Kant’s criticisms between the Groundwork (1785) and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797) do not eradicate perfectionism but transpose it to a new register, the perfection of freedom itself and the conditions of its exercise. Kant’s evocative but incomplete statements of his political position after 1785 elicit numerous debates among Kantians on the basis and limits of state action. Early Kantians view progress as the outcropping of spontaneous freedom, not as administered and imposed. These debates, involving Hufeland, Reinhold, and Humboldt, offer various combinations of Leibnizian and Kantian ideas. In response to Kant’s Groundwork, Hufeland justifies legitimate political constraint through its contribution to systemic perfection. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s early formulation of the limits of state action derives from Kantian anti-paternalism, the Groundwork assertion of the inviolability of rational beings, combined with a modified Leibnizian monadology admitting interaction. His defence of a minimalist state is a possible but not a necessary consequence of Kantian premises. It draws criticism from Karl von Dalberg, who defends Wolffian reformist interventionism.

In the Feyerabend lecture Kant already presents his claim that the principle of right is a principle of coercion, that is, that the state is authorized to use coercion to counteract an unauthorized violation of universal freedom. Such state use of force is a hinderance of a hinderance to freedom. But how is this coercive power specified in particular circumstances? I examine three extreme cases in which a state might be authorized to use its coercive power against its own citizens to cause their deaths: capital punishment, eminent right in emergencies, and war. This paper will show that Kant offered specific explanations of particular limits to legitimate state power, rejecting different limits offered by Beccaria (capital punishment), Achenwall (eminent right and war), and Vattel (war). These assessments reveal that Kant was of several minds regarding whether in any social contract a citizen could rationally consent to these uses of coercion and whether actual or only hypothetical consent was required. I suggest that only later in the published Doctrine of Right did Kant work out his position consistently.

Kant’s 1784 lectures on Achenwall is commonly known as the Feyerabend lectures because the manuscript was attributed to Gottfried Feyerabend. These lectures range over the topics eventually treated in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals (1798), which include both right and ethics. From these lectures we learn how Kant thought about the concepts of end in itself, self-sufficient end and human dignity just prior to writing the Groundwork (1785). Kant accepts much of what he finds in Achenwall, but also advances criticisms of the concept of obligation found in Achenwall and also in Baumgarten. He also rejects Achenwall’s attempt to justify coercion of duties of right simply through the distinction, common in the tradition since Pufundorf, between perfect and imperfect duties. The present discussion concludes that in the 1780s Kant’s position on the relation of right to ethics was still unclear. He appears to base right on the ethical value of humanity as end in itself, but also worries that grounding right on an ethical principle cannot explain why duties of right may be coerced.

Trying to destroy the commandos in the field was one half of Kitchener’s strategy. The other was the destruction of farms and the removal of civilian populations from rural areas to camps close to the British-controlled central railroad. This was designed to deny the commandos access to food and intelligence, but also to act as a threat: continued resistance meant denial of access to family and destruction of virtually everything a burgher owned.

It was not a radical departure from British practice but an evolution and consolidation of what had occurred over the previous 12 months. From the outset of the invasion of the two Republics, the British had considered forms of collective punishment valid for what they saw as illegitimate military actions. This policy had always been chaotically implemented, clashing as it did with a recognition that the conquered populations would have to be governed and so needed to be courted. Perhaps more importantly the shambolic state of British logistics meant during the invasion units lived off the land and rarely fulfilled their obligations to pay for what they took. By the end of 1900, the precedent for large-scale destruction as a tool of war had been well and truly set.

This chapter focuses on the fact that a major difference between a change in an international order and a change of international order is that the scope and depth of the former are not as great as those of the latter—in other words, change unfolding in an international system is somewhat circumscribed. To reflect on a change in the international order and what this means for its legitimacy, this chapter focuses on three points. First, it examines some of the characteristics that facilitate change in an international system and what this implies for the sense of legitimacy. Second, it mentions the reforms that an international order and its legitimacy can adopt to respond to evolving pressures, alluding to the stress faced by the current international system in the last few years. Third, this chapter ends with an overview of the systemic risk to which the present international system is exposed.

