Reading list

Colin Farrelly reviews Vermeule's Judging Under Uncertainty.

A busy fall

Conference announcement: Immigration, Minorities, and Multiculturalism in Democracies, October 25 – 27, 2007,
Fairmont Queen Elizabeth, Montréal.

The complete program is too big to post; go have a look. This is a project of the Major Collaborative Research Initiative on Ethnicity and Democratic Governance.

And don't forget the other conferences earlier this fall: Pluralism, Politics, and God? An International Symposium on Religion and Public Reason, September 13-15; and The Plural States of Recognition, September 27-29.

To read after class:

The NYT has posted a lengthy article-interview of Jack Goldsmith by Jeffrey Rosen, to appear in next week's NYT Magazine.

Now Goldsmith is speaking out. In a new book, “The Terror Presidency,” which will be published later this month, and in a series of conversations I had with him this summer, Goldsmith has recounted how, from his first weeks on the job, he fought vigorously against an expansive view of executive power championed by officials in the White House, including Alberto Gonzales, who was then the White House counsel and who recently resigned as attorney general, and David Addington, who was then Vice President Cheney’s legal adviser and is now his chief of staff. [...]

Goldsmith told me that he has decided to speak publicly about his battles at the Justice Department because he hopes that “future presidents and people inside the executive branch can learn from our mistakes.” In his view, American presidents for the foreseeable future will, like George W. Bush, face enormous pressure to be aggressive and pre-emptive in taking measures to prevent another terrorist attack in the United States. At the same time, Goldsmith notes, everywhere the president looks, critics — as well as his own lawyers — are telling him that pre-emptive actions may violate international law as well as U.S. criminal law. What, exactly, are the legal limits of executive power in the post-9/11 world? How should administration lawyers negotiate the conflict between the fear of attacks and the fear of lawsuits?

In Goldsmith’s view, the Bush administration went about answering these questions in the wrong way. Instead of reaching out to Congress and the courts for support, which would have strengthened its legal hand, the administration asserted what Goldsmith considers an unnecessarily broad, “go-it-alone” view of executive power. As Goldsmith sees it, this strategy has backfired. “They embraced this vision,” he says, “because they wanted to leave the presidency stronger than when they assumed office, but the approach they took achieved exactly the opposite effect. The central irony is that people whose explicit goal was to expand presidential power have diminished it.”

APSA blogging

Larry Solum has posted his copious notes from one of the best events I saw at APSA, the "new originalism" roundtable.

CFP: Montesquieu

The Society for Social and Political Philosophy
(www.sspp.us)
is pleased to issue
a CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS
for a Roundtable on Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws

The Roundtable is to be held at Skidmore College
Saratoga Springs, New York
on March 21-23, 2008.

This Roundtable is designed to explore Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748). We chose this text because our notion of Enlightenment Political Philosophy, and perhaps even Modern Political Philosophy more broadly, has been dominated by the classical theorists of the contract tradition. We need to pay more attention to figures like Montesquieu, who form a counter-tradition in political modernity.

Given the influence of the implicit and explicit norms of the contract tradition on most contemporary political philosophy, the question is not merely of historical value. As a thinker outside of the mainstream tradition of political philosophy, Montesquieu may be a resource for rethinking pressing contemporary questions that have remained stubborn blind spots: especially questions about the passions and political life; about political virtue; about democracy and liberalism. In addition, both Montesquieu and the counter-tradition of political modernity more generally have been significant to post-enlightenment figures in political and continental philosophy like Marx, Deleuze, Schmitt, Negri, Arendt, and Berlin, to name only a few.

Applicants need not be experts in Montesquieu or in 18th century political theory. Applicants must, however, have an expertise in some area of social or political philosophy. Applicants must also be interested in teaching one another and in nurturing the ongoing exploration of the history of political thought.

If selected for participation, applicants will deliver a written, roundtable-style presentation on a specific part or theme of the text. Topics can be historical (e.g. influence of The Spirit of the Laws in the 18th century), contemporary (e.g. liberalism and The Spirit of the Laws), figure-driven (e.g. Marx and The Spirit of the Laws) or thematic (e.g. politics of the passions and affects). However, all topics must relate centrally back to some aspect of The Spirit of the Laws.

Prior to composing their applications, applicants are encouraged to review either the French original of The Spirit of the Laws or the 1989 translation from Cambridge University Press by A. Cohler et al. The Cohler is the official English translation, and it will be used by participants reading in English at the roundtable in March.





