A republican law of peoples

European Journal of Political Theory

Volumn 9, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 70-94

  Pettit, Philip ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Domination; Freedom; Peoples; Republicanism; States

Indexed keywords

EID: 75949115674     PISSN: 14748851     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474885109349406     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. J.-J. Rousseau (1973) The Social Contract and Discourses. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
2. The distinction here is going to be hard to draw, as it is always going to be hard to distinguish between entities that have a capacity to do something but fail to do it - they act in the presence of the capacity but fail to manifest it - and entities that don't have that capacity at all. Yet much of our received thought, e.g. on free will and akrasia, is premised on the assumption that we can draw such a distinction.
3. Thus I abstract from the issue of whether decent states, in the sense introduced by Rawls ought to count as representative states. J. Rawls (1999) The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
4. For an argument to a negative judgment see B. Neufeld (2005) 'Civic Respect, Political Liberalism, and Non-Liberal Societies', Politics, Philosophy and Economics 4: 275-99. Were the sort of theory outlined in this paper to be put into operation in negotiation between states, then the distinctions would be implemented in the course of deciding who should have a place at the table. That exercise would be open to abuse, of course, and would have to be conducted in the presence of acceptable procedures, assuming some could be found, for hearing and judging objections to who is allowed at the table.
5. See Rawls (n. 3), and P. Pettit (2006) 'Rawls's Peoples' in R. Martin and D. Reidy (eds) Rawls's Law of Peoples: A Realistic Utopia. Oxford: Blackwell.
6. Geuss puts objections to Rawls's sequencing of issues that I hope my argument may help to meet. See R. Geuss (2005) Outside Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
7. See C. R. Beitz (1979) Political Theory and International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
8. T. Pogge (1993) 'An Egalitarian Law of Peoples', Philosophy and Public Affairs 23: 195-224.
9. There are two different ways in which a normative theory might develop, operating from a base like that provided by the value of nondomination. It might take the form of a simple evaluative theory that provides a metric for comparing different conditions: in our case, ranking various forms that the international order might take. Or it might start from an evaluation according to which it is imperative - perhaps for independent reasons, perhaps for reasons of feasibility - that in the relevant domain agents with a certain claim to legitimacy should be the ones to fix how things transpire there. On this approach the first task will be to determine the conditions under which relevant agents enjoy legitimacy and the second will be to address recommendations to those agents. The assumption in this addressive version of normative theory is that in relatively normal conditions any regime of legitimate states is going to be better than any illegitimate regime, even an illegitimate regime in which, as it happens, individuals overall enjoy a higher level of nondomination. In this article I do not resolve the issue as to how a normative theory of international relations should best be developed. As already signaled, however, I give a special role to effective, representative states and don't envisage the possibility that a regime in which they did not have that role - e.g. a regime in which everything was fixed by a benevolent all-powerful state - might be superior. In a companion paper, I discuss the conditions under which the order created by such states should count as a legitimate determinant of international affairs. See P. Pettit (2009) 'Legitimate International Institutions: A Neorepublican Perspective', in S. Besson and J. Tasioulas (eds), The Philosophy of International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
10. One argument for an addressive theory might be that the authorization of the agents addressed makes for better consequences overall; this theme will be familiar from indirect consequentialism. A second might be that it is unworldly and infeasible to bypass such agents: this is the theme of those who say e.g. that political philosophers ought to be more respectful of the role of democratic states. See M. Walzer (1981) 'Philosophy and Democracy', Political Theory 9: 379-99.
11. Yet a third, nonconsequentialist argument might be that normative theory is not primarily about evaluating conditions of the world; it essentially involves identifying relevant, legitimate agents and prescribing for what they ought to do.
12. See P. Pettit (1997) Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
13. Q. Skinner (1998) Liberty Before Liberalism.
14. (1998). Liberty Before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
15. M. Viroli (2002) Republicanism. New York: Hill & Wang.
16. J. Maynor (2003) Republicanism in the Modern World. Cambridge: Polity Press.
17. L. Quill (2005) Liberty after Liberalism: Civic Republicanism in a Global Age. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
18. S. Slaughter Liberty beyond Neo-Liberalism: A Republican Critique of Liberal Government in a Globalising Age. London: Macmillan Palgrave.
19. J. Bohman (2007) Democracy Across Borders: From Demos to Demoi. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. In the latter Bohman focuses on the transformation of democracy that can and should be achieved in the international forum and at how this can affect national states. I am very sympathetic to his reworking of various democratic concepts but believe that those of us who work in the frame adopted here can also make use of many of those ideas.
