Now online: "Not so Novus an Ordo: Constitutions Without Social Contracts"

The preprint version is available at Political Theory (subscription required).

Abstract:

Social contract theory imagines political societies as resting on a fundamental agreement, adopted at a discrete moment in hypothetical time, that binds individual persons together into a polity and sets fundamental rules regarding that polity's structure and powers. Written constitutions, adopted at real moments in historical time, dictating governmental structures, bounding governmental powers, and entrenching individual rights, look temptingly like social contracts reified. Yet something essential is lost in this slippage between social contract theory and the practice of constitutionalism. Contractarian blinders lead us to look for greater individualism, social unity, and coherence of principles than should be expected. Real constitutional orders appropriate, incorporate, and channel the histories and divisions of the societies they govern. Treating them as social contracts flattens and distorts them, making those engagements with the past or with social plurality appear anomalous and encouraging their minimization. Accordingly this article redirects attention to non-contractarian strands within constitutionalism's intellectual inheritance and lived practice.

Leiter on Shaw on Nietzsche

Brian Leiter's review of Tamsin Shaw's Nietzsche's Political Skepticism is excerpted here and posted here.

I rolled my eyes at the fact that, even in the few paragraphs excerpted on his blog, Leiter couldn't resist the following: "Most books by political theorists on Nietzsche are unreadable for philosophers; this book is the exception that proves the rule." Heaven forbid that a thoughtful and serious engagement with a political theorist not be accompanied by a sideswipe at the rest of the field! But it's a very thoughtful review of a very good book; both recommended.

The Philosophy of Adam Smith: A conference to commemorate the 250th anniversary of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, January 6-8, 2009, Balliol College, Oxford

The program and schedule are now online, along with paper abstracts. It's a great lineup, and I'm excited that I'll be able to be there for part of it.

Organised by the International Adam Smith Society and The Adam Smith Review
Conference organisers: Vivienne Brown, Editor The Adam Smith Review (v.w.brown@open.ac.uk)
Samuel Fleischacker, President, International Adam Smith Society (fleischert@sbcglobal.net)

Although Adam Smith is better known now for his economics, in his own time it was his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), which established his reputation. Just as scholarly work on Smith has challenged the free market appropriation of Smith’s Wealth of Nations, so it has also come to appreciate the importance of Smith’s moral philosophy for his overall intellectual project. This conference, to be held at the college Smith himself attended from 1740-46, and at the beginning of the year marking the 250th anniversary of the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, will provide an opportunity to re-evaluate the significance of Smith’s moral philosophy and moral psychology, the relationship between them and his other writings on economics, politics, jurisprudence, history, and rhetoric and belles lettres, and the relevance of his thought to current research in these areas.

Plenary speakers will include:

Stephen Darwall (Professor of Philosophy, University of Michigan), "Smith on Honor and Respect"

Charles Griswold (Professor of Philosophy, Boston University), "Tales of the Self: Adam Smith's Reply to Rousseau"

David Raphael (Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Imperial College), "The Virtue of TMS 1759"

Emma Rothschild (Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History, Harvard University, and Director of the Centre for History and Economics, King's College, Cambridge and Harvard University), "TMS and the Inner Life"

Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina), "Is the Impartial Spectator's Vision 20/20?"

ession speakers

Richard van den Berg, "PL Roederer's Reading of Smith's System of Sympathy"
Lauren Brubaker, "Smith's moderate response to Rousseau"
Richard Boyd, "Adam Smith and Nationalism"
Emily Brady, "Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Sympathetic Imagination"
Toni Vogel Carey, "Accounting for Moral as for Natural Things"
Maria Alejandra Carrasco, "The forked meaning of self-command"
Sergio Cremaschi, "Adam Smith's post-scepticism and his unwritten doctrines"
Remy Debes, "The Value of Persons in Smith's Moral Philosophy"
Patricio Fernandez and Nicholas Teh, "Smith and McDowell on Moral Objectivity"
Tom Ford, "Reification and Adam Smith's 'as it were'"
Fonna Forman-Barzilai, "The 'humbler department': Smith's anti-cosmopolitanism"
Christel Fricke, "Moral Norms: Conventions or Universal Principles?"
Patrick Frierson, "Smithian Intrinsic Value"
Ryan Hanley, "Smith's Skepticism"
Maureen Harkin, "Smith on Literature,"
Eugene Heath, "Moral Evolution and the Invisible Hand"
Neven Leddy, "Smith's TMS in 1759, 1790 and 1976"
Thornton Lockwood, "Moral Education in Aristotle and Adam Smith"
John McHugh, "Hume and Smith: Sympathy, Utility and the Sociality of the Self"
Alice MacLachlan, "Injustice, Entitlement, and Smithean Resentment"
James McClellan and Karin Brown, "Sophie de Grouchy's Translation of TMS"
Robert Mankin, "Smith and the Art of Dying"
Angelica Nuzzo, "The Standpoint of Morality in Adam Smith and Hegel"
Paul Oslington, "Newton and Smith on Divine Action"
Jonathan Rick, "The Impartial Spectator's Amour-Propre"
Alvaro Santana-Alcuña, "Outside the Self"
Roberto Scazzieri, "Social Mirrors: Rationality under Relational Constraints""
Eric Schliesser, "Adam Smith's Engagement with Plato's Laws"
Arby Siraki, "Adam Smith's theory of tragedy"
Spiros Tegos, "The Problem of Authority in Adam Smith"
Andrew Terjesen, "Imagination or Correspondence in Smith's 'Sympathy'"
Robert Urquhart, "Adam Smith's Problems: Tensions within TMS and WN"
Carola Freilin von Villiez, ""Dimensions of Impartiality"
Gloria Vivenza, "Cicero and Seneca in TMS"
Christopher Williams, "Taste and Testimony in Adam Smith"
Jeffrey Young, "Justice, Property, and Markets"

