At the blog Bleeding Heart Libertarians, Jason Brennan recently posted this picture outlining the distinction between political philosophy and political theory.

Source: Jason Brennan, found here.

On the view Brennan develops, political philosophy isn’t sensitive to empirical facts and it doesn’t pretend to be.  Whereas, political theory claims that it engages in analysis of empirical facts but doesn’t actually do so (at least not in any serious way).  Political philosophy is clear and well argued.  Political theory is neither of these things.  In short, on Brennan’s view, “political philosophy” is synonymous with “good” and “political theory” is synonymous with “bad.”  While Brennan likely meant this description partly in jest, what strikes me is that some people, perhaps including Brennan himself, do have this view of the distinction between political philosophy and political theory.  For example, as a student, I recall that when I asked about the distinction between the two fields of study, people would often say that political theorists do what political philosophers do but that they just weren’t as good at it as political philosophers.  I think this is a prevalent view.

That the view that Brennan describes is false is established by the fact that there are numerous examples of what is typically thought to be “political philosophy” that exhibit the characteristics that Brennan associates with political theory and vice versa.  I won’t name names, but I am certain that many of us can think of examples of work in political philosophy that are unclear, poorly argued, or that claim to engage in facts without actually taking them seriously.  As a political philosopher (in the sense that I describe below), I am less familiar with political theory as a field, but I am equally certain that there are examples of works by political theorists that not only claim to appeal to empirical facts but actually do so and are also rigorously argued.  I think Catherine Lu’s (a Canadian political theorist) work on colonialism and structural injustice is a good recent example of this type of work and there are likely many others.

If all of this is right, then it seems that Brennan got the distinction between political philosophy and political theory wrong.  Perhaps this is obvious.  So, the less obvious matter is, what exactly is the distinction between political theory and political philosophy? What is also less obvious is, why does this distinction matter?

One view of what distinguishes political theory (and which can be phrased in a less negative way than Brennan manages to) is that political theory aims to take empirical facts more squarely into account than political philosophy.  I think this is one standard way of understanding the distinction.  My own view is that, if we understand the distinction between political theory and political philosophy in this way, it is becoming less and less relevant and may even be giving way.  There are many political philosophers who have been and are working hard to take facts into account as part of their theorizing about democracy, justice, and many other topics that are central to political philosophy.  There are many political theorists who have been and are working hard at taking a more philosophical and rigorous approach in their work.  Finally, given the tough job market in philosophy, many people who would traditionally have self-identified as political philosophers will find themselves with positions in political science departments, being labeled as “political theorists” and working with other political theorists.  So, overtime, this will inevitably lead to more overlap in the way that both sorts of thinkers develop their work.

Does this mean that there is no distinction between political philosophy and political theory?  If there is a distinction between political philosophy and political theory, I wonder if it isn’t a practice dependent distinction.  As it is practiced, political philosophers tend to read certain people and work on certain problems in a way that flows from and is framed by the work that they read.  Something similar could be said of political theorists.  For example, it seems to me that one factor that distinguishes those working in contemporary political philosophy from those working in contemporary political theory is what they take their starting points to be.  Many of those working in contemporary political philosophy take Rawls as their starting point.  In contrast, many of those working in contemporary political theory take Habermas as their starting point.  These starting points become the framework for approaching the problems and issues that members of each group pursue and which, I think, leads to some difference in how these problems and issues are conceptualized and analyzed by members of each group.  Another difference might be related to the sorts of journals that each group reads.  Political philosophers traditionally do not read Political Studies or Political Theory.   And many political theorists traditionally may not read Ethics.

This is all to say, I don’t think that there is a deep difference between political philosophy and political theory.  As the practices of each approach become similar and intertwined, the distinction is likely to fade.  I think this is likely to lead to some of the most interesting and fruitful work in political philosophy.

In the end, I also don’t think that the matters of whether there is and what the distinction between political philosophy and political theory might be are of much significance.  What matters more is the question of what kind of practice counts as good practice when it comes to theorizing about political matters, whether one works in political philosophy or political theory.  Clarity and rigorous argumentation are essential to good theorizing in any field, but are perhaps of particular importance when it comes to political issues (because of their connection to the real world).  Knowledge of facts and at least being sensitive to the connection between facts and theory may also be a necessary component of good theorizing about political matters.  Furthermore, at least one of the things that Brennan identifies as a problem with political theory is something that should be understood as required for good theorizing in both political philosophy and political theory, namely, citation.  As has been pointed out numerous times elsewhere, philosophers, including political philosophers, are particularly bad at citing other relevant and related work and, as a result, may tend to rehash ideas that have already been discussed and criticized rather than developing new ideas.  This practice does not lead to progress within the field.  So, significant citation may not be a matter of “showing off”, as Brennan puts it, but rather a demand of rigour and perhaps should be identified as such.  These are just a few ideas.  There are likely many more qualities that good political philosophy and political theory should aspire to.  This is something worth discussing.

I am pleased to welcome Rekha Nath. Rekha Nath is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama.  She specializes in political philosophy and ethics, with a particular interest in global justice.  She received her B.A. in philosophy and political science from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Melbourne.  Recent publications include, ‘Equal Standing in the Global Community,’ The Monist, 94.4, pp. 593-614, (2011); ‘Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right: A Critique of Virginia Held’s Deontological Justification of Terrorism,’ Social Theory and Practice, 37.4, pp. 679-696, (2011); and ‘The commitments of cosmopolitanism,’ Ethics & International Affairs, 24.3, pp. 319-333, (2010).

Her post follows.

–MK

Social equality offers an explanation of why equality is valuable. On this view, the fundamental object of egalitarian concern is relationships: people ought to relate to one another on terms of equality. But what is the scope of the theory? That is, who ought to structure their interaction with whom on terms of equality?

To investigate this issue, consider a case that builds on one discussed by Michael Blake in ‘Distributive justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy.’ Borduria and Syldavia are societies that reside on opposite sides of a mountain and have long been unaware of each other’s existence. The Bordurians enjoy a much higher standard of living than the Syldavians, in part enabled by the comparative abundance of valuable natural resources in the Bordurian territory.  One day, the Syldavians traverse the mountain and find themselves in Borduria.