Roundtable participants must be members of the society in good standing.
You can become a member of the society at http://www.pdcnet.org/member-sspp.html
or by following the membership link at
www.sspp.us

Spaces are limited.

Applicants should send the following materials as email attachments to papers@sspp.us by October 1, 2007:

1. Curriculum Vitae
2. One page statement of interest in the project. (Please include a discussion of topics that you would be willing to explore in a roundtable presentation. Please also include the projected significance of participation for your research or teaching.)

All applicants will be notified about the outcome of the selection process via email on or before November 1, 2007. Participants will then be asked to send a draft, abstract, or outline of their roundtable presentation to papers@sspp.us

by March 1, 2008 so that we can put together a final program.

POLI 433

The syllabus for POLI 433, "History of Political and Social Thought 3: The 17th and 18th centuries," is online.

This is a course in the history of western political and social thought in early modern times—broadly the 17th and 18th centuries. It spans the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the American and French Revolutions, a period that brought most of the political ideas of the west into recognizably modern form. The significant themes in the period include social contract theory as a mode of political justification; the idea of a break with ancient and medieval, Aristotelian and Thomist, thought; the possibility of a shared political life among members of different religious groups; popular consent; the rise of commercial and polished society, and the meaning of progress; the right to revolt; and the idea of a constitution.

First class is in Arts 145, next Tuesday at 1:05 pm. Space is available in the class. Prior coursework in political theory, political philosophy, or intellectual history is required.

Media again

I'll apparently be discussing reasonable accommodation etc at 7:20 am on 940 AM, which can be listened to here.

The current excuse for a flare-up of attention on the topic (not that it's ever far from the news) is that yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the famous Bill 101 in Quebec. And former PQ premier Bernard Landry took the occasion to say that Quebec is neither bilingual (which legally it is) nor multicultural (which sociologically Montreal clearl is). We may be seeing a trial balloon electoral strategy for the PQ, trying to protect itself against the ADQ: try to tie together old Quebec language resentments with standard-issue rural and working class distrust of immigrants and religious pluralism. This needn't be pure laine-- Landry went out of his way to stress that an acculturated Haitian Quebecoise Pequiste is as much a member of Quebec culture as he is-- but it will be unpleasant.

Calvin Normore is coming to McGill

Via Brian Leiter:

Calvin Normore, one of the world's leading scholars of medieval philosophy (who also works in political philosophy and logic) at UCLA, has accepted the Macdonald Chair in Moral Philosophy at McGill University, where he will join the faculty in fall 2008. That's a major hire for McGill, which will solidify its position as a leading center for history of philosophy. (Normore will continue as an Honorary Research Professor in the American summers/Australian winters at the University of Queensland.)

Media

I'm likely to be on CBC radio this afternoon about 5:40, discussing the Taylor-Bouchard commission, the accommodation of immigrant cultures in Quebec, and Quebecois attitudes toward multiculturalism.

Update: False alarm.

A question for APSA old-timers

It seems to me that the switch from the Panel Paper Room to PROceedings online has resulted in a very dramatic reduction in the number of papers being circulated. It seems to me that there was a genuine strong norm in favor of bringing papers to the PPR in the old days-- it was stated as a rule, and while some papers were too drafty to be circulated and some senior people didn't bother, most papers were in there.

Now as I browse through the (terrible) PROceedings site (click "browse," click on the name of the section or division, e.g. Foundations of Political Theory,, you wish to browse through, you get to the list of panel names; click on a panel name, you see the list of papers that have been uploaded, if any; click "back," and instead of returning to the list of Foundations panels, you're returned to the home page-- maddening) it seems to me that the modal number of papers per panel that are actually uploaded is zero. It also seems to me that this wasn't true in the first few years after the switch-- that is, the norm stuck for a little while but is now close to dead.

Explanations? Is it the terrible site, the worry about putting drafts online, some combination? Or am I hallucinating that there's a phenomenon here at all?

Recommended reading on the republican guarantee

Via Solum, Huey Long and the Guarantee Clause: Transformation by Assassination, by Gerard Magliocca. Magliocca's book on Jackson was already high on my to-buy-and-read list. This terrific piece of constitutional history tells me that I should add him to my list of authors whose work I go out of my way to keep track of.

