Emanuela Ceva
Biographic Data
| ID | 1490135 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Emanuela Ceva |
| GIVEN NAMES | Emanuela |
| FAMILY NAME | Ceva |
| SIGNATURE | CEVA E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Geneva |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4422-7667 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 44 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Institutional Accountability
Institutional accountability is central to democratic governance, yet philosophical inquiry still lacks a conceptually refined and comprehensive map to appreciate its boundaries and defining features. This article offers such a map from a human‐centered view of institutional action. Institutions are not merely systems of rules and procedures; they are enacted through officeholders' interdependent and relatively discretionary conduct‐in‐role. Acco…
Endogenous institutional trustworthiness
Public debate and scholarly discussions about a crisis of institutional trust focus on an external perspective: declining citizen trust, indicating that institutions lose legitimacy. While important, this perspective does not capture a conceptually distinct and politically salient form of institutional dysfunction occurring inside institutions that can undercut their trustworthiness. We develop an internal perspective on institutional trustworthi…
What political theory can learn from conceptual engineering
Conceptual change is commonplace in political theory. Recent scholarship argues that improving a concept, or “engineering” it, can sharpen its normative and explanatory power. This article illustrates what political theory can learn from conceptual engineering (CE) by examining the evolution of “corruption” as a case study. Traditionally defined as the “use of entrusted power for private gain,” corruption has been revisited to capture broader ins…
The Pro ‐ Office Mindset . Anticorruption Beyond Legal Instruments
The authors declare no conflicts of interest
Democratic failures and the heuristic function of localized principled protest
Community-based opposition to large infrastructure projects, such as highways, rail lines, or energy facilities, exemplifies localized forms of protest. The paper clarifies when and how such forms of protest can enhance the democratic decision-making process to the extent that they highlight procedural failures alongside substantive ones. When this happens, these protests perform a heuristic communicative function for democracy and cannot, theref…
Why Voting Rights Matter
The article examines the meaning of migrants’ (dis)enfranchisement within democratic polities, focusing on ideas of political authority and agency derived from democratic theory. Building on the notion that democratic voting represents a mutual and second-personal exercise of authority, the article argues that the disenfranchisement of migrants signifies their exclusion from agential authoritative relationships in politics, and ultimately, from a…
Exploring Electoral Discrimination Through an Ethics of Office Accountability
The Inherent Tolerance of the Democratic Process
Recent attempts at making sense of toleration as an ideal of political morality have focused on how liberal democratic institutions generate political arrangements that protect people’s freedom to “live their life as they see fit.” We show how these views rely on a one-dimensional interpretation of the liberal democratic political project. In so doing, they underestimate an important “interactive” dimension. This dimension concerns what it means …
The interactive wrong of political corruption
In this response essay, Ceva and Ferretti reply to their critics and clarify some key aspects of their book. Specifically, the discussion starts by elaborating on the notion of an ethics of office accountability, explaining that the specification of institutional norms of officeholders behaviour is the result of practices of officeholders' interaction (including democratic practices) and reflection. The second theme is the responsibility for poli…
Institutional Operability
Institutional operability refers to the normative conditions governing the exercise of power of office that makes an institution work. Because institutional action occurs by the interrelated actions of the officeholders, a focus on institutional operability requires the analysis and assessment of the officeholders’ conduct in their institutional capacity. This article distinguishes two perspectives on operability: ‘outward’ and ‘inward.’ The outw…
La sfida della corruzione politica all’etica pubblica. Introduzione
The article presents political corruption as a problem of public ethics of institutions. It first explains the theory of institutional action that underlies the conception of political corruption as a deficit of “office accountability”. Having clarified the officeholders’ duties in their institutional capacity, it portrays political corruption as an “internal enemy” of public institutions. A discussion follows of the normative implications for an…
Automating anticorruption
The paper explores some normative challenges concerning the integration of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms into anticorruption in public institutions. The challenges emerge from the tensions between an approach treating ML algorithms as allies to an exclusively legalistic conception of anticorruption and an approach seeing them within an institutional ethics of office accountability. We explore two main challenges. One concerns the variable opac…
Failing Institutions, Whistle‐Blowing, and the Role of the News Media
The article discusses the normative grounds for recognising a watchdog role to the news media as concerns the dissemination of information about an institutional failure menacing a well‐ordered society. This is, for example, the case of the news media’s role in the diffusion of whistle‐blowers’ disclosures. We argue that many popular justifications for the watchdog role of the news media (as a ‘fourth estate’; a trustee of the people’s right to k…