Fast forward some twenty years to a time when the Bordurians and Syldavians have forged widespread economic and political ties. Although mutually beneficial, these arrangements disproportionately serve the Bordurians’ interests. Bordurian corporations have set up factories in Syldavia, where labor is plentiful and cheap. The average Bordurian consumer now has access to a wider range of cheap manufactured goods, and the standard of living is improving across the board for Bordurian citizens.

In contrast, Syldavian citizens are only slightly better off in material terms as a result of the cross-society arrangements. Prior to establishing these arrangements, they accepted their way of life, knowing no other possibility. Now they strive for what the Bordurians have. But opportunities for social and economic advancement are lacking. Syldavian migrant workers in Borduria take the lowest paying jobs without a path to citizenship. They reside in slums and are not welcomed to join in the Bordurian civic life. Bordurians treat them as inferiors, and that is how they feel.

The terms of interaction between the Bordurians and Syldavians are inegalitarian. What might a call for greater equality require? More equal relations could be achieved in a plurality of ways. For instance, an international political decision-making body giving Bordurians and Syldavians an equal voice in determining the nature of their interaction could be established.  The Bordurian government could take steps to promote social inclusion of immigrants and greater parity in material gains enabled by international cooperation.

Should the Bordurians and Syldavians strive for more egalitarian relations? Initially, one might think not. It might seem that the Bordurians and Syldavians weren’t obligated to forge relations—economic, social, or political ones—in the first place.  So, it seems that now, rather than having to radically alter their relationships with the Syldavians as per the proposed measures, the Bordurians could legitimately sever all forms of cross-border interaction, going back to the situation of autarky. In doing so, there would no longer be any relationships between them that might be judged inegalitarian. In sum, if members of both societies voluntarily choose to interact, why should they have to structure their relations on terms of equality?

To my mind, however, for the Bordurians to address the unequal terms of interaction by cutting off relations with the Syldavians would be unacceptable. Rather, they ought to aim for greater equality in their relations. I will propose a way that a theory of social equality can account for this intuition.

Let’s go back to the time when the two societies initially made contact. Suppose that the first Syldavians to make their way into Borduria marvel at how much better things are on this side of the mountain. Wandering into a vast orchard, these Syldavians stake a claim to a few small plots, which look rather neglected.  After the Syldavians have been tending to their newly acquired land for a few months, some Bordurians inform them that they are trespassing and that if they do not leave immediately the authorities will be called.  So, this is a case in which parties make competing claims to the use of the same resource.

Whenever parties are positioned to make such competing claims, addressing those claims is unavoidable.  It might seem otherwise.  After all, such parties could retreat from their conflict.  For example, the Syldavians could abandon the orchards and return to their home country.  However, retreating is not neutral: it affects how the competing claims are resolved.  The Syldavians’ taking that course of action settles the conflict in the Bordurians’ favor. Effectively, then, retreating is a way of addressing the claims.

So, the question then arises of how individuals positioned to make competing claims ought to address those claims. And this is a question of distributive justice: to what distributive shares are these individuals entitled? The terms that define people’s distributive entitlements, adjudicating between competing claims, can affect the character of their relationships—including the extent to which they are egalitarian.  If people’s relationships ought to be structured on terms of equality, then it follows that the design of these terms should be sensitive to that consideration.  This reasoning provides a basis for taking the institutional terms that result in the inegalitarian relations between Bordurians and Syldavians to be unjust. These terms are unjust for upholding a distribution that is incompatible with egalitarian relations. To summarize, in virtue of the unavoidability of addressing competing claims concerning material shares, demands of distributive justice arise; and satisfying these demands requires sensitivity to the character of social and political relations.

The foregoing reasoning supports the following principle: whenever individuals are positioned to make competing claims concerning material resources, the demands of social equality—that they relate as equals—are activated.  This principle has implications for an important question on the scope of social equality, namely, whether social equality applies only among those who share a state.  Plainly individuals who do not share a state can be positioned to make competing claims concerning material resources, as the Borduria/Syldavia case illustrates. Therefore, by the competing-claims principle, it follows that social equality need not be limited in its application to individuals who share a state.

My argument provides a framework for determining where the demand for egalitarian relations arises.  This is an issue that has not received sufficient attention in the social equality literature. Some authors who discuss social equality take relations of equality to be morally valuable for reasons independent of distributive justice (e.g. Martin O’Neill, David Miller, and Charles Beitz). That view does not deliver an answer to the question of where the demand to address inegalitarian relations applies: it simply takes inegalitarian relations to be objectionable wherever we find them.  Other authors endorse the commitment that I defend, that the two values, social equality and distributive justice, are inextricably linked.  Authors in this camp (e.g. Elizabeth Anderson and Samuel Scheffler) tend not to take a stand on the scope issue.  Samuel Freeman is an exception.  But he holds that demands of distributive justice, and thus of social equality, only apply in the state—a view that should be rejected if my argument is sound.

I am very happy to welcome the next featured Political Philosop-her,  Japa Pallikkathayil.  She is an assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of Pittsburgh.  She works on issues at the intersection of moral and political philosophy.  She has recently focused on the topics of coercion, deception, and exploitation.  Recent publications include,  “Deriving Morality from Politics: Rethinking the Formula of Humanity”, Ethics Vol. 121, No. 1 (October 2010), pp. 116-147 and  “The Possibility of Choice: Three Accounts of the Problem of Coercion”, Philosophers’ Imprint, Vol. 11, No. 16.

Her post follows.

–MK

Morality and the Market

I have been puzzlingly lately over the morality of market transactions.  My puzzlement has been inspired by Elizabeth Anderson’s “The Ethical Limitations of the Market.”  In that piece, Anderson argues that the norms of the marketplace are in tension with the norms of personal and civic relationships in various ways.  She uses that tension to argue against the commodification of various goods and activities – some things ought not be available for purchase.  I am interested in a somewhat different problem that her framework makes apparent – there are some contexts in which the use of the norms of marketplace is inappropriate because of the circumstances of the potential participants rather than the nature of the items up for exchange.

The central feature of market transactions that Anderson identifies is their impersonality: “The producers and consumers of economic goods are typically strangers. Each party to a market transaction views one’s relation to the other as merely a means to the satisfaction of ends defined independently of the relationship and of the other party’s ends” (Anderson, 182).  For anyone with Kantian leanings, and maybe for anyone at all, this language is striking.  How could it ever be appropriate for me to view you merely as a means to my ends?