This Article contends that the assassination of Huey P. Long (The Kingfish) of Louisiana was a major turning point in the development of New Deal constitutionalism. Following his election as Governor in 1928, Long built one of the most formidable political machines ever seen in the United States. Indeed, he amassed so much power that contemporary observers routinely called his regime the first dictatorship in our history. For instance, Long abolished minority rights in the legislature, curtailed judicial review, took over the vote counting system, established a State Board of Censors to regulate political speech, and declared martial law against his opponents. Moving rapidly on to the national stage with his election to the Senate – he was Senator and Governor at the same time – Long established a national “Share Our Wealth” movement with the goal of challenging Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination in 1936.

The abuses in Louisiana triggered a broad national debate about whether the State still had a republican form of government as required by the Guarantee Clause of Article Four. Eventually, this outbreak of popular constitutionalism reached the President, who was desperate to find a way to stop Long. Not only did the President discuss the issue in press conferences, but he asked the Justice Department to examine the question in a lengthy memorandum. In August 1935, the House of Representatives took the first step to invoke the Guarantee Clause by forming a Select Committee to examine the question. A few weeks later, however, Long was killed and the inquiry was abandoned.

By cutting this confrontation short, Long's assassin unintentionally laid the foundation for modern judicial supremacy. But for this shocking event, the Special Committee would have almost certainly issued a report defining: (1) which rights being infringed in Louisiana were fundamental; and (2) which institutional practices there were so abusive that they struck at the heart of self-government. Such a report, coming in the midst of the collapse in Lochnerian doctrine, would have been an authoritative act of constitutional interpretation on major issues such as incorporation, voting rights, and the status of political minorities. Instead, the task of filling this vacuum fell entirely to the Supreme Court, which began that effort with the most famous footnote in the law - Footnote Four of United States v. Carolene Products. To a significant extent, Footnote Four's analysis of the conditions under which laws should receive heightened scrutiny was the judicial substitute for a congressional report on Long and the Guarantee Clause.

Accordingly, this Article makes three significant contributions. First, it provides the first detailed treatment (in a law review context) of Huey Long's dictatorship. Second, it documents the last serious effort to use the Guarantee Clause, which disappeared from serious legal discourse after 1935. Third, it provides a window into a fascinating counterfactual world that was only closed off by a highly improbable act.

As I discuss a bit here, the republican guarantee clause was originally thought to be a very important part of the constitutional order-- the central mechanism for central government protection of freedom within states. Indeed I wish I'd had access to this paper when writing mine, since I talk about the republican guarantee in the early era and the Carolene Products jurisprudence arising out of the New Deal era, but had no idea that the two had this kind of bridge between them.

Signs of old age

The annual Beloit College "mindset list," which sadistically helpfully reminds professors just how young the incoming frosh are, is out. Most disturbing this year:

2. Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.
23. Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
27. Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it.
47. High definition television has always been available.
53. Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
55. MTV has never featured music videos.
66. The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.

That last doesn't seem quite right. Average frosh enter at 18; 2007-18= 1989. Lynx and Mosaic weren't launched until 1993, and I'd say that the birth of the browser is the real birth of the WWW. But anyway, HTML was invented in late 1990-- the frosh were babies, but not unborn.

Decisions, decisions

What panels to attend? APSA panel times for which I seem unable even to reduce the number of options below three, and often seem stuck at four.


Thursday, August 30, 8 am:

Roundtable: Author Meets Critics: Joshua Foa Dienstag, "Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit"

Roundtable: What Do Empirical Political Scientists Need or Want (If Anything) From Normative Political Theory?

Roundtable: Constituting Republican Government

Political Theory Beyond the State


Thursday, August 30, 4:15 pm:

Roundtable: How Should Normative Political Theorists Use Empirical Findings?

Roundtable: Knud Haakonssen's Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith

Moderation and Fanaticism

Friday, August 31, 10:15 am:

Roundtable: Modernity as a Crossdisciplinary and Interdisciplinary Concept

Roundtable: The Political Theory of Bernard Williams

Is Political Theory 'Beyond Political Science'?

Roundtable: Authors Meet Critics: Walter Murphy's Constitutional Democracy: Creating and Maintaining a Just Political Order and Donald Lutz's Principles of Constitutional Design

Friday, August 31, 2 pm:

Contours of Black Political Thought: Panel I

Images of Federalism in Early Modern and Contemporary Europe

The Problem of Political Obligation

Roundtable: Is Federalism Theory Poor or Theory Rich?