Interactive Justice in Transitional Justice
This article develops a new dynamic framework for the normative evaluation of processes of transitional justice capable of integrating instrumental and noninstrumental justice‐based assessments grounded on concerns of “interactive justice.” Interactive justice is realized in or through institutional processes that treat people in ways appropriate to their status as institutional role occupants. Analyzing interactive justice in transitional justic…
Second‐personal authority and the practice of democracy1
What makes democracy a particular mode of social and political organization? We argue that the particularity of democracy consists in the logic that characterizes the form of authority this practice constitutes between its participants. This is a logic of mutuality and second-personality, which can be best understood by looking at the relations between democratic decision-makers as democratic voting primitively illustrates
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice at 24
This Editorial outlines recent developments in the Journal’s scope, mission and review policy. It also illustrates the range of topics addressed on the pages of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, which is now entering its 24th year
Political corruption the internal enemy of public institutions
This book discusses political corruption and anticorruption as a matter of public ethics. It develops a normative account of political corruption as a relationally wrongful practice that consists in an unaccountable use of the power of office. Most current discussions of what political corruption is and why it is wrong have concentrated either on explaining and assessing it as a matter of an individual's corrupt character and motives or as a dysf…
Upholding public institutions in the midst of conflicts
Scholars and international organizations engaged in institutional reconstruction converge in recognizing political corruption as a cause or a consequence of conflicts. Anticorruption is thus generally considered a centrepiece of institutional reconstruction programmes. A common approach to anticorruption within this context aims primarily to counter the negative political, social, and economic effects of political corruption, or implement legal a…
Justice et corruption politique
L’article présente le lancement d’alerte contre la corruption politique comme une composante fondamentale d’une éthique publique de l’anticorruption axée sur l’idée normative de « responsabilité de fonction ». La responsabilité de fonction indique la logique qui devrait réguler les interactions institutionnelles par lesquelles les pouvoirs de fonction doivent être exercés pour qu’une institution fonctionne bien. La corruption politique est l’util…
Teaching and Learning Guide for
Theories of whistleblowing
Whistleblowing" has entered the scholarly and the public debate as a way of describing the exposure by the member of an organization of episodes of corruption, fraud, or general abuses of power within the organization. We offer a critical survey of the main normative theories of whistleblowing in the current debate in political philosophy, with the illustrative aid of one of the epitomic figures of a whistleblower of our time: Edward Snowden. Aft…
The good of toleration
In this paper, I take issue with Peter Balint’s recent account of the value of toleration as an instrument for securing freedom-maximising outcomes in pluralistic societies. In particular, I question the extent to which the ideal of toleration can be entirely reduced to someone’s intentional withholding of negative interference whose value lies in the protection of individual negative freedoms. I argue that couching the value of toleration entire…
Political Corruption as a Relational Injustice
The corruption of public officials and institutions is generally regarded as wrong. But in what exactly does this form of corruption consist and what kind of wrong does it imply? Recent proponents of the “institutionalist approach” to political corruption have concentrated on those occasions when incentive structures distract institutions from their essential purpose and weaken public trust. The corruption of individual public officials has been …
Interactive justice
This piece provides an illustration of the main traits of the interactive dimension of justice; this is the idea that the terms of some human forms of interactions may be inherently valuable as they instantiate the just treatment owed to persons in virtue of their moral status as claim-makers. Interactive justice is presented as the guiding idea for developing just institutional responses to the presence of value conflict in politics because it g…
Personal Trust, Public Accountability, and the Justification of Whistleblowing
Theories of whistleblowing
Whistleblowing" has entered the scholarly and the public debate as a way of describing the exposure by the member of an organization of episodes of corruption, fraud, or general abuses of power within the organization. We offer a critical survey of the main normative theories of whistleblowing in the current debate in political philosophy, with the illustrative aid of one of the epitomic figures of a whistleblower of our time: Edward Snowden. Aft…
Second‐personal authority and the practice of democracy1
What makes democracy a particular mode of social and political organization? We argue that the particularity of democracy consists in the logic that characterizes the form of authority this practice constitutes between its participants. This is a logic of mutuality and second-personality, which can be best understood by looking at the relations between democratic decision-makers as democratic voting primitively illustrates