If inadvertent escalation is not occurring, it may be because brinkmanship tactics are successfully coercing states into backing down before inadvertent escalation can occur. This chapter assesses this possibility, asking the empirical question, has brinkmanship helped nuclear coercion succeed? To evaluate this question, it examines all cases of successful nuclear coercion, from two separate data sets of nuclear coercion success. It finds that brinkmanship has never helped nuclear coercion succeed: There are no nuclear crises in which one side deliberately engaged in brinkmanship, and the other side backed down because it feared inadvertent escalation to war. To the contrary, nuclear crisis participants routinely act to reduce inadvertent escalation risks. The only partial exception is the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which fears of inadvertent escalation helped push Moscow to move toward a settlement. However, this is only a partial exception, as Washington did not deliberately create risks of inadvertent escalation (i.e., it was not engaging in a policy of brinkmanship), Moscow moved to settle also because of fears of deliberate American escalation, and the crisis outcome is better framed as a compromise rather than American diplomatic victory.

Why do most migrant workers still lack access to urban public services despite national directives to incorporate them into cities, reported worker shortages, and ongoing labor unrest? How do policies said to expand workers’ rights end up undermining their claims to benefits owed to them? This opening chapter maps out the challenge of urbanization as development and situates the concept of political atomization and the main findings of this book in the larger context of inequality and authoritarian distribution. The concept of political atomization helps us understand four phenomena better: how authoritarian regimes exercise social control beyond coercion, why the perceived exchange of promised services for loyalty bolsters authoritarian resilience, how public service provision works without elections, and why there have been new gradations of second-class citizenship and structural inequality in China. To show how political atomization works, this book tracks the dynamics and consequences of the process from the state’s perspective through migrants’ points of view. This book uncovers emergent and evolving sources of embedded inequality, social control, and everyday marginalization in China.

In this chapter I argue that seduction is what makes it harder to tell the difference between persuasion – which cannot do away with seductive language in order to win over the other – and manipulation which plays on the addressee’s emotions or emotional needs (Baron, 2003). Seduction thus constitutes the weak spot of persuasive discourse through which manipulative tricks can penetrate. Manipulation is commonly defined as what can only be covert and is null and void if discovered; I will prove that this is not necessarily the case, especially when the addressee can perceive manipulation but is seduced by it anyway. What distinguishes persuasion from manipulation is the strength of the pressure put on the Hearer to acquiesce (Sorlin, 2017a). The role of seductive discourse as defined in this chapter is precisely to attenuate this pressure (on the surface) by using different linguistic, cognitive and pragmatic means that are detailed here and illustrated with an example drawn from the political TV series House of Cards (Netflix 2013—2018). My goal is to show that there is such a thing as a pragmatics of seduction, predicated on strategies of influence in precarious balance between persuasion and manipulation.

Manipulation is pervasive in our lives, yet it is not well understood. Specifically, we lack a wide philosophical theory of manipulation. Such a theory will successfully answer two main questions: a question about the precise meaning of “manipulation,” and a question about its moral status. Prior to presenting a novel theory of manipulation in the following chapters, Chapter 1 offers an overview of the state of the art of philosophical thinking on manipulation. The semantic field of manipulation is constructed by three main concepts: rational persuasion, deception, and coercion. Manipulation cannot, however, be understood adequately on the basis of any one of these concepts, and there is no good theory that accounts for manipulation using a combination of them. The chapter reviews the many difficulties left open by notable attempts to provide an account of the concept of manipulation. The criticisms of those attempts raise the deeper suspicion that perhaps manipulation is not to be captured by a definition at all.

This chapters traces the evolution of the Nova Holanda gang’s governance practices from the mid-1990s until the occupation of Maré by the Brazilian Military in April 2014 through the analysis of newspaper archives, oral histories with residents and gang members, and a dataset of anonymous gang denunciations. Following its integration into the Comando Vermelho faction, CVNH maintained a benevolent dictator regime, combining high levels of coercion with responsive benefits, until several years of warfare with their primary rival led to the use of extreme forms of coercion against residents as disorder prevailed. By 2004, the war between CVNH and Terceiro Comando Puro (TCP) had ended though enforcement continued to be active and frequent, leading to a social bandit regime, in which the gang offered significant benefits and engaged in low levels of coercion. Then, following the resurgence of TCP in 2009 until the arrival of the Brazilian military, CVNH can be considered a benevolent dictator gang once again. They ramped up their coercive behavior in response to TCP’s more aggressive posture while providing significant benefits to avoid frequent police enforcement efforts.

