
Eva ErmanStockholm University | SU · Department of Political Science
Eva Erman
PhD, Professor
Political philosophy
About
105
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Introduction
I am a full professor at the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University. Before 2015, I was full professor at Uppsala University. My research interests include political philosophy, with special focus on democratic theory, global democracy and philosophical methodology. Since 2008, I am the founding Editor-in-Chief of the scholarly journal Ethics & Global Politics (Taylor & Francis).
Additional affiliations
July 2010 - December 2014
July 2004 - July 2006
August 1998 - August 2003
Publications
Publications (105)
Artificial intelligence is bound to have a significant impact on societies and global politics. Given that everyone is affected by the advent of AI technology, its development and deployment should arguably be under democratic control. This essay describes the global AI governance regime complex that has developed in recent years, and discusses wha...
The “impossibility results” in algorithmic fairness suggest that a predictive model cannot fully meet two common fairness criteria – sufficiency and separation – except under extraordinary circumstances. These findings have sparked a discussion on fairness in algorithms, prompting debates over whether predictive models can avoid unfair discriminati...
Focusing on ‘real actions’ of ‘real people’, normative behaviourism turns facts about observable patterns of behaviour into grounds for specific normative political principles. For this reason, this way of doing normative political theory has strong political realist credentials, given its methods, values and ambitions. In fact, according to its su...
In this forum, six scholars discuss Heikki Patomäki’s book World Statehood: The Future of World Politics, published in 2023. The editor’s introduction situates it in the discursive contexts of cosmopolitanism, deep history and functional differentiation. Ian Crawford looks at the concept of world statehood from an astrobiologist’s point of view, pu...
In the recent debate on political normativity in political philosophy, two positions have emerged among so-called political realists. On the first ‘non-moral’ view, political normativity is understood as orthogonal to moral normativity. On the second ‘filter view’, moral norms and prescriptions may be ‘filtered through’ the realities of politics su...
One recent debate in political theory centers on the question of whether there is a distinctively political normativity. According to an influential view, there is a distinctive set of norms that applies specifically to political actions and decisions, which are not grounded in moral normativity. On one version of this non-moral view, political the...
Although the concept of “AI governance” is frequently used in the debate, it is still rather undertheorized. Often it seems to refer to the mechanisms and structures needed to avoid “bad” outcomes and achieve “good” outcomes with regard to the ethical problems artificial intelligence is thought to actualize. In this article we argue that, although...
Artificial intelligence (AI) represents a technological upheaval with the potential to change human society. Because of its transformative potential, AI is increasingly becoming subject to regulatory initiatives at the global level. Yet, so far, scholarship in political science and international relations has focused more on AI applications than on...
Eva Erman and Markus Furendal urge researchers and the public to better think through the role of politics in the age of AI. This is the second post in a new EGG commentary series exploring how AI's development is affecting economic, social and political decision-making around the world. In an era where increasingly complex and capable artificial i...
A central distinction for Jonathan Floyd is that between the traditional method of pursuing political theory conducted by mainstream theorists, which he calls ‘mentalism’, and his suggested method, so-called ‘normative behaviourism’. While the former relies on patterns of thought (e.g. intuitions, value commitments, principles or considered judgeme...
In the last couple of years, increased attention has been directed at the question of whether there is such a thing as a distinctively political normativity. With few exceptions, this question has so far only been explored by political realists. However, the discussion about a distinctively political normativity raises methodological and meta-theor...
In response to the democratic boundary problem, two principles have been seen as competitors: the all-affected interests principle and the all-subjected principle. This article claims that these principles are in fact compatible, being justified vis-à-vis different functions, accommodating different values and drawing on different sources of normat...
How should we understand the relationship between global justice and global democracy? One popular view is captured by the aphorism “No global justice without global democracy.” According to Dryzek and Tanasoca's reading of this aphorism, a particular form of deliberative global democracy is seen as the way to specify and justify what global justic...
Recent years' literature on distinctively political normativity raises methodological and meta‐theoretical concerns of importance for political theory. The aim of this article is to identify and critically examine the main positions in this debate as well as to analyze problems and promising ways forward. In brief, we argue that the predominant “no...
The creation of increasingly complex artificial intelligence (AI) systems raises urgent questions about their ethical and social impact on society. Since this impact ultimately depends on political decisions about normative issues, political philosophers can make valuable contributions by addressing such questions. Currently, AI development and app...
Political realists’ rejection of the so-called ‘ethics first’ approach of political moralists (mainstream liberals), has raised concerns about their own source of normativity. Some realists have responded to such concerns by theorizing a distinctively political normativity. According to this view, politics is seen as an autonomous, independent doma...
This article draws attention to an aspect that thus far has escaped systematic scrutiny in the theoretical literature on the political legitimacy of global governance – functions. It does so by exploring the idea that the content and justification of a principle of political legitimacy for global governance may depend on the function of the entity...
