This thesis excavates Antonio Negri's theorization of the distinction between 'the material and formal constitution' (one which I distinguish throughout by way of capitalization as 'the material constitution' and 'the formal Constitution' or, in the shorthand contraction, 'c/Constitution'). In the first half of the thesis this is undertaken by way of a theoretical line of inquiry (Chapter I-III) and in the second as a series of concretized case studies drawn from contemporary Canadian constitutional historiography (Chapters IV-VI). The first chapter of this thesis (Chapter I) presents the October 1970 Front de libération de Québec (FLQ) Crisis as an event which contains within itself, not unlike similar events surrounding the kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro by the Brigate Rosse (BR) in 1978 Italy, the contours of a Negri-inspired entry into the subject matter. Chapter II offers a more situated analysis of some of Negri's key texts on the c/Constitution from the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties to further ground the conceptual experiment underlying the thesis. Chapter III examines how Negri's thought is developed and brought up to date in his English language collaboration with Michael Hardt. Here, a significant detour will be taken through the critical literature responsive to Empire (2000). This is done first in a contemporary Canadian analysis of the form of sovereignty corresponding to 'Empire' (Chapter IV); second in a Canadian inquiry into the form of collective subjectivity understood by the concept of 'the multitude' (Chapter V); and, third in an Indigenous Canadian consideration of possible alternatives to the Constitution of the State in the 'constitution of the common' (Chapter VI).

In a time of transitions, post-Rawlsian political philosophy is itself in transition, engaged in a methodological dispute regarding the relationship between political theory and changing social practices. This thesis enters this dispute through engaging with John Rawls’s philosophical project and the two leading but contrasting critiques of Rawls’s constructivist methodology. I first seek to rescue constructivism from G.A. Cohen’s critique of its fact-dependence, but secondly argue with Jürgen Habermas for a shift from constructivism to reconstructivism. Part I establishes a theoretical framework. I analyse competing paradigms of the relationship between normative principles and social practices and situate them in relation to the problem of self-grounding. This is the methodological problem of how, in accordance with a conception of freedom as autonomy, philosophy can find normative foundations within existing social practices. While Cohen rejects this problem in arguing for a choice between realism and utopianism, Rawls’s realistic utopianism and Habermas’s utopian realism are both driven by the problem of self-grounding. Part II defends Rawls’s constructivism against Cohen’s criticism of its restricted focus on the basic structure of society and fact-dependence. Part III analyses and critiques the development of Rawls’s project. It analyses Rawls’s concern with the problem of stability and critiques from a Habermasian perspective the approach to the problem of self-grounding this represents. Part IV argues that post-Rawlsian deliberative democrats who have sought to combine ideas from Rawls and Habermas also fail to adequately address this methodological problem. Part V engages with Habermas on his own terms. I first analyse Habermas’s reconstruction of the tension between facticity and validity in morality and politics. On this basis, I conclude that Habermas’s procedural reconstructivism allows him to more successfully address the problem of self-grounding than Rawls’s substantive constructivism, and assess the implications of this conclusion in theory and practice.

How do policymakers make decisions during financial market uncertainty? I develop a straightforward framework of policymaking in uncertainty. To overcome uncertainty, policymakers gather information using strategies discussed across a variety of political science disciplines. Policymakers need information to be able to make goal-oriented decisions. The information strategies actors choose are conditioned on the uncertainty problems they face. In turn, the information they receive impacts their policy decisions. My three empirical papers investigate what strategies are likely to be chosen in different types of uncertainty and how these choices affect policy decisions. My first paper, co-written with Mícheál O’Keeffe, develops a signaling game that policymakers play when they perceive data uncertainty, i.e. uncertainty about economic fundamentals. The model is supported empirically with analytic narratives of recent crises in Korea and Ireland. My following two papers deal with situations of increasing causal uncertainty, i.e. uncertainty about how actions cause outcomes. In both of these papers I use Multi-state Event History Analysis. I find that when there is high causal uncertainty policymakers tend to use learning strategies that start with international-level policy recommendations. These recommendations are then updated with the experiences of regional peers who have adopted them. Beyond creating and finding evidence for a parsimonious framework of decisionmaking in uncertainty, I make a number of other contributions to political economy. I extend the empirical tools researchers can use to understand decisions in complex choice environments. I provide evidence that making financial bureaucrats “independent" does not ensure positive outcomes. Specifically, it does not guarantee that financial bureaucrats will provide accurate information needed for effective policymaking.

