International Justice,Human Rights and Neutrality

A number of theorists have tried to resolve the tension between a western-oriented liberal scheme of human rights and an account that accommodates different political systems and constitutional ideals than the liberal one. One important way the tension has been addressed is through a “neutral” or tolerant, notion of human rights, as present in the work of Rawls, Scanlon and Buchanan. In this paper I argue that neutrality cannot by itself explain the difference between rights considered appropriate for liberal states and rights considered to be human rights proper. The central arguments used by neutralist theorists presuppose, rather than justify, this differential treatment. Instead, that difference can be understood only by reference to the purpose of human rights as distinct from the constitutional rights of a liberal state. This requires us to reassess the point and purpose of a theory of international justice, in contrast to justice for a domestic and politically separate society. In the case of a theorist like Rawls, human rights represent guides to the foreign policy of a liberal state, rather than to principles by which all states are expected to abide. That is because of Rawls’ acceptance that no common, authoritative, third-party, institutions capable of imposing duties on all agents uniformly exist or can exist. This also makes his theory inherently conservative about human rights, given that they are simply to act as a guide to which states can be treated as legitimate when it comes to liberal foreign policy: those that possess institutions that can be said to represent a peoples, rather than being imposed through violence. This standard is lower than the ideal set of rights extended to all in a liberal society. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Normative Underpinnings of Democracy and the Balance between Morality and Legitimacy

ABSTRACT

Jürgen Habermas’s political philosophy incorporates the view that legitimacy is immanent to law, even though it makes morality a central component of democratic legitimacy. Taking this as a starting point, the article examines one criticism that applies to Habermas’s political theory, insofar as he puts morality at the centre of his reconstruction of the concept of legitimacy. Habermas claims that the moral point of view justifies only those norms that embody universalizable interests and rules out those that embody particular interests. Therefore, the objection is that particular citizens will have no reason to endorse these norms and act according to them because these norms do not incorporate their interests. The article goes on to show that Habermas can successfully answer this objection by means of the principle of discourse. The principle performs this function, inasmuch as it has a post-Kantian nature. On the one hand, it incorporates Kantian autonomy. And on the other, the Hegelian insight that autonomy has to be actualized through modern institutions and practices.     

The International Significance of Human Rights

A comparative examination of four alternative ways of understandingwhat human rights are supports an institutional understanding assuggested by Article 28 of the Universal Declaration: Human rightsare weighty moral claims on any coercively imposed institutionalorder, national or international (as Article 28 confirms). Any suchorder must afford the persons on whom it is imposed secure accessto the objects of their human rights. This understanding of humanrights is broadly sharable across cultures and narrows the philosophical and practical differences between the friends ofcivil and political and the champions of social, economic, andcultural human rights. When applied to the global institutionalorder, it provides a new argument for conceiving human rights asuniversal – and a new basis for criticizing this order as tooencouraging of oppression, corruption, and poverty in the developing countries: We have a negative duty not to cooperatein the imposition of this global order if feasible reforms ofit would significantly improve the realization of human rights.     

International Human Rights and National Discretion

This paper argues that the EuropeanCourt of Human Rights couldserve as a model for an international court ofhuman rights to be builtupon the United Nations Committee on HumanRights. It argues that theconcerns states might have over the surrenderof a significant portion oftheir national sovereignity might be lessenedif such an internationalcourt were to incorporate the margin ofappreciation doctrine employed bythe European Court of Human Rights. Thisdoctrine is intended to respectthe customs and traditions of sovereign statesin dealing with humanrights issues, while maintaining that somerights such as the right not tobe tortured will be considered as basic andwill stand independently ofthe customs and traditions of sovereignstates.     

Religion,Violence, and Human Rights

Beginning with the support given by religious groups to humanitarian intervention for the protection of basic human rights in the debates of the 1990s, this essay examines the use of the human rights idea in relation to international law on armed conflict, the “Responsibility To Protect” doctrine, and the development of the idea of sovereignty associated with the “Westphalian system” of international order, identifying a dilemma: that the idea of human rights undergirds both the principle of non‐intervention in the internal affairs of states and the idea of an international responsibility for humanitarian intervention in cases of oppression. The pre‐Westphalian conception of sovereignty as moral responsibility for the common good is then examined as an alternative that avoids this dilemma, and the essay concludes by suggesting that religious ethics also has other resources that, if used, may shed useful light on resolving this problem.     

