No right to unilaterally claim your territory: on the consistency of Kantian statism

Abstract

Abstract:The paper examines the consistency of recent Kantian justifications of state authority through reflection on the normative implications of states' territorial nature. I claim that their conceptual structure leaves these accounts unable to close the justificatory gap that emerges at the transition from legitimate authority simpliciter, to legitimate state authority. None of the strategies Kantian statists have come up with in order to solve this problem -based on the proximity, occupancy, and permissive principles -provides the needed grounds on which to carve up the earth's surface into jurisdictional domains. Yet, I conclude that this does not require Kantians to cede statist grounds altogether but to take a distinctly 'global perspective' on states.

European Duties of Social Justice: A Kantian Framework

“…See alsoFlikschuh (2010) andHuber (2017) for similar interpretations of the Kantian position.European Duties of Social Justice: A Kantian Framework…”

Institutionalising Kant’s political philosophy: Foregrounding cosmopolitan right

“…vii See also Muthu (2000). viii Others who make a similar argument, at varying length, include Cavallar (1994);Holland (2017);and Huber (2017a). Appeal to the idea of the state as a 'moral person' has also been made in order to defend a Kantian world government: see Byrd (1995), who emphasises the idea that states have perfect and imperfect moral duties equivalent to those of individuals in a state of nature.…”