Suppose you are having a garage sale.  I come to consider your offerings and spot an attractive vase.  You have listed the price as $15 but I judge the vase to be worth only $10 to me.  I offer you $10 and you accept.  I don’t consider what you would have done with the extra $5 and in that way I am blind to your ends.  But I take you to have considered what you valued more – the $10 or the vase – and so I take it that the transaction furthers your ends in some way.  And this way of mutually furthering each others’ ends is straightforwardly more efficient than deliberating together about our respective ends.  So, I think it is important to distinguish between the blindness towards others ends involved in market transactions and indifference towards those ends.  It may be that there are circumstances in which I best attend to your ends by, in a sense, ignoring them.

But there are at least two types of circumstances in which this way of respecting you and your ends is untenable.  First, consider someone who has been subjected to injustice.  Suppose, for example, I discover that you are having the garage sale because you are being unjustly evicted from your home (your landlord is violating the terms of your lease but you lack the resources to defend yourself.)  There are two respects in which this situation should unsettle my use of market norms.  First, you lack the control over your resources that you are entitled to have.  In this way, your willingness to accept $10 for the vase becomes suspect – it may not reflect the discretion you are entitled to have over your ends.  Second, I should worry about being the beneficiary of injustice.  Although I am not the perpetrator of the injustice, using the injustice to further my ends taints them.

Before gesturing towards a strategy for dealing with this kind of situation, let me introduce the second type of circumstance in which abiding by the norms of the marketplace does not suffice to respect you and your ends.  Suppose that I discover that you are having the garage sale to pay for your child’s chemotherapy.  Here the direness of your circumstances should unsettle my use of market norms for two reasons.  First, the use of market norms presupposes that I am entitled to discretion about whether to contribute to your ends or not.  But I may not be permitted to simply walk away from your plight.  Sorting out our duties to aid is, however, a difficult task.  I won’t attempt to do that here and, in any case, the second reason market norms are inappropriate in this context does not rely on a view of duties to aid.  This second reason focuses on the kinds of ends that are under consideration.  There is something grotesque about treating your end of saving your child’s life and my end of decorating my home as equivalently important.  But market norms suggest this very comparison – I help you save your child, but only to the extent that this helps me decorate my home, as if these ends were somehow on a par.  In this way, using market norms in this context reflects a misunderstanding of the values in play.

If market norms are inappropriate in contexts involving injustice and survival, what norms should we abide by instead?  Here I want to caution against thinking that the only alternative to market norms are the norms of charity.  Kyla Ebels-Duggan has an illuminating discussion of the moral pitfalls of regarding oneself as another’s benefactor (see her “Against Beneficence: A Normative Account of Love”).  She suggests that, rather than seeing others as the passive recipients of our good will, we should instead try to share their ends in a way that requires active engagement with them.   In the cases above, what I need to do is not merely to attend to your ends in the ways I think are best but to work with you to consider how best to address our respective situations.  Maybe I should pay full price for your vase.  Maybe I should contribute to your ends without any exchange.  Maybe I should do something entirely different.  This is something for us to settle together.

Large portions of the world’s population are subjected to injustice or struggling to survive, or both.  But many of these individuals contribute in substantial ways to the global marketplace.  If what I have argued is correct, those of us who are not subjected to injustice or struggling to survive should be very troubled by most of our market transactions.  These transactions involve us in a blindness to the ends of others that is not justifiable.

In my earlier posts, I challenged Hassoun’s arguments regarding the coerciveness of loan conditionality and then I developed my own positive account  regarding this matter.  In her response, Hassoun attempts to give reasons showing that (1) focusing on “coercive rules” rather than “coercion” is sufficient to make her case for the coerciveness of something like international loan conditionality and (2) that my new account of the coerciveness of international loan conditionality faces its own problems.  I would like to try out some responses to both of these concerns.

First, Hassoun writes, “the important question for me is not whether the IMF and WB succeed in coercing people, but whether they subject people to coercive rules. I tend to think that both the person in Krishnamurthy’s example and those in the IMF/WB case are subject to coercive rules even if they are not successfully coerced and I expect Krishnamurthy accepts this point and thinks that the person in her example is subject to coercive rule.”

I am not sure that I do accept this point.  Reconsider the example Hassoun has in mind.

Conversion 2 (C2):

S has always wanted to become a Catholic.  S decides to carry out this plan and walks over to Mother Teresa’s mission.  S is also starving and desperate for food.  Mother Teresa, says, “I will give you food, if you convert to Catholicism.”  S consents to the conversion.

Hassoun’s thought is that while S may not be “successfully coerced,”  he is “subject to coercive rules.”  Whether this is the case will depend on what exactly it means to be subject to coercive rules.  I am tempted to say that

S is subject to a set of coercive rules just in case that S is coerced by a set of rules. 

On my view, there is no relevant distinction between “successful coercion” and “being subject to coercive rule.”  Any difference between the two is merely terminological and not substantive.  On my view, S is not successfully coerced by Mother Theresa and S is not subject to Mother Teresa’s coercive rules.  S is acting according to her own rules – i.e., S’s rule: convert to Catholicism at first opportunity – and not those of another agent.

Second, Hassoun gives two counterexamples to my proposed motivation-based account of coercion.  Hassoun suggests that, according to my account, (1) “one may have to agree that whether or not a man subjects you to coercive rule by sticking a gun in your mouth and demanding your money depends on whether or not you want to give it to him for other reasons”;  (2) “the fact that you happen to like your government’s rules and follow them of your own free will does not seem to me to make you one wit less subject to their coercive force.”

The first example is meant as a kind of reductio.  Hassoun is suggesting that it would be absurd to hold, as my account of coercion requires, that you are not subject to coercion (or coercive rule in Hassoun’s lingo) if giving over your money is one of your aims or ends.  In response, I wonder if it really is so absurd?  Part of the seeming absurdity, I think, flows from the contentiousness of the example.  If we take a less contentious example (borrowed from Jappa Pallaikathyil’s comment on an earlier post), then the plausibility of my conclusions becomes more apparent.  “Suppose I am destitute, on the brink of starvation, etc. and someone offers me my dream job with a very high salary.”  In this case, as Pallaakathayil notes, it would be weird to say that I am coerced into accepting the offer.  I am accepting the offer because of the aims that I have.  This is what motivates me to act as I do, not the dire circumstances I find myself in.  Similarly, if I really did have the aim of giving over my money to you and that aim continued to motivate me to act despite the the dire circumstances that I find myself in (that is, with a gun to my head), then I think it would be similarly weird to say that I was coerced into giving you my money.  In this case, I would be acting on my own aims and commitments.  (For more thoughts on this issue see the comment section on this earlier post.)

