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Do motivational limitations due to human nature constrain the demands of justice? Among those who say no, David Estlund offers perhaps the most compelling argument. Taking Estlund’s analysis of ‘ability’ as a starting point, I show that motivational deficiencies can constrain the demands of justice under at least one common circumstance – that the motivationally deficient agent makes a good faith effort to overcome her deficiency. In fact, my argument implies something stronger; namely, that the demands of justice are constrained by what people are sufficiently likely to be motivated to do. Thus, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, it is the business of ideal theory – not just nonideal theory – to work with the motivational capacities people are likely enough to have.

Numerous philosophers allege that the “general theory of second best” poses a challenge to the Target View, which asserts that real-world reform efforts should aim to establish arrangements that conform to the constitutive features of ideally just states of affairs. I demonstrate two claims that are relevant in this context. First, I show that the theory of second best fails to present a compelling challenge to the Target View in general. But, second, the theory of second best requires ideal theorists to undertake certain kinds of causal and comparative analyses that are typically thought to lie outside the remit of conventional ideal theory.

Numerous philosophers allege that the “general theory of second best” poses a challenge to the Target View, which asserts that real-world reform efforts should aim to establish arrangements that conform to the constitutive features of ideally just states of affairs. I demonstrate two claims that are relevant in this context. First, I show that the theory of second best fails to present a compelling challenge to the Target View in general. But, second, the theory of second best requires ideal theorists to undertake certain kinds of causal and comparative analyses that are typically thought to lie outside the remit of conventional ideal theory.

Some moral theorists argue that innocent beneficiaries of wrongdoing may have special remedial duties to address the hardships suffered by the victims of the wrongdoing. These arguments generally aim to simply motivate the idea that being a beneficiary can provide an independent ground for charging agents with remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing. Consequently, they have neglected contexts in which it is implausible to charge beneficiaries with remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing, thereby failing to explore the limits of the benefiting relation in detail. Our aim in this article is to identify a criterion to distinguish contexts in which innocent beneficiaries plausibly bear remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing from those in which they do not. We argue that innocent beneficiaries incur special duties to the victims of wrongdoing (qua beneficiary) if and only if receiving and retaining the benefits sustains wrongful harm. We develop this criterion by identifying and explicating two general modes of sustaining wrongful harm. We also show that our criterion offers a general explanation for why some innocent beneficiaries incur a special duty to the victims of wrongdoing while others do not. By sustaining wrongful harm, beneficiaries-with-duties contribute to wrongful harm, and we ordinarily have relatively stringent moral requirements against contributing to wrongful harm. On our account, innocently benefiting from wrongdoing per se does not generate duties to the victims of wrongdoing. Rather, beneficiaries acquire such duties because their receipt and retention of the benefits of wrongdoing contribute to the persistence of the wrongful harm suffered by the victim. We conclude by showing that our proposed criterion also illuminates why there can be reasonable disagreement about whether beneficiaries have a duty to victims in some social contexts.

I present an analysis of feasibility that generalizes the economic concept of a production possibility frontier and develop a model of the feasibility frontier using the familiar possible worlds technology. I then use the model to show that we cannot reasonably expect that adopting political ideals as long-term reform objectives will guide us toward the realization of morally optimal feasible states of affairs. I conclude by proposing that political philosophers turn their attention to the analysis of actual social failures rather than political ideals.

Pogge (2008) and Wenar (2008) have recently argued that we are responsible for the persistence of the so-called ‘resource curse’. But their analyses are limited in important ways. I trace these limitations to their undue focus on the ways in which the international rules governing resource transactions undermine government accountability. To overcome the shortcomings of Pogge’s and Wenar’s analyses, I propose a normative framework organized around the social value of government responsiveness and discuss the implications of adopting this framework for future normative assessment of the resource curse and our relationships to it.

Extant theoretical work on the political resource curse implies that dependence on resource revenues should decrease autocracies’ likelihood of democratizing but not necessarily affect democracies’ chances of survival. Yet most previous empirical studies estimate models that are ill-suited to address this claim. We improve upon previous studies, estimating a dynamic logit model using data from 166 countries, covering the period from 1816 to 2006. We find that an increase in resource dependence decreases an autocracy’s likelihood of being democratic over both the short term and long term but has no appreciable effect on democracies’ likelihood of persisting.

Recent work on the resource curse argues that the effect of resource wealth on development outcomes is a conditional one: resource-dependent countries with low-quality institutions are vulnerable to a resource curse, while resource-dependent countries with high-quality institutions are not. But extant models neglect the ways in which the inflow of resource revenue impacts the institutional environment itself. In this paper, I present a formal model to show that where domestic institutions do not limit state leaders' discretion over policy prior to becoming fiscally reliant on resources, those leaders have little incentive in the wake of resource windfalls to establish institutional mechanisms that limit their discretion. Importantly, this shows that simple calls for domestic institutional reform are unlikely to be effective. Among other things, future prescriptions to mitigate the resource curse must focus on decreasing rulers' fiscal reliance on resources. © The Author(s) 2013.

I discuss Gheaus' argument against the claim that the requirements of justice are not constrained by feasibility concerns. I show that the general strategy exemplified by this argument is not only dialectically puzzling, but also imposes a heavy cost on theories of justice-puzzling because it simply sidesteps a presupposition of any plausible formulation of the so-called 'feasibility requirement' and costly because it deprives justice of its normative implications for action. I also show that Gheaus' attempt to recover this normative force presupposes an epistemic dimension to the feasibility requirement that most proponents of that requirement would reject. © 2014 The Author.