Aristocracy

I'm always a little uncomfortable trying to make Michael Oakeshott's "Rationalism in Politics" seem like a strong, attractive, plausible argument in class-- because however strong its critical bite, its affirmative case seems unavoidably to end up as an endorsement of hereditary political office. Now, I'm willing to be the elegaic Oakeshottean/ Burkean about the old British House of Lords, but at the end of the day I'm an American and our founding fathers dumped tea into the harbor and shot at redcoats when they saw the whites of their eyes and overthrew the mightiest military power in the world in order to stop the pernicious doctrine of hereditary rule and make the world safe for democracy, and it was just to Americans' good fortune that they were able to be without an aristocracy in the first place rather than having to kill theirs off in the streets of Paris, will all the unfortunate consequences that entailed.[*] In 2008 a hereditary aristocracy as a serious political force is just a silly thing to imagine.

My imagination was stunted, I finally realize. Come next year, I'm going to start with the election of Justin Trudeau to Parliament and the immediate talk of his becoming a Liberal leader, recount Michael Ignatieff's genealogy, explain the generations of Bushes and the fact that W was only President because at a crucial moment in the late 1990s some large number of poll respondents thought that he was his father, discuss the Udall family, the Romneys, the Welds, the Chafees, and so on-- then discuss the tendency for arriviste or nouveau or bootstraps-meritocratic leaders promptly establish new family legacies of their own, and point to the Clintons. Widows-and-sons in postcolonial democracies, including the Nehru-Gandhis, and so on. Family politics and legacies run strongly in democratic politics, and while they're occasionally interrupted by a Reagan, a Clinton, a Thatcher, an Obama, even those people unavoidably live in a political world of legislators and officials very many of whom are in a family business which they're learned as an apprenticeship a la Oakeshott. Oakeshott, I think, would tell us not to be surprised, or too dismayed, by this, or too impressed with the occasional poor-kid-turned-Rhodes-Scholar-turned-President.

I guess I'm still dismayed, even after the realization, but I'll try to remember not to be too self-satisfied that we live in a post-Oakeshottian world in which hereditary politics is unthinkable.

Not sure why these musings occurred to me today. I wonder.



*This is a joke. I have more than my fair share of American prejudices, and they are too deep-rooted for me to shake off entirely, but I also know that this is... not an especially accurate reading of the events of 1763-89.

Update: See also: “She’ll be good. It’s in her blood.”

And see this post from Richard Just at TNR. In my gut I agree with all of it-- but it's also exemplary of the defender of technical knowledge, the meritocratic new man who prefers SAT scores to Oakeshott's "two generations to learn".

My colleagues have been doing an excellent job of explaining why it would be a disgrace to appoint Caroline Kennedy to the Senate, but I want to add one other argument to theirs. It has to do with elitism. To make a rough generalization, there are two different kinds of elitism: social elitism and intellectual elitism. Obviously, the two are intertwined in certain respects but they are basically distinct phenomena. (And even where they are closely intertwined, it's possible to see a distinction. Ivy League schools, for instance, have long embodied both strands of the elitist tradition, and still do. But over the past two generations, the relative balance at these institutions has gradually shifted away from social elitism and towards intellectual elitism--with fewer students admitted because their parents are well-connected and more admitted because of their high SAT scores.)

The difference is important because one form of elitism is considerably more valuable to a democratic society than the other. Social elitism is at best worthless, at worst illiberal and dangerous. It runs counter to the notion of equal opportunity that forms the core of the American ideal. More practically, it leads to people doing jobs for which they are not qualified. When those jobs are important ones, the consequences to society can be severe. If there are any positive outcomes that flow from social elitism, I can't think of them.

That isn't true for intellectual elitism. To be sure, this form of elitism carries plenty of downsides. It can lead to hubris (this was the cautionary tale of The Best and the Brightest) and cause people to underestimate the role that luck has played in their own success. But unlike social elitism, intellectual elitism carries clear benefits. It is worthwhile for society to esteem expertise--good for our arts, good for our sciences, and good for our politics. As long as it is tempered by other values, intellectual elitism--a fundamental belief in the worth of intelligence and curiosity--is basically a good thing.

One of the great tricks of the Republican Party in recent years has been to meld these two forms of elitism into a single slur. [...]

The election of Barack Obama suggests that American voters finally saw through this damaging conflation. Obama is probably the most intellectually elite president since Woodrow Wilson--he wrote an acclaimed book, taught at a top law school, and generally evinces a kind of academic disposition toward the world that is rare in politicians--but his entire career is a repudiation of social elitism. He went to the best schools not on the basis of his family connections but on the basis of intellectual merit. In electing Obama, voters were giving a measure of approval to this form of elitism--to expertise and intelligence in government--which is something they have not done in a long time.

And that is why I find the Caroline Kennedy situation so appalling. Just when Democrats have succeeded in decoupling intellectual elitism from social elitism--just when they have succeeded in suggesting that you can be advocates of intelligence and expertise without being advocates of unearned privilege and crude snobbery--along comes the ultimate symbol of social elitism to stake her claim to a powerful place in the Democratic Party. If Kennedy gets the seat, it will be for one reason only: her last name. And the perception that she is close to Obama threatens to meld social elitism and intellectual elitism back together in the minds of voters. That is good news for demagogues like Sarah Palin, and bad news for the country.