This, however, is not to say that there is nothing wrong with what is being done to you, when someone holds a gun to your head (or hangs you from your toes), even if it is consistent with your aims or ends.  My point is simply that you are not being coerced.  A different sort of wrongdoing may occur, but the nature of this wrongdoing is less clear.  For example, the person with the gun may be attempting to coerce you by aiming a gun in your mouth (imagine they did not know that giving up your money was one of your aims).  (In the second case, regarding the government’s rules, something similar may be happening, though I am admittedly less sure here.)  There does seem to be something wrong with attempted coercion.  However, the reasons explaining the wrongness of attempted coercion are different in kind than those explaining the wrongness of successful coercion.  As I suggested earlier, successful coercion is wrong because it interferes with an individual’s autonomy.  Attempted coercion, however, does not interfere with an individual’s autonomy.   And, at least, at this point, I am not entirely clear on why attempted coercion is wrong.

Ultimately, I think, what Hassoun is interested in is attempted coercion and how the global institutional order (including loan conditionality) is an example of attempted coercion.  For her arguments to be successful, she needs to give a story as to why attempted coercion is wrong (and why it stands in need of justification in the same way that successful coercion does).  For my part, I am interested in thinking about successful coercion and why loan conditionality is best understood as an example of this phenomenon.  I am interested in successful coercion largely because, unlike in the case of attempted coercion, the nature of the wrongess is clear.  Furthermore, to the extent that loan conditionality is coercive, the nature of the wrongdoing is also clear: it interferes with individual’s autonomy.

The Philosopher’s Annual has published a list of the best articles in Philosophy.  While I have no doubt that these are among the very best articles of the year, as a political philosopher, I could not help but notice that there are no articles in the area of political philosophy.  After doing an admittedly quick search, I noticed that the last articles in the area of political philosophy to appear in the Annual were in Vol. XXV, from the literature of 2002, by  Christopher F. Zurn, “Deliberative Democracy and Constitutional Review,” from Law and Philosophy and Vol. XXIV, from the literature of 2001, by Liam Murphy & Thomas Nagel, “Taxes, Redistribution and Public Provision” from Philosophy and Public Affairs.  Indeed, if we look at the period before 2002, there were a number of other articles in the area of political philosophy featured in the Annual.  The lack of papers in political philosophy might be explained by the fact that, at least this year, only one or two of the nominating editors work directly in political philosophy.  This may be true also of the years after 2002 (I am not certain about this because I could not find the list of nominating editors for the other issues online).  It also seems that, in recent years, other areas such as philosophy of race, feminist philosophy, and applied ethics are severely underrepresented among the chosen articles and among the nominating board of editors.

This leaves me curious about how the board of nominating editors is chosen. In choosing the nominating board, do the editors aim for some sort of balance among various areas of philosophy? What are the criteria for selection?

On a positive note, there are a good number of articles by women in the Philosopher’s Annual and a number of women among the nominating editors.  This is to be commended.  I hope that, in the future, the editors will also seek to be more inclusive of political philosophers and of philosophers working in other currently underrepresented areas.

Thanks to Eric Schliesser and Alex Guerrero for encouraging me to write this post.

UPDATE: As Alex Guerrero notes on Facebook, the Annual has recently published a few articles that may be thought to be in the area of legal philosophy, which can be seen as a subfield of political philosophy.  However, as he suggests, the pieces that have tended to be chosen are actually much closer to other fields than legal and political philosophy, such as this year’s piece by David Enoch, Levi Spectre & Talia Fisher, “Statistical Evidence, Sensitivity, and the Legal Value of Knowledge,” from Philosophy and Public Affairs 20 (3), 197-224 and last year’s piece by John F. Horty, “Rules and Reasons in the Theory of Precedent,” from Legal Theory.

UPDATE: As Eric Schliesser points out at New Apps, Ryan Muldoon has noted that there is a piece in the Annual, Vol. XXVII, from the literature of 2007, in the area of formal political theory by Peter Vanderschraaf, “Covenants and Reputations,” from Synthese.  This may count as an example of work in political philosophy, but, again, I would argue that, like the other pieces in legal philosophy in the Annual, it is closer to other areas of philosophy.  Moreover, as Alex Guerrero noted on Facebook, even if it does count, this would be only one piece in political philosophy in the last 11 years.

Eric Schliesser also makes some good points about the tendency of the Annual to give an “extremely one-sided perspective on the history of philosophy.”  Check out his post.

I am happy to welcome Nicole Hassoun as the next featured political philosop-her. Nicole Hassoun is an associate professor in philosophy at Binghamton University. From 2006-2012 she was an assistant professor in philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University, affiliated with Carnegie Mellon’s Program on International Relations and the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Bioethics and Health Law. In 2009-2010 she held a postdoctoral position at Stanford University and visited at the United Nation’s World Institute for Development Economics Research. She has also been a visiting scholar at the Center for Poverty Research in Austria and the Center for Advanced Studies in Frankfurt. Her book Globalization and Global Justice: Shrinking Distance, Expanding Obligations was recently published with Cambridge University Press.

Her post follows.

–MK

In her recent post on my book (and lovely comments at the MANCEPT author meets critics’ session) Professor Krishnamurthy’s worries about the conception of coercion I endorse and suggests a potential counter example. Her comments suggest to me that I should have been clearer exactly how the argument proceeds in the section of my book on coercion. Krishnamurthy says that I hold that “if X consents to rule R being imposed on her by Y but X has no other options available to her but to abide by R, X’s consent is coerced by Y.” It is true that I think something like this claim is often assumed by those who think that conditionality is coercive, but I was not trying to suggest this as the definitively correct account of coercion. So let me take a few steps back to retrace the argument in the section of my book on coercion.

