Political Philosophy Journal

Lean Out! On the Morality of Engaging in Positional Competitions The orthodox position in the literature on positional goods posits that although positional competitions are socially undesirable, inefficient, and unfair, individuals are reasonable and justified to ...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Lean Out! On the Morality of Engaging in Positional Competitions" by
Tammy Harel Ben Shahar (Haifa). Available open-access at politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

Honesty and Bad Faith An appealing account of dishonesty subsumes it under the paradigm of lying. However, the account faces clear trouble from a wide range of cases, including cases of bullshit and brazen dishonesty. Such...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Honesty and Bad Faith" by
Nathan Robert Howard (Toronto) and N. G. Laskowski (Maryland). Available open-access at politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

State system legitimacy, assigned responsibilities, and the moral right to exclude Contrary to the conventional view that a state’s moral right to exclude is limited in various ways but unconditional, it’s been claimed that each state’s possession of such a right depends on the legi...

New article in Political Philosophy: "State system legitimacy, assigned responsibilities, and the moral right to exclude" by Andrew Mason (Warwick), available open-access at politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

Survey Article:  When and What Is the “Hinge of History”? The concept of "the hinge of history" suggests a unique period in which human actions have unprecedented and potentially irreversible consequences for the long-term future of civilization. This paper ...

New article in Political Philosophy: "When and What Is the 'Hinge of History'?" by Joe Roussos and coauthors (Institute for Futures Studies). Available open-access at politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

The Value of Climate Despair Given the current and future suffering associated with human-made climate change and the lack of political action in response to it, it seems only natural to feel despair. However, despair has a bad r...

New article in Political Philosophy: "The Value of Climate Despair" by Hannah Altehenger (Umeå) and Leonhard Menges (Salzburg). Available open-access at politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

How Prisons Silence Free speech is a core value of liberal democracies, but for 1.8 million incarcerated Americans, it is largely inaccessible. Incarcerated people have scarce access to phone calls and in-person visits, ...

New article in Political Philosophy: "How Prisons Silence" by Tena Thau (UCL), available open-access at politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

Over-intelligibility Contemporary philosophers have argued that framing new concepts can bring about both moral and epistemic progress. In this paper, I argue that such intelligibility also has downsides. This paper intro...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Over-intelligibility"| by Maya Krishnan (University of Chicago), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

Survey Article: Unfounded Pessimism about Electoral Accountability Faced with the failures of existing democracies, many democratic theorists conclude from recent empirical work in political science critical of the functioning of electoral institutions that citizens ...

New in Political Philosophy: "Survey Article: Unfounded Pessimism about Electoral Accountability" by Sean Ingham, Dimitri Landa, and Ryan Pevnick, available open-access here: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

Police Response to Uncivil Anti-Police Protests Recent literature in political philosophy has argued that protesting against police brutality can permissibly involve uncivil conduct, including damage to property and confrontation with police office...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Police Response to Uncivil Anti-Police Protests," by Avia Pasternak (UMaryland), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

A Democratic Right to Political Strikes Democratic politics in practice often lags far behind the democratic ideals that justify democracy in theory. Where democratic theory postulates the equality of citizens and the accountability of elec...

New article in Political Philosophy: "A Democratic Right to Political Strikes" by Philipp Stehr (Technical University of Munich), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

What Can We Learn from the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem? The Diversity Trumps Ability theorem suggests that, under certain conditions, more diverse groups outperform groups of more individually competent members. Despite initial excitement about the theorem...

New article in Political Philosophy: "What Can We Learn from the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem?" by Jacob Barrett (Vanderbilt), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

Territory without turf The ideas of “territory” and “turf” are important parts of both our folk theory and scholarly treatments of the city. Our territory is where we feel at home and have a measure of control outside of ou...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Territory without Turf" by Jake Monaghan (USC), available open-access at politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

The Right to a Justification Many institutions and organizations now delegate important decisions to algorithms. These algorithms promise greater predictive accuracy, at a lower operating cost than the human decision-makers they ...

New article in Political Philosophy: "The Right to a Justification" by Samuel Dishaw (Louvain), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

The Value of Climate Despair Given the current and future suffering associated with human-made climate change and the lack of political action in response to it, it seems only natural to feel despair. However, despair has a bad r...

New article in Political Philosophy: "The Value of Climate Despair" by Hannah Altehenger (Umeå) and Leonhard Menges (Salzburg), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

Effective Deoccupation: Towards Responsible Guardianship of Nature The doctrine of effective occupation was developed by colonial powers to justify their sovereignty over newly annexed territories and was measured by animus occupandi, the will to be sovereign; and co...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Effective Deoccupation: Towards Responsible Guardianship of Nature" by Alejandra Mancilla (Oslo), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

An Epistemic Role for Opinion Journalism According to the informational model, journalism’s primary function is to provide the public with information and help it acquire knowledge and understanding. Opinion journalism appears to conflict wi...

