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 judgements 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 pursue. 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 accordingly I may 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’s 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.