The section of my book on coercion starts by trying to delimit the landscape of plausible theories. I say an institution is coercive when individuals or groups violating its rules are likely to face sanctions for the violation where a sanction is a punishment or penalty. “Coercion usually creates the conditions under which the coerced have no good alternative except to do what their coercer wants them to do. This is usually explained by the fact that the coerced are threatened by sanctions” (50). Coercion may or may not undermine autonomy and can include the use of brute force. People can be coerced into doing what they would otherwise freely do. I note that, on some accounts of coercion, offers as well as threats can be coercive and there are different baselines relative to which something counts as a threat (51). Threats may have to violate rights or may just have to make people worse off than they can otherwise (reasonably) expect to be.

That said, I do not offer an account of coercion in the book. The main point of the section on coercion in the book is not to argue that conditionality is coercive but to argue that there are many coercive international institutions in a way that liberals who endorse a wide variety of accounts of coercion might accept. (I do have a paper on conditionality here). I cannot offer a controversial conception of coercion in the book and conclude (as I try to do) that most liberals should agree that there are many coercive international institutions. Rather, I try to proceed systematically through the landscape of plausible theories and explain why I think they would all support this conclusion. I argue that whether one accepts an account of coercion on which coercion must be directly exercised against agents by international institutions or can be indirectly exercised by states, whether one accepts an account of coercion on which there can be coercive offers or only threats, whether one accepts an account of coercion on which coercion must violate rights or just make one worse off than one would otherwise be, and whether one accepts a conception of rights on which there are positive (or just negative) rights, there is reason to think many international institutions are coercive.

The example of conditionality is supposed to appeal to those who accept certain rights-based accounts of coercion, if we grant that people and countries have rights to IMF and WB loans on much more concessionary terms than they are offered. The thought is that, then, they are coerced into accepting the conditions on these loans. In effect – they are threatened with not getting the money they have a right to (on much better terms) unless they agree to the terms these institutions specify. I point out that some would object that only states are coercing people into enforcing the conditions on the loans (e.g. implementing austerity measures). However, I suggest that if states have no good option but to accept and abide by the conditions on the loans, international institutions may bear some responsibility for the fact that states are coercing their people. I also point out that the case for thinking people are coerced by institutions like the IMF and WB in examples like these is stronger insofar as these institutions have contributed to the fact that countries have no good option but to accept, and abide by, the conditions on the loans.

To object to the claim that someone is coerced when they lack good options but to consent, Krishnamurthy gives her purported counter example of someone who lacks sufficient food but has the autonomy necessary to agree to the only offer in town – Mother Teresa’s offer to give him food if he will become a Christian. As I will explain below, I think the crucial question for my audience is whether or not the person is subject to coercive rules in the example. I think people can be coerced even if they are autonomous, but this is not essential for my argument. That is, the important question for me is not whether the IMF and WB succeed in coercing people, but whether they subject people to coercive rules. I tend to think that both the person in Krishnamurthy’s example and those in the IMF/WB case are subject to coercive rules even if they are not successfully coerced and I expect Krishnamurthy accepts this point and thinks that the person in her example is subject to coercive rule. If this is so, I think my arguments show that Mother Theresa must ensure that the person can secure (and generally maintain) sufficient autonomy for it to be legitimate to coerce him. If Professor Krishnamurthy disagrees then she must reject one of the premises in my argument – either showing that one of the liberal theories of legitimacy to which I appeal is not committed  to this conclusion or rejecting liberalism. That said, I might agree with her view of this case if Mother Theresa’s conditions do not constitute coercive rule. So, on one way of looking at her case, it poses the question of whether individual relationships must be free in the way that I suggest the relationship between coercive institutional rulers and individuals must be free. I need to think about this further.

In a subsequent post, Krishnamurthy suggests we should endorse a different motivation-based conception of coercion. On her account, one’s consent or choice is coerced by someone iff one would not (“at least in part”) have made that choice but for the person’s action. In trying to make the case that there are many coercive international institutions – I do not consider whether motivation matters. I expect that if one thinks it matters, one could still accept the conclusion that there are many coercive international institutions — one will just find different examples of international coercion convincing. But I do not think the idea that motivation matters for deciding whether people are subject to coercive rules is plausible. Otherwise one may have to agree that whether or not a man subjects you to coercive rule by sticking a gun in your mouth and demanding your money depends on whether or not you want to give it to him for other reasons. Now I can see the truth in the story of the Buddhist monk who tells his persecutor that he does not have a problem even when suspended by his shoelaces over a gaping abyss because it is the persecutor who has to decide whether or not to drop him. Still, the fact that you happen to like your government’s rules and follow them of your own free will does not seem to me to make you one wit less subject to their coercive force. How do we account for this? I think we must attend carefully to the distinction between an account of coercion and coercive institutions (something Krishnamurthy’s comments helpfully suggest I should have been clearer about in the book). A success condition may be necessary for a plausible account of coercion but it should not be part of an account of what makes institutions coercive. I think we should be asking whether the IMF and WB subject states to coercive rules, not whether states are coerced by these institutions, in trying to decide whether or not the IMF and WB are legitimate.

I am very pleased to welcome Michele Moody-Adams as a featured Philosop-her. Michele Moody-Adams is Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University. She has also served as an academic administrator for much of her career,  most recently as Dean of Columbia College and Vice President for Undergraduate Education at Columbia from 2009-2011.  Moody-Adams has published broadly in ethics, political philosophy and the history of philosophy, and is the author of a widely cited book on moral relativism and moral objectivity, Fieldwork in Familiar Places:  Morality, Culture and Philosophy.  She is currently working on a series of interrelated concerns for democratic theory:  including the problem of democratic stability,  the problem of democratic disagreement,  democracy and civic virtues, and  the relationship between memory and democracy.  She is also completing a book length project on the moral demands that history makes through calls for reparations, reconciliation, national apologies and forgiveness.

Her post follows.

–MK

Political Philosophy or Political Theory:  A Distinction without a Difference? 

How do we distinguish political philosophy from political theory?  This has been a lively topic in the academic blogosphere for at least a decade.  After reconsidering the opening pages of Rawls’s Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (JFR),  in which Rawls raises the question of what role political philosophy might play in political practice, I want to extend the debate.  I want to argue that Rawls’s account helps to counter the charge that political philosophy is too prone to “abstraction” and too detached from political life to be capable of making a difference in the “real” world, and to suggest that his account generates reasonable doubt that we can reliably distinguish between political philosophy and political theory.