NOMOS XLIX: Moral Universalism and Pluralism

Nomos XLIX: Moral Universalism and Pluralism, edited by Melissa S. Williams and Henry Richardson, is now in print. It will soon ship to those who were dues-paying members of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy in 2004.

Book Description

Moral universalism, or the idea that some system of ethics applies to all people regardless of race, color, nationality, religion, or culture, must have a plurality over which to range — a plurality of diverse persons, nations, jurisdictions, or localities over which morality asserts a universal authority. The contributors to Moral Universalism and Pluralism, the latest volume in the NOMOS series, investigate the idea that, far from denying the existence of such pluralities, moral universalism presupposes it. At the same time, the search for universally valid principles of morality is deeply challenged by diversity. The fact of pluralism presses us to explore how universalist principles interact with ethical, political, and social particularisms. These important essays refuse the answer that particularisms should simply be made to conform to universal principles, as if morality were a mold into which the diverse matter of human society and culture could be pressed. Rather, the authors bring philosophical, legal and political perspectives to bear on the core questions: Which forms of pluralism are conceptually compatible with moral universalism, and which ones can be accommodated in a politically stable way? Can pluralism generate innovations in understandings of moral duty? How is convergence on the validity of legal and moral authority possible in circumstances of pluralism? As the contributors to the book demonstrate in a wide variety of ways, these normative, conceptual, and political questions deeply intertwine.

Contributors: Kenneth Baynes, William A. Galston, Barbara Herman, F. M. Kamm, Benedict Kingsbury, Frank I. Michelman, William E. Scheuerman, Gopal Sreenivasan, Daniel Weinstock, and Robin West.

Free Will and Canadian Politics

I make my bloggingheads debut (and obviously need a better-quality webcam if I'm going to keep doing this) on Will Wilkinson's "Free Will" show, discussing recent Canadian politics.



If you're clicking over here from bloggingheads, browse around the Canada, Quebec, or federalism tags to see more about the stuff Will and I discussed. For my academic writing on federalism, Quebec, and ethnocultural loyalties, see especially this article, "Federalism, Liberalism, and the Separation of Loyalties," APSR.

Updates: I think I did not-bad by the standard of people who've only lived in a country for 30 months, but various commentators at Will's blog and at the BHTV link above note some corrections and supplements to things that I said. One faithful reader e-mailed me with several related objections that I'll put in comments below this post.

End of term humor

Professors get punchy around this time.

Final exam, UNIV 1101

Universal grade change form

Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought

Readings for Political Science 334, Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought, the second semester in McGill's four-semester sequence in the history of political thought.

I've decided that I like having Machiavelli in with the medievals after all; it makes for nice thematic continuity about how to think about the legacy of Rome.

------------------
Dante Aligheri, On World Government [De Monarchia], Schneider, Bigongiari, Paolucci, eds., Griffon.

Thomas Aquinas, Political Writings, Dyson, Skinner, and Geuss, eds., Cambridge University Press.

St. Augustine, Political Writings, Fortin, Kries, and Tkacz, eds., Hackett Publishing.

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Skinner and Price eds., Cambridge University Press.

Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Penguin Classics

Cary J. Nederman and Kate Langdon Forhan, eds., Readings in Medieval Political Theory: 1100-1400, Hackett Publishing. [RMPT]

Course pack [CP]


January 6
Introduction

January 8
Excerpts online from:
Aristotle, The Politics
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: at least Book 2, Book 5, Book 10 ch. 6-9
Justinian, Institutes
Cicero, On Duties; On the Laws; On the Republic Books 3 and 5.
Plato, The Republic,
New Testament: Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Romans 13, Luke 12:1-53, Matthew 22:15-22, Matthew 16:13-28
Nicene Creed

January 13
Augustine, Political Writings, pp. 1-70

January 15
Augustine, Political Writings, pp. 71-129
Discussion

January 20
Augustine, Political Writings, pp. 130-201

January 22
Augustine, Political Writings, pp. 202-256

January 27
CP: Gratian, Decretals, 1139
RMPT, 21-23, 26-60:
Bernard of Clairvaux, “Letter to Pope Eugenius III,” c. 1146
John of Salisbury, excerpts from Metalogicon and Policratus, both 1159

January 29
Aquinas, Political Writings, pp. 1-75

February 3
Aquinas, Political Writings, pp. 76-157

February 5
Aquinas, Political Writings, pp. 158-219

February 10
Aquinas, Political Writings, pp. 220-278

February 12
CP: Magna Carta 1215
Bracton, The Laws and Customs of England, 1260s

February 17
RMPT, pp. 157-167: John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, 1302
Dante, World Government, 1313, complete

February 19
RMPT, pp. 173-199: excerpts from Marsilius of Padua, Defender of the Peace, 1324
CP: additional excerpts

March 3
CP: Accursius, selections from the Great Gloss, 1230
Bartolus of Sassoferrato, "On the Tyrant," c. 1330
Bartolus, excerpts from Commentary Upon Justinian’s Code, published as Bartolus on The Conflict of Laws, c. 1350

March 5
RMPT, 207-220: William of Ockham, “Whether a Ruler Can Accept The Property of Churches For His Own Needs…”, 1337
CP: Ockham, Tyrannical Government, 1341

March 10
CP: Vitoria, Political Writings, pp. 231-92: “On the American Indians,” 1539

March 12
Machiavelli, Discourses
CP: Machiavelli, letter to Vettori

March 17
Machiavelli, Discourses

March 19
Machiavelli, Discourses

March 24
Machiavelli, Discourses

March 26
Machiavelli, The Prince

March 31
Machiavelli, The Prince
And read for comparison: RMPT, pp. 71-96, 149-52