New article in Political Philosophy: "An Epistemic Role for Opinion Journalism" by Zeynep Soysal (Rochester), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

Collective Self-Determination and International Authority in Climate Governance This article investigates how future climate governance might be made legitimate and compatible with collective self-determination. I develop an original account of international legitimacy through a...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Collective Self-Determination and International Authority in Climate Governance" by Anna Stilz (UC Berkeley), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

Policy Experiments, Informed Consent, and Democratic Authorization In a typical clinical trial, researchers are required to obtain participants’ informed consent. But for some policy experiments, it is impracticable to obtain informed consent. As a result, these tria...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Policy Experiments, Informed Consent, and Democratic Authorization" by Marcos Picchio (National Institutes of Health), available open-access at politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

Must Jurors Know the Stakes of Conviction? Sentencing, Encroachment, and Legal Proof A recent view in legal epistemology holds that since knowledge is the standard for proof of criminal guilt, and since there is pragmatic encroachment on knowledge, contrary to current trial practice j...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Must Jurors Know the Stakes of Conviction? Sentencing, Encroachment, and Legal Proof" by J. Colin Bradley (NYU) and Eleanor Gordon-Smith (Princeton), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

Cultural Appropriation and Group Ownership Claims What could ground normative restrictions concerning cultural appropriation in cases where they are not grounded by independent considerations such as harm? This paper argues that such claims are best ...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Cultural Appropriation and Group Ownership Claims” by Hannah Carnegy-Arbuthnott (University of York), available open-access at politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

Sex Discrimination, Normativity, and Begging the Causal Question Most leading philosophical accounts of discrimination theorize discrimination as a causal notion: roughly, an action discriminates on the basis of X (e.g., race, sex) if X causes (in the right way) th...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Sex Discrimination, Normativity, and Begging the Causal Question" by Lily Hu (Yale University), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

We Cease to be Mere Fragments: Justice, Alienation, Liberalism and Socialism What is the relationship between liberalism and socialism? Partisans of each political tradition often focus on the shortcomings of the other, with socialists charging liberals with defending merely f...

New article in Political Philosophy: "We Cease to be Mere Fragments: Justice, Alienation, Liberalism and Socialism" by Jan Kandiyali (Durham) and Martin O'Neill (York) @jkandiyali.bsky.social @martinoneill.bsky.social, available open access here: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

Mandate Reasons and the Ethics of Representation Democratic theorists have developed a rich literature exploring why winning democratic elections gives representatives the moral right to occupy public office. However, they have largely ignored the q...

New article in Political Philosophy, "Mandate Reasons and the Ethics of Representation" by Sameer Bajaj (University of Warwick), available open-access here: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

Why Manipulation is Wrong Philosophers have been paying increasingly more attention to the notion of manipulation. Perhaps surprisingly, however, most of the recent literature has focused on the conceptual question of identify...

New article in Political Philosophy, "Why Manipulation is Wrong" by Massimo Renzo (King's College London), available open-access here: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

Liberalism’s Problem of Strongly Pro-Social Work Freedom of occupational choice represents people as choosing their occupations according to their personal values and preferences, of which pro-social preferences are one possible type among many. I a...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Liberalism’s Problem of Strongly Pro-Social Work" by Gloria Mähringer (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), available open-access here: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

Democratic Consent Under False Pretences Democratically, the permission of any candidate or party to occupy office is based on consent conferred upon them by voters in the previous election. This article examines why and how political misinf...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Democratic Consent Under False Pretenses" by Ana Tanasoca (Norwegian Nobel Institute and ANU), available open-access here: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

The Different Sources of Dirty Hands: Episodes, Rules, and Careers A recurring methodological mistake within the ‘dirty hands’ literature, the view that politicians must sometimes justifiably commit real moral wrongs, has been to assume that only a specific kind of c...

New article in PolPhil: "The Different Sources of Dirty Hands: Episodes, Rules, and Careers" by GIanni Sarra (King's College London), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

Ideology as Relativized <em>A Priori</em>:  On the Mind’s Relation to the Social World We propose an account of the subject’s cognition and its relation to the world that allows for an articulation of the phenomenon of ideology. We argue that ideology is a form of what we call ‘a priori...

New article in PolPhil: "Ideology as Relativized A Priori: On the Mind’s Relation to the Social World" by Sabina Vaccarino Bremner (University of Pennsylvania) and Chloé de Canson (University of Groningen), available open-access here: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

Solidarity as a Social Kind There has been a resurgence of interest recently in the nature of solidarity. A problem, however, bedevils any attempt to defend any one view against another. What makes disagreement about the nature ...

New article in PolPhil: "Solidarity as a Social Kind," by Andrea Sangiovanni (KCL), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

Rewiring Ethics: Collective Action, Recognition, and Fractal Responsibility Many moral theories hold individuals responsible for their marginal impact on massive patterns (for instance overall value or equality of opportunity) or for following whichever rules would realise th...

New article in PolPhil: "Rewiring Ethics: Collective Action, Recognition, and Fractal Responsibility," by Barry Maguire (University of Edinburgh), available open-access at: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...