While methodological and metatheoretical questions pertaining to feasibility have been intensively discussed in the philosophical literature on justice in recent years, these discussions have not permeated the debate on global democracy. The overall aim of this article is to demonstrate the fruitfulness of importing some of the advancements made in...
Although the discussion about feasibility in political theory is still in its infancy, some important progress has been made in the last years to advance our understanding. In this paper, we intend to make a contribution to this growing literature by investigating the proper place of feasibility considerations in political theory. A motivating forc...
Injustice: Political Theory for the Real World. By Michael Goodhart. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 298p. $99.00 cloth, $29.95 paper. - Volume 17 Issue 4 - Eva Erman, Niklas Möller
Response to Michael Goodhart’s review of The Practical Turn in Political Theory - Volume 17 Issue 4 - Eva Erman, Niklas Möller
In the theoretical literature on global democracy, the influential transmission belt model depicts transnational civil society as a transmission belt between the public space and the empowered space (decision-making loci), assuming that civil society actors contribute to the democratization of global governance by transmitting peoples’ preferences...
The question of whether global democracy requires a world state has with few exceptions been answered with an unequivocal ‘No’. A world state, it is typically argued, is neither feasible nor desirable. Instead, different forms of global governance arrangements have been suggested, involving non-hierarchical and multilayered models with dispersed au...
In his most recent work, Sangiovanni has retreated from his stronger claims about practice-dependence. Instead of claiming that principles of justice must be practice-dependent, he now expresses his claim in a modal form, arguing that there are several ways in which practices may matter. While merely mapping out the logical space of possibilities s...
Contribution to the GLOBALCIT forum debate on Transnational democracy
In this paper, two claims are made. The main claim is that a fruitful approach for theorizing the political legitimacy of global governance and the proper normative role of civil society actors is the so-called ‘function-sensitive’ approach. The underlying idea of this approach is that the demands of legitimacy may vary depending on function and th...
A common denominator of recent proposals suggested by political realists has been a rather pessimistic view of what we may rightfully demand of political authorities in terms of legitimacy. In our analysis, three main justificatory strategies are utilized by realists, each supposedly generating normative premises for this “low bar conclusion.” Thes...
A shared presumption among practice-dependent theorists is that a principle of justice is dependent on the function or aim of the practice to which it is supposed to be applied. In recent contributions to this debate, the condition of epistemic uncertainty plays a significant role for motivating and justifying a practice-dependent view. This paper...
Despite the broad consensus on the value of political legitimacy in global politics, there is still little agreement on what the specific regulative content of the principles of legitimacy ought to be. Two main paths have thus far been taken in the theoretical literature to respond to the legitimacy deficit in the global domain: one via the ideal o...
What has become known as ‘the systemic turn’ in the recent literature on deliberative democracy looks like a promising development. However, while much theorizing has been devoted to the question of what a deliberative system may look like, very little has been offered in terms of criteria for what is required for a system to be deliberative democr...
The practice-dependent approach to justice has received a lot of attention in post-millennium political philosophy. It has been developed in different directions and its normative implications have been criticized, but little attention has been directed to the very distinction between practice-dependence and practice-independence and the question o...
In a previous article, we unpacked the so-called "ethics first premise"-the idea that ethics is "prior" to politics when theorizing political legitimacy-that is denied by political realists. We defended a "justificatory" reading of this premise, according to which political justification is irreducibly moral in the sense that moral values are among...
The question of what role social and political practices should play in the justification of normative principles has received renewed attention in post-millennium political philosophy. Several current debates express dissatisfaction with the methodology adopted in mainstream political theory, taking the form of a criticism of so-called ‘ideal theo...
While questions of pluralism and toleration have impregnated almost all debates in political philosophy over the last decades—not least in relation to discussions about global justice and global democracy—the question of intercultural dialogue has received far less attention in comparison. Indeed, deliberative democracy has a stronger position than...
While the philosophical discourse on human rights traditionally has been of concern mainly for moral philosophers, we have in the last decades witnessed a revitalized interest in human rights among political philosophers and political theorists. This political turn in the contemporary debate on human rights is also evident by the fact that philosop...
The central ideas coming out of the so-called pragmatic turn in philosophy have set in motion what may be described as a pragmatic turn in normative political theory. It has become commonplace among political theorists to draw on theories of language and meaning in theorising democracy, pluralism, justice, etc. The aim of this paper is to explore a...
Over the past 15 years, Rainer Forst has developed a fundamental research programme within the tradition of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The core of this programme is a moral account of the basic right of justification that humans owe to one another as rational beings. This account is put to work by Forst in articulating - both historically an...
This book is about the status of political equality under global political conditions. The overall aim is to revitalize the debate on the status of political equality in transnational democracy.
