- igonzalezricoy.com
Iñigo González Ricoy
Universitat de Barcelona, Philosophy, Faculty Member
- I am an associate professor of political philosophy at UB with research interests in work, future generations, and democracy.edit
Research Interests:
Political theorists have recently sought to replace the liberal, contractual theory of the firm with a political view that models the authority relation of employee to firm, and its appropriate regulation, on that of subject to state.... more
Political theorists have recently sought to replace the liberal, contractual theory of the firm with a political view that models the authority relation of employee to firm, and its appropriate regulation, on that of subject to state. This view is liable to serious difficulties, however, given the extant discontinuities between corporate and civil authority as to their coerciveness, entry and exit conditions, scope, legal standing, and efficiency constraints. I here inspect these, and argue that, albeit in some cases significant, such discontinuities fail to undermine the firm/state analogy, either because they are not significant enough to do so or because the particular trait on which they hinge is not decisive for how authority, in the state and in the firm, should be regulated to be legitimate. A pro tanto requirement exists, I thus argue, that corporate authority be held to regulatory norms comparable to those legitimate states abide by, including civil liberties, rule-of-law constraints, and accountability to subjects.
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Institutions to address short-termism in public policymaking and to more suitably discharge our duties toward future generations have elicited much recent normative research, which this chapter surveys. It focuses on two prominent... more
Institutions to address short-termism in public policymaking and to more suitably discharge our duties toward future generations have elicited much recent normative research, which this chapter surveys. It focuses on two prominent institutions: insulating devices, which seek to mitigate short-termist electoral pressures by transferring authority away to independent bodies, and constraining devices, which seek to bind elected officials to intergenerationally fair rules from which deviation is costly. The chapter first discusses sufficientarian, egalitarian, and prioritarian theories of our duties toward future generations, and how an excessive focus on the short term in policymaking may hinder that such duties be fulfilled. It then surveys constraining and insulating devices, and inspects their effectiveness to address the epistemic, motivational, and institutional drivers of political short-termism as well as their intra-and intergenerational legitimacy.
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Economic disparities often translate into disparities in political influence, rendering political liberties less worthy to poor citizens than to wealthier ones. Concerned with this, Rawls advocated that a guarantee of the fair value of... more
Economic disparities often translate into disparities in political influence, rendering political liberties less worthy to poor citizens than to wealthier ones. Concerned with this, Rawls advocated that a guarantee of the fair value of political liberties be included in the first principle of justice as fairness, with significant regulatory and distributive implications. He nonetheless supplied little examination of the content and grounding of such guarantee, which we here offer. After examining three uncompelling arguments in its favor, we complete a more promising yet less explored argument that builds on the value of self-respect. We first inspect the conditions and duties that securing self-respect entails. We then look into how uneven allocations of the value of political liberties bear, expressively and due to the power imbalances they yield, on such conditions and duties.
Research Interests:
Workplace democracy, which is attracting renewed political and philosophical interest, is often advocated on two intertwined views. The first is that the authority relation of employee to firm is akin to that of subject to state, such... more
Workplace democracy, which is attracting renewed political and philosophical interest, is often advocated on two intertwined views. The first is that the authority relation of employee to firm is akin to that of subject to state, such that reasons favoring democracy in the state likewise apply to the firm. The second is that, when democratic controls are absent in the workplace, employees are liable to objectionable forms of subordination by their bosses, who may then issue arbitrary directives on matters ranging from pay to the allocation of overtime and to relocation and promotion.
Daniel Jacob and Christian Neuhäuser (2018) have recently submitted these views to careful criticism in this journal.1 Jacob and Neuhäuser (JN, for short) argue, on the one hand, that the parallel between firms and states is unwarranted. For, unlike managerial authority, state authority is final. The state grants firms their legal status and subjects their authority to its regulations, which citizens in democracies already control, such that they could render democracy in the workplace mandatory if they wish. They also argue, on the other hand, that suitable workplace regulation alongside meaningful exit options may suffice to prevent, with no need for democratization, objectionable forms of workplace subjection. Neither view offers, they resolve, compelling reasons to believe that justice requires that firms be democratic. I here inspect these criticisms in turn, and offer reasons for skepticism.