This thesis investigates the relationship between the concepts of justice and responsibility. It is important to decide what the relationship is, because the details of a theory of justice will depend on it. Four possible views of the relationship are outlined, and arguments are canvassed for and against one of them, which I call naturalism. Naturalism is appealing because it offers to make theories of justice independent of troubling agency-implicating judgements. But I argue that naturalism is false, because political argument, including theories of justice, cannot do without such judgements. They play an essential role in determining which range of possible actions or arrangements is relevant to a political argument. The argument against naturalism is in two parts. The first part analyses the concept of benefit, underlining the feature of that concept which makes agency-implicating judgements necessary for those who employ it. This first anti-naturalist argument is directed to arguments in ideal theory, in Rawls's sense of that term. The second part of the argument against naturalism is directed to deliberative arguments. Naturalism is, I claim, a much more plausible doctrine if it is understood to apply to such arguments in particular. But I argue that it is nevertheless false, because it leaves us unable to account for some of the reasons persons have for resisting acquiescence. Discussion of the rationality of acquiescence leads into discussion of the nature of deliberation. I argue that a feature of some consequentialist models of deliberation, which I call the hard-nosed view, must be rejected. I end with a comparison of the resulting view with Kant's ethics, and some variant forms of consequentialism.

Issues relating to diversity and pluralism continue to permeate both social and political discourse. Of particular contemporary importance and relevance are those issues raised when the demands associated with forms of pluralism clash with those of the liberal state. These forms of pluralism can be divided into two subcategories: thin and thick pluralism. Thin pluralism refers to forms of pluralism that can be accommodated by the existing liberal framework, whereas thick pluralism challenges this liberal framework. This thesis is an examination of four forms of political association that may be able to accommodate and support the demands of pluralism. These four models are Rawls’ political liberalism, Crowder’s value pluralism, Rorty’s post-foundational liberalism, and Mouffe’s radical democratic project. What unites these four forms of political association is their capacity to avoid the exclusionary effects of a form of liberalism that I, following Gaus, refer to as Enlightenment liberalism. As the name suggests, this conception of liberalism is anchored in the Enlightenment, and in particular with what may be considered as the Enlightenment view of reason. As such, therefore, Enlightenment liberalism is both universal and perfectionist. In this context, I argue that Enlightenment liberalism is a species of what Berlin refers to as ‘moral monism’. These four forms of political association are ordered in such a way as to chart an intellectual trajectory. Rawls and Crowder are both situated firmly within the liberal tradition, whereas Rorty and Mouffe move beyond this, and embrace a form of post-foundational politics. It is in this trajectory that the second theme of this thesis emerges. This is centred on a paradox: in order to avoid the exclusionary effect of Enlightenment liberalism and embrace a form of political association that meets the demands of pluralism and diversity, the models examined still promote autonomy as the dominant virtue. Key words: liberalism, pluralism, the Enlightenment, Enlightenment liberalism, Romanticism, communitarianism, feminism, political liberalism, value pluralism, post-foundational liberalism, radical democracy, agonistic pluralism, Rawls, Crowder, Rorty, Laclau, Mouffe.

