The Problem of Environmental Democracy

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-317
Author(s):  
Eric Pommier ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Hans Jonas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Effective Development ◽  
Environmental Democracy

The work of Hans Jonas’ has been largely overlooked by environmental philosophers. His Principle of Responsibility can help guide effective development of political institutions for environmental purposes. It is possible to use this principle to develop a deliberative and environmental conception of democracy. Some implications of the social contract framework of deliberative democracy show that Jonas’ conceptualization of responsibility leads to an environmental and deliberative conception of democracy by accommodating different citizens’ senses of the good in terms of an environmentally conceived global governance.

scholarly journals State Capacity, Reciprocity, and the Social Contract

Econometrica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 1307-1335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Besley
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Tax Compliance ◽  
The State ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Relative Payoff ◽  
Common Interests

This paper explores the role of civic culture in expanding fiscal capacity by developing a model based on reciprocal obligations: citizens pay their taxes and the state provides public goods. Civic culture evolves over time according to the relative payoff of civic‐minded and materialist citizens. A strong civic culture manifests itself as high tax revenues sustained by high levels of voluntary tax compliance and provision of public goods. This captures the idea of government as a reciprocal social contract between the state and its citizens. The paper highlights the role of political institutions and common interests in the emergence of civic culture.

Political and Distributive Justice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Van Shoelandt ◽  
Gerald Gaus
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Institution ◽  
Special Relation ◽  
Reasonable Disagreement ◽  
The Social

To most philosophers, unmet claims based on distributive justice imply a political injustice—some have a complaint of justice against their political system. This article explores a variety of views about how this connection may be grounded or qualified: political institutions may be one tool among others to realize an independent good, distributive principles might regulate the distributive activities of political institutions, or distributive principles might apply in light of a special relation of a political institution and its members. We also consider a view prevalent in the social contract tradition that, in light of reasonable disagreement, one cannot demand that shared political institutions conform to one’s own contentious distributive theory: members must seek terms with which all can live, even though such terms may not be anyone’s most preferred possibility.

Normative Legitimacy and the State

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Levitov
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Overview ◽  
Hybrid Theory

This article offers a critical overview of the major normative theories of political legitimacy from the seventeenth century to the present day, with a special focus on the leading representatives of the social contract tradition: the voluntarist theory, according to which legitimate political authority must derive from the free choices of its subjects; and the natural duty theory, which holds that a state’s legitimacy depends on the extent to which its institutions are just, regardless of whether it has been freely authorized by its subjects. The article then explores the prospects of a hybrid theory that would combine elements of the two and concludes by examining the ways in which the various conceptions of state legitimacy under consideration might be applied or adapted to the case of supranational political institutions.

D?r al-?arb as the Motherland? The Muslim Tatars of (the Grand Duchy of) Lithuania and Social Contract

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Egdūnas Račius
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Social ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Muslim Minority ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Grand Duchy

Muslim presence in Lithuania, though already addressed from many angles, has not hitherto been approached from either the perspective of the social contract theories or of the compliance with Muslim jurisprudence. The author argues that through choice of non-Muslim Grand Duchy of Lithuania as their adopted Motherland, Muslim Tatars effectively entered into a unique (yet, from the point of Hanafi fiqh, arguably Islamically valid) social contract with the non-Muslim state and society. The article follows the development of this social contract since its inception in the fourteenth century all the way into the nation-state of Lithuania that emerged in the beginning of the twentieth century and continues until the present. The epitome of the social contract under investigation is the official granting in 1995 to Muslim Tatars of a status of one of the nine traditional faiths in Lithuania with all the ensuing political, legal and social consequences for both the Muslim minority and the state.

СОВРЕМЕННОЕ РОССИЙСКОЕ ОБЩЕСТВО КАК ПРОСТРАНСТВО КОНФЛИКТА

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
V. V. Gorshkova ◽  
A. A. Melnikova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Social Conflicts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Russian

The article considers the contradictions and conflicts that are characteristic of modern Russian society. The processes of social disintegration are analyzed and interpreted as a result of fundamental social and economic transformations. The problems of economic inequality are presented in the historical perspective in close connection with the previous stages of Russia's socioeconomic development. Significant polarization of the population is one of the most significant conflict factors in modern society, which leads to an increase in protest moods and may in the long term threaten social upheavals. Nevertheless, dissatisfaction with the socio-economic situation does not lead to ideas of the unification and consolidation of society, but find expression in social conflicts. The emergence and development of social conflicts is influenced by a number of factors: economic, ethnic, religious. One of the most important characteristics of society is its social structure. After the collapse of the USSR, the previous social structure was abolished, and a new social reality was formed in Russia. When considering the stratification structure of society, most attention is paid to the middle class, which is considered the backbone of a stable society. The middle class in Russia is in the stage of formation, it is hardly possible to speak of a complete analogy with the middle class of Western society. The share of middle class in society can be estimated in different ways depending on the methodological approaches used by researchers. An important consequence of the transformation of the social structure was the problem of marginalization, since the dismantling of the old social structure and the slow formation of the new one put the social status and place in the division of labor system of many individuals into question. The sharp impoverishment of representatives of prestigious professions led to a reassessment of their situation, especially for the younger generation. When analyzing the origins of social conflicts in modern Russian society, it is necessary to consider the issue of the attitude of the broad masses of the population to power and national elites. It should be noted that power in Russia historically takes shape around specific leaders and does not have an institutional character. The most significant factor shaping the attitude towards the authorities and the elite in general in Russian society are the economic results of the market reforms that have taken place. Only a small part of the population believes that they won as a result of the changes that have taken place, the natural consequence of which is the population's distrust of the authorities and, in general, political institutions.

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