Papers by Valentin Stoian
International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence
Analele Universitatii din Bucuresti - Stiinte Politice
The article analyses how the emergence of bulk international surveillance impacts the boundary pr... more The article analyses how the emergence of bulk international surveillance impacts the boundary problem in political theory. It first describes how the boundary problem was defined and developed as well as the solutions proposed in the literature. Then, the paper analyses surveillance as a violation of privacy which has a chilling effect and presents the specificities of bulk collection of electronic information. The main argument of the article is that the permanent uncertainty that bulk international surveillance causes triggers the need for a cosmopolitan legal regime to govern it under any of the solutions proposed to the boundary problem.
Intelligence and National Security
The article analyzes the European Union’s response to hybrid warfare and argues that a proper int... more The article analyzes the European Union’s response to hybrid warfare and argues that a proper interpretation of the policies adopted offers cautious support for a rational choice intuitionalist approach. It begins with the presentation of the main theories of European decision-making, among which rational choice and constructivist institutionalism and it derives a hypothesis which it tests in the third part of the article. Several policy documents are analyzed in order to provide the empirical material for the analysis. The article concludes that EU institutions prefer to undertake supra-national action in technical fields which are less politically controversial and where supra-nationalization is more easily accepted
This paper addresses two interrelated questions. Firstly, it will inquire into whether Rousseau’s... more This paper addresses two interrelated questions. Firstly, it will inquire into whether Rousseau’s philosophy includes a theory of liberal rights. In other words, it will ask whether one can find in Rousseau’s writings a defense of what Benjamin Constant calls the “liberty of the moderns” and Isaiah Berlin designates as “negative liberty”. The second question deals with Rousseau’s understanding of the “liberty of the ancients”. The paper asks what type of political participation Rousseau desires for citizens. On one interpretation, Rousseau’s demands the submission to and internalization of an already established, objective good. This good is embodied by the general will, which represents the will of the community. According to another interpretation, Rousseau’s citizens are supposed to participate in the public space by public deliberation while bringing arguments from a widely shared conception of common good. Thus, in this account, the general will is formed (rather than discovere...
The article argues that Ronald Dworkin’s account of political obligation as a form of associative... more The article argues that Ronald Dworkin’s account of political obligation as a form of associative obligation fails to ground a duty to obey the law. The article shows how Dworkin does not succeed in establishing what A.J. Simmons calls the particularity condition. First, Dworkin’s 1986 account of associative obligations is contrasted to its anarchist criticism. Then, Dworkin’s 2011 clarifications made in Justice for Hedgehogs are analyzed. The article shows that Dworkin’s 2011 version of associative political obligations fails the same way as the 1986 version. Dworkin grounds the obligation to obey the law of the state in the claim that one has duties to some associations he participates in, even if he did not consent to this participation. Further, with special reference to political obligation, Dworkin claims that the state is a coercive association in which all participate and which undermines each participants’ dignity. To argue for the claim, the article utilizes arguments abou...