According to what has recently been labeled ‘political realism’ in political theory, ‘political moralists’ such as Rawls and Dworkin misconstrue the political domain by presuming that morality has priority over politics, thus overlooking that the political is an autonomous domain with its own distinctive conditions and normative sources. Political...
Recognition plays a multifaceted role in international theory. In rarely communicating literatures, the term is invoked to explain creation of new states and international structures; policy choices by state and non-state actors; and normative justifiability, or lack thereof, of foreign and international politics. The purpose of this symposium is t...
An intensified discussion on the role of normative ideals has re-emerged in several debates in political philosophy. What is often referred to as “ideal theory,” represented by liberal egalitarians such as John Rawls, is under attack from those that stress that political philosophy at large should take much more seriously the nonideal circumstances...
What is characteristic of the present era of intensified globalization is the growth of problems that transgress traditional territorial boundaries and which are no longer addressed by nation-states alone. Asymmetries between rule-makers and rule-takers, inequalities among states, and disparities between global political problems and the capabiliti...
This book is about the status of political equality under global political conditions. Political equality is one of the core features, if not the core feature, of democracy. In a democracy, this is embodied not only through formal procedures, such as election, but also through civil society engagement, access to free media, and the exercise of basi...
In recent years, we have witnessed deliberative democracy take a 'civil society turn' to address the democratic deficit of global governance. In light of the present circumstances of world politics, it is argued that civil society offers a rich soil for reformulating democracy globally. This article engages in this debate with particular focus on d...
Institutional suggestions for how to rethink democracy in response to changing state responsibilities and capabilities have been numerous and often mutually incompatible. This suggests that conceptual unclarity still reigns concerning how the normative ideal of democracy as collective self-determination, i.e. rule by the people, might best be broug...
While the philosophical discourse on human rights traditionally has been of concern mainly for moral philosophers, we have in the last decades witnessed a revitalized interest in human rights among political philosophers and political theorists. This political turn in the contemporary debate on human rights is also evident by the fact that philosop...
In an era of intensified globalisation the changing role of the nation state in the global political and economic order has become an ever more salient concern. The changing role of the state’s responsibilities and capabilities is often subsumed under the terms ‘multilevel’ or ‘multilayered’ governance, which alludes not only to the inclusion of pu...
On most accounts of global democracy, human rights are ascribed a central function. Still, their conceptual role in global democracy is often unclear. Two recent attempts to remedy this deficiency have been made by James Bohman and Michael Goodhart. What is interesting about their proposals is that they make the case that under the present circumst...
Democracy presumes a collective who are in a specific sense self governing or selfdetermining. However, the problem of who should be included in this collective and thus take part in the collective democratic decision-making, what is sometimes called the boundary problem in democratic theory, is an increasingly pressing political problem in a globa...
This paper analyzes agency in Pettit’s republican conception of freedom. By understanding freedom intersubjectively in terms of agency, Pettit makes an important contribution to the contemporary debate on negative liberty. At the same time, some of the presumptions about agency are problematic. The paper defends the thesis that Pettit is not able t...
The social and political space is no longer entirely mapped in terms of territorial places and borders. What is characteristic of our globalizing era is the growth of problems that transgress traditional territorial boundaries and which are no longer addressed by nation-states alone (Scholte, 2000: 3). In fact, the pace of the political development...
From 7 to 18 December 2009, Copenhagen was the site of the 15th UN Climate Change Conference (COP15). Official delegates representing 192 states gathered to discuss how to meet the challenge of global climate change. While formal decision-making power rested with state representatives, a large number of non-state transnational actors (TNAs) were ac...
This concluding chapter elaborates on the findings of the volume and raises a number of issues pertaining to normative theorizing on democracy beyond the state. Drawing on the individual chapters, it offers a comprehensive analysis of the different democratic requirements applicable to different types of transnational actors (TNAs). We discuss the...
During the last couple of decades, concurrently with an increased awareness of the complexity of ethical conflicts, political theorists have directed attention to how constitutional democracy should cope with a fact of incommensurable doctrines. Poststructuralists such as Chantal Mouffe claim that ethical conflicts are fundamentally irreconcilable,...
The solutions to moral problems offered by contemporary moral theories largely depend on how they understand pluralism. This article compares two different kinds of universal moral theories, liberal impartiality theory and discourse ethics. It defends the twofold thesis that (1) a dialogical theory such as discourse ethics is better equipped to giv...
Within liberal democratic theory, ‘democratic accountability’ denotes an aggregative method for linking political decisions to citizens’ preferences through representative institutions. Could such a notion be transferred to the global context of human rights? Various obstacles seem to block such a transfer: there are no ‘world citizens’ as such; ma...
There is an underlying idea of symmetry involved in most notions of rationality. From a dialogical philosophical standpoint, however, the symmetry implied by social contract theories and so-called Golden Rule thinking is anchored to a Cartesian subject–object world and is therefore not equipped to address recognition – at least not if recognition i...