Justice & Autonomy Within and Between States

This session of the Graduate Student Workshop explores how justice and autonomy should be structured within and across political communities. Collectively, the papers examine when political and market-based decisions enhance or undermine democratic equality, and what normative constraints should guide such forms of autonomy.
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Papers and abstracts:
"Political Uses of Market Power: In Defense of Consumer Activism"
Alessio Salviato, Department of Ethics and Legal Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Consumer activism—boycotts and buycotts undertaken partly for moral or political ends—has been criticized on procedural-democratic grounds. Even when activists pursue the common good, the worry is that markets allocate influence in proportion to purchasing power and thus enable some citizens to steer social change outside egalitarian political procedures. This paper defends a more permissive alternative. Its central claim is a parity thesis: much ordinary consumer behavior, guided largely by price and quality rather than political aims, can nonetheless produce the very same procedurally relevant effects that critics take to motivate special constraints on activism. By predictably reshaping others’ feasible option sets, entrenching inequalities in effective influence, and shifting the site of contestation from democratic forums to market arenas, ordinary consumerism can be no less “agenda-setting” than its explicitly political counterpart. I then argue that three putative differences—activists’ intentions, the alleged Pareto-efficiency of ordinary market choices, and regulability—fail to support the conclusion that consumer activism must satisfy demanding proto-legislative conditions while ordinary consumerism may proceed largely unchecked. If the two practices are procedurally on a par, they should be assessed under the same baseline moral constraints that govern market participation generally. The paper concludes by sketching such a permissive framework, including a revised and evidence-sensitive constraint of respect for basic liberties.
"Strong Secessionist Permissivism"
Elijah Parish, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley
Secession occurs when a region of a state breaks away to form an independent political community, leaving a "rump state" behind. This paper defends a strong permissivist theory of secession, according to which political subunits enjoy a moral liberty to unilaterally secede, even absent grave injustice or an antecedent (cultural, ethnic, religious) identity. Against the prevailing orthodoxy—which treats secession as permissible only in extreme cases—I argue that recognizing a general right to secede is both morally justifiable and politically salutary. First, I contend that permissivism strengthens federalism, enhances trust in political institutions, and protects minority rights. Second, I argue that smaller polities tend to exhibit improved democratic responsiveness and reduced principal-agent problems. Third, after giving a broad defense of permissivism towards secession, I turn towards major objections. Drawing on analogies from just war theory, I claim that forcibly retaining a region whose people express a clear and sustained desire to exit demands a heavy justificatory burden—morally akin to military occupation for humanitarian intervention. Where no such burden can be met, resistance to secession may license self-defense by the separatists. I also address a neglected question in secession ethics: how are separatist groups licensed to claim territory which is already being legitimately governed? I argue that the territorial claims of a legitimate breakaway region outweigh those of even a legitimate state. I conclude with speculative reflections on contemporary secessionist undercurrents—both in established democracies and in emerging experiments like charter cities and seasteading—and explore the implications of a permissivist framework for constitutional design, minority rights, and the ethics of political exit.
Speaker Bios:
Alessio Salviato is a PhD student in Legal Studies and Business Ethics at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His research centers on how we should understand corporate agency and allocate responsibility within firms, the role of multinationals in international politics, and corporate and consumer activism.
Elijah Parish is a Ph.D. philosophy student at the University of California, Berkeley. His primary interests are in ethics and political philosophy. In particular, he’s curious about partiality and interpersonal relationships as well as self-determination and political community.

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