Normative Distinction Research Articles

State or private security supply? An analysis from the institutional economics perspective

The issue of domestic security has become increasingly complex over the past decades. As there is an increasing overlap between private and public provision of security, the question of how to allocate responsibility for security between the public sphere (state) and the private sphere has become important. Concepts that can provide both clarity and sufficient complexity are much needed. This article offers an institutional economics concept. This implies a method where basic elements of neoclassical public finance (e.g. differences like provision v. production or public v. private goods) are combined with explicitly institutional and security economic elements (degree of prevention, specificity, repressivity, state monopoly on the use of force). As a result, a normative distinction between state and private security responsibilities based on qualitative arguments is offered.

A philosophy of the theory of “acts of citizenship” woven into the fabric of a political anthropology of citizenship

ABSTRACT The importance of Isin’s theory of ‘acts of citizenship’ lies not only in its popularity amongst social scientists but, principally, in its engagement with a political anthropology of citizenship. In a collaborative spirit and committed to a political anthropology of citizenship, we critically engage with Isin’s theory, demonstrating how it builds on various normative difficulties that should be acknowledged by anyone using it as methodology, especially for those engaged in anthropologizing the field of citizenship studies. Our examination begins by showing how the theory draws from theoretical works belonging to the causalist school of the philosophy of action, which allows us to untangle the tacit didascaly through which Isin values the introduction of the concept of ‘act’ into our language(s) of citizenship. By tackling its underlying normative bias, we make clear the fundamental element of Isin’s argument: the refusal to reduce citizenship to mere unpurposive processes. Yet, it is unclear, we argue, how citizenship can effectively be captured through purposive processes by investigating ‘acts of citizenship’. Finally, we demonstrate how anthropology allows us to critically address the reductionism at play in the normative distinction between ‘active’ and ‘activist’ citizenship, constituting the very core of Isin’s theory.

GENOMIC POLITICS AND EQUALITY

GENOMIC POLITICS AND EQUALITY

How Should Liberal Democratic Governments Treat Conscientious Disobedience as a Response to State Injustice?: A Proposal

AbstractThis paper suggests that liberal democratic governments adopt a reconciliatory approach to conscientious disobedience. Central to this approach is the view – independent of whether conscientious disobedience is always morally justified – that conscientious disobedience is normatively distinct from other criminal acts with similar effects, and such distinction is worthy of acknowledgment by public apparatus and actors. The prerogative applies to both civil and uncivil instances of disobedience, as defined and explored in the paper. Governments and courts ought to take the normative distinction seriously and treat the conscientious disobedients in a more lenient way than they treat ordinary criminals. A comprehensive legislative scheme for governments to deal with prosecution, sentencing, and imprisonment of the conscientious disobedients will be proposed, with the normative and practical benefits of such an approach discussed in detail.

Medicalisation and the Treatment-Enhancement Distinction in the Ethical Debate on Gene Editing

"Since the advent of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology, much bioethical effort has been devoted to prescribing the appropriate potential uses of gene editing in humans. Frequently in the literature, a normative distinction is drawn between “treatment” and “enhancement”. That is, gene editing may be morally acceptable or even morally required if used to cure a disease or genetic condition. For enhancement, however, it is morally unacceptable, having too weak a justification for the risks involved. In the context of this new technology, we all thus become vulnerable to a bias: medicalisation. There are clear non-medical benefits, as I show here, of using gene editing not for treatment, but for enhancement. Many individuals and governments will wish to pursue these benefits, but if we are ethically constrained by the current perceived force of the treatment-enhancement distinction, we may be prevented from legitimately doing so. We are faced with two options: firstly, to reject the distinction presented by many ethicists, and pursue gene editing for both treatment and enhancement purposes; secondly, to expand medical definitions and the scope of health care, to include the sort of benefits that we might wish were included under “treatment”. The first option, I argue, is to be preferred, but at least currently, faces much public resistance. Instead, we risk the second option becoming the norm, with the medicalisation of scores of non-medical characteristics drawing resources, causing anxiety, and burdening health care systems, because of stubborn adherence to an arbitrary distinction in the gene editing debate. "

CIVIL NATION AND ETHNIC IDENTITY: ON THE QUESTION OF THE “ESSENCE OF THE RUSSIAN NATION”