Daniel Jacob and Christian Neuhäuser (2018) have recently submitted these views to careful criticism in this journal.1 Jacob and Neuhäuser (JN, for short) argue, on the one hand, that the parallel between firms and states is unwarranted. For, unlike managerial authority, state authority is final. The state grants firms their legal status and subjects their authority to its regulations, which citizens in democracies already control, such that they could render democracy in the workplace mandatory if they wish. They also argue, on the other hand, that suitable workplace regulation alongside meaningful exit options may suffice to prevent, with no need for democratization, objectionable forms of workplace subjection. Neither view offers, they resolve, compelling reasons to believe that justice requires that firms be democratic. I here inspect these criticisms in turn, and offer reasons for skepticism.
Research Interests:
Representing unborn generations to more suitably include future interests in today's climate policymaking has sparked much interest in recent years. In this review we survey the main proposed instruments to achieve this effect, some of... more
Representing unborn generations to more suitably include future interests in today's climate policymaking has sparked much interest in recent years. In this review we survey the main proposed instruments to achieve this effect, some of which have been attempted in polities such as Israel, Philippines, Wales, Finland, and Chile. We first review recent normative work on the idea of representing future people in climate governance: The grounds on which it has been advocated, and the main difficulties that traditional forms of representation have encountered when applied to this particular case. We then survey existing institutional means to represent generations to come. We separate out representation in courts, in parliament, and by independent bodies, and review specific instruments including climate litigation, parliamentary commissions, future representatives, youth quotas, and independent offices for future generations. We examine the particular forms whereby each of these may suitably represent future people, including audience representation, sur-rogate representation, and indicative representation, and discuss the main challenges they encounter in so doing.
Research Interests:
Workplace democracy is often defined, and has recently been defended, as a form of intra-firm governance in which workers have control rights over management with no ownership requirement on their part. Using the normative tools of... more
Workplace democracy is often defined, and has recently been defended, as a form of intra-firm governance in which workers have control rights over management with no ownership requirement on their part. Using the normative tools of republican political theory, the paper examines bargaining power disparities and moral hazard problems resulting from the allocation of control rights and ownership to different groups within democratic firms, with a particular reference to the European codetermination system. With various qualifications related to potentially mitigating factors, such as workforce and shareholder composition or the allocation of risk aversion, the paper contends that forms of workplace democracy in which workers control and own the firm, such as cooperativism, are preferable to other forms, such as codetermination, in which ownership and control rights are formally separated.
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This paper examines the link between political liberties and social equality, and contends that the former are constitutive of, i.e. necessary to secure, the latter. Although this constitutive link is often assumed in the literature on... more
This paper examines the link between political liberties and social equality, and contends that the former are constitutive of, i.e. necessary to secure, the latter. Although this constitutive link is often assumed in the literature on political liberties, the reasons why it holds true remain largely unexplored. Three such reasons are examined here. First, political liberties are constitutive of social equality because they bestow political power on their holders, leaving disenfran-chised individuals excluded from decisions that are particularly pervasive, coer-cively enforced, hard to avoid, monopolistic, and final. Second, they are constitutive of social equality due to their positional value, such that those who are denied such liberties are socially downgraded because and to the extent that others enjoy them. Third, they are constitutive of social equality due to their expressive value, in the sense that, by disenfranchising some individuals, the state publicly fails to recognize their equal moral agency. While unpacking these reasons, we address some criticisms of this constitutive link recently raised by Steven Wall and Jason Brennan.
