Politicians and philosophers alike have warned that the spread of antimigrant bigotry in the West... more Politicians and philosophers alike have warned that the spread of antimigrant bigotry in the Western world requires a tragic trade-off regarding immigration policy: Although millions of asylum-seekers might be owed admission to Western democracies, there are many cases where they nonetheless ought to be denied entry, because their admission is overly likely to increase the electoral appeal of extreme rightwing figures and parties, thus endangering the host country's liberal democracy. This article scrutinizes this influential view, by juxtaposing electorally driven migration policy with electorally driven military strikes abroad. If turning millions of asylum-seekers away can be tragically appropriate as a means of thwarting the electoral rise of the extreme right, why cannot the same be true for military strikes overseas that might harm a far smaller number of innocent outsiders? I examine what - if anything- explains the difference between these two cases.
British Journal of Political Science (forthcoming), 2024
Commonsense morality suggests that an unjustly invaded democracy may conscript its own citizens a... more Commonsense morality suggests that an unjustly invaded democracy may conscript its own citizens and bar them from emigrating, when such a policy is necessary to sustain resistance to the invader. What does this assumption regarding "internal conscription" entail for "external conscription"-for foreign countries who might close their borders to many citizens of the invaded democracy, in order to push them to fight? Could it have been morally appropriate for Ukraine's neighbors, for instance, to close their borders to (many) Ukrainians at the onset of the Russian assault on Kyiv, with the aim of sustaining Ukraine's resistance to Putin's invasion? I take up such questions by examining the seeming discrepancy between internal and external conscription. I argue that, notwithstanding its surface appeal, a categorical divide between the two kinds of conscription is unwarranted. At the level of fundamental moral principle, the two stand and fall together.
Foreign exile has often served as an important solution to high-stakes standoffs between oppositi... more Foreign exile has often served as an important solution to high-stakes standoffs between opposition forces and beleaguered autocrats. I assess the moral status of autocratic exile, by focusing on the tension between exile’s contribution to domestic peace and its threat to global deterrence against autocracy. I begin by contending that transitioning societies normally have the moral prerogative of accepting an exile arrangement for their autocrat, even though such an arrangement harms global deterrence against autocracy. I then suggest that, in the absence of clear evidence of majority opposition to an exile arrangement within the transitioning society, foreign countries who have been entangled in an autocrat’s rule will normally have a decisive duty to facilitate his exile, despite exile’s repercussions for global deterrence. I explain why such foreign entanglement, particularly on the part of affluent Western democracies, is inevitable in the case of kleptocrats. But I also show that the entanglement argument for exile extends even to murderous autocrats, whose crimes fall under the purview of the International Criminal Court. Countries entangled in a murderous autocrat’s rule ought to prioritize their particular duties towards his victims over their general moral reasons to advance international criminal justice.
Political honors are ubiquitous in public life, whether in the shape of public monuments, street ... more Political honors are ubiquitous in public life, whether in the shape of public monuments, street names, or national holidays. Yet such honors have received scant attention from normative political theorists. Tackling this gap, I begin by criticizing a desert-based approach to political honors. I then argue that morally appropriate honors are best understood as marking and reinforcing the moral commitments of the collective in whose name they are being awarded. I show how this thesis clarifies and organizes core intuitions regarding a variety of honors, from those commemorating slave-owning founders of the United States to the Nobel Peace Prize.
My aim in this essay is to advance discussion of how to justify the sacrifices that reforms comba... more My aim in this essay is to advance discussion of how to justify the sacrifices that reforms combating global poverty might entail for the world's better-off. I begin from the assumption that we should not try to motivate such sacrifices solely through the hope that they will produce significant poverty gains. Instead, we should also explore whether the affluent actually have compelling moral claims to the goods that they might be asked to relinquish as part of certain global reforms. This alternative strategy forms the background for my discussion of two influential global reform proposals. The first proposal is to tax the natural resource wealth enjoyed by various affluent countries in order to ameliorate global poverty. The second proposal is to prohibit the resource corporations based in affluent democracies from purchasing natural resources controlled by extreme kleptocrats. I argue that once we examine the relationship between these proposals from a sacrifice-sensitive perspective, we find that they genuinely conflict with each other, and that there are sacrifice-related reasons to put aside the canonical proposal for global redistribution of natural resource wealth.
