Published by De Gruyter

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Issue of Moral Philosophy and Politics

Contents
Journal Overview

October 19, 2021

Subsidies, Relocations, and Social Justice

Sylvie Loriaux

Article number: 000010151520210014

Abstract

This article examines Risse and Wollner’s discussion and rejection of several strategies a) in favour of developed countries subsidising their producers, and b) against the relocation of firms operating on their territory. It argues that their critical review of these strategies remains incomplete and therefore not decisive. It starts by bringing into relief two blind spots in their moral assessment of subsidies. The first concerns the imperfect nature of the general duties of global justice they focus on; the second concerns their understanding of the relation between these duties and duties of social justice. While addressing these two difficulties, it presents another possible strategy in support of subsidies, which Risse and Wollner fail to examine: the ‘equal citizenship’ strategy. This strategy is mobilised again in an assessment of Risse and Wollner’s treatment of relocations. In this context, some doubts are raised about the remedy Risse and Wollner prescribe to overcome both social injustices and exploitative relocations ― namely, the domestic redistribution by governments of the gains of international trade. It is argued that such a redistribution is both insufficient to combat social exclusion and threatened by the very practice of trade liberalisation that Risse and Wollner seek to defend.

October 18, 2021

Moving Beyond the Individualist Paradigm? Risse and Wollner on Non-agential Exploitation

Katla Heðinsdóttir

Article number: 000010151520210005

Abstract

Most philosophical examinations of the concept of exploitation center on analyzing two-party interactions between individuals. Mathias Risse and Gabriel Wollner introduce an account of exploitation that seeks to transcend this ‘individualist paradigm’ in three ways: Through exploitation of and by agential groups (non-individual exploitation), of or by non-agential groups (non-agential exploitation) and by social structures (structural exploitation). In this paper, I argue that while the concepts of non-individual and structural exploitation do offer each their way of transcending or revising the individualist paradigm, the most ambitious and original attempt to break with the paradigm is offered by the concept of non-agential exploitation. I then discuss this concept, but ultimately conclude that it suffers from too many shortcomings in its current form to offer a plausible departure from the individualist approach.

October 18, 2021

Trade, Exploitation, and the Problem of Unequal Opportunity Costs

Andreas Cassee

Article number: 000010151520200029

Abstract

This paper assesses the ‘power-induced failure of reciprocity’ account of exploitation in the domain of trade. I argue that its proponents face a dilemma. Either the cost variable of reciprocity is understood to include opportunity costs. Then, the account implausibly implies that those with more valuable outside options should get a larger part of the overall benefits of cooperation. Or the cost variable is understood to exclude opportunity costs. Then, the account has awkward implications in cases where direct costs and opportunity costs are substitutable. To evade this dilemma, the account could be amended to include a hypothetical baseline that equalizes opportunity costs. But then, the account ceases to be isolationist. Whether a cooperative interaction counts as exploitative is no longer independent of moral considerations about distributions outside the domain of trade.

October 11, 2021

On Trade and Exploitation

Pietro Maffettone

Article number: 000010151520210013

Abstract

In this essay I critically engage with Mathias Risse and Gabriel Wollner’s book On Trade Justice: A Philosophical Plea for a New Global Deal . I sketch their general view of the concept of exploitation and of trade exploitation more specifically. I then suggest that, contra Risse and Wollner, exploitation belongs to non-ideal theory. In addition, I argue that Risse and Wollner have not shown that the WTO is exploitative, and argue that their account of fair wages suffers from a number of weaknesses both on the cost and contribution sides.

Open Access September 28, 2021

Egalitarian Trade Justice

James Christensen

Article number: 000010151520210031

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Abstract

This article begins by distinguishing between two approaches to egalitarian trade justice – the explicative approach and the applicative approach – and notes that the former has been used to defend conclusions that are less strongly egalitarian than those defended by advocates of the latter. The article then engages with the primary explicative account of trade egalitarianism – that offered by Aaron James – and argues that its egalitarian conclusions are unduly minimalistic. The aim of the article is not to criticize the explicative approach, but rather to show that the arguments and commitments of its best-known defender – James – either fail to rule out, or in fact positively support, more robustly egalitarian conclusions.

September 23, 2021

What the Trade Pioneers Missed: Money

Aaron James

Article number: 000010151520210006

Abstract

Matias Risse and Gabriel Wollner’s On Trade Justice largely neglects the role of money and central banking in ‘trade fairness.’ This article rehearses why J. M. Keynes thought money and global central banking matters for national capacity, and suggests that this helps answer Risse and Wollner’s chief objection to Aaron James’s Fairness in Practice .