Women,Human Rights,and Counseling: Crossing International Boundaries

As the world becomes more globalized, psychological and counseling issues have become more pronounced. As social justice issues become illuminated on a global scale, there is increased attention to women as identified victims of social injustices and human rights violations. This article examines the role of professional counselors working with women from an international perspective with the intention to heighten awareness and understanding of the interrelationship of global women's issues and effective counseling interventions.     

Deliberative Democracy and "Human Nature": An Empirical Approach

The idea of deliberative democracy is based upon an implicit and questionable assumption that the ability for a meaningful participation in deliberation is a common characteristic of citizens of democratic countries. This paper discusses that assumption and describes the results of empirical research aimed at finding out (1) whether ordinary people are able to solve important ideological and moral controversies by means of deliberation, (2) what factors may facilitate this process, and (3) what are the effects of the deliberation. The research consisted in studying 20 small groups of parents of school-aged children who were asked to participate in a debate about sex education in Polish schools (N  =  195). The debates were conducted by a facilitator. Before and after the debate participants filled out questionnaires testing their attitudes and some psychological variables. The debates were recorded on videotapes. We found that it is possible to conduct a debate on ideologically contentious issues that meets some criteria of the deliberative functioning and such a debate may have some of the effects postulated by deliberative theorists.     

Terrorists and Democrats: Individual Reactions to International Attacks

Three experiments conducted in 1997 and 1998 explored individual responses to reported fictitious international conflict involving the United States and other nations. Participants escalated the conflictual level of their responses to repeated attacks. In Experiment 1, escalation of conflict was greater in response to terrorist attacks than to military ones. In Experiment 2, after the initial attacks, men were more conflictual in responding to terrorist attacks by a democratic nation than by a nondemocratic nation, whereas the opposite pattern was found for women. In Experiment 3, participants responded with a higher level of conflict to terrorist attacks on military targets than to attacks on cultural/educational targets. Participants with greater personality dominance showed steeper escalation of conflict in their responses across successive attacks. These results are interpreted within the framework of an image theory of international relations and an expansion of the democratic peace hypothesis.     

The State,Democracy, and Development in Southern Africa

Development cannot be left to the “magic wand” of market forces alone. This observation has been vindicated by the dismal failure of the IMF/World Bank policies in Africa since the 1970s/80s. That development needs an active state participation and some deliberately dirigiste policies brooks no controversy. Interestingly, even the World Bank has begrudgingly come to accept the centrality of the state in development after peddling policies premised on market fundamentalism for decades. Consensus is now emerging in development discourses in Africa that both states and markets do play an important complimentary role in the development process. The idea that this article canvasses is that both democracy and development need a robust, capable, democratic developmental state. A democratic developmental state operates in such a way that it leaves ample room for other key non-state actors to make their critical input in the development agenda and the democratization process. The article revisits the debate on the post-colonial state; interrogates challenges for democratic governance and sustainable human development; revisits the nexus between democracy and development in the context of Southern Africa. It further investigates the impact of the current process of accelerated globalization on the state, democratization, and development project in the SADC region.     

Abstraction and Finitude: Education, Chance and Democracy

Education in the west has become a very knowing business in which students are encouraged to cultivate self-awareness and meta-cognitive skills in pursuit of a kind of perfection. The result is the evasion of contingency and of the consciousness of human finitude. The neo-liberalism that makes education a market good exacerbates this. These tendencies can be interpreted as a dimension of scepticism. This is to be dissolved partly by acknowledging that we are obscure to ourselves. Such an acknowledgement is fostered by the mythic dimension of experience, which also recommends a degree of humility to the citizens of democratic states.     