Contractarianism has a distinguished history and is one of the most influential schools of thought nowadays, yet there are only few general discussions about this school. The research question which intrigues me is whether contemporary contractarianism can provide a satisfactory normative justification for political principles. I argue that contractarianism, as a methodology, consists of three elements: a conception of practical reason, hypothetical contractors, and a hypothetical contract. Based on various conceptions of practical reason, different contractarian models can be developed. In this thesis, I examine three possible contractarian models: Hobbesian contractarianism (represented by David Gauthier), Kantian contractarianism (represented by T. M. Scanlon) and hybrid contractarianism (represented by John Rawls). I diagnose the shortcomings of these three existing models respectively. Hobbesian contractarianism assumes a conception of rationality, hence it conceives hypothetical contractors as individual utilitymaximizers, and the hypothetical contract as a mutually advantageous agreement. Kantian contractarianism assumes a conception of reasonableness, hence it conceives hypothetical contractors as moral persons who would behave in a way which could be justifiable to one another, and the hypothetical contract as an agreement that no one could reasonably reject. These two models fail since their conceptions of practical reason are too one-sided: the former overlooks reasonableness, whereas the latter overlooks rationality. Due to their one-sideness, these models can at best justify political principles that are general but not overriding. Hybrid contractarianism avoids this problem by assuming that hypothetical contractors were both rational and reasonable and proving that rationality and reasonableness would justify the same hypothetical contract. However, in order to show the congruence between rationality and reasonableness, this model inevitably assume substantial, controversial conceptions of practical reason. Hence, hybrid contractarianism can at best justify political principles that are overriding but not general. The failures of these three models show the limit of this methodology. No matter how contractarians construct their models, their models are subject to the fatal dilemma of choosing between generality and priority. While these two properties are necessary for political principles, this implies that contractarianism does not have the resources to offer a satisfactory normative justification for political principles.

This thesis aims to provide a frame work by which citizens in a democracy can become empowered and take ownership of their democratic institutions and the public sphere in which they discuss solving the problems that they face as a society. In short, this work will argue that politics is a craft, and that political actions are skills. If citizens learn to better practice this skill, then democracy will be better off. It will become better off since more citizens will feel more empowered to participate in the political process if they have their political skills well developed. As will be argued in the second chapter of this thesis, disempowerment can come about even in the face of an equal distribution of formal power and the absence of what Iris Marion Young has called internal exclusions, when citizens have a general feeling of inadequacy while participating. Another term for this psychological malaise that some participants feel is political mortification. Instituting politics as a craft entails creating school curriculums and adult education programs that have students develop their political skills, and that this can help create empowered citizens that want to engage in the political process.

The thesis aims to recover Hume’s connection with utilitarianism. It is argued that Hume is best interpreted as a conservative utilitarian, and this is intended to be a corrective to recent approaches in Hume scholarship. Nowadays the view that Hume is one of the founders of modern utilitarianism is undermined by two views: one sees Hume as a conventionalist contractarian who is the follower of Hobbes, another situates Hume in the Scottish Enlightenment and emphasises his resemblance to Hutcheson. The thesis does not deny that Hume’s political philosophy is influenced by these philosophers. Instead, it is because these views are regarded as providing an exhaustive account of Hume that the thesis aims to challenge them. What is crucial to contemporary Hume studies is a more balanced interpretation of Hume, and this is to be found in the traditional approach which sees Hume as a utilitarian. The thesis is original because, although it recovers a traditional approach, it relates it to contemporary debate by showing that the late 20th century concern to avoid seeing everything through the eyes of utilitarianism has obscured the genuine utilitarian elements of Hume’s political philosophy. The resurgence of interest in the problems of utilitarianism is part of the legacy of post-Rawlsian political theory. Philosophers the thesis criticises such as Gauthier and Barry both follow Rawls in marginalising the contribution of utilitarianism to liberalism. For scholars, the traditional interpretation of Hume should be rejected if Hume’s political philosophy is to be secured, thus they found it on the basis of social contract. The thesis challenges them on two grounds. First, it illustrates that more similarities are to be identified between Hume and Locke. Second, it argues that Hume is best interpreted as founding the school succeeded by Burke and Sidgwick, which has impact on contemporary utilitarianism and philosophical debates.

