Johan Karlsson Schaffer

The Boundaries of Transnational Democracy: Alternatives to the All-Affected Principle

Recently, theorists have sought to justify transnational democracy by means of the all-affected principle, which claims that people have a right to participate in political decision-making that affects them. I argue that this principle is neither logically valid nor feasible as a way of determining the boundaries of democratic communities. First, specifying what it means to be affected is itself a highly political issue, since it must rest on some disputable theory of interests; and the principle does not solve the problem of how to legitimately constitute the demos, since such acts, too, are decisions which affect people. Furthermore, applying the principle comes at too high a cost: either political boundaries must be redrawn for each issue at stake or we must ensure that democratic politics only has consequences within an enclosed community and that it affects its members equally. Secondly, I discuss three possible replacements for the all-affected principle: (a) applying the all-affected principle to second-order rules, not to decisions; (b) drawing boundaries so as to maximise everyones autonomy; (c) including everyone who is subject to the law. I conclude by exploring whether (c) would support transnational democracy to the extent that a global legal order is emerging.

The Consensus Paradox: Does Deliberative Agreement Impede Rational Discourse?

This article explores a tension in deliberative democratic theory. The tension consists in that deliberative opinion formation ideally aims to reach consensus, while a consensus, once established, will likely impede the conditions for further rational public discourse. Hence, over time, deliberative democracy might risk undermining itself. While the tension is demonstrable in theory, we also suggest three cognitive and socio-psychological mechanisms by which consensus might hamper the rationality of public discourse: after an agreement, participants cease to develop new arguments, they tend to forget existing arguments and their fear of deviating from the social norm promotes conformism. Existing research has largely neglected to study how consensus in decision making affects future public deliberation. Our article thus serves three purposes: to elaborate the consensus paradox in deliberative democratic theory; to open up a research agenda for examining the paradox empirically; and to assess the theoretical implications of the paradox.

Introduction: The Turn to Authority beyond States

Abstract The concept of authority has become increasingly palatable to scholars in law, political science and philosophy when describing, explaining and assessing global governance. While many now seem to agree that applying authority to transnational relations opens fruitful arenas for legal, empirical and normative research, they rely on partly incompatible notions of authority, how it emerges out of and affects the social relations between key actors, and how it relates to legitimacy. In this paper, we introduce this special issue on transnational authority. We discuss why international authority has become a central concern in international studies and compare key contemporary conceptions of international authority, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. We also present the different contributions to this issue, which further seek to clarify the concept and its application in law, political science and political theory, theoretically or empirically, assessing arenas where authority is or is not legitimately exercised and developing legal conceptions, which might be utilised to constrain the use of authority in international relations.

The legitimacy of international human rights regimes : legal, political and philosophical perspectives

1. International human rights and the challenge of legitimacy Johan Karlsson Schaffer, Andreas Follesdal and Geir Ulfstein 2. The legitimate authority of international human rights: on the reciprocal legitimation of domestic and international human rights Samantha Besson 3. On the legitimate authority of international human rights bodies Steven Wheatley 4. Equality, human rights, and political legitimacy Kristen Hessler 5. The legitimacy of international interpretive authorities for human rights treaties: an indirect-instrumentalist defence Basak Cali 6. Torture and the politics of legitimation in international law Ian Hurd 7. Legitimacy, institutional power, and international human rights institutions: a conceptual enquiry Lynn Dobson 8. Legitimacy, global governance and human rights institutions: inverting the puzzle Johan Karlsson Schaffer 9. The democratic legitimacy of international human rights conventions: political constitutionalism and the Hirst case Richard Bellamy 10. Much ado about nothing? International judicial review of human rights in well-functioning democracies Andreas Follesdal.

Teaching university teachers to become better teachers: the effects of pedagogical training courses at six Swedish universities

ABSTRACT Do pedagogical training courses for university teachers have desirable effects on the participants? We set out to answer this question by following a panel of 183 university teachers from Sweden’s six largest universities, who participated in pedagogical training courses. Our study reveals that the participants’ self-reported confidence in their role as teachers increased slightly, and their self-assessed pedagogical skills increased notably after they had finished their courses. Even though the courses were rather short, we could also observe some changes in fundamental approaches to teaching in some of the subgroups of respondents, both toward more student-centeredness and, perplexingly, toward more teacher-centeredness. Additionally, most respondents (7 out of 10) found the courses useful or very useful. Course satisfaction was most notable among participants with less than three years of teaching experience. Considering the fact that we find the positive effects of pedagogical training courses to be present mainly in the group of participants with less than three years of teaching experience, we discuss whether a policy of making these courses mandatory for all university teachers implies an overestimation of their impact.