Pragmatic Democracy: Inquiry,Objectivity, and Experience

This essay argues that to understand Dewey's vision of democracy as “epistemic” requires consideration of how experiential and communal aspects of inquiry together produce what is named here “pragmatic objectivity.” Such pragmatic objectivity provides an alternative to absolutism and self‐interested relativism by appealing to certain norms of empirical experimentation. Pragmatic objectivity, it is then argued, can be justified by appeal to Dewey's conception of primary experience. This justification, however, is not without its own complications, which are highlighted with objections regarding “radical pluralism” in political life, and some logical problems that arise due to the supposedly “ineffable” nature of primary experience. The essay concludes by admitting that while Dewey's theory of democracy based on experience cannot answer all of the objections argumentatively, it nevertheless provides potent suggestions for how consensus building can proceed without such philosophical arguments.     

Hyped Virtues,Hidden Vices: The Ethics of Icelandic Sports Literature

Ideally, good sports literature illuminates the subtle moral contours of sports reality. We ask in this paper how modern Icelandic literature describes sport-related ethical issues and attitudes. Our findings indicate that, in stark contrast to the rampant egocentrism, individual vice and misconduct blighting Icelandic sports reality, modern Icelandic prose literature typically either ignores this reality or refers to sports as if they were in full harmony with idealised ancient virtues and morals. Our conclusion is that this discrepancy admits of four possible interpretations: that (1) theories about the individualism and egocentricity of modernity do not apply in Iceland and in Icelandic sports; (2) the writers are seriously self-deceived; (3) the writers write their books for the deliberate purpose of deceiving the public; (4) the writers write their books for the deliberate purpose of preaching. Our answer is that, while there may be reason to foreground (4), the explanation lies in a combination of those four factors.     

We,Heirs of Enlightenment: Critical Theory,Democracy and Social Science

Abstract

My goal here is to come to terms with the Enlightenment as the horizon of critical social science. First, I consider in more detail the understanding of the Enlightenment in Critical Theory, particularly in its conception of the sociality of reason. Second, I develop an account of freedom in terms of human powers, along the lines of recent capability conceptions that link freedom to the development of human powers, including the power to interpret and create norms. Finally, I show the ways in which the social sciences can be moral sciences in the Enlightenment sense. This account provides us with a coherent Enlightenment standard by which to judge institutions as promoting development, understood in terms of the capabilities necessary for freedom. The relevant social science in this area might include the robust generalization that there has never been a famine in a democratic society.     

Participation in Voluntary Associations: Relations with Resources, Personality, and Political Values

Participation in voluntary associations is explained by different theories in sociology, psychology, and political science. Sociologists have emphasized the effects of resources such as human and social capital. Psychologists have demonstrated the role of empathy and extraversion as aspects of personality. Political scientists have considered political values and attitudes. This paper investigates the predictive value of personality characteristics, political values, and social conditions for civic engagement. Data from the Family Survey of the Dutch Population 2000 (n = 1,587) show that active citizens have more human and social capital available to them, they are more interested in politics, have more post materialistic value orientations, prefer leftist or Christian political parties, are less conscientious persons, and show more empathic concern with other people. Relations of personality characteristics with civic engagement were partly intermediated by church attendance and the level of education and varied in complex ways with hourly wages. My results show how social, political, and psychological characteristics are jointly related to civic engagement.     

The Rights of Man: Libertarian Concern for Men's,But Not Women's,Reproductive Autonomy

Libertarianism enshrines individual autonomy as its central political principle, but it has been criticized for applying this principle selectively. Reproductive decisions can stress the concept of individual autonomy by placing into conflict the claimed rights of each biological parent to choose. Two studies (N₁ = 296; N₂ = 580) show that among U.S. participants, libertarianism is associated with opposition to women's reproductive autonomy and support for men's. Libertarianism was associated with opposition to abortion rights and support for men's right both to prevent women from having abortions (male veto) and to withdraw financial support for a child when women refuse to terminate the pregnancy (financial abortion). Adjusting for the association between libertarianism and conservatism, only the relationship with opposition to abortion rights was rendered nonsignificant. Mediation analyses suggest that hostile sexism may account for libertarians' selective support for men's and not women's reproductive autonomy.     

