Suchergebnisse

AbstractRefugee protection depends, minimally, on the identification of agents capable of discharging international obligations in this area of international law. Commonly discussed "agents of justice" include states, IOs, and NGOs. This article focuses on a different set of actors: subnational units (cities, states, and provinces in federal States) and the legal mechanisms they may use to discharge international obligations in the area of refugee protection. I advance three distinct theoretical models for understanding subnational units' responsibilities vis-à-vis international law: (1) derived delegated responsibilities; (2) derived back-up responsibilities; and (3) assumed responsibilities. I conclude by sketching some ways in which subnational units could play an even more salient role in the promotion of international law.

AbstractDeliberative democracy started out as an ideal for mass democracy. Lately, however, its large-scale ambitions have mostly been shelved. This article revivifies the ideal of mass deliberative democracy by offering a clear mechanism by which everyone in the community can be included in the same conversation. The trick is to make use of people's overlapping social communicative networks through which informal deliberative exchanges already occur on an everyday basis. Far from being derailed by threats of polarization, echo chambers, and motivated reasoning, informal networked deliberation can indeed put everyone in touch, directly or indirectly, with everyone else.

The article focuses on the question of how each of us should deliberate internally when forming judgements. That is a matter of political consequence, insofar as those judgements stand behind our votes. I argue that some violations of epistemic independence like message repetition can, if the receivers are not aware of the repetition, lead them to double-count information they have already taken into account, thus distorting their judgments. One upshot is that each of us should ignore or heavily discount certain sorts of inputs (e.g., bot messages or retweets) that are likely just to be repetition of what we have already taken into account in our internal deliberations. I propose various deliberative norms that may protect our internal deliberations from epistemic double-counting, and argue that opinion leaders have special epistemic duties of care to shield their audiences from clone claims.

Abstract
Democratic alternation in power involves uncontrolled policy experiments. One party is elected on one policy platform that it then implements. Things may go well or badly. When another party is elected in its place, it implements a different policy. In imposing policies on the whole community, parties in effect conduct non-randomized trials without control groups. In this paper, we endorse the general idea of policy experimentation but we also argue that it can be done better by deploying in policymaking randomized controlled trials. We focus primarily on the democratic benefits of using randomized trials in policymaking and on how they can enhance the democratic legitimacy of policy. We argue that randomized trials resonate well with three key democratic principles: non-arbitrariness, revisability and public justification. Randomized trials' contribution to non-arbitrariness and revisability is not unique; other types of evidence can advance these democratic principles as well. But through their peculiar democratic scrutability, randomized trials are well-equipped to contribute to the public justifiability of policy.

AbstractWhat does vaccine justice require at the domestic and global levels? In this essay, using the COVID-19 pandemic as a backdrop, we argue that deliberative-democratic participation is needed to answer this question. To be effective on the ground, abstract principles of vaccine justice need to be further specified through policy. Any vaccination strategy needs to find ways to prioritize conflicting moral claims to vaccine allocation, clarify the grounds on which low-risk people are being asked to vaccinate, and reach a balance between special duties toward countrymen and universal duties toward foreigners. Reasonable moral disagreement on these questions is bound to exist in any community. But such disagreement threatens to undermine vaccine justice insofar as the chosen vaccination strategy (and its proposed specification of vaccine justice) lacks public justification. Inclusive democratic deliberation about vaccine justice is a good mechanism for tackling such moral disagreement. By allowing residents and citizens to participate in the specification of abstract principles of vaccine justice, and their translation into policy, democratic deliberation can enhance the legitimacy of any vaccination strategy and boost compliance with it.

Global governance ought to uphold global justice, a purpose that various institutions and instruments of global governance acknowledge more or less explicitly. Yet, to be effectively implemented, ethical principles of justice must first be "translated" into concrete policy. This formative and interpretive exercise—of determining what justice means and practically requires—leaves a lot of discretion to those making the interpretations, thereby raising important ethical dilemmas.

Transnational altruism comes in many forms, prominently among them private giving through charitable NGOs. This paper focuses on the altruistic actions of those giving to charitable organizations and especially on the subsequent altruistic choices of those second-order, donor-organizations. Leaving choices about how donated money should be used exclusively in the hands of donors is morally problematic in various ways. This is why transnational relationships that involve private giving from rich to poor should be democratized. We propose thus a new moral principle for guiding altruistic behavior: democratic altruism. We develop our argument by focusing on the moral powers and formative agency that donors exercise through their charitable behavior, in particular through their choice to support particular types of aid or organizations. We argue that if and when donors give, they should do so in a way that allows the poor to exercise formative agency as well, in decisions over how donated resources should be used on the ground.

AbstractTransnational altruism comes in many forms, prominently among them private giving through charitable NGOs. This paper focuses on the altruistic actions of those giving to charitable organizations and especially on the subsequent altruistic choices of those second-order, donor-organizations. Leaving choices about how donated money should be used exclusively in the hands of donors is morally problematic in various ways. This is why transnational relationships that involve private giving from rich to poor should be democratized. We propose thus a new moral principle for guiding altruistic behavior: democratic altruism. We develop our argument by focusing on the moral powers and formative agency that donors exercise through their charitable behavior, in particular through their choice to support particular types of aid or organizations. We argue that if and when donors give, they should do so in a way that allows the poor to exercise formative agency as well, in decisions over how donated resources should be used on the ground.