The purpose of the article is to reveal the importance of embedding «Russian national identity» in the normative distinction between civil nations and ethnic nations, which has been carried out in Western social studies for more than seventy years. This presupposes the study of the way of representing the nation in the horizon defined by “liberal metaphysics” (K. Schmitt) - in the liberal version of the economic paradigm of the political (J. Agamben’s term). The research method is a philosophical interpretation, which makes it possible to demonstrate the “foundations” (axioms, dogmas, principles, imperatives) that determine the way of presentation, perspectives and conclusions as necessary - for an objective scientific study of nations and national identities, the object of research of which in the presentation is as a given. It is established that a civil nation is a project for which «historiographic recalculation» (M. Heidegger) is a way of combining the reality of a concept and reality; a civil nation as an association based on civic loyalty is reduced to the free self-determination of an autonomous individual-citizen, which necessarily considers any “remnants of naturalness” as invalid, illegal and morally disqualified as “evil” - such a “remnant” is recognized as ethnicity: the methodologically inadmissible confusion of “attribution to value” and “evaluation” is based on the idea. The conclusion is drawn: “civil nation”, being a theoretical concept, is at the same time a political project and is used as an instrument of ideological influence: qualification as an “ethnic nation” singles out the object as a “political enemy” that needs to be removed - “Russian national identity” as European and ethnic is, in consequence of what has been said, a “paradigm case”.

Economics Across the School Curriculum-Benefits and Drawbacks of Some Related Approaches

Teaching economics as a distinct subject matter requires a curriculum rationale and curricular orientation no less than any other subject matter field. As with any social studies curriculum component, it is necessary to delineate the curriculum parameters of economics so as to justify and guide its teaching in the schools. This article aims to explore various approaches to developing and implementing economics curricula, weighs their benefits and drawbacks, and ends with a suggestion for blending the alternatives so as to optimize the benefits. Prior to the development of a curriculum rationale, however, the educator must ask a question seldom raised with the other social sciences: What kind of economics should be taught? Positive Versus Normative Economics The positive versus normative distinction in economics is particularly important in economic education.

Medico-political metaphors of counter-terrorism: The case of Turkey

ABSTRACT Medico-political metaphors can be defined as the organic imagining of a society (re)creating a normative distinction between identity and difference and mobilising specific types of political answers in which threats are constructed through organic language. Accordingly, society is made to resemble a body, thus creating a sense of unity, integrity and finitude, while terrorism is made to resemble a “pathology” that “infects”, weakens and ultimately destroys the healthy social body. In this narrative, “terrorists” are rendered as abnormal and external, and thus terrorism is depoliticised. It is fictionalised as a “technical” issue necessitating expert intervention, in a manner resembling the doctor-patient relationship. To date, there has been little research on the interaction between this organic understanding of society and the Turkish experience of counter-terrorism practices. Therefore, taking as its context the Syrian civil war, this article aims to analyse how medico-political metaphors in the counter-terrorism discourse of the Turkish government function as boundary-producing practices. The article critically assesses how medico-political metaphors in terrorism discourse (re)constitute a power relationship through abnormalisation, externalisation and depoliticisation, and thus contribute to Critical Terrorism Studies by highlighting how policy makers use medico-political metaphors to constitute a reality about terrorism in order to mobilise certain political responses.

Interreligious Learning, Ricoeur, and the Problem of Testimonial and Hermeneutical Injustice

Abstract Ricoeur’s philosophy of religion as well as his suggestion that we may consider interreligious dialogue as a specific form of linguistic hospitality has inspired many to think through the challenges of interfaith learning in a post-secular age. I am one of those scholars who have found Ricoeur a particularly helpful conversation partner as I sought to create a nonviolent and transformative space of encounter in my interreligious classroom. In this article, I elaborate on how my lived experiences as an interreligious educator have made me wonder if Ricoeur’s philosophy of religion and his plea for interreligious hospitality are not actually limiting the critical potential of interreligious education. Ricoeur’s interreligious hermeneutics strongly resonates with a modern (Protestant) understanding of religion and its implicit, normative distinction between good (mature) and bad (immature) religiosity, which to this day belongs to the sociopolitical imagination of the majority in most Western European countries (this is certainly true for the Netherlands). It has been my pedagogical experience that this distinction between good and bad religion contributes to and reinforces testimonial and hermeneutical injustice in my classroom, which results in the marginalization of some of my students, especially those whose religious practice does not fit the understanding of what religion ought to be.