This book takes up two questions revolving around the sovereign people in a liberal democracy as ... more This book takes up two questions revolving around the sovereign people in a liberal democracy as a collective agent. First, can we talk about "the people" as an agent with its own morally important integrity? Second, how should we understand ownership of public property by "the people"? After developing philosophical answers to both of these questions, I go on to illustrate their practical value in thinking through a variety of real-world policy problems, ranging from the domestic and international dimensions of corruption, through transitional justice issues, to ethnic and religious divides that threaten liberal democracy.
Political theory lacks a compelling account of public property. Addressing this gap, I present a ... more Political theory lacks a compelling account of public property. Addressing this gap, I present a " deep public ownership " model, according to which the body politic ultimately owns all the resources within its jurisdiction. I argue that this model is compatible with liberal intuitions regarding private property. I then contend that the model expands the scope of government's duty to uphold the equality of all citizens, by challenging private property constraints on anti-discriminatory government policies. I anticipate the worry that the model supports excessive government intrusion into private affairs, and close by discussing abuse of public property by elected leaders.
Integrity, personal and political (Journal of Politics)
This paper is an early version of some of the ideas that feature (in much more developed form) in... more This paper is an early version of some of the ideas that feature (in much more developed form) in my longer book of the same name, forthcoming with OUP. If you're looking for a concise version of the book's main ideas, please take a look at the preface and intro, which are also available on academia.edu, as well as on my personal website.
Multiple normative theorists currently link political authority to democratic political procedure... more Multiple normative theorists currently link political authority to democratic political procedures. I explore how proponents of this influential view can address a fundamental, but overlooked, puzzle. The puzzle begins from the firm judgement that even a government that keeps democratic procedures intact loses its general authority, if it enacts abhorrent major laws. This judgement means that the moral failure of some laws can dissolve the moral authority of other laws - even ones that are quite distinct in their content. But how can we explain these systemic effects of specific laws? I confront this challenge by introducing a global perspective into the discussion of political authority. First, I suggest that we should only adopt an account of systemic effects that can explain how the worst global conduct dissolves a government's general authority. Second, after developing such an account, I use it to reflect on thornier global cases.
I present a new challenge to the Rawlsian insistence on ideal theory as a compass orienting concr... more I present a new challenge to the Rawlsian insistence on ideal theory as a compass orienting concrete policy choices. My challenge, focusing on global politics, consists of three claims. First, I contend that our global ideal can become more ambitious over time. Second, I argue that Rawlsian ideal theory's level of ambition might change because of concrete policy choices, responding to moral failures which can be identified and resolved without ideal theory. Third, I argue that we currently face such potentially transformative choices. I conclude that these choices are analytically prior to, rather than derivative from, global ideal theory., for conversations and comments on this essay and its themes. Thanks also to the editors and two anonymous reviewers for the European Journal of Political Theory, for their helpful critiques and suggestions.
One of the enduring problems in democratic theory is its inability to specify who should belong t... more One of the enduring problems in democratic theory is its inability to specify who should belong to the demos. In recent years, several scholars have been arguing that democratic theory should try to overcome this "boundary problem" through different kinds of global reform. I argue, however, that the boundary problem is an analytical distraction in thinking about global reform. I begin with general doubts as to whether the boundary problem can ground global reform. I then join the developing conversation on Arash Abizadeh's and Robert Goodin's boundary problem arguments. I offer new reasons for why both arguments encounter fundamental difficulties. I conclude by anticipating the concern that my argument does not take the need for global reform seriously enough.
My aim in this article is to show that there is distinctive normative value to thinking about a l... more My aim in this article is to show that there is distinctive normative value to thinking about a liberal polity as an agent with integrity that can be threatened, paralleling the integrity of an individual person. I argue that the idea of liberal integrity organizes and clarifies important moral intuitions concerning the policies of liberal democracies, especially with regard to their global conduct. This idea provides a novel organizing framework for liberal values that currently seem disparate. It also captures important moral intuitions as to how the tainted histories of actual liberal societies should bear on their global conduct. Finally, this idea explains, in a way that a simple appeal to familiar liberal values arguably cannot, why liberal polities have self-referring moral reasons not to entangle themselves in manifestly illiberal practices beyond their borders – reasons whose significance becomes apparent in scenarios and real-world cases that global political theory overlooks.
