Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: For those who impute to the international legal order an inherent purpose to establish a universal justice that transcends the boundaries of territorial communities, the legal prerogatives associated with state sovereignty represent impediments to the global advance of legality. Sovereignty thus appears as the unconquered domain: a realm of lawlessness that must recede for international law to advance. This view, however, tends to neglect persistent and profound, albeit bounded, disagreement within the international community as to the requirements of justice. An alternative conception of international order predicates peace and cooperation on continued respect for each political unit’s capacity to make and enforce the ineluctably contentious decisions needed to structure social life.

The international order’s pluralism should never be confused with the “gorgeous mosaic” pluralism of the liberal imagination, in which an overarching unity as to “the right” renders inoffensive, and even enriching, the persistence of differences over “the good.” A duty not to intervene in a foreign political community’s internal conflict, so far as that duty extends, is a duty to respect patterns of coercion, and even violence, within a collectivity of which one is not a member. As long as profound disagreement about justice remains part of the human condition, an international pluralism, even in its ideal form, will at moments be a tense and even ugly pluralism, an accommodation among political communities dominated by incompatible positions on matters of justice and injustice, freedom and tyranny, and, ultimately, life and death.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study examines whether and to what extent online discussion spaces expose participants to political talk and to cross-cutting political views in particular. Drawing on a representative national sample of over 1000 Americans who report having participated in chat rooms or discussion forums in the past year, we examine the types of online discussion spaces that create opportunities for cross-cutting political discussion. Our findings suggest that the potential for true deliberation occurs primarily in chat rooms where politics comes up only incidentally, but is not the central purpose of the online space. We discuss the implications of our findings for the contributions of the internet toward a public sphere.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: With climate change and massive ice melt, renewed political interest in the Arctic has (re) introduced the question of Canadian sovereignty over the waters of the Arctic Archipelago, particularly the Northwest Passage. For more than thirty years now, the US and Canada have « agreed to disagree » on Canadian sovereignty over the northern arctic waters. But times are changing, and climate too. And the question of sovereignty might soon need greater attention from both Washington and Ottawa. Already, scientific evidence indicating rapid ice melt has renewed speculations concerning the opening of the Northwest Passage as a lucrative commercial shipping lane. Tourism has also been flourishing in many regions of the North, drawing attention to the social and ecological effects of an increasing unfamiliar human presence in a fragile and nearly untouched ecosystem. Even natural resource discoveries ? like the hydrocarbons prospected in the Beaufort Sea and in the channels of the Queen Elizabeth Islands ? have drawn great attention to the richness of this Northern region as the world faces more and more energy setbacks. In this perspective, growing American interest in a changing Arctic region could therefore be seen as a threat factor to Canadian sovereignty. For Washington, freedom of navigation applies in this region, therefore recognizing the international status of the Northwest Passage. But for Ottawa, these waters are nothing less than the extension of Canada's full sovereignty over its Canadian Arctic. Our discussion will focus on the role of the U.S. government in the enduring status quo over the question of sovereignty. Our task will be to verify if the U.S. has intentionally set this frozen state of relations and also evaluate if it is in Washington?s national interests to reassess its position vis-à-vis Canadian sovereignty over the waters of the Arctic Archipelago.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Key moments in American political history are defined as "disagreement failures," leading to the conclusion that deliberative democracy requires both the celebration of disagreement and the crossing of multiple borders through dialogue