Power, Predistribution, and Social Justice

AbstractThe idea of predistribution has the potential to offer a valuable and distinctive approach to political philosophers, political scientists, and economists, in thinking about social justice and the creation of more egalitarian economies. It is also an idea that has drawn the interest of politicians of the left and centre-left, promising an alternative to traditional forms of social democracy. But the idea of predistribution is not well understood, and stands in need of elucidation. This article explores ways of drawing the conceptual and normative distinction between predistribution and redistribution, examining those general categories when considering the roles of public services and fiscal transfers, and looking at the ways in which government policies can empower and disempower different individuals and groups within the economy. This article argues that the most initially plausible and common-sensical ways of drawing the distinction between predistributive and redistributive public policies collapse when put under analytical pressure. It concludes that the distinction between predistribution and redistribution is best seen in terms of the aims or effects of policies rather than a deeper division of policy types, and argues that, once seen in those terms, predistribution is a central concern of social justice.

Contract Law in a Just Society

Abstract This Article challenges Hanoch Dagan and Michael Heller’s choice theory of contract, according to which contract law is autonomy-enhancing. I make three points: first, the choice theory of contract cannot clarify the critical normative distinction between enforceable formal contracts and unenforceable informal promises. Second, I develop the roads/contract-types analogy: instead of promoting individuals’ autonomy and enhancing their choice among different projects, most contract types are justified by the preexisting preferences of citizens. Finally, I outline a teleological justification of contract law that is different from that propounded by Dagan and Heller. On this view, contract law should remain neutral as to which conception of the good is commendable and provide individuals with the means of shaping and pursuing a conception of a good life.

Heading for Divorce? Investment Protection Rules in Free Trade Agreements

After three decades of companionship, investment protection rules and trade agreements are heading for a divorce. Investment chapters have been included in preferential trade and investment agreements (PTIAs) since the late 1980s, but have recently come under fire. The U.S. administration considers privately enforceable investment protection obligations as an unwanted incentive to offshore American jobs and the EU Commission seeks to omit them to benefit from the accelerated ratification process reserved for trade agreements that fall under exclusive EU competency. After decades of coexistence, investment protection rules and trade agreements are thus likely to go their separate ways. This article empirically evaluates the impact of their thirty-year companionship to assess the implications of their looming split. It finds that investment chapters remain little more than a bilateral investment treaty plugged into a trade agreement. PTIAs and self-standing investment treaties do not vary systematically in investment protection content and the wider trade agreement context does little to affect the interpretation of investment rules in PTIAs. In spite of their coexistence in the same treaty, there is thus little evidence of cross-fertilization between trade and investment protection rules in PTIAs. This absence of normative convergence suggests that their looming split merely formalizes the continuous normative distinction between trade liberalization and investment protection.

