Pierre‐étienne Vandamme
Biographic Data
| ID | 3589314 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Pierre‐étienne Vandamme |
| GIVEN NAMES | Pierre‐étienne |
| FAMILY NAME | Vandamme |
| SIGNATURE | VANDAMME P É |
| AFFILIATIONS | UCLouvain |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3139-3241 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 75 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Le principe de différence, le socialisme et l’écologie
Cet article examine dans quelle mesure John Rawls pourrait être considéré comme un allié intellectuel de l’écologie et du socialisme. Bien que son œuvre offre des ressources indispensables pour penser un éco-socialisme respectueux des droits fondamentaux et de l’égalité des chances, ainsi qu’une société post-croissance, le principe de différence, dans certaines de ses formulations, demeure ambivalent. La thèse de cet article est que ce principe r…
Should we regret the erosion of partisan loyalties? Partisanship and the ethics of voting
People who value political parties are often worried about the decline of partisanship, understood as the sustained commitment by citizens to a political party. From a normative perspective, however, one does not imply the other, and the reasons to value parties seem stronger than the reasons to value partisanship. Although there is value in the joint and sustained commitment to a political cause, partisans are less likely than other citizens to …
A revolution in representation? Insider perspectives on a failed democratic experiment
What (if anything) makes political parties indispensable
It is received wisdom in political science that parties are indispensable in a large-scale democracy. However, one might think that this belief reflects path dependency or a lack of imagination of alternative democratic systems. The recent theoretical development of new alternatives to traditional forms of representative government such as lottocracy or liquid democracy therefore offers an ideal context for questioning the assumption more thoroug…
Can democratic innovations reconcile citizens with representative institutions
Rethinking the imperative mandate: Toward a better balance between independence and accountability
Two of the founding principles of representative governments—the independence of elected representatives and popular accountability—are notoriously in tension. The more independent representatives are, the less citizens can exercise control over them. This article defends an institutional proposal—semi‐directed mandates—aiming to capture the main concerns of both advocates and critics of imperative mandates and to strike a better balance between …
Populism and democracy: A Reassessment
Populism comes in so many forms, both historically and in its contemporary manifestations, that we cannot assess its relationship with democratic institutions as if it were homogeneous. In this article, we reconnect with the history of the first movements that have called themselves populists and draw on an understanding of populism as an egalitarian impulse against oligarchic tendencies, centred on anti-elitism and the defense of a democratic co…
Belgium
Belgium is at the forefront of democratic innovations involving the use of random selection, with the sortition-based Permanent Citizens' Dialogue, institutionalized by the parliament of the German-speaking community, and the deliberative committees mixing elected politicians and randomly selected citizens in the parliaments of Brussels and Wallonia. This article traces the evolution of the public debates that led to this situation and explores t…
The Right to Expressive Voting Methods
Conflicts of Legitimacies in Representative Institutions: The Case of the French Citizen Convention for Climate
Conceived as an alternative form of democratic representation, the random selection of citizens for a political task comes in tension with the logic of electoral representation. The idea, carried by random selection, that anyone can be a good enough representative challenges the assumption that we need to choose the most competent among ourselves. And the fact that citizens’ assemblies are sometimes tasked to draft legislation may undermine the a…
La délibération échelonnée
Doit-on renoncer à l’idéal d’une grande délibération structurée incluant l’ensemble des membres d’une communauté politique ? Pas forcément. La délibération échelonnée, étudiée dans cet article, consiste à multiplier les délibérations par groupes de 20 personnes et à en faire remonter les conclusions provisoires, à la façon d’une pyramide, par le biais de représentant·es des délibérations antérieures. Étant donné le caractère exponentiel de la réd…
An egalitarian fortress? Global distributive justice and the EU
This article offers an original political theory perspective on debates about EU integration and EU justice by discussing possible tensions with the demands of global justice. In particular, it asks whether global egalitarians can consistently argue for further European integration and for an egalitarian EU while maintaining that the scope of egalitarian justice should be global. After highlighting several tensions between EU equality and EU inte…
