12431248
Kaminski MM (2004) Games prisoners play. Princeton University Press,
Princeton
Luce RD, Raiffa H (1957/1989) Games and decisions: introduction and
critical survey. Dover Publication, Mineola
Rapoport A, Chammah AM (1965) Prisoners dilemma. University of
Michigan Press, Ann Arbor
Smith A (1957/1976) The Glasgow edition of the works and correspondence of Adam Smith. Clarendon Press, Oxford

Prisoners of War
Geneva Conventions
Punishment

Privacy

War Against Terrorism

War, Just and Unjust

Privacy
JUHA RAIKKA
Department of Behavioural Sciences and Philosophy,
University of Turku, Turku, Finland

One might think that the issues of privacy are not

connected to those of global justice. But in fact, the concepts of privacy and global justice are related to each other
in many ways. In what follows, I will introduce three of the
connections prevailing between ethical issues of privacy
and global justice.
1.

Poverty has been one of the main causes why people

have not have as much privacy as they would have
wanted. In some cases, privacy refers to an actual
private space, and the spatial privacy is an expensive
good. For instance, people may want to have a room of
their own. Societies that suffer from extreme poverty
cannot guarantee people spatial privacy. Just as
extreme poverty and global injustice are related to
each other, so are lack of privacy and global injustice.

It may be objected that, actually, in poor countries

people tend to want privacy much less than what people
want in affluent countries. In that sense, privacy is relative.
Therefore, the objection goes, the unavoidable lack of
privacy in poor countries is not a serious moral problem.
This objection, however, is not convincing. It may of
course be true that people in poor countries tend to want
privacy much less than people in affluent countries, but
that does not mean that they think that they have enough
(spatial) privacy. Even if they want less privacy, they may
still want it far more than their extremely unpleasant living
circumstances would allow them to have.
2.

The political system of a country largely determines

how much privacy its citizens typically have. Democratic countries tend to have laws strongly limiting
actions that may threaten peoples right to privacy.
Of course, many people feel that actually these laws
are insufficient and they allow too much freedom for
police forces, business enterprises, medical authorities,
and so on. Be that as it may, laws protecting privacy are
clearly much more stringent in democratic countries
than in authoritarian countries.

905

This brings us to the issues of global justice. There

are many authoritarian countries in the world, and they
do not respect peoples right to privacy. Police may enter
peoples houses at night without warrants. Why there are
so many authoritarian countries in the world is a difficult
question, but it is hard to deny that the part of the reason
is the existence of unjust global institutions. Our current
international structures maintain, at least partly, authoritarian governments. It is in the interest of many (or most)
affluent countries that there are plenty of authoritarian
governments all around. Authoritarian governments of
poor countries can do business deals and military agreements with affluent countries that democratic governments of poor countries ordinarily would not do
(because most citizens would oppose them). These
deals and agreements can be very favorable to affluent
countries.
3.

Security measures may cause serious threats to peoples right to privacy. For instance, wire tapping is
surprisingly common in many countries, and there
are surveillance cameras practically everywhere: in
streets, stores, schools, and so on. Our location is
often easy to determine by tracing the location of our
cell phones. Nowadays one typical way to improve
safety is to follow international (tele- and Internet)
communication. Airport security checks have attained
incredible measures. The airport staff can now scan
our bodies, and the next step is said to be the use of
functional brain imaging in order to read passengers
thoughts.

It is appropriate to ask whether these techniques are

used fairly, or whether they possibly discriminate
against citizens of certain countries or members of
certain ethnic or religious groups. More likely than
not, these measures represent the policies of powerful
countries against the citizens of poor and vulnerable
countries, making vivid the injustices in global relations
between countries. Discriminatory violation of privacy
in the name of security impinges on the dignity of
individuals, groups, and nations. It hinders the cause
of fostering global justice.

Related Topics
Cairo Declaration of Human Rights
Human Right to Democracy
Pogge, Thomas
Population Politics
Poverty
Technology

906

Proceduralism

References
Brin D (1998) The transparent society: Will technology force us to choose
between privacy and freedom? Perseus Books, Reading
DeCew JW (1997) In pursuit of privacy. Cornell University Press, Ithaca
Etzioni A (1999) The limits of privacy. Basic Books, Oxford
Inness JC (1992) Privacy, intimacy and isolation. Oxford University Press,
New York
Philip EA, Marc R (eds) (1997) Technology and privacy: The new landscape. MIT Press, Cambridge
Raikka J (2008) Is privacy relative? J Soc Philos 39:534546
Raikka J (2010) Brain imaging and privacy. Neuroethics 3:512
Samar VJ (1991) The right to privacy. Temple University Press, Philadelphia

Proceduralism
JORDY ROCHELEAU
Department of History and Philosophy, Austin Peay State
University, Clarksville, TN, USA

Proceduralism justifies rules, decisions, or institutions by

reference to a valid process, as opposed to their being
morally correct according to a substantive account of
justice or goodness. Procedures such as the rule of law,
democratic voting, or the voluntary consent of states are
argued to confer justice or legitimacy upon their results,
even if the latter are flawed. In democratic theory, procedural accounts locate the legitimacy of state laws in
a deliberative process with rights of political participation.
Laws, including those which are unjust in principle, are
made valid by the democratic process. In the international
arena proceduralists argue that international law and policies are justified by approval through an accepted legal
process, ultimately based on the consent of states. On this
view, states or rules which violate principles of justice,
such as human rights, still can attain legitimacy.
The procedures themselves can have either a moral or
instrumental justification. On the former approach, procedures carry justificatory force because they embody
moral principles. In democratic theory the underpinning
of the procedure is respect for persons as free and equal, in
other words principles of autonomy and fairness. The
resulting rules violate no rights. Moreover, breaking of
the rules agreed to by this process would infringe the
autonomy of others or ones own implicit promises to
abide by the process. In international law, proceduralism
is generally based on the sovereign equality of states,
respecting the self-determination of each and instituting
a fair system of cooperation between them. Rules acquire
force through voluntary consent.