The paper aims to evaluate the reply offered by philosophers of educational justice Elizabeth And... more The paper aims to evaluate the reply offered by philosophers of educational justice Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz to the challenge posed by Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift. According to the latter two authors, the positional character of education undermines the application of sufficientarian principles to the distribution of educational resources. In the Brighouse-Swift view, a good is positional when its crucial characteristic is how much one possesses of it in relation to others. The two philosophers argue that education has this characteristic. Satz and Anderson reply that sufficientarianism can also survive in education, as the current educational structure should be modified. They maintain that the argument for an adequate minimum can diffuse the positionality objection and that by modifying the social structure to allow for other avenues of social mobility one can put less stress on formal education. The paper rejects the two claims and argues against sufficientarianism in education. Firstly, it puts forward the idea that any minimum is politically debatable and not an adequate reply to the positionality objection. The paper then rejects the second claim by arguing that it requires too much social engineering and that education under conditions of equality fits the purpose of social mobility much better
The dissertation addresses the relation between contemporary socialism and contemporary liberalis... more The dissertation addresses the relation between contemporary socialism and contemporary liberalism. It inquires into whether the Rawlsian politico-economic system denominated property-owning democracy can rebut the Marxist challenge and answers the question in the positive. Liberal egalitarianism, especially in its Rawlsian form, has come to dominate political theory and is broadly shared among its practitioners. Since the collapse of analytical Marxism, no major challenge from the left has been posed to the liberal dominance. This thesis aims for a revival of the main ideas of analytical Marxism and draws inspiration from them to construct a critique of the latest work in the field of Rawlsian political theory. The politico-economic regime called property-owning democracy is scrutinized and eventually defended from the Marxist critique. The first two chapters of the dissertation are dedicated to an analysis of the Marxist opus. The aim of the first chapter is to defend a non-relativistic reading of the relationship between Marx and justice. The main focus of the chapter is Marx's The German Ideology, but other quotes bearing on his view of justice are also mobilized. The chapter concludes by arguing for an account according to which morality and justice are, for Marx, both historically dependent and valid at any particular time. The second chapter defends a left-libertarian reading of Marx's works, according to which his main tenets are interpreted as a limited form of self-ownership coupled with joint world ownership. A democratic form of socialism is presented as the institutional structure embodying the principles. The third chapter analyzes the politico-economic arrangement known as property-owning democracy. It argues that it is a system built around a fair market, populated by both hierarchical and cooperative firms. Moreover, it also maintains that Rawls's choice for a property-owning democracy over the welfare state is based on a proper interpretation of all his principles. Finally, the chapter rejects the claim that the property-owning democracy could be understood as a system of democratic coordination, both at the level of the firm and at the level of the economy. Alternatively, a reformed market system is the preferred Rawlsian solution. The fourth and final chapter brings together these strands and compares Marx's democratic socialism with the property-owning democracy. Five socialist objections are constructed and the Rawlsian framework is held against them. The conclusion is that most of these objections can be rebutted and that the liberal framework can offer proper replies to the socialist challenge. The thesis brings three novelties to the literature. It elaborates self-ownership centered theory Marxist theory of justice and defends it from challenges. The thesis refines the ideal of the property-owning democracy and distinguishes it from other capital distribution proposals. Thirdly, it puts these two ideals together for the first full-blown comparison of socialism and the new strands of liberalism. 4.4. Can the property owning democracy (and liberal socialism) rebut the Marxian criticisms?
EUROPOLITY. CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN EUROPEAN GOVERNANCE, 2018
This article investigates the acceptance of securitizing narratives by different professional and... more This article investigates the acceptance of securitizing narratives by different professional and age-based audiences in Romania. Through analysing the results of a q-sort questionnaire created and administered by the National Institute for Intelligence Studies, the article argues that different audiences relate very diversely to narratives of risk. The article begins by outlining the development of the theory of securitization and its transition to include a focus on audience acceptance. Further, the article describes the Romanian 2015 Strategy for Homeland Defense as a key "tool" of securitization. Finally, the article looks into the differential acceptance by distinct audiences of different risk narratives outlined by the Strategy, as discovered through q-sorting. Results show that older people fear Russian expansionism and that governmental employees reject the idea that bad governance is a risk to security.
Critical Studies on Security, 2019
The article criticises contemporary accounts of de-securitisation practices and argues that they ... more The article criticises contemporary accounts of de-securitisation practices and argues that they fail to meet the standards of ideal de-securitisation, which, the article argues, can only be inspired by Rawlsian public reason. Thus, the article criticises these de-securitisations for not engaging with the fundamentals of securitising speech. Alternatively, the paper formulates a Rawlsian-inspired theory of de-securitisation, arguing that public reason-inspired practices fulfill the ambitions of the original authors of securitisation theorists much better than those identified in the previous literature. Further, the paper traces the securitisation of corruption in Romania and identifies some of the key securitising agents and securitising tools employed. It argues that corruption was securitised through the use of policy documents, public speeches and through establishing a close cooperation between the Romanian Intelligence Service and the National Anti-corruption directorate. Finally, it looks at three decisions of the Romanian Constitutional Court as empirical cases of Rawlsian desecuritisation. This was chosen because, unlike in several European decisions, Romania offers a clear case where courts struck down rather than affirmed security legislation.
JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 2019
The European Parliament is an increasingly central actor in attempts to regulate surveillance and... more The European Parliament is an increasingly central actor in attempts to regulate surveillance and find the balance between safeguarding personal freedoms and ensuring EU citizens’ security. However, virtually nothing is known about what drives the positions of MEPs on this issue, or about how the cohesion of European parties is affected by these attempts. We explore this subject and propose a novel theoretical framework focusing on the interplay between the characteristics of the two principals of the MEPs – European party groups and national parties. We tested the model by analysing the votes held on the two most salient directives adopted in this field. The findings indicate that national parties’ ideological positions, and the differences between them and the European parties in the salience assigned to human rights and law and order, predict to a great extent both MEP votes on the directives and dissent from the European party line.
The paper aims to evaluate the reply offered by philosophers of educational justice Elizabeth And... more The paper aims to evaluate the reply offered by philosophers of educational justice Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz to the challenge posed by Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift. According to the latter two authors, the positional character of education undermines the application of sufficientarian principles to the distribution of educational resources. In the Brighouse-Swift view, a good is positional when its crucial characteristic is how much one possesses of it in relation to others. The two philosophers argue that education has this characteristic. Satz and Anderson reply that sufficientarianism can also survive in education, as the current educational structure should be modified. They maintain that the argument for an adequate minimum can diffuse the positionality objection and that by modifying the social structure to allow for other avenues of social mobility one can put less stress on formal education. The paper rejects the two claims and argues against sufficientarianism in...
The article aims to present the normative premises of a Marxist theory of justice and to argue th... more The article aims to present the normative premises of a Marxist theory of justice and to argue that such an endeavor has, at its central pillar, the value of self-ownership. The article first undertakes a summary of the main strands in the literature on exploitation. It divides the literature into force-based and distributional-based conceptions of exploitation. Then, the article uses these insights in order to illuminate the Marxist texts and to argue in favor of a limited form of self-ownership combined with joint ownership of global resources and the absence of alienation as the main building blocks of a Marxist theory of justice. Finally, the article defends the idea of limited self-ownership as both internally coherent as a better approximation of Karl Marx’s works than the principle of need. While the full development of a Marxist theory of justice is left for a further work, the paper contributes an interpretation of the building blocks of such a theory.
IntroductionPolitical theory and real-world politics have had a sometimes tenuous relationship. C... more IntroductionPolitical theory and real-world politics have had a sometimes tenuous relationship. Caught in the web of abstract theorizing, political philosophers chose to withdraw from real world politics and to relate to one another strictly according to philosophical lines. Alternatively, real world politicians are daily confronted with hard political choices to make, compromises to decide upon and power struggles to contend. While these two worlds have gradually moved apart, only few political theorists have attempted engaging with the world of day-to-day politics.This engagement is necessary since political theory risks losing its relevance if it chooses to withdraw from a dialogue with politics. Aimed to be not just a study of politics, but to generate action-guiding principles of political justice, political theory must take into account the developments occurring in real-world politics if it seeks to remain relevant.One way in which some political theorists chose to undertake ...
The paper aims to evaluate the reply offered by philosophers of educational justice Elizabeth And... more The paper aims to evaluate the reply offered by philosophers of educational justice Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz to the challenge posed by Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift. According to the latter two authors, the positional character of education undermines the application of sufficientarian principles to the distribution of educational resources. In the Brighouse-Swift view, a good is positional when its crucial characteristic is how much one possesses of it in relation to others. The two philosophers argue that education has this characteristic. Satz and Anderson reply that sufficientarianism can also survive in education, as the current educational structure should be modified. They maintain that the argument for an adequate minimum can diffuse the positionality objection and that by modifying the social structure to allow for other avenues of social mobility one can put less stress on formal education. The paper rejects the two claims and argues against sufficientarianism in education. Firstly, it puts forward the idea that any minimum is politically debatable and not an adequate reply to the positionality objection. The paper then rejects the second claim by arguing that it requires too much social engineering and that education under conditions of equality fits the purpose of social mobility much better.
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Papers by Valentin Stoian