The news I miss on red-eye flights

Cass Sunstein chosen as new administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Congratulations to him!

Notes Orin Kerr, "this is terrific news for other legal academics. Cass currently writes about 120 law review articles a year, all of which place in top journals, amounting to about 30% of the total placed articles in those journals. With Cass working full-time in Washington, I'm betting that his scholarly productivity will plummet. He might write as few as 20 articles a year! That means that there will be 100 more non-Cass placements free every year for the next few years for the rest of us, which gives other scholars a great opportunity to place their articles while Cass is working in government."

But Orin neglects the cost to all of Cass' foregone coauthors.

2008 books in political theory, continued

See this post for part 1.

Ten interesting and important books, by my lights, in political theory in 2008 by young and mid-career scholars. This will be a much more idiosyncratic list built around my own interests than the first one was-- not that the first one represented Objective Truth or anything, but, e.g., I'm pretty confident that there will be APSA panels or conferences or workshops or review symposia about most of the books I named there. Some of the books below are ones I suspect not many people have heard of yet; I want to encourage more people to have a look at them. In any case, well-known or not, consensus choices or not, these are interesting-to-me books published last year. Further contributions welcome in comments!

Sharon Krause, Civil Passions

Must we put passions aside when we deliberate about justice? Can we do so? The dominant views of deliberation rightly emphasize the importance of impartiality as a cornerstone of fair decision making, but they wrongly assume that impartiality means being disengaged and passionless. In Civil Passions, Sharon Krause argues that moral and political deliberation must incorporate passions, even as she insists on the value of impartiality. Drawing on resources ranging from Hume's theory of moral sentiment to recent findings in neuroscience, Civil Passions breaks new ground by providing a systematic account of how passions can generate an impartial standpoint that yields binding and compelling conclusions in politics. Krause shows that the path to genuinely impartial justice in the public sphere--and ultimately to social change and political reform--runs through moral sentiment properly construed. This new account of affective but impartial judgment calls for a politics of liberal rights and democratic contestation, and it requires us to reconceive the meaning of public reason, the nature of sound deliberation, and the authority of law. By illuminating how impartiality feels, Civil Passions offers not only a truer account of how we deliberate about justice, but one that promises to engage citizens more effectively in acting for justice.

Burke Hendrix, Ownership, Authority, and Self-Determination: Moral Principles and Indigenous Rights Claims

Much controversy has existed over the claims that Native Americans and other indigenous peoples have a right—based on original occupancy of land, historical transfers of sovereignty, and principles of self-determination—to a political status separate from the states in which they now find themselves embedded. How valid are these claims on moral grounds?

Burke Hendrix tackles these thorny questions in this book. Rather than focusing on the legal and constitutional status of indigenous nations within the states now ruling them, he starts at a more basic level, interrogating fundamental justifications for political authority itself. He shows that historical claims of land ownership and prior sovereignty cannot provide a sufficient basis for challenging the authority of existing states, but that our natural moral duties to aid other persons in danger can justify rights to political separation from states that fail to protect their citizens as they should.

Actual attempts at political separation must be carefully managed through well-defined procedural mechanisms, however, to foster extensive democratic deliberation about the nature of the politic al changes at stake. Using such procedures, Hendrix argues, indigenous peoples should be able to withdraw politically from the states currently ruling them, even to the point of choosing full independence.

Dennis Rasmussen, The Problems and Promise of Commercial Society: Adam Smith's Response to Rousseau

Adam Smith is popularly regarded as the ideological forefather of laissez-faire capitalism, while Rousseau is seen as the passionate advocate of the life of virtue in small, harmonious communities and as a sharp critic of the ills of commercial society. But, in fact, Smith had many of the same worries about commercial society that Rousseau did and was strongly influenced by his critique.