The View from Elsewhere: Scandinavian Penal Practices and International Critique

International organs review rights performance regularly and while one may dispute their objectivity, their access to relevant information has risen significantly in recent years. Through this material, we have engaged in a longitudinal, comparative analysis of penal exceptionalism in Scandinavia. We contrast in particular the findings of the Committee against Torture (CAT) for Norway, Sweden and Denmark against four Western European states (Belgium, United Kingdom, Germany and Italy). In other words, we compare the Scandinavian states with countries with similar economic development and determine to what extent there are differences in detention conditions.

The Co-Originality of Human Rights and Democracy in an International Order

This paper analyses Jurgen Habermas’s claim that democracy and human rights are co-original and its implications for his international theory. Reconstructing Habermas’s argument as it has developed over two decades, I analyse how it might address three problems. First, since the co-originality thesis implies that the precise content of individual rights must be articulated through actual deliberative procedures, it will be hard to justify such procedures unless we assume a principle of legitimacy demanding respect for persons as free and equal. Second, insisting on this view leads to a vicious regress, because everything seems to be up for grabs in political deliberation – even the conditions constitutive of those procedures. Third, if we insist that substantive rights must be articulated by an actual, historical legislator, it will be difficult to sustain a theory of human rights as universal and extending beyond the self-regulating processes of a particular constitutional project. Analysing how Habermas’s cosmopolitan model of global governance fails to satisfy the co-originality claim, I conclude by exploring whether Benhabib’s notion of ‘democratic iterations’ provide an alternative route for maintaining the co-originality claim within an international order.

The Stability of a Cosmopolitan Political Order: Between Federalism and Functionalism

While cosmopolitan theorists debate whether a global political order is necessary in order to realise cosmopolitan goals, those who think it is largely agree on what it ought to look like: A multi-level, multi-sited global order based on a principle of dispersed sovereignty. Cosmopolitans have justified this principle of dispersed sovereignty and the resultant political order in two ways: A federalist argument holds that dispersing authority across multiple levels or sites of power is supposed to constrain a global political order from becoming a worldwide despotic Leviathan and offer multiple venues for democratic participation. A functionalist argument holds that dispersed sovereignty is especially suitable to address certain complex, border-transgressing political problems. In this paper, I argue that by relying on both kinds of arguments, institutional cosmopolitans undermine both the stability and the feasibility of the political order that they envisage. Revisiting classical theories of international integration, I show that federalism and functionalism present conflicting conceptions of transnational institution building. Combining the two, I argue, does not necessarily strengthen the case of recent institutional cosmopolitanism. Moreover, the principle of dispersed sovereignty conflicts with core cosmopolitan values of individualism and equality.

The Forgotten Revolution: Debunking Conventional Wisdom on Sweden's Transition to Democracy

A long, established tradition suggests that Sweden’s process of democratization was characterized by its gradualness and reformism. In contrast to other countries, such as Denmark, Sweden did not have an abrupt, democratic revolution, this tradition holds. In this paper, I argue that this conventional view is flawed: In the course of a decade in the early twentieth century, Sweden went from being one of the least democratic countries in Europe to become a full-fledged, stable democracy. This signifies a fast, dramatic process of democratization – a democratic revolution. The paper proceeds in four parts: First, I review the established conventional view of Swedish democratization. Second, I present quantitative comparative data and historical evidence that seem to falsify the conventional view, and indeed indicate that Sweden’s democratization was anything but slow and gradual. Third, I explore some reasons why the conventional view has gained hold, looking both at the way in which academic researchers have reached the conventional conclusion and how the conventional view might be understood in relation to the victorious parties in the struggle to gain recognition and legitimacy. In the concluding part, I consider how this historical narrative lives on in present-day politics, discussing how Swedish development aid seeks to export the political myth that successful democratization must be slow and gradual, rather than revolutionary.