Saturday, September 1, 2 pm:

Virtue and the American Founding

Roundtable: Iris Marion Young: Legacies for Feminist Theory

Roundtable: What's New About the New Originalism?

Global Justice

I don't think I'm getting more indecisive in my old age. I think it's just an unusually good program unusually badly clustered...

Visiting Faculty Fellowships

at the new Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto.

PQ wants full immigration control for Quebec

From the Gazette:

Quebec should have total control over its immigration to send a clear message to newcomers that the province is a francophone state, not a bilingual one, Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois said on Tuesday[...]

Marois believes Quebec needs to attract more immigrants, especially to cope with a declining birthrate and employment needs, but she stressed the province has to send a very clear message to those who decide to settle in Quebec.

"Many of them believe that they are settling in a bilingual state. It's not true. Quebec is a francophone state that respects the rights of its anglophone minority. And when you live in Quebec, you live in French," Marois stated.

She pressed Premier Jean Charest to negotiate with the federal government to gain control over the 40 per cent of immigrants to the province that it does not already handle. Under a 1991 agreement, Quebec can choose the immigrants who have money to invest here and decide how it integrates them. But Ottawa keeps dealing with refugees and immigrants coming to reunite with family members.

Marois argued it's fair to ask for that since Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government recognized Quebec as a nation. Having additional powers would allow Quebec to choose immigrants that will more easily blend into Quebec's culture and values, Marois added.

That last bit is a clever if probably-inevitable reverse-judo attempt. Harper defanged the "nation" question by embracing the word; the PQ can't afford to let that be as free of consequences as Harper would like it to be.

Notice that the PQ is not only playing to traditional themes here. It's also trying to recapture the part of its base that it lost to the anti-immigrant ADQ in the last election-- partly by playing on a subtle distancing between Montreal and the rest of Quebec. Montreal is clearly ground zero of bilingualism in the province, as well as being ground zero of the non-francophone new immigration. The ADQ objects to Montreal as a place and the new immigrants as a group, though language isn't its primary issue. If the PQ can pick up on the rural voters' annoyance at immigrant-heavy Montreal, it may not much matter whether the annoyance is cast as a language issue rather than a religion or race issue. This will be a tricky balance for the traditionally Montreal-francophone-elite centered PQ, but is absolutely necessary for them to figure it out.

I had just been thinking...

about what a shame it is that Phi Beta Cons, National Review's blog ostensibly about higher education, is such an embarrassing waste. The idea of a consistent source of conservative commentary on higher education, written by people who can distinguish between good and bad research, and who are invested in and knowledgeable about higher education, is quite appealing. It seems to me like something that's genuinely missing from the world. But, of course, PBC none of these things. It is instead dedicated to arguing that professors have too much vacation time except that they're all busily whittling away at the foundations of western civilization, that the successful firing of a fraud-committing tenured professor shows the importance of abolishing tenure, that standards of excellence are under mortal threat from the multiculturalist left but shouldn't be compared in importance to, say, fraternities and the need to admit football players, and that affirmative action (for blacks who are not football players) is the very worstest yucky thing in the world, ever.

Then I noticed that it was Inside Higher Ed, and not PBC, that was carrying the following news item-- something that would be of interest to a large number of conservatives who are interested in higher education:

Hillsdale College, which for more than 20 years has declined to accept federal funds, said Monday that it would no longer take financial aid money from the state of Michigan either, The Detroit News reported. Hillsdale officials said in a statement that they would relinquish about $670,000 in state tuition aid that about 350 students at the private institution receive annually and replace the money with private scholarship funds.

Not a huge deal-- but since Hillsdale is both a minor cause celebre among American conservatives for its rejection of federal funds and a longtime patron of conservative thought, the people most likely to find it interesting and important would be PBC's likely readership. Instead, the blog is busy with Candace de Russy's response to the (well-known and correct) argument that the humanities and most social sciences are over- and badly-regulated by Institutional Review Boards that inappropriately apply standards derived from biomedical experiments to all research involving "human subjects."

Her response? The rhetorical "But is there too much oversight or too little?" followed by an non-sequiter about inadequate oversight... of three biomedical studies.

Update: Phoebe Maltz suggests that the problem is structural, that there probably couldn't be such a venue for responsible conservative commentary on the academy. I think she's onto something but that it doesn't have to be as bad as PBC...

