Joseph Lacey

Considerations on English as a Global Lingua Franca

Central to Philippe Van Parijs’ recent text, Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World, are claims that the emergence of English as a global lingua franca is (1) inevitable, (2) necessary for transnational justice and (3) to be accelerated. After first outlining the reasoning behind these claims, this article then goes on to argue that there are good reasons to doubt that English will inevitably become a global lingua franca; the absence of a lingua franca is not an insurmountable obstacle to the achievement of transnational justice; and there is little justification for artificially accelerating the universalisation of English.

Conceptually Mapping the European Union: A Demoi-cratic Analysis

Abstract This article identifies demoi-cracy as the most robust category for understanding the European Union, and three tasks are undertaken to contribute towards this conceptualisation. First, it is explained how demoi-cracy differs from other popular categories that have been used to describe the EU and why it stands out as the most accurate. Second, contrary to the view that places demoi-cracy in contrast to political systems existing with a singular demos, it is argued that this concept is best understood as being capable of capturing cases where a weaker demos exists alongside strong sovereign demoi. Finally, the idea of demoi-cracy is broken into two further concepts (deep diversity and dual compound regime) and elaborated upon at length with a view to further specifying the nature of the EU.

Europe’s voting space and the problem of second-order elections: A transnational proposal

This article offers an empirically driven critical consideration of the idea of transnationalising Europe’s voting space, which would mean allowing European citizens to vote for a party from any member state at the European Parliament elections. We argue that such a move would reduce the second-order problem in European elections, as it would force political parties to move away from campaigning solely on national issues. We also claim that it would improve the extent to which Europeans are represented in their parliament and would be particularly welcomed by citizens currently dissatisfied with the state of their national democracy. We offer evidence to back up these claims, based on data on the political preferences of almost half a million Europeans and 274 European parties.

Climate change and Norman Daniels’ theory of just health: an essay on basic needs

Norman Daniels, in applying Rawls’ theory of justice to the issue of human health, ideally presupposes that society exists in a state of moderate scarcity. However, faced with problems like climate change, many societies find that their state of moderate scarcity is increasingly under threat. The first part of this essay aims to determine the consequences for Daniels’ theory of just health when we incorporate into Rawls’ understanding of justice the idea that the condition of moderate scarcity can fail. Most significantly, I argue for a generation-neutral principle of basic needs that is lexically prior to Rawls’ familiar principles of justice. The second part of this paper aims to demonstrate how my reformulated version of Daniels’ conception of just health can help to justify action on climate change and guide climate policy within liberal-egalitarian societies.

Enlargement, association, accession – a normative account of membership in a union of states

Abstract This paper deals with the legitimacy of the EU’s external borders and the decision-making rules for changing them. First, while the EU should not indefinitely expand, we can identify no normative grounds for precluding in advance any liberal democratic nation-states from participation in the European project. Second, for those countries having more or less thick legal ties with the EU, or who are otherwise substantially affected by European decision-making, we argue for the institutionalisation of flexible deliberative communities. For closely associated countries, we argue that the EU has special duties in opening the door to membership. Third, we address the legitimacy of the EU’s decision-making procedures for deciding on accession candidates and creating association agreements with non-member states. Here we defend the EU’s current unanimity requirement for the former and its supermajoritarian decision rules for the latter. Finally, we suggest that nationalism is the primary obstacle to the achievement of just inclusion outcomes for non-member states.

European boundaries in question

Abstract This introduction provides a descriptive typology and normative analysis of the ways boundaries are being questioned in Europe. We distinguish between boundary-making (defining or redefining the territorial borders of a polity), boundary-crossing (determining the rules of access to territorial borders) and boundary-unbundling (allowing boundary-making and boundary-crossing to vary between policies and polities), noting each of these categories possesses internal and external dimensions. Cosmopolitans and statists offer contrasting normative evaluations of these processes, favouring weakening and maintaining or strengthening state boundaries respectively. We endorse a demoicratic approach lying between these two as better reflecting how individuals relate to each other and to the EU, a view shared by some but not all contributors to this volume. We conclude by situating the contributions within our topological framework, highlighting how they illustrate the contemporary questioning of European boundaries.