An important body of literature has documented, and sometimes lamented, the decline of partisanship over the last few decades. Party membership and partisan identification seem to have decreased significantly, while skepticism towards partisan politics has increased among populations of consolidated democracies. However, as I argue in a recent article, while some aspects of this evolution are worrisome, it is unclear that we should regret the age of massive partisan loyalty. While parties may be essential to a well-functioning democracy for a diversity of reasons, partisanship, understood as the sustained commitment by citizens to a particular political party, is more ambivalent. In other words, parties may be more valuable than partisanship.
Strawberry Thief printed textile designed by William Morris (1883).(more…)
For a long time, debates in animal ethics focused primarily on how humans ought to treat animals. The central questions concerned cruelty, suffering, and welfare: Which practices are permissible? How much harm is too much? More recently, however, philosophers have argued that this focus is too narrow. Animals are not merely passive recipients of human action. They are deeply and systematically affected by political decisions—about land use, agriculture, energy, urban planning, conservation, and climate policy. If justice is concerned with how power is exercised over those whose lives it shapes, then animals seem to fall squarely within its scope.
This thought has motivated what is often called the ‘political turn’ in animal ethics. Rather than asking only how individuals should treat animals, political theorists ask how institutions should be structured to account for animals’ interests. Influential proposals describe animals as citizens, denizens, or members of sovereign communities, and argue that their interests ought to be represented—directly or indirectly—within democratic decision-making. The underlying intuition is simple and compelling: if animals are sentient beings with morally significant interests, and if political decisions profoundly affect those interests, then excluding animals from politics looks like a form of injustice.
In our recent paper, we take this intuition seriously. But we also argue that once animals are genuinely included as political subjects, two fundamental problems arise—problems that have not received sufficient attention in the literature.
Two problems for political inclusion
The first is what we call the Conflict Problem. Political inclusion does not merely require that interests be recognised; it requires that they be adjudicated. Yet the interests of animals often conflict sharply—not only with human interests, but with one another. Predators survive by killing prey. Conservation policies benefit some species at the expense of others. Infrastructure projects may harm local animals while benefiting far larger populations elsewhere.
Consider the case of wind turbines. Large-scale wind energy projects are widely defended on environmental grounds. They reduce greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to mitigating climate change, which in turn benefits humans and animals alike. At the same time, turbines cause significant and foreseeable harm to present animals through habitat destruction, collisions, and noise. If animals are politically included, whose interests should prevail—the many animals harmed now, or the many more who may benefit later? And how should conflicts between animals themselves be resolved?
These are not exceptional cases. Once animals are included in the demos, such conflicts become pervasive. Yet familiar democratic tools—compromise, aggregation, cost–benefit analysis—sit uneasily with stakes involving survival, bodily integrity, and irreversible harm. The Conflict Problem highlights a structural tension between political inclusion and the tragic nature of many interspecies conflicts.
The second challenge is the Numbers Problem. Nonhuman animals vastly outnumber humans. Even conservative estimates suggest that wild animals alone number in the trillions. If political inclusion tracked affectedness, population size, or proportional representation, animals would dominate political decision-making. Human political influence would be radically reduced, and many ordinary human projects—housing developments, transport infrastructure, even public health measures—could be routinely overridden on animal-protective grounds.
Many people find this implication implausible or unacceptable. Yet rejecting it is not straightforward. If animals count morally, why should they not count politically in proportion to their numbers or the extent to which they are affected? The Numbers Problem forces proponents of political inclusion to explain why animals should be included—but not too much.
Why proposed solutions fall short
A range of responses has been proposed to defuse these problems. Some restrict political inclusion to certain categories of animals—such as domesticated animals—while treating wild animals as members of separate sovereign communities. While these strategies may soften the Conflict and Numbers Problems, we argue that they do not resolve them without significant cost. Weighting interests by cognitive capacity risks reintroducing hierarchies that sit uneasily with commitments to equal moral consideration. Restricting inclusion excludes many animals whose interests are undeniably shaped by political decisions. Institutional workarounds can dilute animals’ political power to the point where inclusion becomes largely symbolic.
Alternatively, one might accept the radical implications of political inclusion: that justice really does demand sweeping changes to human institutions, priorities, and resource allocation. This response is coherent—but it requires acknowledging just how disruptive animal-inclusive democracy would be. The political turn, on this reading, is not a modest extension of existing democratic ideals. It is a demand for profound political transformation.
Taking inclusion seriously
Our aim is not to reject the political turn in animal ethics. On the contrary, we believe it has brought essential questions into view. But taking animals seriously as political subjects means taking these problems seriously as well. Political inclusion is not a cost-free moral upgrade. It forces us to confront conflicts that cannot be neatly resolved and numbers that cannot be easily managed.