The green case for a randomly selected chamber
Trois modèles de revenu de base
Parler du revenu de base (revenu universel, allocation universelle) au singulier n’a pas beaucoup de sens. Évaluer une telle proposition dans l’abstraction, sans préciser de quel modèle de revenu de base on parle, encore moins. Il s’agit en effet d’un instrument pouvant être mis au service d’une multitude de causes et aux effets très variés selon le projet politique présidant à son implémentation. Cet article propose pour cette raison de distingu…
Sortition and consciousness of injustice
Cet article examine dans quelle mesure le tirage au sort de représentants politiques pourrait être un vecteur de justice sociale. En raison de sa capacité à amener à des postes de pouvoir des représentants de groupes désavantagés, la réponse semble a priori positive. Elle présuppose toutefois la capacité des représentants tirés au sort issus de ces groupes à agir dans le meilleur intérêt du groupe – et donc qu’ils aient conscience des injustices …
Selecting Constitutional Judges Randomly
This article discusses from the perspective of democratic theory an innovative proposal for the selection of constitutional, supreme court, or federal judges that aims at combining the values of expertise and political independence. It consists in combining a certification process – selecting a pool of properly qualified candidates – with a random selection among this pool. We argue that such selection procedure would better respect the separatio…
Le pouvoir de révoquer les élus
Can the Recall Improve Electoral Representation
Empirical studies reveal many citizens’ unwillingness to get rid of representative democracy. A great number of them, however, distrust their representatives and would want representation to be improved, for example by giving citizens more control over their representatives. One possible mechanism of control is the recall – the possibility to remove elected representatives from office through a vote before the end of their term. Although this dem…
What’s wrong with an epistocratic council
Epistemic justifications of democracy affirm the comparative quality of democracies’ decisions. The challenge faced by those who endorse such views is to explain why we should prefer standard democratic institutions to some sort of epistocracy or rule of the wisest. This article takes up this challenge by assessing the epistemic potential of an epistocratic council, as imagined by Jason Brennan. Members of such council would be selected through c…
La gauche face au défi migratoire
Prolétaires de tous les pays, unissez-vous ! ». Aujourd’hui, la conclusion du Manifeste du parti communiste fait figure de vœu pieux. À l’heure où les partis xénophobes gagnent du terrain dans presque toutes les démocraties, séduisant largement (mais pas uniquement) un électorat populaire autrefois acquis à la gauche, on a beaucoup de mal à imaginer l’union sacrée des travailleurs du monde. Il n’est pourtant pas dit que cette exhortation ait perd…
Why not More Equality? Sufficientarianism and Inequalities above the Threshold
For people starting from a presumption in favor of equality, the very idea of a sufficiency threshold where the demands of justice would stop because everyone has enough is puzzling. However, Liam Shields, offers an account of sufficiency that has the potential to reconcile these egalitarians with the principle of sufficiency. This comes from his endorsement of what he calls "the shift thesis", stating roughly that there is a discontinuity in the…
Indirect cosmopolitan education: On the contribution of national education to attitudes towards foreigners
Many rich countries are witnessing the rise of xenophobic political parties. The opposition to immigration and global redistributive policies is high. How can we pursue global justice in such non-ideal circumstances? Whatever the way we want to pursue global justice, it seems that a change in the political ethos of citizens from rich countries will be necessary. They must come to internalize some genuine concern for foreigners and relativize nati…
Equality, value pluralism and relevance: Is luck egalitarianism in one way good, but not all things considered
Some luck egalitarians argue that justice is just one value among others and is thus not necessarily what we should strive for in order to make the world better. Yet, by focusing on only one dimension of what matters – luck equality – it proves very difficult to draw political implications in cases where several values are in tension. We believe that normative political philosophy must have the ambitionto guide political action. Hence, in this pa…
Voting secrecy and the right to justification