For moral proceduralisms, the question arises why

procedures retain their force if they lead to unjust results.
If the procedure is justified by the protection of rights and
fairness, why accept as valid results which are themselves
unfair? Moreover, while procedures can be argued to be
consistent with rights and fairness, frequently there is
more than one procedure that would protect such rights.
The question arises why a particular procedure carries
justifying force.
Other procedural justifications are pragmatic, holding that a procedure confers justification because it is on
the whole likely to produce better, more just outcomes
than alternatives. Democratic, consensual processes can
be supported for their general reliability without
asserting their infallibility. Given the difficulty of securing agreement on substantive conceptions of justice,
deference to procedures may be utilitarian and best
preserve justice on average. With respect to the justificatory force of law, pragmatic proceduralists can argue
that observance of domestic and international law preserves stability. A pragmatic account could be bolstered
by considerations of fairness to explain why parties
should accept rules that they have reason to believe are
mistaken.
As a principled and practical account of the justice or
legitimacy of international norms, proceduralism is an
influential approach for pursuing and evaluating international justice for states and, arguably, global justice for the
individuals who compose them.

Related Topics
Democracy, Deliberative
Democratic Legitimacy
International Institutional Legitimacy
International Law
International Law, Normative Foundations of
Recognitional Legitimacy

References
Bohman J, Rehg W (1997) Deliberative democracy: essays on reason and
politics. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Clark I (2005) Legitimacy in international society. Oxford University
Press, Oxford
Enoch D (2009) On Estlunds democratic authority. Iyyun The Jerusalem
Philos Quart 58:3548
Estlund D (2008) Democratic authority: a philosophical framework.
Princeton University Press, Princeton
Franck T (1990) The power of legitimacy among nations. Oxford University Press, New York
Peter F (2008) Pure epistemic proceduralism. Episteme 5:3355

Propaganda

Propaganda
ROBERT P. ABELE
Department of Humanities and Philosophy, Diablo Valley
College, Pleasant Hill, CA, USA

Propaganda is a term that is widely used, but little

understood. In order to reflect philosophically on the
dynamics of propaganda, who uses it, and why, it is
important to come to an understanding of a definition
of propaganda. In the Oxford English Dictionary, propaganda is defined as any association, systematic scheme,
or concerted movement for the propagation of
a particular doctrine or practice.
While sufficiently general, this definition fails to take
into account the use of propaganda in both Europe and
the USA in, for example, mobilizing the population for
supporting two world wars, and now in military excursions in the Middle East. Most specifically, the person who
was most instrumental in transforming propaganda from
a general, innocuous definition, into the one with negative
connotations it has today, was the nephew of Sigmund
Freud, Edward Bernays.
The understanding of propaganda maintained by
Bernays was at once capitalistic and political. For him,
democracy will only work if the mass of people is guided
by enlightened elite that is imperceptible in their crafting
of public opinion. This understanding comes from his
intellectual hero, Walter Lippmann, who stated that the
masses of people are incapable of thinking clearly and are
driven instead by the herd instinct, emotions, and prejudice (Bernays 2004).
We may conclude that the way Bernays and Lippmann
understood it, propaganda is a form of coercion: a verbal
manipulation of the people to whom it is directed by
cloaking the message in terms with which no one can
disagree (e.g., euphemisms such as American x, USA
PATRIOT Act; Support our troops; going to war to
bring democracy, etc.), thereby creating the illusion in
people that they are in control of their lives and their
institutional structures, as well as the illusion of having
free choice in such matters, while in reality allowing the
perpetrator of it to have their way. As the French philosopher Jacques Ellul states it, propagandists must conceal
their true intentions, since to do otherwise would be to
submit their projects to public discussion and, thus, be
likely to prevent their success (Ellul 1973).
The result of this understanding is that the elites who
control propaganda create ideological conformity by

limiting the range of acceptable dissent. As Noam Chomsky has indicated, from Lippmanns view, governments,
especially democratic ones, must be about the manufacture of consent since the masses cannot be trusted. There
are, in consequence, two political roles that are to be
clearly distinguished: the role of the specialized class, the
insiders, who have access to information and understanding; and the public whose function is to align itself
with someone in a position to act with executive power
(Chomsky 1991).
This is not to argue, of course, that only capitalistic
democracy engages in propaganda. A brief examination of
the days of the Cold War will suffice to demonstrate that the
Soviet Union news agencies, TASS and Pravda, engaged in
numerous instances of alleged news reporting that was in
actuality directly controlled by the state. However, while
these agencies were continually attacked by the American
press as biased and untrustworthy, the American media
was engaging in the same process by using its freedom of the
press to appease advertisers, and then engaging in the
propaganda methods of Lippmann and Bernays to idealize
the structure of American capitalistic democracy while
allowing elite control of the message and the decision making
of government (Chomsky 1997a, b).
The main mechanism by which elites engage in propaganda is, of course, the mainstream media. Often referred to
as elite media, (represented in the USA by the New York
Times and Washington Post, CBS, NBC, etc.), they set the
news agenda that others use in their coverage of world and
national news. In what is arguably the most important
study of this elite media, Chomsky and Edward S.
Hermann concluded that there are five filters the elite
media use in determining the news:
1. The size: concentrated ownership; owner wealth;
profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms
2. Advertising as the primary income source of the mass
media
3. Reliance of the media on information provided by
government, business, and government-touted
experts funded and approved by these primary sources
and agents of power
4. Flak as a means of disciplining the media
5. The control mechanism of news: once encapsulated by
the term Anticommunism, now changed, in the
words of Edward Herman, to the miracle of the
market (Chomsky and Herman 2002; Herman 2003;
Chomsky 1997b)
This mainstream media diverts attention away from
the important issues and into side issues, leaving the elite
to determine solutions to the main issues. To take one