This article constructs an argument for the development of green energy that can appeal to Americ... more This article constructs an argument for the development of green energy that can appeal to Americans moderately skeptical of climate change. Accepting – arguendo and in a qualified way - key empirical and normative assumptions of American environmental skeptics, I make two main moves. First, while environmentalists often justify the development of green energy through references to future generations, I try to show that they need a present-oriented argument focused on negative duties to respect rights, in order to justify prioritizing the development of green energy to environmental skeptics in the United States. Second, I construct such an argument, calling on affluent democracies to develop green energy in order to be able to stop their complicity, through oil trade, in petrocrats' violation of their peoples' property rights. I anticipate multiple objections, including the objection that stopping trade with petrocrats will not lead to green energy as a replacement.
One of the most interesting yet under-explored features of the liberal debate on global justice i... more One of the most interesting yet under-explored features of the liberal debate on global justice is the presence of what can be termed Rawlzickians. Rawlzickians are statists who reject libertarianism domestically for Rawlsian reasons, yet employ libertarian terms and arguments globally. My main purpose here is to show that the significance of this libertarian language has been vastly underestimated, even by those who speak it.
My aim in his article is to elucidate a theme that is central to the ongoing debate on Nietzsche,... more My aim in his article is to elucidate a theme that is central to the ongoing debate on Nietzsche, Nazism, and Judaism: Nietzsche’s deployment of loaded physiological language in general, and provocative use of anti-Semitic physiological language in particular. In the article’s first stage, I place Nietzsche’s loaded physiological language regarding the Jews in an interpretive context. In the article’s second, main stage, I place this language in a historical context, by presenting under-studied historical material concerning Nietzsche’s Zionist reception. I show how prominent Zionist thinkers who were heavily influenced by Nietzsche applied to the diaspora Jews the same loaded physiological language, and in some cases even the same anti-Semitic physiological imagery, which has fuelled critiques associating Nietzsche with Nazism. I then trace the formative Nietzschean influence of these early Zionists on later Zionist physiological discourse, all the way up to the 1950s. This complex history exposes significant problems with the way in which the debate on Nietzsche, Nazism and Judaism currently treats Nietzsche’s Jewish reception.
My aim in this article is to ask how both the findings and the limitations of social science shou... more My aim in this article is to ask how both the findings and the limitations of social science should inform the debate on global economic justice among liberal political philosophers. More specifically, I make three claims. First, I show that social science research casts doubt on key premises of important liberal global justice theories. However, second, I also suggest that empirical questions pivotal to these theories bring to the fore important limitations inherent to social science work on global issues. These limitations lead me to argue, third, that new normative concerns should feature in liberal discussions about global reform.
Global justice theorists have given much attention to corporations’ purchases of state-owned natu... more Global justice theorists have given much attention to corporations’ purchases of state-owned natural resources controlled by dictators. These resources, the common argument goes, belong to the people rather than to those who exercise effective political power. Dictators who rely on violence to secure their political power and who sell state-owned natural resources without authorization from their people, or from their people’s elected delegates, are therefore violating their peoples’ property rights. But many dictatorships also distribute natural resource revenue to the population, and stopping to purchase natural resources from them is therefore likely to produce relative deprivation for the people, even while increasing the chances of the people gaining control over their property. Given these circumstances, can corporations buying the people’s natural resources from a distributive dictatorship appeal to the people’s consent as justification for such purchases? I consider this question by inspecting three types of consent to which resource corporations might appeal. I show that, under the circumstances of natural resource trade with distributive dictatorships, none of these types of consent can obtain. Hence resource corporations cannot appeal to popular consent to defend their transactions with distributive dictatorships.
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Papers by Shmuel Nili
order to ameliorate global poverty. The second proposal is to prohibit the resource corporations based in affluent democracies from purchasing natural resources controlled by extreme kleptocrats. I argue that once we examine the relationship between these proposals from a sacrifice-sensitive perspective, we find that they genuinely conflict with each other, and that there are sacrifice-related reasons to put aside the canonical proposal for global redistribution of natural resource wealth.