In this first book-length comparative study of these leading eighteenth-century thinkers, Dennis Rasmussen highlights Smith's sympathy with Rousseau's concerns and analyzes in depth the ways in which Smith crafted his arguments to defend commercial society against these charges. These arguments, Rasmussen emphasizes, were pragmatic in nature, not ideological: it was Smith's view that, all things considered, commercial society offered more benefits than the alternatives.

Just because of this pragmatic orientation, Smith's approach can be useful to us in assessing the pros and cons of commercial society today and thus contributes to a debate that is too much dominated by both dogmatic critics and doctrinaire champions of our modern commercial society.

Annelien De Dijn, French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville: Liberty in a Levelled Society

This study makes a major contribution to our understanding of one of the most important and enduring strands of modern political thought. Annelien de Dijn argues that Montesquieu’s aristocratic liberalism - his conviction that the preservation of freedom in a monarchy required the existence of an aristocratic ‘corps intermédiaire’ - had a continued impact on post-revolutionary France. Revisionist historians from Furet to Rosanvallon have emphasised the impact of revolutionary republicanism on post-revolutionary France, with its monist conception of politics and its focus on popular sovereignty. Dr de Dijn, however, highlights the persistence of a pluralist liberalism that was rooted in the Old Regime, and which saw democracy and equality as inherent threats to liberty. She thus provides a new context in which to read the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, who is revealed as the heir not just of Restoration liberals, but also of the Royalists and their hero, Montesquieu.

Elisabeth Ellis, Provisional Politics: Kantian Arguments in Policy Context

If we are to vindicate moral reasoning in politics, Elisabeth Ellis argues in this original and provocative work, we must focus on the conditions of political discourse rather than the contents of any particular ethical system. Written in an engaging, direct style, Provisional Politics builds on Ellis’s prize-winning interpretation of Kant’s theory of provisional right to construct a new theory of justice under conditions of agency and plurality. She develops this new perspective through a series of cases ranging from the treatment of AIDS widows in Kenya to the rights of non-citizens everywhere, as well as the clash between democratic decision-making and the politics of species conservation. The book concludes with a sobering discussion of the probable limits of political agency.

Jenet Kirkpatrick, Uncivil Disobedience:
Studies in Violence and Democratic Politics

Uncivil Disobedience examines the roles violence and terrorism have played in the exercise of democratic ideals in America. Jennet Kirkpatrick explores how crowds, rallying behind the principle of popular sovereignty and desiring to make law conform to justice, can disdain law and engage in violence. She exposes the hazards of democracy that arise when citizens seek to control government directly, and demonstrates the importance of laws and institutions as limitations on the will of the people.

Kirkpatrick looks at some of the most explosive instances of uncivil disobedience in American history: the contemporary militia movement, Southern lynch mobs, frontier vigilantism, and militant abolitionism. She argues that the groups behind these violent episodes are often motivated by admirable democratic ideas of popular power and autonomy. Kirkpatrick shows how, in this respect, they are not so unlike the much-admired adherents of nonviolent civil disobedience, yet she reveals how those who engage in violent disobedience use these admirable democratic principles as a justification for terrorism and killing. She uses a "bottom-up" analysis of events to explain how this transformation takes place, paying close attention to what members of these groups do and how they think about the relationship between citizens and the law.

Uncivil Disobedience calls for a new vision of liberal democracy where the rule of the people and the rule of law are recognized as fundamental ideals, and where neither is triumphant or transcendent.

Jason Maloy,The Colonial American Origins of Modern Democratic Thought

This first examination in almost 40 years of political ideas in the seventeenth-century American colonies reaches some surprising conclusions about the history of democratic theory more generally. The origins of a distinctively modern kind of thinking about democracy can be located, not in revolutionary America and France in the later eighteenth century, but in the tiny New England colonies in the middle seventeenth. The key feature of this democratic rebirth was honoring not only the principle of popular sovereignty through regular elections but also the principle of accountability through non-electoral procedures for the auditing and impeachment of elected officers. By staking its institutional identity entirely on elections, modern democratic thought has misplaced the sense of robust popular control that originally animated it.