Open Access September 23, 2021

Combining Philosophical and Democratic Capability Lists

Sebastian Östlund

Article number: 000010151520210001

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Abstract

Political practices often aim to reach valuable outcomes through democratic processes. However, philosophical considerations and democratic deliberations sometimes support different conclusions about what a valuable outcome would be. This paper contributes to a research agenda that aims to reconcile recommendations that follow from these different bases. The setting for this research agenda is capabilitarian. It affirms the idea that what we should distribute are substantive freedoms to be and do things that people have reason to value. Disagreements about these valuable outcomes become particularly problematic in urgent situations such as pandemics, floods, and wildfires. These situations are urgent since they are time-sensitive and involve an impending loss of well-being. A method of compromise would help mitigate losses of well-being while respecting the aim of reaching valuable outcomes through democratic processes. I thus offer an equitable and decisive method of compromise that helps integrate philosophical considerations with democratic deliberations.

September 6, 2021

Exploitation, Trade Justice, and Corporate Obligations

Brian Berkey

Article number: 000010151520210009

Abstract

In On Trade Justice , Risse and Wollner defend an account of trade justice on which the central requirement, applying to both states and firms, is a requirement of non-exploitation. On their view, trade exploitation consists in ‘power-induced failure of reciprocity’, which generates an unfair distribution of the benefits and burdens associated with trade relationships. In this paper, I argue that while there are many appealing features of Risse and Wollner’s account, their discussion does not articulate and develop the unified picture of states’ and firms’ obligations that they aim to provide as clearly as it might have. In particular, it is, I claim, unclear exactly how they understand the relationship between the fairness-based requirements that apply to states and those that apply to firms. I argue that there are two types of accounts that they might accept: a transactional account and a structural account. I offer reasons to think that there are reasons to prefer a structural account. In addition, I note some of the key implications of accepting such an account, and suggest that if Risse and Wollner accept these implications and revise other aspects of their view accordingly, the result is a plausible and unified account of what trade justice requires.

September 3, 2021

On Trade Justice, Power and Institutions – Some Questions for Risse and Wollner

Oisin Suttle

Article number: 000010151520210017

Abstract

While Risse and Wollner make an important contribution to theorising global justice and trade, I identify certain concerns with their approach and suggest an alternative that addresses these. First, I query their emphasis on subjection to the trade regime as a morally salient feature, suggesting their argument trades on an ambiguity, and fails to connect the trade regime, as a trigger, with their preferred account of trade-justice-as-non-exploitation. Second, I examine their treatment of the WTO, how they understand international organisations as inheritors of states’ obligations, and how far an organisation like the WTO can or should be self-consciously reoriented towards justice-as-non-exploitation. Third, I ask how their account is distinct from existing approaches, and whether it makes sense to apply the same conception of justice across diverse agents and institutions. I conclude by sketching an alternative approach, which makes the justification of states’ policies to outsiders the central problem of trade justice.

September 2, 2021

When (Not) to Trade with Autocrats: Complicity, Exploitation, and Human Rights

Kevin K. W. Ip

Article number: 000010151520210007

Abstract

Transnational trade is at the heart of the global economy. Trade relations often transcend both ideological divides and regime type. Trading with autocratic regimes, however, raises significant moral issues. In their recent book, On Trade Justice , Mathias Risse and Gabriel Wollner argue that trade with autocratic regimes is morally permissible only under a very limited set of circumstances. This article discusses the morally permissible trade policies that liberal democracies ought to adopt toward autocratic regimes. Liberal democracies trading with autocratic regimes have a special obligation to improve the human rights conditions in these regimes. This duty is partly based on their complicity in human rights violations and on the fact that the democracies benefit from these violations in their trading relationships. Their responsibility goes beyond the improvement of labor conditions and requires various strategies such as imposing trade sanctions and export controls, and making trade conditional on human rights performance.

August 30, 2021

AI and Phronesis

Nir Eisikovits, Dan Feldman

Article number: 000010151520210026

Abstract

We argue that the growing prevalence of statistical machine learning in everyday decision making – from creditworthiness to police force allocation – effectively replaces many of our humdrum practical judgments and that this will eventually undermine our capacit y for making such judgments. We lean on Aristotle’s famous account of how phronesis and moral virtues develop to make our case. If Aristotle is right that the habitual exercise of practical judgment allows us to incrementally hone virtues, and if AI saves us time by taking over some of those practical judgments, or if its pattern recognition capacities are very good at learning that kind of behavior – we risk innovating ourselves out of moral competence with the introduction of AI.