20. For an exploration of the significance of the republican tradition on quite another front see D. H. Deudney (2007) Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village. Princeton: Princeton University Press. His concern is with ideas about the institutions whereby 'republican security' can be ensured (p. 269):
21. The tradition of republican security theory begins in classical antiquity, not the modern Enlightenment, and its Enlightenment culminations are in Montesquieu and the American founding, not Kant. Three of the most powerful ideas in contemporary international Liberalism, democratic peace, commercial peace, and international unions, are the legacies of Enlightenment republican security theory.
22. P. Pettit (2007) 'Republican Liberty: Three Axioms, Four Theorems', in C. Laborde and J. Maynor (eds) Republicanism and Political Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.
23. See Pettit (n. 8). and Skinner (n. 8). Two recent books of a broadly republican character have argued that the ideal of non-domination should be given a more normative cast than in either of these works - and, more particularly, that it should be taken to imply that those who are denied alien control are denied that control, at least in part, by coming to recognize normative constraints against the exercise of such power. See H. Richardson (2002) Democratic Autonomy. New York: Oxford University Press.
24. Bohman (n. 9). I am sympathetic to the thought that the recognition of normative constraints would give a new dimension to the ideal of non-domination. I believe that that sort of recognition will be present under a legal order that ensures people's non-domination, since any successful legal order will have to be internalized by participants: H. L. A. Hart (1961) The Concept of Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
25. And I recognize that the idea has roots in tradition. J.-F. Spitz (1995) La Liberte Politique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. But, still, I am loath to make it a definitional requirement that nondomination should be ensured on such a normative basis.
26. There is a sense in which control can occur without any related desire on the part of the controller: this is the sense in which the weather may control what someone does. But that sense of control is not relevant to freedom in the same manner as control that occurs in the presence of desire.
27. It will make it more probable that B will perform to the desired pattern, of course, in more than the evidential sense of providing extra evidence that B will do so. There will be extra evidence that B will perform to the pattern but that will be due to A's presence, not merely revealed by it. The need for this qualification is ignored in many definitions of what power or control requires, particularly those that invoke the notion of conditional probability in explicating the idea; see e.g. R. Dahl (1957) 'The Concept of Power', Behavioral Science 2: 201-15.
28. Notice that A may control for B's x-ing without controlling for that result most effectively - i.e. without maximizing the relevant probability - or without controlling for it most efficiently: i.e. without maximizing A's overall utility.
29. The relevant contrast for determining whether A raises the probability of B's x-ing should be the probability of B's x-ing in the absence of A, not just the probability of B's x-ing in the event of A not taking the action whereby A exercises control. For suppose that B is negatively affected by the fact that A is present in B's life so that no matter what A does, no matter even if A omits to do anything, A's presence reduces the probability that B will x. It would be strange in that case to say that A had control over B in regard to the x-ing. And yet there might be an action available to A such that by taking that action, A would raise the probability of B's x-ing beyond the level it would have had, if A had not taken that action. A has no chance of controlling for the desired pattern in B's behavior in a case like this. Similarly A would have no chance of not controlling for that pattern did it happen that A's presence meant that B was more likely to x, regardless of how A actually acted.
30. Sometimes the word is used to mean obstruction only: i.e. the removal of an option. For approaches that cast freedom as the absence of obstruction and so as the absence of interference in that sense, see H. Steiner (1994) An Essay on Rights. Oxford: Blackwell.
31. I. Carter (1999) A Measure of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
32. M. H. Kramer (2003) The Quality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
33. What of the exploitative offer: the offer that drives a hard bargain with someone in a weak bargaining position? That such an offer is acceptable is a sign that the person who is made the offer is already in a vulnerable position where domination is likely to occur. The offer itself will perpetrate a harm if, as is common in such circumstances, it sets up a relationship where further domination is facilitated; if it does not set up such a relationship, then it may better the exploited person's position, though it will hardly reflect well on the character of the exploiter. I am grateful for some discussion of this point with Arudra Burra.
34. P. Pettit (2008) 'The Basic Liberties', in M. Kramer (ed.), Essays on H.L.A.Hart. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
35. Is A's alien control of B's choices an evil if B doesn't recognize A's power and never chooses in a way that activates interference and brings the power to awareness? I would say, yes. When I think that the possibility of alien control over my choices is bad, I think that it is bad qua alien control, not necessarily because it would have any other effect; I would not need to cite any other ground for condemning it. But that means that I count such alien control as bad - at least pro tanto bad - across a range of possible scenarios in which its effects vary. And those scenarios will include ones in which I remain unaware that it is in place, and happen to choose so as not to trigger active interference. That actual scenario or world will be bad just because the possible world, relative to it, in which I choose otherwise involves interference. Thus, it will be bad despite the fact that a relatively indiscernible world in which interference would not be triggered in the corresponding possible world would not be bad.
