In this essay, I use Martin Luther King Jr.'s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to open questions about international order and disorder. The idea of order is central to modern discourse on international politics, but the concept is often ill defined and ambiguous. King's ideas clarify three issues: First, is order understood as an objective condition of a system or a political judgment about its suitability for social life? Second, does compliance with law lead naturally to order? And third, is order always preferable to disorder? The way King answers each question is somewhat different than the conventional wisdom in international relations. IR scholars typically assume that international order is a universal good and that compliance with law enhances it. King highlights the gap between order as defined by the authorities in Alabama and his own lived experience. I use the difference to map the terrain of scholarship on international order and disorder and to draw implications for concepts, research methods, and political judgment.

One of the problems with the problem of world order is that what makes for order within societies is often precisely what makes for disorderly relations between them. I argue in this short essay that many of the problems with the problem of world order arise from assumptions that are widely shared within a discipline where the language of power and interest dominates and where a view of states as “like units” permeates. With more emphasis on values and visions of the good life, and acceptance that the ontological foundation of IR is difference rather than sameness, the debates about the problem of world order would take on a different form. The essay adapts the work of Hedley Bull and introduces the concept of “resilience-governance” to distinguish between resilience as a practice of self-governance taking place within ordering domains and resilience as a practice of “diversity-governance” taking place between ordering domains. The combination of the two allows for a bifocal view into how practices of resilience as self-governance may produce order within individual domains but will at the same time increase diversity and difference between the ordering domains, hence making the practices of resilience as diversity-governance much more challenging.

Discussions of the liberal international order, both inside and outside the academy, tend to take its necessity and desirability for granted. While its specific contours and content are left somewhat open in such debates, the idea that this international order is essential for global peace and stability is left largely unquestioned. What is more, the potential loss or end of this order is often taken to mean a return to anarchy, chaos, and disorder. In this essay, I question the presumed necessity and desirability of the liberal international order that most discussions of it seem to share. By rethinking the international order as processual, emergent, and grounded in the social and political contexts that shape its constitution and operation, I suggest that fears about the crisis of international order are less about international order itself and more about the loss of a specific order. This specific order, I argue, constituted in part through processes of racialization, is not so much a rules-based order of sovereign equality but rather an international order of White sovereignty that secures the domination and rule of some over others, of Whiteness over non-Whiteness. Recognizing the role of White sovereignty in the contemporary international order points toward a need to take seriously calls for abolition. Rather than signifying a return to chaos and disorder, the prospect and promise of abolition represents a call to break free from the constraints of the present order and reach into an as-yet-unimaginable future.

Can the best arguments for a privation theory of evil be parodied, with equal plausibility, as arguments for a privation theory of good? The privation theory of evil claims that evil has no positive existence, and it is but a privation of good. The privation theory of good claims the opposite. I approach this topic as one element in the so-called evil-God Challenge. Stephen Law has argued that the epistemic support for belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect God (theism) is on a par with the epistemic support for belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, but completely evil-God (maltheism). In fact, he concludes, the arguments for an evil God are symmetrical with, and isomorphic to, those for a good God. The privation theory of evil has often been used to defend theism against the argument from evil. Thus, part of the evil-God Challenge is to evaluate arguments for the privation theory of evil for their vulnerability to maltheist parody. I consider a broad range of arguments for the privation theory of evil, and I argue that most of them are vulnerable to parodic neutralization. Furthermore, I argue that although the thesis of the convertibility of being and goodness is often held to entail the privation theory of evil, or to be entailed by it (or to be equivalent to it), it is independent of the privation theory. I do find that David Oderberg’s recent argument for the privation theory of evil resists any easy maltheist parody, but I argue that it has a defect. I sketch an argument according to which his good-as-fulfillment account is compatible with a perfectly evil god. My tentative conclusion is that the privation theory of evil enjoys little more plausibility than does the privation theory of good.

Godwin Mbikusita-Lewanika, the founding president of Zambia’s first nationalist organisation, is now remembered as a staunch supporter of colonial rule. Such figures are not uncommon and are often termed “loyalists,” a term that is usually understood in the literature as a fixed category that either dwindled in the face of racial oppression or was a choice shaped and hardened by conflict. Lewanika, however, moved easily between different sides, reinventing himself as an anticolonial nationalist, trade unionist, colonial loyalist, and Lozi traditional monarchist as circumstances warranted. The tumult of the mid-twentieth century opened up new opportunities and Lewanika seized roles that were not previously available. Biographies of anticolonial nationalists often argue they turned to political action when their education and ambitions clashed with the highly-circumscribed roles available under colonialism. Lewanika’s life was the opposite. He carved out a prominent place for himself in the colonial order and then in independent Zambia.

The dominance of the Abrahamic tradition in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion has led some to call for greater exploration of alternatives to the traditional conception of God, such as Pantheism, Ultimism, and Axiarchism. While we think this call for alternatives is important, we go in a different direction. Rather than explore and defend alternative conceptions of God, we defend a range of fairly traditional but non-religious conceptions of God. This range of views, from deism to philosophical theism, enjoys a variety of benefits over its religious competitors and deserves greater attention.