907

908

Propaganda

example, in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the

media focused on side issues, such as whether or not Iraq
possess weapons of mass destruction instead of whether
or not global justice and international law would sanction
an attack on Iraq (Abele 2009).
Given our analysis thus far, we may hypothesize that
propaganda allows government overreach and abuse of
power. If so, government authority itself would be suspect
because of the uses to which its authority is put, through
the means of propaganda: the self-interests of the elites in
control of the institution, and the perpetuation of the
institutional structures that allow the continual pursuit
of authority and elite self-interest. We may see evidence of
this in at least two specific issues. First, the war on
terrorism is a propaganda tool that has provided such
governments with the pretext they desired to expand their
reach globally (Abele 2009). Additionally, one can see how
the European Union planned the selling of this war by
examining the European organization Statewatch documentation. Second, Lippmann and Bernays understood
that propaganda should be used for keeping the party
system in the USA to two or a few because the mass of
people cannot think for themselves beyond a few carefully
controlled options. In this hypothesis, propaganda is
deliberately used to limit political choice, and that is
precisely what Bernays advocates in his book Propaganda
(Bernays 2004).
The connection of the role of propaganda in media
and government to global justice may be seen in the
following analysis. In most governments today, propaganda plays a critical role. The institutional structure
propagates itself domestically by propaganda, because in
an affluent country and/or a democratic institution of any
type, forced consent is difficult to maintain in the long
run. It propagates itself outside of its own boundaries by
the exercise of force. Taken together, force and propaganda
are the sources of authoritarian power in any institutional
structure. Control the use of both, and power can become
absolute. One need only examine US actions in Central
America in the 1980s to see the intimate connection
between propaganda at home and violence abroad. In
this instance, the USA maintained the traditional power
structure of supporting highly undemocratic societies by
terrorist wars against the civilians and the Church, beginning with the assassination of Archbishop Romero, and
ending with the assassination of six leading Jesuit intellectuals who had become too critical of the governing apparatus. In Nicaragua, the USA increased its assault on the
government after its first democratic election in 1984. All
the while, the New York Times praised for Reagan with
such euphemisms as his experiment in peace and

democracy, as were the other mainstream media outlets.

The populace who took its views from the media at this
time was convinced that the USA was acting altruistically
(Chomsky 1997a).
The results of this nexus of political power and propaganda are manifold. Chomsky summarizes it by stating
that the product of the media will reflect the interests of
the buyers and sellers, and the power systems that are
around them (1997b). Specifically, one may see the third
and fifth filters outlined above operative here:
Filter #3: Since the media cannot afford to place
reporters everywhere and to investigate everything, they
concentrate their resources where the major news is likely
to happen e.g., the White House, Congress, Parliament,
etc., where they become highly dependent on pronouncements by the assigned spokesperson from these institutions. Editors and journalists who offend these sources will
be denied access to them (e.g., Associated Press reporter
Helen Thomas comments on the Israeli subjugation of
the Palestinians led to her firing in 2010).
Filter #5: Demonizing the elite enemy or evil dictator coincides with the ideology of the free market: the
West wants oil, so Saddam Hussein becomes a genocidal
maniac with desires to attack America; the corporate elites
want an unrestrained ability to produce and market
product, so environmentalists become ecoterrorists,
etc. (Cromwell 2002).
The results from all this may be summarized as
follows:
1. There is little willingness on the part of media to
criticize government policies beyond general questions, such as whether or not a war will be winnable
instead of whether or not the war is right.
2. In nearly every case, the main media accept forthrightly, and even tout as facts, the statements from
government officials.
3. Even media opponents of war only question the pragmatics of the war e.g., the cost versus the benefit; the
length of stay in, say, Iraq, etc.
4. The media ignore critically important stories that
do not play to the doctrines held by the elites. For
example, the Cancun climate change conference in
December 2010 was not mentioned once in mainstream US media during its first 2 days.
5. All mainstream media debate takes place within corporate acceptable range: there is no direct attack on the
policy and ideology behind corporate or governmental
decisions.
6. The permitted statement of lessons from, for example,
the Iraq invasion, is also quite narrow: the war was

Propaganda

entered into because of intelligence error, or stupidly, or

without properly assessing costs or consequences, etc.
7. In the USA, the antiwar movement is and has been,
beginning in 1991 excluded from news and/or
consideration in the media.
From a global justice perspective, no matter the position one advocates, the verbal manipulation of the masses
either excludes fellow community members from full participation in the national community and negates the
moral duties that members have toward one another
(e.g., Walzer), or that impartiality and egalitarianism,
fundamental to a truly democratic world community, is
equally fundamentally undermined by the manipulation
of the masses through elitist propaganda (e.g., Habermas).
Either way (allowing for degrees of viewpoints in
between), there is a clear dynamic involved in propaganda
that precludes the requirements of justice. The viewpoint
that justice is a consequent of (local or national) community, or a primary expression of the global extension of the
values of impartiality and egalitarianism, is contrary to the
propaganda model, exemplified here by Bernays, who held
that the masses must be programmed to believe certain
things because they are incapable of formulating their own
viewpoints. Manipulation of others for the sake of elitist
interests, even if those interests are well intended, effectively eclipses a moral and democratic community.
For examples of possible global justice analyses of
propaganda, let us take Walzer and Habermas. In Walzers
communitarian view, the key question is what individuals
like us, who are situated as we are, who share a culture and
are determined to go on sharing it, would choose (Walzer
1983). This emphasis results, for Walzer, in the rights of
communities to choose, for example, policies of inclusion
and exclusion of membership. Applied to propaganda,
one may easily ascertain that the entire function of
propaganda is to delimit and detract from open choices,
and to guide or manipulate the community to choose
between narrowly defined and predetermined alternatives.
Thus, the propagandist is not an individual like us, but
has a specific set of concerns that may or may not be
focused on the good of the community. More than likely,
if someone turns to propaganda to get her message across
to others, the question concerning what we would
choose is nonexistent in the message, having long since
been replaced by an answer to that question, to which one
is already committed. Since that eclipses the selfdetermination of a community, Walzer would be unlikely
to support its use.
In the cosmopolitan perspective of Jurgen Habermas,
social discourse is predicated on certain speech

909

conditions, which Habermas refers to as the ideal speech

situation. The goal is assumed to be that of reaching an
understanding. As such, the structure of discourse entails
universal validity claims. This, in turn, presupposes the
comprehensibility, truth, truthfulness, and rightness of the
claims being made (Habermas 1979). Thus, reaching an
understanding requires a rational motivation. When
these dynamics are nonexistent in discourse, the speech
becomes distorted, and geared toward another end than
mutual understanding. Habermas would clearly refer to
the practice of propaganda as a primary instance of
distorted speech. It is inauthentic speech, in that
the speaker attempts to gain support for an option not
by truth, truthfulness, and rational motivation, but by
manipulating languages and images to guide the hearer
to the position the propagandist prefers. This is the very
antithesis of the necessary conditions for democratic discourse, for Habermas.
We may conclude that the paradigms on which global
justice is built are opposed to the inequality demonstrated
by the propaganda model. Ideological control of the
population is done through propaganda, demonstrating
that the institutions built on propaganda are designed to
maintain institutional structures of inequality (Chomsky
and Herman 2002; Laffey 2003). The consequence of this
is that concerns of global justice are at cross-purposes
with the propaganda model, regardless of the justice
perspective one maintains.