April 2
Machiavelli, The Prince

April 7
Machiavelli, The Prince

April 9
Conclusion

Today at McGill: the UDHR at 60


The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 60 Years Later

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 60 Years Later

A Conference to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 9, 2008

Stewart Biology Building
1205 Docteur Penfield &
McGill Faculty Club
3450 McTavish

McGill University
Montréal, Québec


9:00 - 9:15 Room S14

Opening Remarks

• Professor Gerald L. Gall, D.C., President, The John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights / Member, Board of Director, Association for Canadian Studies
• Dr. Pierre-Gerlier Forest, President, The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation


9:15-10:45 Room S14

(1) Opening Plenary Session - Global Security, Migration and Human Rights

• Professor François Crépeau, Université de Montréal, Trudeau Fellow 2008
• Emina Tudakovic, First Secretary, The Canadian Permanent Mission of the United Nations & Rapporteur of the Executive Committee
• Alex Neve, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada, Trudeau Mentor 2008
• Mel Cappe, President, The Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP)
• Emmanuel Kattan, Office of the Secretariat for the Alliance of Civilizations, United Nations


10:45 - 11:00 Break

Concurrent Sessions:

11:00 - 12:30 Room S14

(2) Religion and Human Rights

• Professor Pascale Fournier, University of Ottawa, Trudeau Scholar 2003
• Professor Richard Moon, University of Windsor
• Xavier Gravend-Tirole, Université de Montréal / Université de Lausanne, Trudeau Scholar 2008

11:00 - 12:30 Room S13

(3) Rights of Indigenous Peoples

• Jean Teillet, Pape, Salter & Teillet, Vancouver, BC
• Professor Patrick Macklem, University of Toronto


12:30 -1:45 Lunch Ruth W. Messinger, Executive Director,
American Jewish World Services (invited)
McGill Faculty Club and Conference Centre
3450 McTavish Street


Concurrent Sessions:

1:45 – 3:15 Room S13

(4) Language and Human Rights

• Professor Jose Woerhling, Université de Montréal
• Professor Ingride Roy, Université de Sherbrooke
• Professor Pierre Foucher, Université de Ottawa
• Julius Grey, Grey - Casgrain, Montréal, Québec

1:45 -3:15 Room S14

(5) Human Rights and Social Justice

• Professor Fiona Kelly, UBC / Trudeau Scholar 2005
• Laurie Sargent, Justice Canada
• Professor Lucie Lamarche, University of Ottawa
• Professor Peter Leuprecht, UQAM

3:15-3:30 Break

3:30-4:45 Room S14

(6) Closing Plenary Session - Human Rights and Identity

• Professor Kathleen Mahoney, University of Calgary, Trudeau Fellow 2008
• Professor Will Kymlicka, Queens University, Trudeau Fellow 2005
• Professor Deborah Anker, Harvard Law School (invited)
• Professor Roderick Macdonald, McGill University, Trudeau Fellow 2004

Coming soon

In late January, I'll be hosting a symposium on Nancy Rosenblum's important new book, On the Side of Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship. Rosenblum and several respondents will be posting here and responding to one another as well as to posts in comments. There will be material from the book available on the blog, but of course the more people who've had a chance to read the book, the better our conversations will be.

Hiring in IPE

McGILL UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE International Relations The Department of Political Science invites applications for a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level in the area of International Relations, with a specialization in international political economy, broadly understood. The Department seeks applicants whose research is theoretically and empirically informed, who possess strong training in qualitative and/or quantitative and/or formal methods, and who can teach effectively at the undergraduate and graduate levels. An applicant’s record of performance must provide evidence of outstanding research potential. Candidates should have already completed the PhD or be very near completion. Applications should include a curriculum vitae, graduate transcript, three letters of reference, a sample of written work and materials pertinent to teaching skills. The position start date is August 1, 2009. Review of applications will begin in January 2009 and will continue until the position is filled. For more information about the Department and University, visit our web site at www.mcgill.ca/politicalscience/. PLEASE FORWARD SUPPORTING MATERIALS TO: Professor Richard Schultz James McGill Professor and Chair Department of Political Science McGill University 855 Sherbrooke Street West Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2T7

Toronto-bound

APSA has posted an official reply to the request to resite next year's Annual Meeting because of concerns about free speech and academic protections in Canada, as well as a report detailing the relevant legislation and cases.

Elsewhere

At Lawyers,guns, and Money, djw and commentators discuss the choice of "Bombay" or "Mumbai" as a name, with some reference to some things I wrote about it some time ago. I still do say "Bombay," for the reasons I describe in the passage quoted in djw's post. As John says in the comment thread, "I'd rather side with Rushdie than with Shiv Sena."

But as a usage matter, "Mumbai" has stuck, and now has almost ten more years in use than it had had when I wrote Multiculturalism of Fear. I think I correctly described what happened then, and that the general point I was using the case to illustrate is right, but I do also recognize that in linguistic matters, eventually "long usage is a law sufficient." I'm not sure at what point my resistance to Shiv Sena becomes the cranky old Bircher in the corner saying "Peking" or Grandpa Simpson refusing to recognize Missourah.

I've got nothing else new to add, though of course I was pleased that djw found my discussion of the case useful.

Now available: Montesquieu and His Legacy


Rebecca Kingston, ed., Montesquieu and His Legacy, SUNY Press 2009. [Must have been sent back from the future-- woo!]