In Section One of JFR, Rawls considers four ways in which political philosophy can have practical political impact:

(1)  by helping to settle divisive political conflict, through uncovering deeper bases of agreement underlying the conflicting views;

(2)  by serving as a source of conceptual “orientation,” to assist  those who seek a reflective understanding of their society’s political institutions;

(3)  by encouraging “reconciliation” with generally defensible political institutions, displaying their (overall) rationality and calming “frustration and rage” at institutions which may depart from important tenets of our individual comprehensive conceptions;

(4)  by “probing the limits of political possibility,”  to yield a “realistically utopian” and hopeful vision of a shared political  future. 

It is relatively unproblematic to hold that political philosophy might help to resolve disagreement and contribute to shaping the self-conceptions of reflective citizens.  But we may worry that the (broadly Hegelian) project of “reconciliation” might seem to encourage an uncritical quietism that is likely to silence social criticism and change.  Reconciliation, however, is only one of the roles that Rawls thinks political philosophy may play. That project is dwarfed by the majesty of Rawls’s lifelong effort to understand the requirements of justice in a liberal democratic society, and to do so in a fashion that richly extends our understanding of the limits of political possibility.  This effort has profoundly affected how reflective people (both outside and inside the academy) think about liberty, equality, and the relation between them—even among critics of Rawls’s views.  Rawls’s work has also influenced efforts to reshape the basic institutions of liberal democratic societies (as well as the relations between them and other less well-off societies).   In fact, the extraordinary reach of Rawls’s work makes it difficult to maintain convincingly that political philosophy is too abstract or detached to make a difference in political society.

Even the difficult and systematic political philosophy of a thinker such as Rawls, then, is deeply engaged with political practice.  Still, there will be those who want to defend the claim of broad philosophical detachment from political reality.  Some will argue that political theorists simply care more than political philosophers do about the real world of political action and institutions.  It may also be said that political theorists who are interested in the history of political thought typically attend more fully than political philosophers to the question of how political ideas emerge from particular socio-historical contexts, and to the problem of what role political ideas play in reshaping the contexts from which they emerged.  Those who understand “political theory” in these terms will insist that even when political philosophers begin by professing interest in historical context, or the data of political life, they quickly become preoccupied with analyzing the concepts and commitments that underwrite political life and with addressing questions more at home in epistemology, metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and logic.  When the focus of their work turns primarily to answering such questions, it will be urged, political philosophy becomes unavoidably “abstract” and “detached” from the real world. Michael Walzer has defended this view by seconding Wittgenstein’s observation, in Zettel,  that “The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas; that is what makes him a philosopher.”

Walzer goes on to claim, in Interpretation and Social Criticism, that political philosophy’s detachment from practice is revealed in philosophical attempts of to discover or invent new political or moral principles that bear insufficient connection to everyday life.  Rawls’s work on the difference principle, he argues, is a crucial example:  for Walzer, the difference principle can be understood only if we see it as the outcome of an elaborate process of invention.   Yet, Rawls consistently (and I think convincingly) maintained that the difference principle is an interpretation:  it as a way of articulating a conception of reciprocity, and an attempt to produce a reasonable interpretation of the idea of mutual benefit.

Some will reject Rawls’s interpretations of the concepts of mutual benefit and reciprocity either as intrinsically indefensible, or as incompatible with institutions that might allow us to realize other important political values.    But it is one thing to produce an unconvincing interpretation of a familiar concept, and an altogether different thing to invent a new political concept or idea.  More important, any attempt to elaborate disagreement with Rawls’s interpretations will bring home just how fully engaged Rawls’s work was in drawing out, and systematizing, the considered convictions that shape reasonably just, but actually existing,  liberal democratic institutions.  From the early arguments in the 1950’s, through the late work in  JFR (2001), Rawls’s engagement with political practice consistently confirmed that moral and political philosophy are unavoidably connected to the data and experience of everyday life, and that genuine moral and political inquiry are fundamentally interpretive projects.  [I elaborate various aspects of these claims in my “Theory, Practice and the Contingency of Rorty’s Irony” (1994);  Fieldwork in Familiar Places (1997); and “The Idea of Moral Progress,”  (1999).]

It may be true that what is typically called political theory tends to have a closer link with contextually rich details of political institutions and empirical data than do the projects we typically designate as political philosophy.  But anyone who reads the work of contemporary political thinkers concerned about such topics as global justice, human rights, multiculturalism, and gender and racial inequalities, will appreciate that, whether it comes from self-described political philosophers or political theorists, the most compelling work in this area is deeply engaged with contextual details.  As a result, it is sometimes difficult to know when to treat the relevant work as political philosophy and when to see it as political theory.   But, in many instances, such work is effective for precisely this reason: it challenges our sense of how to draw the boundary between the two disciplines.

Even when we feel relatively confident drawing the boundary in a particular case, the fact that a theory has a central focus on “practice” and “the empirical” does not guarantee that it will have a practical impact on political life and institutions.   In the realm of the political (as, indeed, in any kind of theorizing) the “gap” between theory and practice can be bridged only by agents who are able to draw out the lessons of a theory and who are also willing, sometimes in the face of resistance, to try to put those ideas into practice.   Political theory and political philosophy, alike, have effects in the world only by means of such agents—some of whom may also be political theorists and/or political philosophers, but many of whom (perhaps understandably) are not. (I discuss this issue at length in “The Idea of Moral Progress”).  It bears emphasizing that some of the most influential and effective “gap-bridging” political agents have been inspired by the thought-experiments produced in political philosophy, and that this work, by re-interpreting familiar concepts and practices, expands the limits of political possibility and encourages us to see ourselves and our institutions in new ways.  Indeed, an inspiring thought-experiment in political philosophy can sometimes be more effective at inspiring and empowering agents of political change than even the most empirically rich political theory.

Yet whether political thought self-consciously adopts the label of political philosophy or political theory, or claims to be a complex hybrid, too often it still remains insufficiently attentive to facts about liberal democracies that reveal just how far we are from even a “realistic” utopia.  (Regrettably, even Rawls’s treatment of these issues in his late work seems to fall short of the mark.)  An important virtue of continuing work on gender inequality, racial discrimination, class inequalities, and the challenge of global justice, is the clarity with which this work reveals some of the shortcomings of conventional political thought.  Lasting remedies for these shortcomings will depend upon three developments: (a) widespread recognition that neither political philosophy nor political theory can be done apart from a serious engagement with political reality; (b) broader appreciation of the fact that the best work in each discipline has always reflected such engagement; (c) finally, greater intellectual openness –particularly within the academy—to work that straddles any supposed boundaries between political philosophy and political theory.  In short, further progress in political thought depends upon facing the very real possibility that the distinction between political philosophy and political theory may be a distinction without a difference.