While we want voters to discuss collectively, exchange views and perspectives, justify their positions, consider all interests impartially, we let them perform the crucial action of voting alone, in the secrecy of the voting booth. This paper critically considers the reasons why every contemporary democracy uses secret ballots in general elections. It then looks for alternatives which would better combine the respective benefits of secrecy and pu…
Le tirage au sort est-il compatible avec l'élection
De nombreux travaux se sont récemment penchés sur les bénéfices d'une réintroduction du tirage au sort en politique, le plus souvent envisagé comme complément plutôt que comme alternative aux élections. Cet article vise deux objectifs. Premièrement, mettre en évidence les propriétés et vertus de ces deux modes de sélection qui les rendent a priori complémentaires plutôt que rivaux. Deuxièmement, interroger leur compatibilité en soulignant la riva…
Intercameral Relations in a Bicameral Elected and Sortition Legislature
The idea of a hybrid bicameral system combining election and sortition is investigated. More precisely, the article imagines how an elected and a sortition chamber would interact, taking into account their public perception and their competing legitimacies. The article draws on a survey of a representative sample of the Belgian population and Belgian members of parliament assessing their views about sortition in political representation. Findings…
Voting secrecy and the right to justification
While we want voters to discuss collectively, exchange views and perspectives, justify their positions, consider all interests impartially, we let them perform the crucial action of voting alone, in the secrecy of the voting booth. This paper critically considers the reasons why every contemporary democracy uses secret ballots in general elections. It then looks for alternatives which would better combine the respective benefits of secrecy and pu…
Le tirage au sort est-il compatible avec l'élection
De nombreux travaux se sont récemment penchés sur les bénéfices d'une réintroduction du tirage au sort en politique, le plus souvent envisagé comme complément plutôt que comme alternative aux élections. Cet article vise deux objectifs. Premièrement, mettre en évidence les propriétés et vertus de ces deux modes de sélection qui les rendent a priori complémentaires plutôt que rivaux. Deuxièmement, interroger leur compatibilité en soulignant la riva…
Rethinking the imperative mandate: Toward a better balance between independence and accountability
Two of the founding principles of representative governments—the independence of elected representatives and popular accountability—are notoriously in tension. The more independent representatives are, the less citizens can exercise control over them. This article defends an institutional proposal—semi‐directed mandates—aiming to capture the main concerns of both advocates and critics of imperative mandates and to strike a better balance between …
Populism and democracy: A Reassessment
Populism comes in so many forms, both historically and in its contemporary manifestations, that we cannot assess its relationship with democratic institutions as if it were homogeneous. In this article, we reconnect with the history of the first movements that have called themselves populists and draw on an understanding of populism as an egalitarian impulse against oligarchic tendencies, centred on anti-elitism and the defense of a democratic co…
Conflicts of Legitimacies in Representative Institutions: The Case of the French Citizen Convention for Climate
Conceived as an alternative form of democratic representation, the random selection of citizens for a political task comes in tension with the logic of electoral representation. The idea, carried by random selection, that anyone can be a good enough representative challenges the assumption that we need to choose the most competent among ourselves. And the fact that citizens’ assemblies are sometimes tasked to draft legislation may undermine the a…
Can the Recall Improve Electoral Representation
Empirical studies reveal many citizens’ unwillingness to get rid of representative democracy. A great number of them, however, distrust their representatives and would want representation to be improved, for example by giving citizens more control over their representatives. One possible mechanism of control is the recall – the possibility to remove elected representatives from office through a vote before the end of their term. Although this dem…
What’s wrong with an epistocratic council
Epistemic justifications of democracy affirm the comparative quality of democracies’ decisions. The challenge faced by those who endorse such views is to explain why we should prefer standard democratic institutions to some sort of epistocracy or rule of the wisest. This article takes up this challenge by assessing the epistemic potential of an epistocratic council, as imagined by Jason Brennan. Members of such council would be selected through c…
What (if anything) makes political parties indispensable
