Research
I am interested both in theoretical and applied issues in political theory.
As to the former, I have special interests in the justification of normative principles, the methodology of constructivism, the role of moral intuitions in constructivism, and the legitimate scope of principles of justice (should they only apply to institutions or also to individual conduct? how much should they impact on our life plans?). Several of these interests overlap with aspects of G. A. Cohen's critique of John Rawls's work.
As to my interests in applied political theory, I have worked on the relationship between institutions and social norms, the role of institutions in maintaining justice, and practice-dependent approaches to justice. I am currently mainly interested in issues of global, international and transnational socio-economic justice, with a particular focus on the interdependence between domestic and international justice. In my current research, I analyze to what extent the current global order can be described as raising problems of global background justice between states and between other global actors interacting with one another. I argue that, under specific global circumstances, states no longer possess the degree of autonomy and the problem-solving capacities that are necessary to address social justice, unless those global circumstances are properly tackled by supranational institutions. Thus, I advocate the establishment of supranational regulatory institutions, with comptence over several socio-economic issues, for the sake of protecting state sovereignty itself. Examples of factors that potentially threaten "global background justice" are international tax competition, escalating trade tariffs, company relocations, and labour standards in countries with weak regulatory capacities.