UNaccountable: A Reply to Rosa Freedman

Sexual abuse is a very human stain that has marked many organizations that define themselves through virtue, including the church, schools, scouting organizations and other humanitarian organizations. The exposure of sexual abuse by United Nations (UN) peacekeepers reveals behaviour that is undoubtedly unconscionable, but surely not inconceivable. While the UN was constructed from plans to deliver peace, security, development and human rights, the organization was inescapably hewn from the crooked timber of humanity. The UN is ultimately a creature of the world upon which it seeks to act. The reality of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers has been destructive of the organization’s legitimacy, yet so is any fantasy about the imagined purity of the organization and its personnel. Scholarly attention to the development of an accountability framework for UN peacekeeping is critical so as to avoid not only overly romantic, but also overly cynical, readings of the nature of the organization. Rosa Freedman’s article calls for a ‘new approach to accountability’ in response to sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers. Her focus is on accountability as a process rather than a value. Freedman highlights the importance of a victim-centred approach, arguing for the need to place relevant aspects of criminal justice, truth and reconciliation mechanisms, human rights law and political processes at the heart of accountability responses. In this short article, my focus will be on the currency, rather than the metal, of the accountability coin, giving regard to the value or values we expect accountability to serve in this setting rather than to its processes. It is hoped that this will provide an interesting foundation to support, but also to critique, elements of Freedman’s discussion. History tells that the humanitarian nature of an institution or authority is no antidote to misdeed. Certainly for the countries in which the highest number of UN sexual abuse allegations has been recorded (Haiti, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan), the history of humanitarianism is also a history of paternalism. Both ‘isms’ involve ‘the act of interfering in the lives of others, often without their permission, on the grounds that such interventions are for their own good’.1 In order to avoid one sliding into the other, humanitarians must navigate a delicate balance between care and control. Michael Barnett has tracked the history of humanitarianism, drawing chilling comparisons between the ‘civilizing mission’ of empire and liberal humanitarianism.2 Of course, there is also a key normative distinction between these projects. To effectively distinguish itself from imperial governance, humanitarian governance must stake its legitimacy on purpose: to act for the benefit of the ruled rather than of the rulers. The legitimacy of humanitarian governance is dependent on the idea that humanitarian agencies act not out of self-interest but, rather, as a public trustee and for the benefit of the ruled. At the heart of the relationship, therefore, is trust. In the literature responding to the problem of sexual violence by UN peacekeepers, scholars have focused on ‘shame’, ‘danger’ and even ‘hope’.3 My argument is that ‘trust’, at least from an institutional perspective, is the key institutional value that is betrayed by reported (and unreported) cases of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers and is the value that accountability processes must seek to restore. Of course, the concept of trust is context specific and can have interpersonal, financial and political manifestations and implications.4 It also has legal relevance. I argue that trust is foundational to our understanding of the legal authority exercised by UN peacekeepers. In legal terms, we can classify the relationship between UN peacekeepers and the foreign populations over which they exercise authority in the nature of a fiduciary relationship. Because the fiduciary relationship is legal in nature, it generates legal duties, including the duty upon the UN to account to those over whom it exercises control.

Charakterystyka i sens normatywnego wyróżnienia grupy umów o świadczenie usług prawniczych

PURPOSE OF NORMATIVE DISTINCTION OF THE GROUP OF LEGAL SERVICES CONTRACTSIt is necessary to be in favour of both doctrinal and normative distinction of legal services contracts. Currently the differentiation in regulations of fundamental standards of providing legal services is too large. There is no sufficient explanation for different treatment legal services providers in rudimentary and significant issues designating the essence of legal services and their safety, regardless of the regulated or deregulated market. It appears that the deregulated legal services market should be included in the provisions concerning regulated economic activity in the Freedom of Business Activity Act. The deregulated legal services market should as well constitute an exception justified by the public interest in a higher degree than by creation of qualification requirements, which are currently the base for distinguishing the regulated legal services market. It is necessary to consider formal submission of the deregulated legal services market to the deontology of legal profession. Fundamental standards of ethics and legal pragmatics should be included in all kinds of legal services, not only those provided within the regulated market. Sanctioning of above mentioned standards is undoubtedly in the public interest and for that reason their mandatory application at least in the basic range should not be dependent on the affiliation to a specific group of legal services providers.

Die Kritik des Rechts und das Recht der Kritik

AbstractThe question of the critique of law is at the same time the question of the law – and the right – of critique. For law is itself the first institutionalized practice of critique: an apparatus of normative distinction. This raises the question of whether a critique of law is at all possible. For either the critique of law simply repeats the critique which is enacted by law; but then it is not a critique of law but rather its affirmation. Or it effectively rejects law and overcomes its practice of normative distinction; but then it is not acritiqueof law but something other than critique. The critique of law is trapped in an aporia. The paper first exposes and then explores a way of overcoming this aporia.

Pragmatism and the predictive mind

Predictive processing and its apparent commitment to explaining cognition in terms of Bayesian inference over hierarchical generative models seems to flatly contradict the pragmatist conception of mind and experience. Against this, I argue that this appearance results from philosophical overlays at odd with the science itself, and that the two frameworks are in fact well-poised for mutually beneficial theoretical exchange. Specifically, I argue: first, that predictive processing illuminates pragmatism’s commitment to both the primacy of pragmatic coping in accounts of the mind and the profound organism-relativity of experience; second, that this pragmatic, “narcissistic” character of prediction error minimization undermines its ability to explain the distinctive normativity of intentionality; and third, that predictive processing therefore mandates an extra-neural account of intentional content of exactly the sort that pragmatism’s communitarian vision of human thought can provide.