Dana Villa, Public Freedom

The freedom to take part in civic life--whether in the exercise of one's right to vote or congregate and protest--has become increasingly less important to Americans than individual rights and liberties. In Public Freedom, renowned political theorist Dana Villa argues that political freedom is essential to both the preservation of constitutional government and the very substance of American democracy itself.

Through intense close readings of theorists such as Hegel, Tocqueville, Mill, Adorno, Arendt, and Foucault, Villa diagnoses the key causes of our democratic discontent and offers solutions to preserve at least some of our democratic hopes. He demonstrates how Americans' preoccupation with a market-based conception of freedom--that is, the personal freedom to choose among different material, moral, and vocational goods--has led to the gradual erosion of meaningful public participation in politics as well as diminished interest in the health of the public realm itself. Villa critically examines, among other topics, the promise and limits of civil society and associational life as sources of democratic renewal; the effects of mass media on the public arena; and the problematic but still necessary ideas of civic competence and democratic maturity.

Public Freedom is a passionate and insightful defense of political liberties at a moment in America's history when such freedoms are very much at risk.

Alan Houston, Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement

This fascinating book explores Benjamin Franklin’s social and political thought. Although Franklin is often considered “the first American,” his intellectual world was cosmopolitan. An active participant in eighteenth-century Atlantic debates over the modern commercial republic, Franklin combined abstract analyses with practical proposals. Houston treats Franklin as shrewd, creative, and engaged—a lively thinker who joined both learned controversies and political conflicts at home and abroad.

Drawing on meticulous archival research, Houston examines such tantalizing themes as trade and commerce, voluntary associations and civic militias, population growth and immigration policy, political union and electoral institutions, freedom and slavery. In each case, he shows how Franklin urged the improvement of self and society.

Engagingly written and richly illustrated, this book provides a compelling portrait of Franklin, a fresh perspective on American identity, and a vital account of what it means to be practical.

Adrian Vermeule, Law and the Limits of Reason

Human reason is limited. Given the scarcity of reason, how should the power to make constitutional law be allocated among legislatures, courts and the executive, and how should legal institutions be designed? In Law and the Limits of Reason, Adrian Vermeule denies the widespread view, stemming from Burke and Hayek, that the limits of reason counsel in favor of judges making "living" constitutional law in the style of the common law. Instead, he proposes and defends a "codified constitution" - a regime in which legislatures have the primary authority to develop constitutional law over time, through statutes and constitutional amendments.

Vermeule contends that precisely because of the limits of human reason, large modern legislatures, with their numerous and highly diverse memberships and their complex internal structures for processing information, are the most epistemically effective lawmaking institutions.

Blogging on jet lag and 2 hrs sleep in the last 2 days

You know, it's remarkable how entertaining and enjoyable and rewatchable I find Shrek, given that its moral is "It doesn't matter whether you're beautiful or ugly; all that matters is that you're not short."

By contrast, no matter how much fun I found watching Legally Blonde once in my life, I'll never watch it again. Its moral that "people who are beautiful and rich and popular but don't work very hard on their studies have it unfairly tough, until such time as the rest of us realize that their beauty entitles them to academic success" is too execrable to put up with twice.

The return of the big book

In late 2005 I wrote:

2005 was a kind of curious year in book publishing in political theory and philosophy. The market was mainly filled with huge Companions or Very Short Introductions or anything else besides actual monographs. It doesn't seem to me that there was any book that captured everyone's attention. There was no new book in the prestigious Oxford Political Theory series. People have been talking for the past few years about the absence of any set of questions so exciting and energizing as to draw everyone out of their niches and into a common conversation. This year seemed to me the year in which that absence filtered through to the lagging-indicator of newly-published monographs.