Montesquieu (1689-1755) is regarded as one of the most important thinkers of the Enlightenment. His Lettres persanes and L'Esprit des lois have been read by students and scholars throughout the last two centuries. While many have associated Montesquieu with the doctrine of the "separation of powers" in the history of ideas, Rebecca E. Kingston brings together leading international scholars who for the first time present a systematic treatment and discussion of the significance of his ideas more generally for the development of Western political theory and institutions. In particular, Montesquieu and His Legacy supplements the conventional focus on the institutional teachings of Montesquieu with attention to the theme of morals and manners. The contributors provide commentary on the broad legacy of Montesquieu's thought in past times as well as for the contemporary era.

1. What Montesquieu Taught:“Perfection Does Not Concern Men or Things Universally,” Michael Mosher

Part I. Morals and Manners in the Work of Montesquieu

2. Morals and Manners in Montesquieu’s Analysis of the British System of Liberty, Cecil Patrick Courtney

3. Honor, Interest, Virtue: The Affective Foundations of the Political in The Spirit of Laws, Céline Spector

4. On the Proper Use of the Stick: The Spirit of Laws and the Chinese Empire, Catherine Volpilhac-Auger

5. Montesquieu on Power: Beyond Checks and Balances, Brian C.J. Singer

Part II. Montesquieu’s Legacy in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Political Thought

6. Montesquieu’s Constitutional Legacies, Jacob T. Levy

7. Montesquieu’s Humanité and Rousseau’s Pitié, Clifford Orwin

8. Montesquieu and Tocqueville as Philosophical Historians: Liberty, Determinism, and the Prospects for Freedom, David W. Carrithers

9. Montesquieu and the Scottish Enlightenment, James Moore

Part III. Montesquieu and Comparative Constitutional Law

10. Montesquieu and the Renaissance of Comparative Public Law, Ran Hirschl

11. Free Speech and The Spirit of Laws in Canada and the United States: A Test of Montesquieu’s Approach to Comparative Law, Stephan L. Newman

12. Montesquieu’s Persian Letters: A Timely Classic, Fred Dallmayr

13. Montesquieu and Us, Jean Ehrard

14. Montesquieu and the Future of Liberalism, Ronald F. Thiemann

15. Montesquieu and Liberalism: The Question of Pluralism, Catherine Larriere

Graduate Conference Announcement: Political Theory at Princeton

Graduate Conference in Political Theory
Princeton University
April 17-18, 2009

The Committee for the Graduate Conference in Political Theory at Princeton University welcomes papers concerning any period, methodological approach, or topic in political theory, political philosophy, or the history of political thought. Approximately eight papers will be accepted.

Each session, led by a discussant from Princeton, will be focused exclusively on one paper and will feature an extensive question and answer period with Princeton faculty and students. Papers will be pre-circulated among conference participants.

The keynote address, "Utopophobia," will be delivered by David Estlund, Professor of Philosophy, Brown University.

Submissions are due via the submission form on the conference website by January 31, 2000. Please limit your paper submission to 7500 words and format it for blind review (the text should include your paper's title but be free of other personal and institutional information). Papers will be refereed by current graduate students in the Department of Politics at Princeton. Acceptance notices will be sent by February 28, 2009.

Lodging and meals will be provided by the committee, which acknowledges the generous support of the Democracy and Human Values Project, University Center for Human Values, Department of Classics, Department of History, and Department of Politics at Princeton University.

All papers should be submitted through the online form. Submissions by mail or email will not be accepted.

Questions and comments can be directed to: polthry@princeton.edu

For more information, please visit the conference website at: https://politicaltheory.princeton.edu/.

Political theory within political science

I may not agree in quite every particular, but in general, Mike Munger is singing the right song.

Fun and games continues

The dependence of the proposed coalition government on Bloc support looks like it's becoming the issue on which Conservatives will rely as they try to save their Government. There had been some attempts to use Dion's criticisms of the NDP, and to say that a grave economic crisis was a bad time to bring socialists into government (which, y'know, yeah); but that didn't seem to get much traction. The Bloc issues is where thre Tories will make their stand.

The key attack line from the Tories is that the Liberals are betraying their federalist principles by agreeing to demands from the Bloc.

"This deal that the leader of the Liberal Party has made with the separatists is a betrayal of the voters of this country, a betrayal of the best interests of our economy, a betrayal of the best interests of our country, and we will fight it with every means we have," Harper said in the House of Commons.

"The highest principle of Canadian democracy is that if one wants to be prime minister, one gets one's mandate from the Canadian people and not from Quebec separatists."

That's one odd "highest principle," and seems incompatible with the federalist view that Quebec nationalists are "Canadian people." (It's the nationalists who deny that.) But Harper believes that the strength of the no-Bloc taboo may be strong enough to save the government-- and from what I hear about popular responses in the ROC, he may be right.

Of course, this won't help the Bloc be any less anathema to federalist anglos.

Former Parti Québécois leader Jacques Parizeau says he’s delighted and very satisfied with the Bloc Québécois’ decision to join a coalition that could form the next federal government in Ottawa.

And neither will this.

The political crisis in Ottawa is yet another sign that Canada is not governable and the only solution for Quebec is to get out, Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois said Tuesday morning.

Montreal Political Theory Workshop:
Quelle responsabilité morale? Droit, politique et éthique en débats /
Settling moral accounts: Law, politics and morality


1000-1630 hours
Friday 5 December 2008
Room 16, Old Chancellor Day Hall
3644 Peel Street
McGill University

This workshop is funded by the Groupe de Recherche Interuniversitaire en Philosophie Politique (GRIPP), and co-hosted by the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism.