This article looks at the gender regime of the governing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP) in Turkey through the double lenses of “gender ideology” and moral panics. It traces the itinerary along which “gender ideology” as a reactionary discourse has traveled through a landscape stretching from the Vatican to Turkey. This trajectory places the AKP’s gender perspective and policies within a larger right-wing populist rhetoric of transnational fundamentalism which claims gender is an ideology. The “gender ideology” discourse of the AKP is maintained through a constant sense of crisis which reveals itself in moments of moral panics. The article specifically takes the period of 2019–2020 where such a moment of moral panic was heightened and examines this specific period through an analysis of public speeches of political figures, newspaper articles, and other published materials on the issue. The article shows how this fundamentalist discourse of “gender ideology” and its concomitant strategy of moral panics built an oppressive political environment for women and LGBTI+ people in Turkey and paved the road to the country’s withdrawal from the İstanbul Convention in 2021.

This article uses an original dataset to sketch a portrait of women mayoral candidates and women elected as mayors in Italy in the period 1993–2021. The analysis highlights several significant findings. Women must compensate for their political marginality by deploying other resources, such as higher levels of education. Nevertheless, women are penalised not only by the reluctance of parties to put them forward as candidates, but also by the elections themselves. More specifically, the electoral presence and strength of women decreases when the population size of the municipality grows, except for municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Moreover, women candidates are most disadvantaged in geographical areas where the socioeconomic condition of women is more marginal. However, women mayors running for a second mandate have the same chance of winning as men. Finally, it is the protest parties, rather than the left-wing parties, that are revealed as doing the most to promote women.

According to normative pluralists there are no truths about what one ought simpliciter to do, only truths about what one ought to do according to some normative system or standpoint. In contrast with conceptual normative pluralists who argue for this conclusion on the basis that the concept of an ought simpliciter is somehow defective, non-conceptual normative pluralists defend this conclusion on first-order grounds. Non-conceptual normative pluralism has recently received a book-length defence by Mathea Slåttholm Sagdahl. In this article I critique Sagdahl's defence of non-conceptual normative pluralism. Firstly, I challenge Sagdahl's attempt to motivate non-conceptual normative pluralism by appealing to Henry Sidgwick's work on the dualism of practical reason. Secondly, I criticise her response to the most prominent argument against non-conceptual normative pluralism in the philosophical literature, the argument from nominal-notable comparisons. Thirdly, I explore the possibility of a view similar to Sagdahl's position but which accepts the ought simpliciter.

The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, but there is only one God – this is the traditional problem of the Trinity. Recently, a new problem for the doctrine of the Trinity has been developed. God is triune, the Son is God, but the Son is not triune – that’s the new Triunity Problem. In this article, I show that adopting any solution to a traditional problem makes it possible to solve the new problem without incurring additional costs. I distinguish possible types of solutions to the traditional problem and point out the costs involved. I then show how each of these solutions can be used and developed to solve the new problem.

At the moment of independence, the Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda occupied a unique position within the Ugandan state. Local communities existed largely outside the sovereignty of the state and remained disinvested from its politico-economic institutions, and policymakers saw Karamoja as a problematic challenge to their agendas of development, security, and nation-building. I contend that, in the years surrounding Uganda's independence, government officials, rural communities, and a small emergent local elite fiercely debated Karamoja's place in the Ugandan state in state spaces such as government headquarters, trading centers, and barazas. Examining these contestations in state spaces allows us to map the indigenous political epistemologies of Karamoja against the epistemology of statehood and demonstrates the diversity of political thought that existed in Karamoja. A look at political debates in Karamoja at the moment of independence also sheds light on gaps within the historiographies of belonging and marginality in African states and addresses Karamoja's exclusion from the historiography of Uganda.

“INTELLECTUAL LIGHTENING”: A tribute to John Harris through a collection of memories, imaginary books, fictional reviews, and an interview. John Harris’ impressive and diverse academic career is illustrated and remembered by his colleagues who each contribute with a special memory, story or fake book review, in order to thank John and to cherish the memories. A good philosopher, a kind person, a teacher, different aspects of his work are discussed.

In this article, we demystify the South African Defence Force’s 32 Battalion and de-exceptionalize the apartheid military by connecting it to other colonial military communities, and apartheid governance more broadly. Drawing on oral history, autoethnography, and archival documents, we demonstrate the highly unequal, yet mutual, reliance of white authorities and elite Black women in the haphazard and improvised nature of apartheid military rule. Most women arrived at the unit's base, Buffalo, as Angolan refugees, where white military authorities fixated on their domestic and family lives. We examine the practical workings of military rule by considering three nodes of social surveillance and control. Elite Black women, known as “block leaders,” served as intermediaries, actively participating in the mechanics of military rule while also using their position to advocate for their community. Finally, we consider the ingrained violent patriarchal nature of life in the community by highlighting the nature of women's precariousness and labor.

Weighted lottery proposals give guidance in rescue dilemma situations by balancing the demands of comparative and absolute fairness. While they do not advocate for saving the greater number outright, they are responsive to absolute fairness insofar as they show a certain sensitivity to the numbers involved. In this paper we investigate what criterion of absolute fairness we should demand weighted lotteries to fulfill. We do so by way of critically examining what is probably the most sophisticated weighted lottery on the market: Gerard Vong's Exclusive Composition-Sensitive (EXCS) lottery. We find that both the standard that seems most common in the debate, and a different standard Vong uses to criticize Jens Timmermann's Individualist Lottery are in contradiction to basic demands placed upon weighted lotteries and are therefore unsuitable as necessary conditions for absolute fairness. We instead propose a purely gradual understanding of absolute fairness.