This chapter develops the concept of criminalized governance, defining it as the structures and practices through which criminalized groups control territory and manage relations with local populations. It distinguishes between two primary dimensions: coercion and the provision of benefits. The chapter then provides detailed descriptions of the various activities and behaviors included within each of these dimensions. A typology of criminalized governance regimes is then presented, which contains five ideal types: disorder, benevolent dictator, tyrant, social bandit, and laissez-faire. Finally, existing explanations from the literature on criminalized governance in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas are addressed.

Taking a rationalist approach to institutions as equilibria, I develop a critical perspective on whether and when intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) promote peaceful change. I challenge the standard view that cooperation through IGOs is necessarily “peaceful” by tightening the definition of peaceful change to include not only being nonviolent and voluntary but also being noncoercive. Whether voluntary cooperation is peaceful now depends not only on the means used and end point of change but also on its starting point. Whenever prevailing institutions overly favor (previously) powerful states, seemingly cooperative change within IGOs entails implicit elements of coercion. This is especially true of formal IGOs (FIGOs) whose rules and agency are tightly tied to the interests of the powerful. By contrast, the greater flexibility of informal IGOs (IIGOs) enables them to promote change that is more inclusive of the interests of all concerned. Their greater operational capacity may give FIGOs a comparative advantage for adapting international order – and thus for peaceful change when the international order is just. But IIGOs are more effective for promoting peaceful change when larger transformational change of the international order is needed.

This chapter explores the potential of Construction Grammar for analyzing literary texts. First, it investigates typical features of literary language from a constructional point of view. Fairy tales, for example, are characterized by their opening lines like “Once upon a time …,” analyzed as a concrete, complex construction. Similarly, many authors, styles, and genres are characterized by particular constructions, or the use of particular words and phrases. The second section deals with creative, innovative, and seemingly ‘rule-breaking’ language in a constructional framework, suggesting that Construction Grammar as a usage-based and cognitively plausible model offers the perfect toolkit to analyze seemingly unruly linguistic behavior. The third part deals with literary genres as linguistic units beyond the sentence, arguing that literary texts are also learned form–meaning pairings and can be treated as constructions. Genres as constructions may change dynamically over time and be subject to prototypeeffects. Drawing on numerous examples, this chapter thus demonstrates that literary language and texts can be productively analyzed using concepts and methods of Construction Grammar.

This chapter examines a class of grammatical patterns called functional amalgams, for example, That’s the real issue is that you never really know and I have a friend in the Bay Area is a painter. Distinct from syntactic blends, functional amalgams are innovative constructions that combine otherwise incompatible subparts of other constructions. These combinations are not licensed by the canonical phrase-structure rules of the language and may appear illogical or redundant. However, unlike speech errors, functional amalgams are purposeful productions and serve to distribute across constituents units of meaning that would otherwise coalesce in a single constituent sign of a complex linguistic expression. We examine the properties that distinguish functional amalgams from syntactic amalgams, and explore the syntactic, semantic, and discourse-pragmatic features of functional amalgams, using an array of English sentence patterns as illustrations and showing why amalgams qualify as constructions in the sense of Construction Grammar. Finally, we extend this conception of functional amalgams to complex words, asking how selection properties of derivational endings may lead to coerced meanings.

Climate change is humanity’s greatest challenge for the XXIst century. Its effects will be felt for generations to come. In light of the enormity of the challenge, bank regulators are moving, yet reforms are neither homogeneous nor comprehensive. The EU is clearly more committed to the effort than any other player, and even within the EU, attitudes are cautious towards Pillar 1 (prudential requirements) and macroprudential measures, and bolder towards Pillar 3 (market discipline through disclosures) and Pillar 2 (supervisory review), though more uneven on the latter. This does not follow a scientific logic (due to the high uncertainty of climate risk) but a policy logic, since legislators and regulators tend to follow a path of minimum resistance, and undertake first the reforms that require them a lower epistemic burden.