Inuit reach deal with Quebec

The Montreal Gazette:

ELIZABETH THOMPSON, The Gazette

Quebec's Inuit have reached a landmark agreement in principle with Ottawa and Quebec City to create an Inuit-controlled government covering the northernmost third of the province.

It will be unlike any other level of government in Canada. Answerable to Quebec's National Assembly, the Nunavik Regional Government will encompass not only the functions normally assumed by a municipality but also those of a school board and a health authority.

"It's quite unique," said Jean-François Arteau, chief negotiator for the Inuit-run Makivik Corporation. "We'll have real elected officials taking real decisions for issues regarding Nunavik residents."

Arteau said the deal should be instrumental in helping the Inuit take charge of their own future and find the solutions best adapted to their communities.

For example, when it comes to a problem such as youth protection or suicide prevention, the new government will be able to adopt a comprehensive strategy that encompasses both education and social services, he said.

The regional government will also have the power to allocate resources where it believes they are most needed, he said.

For example, money can be allocated to address the area's housing shortage instead of being locked in to such specific programs as small business creation. "With the same amount of money, they will be able to do better and manage it more efficiently."

[...]

While contained in only 25 pages, the agreement in principle sets out a detailed blueprint for the Nunavik Regional Government, which will govern the territory north of the 55th parallel, even further north than the giant James Bay hydro-electric site.

The existing Kativik Regional Government, the Kativik School Board and the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services will be amalgamated to create one regional government. It will be run by a Nunavik Assembly, consisting of at least 21 elected members including representatives of each of the territory's 14 communities. An executive council, consisting of five members of the Assembly and headed by the Leader of the Executive Council, will carry out decisions reached by the Assembly.

While the Nunavik Regional Government will have the power to impose property taxes in addition to money it will continue to receive from Quebec and Ottawa, it will not have the authority to collect income or sales taxes. Arteau said the second phase of the agreement, yet to be negotiated, will deal with such issues as royalties for mining in the mineral-rich territory.

Hmm. Good news, but I'm uneasy. There's no mention of any legislative authority, and the reference to municipal powers makes me suspect that legislative authority will be extremely weak and-- more important-- at the ongoing mercy of the Quebec National Assembly. Indigenous self-government can be a powerful force, but there's a constant danger that the indigenous government will become little more than the local branch of social workers and social service administrators controlling the use of funds allocated elsewhere. I'm reminded of the failed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission in Australia, and policies there that amounted to self-administration, not self-government.

Development as such doesn't seem to be anybody's priority. (While I don't think that small businesses are best fostered with subsidies, it's a bad sign when that's the only example of something that's not worth spending money on, with no discussion of what the better ways to foster them would be.) And it's worrisome to have resource royalties be punted when that would be one of the chief local sources of revenue.

But I'll provisionally file it under "good news as far as it goes," especially on the basis that a unified level of Inuit government might simply provide a more powerful political voice and focal point for political strength than has existed before. (This is an argument about why even weak and apparently doomed-to-be-unsuccessful indigenous self-government is probably worth having in an essat in Nomos from a couple years ago.)

Update: there's a map in this story.

Poli sci on SSRN

There's now a political science research network for working papers on SSRN, with lots of distinct subfield subject-matter lists. You can browse through them here.

The truth comes out

A commentator who calls him or herself simply UofCer reveals:

After we took a couple classes with Jacob Levy, a friend of mine made a facebook group: 18 million milligrams of caffeine with Jacob Levy. Every day he would walk in, set two cans of Diet Coke on the table and promptly begin lecturing without notes. If there were more than two cans, you could be certain you'd be late for whatever you had next.

Someone-- I suspect it was one of the architects of this group-- once asked me why it was Diet Coke rather than coffee, given my known proclivities.

The answer: On my way to class, I need my hands free to carry books. And it's dangerous to walk around with a cup of coffee in each of your sports jacket pockets. Two cans of soda will roughly get me through an hour and twenty minutes of talking-- after which time I can go get a proper cup of coffee.

Update: Phoebe Maltz enjoys the black ambrosia, too. In response to people who criticize the money spent, she observes, "If you consider the accused lattes to be a replacement for the three martinis our generation is not having at lunch, and the two packs of cigarettes our generation is not having throughout the day, it looks a bit different."