36. P. Pettit (2007) 'Joining the Dots', in M. Smith, H. G. Brennan, R. E. Goodin and F. C. Jackson (eds) Common Minds: Themes from the Philosophy of Philip Pettit. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
37. C. Kukathas and P. Pettit (1991) Rawls: A Theory of Justice and its Critics. Cambridge and Stanford, CA: Polity Press and Stanford University Press.
38. I put it this way to emphasize that the case envisaged is one where, under the contextual presumptions about B's options, A deprives B of one option or imposes a cost on the option that changes its character. A coerces B, therefore, rather than making an offer. See Pettit (n. 8), pp. 53-4.
39. See J. Pitts (2005) A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
40. Also D. Bell (2010, forthcoming) Empire and Imperialism, in G. Claeys and G. Stedman Jones (eds.), The Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Political Thought. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
41. US Government, National Security Strategy of the United States of America. White House, Washington, DC, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html.
42. See also I. Shapiro (2007) Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy Against Global Terror. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
43. T. Donnelly, et al., 'Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century', p. i, http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf.
44. D. W. Greig (1976) International Law, 2nd edn. London: Butterworths.
45. A.-M. Slaughter (2004) A New World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
46. P. Pettit (2006) 'Democracy, National and International', Monist 89: 302-25, and Pettit (n. 7).
47. John Rawls (n. 3) may often have common reasons in mind when he speaks of public reasons and my ideas have clearly been influenced by his discussion. I prefer to speak of common reasons, emphasizing points that are not made in Rawls and might even be rejected by him: 1) that they are generated as a byproduct of ongoing debate; 2) that they are relevant to such debate, no matter at what site it occurs, private or public, informal or formal; and 3) that in principle common reasons that operate in a society, or even in the international public world, may not be reasons that carry independent moral force: we may disapprove of their having the role they are given in debate. The language of common reasons, as used here, may be more in the spirit of Habermas, than Rawls (Moon, J. D. 'Rawls and Habermas on Public Reason'). J. Hbermas (1984, 1989) A Theory of Communicative Action, vols 1 and 2. Cambridge: Polity Press.
48. J. D. Moon (2003) 'Rawls and Habermas on Public Reason', Annual Review of Political Science 6: 257-74.
49. For an extension of the Rawlsian idea to the international forum on global public reason see Joshua Cohen's (2004) 'Minimalism about Human Rights: The Most we can Hope for', Journal of Political Philosophy 12: 190-213. I am grateful for a discussion on these matters with Tim Scanlon.
50. See G. Brennan and P. Pettit (2004) The Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
51. Pettit (n. 18).
52. Hart (n. 12).
53. See Deudney (n. 10), pp. 152-4.
54. There may be more powerful, dominating states within any such league of relatively weaker states, of course. But there may be - though alas there won't necessarily be - a possibility of guarding against this via alliances between the less powerful states in the league.
55. J. Braithwaite and P. Drahos (2000) Global Business Regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
56. See J. Ruggie (2007) Business and Human Rights: Mapping International Standards of Responsibility and Accountability for Corporate Acts. New York: UNHR Council.
57. Rawls (n. 3).
58. See P. Pettit (2002) Rules, Reasons, and Norms: Selected Essays, p. 276. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
59. The importance of discourse-compatibility appears in the fact that while parties in a bidding process may come to accept common arrangements that give very different levels of advantage to different sides, those arrangements might prove to be unacceptable in a deliberative process where each is restricted to presenting arguments in the currency of common reasons. We might bargain our way to a seven-three division of ten units, where the stronger could credibly stick at the offer of three, but it might be very difficult for us to agree that such a division was supported by commonly accepted reasons.
60. For the content of the memo and criticism of it, including mention of this response, see http://www.counterpunch.org/summers.html.
61. And its taking those steps may actually improve the freedom as nondomination of its citizens, as when they are protected against the power of their own state by being able to appeal to an international body against it. See Pettit (n. 8), p. 153.
62. Even if domination was not itself a prospect - in itself a miraculous possibility - such poverty and insecurity would mean that those people were not able to enjoy their freedom as nondomination; it would have little or no value for them, since the choices in which they could exercise it would be extremely limited. Their freedom as nondomination might not be compromised but it would be severely conditioned. See Pettit (n. 8), ch. 2.
63. My thanks to Barbara Buckinx for discussion on topics related to this article, to Duncan Bell, Samantha Besson, John Maynor and John Tasioulas for comments on an earlier draft and to the very useful discussion at a conference in Cambridge University where it was first presented in May 2007. I also benefited from comments received when it was presented as a lecture at the University of Sydney in July 2009.