AJPS — 2026-08-31
Original The territorial rights of wild animals: Justification
Pablo P. Castello
Abstract
Abstract Territorial rights (TR) have become foundational in normative political theory, addressing pressing questions about boundary drawing, governance, and resource use. Influential TR theorists Cara Nine and Margaret Moore justify humans’ TR based on the functional, social, and identity‐anchored normative significance of non‐substitutable places. However, these arguments treat animals as resources, excluding them from normative consideration and political standing. This article analyzes Nine and Moore's arguments to assess whether their justificatory logic applies to wild animals. Using mule deers as a case study, I test whether they have sufficiently weighty interests in occupancy, residency, resource use, and control to ground duties on humans and whether TR theories should continue to treat animals as mere natural resources.
AJPS — 2026-03-25
Original What is (de)politicization and what is wrong with it?
Dimitrios Halikias
Abstract
Abstract This article attempts to clarify the meaning of (de)politicization. Politicization sometimes refers to the inappropriate intrusion of partisan loyalties in nonpolitical social domains ( affective politicization ). Politicization can also constitute an ideal of civic agency and energy ( contestatory politicization ). In other contexts, politicization is meant as a kind of institutional corruption, in which government decisions are made for the sake of sectional advantage ( patrimonial politicization ). It can also refer to the imposition of controversial values judgments by ostensibly neutral institutions like the courts and bureaucracy ( values politicization ). These concepts raise divergent normative considerations of varying weightiness. This article motivates the potency of a fifth concept of politicization, which centers on the category of authoritative rule ( archic politicization ). It offers an ideal–typical contrast between political rule and depoliticized power, and it treats the distinct justifications for and objections to the substitution of depoliticized, impersonal reason for authoritative, political will.