My earlier discussion of Hassoun’s view of the coerciveness of loan conditionality aimed to show that a new account of coercion is needed, namely, an account that takes into account the motivation of the person that is purported to be coerced.  By way of starting to develop (this is all very tentative!) a view of coercion that takes this into account, consider two examples.

Conversion 1 (C1):

S is opposed to organized religion and has committed to not associating with organized religions of any kind.  S is starving and desperate for food.  S bumps into Mother Teresa.  Mother Teresa, says, “I will give you food, if you convert to Catholicism.”  S consents to the conversion.

Conversion 2 (C2):

S has always wanted to become a Catholic.  S decides to carry out this plan and walks over to Mother Teresa’s mission.  S is also starving and desperate for food.  Mother Teresa, says, “I will give you food, if you convert to Catholicism.”  S consents to the conversion.

In assessing whether coercion occurs in either of these cases, we need to take into account S’s motivation for consenting to the conversion.  Two factors are at play in S’s motivation for consenting to the conversion in C1.  First, is Mother Teresa’s offer.  She states, “I will give you food, if you convert to Catholicism.”  If Mother Teresa had not offered to give S food for S’s conversion, then S would not have consented to the conversion.  Second, is S’s desire.  S has the rational desire not to starve.  Together these two things motivate S’s consent to conversion in C1.

In order to determine whether S’s consent is genuine, we must consider both of S’s underlying motivations for accepting the offer that Mother Teresa makes.  I think, the second factor described above – the desire – is relevant to our assessment of whether S’s consent is genuine.  In C1, S consents to Mother Teresa’s offer not because of her own plan to convert to Catholicism.  S consents to Mother Teresa’s offer because of her desire not to starve.  The desire not to starve is certainly a rational one (and as such is an expression of S’s rationality).  It is not, however, an expression of S’s autonomy.  As Hassoun suggests autonomy is not only the ability to reason (or to be rational) but it also involves the capacity to form and to carry out significant plans.  Not starving is not a significant plan.  As such, the desire not to starve is not an expression of S’s autonomy.  For these reasons, in C1, S does not genuinely consent to Mother Teresa’s offer.

In contrast, consider S’s consent to conversion in C2.  In this case, S does not accept Mother Teresa’s offer because of her rational desire to avoid starvation.  In this case, S accepts Mother Teresa’s offer because of her own significant plans and commitments to convert to Catholicism.  As such, S’s consent to the conversion is an expression of S’s autonomy.  This is why, in C2, S’s consent is not coerced by Mother Teresa.

From this discussion we can, tentatively, derive an account of genuine consent:

X’s consent (or choice) to ϕ is genuine if and only if X consents to ϕ because of X’s significant plans and aims.

Establishing that S’s consent is not genuine is not sufficient to establish that S’s consent is coerced, however.  For example, if in C1, S takes a mind altering drug of her own volition and then, because of hallucination induced beliefs, comes to desire converting to Catholicism and actively finds and convinces someone to covert her, then S’s choice would not be genuine but it also would not be coerced by the person who converts her.  For X’s consent to be coerced, it must be forced by someone.  The first factor described above – the offer – establishes that Mother Teresa coerced S in C1.   In making an offer to S, Mother Teresa does something to S.  She motivates S to act as she does.  S would not have acted as she did, but for Mother Teresa’s offer.  S’s desire not to starve would not in itself have motivated S to convert.  S satisfies her desire not to starve by converting because Mother Teresa made the offer she did.  It is for this reason that Mother Teresa can be said to coerce S’s consent.  In contrast, in C2, S’s consent is genuine and is not coerced by Mother Teresa.  S would have converted to Catholicism, even if Mother Teresa had simply asked a question (for example, “Would you like to convert to Catholicism”).  Indeed, S would have attempted to convert even if Mother Teresa had said nothing at all.

This suggests a model of coercion:

X’s consent (or choice) to ϕ is coerced by Y if and only if X would not have ϕ‘d but for Y’s doing φ to X.

Genuine consent and coercion are both parts of a two step view of coercion.  Before one can establish that S is coerced, one must first determine whether S’s consent is genuine.  If it is established that S’s consent is not genuine, only then are we in a position to consider whether S’s consent was coerced.  I think, together these two factors,  genuine consent and coercion, establish in C1 that not only is S’s consent not genuine but also that it is forced by Mother Teresa.

Return now to loan conditionality.  Whether loan conditions are coercively imposed by the IMF and the World Bank on a borrowing country will depend on whether the country’s consent is closest in its description to C1 or C2.

Imagine that a country is undergoing a period of economic hardship and, as a result, famine.  It approaches the IMF and the World Bank for a loan.  Imagine also that this country has historically been and is currently and explicitly socialist in its political orientation.  They have publically owned services and industries for health, water, electricity and transportation (e.g., train and airplane).  If this sort of country accepts IMF and World Bank conditions that require privatization of its public enterprises, then, given its explicit and historical commitment to socialism, we have good reason to think that implementation of such policies is not genuinely consented to.  The country implements such polices not because it has plans of converting to neoliberalism but, rather, because of its rational desire to avoid famine and economic catastrophe.  It also implements such policies because of the offer made by the IMF and the World Bank (“We will lend you the money, if you privatize”).  Without such an offer on the table, the country would not have suddenly decided to implement neoliberal policies as a way of overcoming famine.  Consent in this case, like that of C1, it is not expressive of X’s citizens’ collective aims and plans and it is forced by the IMF and the World Bank’s offer.

Whether this sort of description is true of any particular country is something that will have to be established on a case-by-case basis.  It is my suspicion that in many cases, genuine consent is lacking and that the consent of many countries is forced by the IMF and World Bank in the way described above.

One of the main functions of both the IMF and the World Bank is to lend money to developing countries.  The IMF lends money to countries specifically for addressing balance of payment problems while the World Bank lends money to countries more generally for economic development.  Typically, disbursement of money is contingent on implementing specific economic policies that are meant to address the economic problems that initiated the country’s request for a loan.  And, typically, conditions have tended to include privatization and liberalization of the economy.