It is received wisdom in political science that parties are indispensable in a large-scale democracy. However, one might think that this belief reflects path dependency or a lack of imagination of alternative democratic systems. The recent theoretical development of new alternatives to traditional forms of representative government such as lottocracy or liquid democracy therefore offers an ideal context for questioning the assumption more thoroug…
The green case for a randomly selected chamber
Trois modèles de revenu de base
Parler du revenu de base (revenu universel, allocation universelle) au singulier n’a pas beaucoup de sens. Évaluer une telle proposition dans l’abstraction, sans préciser de quel modèle de revenu de base on parle, encore moins. Il s’agit en effet d’un instrument pouvant être mis au service d’une multitude de causes et aux effets très variés selon le projet politique présidant à son implémentation. Cet article propose pour cette raison de distingu…
Politics against Domination
Who is in favour of domination? Surely some people have a strong interest in preserving it, but as this is not publicly confessable and people enjoy picturing themselves as moral, everyone will officially support a non-domination programme. What is more, Ian Shapiro suggests, in circumstances where ‘you cannot be confident of your ability to dominate others’, it is in your interest ‘to create a world that no one can dominate’ (pp. 5 and 6). These…
Can democratic innovations reconcile citizens with representative institutions
An egalitarian fortress? Global distributive justice and the EU
This article offers an original political theory perspective on debates about EU integration and EU justice by discussing possible tensions with the demands of global justice. In particular, it asks whether global egalitarians can consistently argue for further European integration and for an egalitarian EU while maintaining that the scope of egalitarian justice should be global. After highlighting several tensions between EU equality and EU inte…
Sortition and consciousness of injustice
Cet article examine dans quelle mesure le tirage au sort de représentants politiques pourrait être un vecteur de justice sociale. En raison de sa capacité à amener à des postes de pouvoir des représentants de groupes désavantagés, la réponse semble a priori positive. Elle présuppose toutefois la capacité des représentants tirés au sort issus de ces groupes à agir dans le meilleur intérêt du groupe – et donc qu’ils aient conscience des injustices …
Selecting Constitutional Judges Randomly
This article discusses from the perspective of democratic theory an innovative proposal for the selection of constitutional, supreme court, or federal judges that aims at combining the values of expertise and political independence. It consists in combining a certification process – selecting a pool of properly qualified candidates – with a random selection among this pool. We argue that such selection procedure would better respect the separatio…
Le pouvoir de révoquer les élus
Indirect cosmopolitan education: On the contribution of national education to attitudes towards foreigners
Many rich countries are witnessing the rise of xenophobic political parties. The opposition to immigration and global redistributive policies is high. How can we pursue global justice in such non-ideal circumstances? Whatever the way we want to pursue global justice, it seems that a change in the political ethos of citizens from rich countries will be necessary. They must come to internalize some genuine concern for foreigners and relativize nati…
Equality, value pluralism and relevance: Is luck egalitarianism in one way good, but not all things considered
Some luck egalitarians argue that justice is just one value among others and is thus not necessarily what we should strive for in order to make the world better. Yet, by focusing on only one dimension of what matters – luck equality – it proves very difficult to draw political implications in cases where several values are in tension. We believe that normative political philosophy must have the ambitionto guide political action. Hence, in this pa…
Prairat Eirick. La morale du professeur: Paris : PUF, 2013, 270 p
Le dernier ouvrage du spécialiste des sciences de l’éducation Eirick Prairat interroge l’attitude morale qui doit guider l’agir enseignant. Non pas, donc, les contenus moraux qu’un professeur doit transmettre – comportement qu’on essaye désormais d’éviter –, mais les principes d’action qu’il doit mobiliser afin d’être un professeur juste. Pour ce faire, l’auteur prend soin d’inscrire sa réflexion dans le contexte contemporain d’une École balançan…
Quels fondements philosophiques pour l’enseignement de la morale laïque ? Pour une éducation au décentrement
Vincent Peillon, ministre de l’Éducation nationale, a suggéré à la rentrée 2012 l’introduction d’un cours de morale laïque à l’école, suscitant les réactions les plus diverses. Cet article examine à la fois la plausibilité d’une éducation morale respectant les exigences de neutralité et de laïcité de l’État et la désirabilité d’un tel enseignement. Distinguant des compréhensions conventionnelle et postconventionnelle de la morale, il conclut à la…