Political corruption, individual behaviour and the quality of institutions
Is the corrupt behaviour of public officials a politically relevant kind of wrong only when it causes the malfunctioning of institutions? We challenge recent institutionalist approaches to political corruption by showing a sense in which the individual corrupt behaviour of certain public officials is wrong not only as a breach of personal morality but in inherently politically salient terms. To show this sense, we focus on a specific instance of …
Personal Trust, Public Accountability, and the Justification of Whistleblowing
Political corruption
The corruption of public officials and institutions is generally regarded as wrong. But in what exactly does this form of corruption consist and what kind of wrong does it imply? This article aims to take stock of the current philosophical discussion of the different senses in which political corruption is generally wrong, beyond the specific negative legal, economic, and social costs it may happen to have in specific circumstances. Political cor…
Values, Diversity and the Justification of EU Institutions
Liberal theories of justice typically claim that political institutions should be justifiable to those who live under them – whatever their values. The more such values diverge, the greater the challenge of justifiability. Diversity of this kind becomes especially pronounced when the institutions in question are supranational. Focusing on the case of the European Union, this article aims to address a basic question: what kinds of values should in…
Plural Values and Heterogeneous Situations
This article aims to investigate the way in which a political theory of justice should respond to the endorsement of pluralism. After offering reasons in support of the necessity for such a theory to take pluralism seriously, an argument is put forward for its characterization in minimal and procedural terms. However, taking issue with the straightforward relationship of implication identified by a number of scholars between pluralism and procedu…
Just Procedures with Controversial Outcomes
Beyond legitimacy. Can proceduralism say anything relevant about justice
Whilst legitimacy is often thought to concern the processes through which coercive decisions are made in society, justice has been standardly viewed as a ‘substantial’ matter concerning the moral justification of the terms of social cooperation. Accordingly, theorization about procedures may seem appropriate for the former but not for the latter. To defend proceduralism as a relevant approach to justice, I distinguish three questions: (1) Who is …
Liberal Pluralism and Pluralist Liberalism
Plural Values and Heterogeneous Situations
This article aims to investigate the way in which a political theory of justice should respond to the endorsement of pluralism. After offering reasons in support of the necessity for such a theory to take pluralism seriously, an argument is put forward for its characterization in minimal and procedural terms. However, taking issue with the straightforward relationship of implication identified by a number of scholars between pluralism and procedu…
Just Procedures with Controversial Outcomes
Values, Diversity and the Justification of EU Institutions
Liberal theories of justice typically claim that political institutions should be justifiable to those who live under them – whatever their values. The more such values diverge, the greater the challenge of justifiability. Diversity of this kind becomes especially pronounced when the institutions in question are supranational. Focusing on the case of the European Union, this article aims to address a basic question: what kinds of values should in…
Just interactions in value conflicts
This article discusses a procedural, minimalist approach to justice in terms of fair hearing applicable to value conflicts at impasse in politics. This approach may be summarized in the Adversary Argumentation Principle (AAP): the idea that each side in a conflict should be heard. I engage with Stuart Hampshire’s efforts to justify the AAP and argue that those efforts have failed to provide normatively cogent foundations for it. I suggest derivin…
Beyond legitimacy. Can proceduralism say anything relevant about justice
Whilst legitimacy is often thought to concern the processes through which coercive decisions are made in society, justice has been standardly viewed as a ‘substantial’ matter concerning the moral justification of the terms of social cooperation. Accordingly, theorization about procedures may seem appropriate for the former but not for the latter. To defend proceduralism as a relevant approach to justice, I distinguish three questions: (1) Who is …
Introduction
That a polity should be, in a basic sense, legitimate and just is hardly a disputed stance among political theorists. More precisely, the task – commonly considered crucial to liberal political phi
Justice, Legitimacy, and Diversity
A Matter of Respect
In this article, we engage critically with the understanding of majority‐minority relations in a liberal democracy as relations of toleration. We make two main claims: first, that appeals to toleration are unable to capture the procedural problems concerning the unequal socio‐political participation of minorities, and, second, that they do not offer any critical tool to establish what judgements the majority is entitled to consider valid reasons …
Justice, Legitimacy, and Diversity
1. Introduction: Justice, Legitimacy and Diversity Emanuela Ceva and Enzo Rossi 2. Justification, choice and promise: three devices of the consent tradition in a diverse society Gerald Gaus 3. Political legitimacy, justice and consent John Horton 4. Justice, legitimacy and (normative) authority for political realists Enzo Rossi 5. Just politics Glen Newey 6. Beyond legitimacy. Can proceduralism say anything relevant about justice? Emanuela Ceva 7…