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Research Interests: Business Ethics, Political Philosophy, Corporate Social Responsibility, International Law, Human Rights, and 10 moreVirtue Ethics, Corporate Governance, Natural Law, Philosophy Of Law, Philosophy Of Economics, Environmental Sustainability, Ethics and economics, International Strategy, Soft Law, and Global Economic Governance
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Do citizens have a duty to abstain from voting when they cannot vote well? Jason Brennan has recently argued that, since citizens have a duty not to engage in harmful activities and bad voting is a harmful activity, citizens have a duty... more
Do citizens have a duty to abstain from voting when they cannot vote well? Jason Brennan has recently argued that, since citizens have a duty not to engage in harmful activities and bad voting is a harmful activity, citizens have a duty to abstain from voting badly. In this reply, I argue that Brennan dismisses the moral disagreements that unavoidably pervade the very idea of bad voting in a democratic society and provides a de-politicised and incomplete account of what voting badly means. Without a sound definition of bad voting, Brennan's argument fails.
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Confirmed speakers & discussant: Sara Amighetti (Goethe Universitat Frankfurt) Jonathan Boston (Victoria University of Wellington) Paul Bou-Habib (Essex & Universitat Pompeu Fabra) Simon Caney (University of Oxford) Paula Casal (ICREA &... more
Confirmed speakers & discussant:
Sara Amighetti (Goethe Universitat Frankfurt)
Jonathan Boston (Victoria University of Wellington)
Paul Bou-Habib (Essex & Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Simon Caney (University of Oxford)
Paula Casal (ICREA & Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Iñigo González-Ricoy (Universitat de Barcelona)
Axel Gosseries (Université de Louvain)
Graham Smith (University of Westminster)
Isa Trifan (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Andrew Williams (ICREA & Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Sara Amighetti (Goethe Universitat Frankfurt)
Jonathan Boston (Victoria University of Wellington)
Paul Bou-Habib (Essex & Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Simon Caney (University of Oxford)
Paula Casal (ICREA & Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Iñigo González-Ricoy (Universitat de Barcelona)
Axel Gosseries (Université de Louvain)
Graham Smith (University of Westminster)
Isa Trifan (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Andrew Williams (ICREA & Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Research Interests:
This paper examines the link between political liberties and social equality, and contends that the former are constitutive of, i.e. necessary to secure, the latter. Although this constitutive link is often assumed in the literature on... more
This paper examines the link between political liberties and social equality, and contends that the former are constitutive of, i.e. necessary to secure, the latter. Although this constitutive link is often assumed in the literature on political liberties, the reasons why it holds true remain largely unexplored. Three such reasons are examined here. First, political liberties are constitutive of social equality because they bestow political power on their holders, leaving disenfranchised individuals excluded from decisions that are particularly pervasive, coercively enforced, hard to avoid, monopolistic, and final. Second, they are constitutive of social equality due to their positional value, such that those who are denied such liberties are socially downgraded because and to the extent that others enjoy them. Third, they are constitutive of social equality due to their expressive value, in the sense that, by disenfranchising some individuals, the state publicly fails to recognize their equal moral agency. While unpacking these reasons, we address some criticisms of this constitutive link recently raised by Steven Wall and Jason Brennan. * Previous versions of the paper were presented in Oxford, Zurich, Mexico City, and Barcelona. We are grateful to those audiences and, for written comments, to Charles Beitz, Chiara Cordelli, Carina Fourie, José Juan Moreso, Christian Schemmel, and two anonymous reviewers.
Research Interests:
Economic disparities often translate into disparities in political influence, rendering political liberties less worthy to poor citizens than to wealthier ones. Concerned with this, Rawls advocated that a guarantee of the fair value of... more
Economic disparities often translate into disparities in political influence, rendering political liberties less worthy to poor citizens than to wealthier ones. Concerned with this, Rawls advocated that a guarantee of the fair value of political liberties be included in the first principle of justice as fairness, with significant regulatory and distributive implications. He nonetheless supplied little examination of the content and grounding of this guarantee, which we here offer. After examining three uncompelling arguments in its favor, we complete a more promising yet less explored argument that builds on the value of self-respect. We first inspect the conditions and duties that securing self-respect entails. We then look into how uneven allocations of the value of political liberties bear, expressively and due to the power imbalances they yield, on such conditions and duties.