Politics against Domination
Who is in favour of domination? Surely some people have a strong interest in preserving it, but as this is not publicly confessable and people enjoy picturing themselves as moral, everyone will officially support a non-domination programme. What is more, Ian Shapiro suggests, in circumstances where ‘you cannot be confident of your ability to dominate others’, it is in your interest ‘to create a world that no one can dominate’ (pp. 5 and 6). These…
A Randomly Selected Chamber: Promises and Challenges
This paper explores the idea of a randomly selected chamber of representatives (RSC) through an appreciation of the promises it offers and the challenges it would face. We identify two main promises: a RSC could offset the aristocratic character of elections, thereby increasing the legitimacy of the political system; and it could increase democracy’s epistemic potential, thanks to gains in terms of diversity, deliberations, humility, and long-ter…
Why not More Equality? Sufficientarianism and Inequalities above the Threshold
For people starting from a presumption in favor of equality, the very idea of a sufficiency threshold where the demands of justice would stop because everyone has enough is puzzling. However, Liam Shields, offers an account of sufficiency that has the potential to reconcile these egalitarians with the principle of sufficiency. This comes from his endorsement of what he calls "the shift thesis", stating roughly that there is a discontinuity in the…
Indirect cosmopolitan education: On the contribution of national education to attitudes towards foreigners
Many rich countries are witnessing the rise of xenophobic political parties. The opposition to immigration and global redistributive policies is high. How can we pursue global justice in such non-ideal circumstances? Whatever the way we want to pursue global justice, it seems that a change in the political ethos of citizens from rich countries will be necessary. They must come to internalize some genuine concern for foreigners and relativize nati…
Equality, value pluralism and relevance: Is luck egalitarianism in one way good, but not all things considered
Some luck egalitarians argue that justice is just one value among others and is thus not necessarily what we should strive for in order to make the world better. Yet, by focusing on only one dimension of what matters – luck equality – it proves very difficult to draw political implications in cases where several values are in tension. We believe that normative political philosophy must have the ambitionto guide political action. Hence, in this pa…
Voting secrecy and the right to justification
While we want voters to discuss collectively, exchange views and perspectives, justify their positions, consider all interests impartially, we let them perform the crucial action of voting alone, in the secrecy of the voting booth. This paper critically considers the reasons why every contemporary democracy uses secret ballots in general elections. It then looks for alternatives which would better combine the respective benefits of secrecy and pu…
Le tirage au sort est-il compatible avec l'élection
De nombreux travaux se sont récemment penchés sur les bénéfices d'une réintroduction du tirage au sort en politique, le plus souvent envisagé comme complément plutôt que comme alternative aux élections. Cet article vise deux objectifs. Premièrement, mettre en évidence les propriétés et vertus de ces deux modes de sélection qui les rendent a priori complémentaires plutôt que rivaux. Deuxièmement, interroger leur compatibilité en soulignant la riva…
Intercameral Relations in a Bicameral Elected and Sortition Legislature
The idea of a hybrid bicameral system combining election and sortition is investigated. More precisely, the article imagines how an elected and a sortition chamber would interact, taking into account their public perception and their competing legitimacies. The article draws on a survey of a representative sample of the Belgian population and Belgian members of parliament assessing their views about sortition in political representation. Findings…
La gauche face au défi migratoire
Prolétaires de tous les pays, unissez-vous ! ». Aujourd’hui, la conclusion du Manifeste du parti communiste fait figure de vœu pieux. À l’heure où les partis xénophobes gagnent du terrain dans presque toutes les démocraties, séduisant largement (mais pas uniquement) un électorat populaire autrefois acquis à la gauche, on a beaucoup de mal à imaginer l’union sacrée des travailleurs du monde. Il n’est pourtant pas dit que cette exhortation ait perd…
Can the Recall Improve Electoral Representation
Empirical studies reveal many citizens’ unwillingness to get rid of representative democracy. A great number of them, however, distrust their representatives and would want representation to be improved, for example by giving citizens more control over their representatives. One possible mechanism of control is the recall – the possibility to remove elected representatives from office through a vote before the end of their term. Although this dem…