Ethics,Brain Injuries,and Sports: Prohibition,Reform, and Prudence

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the issue of the elimination of sports, or elements of sports, that present a high risk of brain injury. In particular, we critically examine two elements of Angelo Corlett’s and Pam Sailors’ arguments for the prohibition of football and Nicholas Dixon’s claim for the reformation of boxing to eliminate blows to the head based on (a) the empirical assumption of an essential or causal connection between brain injuries incurred in football and the development of a degenerative brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE); and (b) John Stuart Mill’s rejection of consensual domination (ie voluntary enslavement). We present four arguments to contest the validity of Corlett, Dixon’s and Sailor’s positions. Specifically, we argue that (i) certain autonomy-based arguments undermine paternalist arguments for reform; (ii) the nature of the goods people pursue in their lives might justify their foregoing (degrees of) future autonomy; (iii) Mill’s argument against consensual domination draws on ambiguous and arbitrary distinctions; (iv) the lack of consensus and empirical evidence regarding CTE arising from brain injuries in sport underdetermines calls for reform. We conclude that these proposals for reforming or eliminating sports with high risks of brain injuries are not well founded.     

Associations Among Perceived Autonomy Support,Forms of Self-Regulation,and Persistence: A Prospective Study

According to self-determination theory, when the social context is autonomy supportive, people are motivated to internalize the regulation of important activities, and whereas when the context is controlling, self-determined motivation is undermined. A model that incorporates perceptions of coaches' interpersonal behaviors (autonomy support vs. control), 5 forms of regulation (intrinsic motivation, identified, introjected and external regulation, and amotivation), and persistence was tested with competitive swimmers (N = 369) using a prospective 3-wave design. Analyses using structural equation modeling revealed that experiencing relationships as controlling fostered non–self-determined forms of regulation (external regulation and amotivation). Greater levels of self-determined motivation occurred when relationships were experienced as autonomy supportive. Individuals who exhibited self-determined types of regulation at Time 1 showed more persistence at both Time 2 (10 months later) and Time 3 (22 months later). Individuals who were amotivated at Time 1 had the highest rate of attrition at both Time 2 and Time 3. Introjected regulation was a significant predictor of persistence at Time 2 but became nonsignificant at Time 3. External regulation was not a significant predictor of behavior at Time 2, but became negatively associated with persistence at Time 3. The findings are discussed in light of the determinants of the internalization process and the consequences of different forms of self-regulation for psychological functioning.     

从李丽云事件看生命健康权、患者自主权和医生干涉权

当患方行使自主权所做的决定危及自身生命健康权时,能否赋予医生干涉权以实现生命高于一切的理念？阐明了生命健康权、患者自主权和医生干涉权的关系．并从我国实际出发,论述不能通过赋予医生干涉权来避免类似李丽云悲剧的发生,建议立法完善对民事行为能力的规定,建立司法机关或其他第三方机构提前快速审查机制来解决自主权与生命权的冲突。     

民主建设的逻辑、次序与策略:延安时期毛泽东的思考与实践

延安时期毛泽东提出了大众民主（人民民主）的建设目标,并对于这种民主建设的逻辑、次序和策略等相关问题做出了努力的探索。延安时期毛泽东领导的边区民主建设是中国本土的一次民主操练,对于当前中国民主政治关系的建设具有重要借鉴意义。     

Blockchain,The Greater Good,and Human and Civil Rights

The central theme of this paper is that the development of a technology that is predicted to have a major impact on the way we transact with each other should be a matter where the needs of society at large are taken into account. Where the technology is one that emerges from the domain of the Internet, inclusivity becomes even more acute in order to avoid widening the already existing gap in reaping the “digital dividend.” With blockchain, the obligation could even be seen as a moral one, as blockchain is said to have the potential to negate the scope for the abuse of trust by states and institutions. This could be a game changer in areas such as public procurement and the conduct of elections where abuse can lead to the denial of essential resources and a concomitant loss of life, or to conflict and mass killings. Blockchain presents an opportunity for the Internet development community to claim a degree of recognition in the human rights realm by aiding civil intervention in areas where military intervention has been deemed inappropriate.