Pateman elected to British Academy

Carole Pateman has been elected to the British Academy. (She was elected as a regular fellow not an overseas "corresponding" fellow, thanks to her position at Cardiff.)

Neutrality 2008 : Call For Papers

Neutrality 2008: Call For Papers. Submission Deadline: 10/20/2007
CALL FOR PAPERS

The Centre for Research in Ethics at the University of Montreal (CRÉUM) is sponsoring an international conference on the ideal of neutrality which will take place in Montreal in May 2008 and will be followed by a workshop. Participants in the conference include: Arash Abizadeh (McGill University) ; Anthony Appiah (Princeton University) ; Richard Arneson (University of California, San Diego) ; George Crowder (Flinders University) ; Peter de Marneffe (Arizona State University) ; Charles Larmore (Brown University) ; Jacob Levy (McGill University) ; Stephen Macedo (Princeton University ); Ruwen Ogien (CNRS-Paris) ; Alan Patten (Princeton University) ; João Cardoso Rosas (Minho University) ; George Sher (Rice University) ; Christine Sypnowich (Queen’s University) ; Steven Wall (Bowling Green State University) ; Daniel Weinstock (CRÉUM, Université de Montréal).

This call for papers is addressed to graduate students and junior researchers interested in presenting their work on neutrality in this workshop.

The idea that the state should be neutral towards conceptions of the good life has been a constant topic of debate for the last thirty years amongst political theorists concerned with the legitimacy of the state. Although some have claimed the debate is passé, many recent works have proved them wrong (Wall and Klosko, 2003 ; Appiah, 2005 ; de Marneffe, 2006 ; Weinstock, 2006 ; Ogien, 2007) as the dialogue between communitarians and liberals has now opened an intense discussion between liberals themselves about the attractiveness or the scope of the neutrality principle, calling at times for a new perfectionism (Sher, 1997 ; Wall, 1998). This colloquium aims to present a diagnosis of the ongoing debate and offer new perspectives. It will be organized around three main topics:

First, the definition of the neutrality principle is open to discussion: even if there’s a broad agreement on its characterization as a constraint on justifications given by the government (justificatory neutrality, (Kymlicka, 1989)), the nature of this constraint and the scope of the principle are highly controversial. Alternative definitions (as equal concern or as neutrality of effects) may not have received appropriate attention (Goodin and Reeve, 1989 ; Wall, 2001 ; Appiah, 2005).

A second important issue questions the relation between neutrality and perfectionism. Some liberals refuse to take neutrality as the only legitimate understanding of liberal principles (Raz, 1986 ; Chan, 2000) and argue for liberal perfectionism. Is this claim valid or attractive? Different versions of perfectionism should be presented and they should answer diverse concerns related to its paternalistic aspect. Neutrality proponents also have to answer serious objections. Although some have argued for a neutralist foundation of neutrality (Larmore, 1993), this path has been criticized in light of the difficulties in building up a case for the neutrality principle without using substantive values such as respect or democratic equality.

A third bundle of questions will focus on practical issues where neutrality is an attractive ideal or, on the contrary, an undesirable principle. Important areas of investigation include education and religion, and, also, language and work. The colloquium hopes to elicit reflection on the possible application of the neutrality ideal to new practical spheres.

Guidelines for submission:
Proposals should address one of these issues and should be between 300 and 500 words in length. Submission deadline is October 20, 2007. Notification of acceptance will be provided by February 1, 2008. Preferred format for all submissions is RTF attachment submitted by electronic mail to Roberto Merrill (nrbmerrill@gmail.com ) and Geneviève Rousselière (groussel@princeton.edu) with “Neutrality 2008 Submission” in the subject line of the email.

The plural states of recognition

La reconnaissance dans tous ses états
The plural states of recognition

Atelier international / International Workshop of the Center for Research in Ethics at the University of Montreal. Registration required : You can now register forthe workshop by sending your name and institutional affiliation to info@creum.umontreal.ca .