What’s wrong with an epistocratic council
Epistemic justifications of democracy affirm the comparative quality of democracies’ decisions. The challenge faced by those who endorse such views is to explain why we should prefer standard democratic institutions to some sort of epistocracy or rule of the wisest. This article takes up this challenge by assessing the epistemic potential of an epistocratic council, as imagined by Jason Brennan. Members of such council would be selected through c…
Trois modèles de revenu de base
Parler du revenu de base (revenu universel, allocation universelle) au singulier n’a pas beaucoup de sens. Évaluer une telle proposition dans l’abstraction, sans préciser de quel modèle de revenu de base on parle, encore moins. Il s’agit en effet d’un instrument pouvant être mis au service d’une multitude de causes et aux effets très variés selon le projet politique présidant à son implémentation. Cet article propose pour cette raison de distingu…
Sortition and consciousness of injustice
Cet article examine dans quelle mesure le tirage au sort de représentants politiques pourrait être un vecteur de justice sociale. En raison de sa capacité à amener à des postes de pouvoir des représentants de groupes désavantagés, la réponse semble a priori positive. Elle présuppose toutefois la capacité des représentants tirés au sort issus de ces groupes à agir dans le meilleur intérêt du groupe – et donc qu’ils aient conscience des injustices …
Selecting Constitutional Judges Randomly
This article discusses from the perspective of democratic theory an innovative proposal for the selection of constitutional, supreme court, or federal judges that aims at combining the values of expertise and political independence. It consists in combining a certification process – selecting a pool of properly qualified candidates – with a random selection among this pool. We argue that such selection procedure would better respect the separatio…
Le pouvoir de révoquer les élus
La délibération échelonnée
Doit-on renoncer à l’idéal d’une grande délibération structurée incluant l’ensemble des membres d’une communauté politique ? Pas forcément. La délibération échelonnée, étudiée dans cet article, consiste à multiplier les délibérations par groupes de 20 personnes et à en faire remonter les conclusions provisoires, à la façon d’une pyramide, par le biais de représentant·es des délibérations antérieures. Étant donné le caractère exponentiel de la réd…
An egalitarian fortress? Global distributive justice and the EU
This article offers an original political theory perspective on debates about EU integration and EU justice by discussing possible tensions with the demands of global justice. In particular, it asks whether global egalitarians can consistently argue for further European integration and for an egalitarian EU while maintaining that the scope of egalitarian justice should be global. After highlighting several tensions between EU equality and EU inte…
The green case for a randomly selected chamber
The Right to Expressive Voting Methods
Conflicts of Legitimacies in Representative Institutions: The Case of the French Citizen Convention for Climate
Conceived as an alternative form of democratic representation, the random selection of citizens for a political task comes in tension with the logic of electoral representation. The idea, carried by random selection, that anyone can be a good enough representative challenges the assumption that we need to choose the most competent among ourselves. And the fact that citizens’ assemblies are sometimes tasked to draft legislation may undermine the a…
Can democratic innovations reconcile citizens with representative institutions
Rethinking the imperative mandate: Toward a better balance between independence and accountability
Two of the founding principles of representative governments—the independence of elected representatives and popular accountability—are notoriously in tension. The more independent representatives are, the less citizens can exercise control over them. This article defends an institutional proposal—semi‐directed mandates—aiming to capture the main concerns of both advocates and critics of imperative mandates and to strike a better balance between …
Populism and democracy: A Reassessment
Populism comes in so many forms, both historically and in its contemporary manifestations, that we cannot assess its relationship with democratic institutions as if it were homogeneous. In this article, we reconnect with the history of the first movements that have called themselves populists and draw on an understanding of populism as an egalitarian impulse against oligarchic tendencies, centred on anti-elitism and the defense of a democratic co…
Political science (23 works) · Politics (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Law and economics (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Democracy (10 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (9 works) · Economics (8 works)