Panel I: 1000 – 1230 hrs.
Settling Moral Accounts: Ignorance, Forgiveness and Political Responsibility

Chair: Jacob Levy (Political Science, McGill)

Farid Abdel-Nour (Political Science, San Diego State University), 'Citizenship and Political Responsibility in Modern Mass Democracies'

Gaëlle Fiasse (Philosophy and Religious Studies, McGill), 'Should I Merely Excuse the Ignorant but Forgive the Wicked? An Answer to a Contemporary Paradox'

Discussant:
Christiane Wilke (Law, Carleton)

Lunch Break 1230-1400 hrs.

Panel II: 1400 – 1630 hrs.
Settling Moral Accounts: Tragic Narratives, Law and Judgement

Chair: René Provost (Law, McGill)

Christiane Wilke (Law, Carleton University), 'Reconsecrating the Temple of Justice: Invocations of Civilization, Humanity and Justice at the Nuremberg Justice Trial'

Catherine Lu (Political Science, McGill), 'Accounting for Political Catastrophe: A Tragic View'

Discussant:
René Provost (Law, McGill)

Two thoughts...

on the current state of play in Ottawa.

1) This "reversing the verdict of the election/ overturning the popular will" gambit isn't going to fly. The rules of the game in a US Presidential Election are: the one to get a majority in the Electoral College wins. The rules of the game in a newly-elected Parliament are: the one who can put together a government that has the confidence of the House of Commons wins. Harper doesn't represent The General Will. He leads a plurality-but-minority party. The Voice of The People didn't make him Prime Minister and reject Dion; a bunch of people voted for a bunch of different outcomes. Lo and behold, a parliament split among four parties is prone to some ormanipulation by those willing to build coalitions.

That said, it's no doubt weird that this happens now. This coalition was possible any time during the last Parliament. What's changed between then and now is an intervening election wherein Harper increased his party's share of seats and Dion took a drubbing. So, yes, for that to have the upshot "Prime Minister Dion" is unusual. But it doesn't overturn the election-- the three opposition parties were elected to their various numbers of seats, too, and those are real seats in Parliament.

2) Taboos break down. It's interesting to see the Bloc evolve into a party that's taking active responsibility for outcomes in (though not yet for governing) a country it wishes to see taken apart. There's real power that's been sitting there taking up seats year after year, not doing anything. But now-- well, a system of responsible party government makes it awfully hard for a party to refuse responsibility forever. But that's a big step for the Bloc-- it points the way toward being a party of Quebec interests rather than a party of Quebec secession. Could the Bloc someday become Shas-- the perpetual coalition-making swing party, just selling its coalition participation to the highest bidder, where the bids are goodies for Quebec? Doesn't seem impossible to me. The PQ is in a different position-- it doesn't face the same kind of pressure to change its agenda. But for the Bloc to sit in Ottawa year after year not able to do anything has been anomalous.

It's not just the Bloc's taboos getting broken, though. Working with the separatists isn't something the Liberal Party can be happy about at some fundamental level. And many parliamentary systems do effectively have some outcast party that's deemed not to count for purposes of counting heads... until, someday, it does count. Israeli governments always aim for a "Jewish majority;" it's considered unacceptable for a government's survival to depend on the participation of Arab parties. Post-totalitarian parties-- the post-fascists in Italy, the post-Communists in Germany-- are sometimes in the same position. But as I recall the post-fascists finally did count, when Berlusconi needed them to assemble his first right/ center-right coalition (along with the secessionist Northern League!). And the PDS in Germany has been part of some state-level coalitions (IIRC), even if it's still taboo in the Bundestag. The UK hasn't needed a coalition to govern in a very long time, but Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party are both traditionally outside polite Westminster society-- and it would be a very strange thing if some future Lib-Lab coalition depended on, say, the SNP to reach a majority.

The current Spanish government depends on the passive cooperation of the Catalan and Basque nationalist parties-- they abstain from confidence votes, allowing the plurality socialists to retain power.

Update: Mario Dumont, leader of the "autonomist" (but not secessionist) Quebec party ADQ, is trying to make hay in the Quebec election of the Bloc getting into bed with Dion.

Mario Dumont turned his guns on Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois Tuesday, accusing her of working against Quebec’s interests by supporting a plan in Ottawa that would make Stéphane Dion prime minister.

Dumont, leader of the Action démocratique du Québec, charged that Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, supported by Marois, had made “an unbelievable gaffe” in supporting a Liberal-NDP coalition government to replace the Conservative government.

Dumont, campaigning for Monday’s provincial election, called on Marois to force Duceppe to abandon the coalition agreement.

The “Duceppe-Marois gaffe” would lead to either Dion becoming prime minister or a federal election. Quebecers want neither option and both are contrary to Quebec’s interests, he said.

“(Marois) called on Quebecers to vote for the Bloc Québécois, she forgot to tell them they would be getting Stéphane Dion as prime minister a few weeks later,” Dumont said after a speech to the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal.

[Note to non-locals: the Bloc Quebecois is a party that runs for federal Parliament, the Parti Quebecois is a party that runs for the government of Quebec; they're closely allied but not identical. The ADQ doesn't have any particular federal counterpart, but is broadly more right-wing than the PQ/BQ.]

On occasion Dumont can be very effective with an attack issue. He hasn't found one yet this campaign-- but maybe this is the one.

Fascinating.

Canada may be on the verge of a constitutional and political showdown, and the secessionist Bloc Quebecois is the kingmaker.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, leading a conservative minority government, proposed to abolish government funding for political parties-- a move that would hurt his own part much less than the opposition parties, as the government subsidy makes up most of their budgets.

I've joked several times in this space about the apparent inability of Canadian parties to learn the word "coalition," but mortal threats concentrate the mind wonderfully, and the Liberal and NDP parties finally seemed to reach a willingness to join forces.