Related Topics
Democracy, Deliberative
Global Democracy
Global Public Sphere
Habermas, Jurgen
Language and Politics
Political Leadership
Self-Determination

References
Abele R (2009) The anatomy of a deception. University Press of America,
Lanham
Bernays EL (2004) Propaganda. Ig Publishing, New York
Chomsky N (1977) Triumphs of democracy. In: Language and Responsibility. Pantheon, New York
Chomsky N (1991) Force and opinion. Z Magazine July/August 1991
Chomsky N (1997a) Market democracy in a neoliberal world order.
Z Magazine, November 1997
Chomsky N (1997b) What makes mainstream media mainstream?
Z Magazine, October 1997
Chomsky N, Herman ES (2002) Manufacturing consent. Pantheon,
New York
Chomsky N, Pateman B (2005) Chomsky on anarchism. AK Press,
Oakland

910

Property Rights

Cromwell D (2002) The propaganda model: an overview. Private Planet

Ellul J (1973) Propaganda. Vintage, Visalia
Habermas J (1979) Communication and the evolution of society. Beacon,
Boston
Herman ES (2003) The propaganda model: a retrospective. Against All
Reason 1:114 (9 Dec 2003)
Laffey M (2003) Discerning the patterns of world order: Noam Chomsky
and international theory after the cold war. Rev Int Stud 29:587604
Leopold J (2010) Cheney admits to war crimes, media yawns, Obama
turns the other cheek. Truthout.org, 15 February 2010
MacIntyre A (1984) After virtue. University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana
McChesney RW (1999) Noam Chomsky and the struggle against neoliberalism. Monthly Review, 1 April 1999
Roberts PC (2010) The impotence of elections. Global Research, 4 November
2010
Walzer M (1983) Spheres of justice. Basic Books, New York

Property Rights
JAMIE HARDY
Department of Philosophy, University of Utah,
Salt Lake City, UT, USA

Property rights refer to the collection of rights a person,

group, or entity has to an object. Full property rights
consist of control rights, compensation rights, enforcement rights, and transfer rights. Control rights are the
exclusive right to use an object and the power to grant or
deny permission to others for using the object. Owners are
entitled to compensation if someone uses ones property
without permission. A person is entitled to use force to
prevent a violation of control rights or as a means to
collect compensation from those who violated control
rights. Lastly, the owner has the right to transfer any
or all of these rights to another as long as it is voluntary,
e.g., trade, rent, gift, or loan. Full ownership rights are
meant to include the strongest and most logically consistent set of rights over an object.
A central philosophical issue is the justification of
private property. What, if anything, grants a person property rights? This article will provide a survey of philosophical justifications of individual property rights and what, if
any, limits to acquisition and use these theories justify.

Self-Ownership and World Ownership

One justification of property rights rests on the theory of
self-ownership. Self-ownership holds that a person has full
ownership rights over oneself. A person is then able to
extend self-ownership into world ownership. John Locke
claims that the world was initially commonly owned, yet

people were able to convert common ownership over the

natural resources into private ownership by mixing ones
labor with it. Locke placed limits on the acquisition and use
of natural resources, commonly referred to as the Lockean
proviso. First, there must be enough good resources left for
others to acquire. Second, one cannot let resources spoil.
For example, if one grew too many apples and they were
going to rot, other people may take the apples. However,
according to Locke, the advent on money allows one to
circumvent the spoilage requirement because excess goods
can be exchanged for money that does not spoil.
Robert Nozick is generally regarded as a selfownership theorist working within the Lockean tradition.
For Nozick, the world is initially unowned instead of
commonly owned. Nozick criticizes the labor mixing theory of acquisition, yet his remarks seem to embrace the
idea that self-ownership could lead to world ownership.
Nozick shifts the debate on initial acquisition by offering
his own interpretation of the Lockean proviso. If ones
initial acquisition does not make others who are no longer
free to use the resources no worse off than if the object
is left free for them to use, then it is a legitimate acquisition. One can still make the acquisition if it makes others
worse off provided that the person making the acquisition
compensates all of those made worse off. If one can compensate everyone so that everyone is as well off as they
were prior to the acquisition, then one can acquire the
resource. Nozick believes that if one satisfies these conditions, then no one has a legitimate complaint making the
acquisition just.
Nozick develops a historical entitlement theory. The
legitimacy of current property holdings depends on how
those holdings came about. One is entitled to an object if
one satisfies the principle of just acquisition and the
principle of just transfer. An acquisition is just if it
meets Nozicks interpretation of the Lockean proviso.
One is free to transfer an object to another as long as it
is voluntary that is force or fraud is not used to elicit the
transfer. If it turns out that at some point in the history of
the object that it was stolen, then the current holder of
the object is not entitled to the object. Given that current
property holdings came about from some violation of
property rights, it seems that the current holdings are
not just, e.g., colonists taking land from indigenous people. Some defenders argue that if a violation exceeds
a significant amount of time, then those holdings are
justified.
Left-libertarians accept self-ownership but deny that
self-ownership generates world ownership. They deny
that anyone has a permanent right to private property,
but accept that a person has the right to his or her body

Property Rights

and labor. The world is commonly owned in some egalitarian manner by all humans and the task of justice is to
decide how best to distribute natural resources in a fair
manner. Micheal Otsuka claims that natural resources
should be distributed in a manner that provides for
equal opportunity for welfare. When a person dies, the
natural resources are distributed to the next generation.
The practicality of a system that divides property in this
way is doubtful. Another view holds that when one wants
the right to use resources beyond ones immediate needs,
then that person rents the resources from humanity.
That rent money is then distributed in some egalitarian
manner. This is essentially a tax on the use of natural
resources with the goal of redistributing wealth. This is
important, because if a person owns himself or herself,
then taxing a persons labor would be violating a persons
self-ownership. All left-libertarian theories suffer a defect
in common with all egalitarian theories, namely, their
evident unease in responding to the question: what is
equality? Without a justifiable egalitarian theory, no just
allocation is possible.