Natality or Birth? Arendt and Cavarero on the Human Condition of Being Born

This essay offers a critical analysis of Hannah Arendt's notion of natality through the lens of Adriana Cavarero's feminist philosophy of birth. First, I argue that the strength of Arendtian natality is its rootedness in an ontology of uniqueness, and a commitment to human plurality and relationality. Next, I trace with Cavarero three critical concerns regarding Arendtian natality, namely that it is curiously abstract; problematically disembodied and sexually neutral; and dependent on a model of vulnerability that assumes equality rather than asymmetry. This last issue is further developed in the final section of the essay, where I examine the idea that birth, for Cavarero, becomes the very concept by which we can distinguish and normatively differentiate acts of care and love from acts of wounding and violence. Upholding the normative distinction here depends on a conceptual distinction between vulnerability and helplessness. To maintain the ethical potential of the scene of birth, I argue that we have to insist on the very characteristics Cavarero attributes to it—ones, as this essay aims to show, that are ultimately missing in the Arendtian account thereof.

THE JUSTICIABILITY OF RELIGION

AbstractInShergill & Others v. Khaira & Others[2014] UKSC 33, the UK courts considered whether a Sikh holy saint had the power to dismiss trustees who questioned his “succession” to the religious institution of theNirmal Kutia Johal. The Supreme Court, reversing the decision of the Court of Appeal that religious questions were “nonjusticiable,” reinstated the judgment at first instance of the High Court to the contrary. The decision of the Supreme Court is important because whenever questions of the identification and legitimacy of successors to a religious institution have arisen, their “justiciability” before a secular court has invariably been a bone of contention on grounds that it threatens the autonomy of religious institutions. InShergillthe Supreme Court got around these concerns by drawing a normative distinction between the public law of the land (which the courts are required to determine), and the internal private law of a religious institution on matters of succession, ordination, and removal (which are not in themselves for the courts to decide). ButShergillalso went further than previous case law in two respects. First, the fundamental tenets of a belief system are capable of an objective assessment by a secular court provided that there is public law element to a dispute, in which case the court can then decide on the fitness of the successor for office. This means there is no general presumption that a secular court is barred from considering religious questions per se. Second, these principles apply just as much to the judicial consideration of non-Christian faiths as they to the Christian religion, and this is so notwithstanding the court's unfamiliarity with other faiths.

The distinctive “should” of assertability

Recent work has assumed that the normativity associated with assertion differs from the normativity of morality, practical rationality, etiquette, and legality. That is, whether an assertion “should” be made is not merely a function of these other familiar sorts of normativity and is especially connected to truth. Some researchers have challenged this assumption of distinctive normativity. In this paper I report two experiments that test the assumption. Participants read a brief story, judged whether an assertion should be made, and rated several other qualities of the assertion, including its truth value, morality, rationality, etiquette, legality, and folly. Of these qualities, truth value most strongly predicted assertability. The findings support the assumption of distinctive normativity and provide further evidence that the norm of our social practice of assertion is factive (i.e., it makes truth essential to assertability).

Explaining Practical Normativity

Ethical non-naturalists often charge that their naturalist competitors cannot adequately explain the distinctive normativity of moral or more broadly practical concepts. I argue that the force of the charge is mitigated, because non-naturalism is ultimately committed to a kind of mysterianism about the metaphysics of practical norms that possesses limited explanatory power. I then show that focusing on comparative judgments about the explanatory power of various metaethical theories raises additional problems for the non-naturalist, and suggest grounds for optimism that a naturalistic realist about practical normativity will ultimately be able to explain the distinctive normativity of practical norms. I then show that radical pluralism or particularism about the structure of normative ethics would complicate the naturalistic strategy that I defend. This suggests a perhaps surprising way in which the resolution of the debate between ethical naturalists and non-naturalists may rest in part on the answers to substantive normative questions.