Problem: even combined, they have fewer MPs than the Tories. The balance of power is held by the Bloc, which has never entered into coalition or federal government since, after all, its raison d'etre is to free Quebec from the Canadian yoke.

Second problem: if the Tories lose a vote of confidence, the normal response is for the PM to ask the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and hold a new election-- but the last election was a matter of weeks ago.

So one question is: what does the GG do, if the PM is asking for a new election while Stephan Dion asks for the right to form a new government in the existing Parliament? And another question is: to grant Dion's request, what kind of participation would the GG demand from the Bloc? Passive support seems insufficient; active participation would be anathema both to the Bloc and to huge swaths of Liberal Anglophone Canada.

And it's worth noting just how topsy-turvy the world is in which the Bloc makes Stephane Dion Prime Minister. Dion has for two decades been one of the champions of Canadian unity and federalism within the Quebec debate, and has been a hate-figure for nationalists; Bernard Landry called him "le politicien le plus détesté de l'histoire du Québec." It would come as a serious surprise to me if either Bloc voters were happy that the Bloc installed Dion, or if Liberal voters were happy about any collaboration with the Bloc.

Harper has now backed down from the political party subsidy proposal. But the thing about political learning is that newly-learned lessons aren't quickly unlearned. The Liberals and NDP have finally learned, under mortal threat, that a coalition is thinkable-- and then they learned that they could terrify Harper, which they've proven unable to do for years. So they could still decide to vote no-confidence next week and bring the government down-- apparently throwing Canada's immediate political future into the hands of the GG, which is constitutionally unsettling in one way (Governors General, like the British monarch for whom they stand in, aren't really supposed to have political choices to make in our modern constitutional monarchies)-- and into the hands of the Bloc, which is constitutionally unsettling in another way.

A big week ahead. Fruits and votes is my recommendation for a blog on which to follow the action.

Elsewhere: Kirsch on Zizek

"The Deadly Jester," at TNR.

Ah...

health care.

Despite a shortage of doctors across the province, the Quebec government is planning to issue fewer permits than the actual number of graduates in family medicine next year, The Gazette has learned.

A total of 238 doctors are expected to complete their residencies in family medicine and pass their board exams in 2009. However, the government is counting on issuing 220 permits, according to the Quebec Federation of General Practitioners.

The gap stems from a 5-year-old permits policy aimed at making sure young doctors start their careers in short-staffed regions across the province. In the past, the government had issued more permits than there were students in the graduating class. This gave doctors more choice about where to practice, and some regions had a hard time recruiting new doctors.

This year, however, the government has decided to keep a tight lid on permits - in particular, limiting those available in Montreal - to make sure that all regions are able to hire new doctors.

But the policy - known as Plans régionaux d'effectifs médicaux or PREMs - has actually backfired and led to an exodus of mostly anglophone, Quebec-trained doctors quitting the province for Ontario and elsewhere, critics say.

"It's absurd," said Mark Roper, a Westmount family physician and chairman of the medical manpower committee of the Regional Department of General Medicine of Montreal.

"It's almost like they're pushing young doctors out of the province."

Most new doctors prefer to practise in Montreal rather than in small rural communities. Quebec has offered doctors financial carrots to work in the Far North, but it has used the stick to get them to practise in the Mauricie, the Outaouais and other regions.

Before the PREMs, new doctors who decided to stay in Montreal were docked 30 per cent of their billings for the first three years of their careers. Most doctors toughed it out, so the government switched to the more restrictive PREM system.

Each year, the Health Department - in co-operation with the federation of GPs - decides on a certain number of positions for the 15 regions of Quebec.

Newly-graduated doctors must then apply for positions in a number of regions. Most apply to work in Montreal as their first choice, and if they don't get accepted, they are more likely to be hired by another region.

For Montreal, the government has decided to issue only 54 permits even though the city has a shortage of about 300 family doctors. If new doctors decide to stay in Montreal without a PREM position, going into solo practice, their billings will be docked by 25 per cent, not for the first three years but their entire careers.

Figures obtained by The Gazette show that recruitment was actually higher before the PREMs system went into effect in every region except Mauricie. So where have all those young doctors gone?

Quebec has been a net exporter of doctors to other provinces in the past five years, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

Experimentation

I'm one of the last of the oldline blogluddists who thinks that the decline of civility and decency the blogosphere can be traced to two events, one of which I won't tell you but one of which was the creation of comments sections. In particular, I remember thinking that the opening of comments at Kevin Drum's then-site, CalPundit, changed things rather a lot. Almost every high-traffic site I've been reading since before the introduction of comments seems to me to have suffered on net from the development, except for Crooked Timber.

However:
1) This is a very low-traffic site, compared with my former digs chez Volokh or chez TNR. I'ts far below the traffic of sites with comments sections I really enjoy-- i.e. John and Belle, or PTN.

2) I'm going to be hosting a blogevent in the near future that will require comments, and I figured that I ought to start figuring out how to accommodate a comments section before rather than during that event.

So I'll be opening comments around here, at least temporarily. I hereby incorporate by reference Brad DeLong's comments policy, pending the evolution of relevant local norms. I don't intend to moderate in advance a la Leiter.

So, all twenty of my loyal readers: talk away!

Update:

So much for low traffic! Welcome to Kevin Drum's reader's. I invite you to stick around and read a post that's actually about something (e.g.).