Consequentialist Theories
Another method of justification of private property relies
on the benefits of a system of private property. Society
is best served by a market economy. Market economies
depend on a system of private property in order to operate. A centralized economy is impossible because no
person or entity has enough knowledge to run the economy and any mistake by a central planner has devastating
consequences for society. Instead, a decentralized
economy based on private property better meets the
needs of people. The failure of Eastern bloc nations and
the success of Western market economies are viewed as
examples of why private property best serves the needs of
the people.
A second consequentialist justification is the tragedy
of the commons. The tragedy of the commons holds that
if everyone is allowed to use the land, then no one has an
incentive to take care of the land. If a person takes responsibility, such as planting crops for the next harvest, then
that person is the only one doing work while everyone
benefits. Since the only incentive is to use the land, the
land will be overused. Eventually, the overuse will result in
the land being of no use to anyone. Privatization resolves
this problem because it creates an incentive for the owner
to take care of the property.
Consequentialist justifications are not as strong as selfownership justifications because consequentialist justifications are contingent. If public ownership provides
better outcomes, then one should abandon private

911

property. One could maintain that private property is

generally beneficial, but some interference in property
rights is justified to produce better outcomes. Additionally, not everyone would be better off under a system
of private property that forces one to accept that
some people can be made worse off to benefit others.

Cooperative Schemes
Some hold that society is a cooperative scheme and that
members of the cooperative scheme have the right to
decide how goods shall be divided. This idea holds that
each person can only produce a certain amount of goods;
however, if they all cooperate, then the amount of goods
produced is greater than the sum of their individual components. Every person has an equal right to the benefits of
the cooperative scheme. Further, each person has an equal
right to determine the rules of the cooperative scheme.
John Rawls could be viewed as a proponent of this view.
While Rawls does not specifically argue for private property, if it turns out that a system of private property
maximizes the position of the worst off members of society, then private property is justified.
A similar argument holds that markets and private
property cannot exist without cooperative institutions
that rely on the government. Property rights are just one
set of legal conventions. Governments have the right to
decide on the rules of trade and property. Taxation is
a part of the property system because it pays for the social
institutions that give rise to property in the first place.
A persons possessions are the product of many governmental policies. What a person is morally entitled to is
simply the product of the legal code and governmental
policies.
One can dispute that society is a cooperative scheme in
any meaningful way. Insofar as people do cooperate economically, it is through voluntary transactions with
a limited number of people. Anarchists and libertarians
can point to historical examples of property rights and
markets that did not rely on governments. Moreover, even
if we grant the idea of a cooperative scheme, it does not
follow that everyone has an equal claim to its product, for
some may contribute more than others. In any case, just
ownership is a controversial idea because the notion of
property rights is a contested concept. Extended globally,
the debate gets even more complex, making it a challenge
for any theory of global justice.

Related Topics
Capitalism
Economic Rights
Georgism

912

Protectionist Policies

Hardin, Garrett
Labor
Libertarianism
Locke, John
Narveson, Jan
Natural Rights
Nozick, Robert
Rawls, John
Rights
Socialism

References
Cohen GA (1995) Self-ownership, freedom and equality. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge
Locke J (1960) Two treatises of government, with introduction,
ed. Laslett P. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Mises L (1951) Socialism. Yale University Press, New Haven
Murphy L, Nagel T (2002) The myth of ownership: taxes and justice.
Oxford University Press, New York
Nozick R (1974) Anarchy, state, and utopia. Basic Books, New York
Otsuka M (2003) Libertarianism without inequality. Clarendon, Oxford
Rawls J (1971) A theory of justice. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Schmidtz S (1991) The limits of government: an essay on the public goods
argument. Westview Press, Boulder
Vallentyne P, Steiner H (eds) (2000) Left libertarianism and its critics: the
contemporary debate. Palgrave, New York

Protectionist Policies
Free Trade
International Organizations
Third World Resistance

Public Good
Common Good

Public Interest
MATT DEATON
Department of Philosophy, University of Tennessee,
Knoxville, TN, USA

Given the presumption that domestic, international, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations must

ultimately justify their actions by reference to how they

represent the will and impact the welfare of the public at
large, clarifying the term public interest is essential for
both analyzing and promoting global justice. Clearly, the
concept is relevant to a range of global issues, from the
practices of the International Monetary Fund, to international property rights regimes, to the legitimacy of
contested governments. While some use public goods
interchangeably with public interest, the latter seems to
not only encompass entitlements and resources, but also
intentions and courses of action in a way the former does
not. Thus, at least three candidate conceptions are available: utility maximization, express public desire, and various perfectionist theories.

Utility Maximization
Utilitarians conceive of public interest in terms of net
utility maximization, attempting to bring about policies
expected to produce the most pleasure or desire satisfaction
overall. Economists, politicians, leaders, and laypeople
alike often deliberate using utilitarian assumptions, even
when unfamiliar with the deeper workings of the theory.
Several problems plague utilitarian accounts of public
interest. Chiefly is the now familiar complaint that it does
not adequately respect the individual. Since maximizing
overall pleasure or desire satisfaction might be best
achieved by oppressing a few, the approach potentially
jeopardizes the rights of minorities. Enslaving blue-eyed
persons, for example, might actually produce more pleasure overall than preserving their freedom since they are
a minority, but this is of course unacceptable. Similarly,
haphazardly storing the worlds nuclear waste on the tiny
island nation of Tuvalu might maximize utility, but is also
unacceptable. The utilitarian seems to view the public as
a single person whose utility should be maximized, rather
than a group of individuals with conflicting interests that
must be fairly balanced.
This has led defenders to place limits on what can be
done in the name of the public good while retaining the
background aim of maximizing utility. While excluding
cases like those above, this move however seems ad hoc
a rationalization instead of a satisfying justification.
Some argue that protecting individuals with a properly
balanced rights scheme is in fact the best way to maximize
utility, rendering the theory compatible with adequate
respect for individuals. Critics have however replied that
it seems odd to think we have a duty to enlarge an
abstract utility pool to maximize pleasure for its own
sake. It is the sanctity of the individual that makes rights
important and utility worth promoting, not the other
way around.