Now, there's nothing wrong with that. The exciting, unifying, common-conversation Big Ideas are only sometimes productive. There need to be signficant periods of time when people are working in their niches and making progress there. Frankly, I enjoy going to APSA more in the years when it's filled with scores of panels with interesting new papers, each following its own logic of argument and discovery, than in the years when everyone feels compelled to give a paper about, e.g., deliberative democracy.

But in those fragmentary moments, excellent books can get published that don't get noticed because they're in other people's niches. I like to see good work get read and recognized, and like to discourage the occasional bout of "nothing good is being done these days" despair. So, as a partial corrective, a list of ten excellent, interesting, important, or potentially transformative books in political theory

Well, the last twelve months look rather different. Herewith a quick rundown of some of the books published since December 2007-- some of them works that people I know have been eagerly awaiting for years. In this post I'll list ten by well-established prominent senior figures in the field; I'll follow up with a post on ten by young and mid-career scholars. No rankings or claims of "ten best" or "ten most important;" more like my equivalent of Larry Solum's Legal Theory Bookworm (and, unsurprisingly, there's a bit of overlap with the books he's highlighted over the past year).

Thomas Christiano, The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and Its Limits

What is the ethical basis of democracy? And what reasons do we have to go along with democratic decisions even when we disagree with them? And when do we have reason to say that we may justly ignore democratic decisions? These questions must be answered if we are to have answers to some of the most important questions facing our global community, which include whether there is a human right to democracy and whether we must attempt to spread democracy throughout the globe.

This book provides a philosophical account of the moral foundations of democracy and of liberalism. It shows how democracy and basic liberal rights are grounded in the principle of public equality, which tells us that in the establishment of law and policy we must treat persons as equals in ways they can see are treating them as equals. The principle of public equality is shown to be the fundamental principle of social justice. This account enables us to understand the nature and roles of adversarial politics and public deliberation in political life. It gives an account of the grounds of the authority of democracy. It also shows when the authority of democracy runs out. It shows how the violations of democratic and liberal rights are beyond the legitimate authority of democracy and how the creation of persistent minorities in a democratic society, and the failure to ensure a basic minimum for all persons, weaken the legitimate authority of democracy.

G.A. Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality

In this stimulating work of political philosophy, acclaimed philosopher G. A. Cohen sets out to rescue the egalitarian thesis that in a society in which distributive justice prevails, people’s material prospects are roughly equal. Arguing against the Rawlsian version of a just society, Cohen demonstrates that distributive justice does not tolerate deep inequality.

In the course of providing a deep and sophisticated critique of Rawls’s theory of justice, Cohen demonstrates that questions of distributive justice arise not only for the state but also for people in their daily lives. The right rules for the macro scale of public institutions and policies also apply, with suitable adjustments, to the micro level of individual decision-making.

Cohen also charges Rawls’s constructivism with systematically conflating the concept of justice with other concepts. Within the Rawlsian architectonic, justice is not distinguished either from other values or from optimal rules of social regulation. The elimination of those conflations brings justice closer to equality.

George Kateb, Patriotism and Other Mistakes

George Kateb has been one of the most respected and influential political theorists of the last quarter century. His work stands apart from that of many of his contemporaries and resists easy summary. In these essays Kateb often admonishes himself, in Socratic fashion, to keep political argument as far as possible negative: to be willing to assert what we are not, and what we will not do, and to build modestly from there some account of what we are and what we ought to do.

Drawing attention to the non-rational character of many motives that drive people to construct and maintain a political order, he urges greater vigilance in political life and cautions against “mistakes” not usually acknowledged as such. Patriotism is one such mistake, too often resulting in terrible brutality and injustices. He asks us to consider how commitments to ideals of religion, nation, race, ethnicity, manliness, and courage find themselves in the service of immoral ends, and he exhorts us to remember the dignity of the individual.

