Getting Real about Taxes: Offshore tax sheltering and realism's ethic of responsibility
(with Arlen, G.)
This paper tackles the issue of offshore tax sheltering from the perspective of normative political realism. Tax sheltering is a pressing contemporary policy challenge, with hundreds of billions in private assets protected in offshore trusts and shell companies. Indeed, tax sheltering produces a variety of empirical dilemmas that render it a distinctive challenge for global governance. Therefore, it is crucial for normative political theorists to confront this problem. A realist approach offers three distinct advantages, elaborated in the three subsequent sections of the paper. First, it relaxes the theoretical burden by starting from the real practice of tax evasion, rather than from an abstract theory of equality or justice. Second, realism recognizes that sheltering is a political harm: a threat to the very maintenance of order, not just a problem of inequality or injustice. If politicians fail at such polity maintenance, realism's ethic of responsibility provides clear political reasons for why they should be held accountable. Third, realism's focus on power and its acceptance of coercion open up new strategies for addressing the problem than would be allowed by theories with a stronger emphasis on consensus.
The Sources of Political Normativity: The case for instrumental and epistemic normativity in political realism
(with Destri, C.)
This article argues that political realists have at least two strategies to provide distinctively political normative judgments that have nothing to do with morality. The first ground is instrumental normativity, which states that if we believe that something is a necessary means to a goal we have, we have a reason to do it. In politics, certain means are required by any ends we may intend to purse. The second ground is epistemic normativity, stating that if something is (empirically) true, this gives us a reason to believe it. In politics, there are certain empirical regularities that ought to be acknowledged for what they are. Both sources are flawed. Instrumental normativity only requires coherence between attitudes and beliefs, and one can hang on to false beliefs to preserve attitudes incompatible with reality. I may desire to eschew power relations, and as such imagine politics to be like a camping trip. Epistemic normativity, on the other hand, operates critically, striking down existing normative claims. It shows us that politics is nothing like a camping trip, but it doesn’t tell us what we should do about it (beyond abandoning some false beliefs). We conclude by showing that if the two are taken together, they remedy each other flaws
Political Normativity and the Functional Autonomy of Politics
This paper argues for a new interpretation of the realist claim that politics is autonomous from morality and should be assessed based on political values. First, this article defends an original normative source: functional normativity. Secondly, it advocates a substantive functional standard: political institutions ought to be assessed by their capacity to issue binding collective decisions. Drawing from the so-called ‘etiological account’ in philosophy of biology, I will argue that functions yield normative standards, which are independent from morality. E.g. a good heart is one that pumps blood well and a good army is one that it is good at exerting military force. I then interpret realism’s naturalistic conception of politics as an etiological function of social groups: selecting binding collective decisions under persistent disagreement. I conclude that political institutions should be evaluated realistically by how well they perform this task. Finally, I assess trade-offs between this functional political normativity and other moral values. I conclude that justice, fairness, freedom, equality remain obviously important concerns, but only so long as the basic political function is secured.
A realistic conception of politics: conflict, order and political realism
In this paper I unpack a realistic conception of politics by tightly defining its constitutive features: conflict and order. A conflict emerges when an actor is disposed to impose his/her views against the resistance of others. Conflicts are more problematic than moralists realize because they emerge unilaterally, are potentially violent, impermeable to content-based reason, and unavoidable. Order is then defined as an institutional framework that provides binding collective decisions. Order is deemed necessary because individuals need to cooperate to survive, but groups cannot spontaneously secure collective decisions and are prone to conflicts. Particularly, the fact that potentially violent conflicts emerge unilaterally means that order requires coercion. I conclude that mischaracterizing conflict and order leads to undesirable normative principles, and that this criticism can be leveraged not only against Rawlsian liberals who moralize conflicts away, but also against some agonists who underestimate the need for order and some communitarians who underplay both circumstances.
Cross‐National Solidarity and Political Sustainability in the EU after the Crisis
(with M. Ferrera)
The recent economic shocks have severely tested the EU's political sustainability. The deep‐rooted and unending succession of existential crises demonstrates the sharp misalignment between the high degree of integration reached by the EU, its authority structure, and the absence of solidarity to sustain this structure. The contribution unfolds as follows: first, we claim that the Union has become a complex adaptive system and that attempts to restore the status quo ante are unrealistic. Section II shows that its authority structure is ill‐suited to steering the complex system because it lacks adequate instruments for addressing common risks and democratic externalities. Section III argues that contemporary EU leaders are failing to promote the principles of solidarity which, according to its founding father are required to disarm centrifugal tendencies. Section IV presents empirical evidence which signals the existence of considerable popular support for these pan‐European forms of solidarity.
Norms from Nature. Etiological Functions as Normative Standards
When we say that the function of a knife is cutting, we open the door to evaluating knives based on how well they cut. The aim of the paper is to investigate whether functions ground normative standards. This is an exciting question, as it would highlight the important existence of one instance of non-moral normativity and investigate to what degree it involves a trade off with it. Additionally, insofar as it depends on a naturalistic account of functions, functional normativity may be an obvious candidate of non-linguistic normativity that the special issue aims to investigate. The article will first investigate what functions are, providing an etiological account that explains functional attributions for artefacts, as well as biological and social functions. It then discusses how failing to discharge a function results in malfunctioning, not in losing the function. Finally, it argues that functions so understood provide normative standards, independent of moral norms.