Public Interest

Express Public Desire

Some identify the public interest via direct survey, arguing
that whatever a people consciously desire is by definition
in their interests. Rousseaus general will, which views
the result of a democratic vote as authoritatively identifying and determining the good of all, is one way to capture
this notion. While his approach threatens to reify the
public to the detriment of individuals, as does the utilitarian view above, Rousseau requires citizens to not simply
vote their personal preferences, but according to what they
earnestly believe best for all.
A public can however be mistaken about what is good
for them. A majority could conceivably prefer a particular
policy, earnestly believing it best for the publics interests
as a whole, but mistakenly predict its consequences. For
example, most contemporaries demonstrate their preference for petroleum-based fuels through their purchases,
but this is predicted by scientists to severely hamper our
long-term interests.
Questions also arise concerning the authority of democratic processes and the potential harm done losers. Since
votes are often settled by single-digit percentage points,
perhaps it is inappropriate to equate the express desire of
a slim majority with the interests of the entire public.

Perfectionist Theories
Promoting the public interest for the perfectionist
involves encouraging conformity with a favored conception of the best human life.
Marxists are sometimes considered perfectionists
because they believe humans are at their best when engaged
in creative, productive labor. Promoting the public interest
on their account would modestly entail encouraging working arrangements that empower workers and downplay
profits, and more radically entail democratizing the economy, with public ownership of factories and resources.
Religious perfectionists identify the highest human life
with religious devotion. To the extent that a person satisfies Gods will, meditates, faithfully completes ritual, or
whatever the case may be, he or she approaches human
perfection. Thus, promoting the public interest in the view
of the religious perfectionist entails encouraging or even
enforcing religious conformity and observance.
One problem with perfectionist theories is that they
often overgeneralize. Humans have proven themselves
capable of flourishing according to a plethora of doctrines,
many thriving according to more than one over the course
of their lives. Even Socrates, who valorized the life of the
ascetic truth-seeking philosopher, recommended different
lifestyles for different people, and warned of the

913

frustration that awaits those who choose paths contrary

to their nature.
Perfectionist theories then threaten to recommend policies that might promote the interests of some, but are
likely to run contrary to the interests of many. One solution
offered by liberals like John Rawls is to provide a frame
from within which persons may decide which way of life is
best for them personally. Guaranteeing basic liberties along
with basic resources, such as access to education, basic
health care, and basic sustenance, it is believed individuals
will better identify and promote their good than were it
mandated from some central authority. Rawls considered
fully realizing fair background conditions the core of public
interest domestically, while his international conception
was less demanding, entailing some basic fairness, peace,
stability, and the possibility of cooperation.
As should be apparent, whichever conception of public interest we consider most attractive will likely reciprocally depend on a host of related considerations how we
view democracy, the proper role of governments, the public versus private divide, and the like. Given that these
concepts frame virtually every issue concerning global
justice, and since it is possible that parties often unknowingly use the term with differing meanings in mind, recognizing and making explicit those varied assumptions is
essential to deliberation and progress. For if honoring and
promoting the public interest is key to achieving justice,
we must first understand and agree what the term conveys.

Acknowledgments
The author thanks David Reidy for many helpful suggestions on a draft of this entry.

Related Topics
Democratic Equality
Global Public Goods
Liberal Internationalism
Liberalism
Utilitarianism

References
Christiano T (ed) (2003) Philosophy and democracy: an anthology.
Oxford University Press, New York
Estlund D (ed) (2002) Democracy. Blackwell Publishing, Massachusetts
Kymlicka W (2002) Contemporary political philosophy: an introduction,
2nd edn. Oxford University Press, New York
Rawls J (2003) The law of peoples with The idea of public reason
revisited. Harvard University Press, Massachusetts
Rawls J (2005) Political liberalism, expanded edn. Columbia University
Press, New York
Wall S (2007) Perfectionism in moral and political philosophy.
Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perfectionism-moral

914

Public Reason

Public Reason
DOUGLAS PALETTA
Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, PA, USA

An important feature of liberal societies is that the government makes an effort to justify its laws and actions to
citizens. The United States Supreme Court provides an
example of this practice. The Court rules on fundamental
constitutional issues and justifies its decisions by issuing
lengthy opinions. When issuing its decisions, some kinds
of arguments are acceptable and others, such as theological arguments, are not. The Court justifies its decisions
using only what we might call public reasons. Public
reasons are the sort of considerations that are appropriate
for government to take into account in making decisions
in a democratic society because they are generally acceptable to all citizens. Rawls identifies the standards of public
reason domestically with the ideals embedded in liberal
democracy, primarily the values of freedom and equality.
These considerations constrain the types of arguments
that citizens should give when arguing about fundamental
political issues, such as the essential provisions of the
constitution.
John Rawls develops the idea of public reason as
a kind of political justification appropriate for pluralistic societies. Pluralism presents a problem for the liberal
ideal of legitimacy. In a pluralist society, individuals
affirm a wide range of contradictory religious and
moral doctrines. Due to substantive moral disagreement, justifying constitutional essentials in terms of
any particular religious or moral doctrine would justify
them on a basis that cannot be generally accepted. Public reason solves this problem and allows states to meet
the liberal idea of legitimacy by providing a common set
of standards and reasons for creating, interpreting, and
adjudicating laws. Rather than rely on any substantive
ethical doctrine, these standards emerge from the basic
shared values in a democratic culture. These democratic
values can be understood and interpreted apart from
any further moral, metaphysical, or epistemological
claims. Moreover, the limited nature of these political
standards allows citizens who affirm contradictory
moral doctrines to share a commitment to the political
ideals. For instance, a Christian may believe that people
are fundamentally equal because we are all the children
of God. An atheist may believe that people are equal
because all have the capacity to value. Both the Christian

and the atheist can affirm that citizens should be treated

equally in the public, political sphere even if they disagree about why. In this way, public reason places limits
on what arguments are acceptable in political debates.
While both the Christian and the atheist can argue for
a policy on the basis of the political value of equality
embedded in their shared culture, neither can appeal to
her full moral doctrine.
Applying the idea of public reason globally requires
modifying several elements of how the idea applies in
democratic societies. Globally, individuals accept
a wider range of worldviews and governments. Moreover, Peruvians do not share institutions or culture with
Swedes. The increase in pluralism and decrease in
a common basis strain the possibility of applying public
reason globally. To use public reason globally, the
Peruvians and Swedes need a shared basis like the Christian and atheist. States that satisfy the principle of liberal
legitimacy share a common basis. So long as a state
recognizes the need to justify its actions to its citizens,
the state treats its citizens as free and equal persons.
While the way this liberalism manifests itself in Peru
and Sweden differs, the affirmation of freedom and
equality provide a common basis for giving reasons
about policies that affect both countries. If legislators
and heads of state act in accordance with standards
generally acceptable to all and provide acceptable reasons for their actions, the ideal of public reason can be
realized globally.