Justice has a habit of unsettling our institutions. If animals are to be included in the demos, we must decide how much disruption we are willing to accept—and which democratic principles we are prepared to revise in response. The answers to these questions remain open. What is no longer plausible, we suggest, is to assume that political inclusion can be achieved without confronting its most demanding implications.
David Paaske is a PhD student at the Arctic University of Norway. Angela Martin is a lecturer at the University of Fribourg.
Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Photography by Gage Skidmore.
This is a guest post by Zsolt Kapelner (University of Oslo).
‘Flooding the zone’ is a term often used to describe the strategy Trump and his team have followed in recent weeks. This strategy involves issuing a torrent of executive orders, controversial statements, and the like with the aim of overwhelming the opposition and the media and creating confusion. Many have criticized this strategy and, in my view, rightly so. But what precisely is wrong with it? In this short piece I want to argue that ‘flooding the zone’ is not simply one of the, perhaps dirtier, tricks in the toolbox of democratic competition; instead, it is an inherently antidemocratic strategy which deliberately aims at exploiting one of our crucial vulnerabilities as a democratic public, i.e., our limited attentional capacity.
Karazin Business School, Kharkiv, July 2022. Photography by Aaron J. Wendland.
This is a guest post by Orysya Bila (Ukrainian Catholic University) and Joshua Duclos (St Paul’s School), as part of the Reflections on the Russia-Ukraine War series, organized by Aaron James Wendland. This is an edited version of an article published in Studia Philosophica Estonica. Justice Everywhere will publish edited versions of several of the papers from this special issue over the next few weeks.
Why teach philosophy in wartime Ukraine? It’s a fair question. It’s a necessary question. Given the variety and gravity of Ukraine’s urgent needs, few will think to themselves: “But what about philosophy? Is Ukraine getting enough philosophy?” As two scholars committed to teaching philosophy in wartime Ukraine – one American, one Ukrainian – we believe an explanation is in order.
This lecture was delivered by Professor Timothy Snyder (Yale University) as part of a benefit conference for the Ukrainian academy that Aaron James Wendland organized in March 2023 at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The benefit conference was designed to provide financial support for academic and civic initiatives at Kyiv Mohyla Academy and thereby counteract the destabilizing impact that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had on Ukrainian higher education and civilian life. The lecture has been lightly edited for the purpose of publication in Studia Philosophica Estonica and the original presentation can be found on the Munk School’s YouTube channel. Several themes from this lecture have been developed and expanded upon in Professor Snyder’s forthcoming book: On Freedom.
Among Chagossians the feelings seem more mixed. Some see it as a step in the right direction, suggesting that Mauritius is more likely to put resettlement plans in place. Others, however, have criticised the fact that, even in a decision like this, Chagossians have been systemically excluded from the discussion. One group representing Chagossians in the UK, Mauritius and the Seychelles claimed that “Chagossians have learned this outcome [of the negotiations] from the media and remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland”. Others, speaking to the BBC, expressed frustration that, once again, decisions about their future were made without their input.
This is a guest post by Callum MacRae (Jagiellonian University, Krakow)
Wisława Szymborska park, photograph provided by Callum MacRae
Tucked behind the public Voivodeship library, connecting Karmelicka street to the east with Dolnych Młynów to the west, lies Krakow’s Wisława Szymborska park. The park is new to Krakow, having opened just last year. But, sitting just a short walk from the historic old town, those who live in the city have already come to know and love it as a precious area of public greenspace. On warm days, the park’s carefully considered design is alive with people; playing, chatting, reading, passing time, watching the world go by.
But the park represents more than just an impressively successful example of green, public, urban design. It is a product of Krakow’s Citizens’ Budget scheme, having been approved in the 2019 round of funding, and as such it also represents the power and potential of Poland’s remarkable modern engagement with participatory budgeting in local government.
Here are a few highlights from this year’s writing on a wide range of issues relating to justice, society and democratic systems:
For our ongoing “Beyond the Ivory Tower” series, Leonie Smith spoke to Lisa Guenther about her work with incarcerated people and what we can learn from her experiences for developing a more just approach to criminal justice.
Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2024-25 season!
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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing in September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series and other special series (published on Thursdays). If you would like to contribute a guest post on a topical justice-based issue (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.
Critics of the “first past the post” electoral rule often complain that it is unfair. It seems unfair that (for example) in the 2019 UK general election the Scottish National Party won 7% of parliamentary seats with only 4% of votes cast across the country, while the Liberal Democrats won 2% of seats with 4% of votes.
So, which electoral system is the fairest of them all?
I submit that there is really no answer to this question, and we would do better to discard it.
This blog explores issues of justice, morality, and ethics in all areas of public, political, social, economic, and personal life. It is run by a cooperative of political theorists and philosophers and in collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy.