And, NB: People generally don't, or shouldn't refer to themselves as luddites about some modern technology without making fun of themselves, and I was certainly trying to do that. It's a silly view that says technology c. 2002-2003 was just right, and that the years since have been a fall from grace. It is true that my experience of blogging and reading blogs came to feel different after comments sections opened, and obviously I've made a deliberate decision to leave comments off until now-- but I'd still ask you not to take my opening paragraph above too seriously. (By the way, saying "one of which I won't tell you" was meant to be more honest than just attributing the whole change to comments sections. I know it looks like I'm trying to be coy or cute but that wasn't the idea.)

Kevin quite reasonably says, "This deserves explication. Does Jacob think that opening a comment section changed my actual blogging? Or did the blogging remain the same but the mere existence of raucous commenters changed things? If the latter, why not just ignore the comments? If the former, how?"

Unfortunately I can't quite disentangle the two. This is a matter of impressionistic memory of events 5-6 years past, and many things change at the same time. With or without comments Kevin's one of the blogosphere's best on a number of dimensions, and I certainly don't mean that he became uncivil-- he continues to stand out for his civility and graciousness. So maybe it's just that I found one of my favorite blogs marred by the raucousness below the posts, that I couldn't quite discipline myself to look away from. And CalPundit probably stands out in my memory partly because the contrast between Kevin's posts and the raucousness below them was so dramatic; if I didn't look away, it meant that my experience of reading the blog changed very suddenly. I think that's mostly where this impression in my memory comes from.

But I also think that comments sections have encouraged intra-blog rather than inter-blog conversations.

As a lecturer, I'm at least somewhat responsive to my audience and their reactions. I do notice when the students' eyes are glazing over, when they seem alert, what makes them ask questions, what puts them to sleep. I don't respond to that in a Pavlovian way-- that way lies the professor-as-standup-comic, and I'm pretty sure that my vocation doesn't lie in that direction even if I wanted to try it. But I do respond, consciously and unconsciously-- speaking to a live audience is interactive in a way that writing an article for future publication is not. I'm sure that makes me a better teacher than if I ignored my audience-- but it also makes my lectures a little bit more homogenous, and a little bit more geared to what I think my students already find interesting or congenial.

Blogging's interactive, too. If nothing else, I suspect that choice of blogging topics gets influenced by the enthusiasm for some topics shown by one's commentators, when comments sections are on. That by itself makes the medium a little bit less idiosyncratically personal; it encourages blogging about hot topics over blogging about one's cat (to take an old CalPundit example)-- whereas as a reader I enjoy the idiosyncratically personal voices.

But there's probably something beyond even that. Comments crowds tend to be more aligned with the blog-author than do other blog-writers. And I think that conversations among blog authors across ideological lines started to fall off after comments sections came into being. Opportunity costs of time kick in-- most blog-authors do read their own comments sections, and that surely changes the overall ideological balance of who they're spending time online reading. The objections one starts to notice to one's own position come from one's loyal readers-- so a center-left blogger will start to encounter primarily objections from the left, and vice-versa. That has an effect of its own. At least for some bloggers, the effect is a predictable echo-chamber one, and the positions become more extreme.

One other thing about all this:

2002-03 of course had more going on in it than blogstuff. I do think that, as the war in Iraq became more likely, and then happened, politics in general became somewhat more polarized and nastier in the US, certainly than it had been for a while after 9/11.

One thing I worry about in my memory is... well, for comparison I think about Andrew Sullivan and Paul Krugman. Sullivan famously called Krugman as a "shrill" critic of Bush, back in the days when Sullivan was broadly supportive of Bush. Now that pretty much everything Krugman said about Bush has proven an understatement, and now that Sullivan is fully on board as a critic, I wonder how he remembers Krugman c. 2000-2003? My guess is that he still remembers them as shrill. Krugman was, from Sullivan's perspective, prematurely anti-Bush-- and like the premature anti-Fascists of 1939 and 1940, those who were prematurely anti-Bush tend not to get much love from the latecomers. (I think that Brad DeLong's long-running "order of the shrill" feature was actually a pretty important device-- it reminded the latecomers that they were coming around to views Krugman had long since put forward, and views that they had once found irritating in him.)

From my perspective as I lived it, some of the left blogosphere was prematurely anti-war. What that means is: they were right and I was wrong. They saw important things before I did. But it's very difficult to change the emotional valence of memory. It's likely that some of my memory is colored by that-- I found off-putting some commentary that was right, but that I didn't agree with then. I don't think that that directly plays very much into my wariness about comments sections, but that's the sort of thing it would be hard to know for sure about oneself. It probably does play into my overall memory of a change in blogspheric tone in that era.

For what it's worth, I don't think that I'm the only one who was struck by Kevin's comments section in the old days; in the post linked to above, Brad DeLong relies on "Kevin Drum's comments section" as a shorthand for something to be avoided: "trolls must be squashed quickly, or the space turns into... Kevin Drum's comment section." I see that Kevin's got moderators these days, and that it makes a difference, but, again, memories are hard to shake.

Multimedia

The "Liberals and Libertarians: Common Ground or Separate Agendas?" panel at Princeton last month is now available in video at the WWS website (scroll down to October 23) or in free audio on iTunes (search for liberals libertarians, or for one or more of the participants-- Paul Starr, John Tomasi, Brink Lindsey, Will Wilkinson, Douglas Massey, Chris Hayes, me.) Yes, I now exist in iTunes-- very exciting, I know.

An introduction to referral logs

Dear students,

If you're going to run a google search on an assigned paper topic, which mentions a bunch of readings from your class, don't be shocked if the search at some point directs you toward the professor who thought up the topic in the first place. But following that link leaves a digital trail that your professor can see. Nothing wrong with following the links, of course; it's good to look for ideas! But I just thought you should know.

JTL