Alexander Somek

The Social Question in a Transnational Context

The social question has come down upon us in two different understandings. Modestly understood, it is about helping the needy and creating opportunities for disadvantaged members of society. More ambitiously conceived, by contrast, it is about extricating human life generally from the false necessities of market dealings. The article argues that the ambitious understanding is likely to become eclipsed in a transnational context. Such an eclipse, in turn, threatens to destabilize transnational arrangements as soon as some participants embrace broader ambitions.

Europe: From Emancipation to Empowerment

Marx is dead. But so is Hayek. With neoliberalism crumbling, Europeans are beginning to wonder what it is that is really wrong with the current European Union. The paper proposes the following answer: To this day, European integration has not been a process of emancipation. This shortcoming, however, is not written on the Union’s face. It requires, pursuant to best psychological traditions, a careful analysis of symptoms. One indication of the absence of emancipation is, indeed, the Union’s rhetorical embrace of empowerment.

Delegation and Authority: Authoritarian Liberalism Today

In light of the reforms undertaken for the sake of the Euro, the article revisits the concept authoritarian liberalism that was introduced in 1933 by the German public law scholar Hermann Heller. This notion seeks to capture the liaison between the ‘strong state’ and economic liberalism. The article suggests that this notion can be fruitfully used to designate the new governance of economic and monetary union. It argues, particularly, that it makes sense to speak of an authoritarian style of governance even if the latter does not wear vestiges of outright repression. Two different faces of authoritarian liberalism can be distinguished: one that looks more towards authoritarianism and another one that views authoritarian rule as a managerial strategy that is good for the economy. The article then speculates whether the EU has been, indeed, successful because it shifts between the two. Disturbingly, there may be something deeply as well as more accidentally authoritarian about European integration.

A Constitution for Antidiscrimination: Exploring the Vanguard Moment of Community Law

It is a commonplace that ‘non‐discrimination’ is a fundamental principle of Community Law. If the principle is taken to express a broader commitment to equality, however, there appears to be something quite unusual about it. When compared with the standards set by modern constitutional law, the commitment to equality is, at least with respect to Member State action, less extensive; in the context of indirect gender discrimination, however, the principle acquires remarkable scope. Although this ‘vanguard moment’ of Community Law is tacitly acknowledged in the practice of the ECJ, it is, at the same time, subdued; the resources of the principle might be tapped, however, by moving toward a constitution for antidiscrimination. The article explores both the philosophical presuppositions and the institutional context of what could become a constitutionalisation of antidiscrimination at the level of Community Law.

Europe: Political, Not Cosmopolitan

The article challenges the established view according to which the authority of the European Union is inexplicable in terms of collective self-determination. Contrary to this widely held belief, it explains the condition under which it is plausible to impute the current shape of the Union to the collective self-determination of European citizens. This condition is met if citizens approach the Union with a cosmopolitan attitude. The article then goes on to explain that while the Union may not appear optimal under this condition it looks quite disastrous when approached from the perspective of political selfdetermination. The argument makes an appeal to European citizens. They have to come to grips with their own self-understanding. Should European citizens come to realize that they are, after all, political beings because they care about sustaining a form of life at specific place of the world, they will have to re-appropriate Europe for themselves.The article challenges the established view according to which the authority of the EU is inexplicable in terms of collective civic self-determination. Contrary to this widely held belief, it explains the condition under which it is plausible to impute the current shape of the Union to the collective self-determination of European citizens. This condition is met if citizens approach the Union with a cosmopolitan attitude. The article then goes on to explain that while the Union may not appear optimal under this condition, it looks quite disastrous when approached from the perspective of political self-determination. The argument makes an appeal to European citizens. They have to come to grips with their own self-understanding. Should European citizens come to realise that they are, after all, political beings because they care about sustaining a form of life at specific place of the world, they will have to re-appropriate Europe for themselves.

National Solidarity, Global Impartiality, and the Performance of Philosophical Theory. The Example of Migration Policy

This paper explores the issue of whether an international system of nation-states can be defended from a global perspective of impartiality. At present, it seems as if the nation-state were the only suitable institutional location for the realization of effective systems of social justice. Provided that national politics is indeed disposed to promote the freedom and well-being of its citizens, a decentralized system of nation-states is likely to produce beneficial effects. Experience, however, teaches that national politics has in many instances had decidedly negative effects. For that reason, the existing system of nation-states cannot be defended from a global point of view. Hence, the question turns on whether a system of nation-states could conceivably find the support of rational persons if it incorporated substantive restrictions on national politics. This paper discusses the liberty to migrate as one of the many options potentially available for the correction of the existing international regime. As the closer inspection of the underlying philosophical question reveals, the problem can only be resolved with reference to a normatively relevant understanding of the kind of persons we take ourselves to be. From the conclusion that the freedom to migrate is to be understood as a fundamental liberty, the discussion then turns to the legitimate limitations that might be imposed by national immigration policies. It is argued that—in order to accommodate what is demanded by both global impartiality and national solidarity—open admission policies must not in effect place at a disadvantage those who are already relatively worse off under a present distribution, for this would violate basic conditions for the development and confirmation of socially acquired self-esteem

The Cosmopolitan Constitution

Introduction 1. One Point Zero: Powers 2. Two Point Zero: Recognition 3. Dignity and Emancipation 4. Three Point Zero: Transcendence 5. The Two Faces of the Cosmopolitan Constitution

The Darling Dogma of Bourgeois Europeanists

This review article examines critically the belief that national democracies are inherently deficient on democratic grounds since they affect people across their own borders without offering them a voice in the domestic political process. Supranational institutions are supposed to address this problem. The article explains, first, that this belief can be given two different readings: one is liberal, the other democratic. Second, it argues that making sense of this belief requires transforming it into a principle of cosmopolitan citizenship that draws on the idea of virtual representation. The current European Union would look differently if it were to abide by this principle.

On Cosmopolitan Self-Determination

In order to arrive at an adequate understanding of the changing Westphalian world, it is necessary to distinguish political self-determination from its cosmopolitan counterpart. While political self-determination has its place in a familiar and common space, cosmopolitan self-determination stands for unbounded collective self-determination among strangers. Two forms can be distinguished. In its mixed form, it is tied in with political self-determination, adopting the latter as a medium for realizing common autonomy among those who are foreign to one another. Virtual representation is essential to understanding how cosmopolitans are connected to bounded political spaces. In its pure form, by contrast, cosmopolitan self-determination detaches itself from political judgment and finds its major role in authorizing risk management and crisis intervention. It lends expression to the impoverishment suffered by collective freedom in an administered world. Any calibration of the relationship between political and cosmopolitan self-determination must examine the general social conditions enabling an autonomous life.

From Workers to Migrants, from Distributive Justice to Inclusion: Exploring the Changing Social Democratic Imagination

: There is little awareness that from the perspective of distributive justice, a transnational market society exercises a justice-disabling effect. No longer is society perceived to be a system of co-operation, the net product of which is to be distributed among all participants fairly, but rather viewed as a composite of uncoordinated templates for the individual pursuit of opportunities. A society of this type does no longer regard a centralised political effort at redistribution as its essential objective; rather, its most fundamental principle concerns equal access to opportunities without regard to nationality or local preference. Such a concern with inclusion appears to be at odds with the received vision of distributive justice whose realisation presupposes bounded solidarity and, hence, closure.