Open Access August 9, 2021

Political Equality and Political Sufficiency

Adrian Blau

Article number: 000010151520200059

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Abstract

The distinction between equality and sufficiency, much discussed in the distributive justice literature, is here applied to democratic theory. Overlooking this distinction can have significant normative implications, undermining some defences and criticisms of political equality, as I show by discussing the work of three prominent democratic theorists: Thomas Christiano, David Estlund, and Mark Warren. Most importantly, Christiano sometimes defends egalitarian conclusions using sufficientarian premises, or worries about inequality in situations where insufficiency is also part of the problem; inequality above the level of sufficiency is not always as troubling. Estlund makes the reverse error. He attacks rather than defends political egalitarianism, but insufficiency seems to explain some of his concerns. Nonetheless, I show that political egalitarians may need to specify a sufficientarian threshold, to avoid levelling-down objections. Democratic theorists should thus take seriously the distinction between political equality and political sufficiency. More generally, political theorists and philosophers should be aware of omitted variable bias and interaction effects due to conceptual stretching arising from under-theorised distinctions in their thought experiments.

Open Access August 6, 2021

Individual Responsibility under Systemic Corruption: A Coercion-Based View

Emanuela Ceva, Carla Bagnoli

Article number: 000010151520200033

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Abstract

Should officeholders be held individually responsible for submitting to systemically corrupt institutional practices? We draw a structural analogy between individual action under coercive threat and individual participation in systemic corruption, and we argue that officeholders who submit to corrupt institutional practices are not excused by the existence of a systemic coercive threat. Even when they have good personal reasons to accept the threat, they remain individually morally assessable and, in the circumstances, they are also individually blameworthy for actions performed in their institutional capacity.

Open Access August 5, 2021

An Institutionalist Approach to AI Ethics: Justifying the Priority of Government Regulation over Self-Regulation

Thomas Ferretti

Article number: 000010151520200056

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Abstract

This article explores the cooperation of government and the private sector to tackle the ethical dimension of artificial intelligence (AI). The argument draws on the institutionalist approach in philosophy and business ethics defending a ‘division of moral labor’ between governments and the private sector (Rawls 2001; Scheffler and Munoz-Dardé 2005). The goal and main contribution of this article is to explain how this approach can provide ethical guidelines to the AI industry and to highlight the limits of self-regulation. In what follows, I discuss three institutionalist claims. First, principles of AI ethics should be validated through legitimate democratic processes. Second, compliance with these principles should be secured in a stable way. Third, their implementation in practice should be as efficient as possible. If we accept these claims, there are good reasons to conclude that, in many cases, governments implementing hard regulation are in principle (if not yet in practice) the best instruments to secure an ethical development of AI systems. Where adequate regulation exists, firms should respect the law. But when regulation does not yet exist, helping governments build adequate regulation should be businesses’ ethical priority, not self-regulation.

March 3, 2021

Prior Residence and Immigrant Voting Rights

Anna Goppel

Article number: 000010151520200004

Abstract

Although the moral foundations of voting rights regulations have been the subject of widespread scrutiny, there is one aspect of the debate which has gone largely unquestioned and is currently accepted in every state’s actual voting rights regulations. This is the requirement of prior residence, which stipulates that immigrants are granted the right to vote only once they have lived in the host country for a certain period of time. It is this requirement I call into question in this paper. Taking up the most plausible justifications for this requirement, I aim to put substantial pressure on its moral acceptability by arguing that it is not directly grounded by any of the principles that are currently defended as a means to determine the demos , nor a proxy for some other morally relevant feature, nor a warrantor for abilities held to be significant for the right to vote.

February 25, 2021

Everybody to Count for One? Inclusion and Exclusion in Welfare-Consequentialist Public Policy

Noel Semple

Article number: 000010151520200014

Abstract

Which individuals should count in a welfare-consequentialist analysis of public policy? Some answers to this question are parochial, and others are more inclusive. The most inclusive possible answer is ‘everybody to count for one.’ In other words, all individuals who are capable of having welfare – including foreigners, the unborn, and non-human animals – should be weighed equally. This article argues that ‘who should count’ is a question that requires a two-level answer. On the first level, a specification of welfare-consequentialism serves as an ethical ideal, a claim about the attributes that the ideal policy would have. ‘Everybody to count for one’ might succeed on this level. However, on the second level is the welfare-consequentialist analysis procedure used by human analysts to give advice on real policy questions. For epistemic reasons, the analysis procedure should be more parochial than ‘everybody to count for one.’

About this journal

Moral Philosophy and Politics (MOPP) is an international, peer-reviewed journal which invites the submission of original philosophical articles on issues of public relevance. ‘Public relevance’ is to be understood in a broad sense. Of particular interest to the journal are the philosophical assessment of policy and its normative basis, analyses of the philosophical underpinnings or implications of political debate and reflection on the justice or injustice of the social and political structures which regulate human action.

MOPP is committed to the ideal of clarity, evidence-based thinking and intellectual openness; interdisciplinary work and historical approaches will be considered as long as they are relevant to contemporary issues. MOPP will consider publishing both theoretical and meta-ethical work as well as work concerned with conceptual problems, if such work sheds light on political, moral, economic and social issues of contemporary societies. Contributors are expected to make clear how their work relates to these issues.

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