Sirkku K. Hellsten

Failing states and ailing leadership in African politics in the era of globalization: libertarian communitarianism and the Kenyan experience

The article discusses the Kenyan post-2007 elections political crisis within the framework of ‘libertarian communitarianism’ that integrates individualistic self-interest with traditional collectivist solidarity in the era of globalization in Africa. The author argues that behind the Kenyan post-election anarchy can be analyzed as a type of ‘prisoners dilemma’ framework in which self-interested rationality is placed in a collectivist social contract setting. In Kenya, this has allowed political manipulation of ethnicity as well as bad governance, both of which have prevented the building of a strong, impartial state. In Kenya, socio-economic disparities and historical injustices due to corruption, nepotism, cronyism and other forms of favoritism have maintained ethnic and other internal tensions, which exploded into open conflict after the disputed December 2007 elections. The author shows how the ‘libertarian communitarist’ politico-economic context lacks shared values and precludes forward-looking solutions for social justice that promote public good and national unity. Instead, a nation remains divided with its people set up in competitive positions, because there is public trust neither in partisan and self-interested governments nor in inefficient state structures with often (ethnically and/or regionally) biased (re)distribution of resources and unequal service delivery. The greed of the political elites and grievances of the ordinary citizenry maintain distrust across the nation and focus on past injustices rather than finding a shared agenda for future unity. The author suggests that in order to build up public trust, to strengthen the state structures and to gain national unity, it is necessary to focus on shared values and a forward-looking concept of justice, acceptable to all.

Pluralism in multicultural liberal democracy and the justification of female circumcision

This article discusses the problems that a liberal, multicultural democracy has in dealing with cultural practices, such as female circumcision, which themselves suppress the liberal values of autonomy and pluralism. In this context I have chosen the justification of female circumcision as my issue for three reasons. First, with increasing immigration, in Western multicultural and pluralistic societies this practice has recently been given a good deal of public attention; second, I believe that it is time to put this cruel and discriminatory tradition finally in the past; and third, the paradox that the victims of this practice are also often its strongest proponents well demonstrates the problems that liberal democracies have in dealing with the question of autonomy and tolerance in real-life situations. My main argument is that, without giving up tolerance, we can show that there can be no moral justification for such a tradition as female circumcision, even within a multicultural and pluralist society. I shall first show why neither female circumcision nor any other tradition that oppresses and harms individuals and is maintained by coercion can be satisfactorily defended by liberal arguments. Then I shall discuss why ‘communitarian’counter-arguments which appeal to the significance of communal values and traditions or to cultural rights also fail to give any plausible support to the maintenance of this tradition. Finally, I shall consider in more detail how the value of autonomy should be normatively understood in a modern pluralist society [1].

Moral Individualism and the Justification of Liberal Democracy

This article discusses the connection between individualism, pluralism and the moral foundation of liberal democracy. It analyses whether the requirement of value pluralism promoted by liberal democracies leads inevitably to communitarian ethics, or whether the liberal and democratic values of autonomy, tolerance and equality are actually based on an objectivistic and teleological account of justice. The author argues that value-neutral procedural and methodological individualism cannot support the liberal demands for pluralism and tolerance in a democratic regime. Instead, the justification of liberal democracy has to replace mechanical, methodological individualism with moral individualism. Moral individualism shows that in order to be legitimate and functioning liberal democracy has to be based on the form of individualism which contains objectivist moral aspects.

Ethics: universal or global? The trends in studies of ethics in the context of globalization

The article discusses how theory and practice in global ethics affect each other. First, the author explores how the study of ethics has changed in the era of globalization and ponders what the role of the field of study of global ethics is in this context. Second, she wants to show how the logical fallacies in widening study field of ethics produce false polarizations between facts and value judgements in social ethics made in various cultural contexts. She further elaborates how these false polarizations prevent constructive cross-cultural and transnational discussions on ethical guidelines and principles that are needed to produce joint action (plans) to deal with serious ethical issues globally and nationally. Finally, the paper argues that in order to find a way to solve our shared complex ethical problems in global context, we need to get back to basics by focusing on the method of ethics, that is, self-critical and logical analysis of sound argumentation and justification of our values and moral principles.