The good and the best. Being realistic about social change
Too often calls for utopian social change serve as a device for conserving the status quo, because they pose objectives that are beyond what is feasible to implement and devalue reachable marginal improvement. As Voltaire famously remarked: ‘the best is the enemy of the good’. In this paper I suggest that being realistic about social change means seriously committing to realize it. I argue that social change should be conceived and evaluated in terms of a course of action rather than merely an ideal end-state. End-states must be assessed in conjunction with the means they require, other consequences they imply, and their likelihood of success (i.e. as a course of action). These additional three elements give rise to three distinct failures of being realistic about social change: the fanatic who does not consider the cost of means, the saint who does not consider the benefit of end-states, and the naïve who does not consider likelihood of success. Similar failures can be construed as empirical mistakes in giving the course of action due consideration: the ineffective actor (who fails to acquire available knowledge of means), the wishful thinker (whose knowledge of consequences is distorted by preferences) and the self-deceiver (whose knowledge of end-states is distorted by his preferences). Being realistic about social change – I conclude - does not mean that we should not be ambitious in what we propose, but that we should avoid these six fallacies if we truly care about realizing it.
Solidarity, Stability and Enlightened Self-Interest in the EU
Solidarity, Stability and Enlightened Self-Interest in the EU-In this paper I argue that more solidarity, realistically conceived, is in the long-term enlightened self-interest of all European member states. I will first argue that the concept of solidarity combines two intuitions: solidarity is a set of feelings that supports group cohesion, and a set of transfers from the most advantaged to the most disadvantaged members of a group. Secondly, I will argue that solidarity is in the interest of each member of the community. It benefits the worst off by providing material assistance and avoiding that they fall below an acceptable minimum. Less obviously, it also benefits the most advantaged by stabilizing cooperation within a system that benefits them the most. Whether they know it or not, it is in their long term enlightened self-interest as well. Finally, I apply this normative argument to the case of the European Union and consider some objections.
Subjectivity is Objective: Thomas Hobbes on Normative Truths
Much controversy surrounding Hobbes's interpretations springs from a puzzle – how can subjectivist assumptions lead to an objective theory of morality and politics? Two different strands coexist in the history of philosophy: the first emphasizes his moral psychology, while the other stresses the universality of the laws of nature. My hypothesis is that Hobbes's subjectivism allowed for some degree of objectivity in two ways. First, by reducing values to individual preferences they become facts, recognizable as true or false. Second, subjective desires still have factual objective consequences. With these two qualifications, Hobbes subjectivism can be made compatible with an objective science of morality. This idea is captured in the distinction between real and apparent goods, under which non-compliance appears to be an apparent good for its objective negative consequences. While for a moral scientist, the risks posed by the state of nature are sufficient to warrant cooperation, the sovereign's sanctions provide more obvious negative consequences for the less forward-looking.
Verso una Concezione Realistica della Politica
Il confine tra realismo politico e liberalismo non è teoricamente così chiaro come l’asprezza del dibattito sembrerebbe suggerire. Tra le due tradizioni non c’è una forte distinzione né sul piano metodologico né su quello sostanziale. Il dibattito sul metodo, che ruota attorno alle condizioni di realizzabilità dei propri ideali, non basta a qualificare una posizione come realista, perché questa preoccupazione è presente anche nella tradizione liberale della cosiddetta teoria non-ideale (Valentini 2012). Molti realisti, come Matt Sleat (Sleat 2014), Enzo Rossi (2015b) ed Edward Hall (2015), ritengono riduttivo assimilare le loro tesi a questa posizione. Nemmeno sul piano sostanziale è facile distinguere tra realismo e idealismo perché entrambi gli approcci sostengono istituzioni liberali e democratiche. I realisti in questo caso si limitano a criticare il modo in cui queste vengono giustificate dagli idealisti (Finlayson 2015). Per cercare di chiarire questo dibattito, è dunque necessario specificare che la «caratteristica che lo definisce […] è il tentativo di dare autonomia al politico» (Rossi e Sleat 2014, 2). Questo articolo mira perciò a mettere a fuoco la «concezione fondamentalmente diversa di che cos’è la politica» (Sleat 2014, 5) adottata dai realisti politici.
Realistic Solidarity for the Real EU
This paper tackles the notion of solidarity in the EU from a realistic perspective and aims at clarifying two common flaws in the arguments of many who invoke it: vagueness and utopianism. I have two aims: to clarify the concept of solidarity, and to offer a realistic justification for its application to the EU. To make sense of the heterogeneous history of the concept, I suggest distinguishing it from charity, which is spontaneous and universal, and from fraternity, which relates to a mere emotional sense of fellow-feeling. This less demanding conception of solidarity can be realistically defended as instrumental to stabilizing political cooperation within the EU, and as such it is in the long-term enlightened self-interest of all its members.