Related Topics
Global Democracy
Global Public
Political Legitimacy
Rawls, John
Realistic Utopia
Reciprocity

References
Freeman S (2007) Public reason and political justification. In: Justice
and the social contract. Oxford University Press, New York,
pp 215258
Larmore C (2003) Samuel Freeman. In: Samuel F (ed) The Cambridge
companion to Rawls. Cambridge University Press, New York,
pp 368393
Rawls J (1993) The idea of public reason. In: Political liberalism. Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 212254
Rawls J (1999) The idea of public reason revisited. In: The law of peoples.
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

Punishment

Punishment
THADDEUS METZ
Department of Philosophy, University of Johannesburg,
Auckland Park, Republic of South Africa

Like domestic justice, there are different types of global

justice, ranging from just intervention to economic justice
to just compensation to criminal justice. The latter two
forms of justice are often called nonideal, as they essentially concern just ways of responding to injustice that has
been committed. The main way to differentiate between
compensatory and criminal justice is to note that the latter
is inherently punitive in a way that the former is not. For
the sake of this entry, to act punitively means to intentionally impose hard treatment on a party consequent to
the appearance of an unjust act. In an international context, clear instances of punishment would include: one
state executing a foreign national who had been judged
to have committed an act of terror against it; one state
boycotting members of a political group because of the
latters aggression against another state; and a United
Nations tribunal imprisoning someone found guilty of
war crimes. Note that punishment does not by definition indicate that the hard treatment has been meted out
after a fair trial, by a legitimate authority, or on the guilty
alone; these are desirable forms of punishment, but are not
essential to punishment as such.
A large majority of theoretical debate with regard to
criminal justice at the global level has been concerned to
identify which kinds of punishment of international
agents are morally sound. Three key issues have been:
(1) international sentencing, which concerns the rightness
of international tribunals to prosecute what might be
called large-scale or humanitarian crimes; (2) extraterritorial punishment, most topically regarding the appropriateness of a state punishing a foreign national for acts
committed against it or its citizens while abroad; and
(3) punishment and warfare, where the main issue is
whether punishment of a guilty actor on the global stage
can be a just cause for war. This entry discusses all three
topics, devoting the most space to justice in international
sentencing, which has commanded the most attention
from contemporary moral philosophers, political theorists, and academic lawyers.

International Sentencing
Modeled after the Nuremburg Trials of Nazi war criminals
in 1945, in 1998, the United Nations adopted the Rome

Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC),

a multinational treaty that set up a permanent tribunal
to prosecute individuals for four types of offense, namely,
crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity such as torture and sexual slavery, war crimes such as intentionally
targeting civilians and subjecting prisoners to medical
experimentation, and the crime of aggression. In the
years prior to the establishment of the ICC, the United
Nations Security Council had established special tribunals
to deal with atrocities in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. While
many of the moral issues facing the ICC and these other
courts are similar, this entry focuses exclusively on the
ICC, which is expected to reduce the need for ad hoc
tribunals and to oversee them when they are deemed
necessary.
Although the scope of the ICC is global in one sense,
seeking to try the above four types of crimes wherever they
may occur, it is not in another, since its jurisdiction is in
the first instance a function of those states that have
consented to be bound by it. More than 100 states have
become a party to the Rome Statute, with some notable
exceptions including the United States, Israel, and Russia.
Recent cases pursued by the ICC include those against
individuals from the Congo, the Central African Republic,
Uganda, and Sudan (Darfur).
One might well think that if any actions warrant punishment, it is those such as genocide and crimes against
humanity. However, critics suggest that it is often reasonable to trade off justice for peace, viz., to let those most
responsible for heinous misdeeds go, if necessary and
sufficient to end them. If political leaders committing
atrocities knew that, upon releasing power, they would
be nabbed by the ICC or some other tribunal, then they
would be less inclined to release power, so the argument
goes. Defenders of international sentencing reply by,
among other things, marshaling empirical evidence to
suggest that countries in which atrocities were not prosecuted have tended not to be stable.
A further issue is that, supposing punishment of humanitarian crimes is often justified, it is not obvious that it ought
to be done outside the context where they took place. The
ICC is based at The Hague, a long way from places such as
sub-Saharan Africa. It might be more difficult for the
accused to mount a defense so far away from home; and it
might be less likely that a trial would have healing or reconciliatory effects on a local populace if it were not conducted
in their presence. However, note that the ICC is permitted to
exercise jurisdiction only when national courts are unwilling
or unable to do so themselves.
Yet another controversy regarding the appropriate
body to punish large-scale crimes is the (perceived) lack

