Political Theory

H13(b) - Rethinking Sovereignty

Date: Jun 4 | Time: 01:45pm to 03:15pm | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Joseph Dattilo (University of Toronto)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Joseph Dattilo (University of Toronto)

Nietzsche’s Debt: Values, Sovereignty, and the Identity of the State: Robert Sparling (University of Ottawa)
Abstract: Nietzsche famously asked, “The breeding of an animal which is entitled to make promises—is this not the paradoxical task which nature has set itself with respect to man?” (Genealogy of Morals II.1) He proceeded to tell a philosophically influential tale about the identity of the truly sovereign individual having its origins in relationships of debt. The sovereign individual, for Nietzsche, is the one whose power and identity is intimately related to his capacity to bind past, present and future through acts of promising and fulfilling the promises made. Many critics of the global financial order have been drawn to Nietzsche’s account of debt and guilt. What does Nietzsche’s myth about the origins and philosophical meaning of debt tell us about collective debts, and particularly the debts of states? In this paper I wish to explore the interrelation of state debt and state identity through a Nietzschean lens. In many respects, the modern fixation with the doctrine of pacta sunt servanda (agreements must be kept) can be read as an expression of the fevered desire for sovereign collectivities to prove the strength of their “independent, enduring will[s]”. (On such an account, strange waverings such as we see in the perpetual U.S. debt ceiling crises are products of national akrasia.) However, this paper will argue that the Nietzschean story is anthropologically and ethically dubious, and applying it to the great beast of the state is of little utility in coming to terms with the ethical difficulties of state debts. The paper thus calls into question the turn to Nietzsche to uncover the logic of the global financial order.

Power to the People?: Arendt and a Reimagining of Popular Sovereignty: Zach Pfeifer (York University), Martin Breaugh (York University)
Abstract: Populism’s current electoral success across liberal democracies attests to the fact of its growing appeal and increasing ability to reshape the liberal democratic status quo. Cas Mudde, among other researchers engaging with his ideational approach, has identified populism’s ideological characterization of the world as a struggle between the “corrupt elites” and the “moral people”. The subsequent political project of populist movements and parties has been interpreted as an attempt to remove these “elites” from power and to empower the “people”. Accordingly, much of the recent analysis has focused on analyzing how populism has contested the existing entitlements that legitimize “elite” rule in liberal democratic countries and the theoretical implications of this contestation. However, alongside populism’s questioning of who political power belongs to, there is the accompanying, but largely overlooked, question of how populism conceptualizes political power in the first place. This presentation will examine this latter question, arguing that the populist ideology accepts existing conceptualizations of what political power is while contesting the basis of its allocation. To illuminate the theoretical implications of this simultaneous acceptance and contestation, this presentation will draw on the political thought of Hannah Arendt, whose critique of ‘traditional’ understandings of political power as sovereignty offers a compelling alternative. Through an analysis of Arendt’s reconceptualization of power as a non-possessive activity, this presentation will apply her framework to populism’s conceptual approach, arguing that this approach creates internal tensions that prevent it from achieving its ultimate goal of a genuine popularization of power.

Policing and the Social Limits of Liberal Political Philosophy: Will Kujala (Huron University College)
Abstract: This paper responds to recent work on policing in normative political philosophy that seeks to establish the just role and extent of police power in liberal societies. This literature is defined by an attempt to both seek out context-transcending criteria for police legitimacy, and do so while attentive to the real conditions of the so-called 'nonideal world.' I suggest that in turning to the nonideal or real world, these liberal examinations of police power offer a picture of the real world that suffers from a social deficit. By this I mean that they bracket the broader social contradictions to which policing was and is a response, and the position of the police in political antagonisms. This has the result of presupposing a liberal social theory portraying the police as a response to insuperable dilemmas built into the human condition, and as mediators of social conflict rather than participants in it. I suggest that correcting the social deficit is possible by taking alternative paths to the ideal in contemporary political philosophy: towards the diagnosis of social pathologies, and the reconstruction of claims emerging from social movements responding to these pathologies.