A burgeoning literature argues that the abundance of oil in developing countries strengthens autocratic rule and erodes democracy. However, extant studies either show the average cross-national correlation between oil and political regime or develop particularistic accounts that do not easily lend themselves to theorizing. Consequently, we know little of the causal mechanisms that potentially link oil wealth to undemocratic outcomes and the conditions that would help explain the ultimate, not average, effect of oil on political regime. This study develops a conditional theory of the “political resource curse.” It does so by undertaking a statistical reassessment of the relationship between oil wealth and political regime and a nuanced qualitative examination of a set of carefully selected cases in order to contribute to developing an adequate account of causal mechanisms that transmit and conditions that shape the relationship between oil abundance and autocracy. It draws on qualitative and quantitative evidence collected over eighteen months of fieldwork in oil-rich former Soviet countries of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, and the ‘counterfactual’ oil-poor Kyrgyzstan. Employing a theoretical framework that draws on insights from the rentier state theory, historical institutionalism, and rational choice institutionalism, I trace, compare, and contrast the processes that potentially link oil wealth to regime outcomes in these countries between 1989 and 2010. The findings strongly suggest that political regime differences can be better explained by the interaction of oil wealth with several structural and institutional variables rather than by oil abundance or another single factor alone. A thorough qualitative analysis of the post-Soviet cases shows that the causal mechanisms hypothesized in the ‘resource curse’ literature were neither necessarily present, nor uniform across these cases and throughout the post-Soviet period. This was because a particular interaction of exogenous variables and oil wealth affected the causal mechanisms differently, ultimately entailing different regime outcomes. The spread of alternative political elites, relative size of the ethnic minority with ties to a powerful kin state, and oil production geography were key exogenous factors that consistently interacted with oil in affecting the political regimes.

This thesis is an examination of the interplay between democratic norms and principles defining philosophical multiculturalism. Its most general aim is to find an answer to the following question concerning the possibility of democratic multiculturalism; do democracies adopt multicultural policies at the expense of their democratic credentials or are the two compatible with each other? The argument emerges from the interaction of two strong threads that run through the thesis. First, the thesis engages with three prevalent views on how democracies should react to the facts of disagreement – count heads, turn difference into a positive resource, and design procedures to maximize traditional values lying in the triangle of freedom, equality, and fraternity. In response, I offer a fourth view of democracy that combines minimalism with normativity. Normative minimalist democracy (NMD) holds that these three views are unable to appreciate the respective normative weights of dissensus and consensus, both of which have an ineliminable place in the modern democratic practices and their normative underpinnings. The second thread responds to another trichotomy – the three supposedly democratic challenges that philosophers of multiculturalism have brought up over the last two decades (as well as to the corresponding liberal-egalitarian counter-responses), which respectively draw attention to the importance of recognition, self-rule, and inclusion. With respect to these challenges and counter-challenges, the dissertation argues that both supporters and opponents of multiculturalism have democratic aspirations; and democratic response to multiculturalism should not be overshadowed by either unfounded optimism about the prospects of a substantive consensus fair to all previously marginalized minorities, nor by pessimism about the relapse into the preEnlightenment world due to the so-called return of parochialism. In between these two positions lies a more democratic response to multiculturalism – one that neither celebrates the role of culture as a unique vehicle of human fulfilment, nor dismisses it as a remnant of the past. The argument for seeking a middle ground arises in part out of frustration with the two extremes. Supplementing this critical aspect of the argument is a more constructive strand that explores what the individualist core of democracy implies with respect to political diversity in the form of disagreeing groups. Although NMD leaves room for a theory of groups substantially thinner than the one its multiculturalist critiques require because it is more clearly constrained by democracy’s individualist commitments, it is still thicker than the one standard liberal egalitarianism allows.