The book is divided into three sections. In the first, Kateb discusses the expansion of state power (including such topics as surveillance) and the justifications for war recently made by American policy makers. The second section offers essays in moral psychology, and the third comprises fresh interpretations of major thinkers in the tradition of political thought, from Socrates to Arendt.

Charles Larmore, The Autonomy of Morality

In The Autonomy of Morality Charles Larmore challenges two ideas that have shaped the modern mind. The world, he argues, is not a realm of value-neutral fact, nor does human freedom consist in imposing principles of our own devising on an alien reality. Rather, reason consists in being responsive to reasons for thought and action that arise from the world itself. Larmore shows that the moral good has an authority that speaks for itself. Only in this light does the true basis of a liberal political order come into view, as well as the role of unexpected goods in the makeup of a life lived well.

David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice

This book presents a non-cosmopolitan theory of global justice. In contrast to theories that seek to extend principles of social justice, such as equality of opportunity or resources, to the world as a whole, it argues that in a world made up of self-determining national communities, a different conception is needed. The book presents and defends an account of national responsibility which entails that nations may justifiably claim the benefits that their decisions and policies produce, while also being held liable for harms that they inflict on other peoples. Such collective responsibility extends to responsibility for the national past, so the present generation may owe redress to those who have been harmed by the actions of their predecessors. Global justice, therefore, must be understood not in terms of equality, but in terms of a minimum set of basic rights that belong to human beings everywhere. Where these rights are being violated or threatened, remedial responsibility may fall on outsiders. The book considers how this responsibility should be allocated, and how far citizens of democratic societies must limit their pursuit of domestic objectives in order to discharge their global obligations.

The book presents a systematic challenge to existing theories of global justice without retreating to a narrow nationalism that denies that we have any responsibilities to the world's poor. It combines discussion of practical questions such as immigration and foreign aid with philosophical exploration of, for instance, the different senses of responsibility, and the grounds of human rights.

[See also my article "National and statist responsibility," Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy]

Martha Nussbaum, Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious Equality

From one of America's most distinguished moral philosophers, a sweeping historically based argument that equal respect for all citizens is the bedrock of America's tradition of religious freedom.

In one of the great triumphs of the colonial and Revolutionary periods, the founders of the future United States overcame religious intolerance in favor of a constitutional order dedicated to fair treatment for people's deeply held conscientious beliefs. It granted equal liberty of conscience to all and took a firm stand against religious establishment. This respect for religious difference, acclaimed scholar Martha Nussbaum writes, formed our democracy.

Yet today there are signs that this legacy is misunderstood. The prominence of a particular type of Christianity in our public life suggests the unequal worth of citizens who hold different religious beliefs, or no beliefs. Other people, meanwhile, seek to curtail the influence of religion in public life in a way that is itself unbalanced and unfair. Such partisan efforts, Nussbaum argues, violate the spirit of our Constitution.

Liberty of Conscience is a historical and conceptual study of the American tradition of religious freedom. Weaving together political history, philosophical ideas, and key constitutional cases, this is a rich chronicle of an ideal of equality that has always been central to our history but is now in serious danger.

Josiah Ober, Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens

When does democracy work well, and why? Is democracy the best form of government? These questions are of supreme importance today as the United States seeks to promote its democratic values abroad. Democracy and Knowledge is the first book to look to ancient Athens to explain how and why directly democratic government by the people produces wealth, power, and security.

Combining a history of Athens with contemporary theories of collective action and rational choice developed by economists and political scientists, Josiah Ober examines Athenian democracy's unique contribution to the ancient Greek city-state's remarkable success, and demonstrates the valuable lessons Athenian political practices hold for us today. He argues that the key to Athens's success lay in how the city-state managed and organized the aggregation and distribution of knowledge among its citizens. Ober explores the institutional contexts of democratic knowledge management, including the use of social networks for collecting information, publicity for building common knowledge, and open access for lowering transaction costs. He explains why a government's attempt to dam the flow of information makes democracy stumble. Democratic participation and deliberation consume state resources and social energy. Yet as Ober shows, the benefits of a well-designed democracy far outweigh its costs.