Thursday September 27: Struggle for recognition

Recognition : the heritage of a concept
Chair : George Di Giovanni (McGill University)

9 h 15 Robert R.Williams (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Hegel and Aristotle on Recognition and Friendship

9 h45 Simon Thompson (University of the West of England)
Recognition and the rise of democracy

10 h 30 Arto Laitinen and Heikki Ikäheimo (Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Esteem as a type of recognition & University of Jyväskylä)

11 h Jean-Philippe Deranty (Macquarie University)
The social mediation of practical self-relation. Normative and critical implications
of current debates on Hegel and recognition


Recognition, conflicts and social movements
Chair: Estelle Ferrarese (Université Strasbourg II)

14 h 30 Christian Lazzeri (Université Paris X – Nanterre)
Le prix de la lutte pour la reconnaissance

15 h Christian Nadeau (Université de Montréal)
Crimes contre l’humanité et théories de la reconnaissance

15 h 45 Hervé Pourtois (Université catholique de Louvain)
Le « tournant délibératif» de la théorie de la reconnaissance : issue ou impasse ?

16 h 15 Emmanuel Renault (ENS LSH Lyon)
Lutte, domination et reconnaissance : qu’est-ce que le modèle hégélien
de la reconnaissance ?


Friday September 28: politics of recognition

recognition of national identities
Chair : Stéphane Courtois (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières)

9 h Peter Leuprecht (Université du Québec à Montréal)
Droits humains - individuels et /ou collectifs ?

9 h30 Geneviève Nootens (Université du Québec à Chicoutimi)
Reconnaissance, légitimité et démocratie dans les sociétés plurinationales

10 h 15 Michel Seymour (Université de Montréal)
La nation comme sujet de reconnaissance

10h 45 Michel Wieviorka (École des Hautes Études en Sciences sociales)
Naissance et déclin du débat sur le multiculturalisme


The institutionalization of recognition
Chair: Daniel Weinstock (CRÉUM)

14 h 15 Anna Elisabetta Galeotti (University of Piemonte Orientale in Vercelli)
Recognition, Respect and Justice

14 h 45 Margaret Moore (Queen’s University)
Toleration, Recognition and Institutional Accommodation

15 h 30 Anne Phillips (London School of Economics)
The risks of recognition

16 h Nancy Fraser (New School for Social Research)
The Priority of Justice:A Critique of Agonistic Approaches to Recognition

Saturday September 29: ethics of recognition

applied ethics of recognition
Chair : Alain G. Gagnon (Université de Québec à Montréal)

9 h Martin Blanchard (Université de Montréal)
Éthique de la délibération et revendications autochtones au Canada

9 h30 Avigail Eisenberg (University of Victoria)
A normatively defensible approach to the recognition of Indigenous identity

10 h 15 Jocelyn Maclure (Université Laval)
La reconnaissance engage-t-elle à l’essentialisme?

10 h 45 Melissa Williams (University of Toronto)
Recognition Regress? The Ontario Sharia Decision
and the Problem of Democratic Will Formation


The moral dimensions of recognition
Chair:Will Kymlicka (Queen’s University)

14 h 15 Elizabeth A. Povinelli (University of Columbia)
Recognition, Espionage, Camouflage

14 h 45 Charles Blattberg (Université de Montréal)
Demanding Recognition? On Overly-Adversarial Politics

15 h 30 Rajeev Bhargava (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi)
The Phenomenology of Broken Spirits: Hegel and Taylor on misrecognition
and humiliation

16 h Charles Taylor (McGill University,New School for Social Research and Fribourg)
New Developments in the Politics of Recognition

Now online

Federalism, Liberalism, and the Separation of Loyalties, 101 (3) APSR, August 2007, pp 459-477. PDF is here, APSA membership or institutional subscription required.

Political theory awards

From the Foundations of Political Theory organized section of APSA.

AWARD WINNERS

The David Easton Award is given for a book that broadens the horizons of contemporary political science by engaging issues of philosophical significance in political life through any of a variety of approaches in the social sciences and humanities. The award is limited to books published in the previous five years and carries a cash prize of $500.

This year's award goes to Quentin Skinner, of Cambridge University

for Visions of Politics, 3 Volumes, (Cambridge University Press, 2002)

Committee:

Jennifer Pitts, Princeton University; Shannon Stimson, University of California-Berkeley; Stephen White (Chair of Committee), University of Virginia.

First Book Award

The First Book Award is given for a first book by a scholar in the "early stages of his or her career" in the area of political theory or political philosophy. "Early stages" is interpreted to mean that the recipient cannot have held his or her PhD for more than ten years. This award carries a cash prize of $200.00.