In her recent book, Globalization and Global Justice (CUP, 2012), Nicole Hassoun presents an account of what is wrong with loan conditionality.  She writes

many countries’ participation in international institutions is not voluntary . . .  Countries often pay significant penalties if they do not abide by . . . . WB or IMF rules.  Sometimes these countries do not have other decent options and, so, are not free to resist these organization’s conditions.  Highly indebted poor countries facing default, for instance, may have to abide by IMF conditionality.  The consequences of refusing to do so can be devastating (Hassoun, 2012, p. 73).

Highly indebted countries are in significant need of loans.  Without loans many individuals within such countries would go hungry, for example.  Hassoun claims that loan conditionality is problematic because highly indebted states are in need of a loan and they have no “options but to abide by international institutions’ rules” (Hassoun, 2012, p. 74).  This means they are coerced into accepting loan conditions, since, on her view, coercion occurs when there exists no option but to comply with a set of demands or rules.

While Hassoun does not give a detailed explanation as to why she thinks that borrowing states have no other options available to them but to borrow from the IMF and World Bank, an argument can easily be given.

Contrast private borrowing with international borrowing.  If a private individual is in need of a loan, she has opportunities to borrow from a variety of different sources.  She can apply to different banks, seek investments from the private sector, borrow money from family members and friends, or take up an extra job and attempt to save the extra income.  The international sphere is not like this.  If a country is in need of a loan, it does not have options outside of borrowing from the IMF and World Bank.  The kind of borrowing options that exist at the local private level simply do not exist at the international level.  This is because the IMF and the World Bank are “lenders of last resort.”  They lend money to countries when no one else will.  Moreover, the IMF and the World Bank are essentially the same institutions in the sense that they coordinate all of their actions.  A country cannot receive a loan from one without receiving approval from the other.  Furthermore, if they choose not to lend to a country, then no one else will do so either.  Approval from the IMF and the World Bank is the gold standard of international finance; it guarantees loans from other private investors.  So, if the IMF and the World Bank decide that a certain country is not worthy of a loan (say, because it has a bad credit rating), then other lenders such as private banks or investors are unlikely to give that country a loan.  In short, if a highly indebted state is in need of a loan, outside of borrowing from the IMF and World Bank, there are no other realistic options to pursue. So, Hassoun seems right in her claim: borrowing countries and the individuals within them have no option but to accept the conditions that the IMF and the Bank place on their loans, if they hope to secure a loan.  If Hassoun is right and coercion occurs when there exists no option but to comply with a set of demands or rules, then the IMF and World Bank’s loan conditionality is coercive.

Hassoun’s account of coercion, though accepted by many, is not ultimately compelling.  Hassoun argues that if X consents to rule R being imposed on her by Y but X has no other options available to her, then X’s consent is coerced by Y (see Hassoun, 2012, p. 73-75).  It is not clear to me, even if these conditions are met, that X’s consent is coerced rather than genuine.

Imagine that Aalok lives on the streets of Kolkata and is starving.  For a variety of reasons, Aalok has decided that he will convert to Catholicism as soon as the opportunity presents itself.  Unfortunately, due to food shortage, all but one of the local charities is closed.  Aalok happens to walk by this charity, the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity.  Mother Teresa is standing at the door and states, “I will feed you on the condition that you convert to Catholicism.”  Aalok consents.

In this case, Aalok has no option but to accept Mother Teresa’s conditions.  He is in need of food.  There is nowhere else to go for help.  Yet, I would argue, Aalok’s consent to the conversion is not coerced.  Aalok consents to Mother Teresa’s offer in a way that is consistent with and expressive of his genuine (or authentic) and rational commitments and aims.  He is autonomous in Hassoun’s sense: he consents in a way that is expressive of his ability “to reason about, make, and carry out  significant plans” on the basis of his “commitments” (see Hassoun, 2012, p. 26).

Similar things could be argued, at least in principle, about loan conditionality.  A country’s consent to certain conditions, say, to privatization of the water industry, may not be coerced.  If a country, such as India was already planning to privatize its water industry and then consents to an IMF loan on the condition of privatizing its water industry, it would not be coerced into accepting such conditions.

In short, establishing that someone has a lack of alternative options is not sufficient to establish that her consent is coerced.  If this conclusion is correct, then, even if there are no other options available to borrowing countries, these countries may not be coerced by the IMF and World Bank into accepting loan conditions.  Hassoun has not convincingly established that the IMF and World Bank coerce borrowing countries.

This discussion also suggests that an alternative account of coercion is needed.  A plausible account of coercion must take into consideration both the motivations (the rational plans and commitments) of Aalok, in the case of Mother Teresa, and of those within developing countries’, in the case of the IMF and World Bank.  Without such an account we cannot determine whether either are being genuinely coerced or not.

Cross posted at the new Experimental Philosophy Blog.

At the old Experimental Philosophy blog, I recently asked for people’s thoughts about the prevalence of experimental work in top journals in ethics and political philosophy.   More specifically, I was wondering whether there were any papers with experimental content in Philosophy and Public Affairs and Ethics.

In the comments section at the Leiter reports, Joshua Knobe supports my concern, writing “there has been a surprising lack of experimental philosophy papers in the ethics journals, especially Ethics and PPA.”  Also notable is that while there has been at least one paper in relation to experimental work in PPA, it was a critical paper by Selim Baker (“The Normative Insignificance of Neuroscience” appeared in Philosophy & Public Affairs 37:4 (2009), pp. 293-329).  Thanks to Alex Guerro for the pointer.

While there may be other things behind this phenomenon, I am starting to think that self-selection plays an important role.  I am currently working with a group of people on an experimental piece (for more information click here and scroll all the way down), but I wouldn’t dream of submitting it to PPA or Ethics.  Since there hasn’t yet been much work in experimental philosophy published in PPA or Ethics, I believe that the chances of this paper actually being publishing in either of them are rather small.  So, I am not motivated to submit this work to either of those journals. Of course, if, for similar reasons, very few people send in experimental papers to Ethics and PPA, then the chances of such work appearing in these journals is very small.

There are ways of correcting for this problem.  For example, these journals could host a special issue on experimental philosophy and ethics/political philosophy.   I think this could go a long way toward increasing the number of submissions with experimental content or focus.

What are other ways of correcting this problem?