Biotechnology, Genetic Information, and Community

One of the main ethical problems in biomedical issues has been deciding who should have access to our genetic information and why. In this article I set this issue along with other ethical problems of biomedicine within a framework based on the contemporary liberal-communitarian debate, and discuss whether individual rights or social duties should have priority in the use of genetic or other health related information. However, instead of attempting to provide a clear normative stand, I want to discuss this issue from the point of view of analytical political philosophy. This means that my purpose is to clarify the complex relationship between the liberal ideal of political justice, the communitarian ethical approach and individual’s moral judgement in the issues of biomedicine. My starting point is the contemporary shift of emphasis from the liberal concept of justice towards a more communitarian ethical approach. This can be seen in the Western world in the recent tendency to supplement and balance individual rights with considerations of individual responsibilities.1 What I see should be acknowledge here is that even if the promotion of individuals’ social duties is now evidently gaining emphasis in Western medical practice, the academic discussions as well as political and legal debates are still mainly based on the ethical demands of informed consent, individual autonomy and individual rights. This may lead us to a curious situation in which explicitly individualistic and liberal philosophical, political and legal discourse still uses the language of rights,2 while in practice there is, at least implicitly, increasing social pressure for individuals to accept their social duties and give ‘the common good’ priority over their personal moral judgement.

The shifting patterns of progress

Publication of the final issue of Journal of Global Ethics for 2017 is an opportunity to look back at an eventful year and reflect on what might be in store for us next. As Martin Schönfeld, who is an environmental philosopher, is now co-editor of the journal, we thought this is a good opportunity to focus on environmental issues in our editorial article – particularly as the events of this year illustrate an ideological polarization on how to respond to Earth system overshoot. In 2017, Earth Overshoot Day fell on August 2. This is the illustrative calendar date when annual total consumption exceeded annual planetary capacity. The overshoot is a quantitative measure and it works like this: divide what the Earth system assimilates and produces in a year (environmental services plus biotic productivity) by what civilization puts in and takes out from it (ecological footprint), and multiply the resulting fraction with the number of days in a year. Ideally, the value of the fraction ought to be 1 or greater, but since the 1970s, it has been less than that, and it keeps falling. This signals a crossing of system limits. Civilization overshoots system capacity when collective human demand exceeds environmental supply. A sustainable civilization would run out of a year’s supply by December 31, if ever. Unsustainable cultures, however, do run out. How much eco-debt they rack up is told by the date. In 1971, global demand exceeded supply for the first time and civilization edged into unsustainable territory. Overshoot Day that year fell on December 21. In 1988, 30 years ago, civilization used up a year’s worth of system capacity by October 16. When Journal of Global Ethics was founded in 2004, with volume 1 released in 2005, the overshoot date was September 2. This year’s date, August 2, is the earliest yet. We now operate as if we lived on 1.7 planets. The global average glosses over national differences, and these differences don’t quite match long-standing expectations anymore – as if, for instance, rich countries must have big environmental footprints and incur large ecological debts, and poor countries would have to be their direct opposites. Of course, to an extent, the old pattern still persists. Norway, for instance, ranks highest on the UN Human Development Index (HDI) and had its national overshoot day already on April 18 –months before the global average. Honduras, by contrast, operated within planetary boundaries in 2017 and didn’t run out of supply until December 31, but its HDI rank is only a modest #130 (out of 188 ranked countries). On the one hand, these differences align with conventional expectations. Consider the contrast in sustainability, with wealthy Norwegians being wildly in overshoot, and modest Hondurans staying within Earth system limits. Location surely matters. Societies exposed to subarctic and arctic climate are bound to consume more energy and materials per capita and year than societies with a mild climate that varies from tropical at the coasts to temperate in the mountains. Furthermore, and unlike Honduras, Norway is a major oil producer, and extractive industries are notoriously energy-intensive. This adds to Norway’s overshoot and large carbon footprint. At the same time, oil production also partially explains Norway’s high level of human development – just as the lack of oil wealth accounts for the relatively modest development of Honduras. Before discovering oil in 1969, Norway’s postwar economy had amounted to little more than fishing and farming, quite similar to the Honduran economy of the time. Since then, crude oil extraction and the production of petroleum gases have become the central sources of Norway’s wealth, while the Honduran economy shifted from

Beyond Europe: Rhetoric of Reproductive Rights in Global Population Policies

The world is still witnessing a fast population expansion. The United Nations’ State of World Population Report 2004 from UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, estimates that the population will grow from the current 6.5 billion to 9.1 billion by 2050. The increase of 2.6 billion is equivalent to the combined populations of China and India today (UNFPA, 2004). However, while population grows fast in poor countries, which are already struggling to feed their people, the numbers are stagnating in rich nations. In many of the developing countries growth rates tend to be between 2.1-2.5 per cent (from the average of 1.5-1.7) — and sometimes they are even higher than this. In fact, populations in the poor regions have more than quadrupled in less than 50 years, while in many affluent European countries the population is further declining.