Conference Agenda

Criminal entrapment occurs whenever one party, the “Agent”, intentionally brings it about that another, the “Target”, commits a criminal offence, intending to have the Target prosecuted and punished for committing the offence.The Agent could either be a state official (“state entrapment”) or a private party (“private entrapment”).

Several jurisdictions and parts of the literature allow blocking the prosecution or conviction only for Targets of state entrapment.

The article defends the position that we need to discern the distinctive wrongness of entrapment to ascertain whether the identity of the Agent should matter for whether, and if so, by whom, the Target ought to be held accountable for the criminal offence into which they were entrapped.

It argues that entrapment amounts to an objectionable subversion of practices of accountability. Some instances of entrapment are permissible. There is reason to block the prosecution of Targets of impermissible instances to prevent the Agent’s scheme from coming to fruition, regardless of the (state or private) identity of the Agent. This reason is, however, typically weak and therefore often defeated. Contrary to current legal practice, Agents involved in impermissible instances of entrapment ought to be prosecuted if their behaviour amounts, in itself, to a criminal offence.

The aim of this paper is to ask what goes wrong, normatively speaking, when particular kinds of justified hope are structurally unavailable for members of some social groups. In response, I introduce the notion of speratic injustice (from spes = lat. “hope”), a particular kind of hope-related wrong. I argue that the structural unavailability of justified hope can constitute or entrench a particular kind of powerlessness in relation to the future, both of a broader social and of a more specifically political kind. The implication is that if we are concerned about the injustice of structurally unequal power relations, we should also be concerned about the structural unavailability of justified hope. The notion of diachronic democracy emerges from this analysis as the only way to prevent or overcome speratic injustice. Diachronic democracy provides citizens with a focal point for negotiating, contesting and revising different and often conflicting visions of their common future. In so doing, it empowers citizens by putting them collectively in charge of their shared future.

Republican political philosophers have long debated whether majoritarian democratic institutions are compatible with the republican ideal of non-domination. While neo-republicans like Pettit look to counter-majoritarian mechanisms and institutions in order to avoid domination by the majority, others have argued that basic political equality (understood as one person one vote) together with some form of social equality (understood as near equal influence and control) will safeguard against domination. What is striking about both sides of this debate, however, is the fact that the basic premise that all democratic decisions should always be based on the equal votes of all members of a community (whether that is a firm, a political party, or a parliament) is never questioned.

In this paper, I will look at the often-neglected idea that at least for some democratic decisions the degree of affectedness should determine the weight (or the amount) of a person’s vote(s) and show that it actually fits very well with the worry of arbitrary interference that republicans have. This raises the question of whether republican non-domination requires an affectedness-sensitive democratic system.

This article develops a novel concern about competitive social institutions: their impact on our “radius of care”, i.e., the range of persons to whom we can reasonably adopt an attitude of care. Care, here, is understood as epistemic, emotional and practical responsiveness to the needs and interests of others (for their own sake). The article proceeds in four steps. It argues, first, that competitive institutions can create strong practical reasons to favour the interests of ourselves and those we are close to or have special obligations towards. Second, it argues that this is normatively relevant: from an individual agent’s perspective, there is value to adopting an attitude of care towards others; from a social perspective, attitudes of care create positive externalities. Third, it argues that this concern about competition differs from those discussed in the literature: competition’s potential inefficiency (Heath 2014); the harm of resulting status inequalities (Sandel 2020); ensuing estrangement (Hussain 2020). Fourth, the article explores how it complements existing feminist criticisms of market relationships, like the thesis that markets have come to colonize areas where care is the appropriate attitude to take (Tronto 1993) and the claim that markets inherently disadvantage altruistic caregivers (Kittay 2020).