This year's award goes to Bryan Garsten, of Yale University, for Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment (Harvard University Press, 2006)



According to the Committee:

In this impressive and timely study, Bryan Garsten explores the early modern critique of rhetoric and persuasively argues on behalf of a classically-based alternative of responsible rhetoric and dialogically-based political judgment. Initially a response to the breakdown of authoritative political and religious sources, early modern liberal thinkers like Hobbes, Rousseau and Kant developed theories of "public reason" that valorized increasingly abstract, elite, and centralized forms of political decision-making. By contrast, thinkers like Aristotle and Cicero commended more public and open forms of political deliberation - now based upon a shared store of rhetorical conventions - yet were both sensitive to, and warned against the dangers of demagogic rhetorical manipulation. One ironic conclusion of Garsten's study is to suggest that ancient thinkers had greater confidence in public reasonableness than was explicitly the case for liberal philosophers. Garsten's sensitive and detailed exegeses are judicious, mature, and resonate deeply with contemporary debates over democratic deliberation and the role of reason and rhetoric in politics.


Best First Book Honorable Mention: Davide Panagia, The Poetics of Political Thinking (Duke 2006):

In The Poetics of Political Thinking , Davide Panagia provides a strikingly original perspective on aesthetics, ethics, and politics. Political theories, he argues, are composed of mutilayered, multivalent ideas and, hence, are best understood as "images" of thinking rather than philosophical arguments. By weaving together painting, poetry, and philosophy, Panagia reveals how unrepresentability haunts our thinking about politics. His new readings of Hobbes, Rawls, and Habermas place their ideas in productive conversation with Deleuze, Ranciere, and Hazlitt, among others. The images of political thinking that emerge mirror the "disjunctive encounters between dissimilars" characteristic of democratic negotiations of difference. Panagia's eloquently written and thought-provoking book challenges political theorists to think differently about how we read and what we do.

Committee:

Patrick Deneen (Chair of Committee), Georgetown University; Roxanne Euben,
Wellesley College; Nancy Love, Pennsylvania State University

Books to buy

APSA's now just around the corner, so no new academic book purchases for the next month. Especially now that the Canadian dollar is so high against the American dollar, it's much better to pick books up at 20-40% off American list prices than to get them at (already-higher) Canadian list prices. So time to start keeping a list of books-- mainly 2007 releases, but also some backlist items that I've recently noticed and don't own yet.

Anne Phillips, Multiculturalism Without Culture, was top of the list but I just got a review copy. Still, looking like a busy buying year. My shopping list so far:

Adrian Vermeuele, Mechanisms of Democracy (Oxford)
Harro Höpfl, Jesuit Political Thought (Cambridge)
Gerard Magliocca, Andrew Jackson and the Constitution (Kansas)
Stephen Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property (Oxford)
Colin Farrelly, Justice, Democracy and Reasonable Agreement (Palgrave)
John Millar, An Historical View of English Government (Liberty Fund)
Hamilton and Madison, Pacificus–Helvidius Debates of 1793–1794 (Liberty Fund)
Jean Louis De Lolme, The Constitution of England (Liberty Fund) (This is a very exciting volume to have back in print)
Brian Tamanaha, Law as a Means to an End (Cambridge) (Shameful that I don't have this one yet, really, but it was sold out at APSA last year and then I forgot that I hadn't gotten it)
Andrew Mason, Leveling the Playing Field (Oxford)
Carles Boix and Susan Stokes, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics
Alan Cromartie, The Constitutionalist Revolution: An Essay on the History of England, 1450–1642 (Cambridge)
Sarah Song, Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism (Cambridge)
Suzanne Dovi, The Good Representative, Blackwell
Rhodes et al., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions
Sotirios A. Barber and James E. Fleming, Constitutional Interpretation: The Basic Questions (Oxford)
Philip G. Roeder, Where Nation-States Come From: Institutional Change in the Age of Nationalism (Princeton)
Corey Brettschneider, Democratic Rights: The Substance of Self-Government
(Princeton)
Howard Schweber, The Language of Liberal Constitutionalism (Cambridge)
Urbinati and Zakaras, eds., J.S. Mill's Political Thought (Cambridge)
James Otteson, Actual Ethics (Cambridge)
Mark Francis, Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life (Cornell)
Seyla Benhabib, Ian Shapiro, and Danilo Petranovich, eds., Identities, Affiliations, and Allegiances

Hmm. I'm sure there was another list that I wrote down somewhere, but this'll probably do for a start...