Research

Here are some current projects I’m working on:

Dissertation

I am working on a dissertation under the supervision of Kevin Vallier on public reason liberalism. In the first chapter, I bring into relief a tension between different desiderata of public reason. First, public reason liberals seek to respect diverse citizens. But, I argue that in both consensus and convergence models, they achieve this desiderata at the cost of progress, understood as a political value. By viewing (either implicitly or explicitly) public justification as static at some equilibrium point, these frameworks forsake further progress and thus contain a status quo bias. This status quo bias both fails to realize the political value of progress and, in the long run, undermines stability.

In my second chapter, I articulate a polycentric model of public reason which I aim to show can overcome the tension I lay out in the first chapter.

In the third chapter, I aim to show how such a framework can function when it comes to certain applied issues, such as the public justification of environmental policy.

Other projects

A paper on the compatibility of welfare-state capitalism and democratic equality

In this paper I argue that various social democratic arguments fail to vindicate welfare-state capitalism from a Rawlsian critique. Although Rawls’s description of welfare-state capitalism was too narrow, more egalitarian versions of it fail to realize the right kind of reciprocal relationship between citizens.

A paper on Deweyan Democracy

I defend Deweyan democracy against the claim that it is incompatible with the fact of reasonable pluralism. I argue that it balances the desiderata of democratic faith and respect for diverse citizens.