Liberal Democratic Institutions and the Damages of Political Corruption
Political Justification through Democratic Participation
On a proceduralist account of democracy, collective decisions derive their justification—at least in part—from the qualities of the process through which they have been made. To fulfill its justificatory function, this process should ensure that citizens have an equal right to political participation as a respectful response to their equal status as agents capable of selflegislation. How should democratic participation be understood if it is to o…
Political corruption, individual behaviour and the quality of institutions
Is the corrupt behaviour of public officials a politically relevant kind of wrong only when it causes the malfunctioning of institutions? We challenge recent institutionalist approaches to political corruption by showing a sense in which the individual corrupt behaviour of certain public officials is wrong not only as a breach of personal morality but in inherently politically salient terms. To show this sense, we focus on a specific instance of …
Political corruption
The corruption of public officials and institutions is generally regarded as wrong. But in what exactly does this form of corruption consist and what kind of wrong does it imply? This article aims to take stock of the current philosophical discussion of the different senses in which political corruption is generally wrong, beyond the specific negative legal, economic, and social costs it may happen to have in specific circumstances. Political cor…
Political Corruption as a Relational Injustice
The corruption of public officials and institutions is generally regarded as wrong. But in what exactly does this form of corruption consist and what kind of wrong does it imply? Recent proponents of the “institutionalist approach” to political corruption have concentrated on those occasions when incentive structures distract institutions from their essential purpose and weaken public trust. The corruption of individual public officials has been …
Interactive justice
This piece provides an illustration of the main traits of the interactive dimension of justice; this is the idea that the terms of some human forms of interactions may be inherently valuable as they instantiate the just treatment owed to persons in virtue of their moral status as claim-makers. Interactive justice is presented as the guiding idea for developing just institutional responses to the presence of value conflict in politics because it g…
Personal Trust, Public Accountability, and the Justification of Whistleblowing
Teaching & learning guide for political corruption
The good of toleration
In this paper, I take issue with Peter Balint’s recent account of the value of toleration as an instrument for securing freedom-maximising outcomes in pluralistic societies. In particular, I question the extent to which the ideal of toleration can be entirely reduced to someone’s intentional withholding of negative interference whose value lies in the protection of individual negative freedoms. I argue that couching the value of toleration entire…
Justice et corruption politique
L’article présente le lancement d’alerte contre la corruption politique comme une composante fondamentale d’une éthique publique de l’anticorruption axée sur l’idée normative de « responsabilité de fonction ». La responsabilité de fonction indique la logique qui devrait réguler les interactions institutionnelles par lesquelles les pouvoirs de fonction doivent être exercés pour qu’une institution fonctionne bien. La corruption politique est l’util…
Teaching and Learning Guide for
Theories of whistleblowing
Whistleblowing" has entered the scholarly and the public debate as a way of describing the exposure by the member of an organization of episodes of corruption, fraud, or general abuses of power within the organization. We offer a critical survey of the main normative theories of whistleblowing in the current debate in political philosophy, with the illustrative aid of one of the epitomic figures of a whistleblower of our time: Edward Snowden. Aft…
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice at 24
This Editorial outlines recent developments in the Journal’s scope, mission and review policy. It also illustrates the range of topics addressed on the pages of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, which is now entering its 24th year
Political corruption the internal enemy of public institutions
This book discusses political corruption and anticorruption as a matter of public ethics. It develops a normative account of political corruption as a relationally wrongful practice that consists in an unaccountable use of the power of office. Most current discussions of what political corruption is and why it is wrong have concentrated either on explaining and assessing it as a matter of an individual's corrupt character and motives or as a dysf…
Upholding public institutions in the midst of conflicts
Scholars and international organizations engaged in institutional reconstruction converge in recognizing political corruption as a cause or a consequence of conflicts. Anticorruption is thus generally considered a centrepiece of institutional reconstruction programmes. A common approach to anticorruption within this context aims primarily to counter the negative political, social, and economic effects of political corruption, or implement legal a…
Political science (35 works) · Law (33 works) · Politics (29 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Law and economics (25 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (25 works) · Law (20 works) · Philosophy (19 works) · Epistemology (16 works) · Philosophy (13 works)