Many political philosophers hold the Feasible Alternatives Principle (FAP): justice demands that we implement some reform of international institutions P only if P is feasible and P improves upon the status quo from the standpoint of justice. The FAP implies that any argument for a moral requirement to implement P must incorporate claims whose content pertains to the causal processes that explain the current state of affairs. Yet, philosophers routinely neglect the need to attend to actual causal processes. This undermines their arguments concerning moral requirements to reform international institutions. The upshot is that philosophers' arguments must engage in causal analysis to a greater extent than is typical. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Normative political theorists frequently compare hypothetical scenarios for the purpose of identifying reasons to prefer one kind of institution to alternatives. We examine three types of “unfair” comparisons and the reasoning errors associated with each. A theorist makes an obscure comparison when one (or more) of the alternatives under consideration is underspecified; a theorist makes a mismatched comparison when they fail to hold fixed the relevant contextual factors while comparing alternatives; and a theorist makes an irrelevant comparison when they compare alternatives assuming contextual factors that differ in important respects from those they “should” assume given their theoretical aims. We then introduce the notion of a modeling mindset and show how this mindset can help theorists detect and avoid the three types of error. We conclude with a reconstruction of Cohen's camping trip thought experiment to illustrate the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eva Erman and Niklas Möller have recently presented a trenchant critique of my argument that ideal normative theories are uninformative for certain practical purposes. Their critique is largely correct. In this article, I develop the ideas behind my earlier argument in a way that circumvents their critique and explains more clearly why ideal theory is uninformative for certain purposes while leaving open the possibility that it might be informative for other purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The editors of the journal "Politics, Philosophy & Economics" aim to process submitted manuscripts in a timely manner to benefit authors and scholarly debate. They have made decisions on 72% of submissions within 30 days, 87% within 60 days, and 97% within 90 days. The acceptance rate has remained around 5%, similar to previous years. The editors express gratitude for the support of Associate Editors, the Editorial Board, and reviewers, acknowledging that maintaining efficiency depends on continued support from scholars worldwide. While an increase in submissions could pose a challenge, the editors are currently pleased with their efforts. [Extracted from the article]

It is tempting to think (1) that we may sometimes have what we call hopelessly utopian duties and yet (2) that "ought" implies "can." How might we square these apparently conflicting claims? A simple solution is to interpret hopelessly utopian duties as duties to pursue the achievement of manifestly unattainable outcomes (as opposed to duties to achieve the outcomes), thereby promising to vindicate the possibility of such duties in a way that is compatible with "ought" implies "can." The main challenge for this simple solution is to say what the relevant "duties to pursue" are supposed to involve. We survey several existing candidates and argue that none of them succeeds in delivering on the promise of the simple solution. We then propose a previously untheorized class of duties that we call duties to devote ourselves to achieving an outcome, and argue that such duties provide us with an interpretation of hopelessly utopian duties that is up to the task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

III THE OBJECTION FROM SELECTION BIAS The objection from selection bias targets the following B Epistocratic Conjecture: b The average epistocratic voter is more likely to vote correctly than the average democratic voter. Estlund's equivocal stance on the force of the demographic objection is at least partly explained by the fact that he introduces it to support the claim that the average epistocratic voter is less likely to vote correctly than the average democratic voter. Where this possibility is realized, any procedure that selects voters on the basis of their observed competence will be "biased" in the sense that competent voters will be, on average, more likely than incompetent voters to possess certain attributes that reduce the probability of voting correctly. But this claim is logically stronger than the claim that the objection from selection bias can support: namely, that we have no reasons to believe that the average epistocratic voter will be more likely to vote correctly than the average democratic voter. [Extracted from the article]

Tom Christiano, Jon Riley, and Andrew Williams have concluded their successful tenure as Editors of Politics, Philosophy & Economics (PPE). They have established PPE as a leading outlet for work in political philosophy. Avia Pasternak, Ryan Pevnick, and David Wiens will take over as Co-Editors, aiming to maintain the journal's reputation while expanding its reach. The transition will be facilitated by the continued involvement of current Associate Editors and the addition of new scholars to the editorial team. The journal's reviewing process has been efficient, with the majority of submissions processed within one month. The new editors express gratitude for the support of the PPE community and look forward to continuing their work. [Extracted from the article]

Contractarians aim to derive moral principles from the dictates of instrumental rationality alone. It is well-known that contractarian moral theories struggle to identify normative principles that are both uniquely rational and morally compelling. Michael Moehler's recent book, Minimal Morality, seeks to avoid these difficulties by developing a novel 'two-level' social contract theory, which restricts the scope of contractarian morality to cases of deep and persistent moral disagreement. Yet Moehler remains ambitious, arguing that a restricted version of Kant's categorical imperative is a uniquely rational principle of conflict resolution. We develop a formal model of Moehler's informal game-theoretic argument, which reconstructs a valid argument for Moehler's conclusion. This model, in turn, enables us to expose how a successful argument for Moehler's contractarian principle rests on assumptions that can only be justified by subtle yet significant departures from the standard conception of rationality. We thus extend our understanding of familiar contractarian difficulties by showing how they arise even if we restrict the scope of contractarian morality to a domain where its application seems both promising and necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a novel competition criterion for evaluating institutional schemes. Roughly, this criterion says that one institutional scheme is normatively superior to another to the extent that the former engenders more widespread political competition than the latter. I show that this criterion should be endorsed by both global egalitarians and their statist rivals, as it follows from their common commitment to the moral equality of all persons. I illustrate the normative import of the competition criterion by exploring its potential implications for the scope of egalitarian principles of distributive justice. In particular, I highlight the challenges it raises for global egalitarians’ efforts to justify extending the scope of egalitarian justice beyond the state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]