915

916

Punishment

of even-handedness in how international prosecution has

been or is likely to be conducted. It is often pointed out
that those prosecuted by the ICC have come exclusively
from developing indeed, African countries, and that
one cannot expect, say, white UK politicians ever to face
charges of crimes of aggression or war crimes. Is there bias
of this sort, and, if so, is it sufficient reason to dismantle
the ICC, supposing the bias is ineradicable?
Additional questions regarding the ICC, beyond
whether it should punish, are: what it should punish,
whom it should punish, and the ultimate reason why it
should punish. First, in terms of what properly counts as
an international crime, more theoretical work needs to
be done to ascertain what, if anything, the four crimes of
genocide, inhumanity, war, and aggression all have in
common. On a more piecemeal basis, some have proposed
broadening what is currently prosecuted at the international level to include drug trafficking and terrorism,
neither of which falls under any of the four headings.
Also, some feminists have argued that normal rape,
outside of wartime, also constitutes a crime against
humanity, as this action targets women as a class even if
it has not been coordinated.
With regard to whom to punish, there is critical discussion about whether the primary objects of punishment
should be those who have given the orders and coordinated the atrocities, on the one hand, or those who have
carried them out, on the other. Additional considerations,
here, include the state of mind required, particularly of the
latter, in order to be liable for international penalties, i.e.,
roughly whether intention to participate in a large-scale
atrocity is necessary for culpability, or whether knowledge
is sufficient.
Finally, there is rich debate about why there should be
a class of crimes prosecuted by an international tribunal
(supposing there should be). A number have argued that
standard philosophical defenses of punishment at the
domestic level do not readily apply to the international
one. First, sporadic punishment of those who have broken
international humanitarian law, which is probably all the
ICC could ever muster, is unlikely to deter. Second, those
who violate such law are unlikely ever to be rehabilitated,
at least not by punishment imposed by an alien body that
offenders deem to lack moral authority. Third, a poor reason
to punish a war criminal is that he has supposedly taken
unfair advantage of law-abiding citizens everywhere on the
globe; the right reason to punish him does not seem to be
that he did what all the innocent wanted to do (or would
have had good reason to do), but restrained themselves
from doing. Fourth, while it is possible for an international tribunal to give an offender the penalty he deserves,

there is no reason to think that only such a tribunal could

do so or would be best placed to. A number have
suggested, in contrast, that the best justification for the
creation and maintenance of the ICC is an expressive
rationale, the idea that the global political community
has a duty to disavow large-scale crimes and to affirm
the worth of their victims, something it can do only with
punishment.

Extraterritorial Punishment
Moving from an international punitive authority to
a national one, the current topic concerns the way territoriality affects a states proper imposition of punishment.
The topic is broad, and includes a state punishing one of
its legal residents for acts committed against others while
in a foreign country (e.g., for sex tourism) and
punishing members of a different political group for acts
committed against the state or its legal residents either
while in its territory or abroad. This entry focuses on the
latter issue, which is of greater interest these days because
of the salience of international terrorism.
Given the fact that terrorism is not included among
the crimes that the ICC may prosecute, few would deny
that, e.g., the United States may punish foreign nationals
who have intentionally imposed serious harm on its territory for the sake of a political cause. However, is this
merely a second best scenario, i.e., would it be better if the
United Nations agreed to give the ICC jurisdiction over
cases of international terrorism?
One major criticism of the United States reactions to
terrorism committed or materially supported by foreign
nationals has been its treatment of prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay. Some complain, for instance, that the
United States has in fact failed to punish; detaining people
indefinitely out of a suspicion of prospective wrongdoing
and torturing them for information are not instances of
punishment these actions are worse, so the argument
goes. Another criticism of United States policy has focused
on the procedures it has been inclined to use to establish
the guilt deemed requisite for punishment of Guantanamo
Bay prisoners. The Military Commissions Act of 2006
permits alien unlawful military combatants to be prosecuted in military tribunals rather than federal courts,
where the former naturally provide less protection to
defendants than the latter.
A further element of debate concerns the kinds of
actions done by foreign nationals that a state may rightly
punish. Current norms permit a state to punish foreign
nationals not only for wrongful actions done on its territory (even if materially supported elsewhere), on the one
hand, but also for those done to its citizens abroad.

Punishment

However, recent work questions whether the latter is justified; if the point of a domestic punishment system is to
ensure that both permanent and temporary residents in
a states territory are protected from harm, then there is no
reason to think that a state should have jurisdiction over
harm done to its citizens when they are in a foreign land.
Even if punitive responses by a given state to foreign
national combatants unaffiliated with a state are justified
in some cases, it might be that a general policy that focuses
principally on punitive reactions to terrorism is ineffective
or even counterproductive. Some would say that if these
empirical claims were true, then a state would in fact lack
a blanket right to punish foreign national terrorists, while
others would say that the state retains the right but would
be foolish, and perhaps lacking in virtue, to exercise it.

Punishment and Warfare

In contrast to the first two major topics, which are about
whether punishment of certain kinds is justified, the third
question asks whether punishment is of such importance
as to justify something else, namely, war. Classic thinkers
who have analyzed the justice of war have tended to
answer affirmatively. Original just war theorists such as
Augustine, Grotius, and Vitoria maintain that punishment can be a just cause for war, that is, an end making
it just to initiate and continue warfare. In the postwar era,
international consensus has tended to shy away from such
a view, with the United Nations Charter suggesting, for
instance, that only a need to prevent or counteract aggression against oneself or others can be a proper aim of war.
Recent work, however, has provided grounds for
reconsidering the strictly aggression-based model of just
cause. Some have argued that war would be justified if it
were authorized by a legitimate international polity as
a way to enforce law. Others have argued that war for the
sake of punishment can be justified in the absence of such
a global authority. For example, while punishment might
not be an aim that is sufficient for a state to be justified in
starting a war on its own, once it has begun a war in order

917

to prevent aggression, it may conduct the war so as to

punish, in particular, with an eye to deterring future
misdeeds.

Related Topics
Capital Punishment
Coercion
Collective Responsibility
Crimes Against Humanity
Global Federalism
Human Rights
International Criminal Court (ICC)
International Criminal Justice
Retribution
Sanctions
Truth Commissions
War Against Terrorism
War Crimes
War, Just and Unjust

References
Bassiouni MC (ed) (1998) International criminal law, 2nd rev edn.
Kluwer Law International, Dordrecht
Chehtman A (2010) The extraterritorial scope of the right to punish.
Law Philos 29:127157
Jokic A (ed) (2001) War crimes and collective responsibility: a reader.
Blackwell, Malden
Lang A (2008) Punishment, justice and international relations: ethics and
order after the cold war. Routledge, London
May L (2005) Crimes against humanity: a normative account. Cambridge
University Press, New York
May L (2007) War crimes and just war. Cambridge University Press,
New York
Rodin D (2002) War and self-defense. Oxford University Press, New York
Scott JB (ed) (1917) Classics of international law. Carnegie Institute,
Washington, DC
Sloane R (2007) The expressive capacity of international punishment.
Stanford J Int Law 43:3994
Symposium on Security and Liberty (2005) Notre Dame Journal of Law,
Ethics, and Public Policy 19:1326
Wringe B (2006) Why punish war crimes? Victors justice and expressive
justifications of punishment. Law Philos 25:159191