Understanding how democracy can lead to prosperity and security is among the most pressing political challenges of modern times. Democracy and Knowledge reveals how ancient Greek politics can help us transcend the democratic dilemmas that confront the world today.

Philip Pettit, Made With Words; Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics

Hobbes's extreme political views have commanded so much attention that they have eclipsed his work on language and mind, and on reasoning, personhood, and group formation. But this work is of immense interest in itself, as Philip Pettit shows in Made with Words, and it critically shapes Hobbes's political philosophy.

Pettit argues that it was Hobbes, not later thinkers like Rousseau, who invented the invention of language thesis--the idea that language is a cultural innovation that transformed the human mind. The invention, in Hobbes's story, is a double-edged sword. It enables human beings to reason, commit themselves as persons, and incorporate in groups. But it also allows them to agonize about the future and about their standing relative to one another; it takes them out of the Eden of animal silence and into a life of inescapable conflict--the state of nature. Still, if language leads into this wasteland, according to Hobbes, it can also lead out. It can enable people to establish a commonwealth where the words of law and morality have a common, enforceable sense, and where people can invoke the sanctions of an absolute sovereign to give their words to one another in credible commitment and contract.

Written by one of today's leading philosophers, Made with Words is both an original reinterpretation and a clear and lively introduction to Hobbes's thought.

Nancy Rosenblum, On The Side of Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship

Political parties are the defining institutions of representative democracy and the darlings of political science. Their governing and electoral functions are among the chief concerns of the field. Yet most political theorists--including democratic theorists--ignore or disparage parties as grubby arenas of ambition, obstacles to meaningful political participation and deliberation. On the Side of the Angels is a vigorous defense of the virtues of parties and partisanship, and their worth as a subject for political theory.

Nancy Rosenblum's account moves between political theory and political science, and she uses resources from both fields to outline an appreciation of parties and the moral distinctiveness of partisanship. She draws from the history of political thought and identifies the main lines of opposition to parties, as well as the rare but significant moments of appreciation. Rosenblum then sets forth her own theoretical appreciation of parties and partisanship. She discusses the achievement of parties in regulating rivalries, channeling political energies, and creating the lines of division that make pluralist politics meaningful. She defends "partisan" as a political identity over the much-vaunted status of "independent," and she considers where contemporary democracies should draw the line in banning parties.

On the Side of the Angels offers an ethics of partisanship that speaks to questions of centrism, extremism, and polarization in American party politics. By rescuing parties from their status as orphans of political philosophy, Rosenblum fills a significant void in political and democratic theory.

[There will be a symposium on On the Side of Angels on this blog in the near future.]

CFP: Association for Political Theory

The APT Conference 2009
Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
October 22-24, 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS
Proposals due February 15, 2009

The Association for Political Theory (APT) invites proposals for its
seventh annual conference to be held October 22–24, 2009 at Texas A&M
University in College Station, Texas. The APT is an interdisciplinary
organization devoted to supporting political theory and political
philosophy. We recognize that scholars in a range of disciplines are
doing important critical work on social and political questions. We
welcome their participation in this conference. The APT Conference
provides a collegial setting for scholars of various professional ranks,
institutional affiliations and theoretical approaches to engage one
another in fruitful discussions of their work. To learn more about the
Association and its annual conference, please visit the APT Gateway
website .

The full text of the call for papers is now available on the APT
website. Visit the APT homepage, or click on this link to
download a printer-friendly pdf of the Call.

Paper and panel proposals can be submitted any time on the APT website.
Proposals are due by 15 February 2009.

Hither and yon, Oxford edition

I'll be at the Adam Smith/ 250th Anniversary of Theory of Moral Sentiments at Balliol College and then the "Liberalisms East and West" conference at St. Antony's College this week/ weekend. Very excited about both.

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.