Avia Pasternak – författare

States are often held responsible for their wrongdoings. States pay compensation for their unjust wars, as did Iraq in the aftermath of its invasion of Kuwait. States pay reparations for their historical wrongdoings, as did Chile to the victims of the Pinochet Regime, or Germany to Israel and other countries because of the Holocaust. Some argue that they should pay punitive damages for their international crimes as well. But state responsibility has a troubling feature: states are corporate agents, comprising flesh and blood citizens. When they turn to the public purse to finance their corporate liabilities, it is their citizens who pay the price. Even citizens who protested against their state's policies, did not know about them, or had no influence on policy makers end up sharing the burden. Why should these citizens pay for their state's wrongdoings, if they don't carry the blame? Responsible Citizens, Irresponsible States develops a fresh justification for citizens' duties to share the burden of their state's wrongdoings. This justification revolves around citizens' participation in their state: drawing on recent debates in the philosophy of collective action, Avia Pasternak shows that citizens are acting together in their state and that their state policies are the product of this collective action. Given this participation, citizens ought to share the burden of remedying harmful wrongs their state policies bring about. However, she also argues that not all citizens in all states are participating in their state. In many authoritarian states, citizens' participation in the state is highly restricted or coerced. Here, ordinary citizens do not share responsibility for their state policies and should not be forced to pay for them. These conclusions carry significant real-world implications for the way domestic international law holds various types of states, and their citizens, responsible for their wrongdoings. This work is essential for political theorists and philosophers grappling with citizen responsibility and duty.

In the summer of 2020, angry citizens took to the streets of Minneapolis after a recording of the murder of George Floyd went viral. They set fire to a police station, destroyed cars and shops, and clashed with police. In the summer of 2023, violent disorder broke out across France after police killed a seventeen year-old boy. In 2011, protests spread from London across England after police murdered a young Black man during a police arrest. State authorities were quick to denounce such uprisings as callous lawlessness. Were they right? Are violent protestors unscrupulous criminals, or might their revolt be justified despite its lawlessness and the heavy costs it imposes? In No Justice, No Peace, Avia Pasternak highlights the political nature of such protests, offering an in-depth examination of these pressing questions. Violent protestors, she argues, disrupt the peace in order to achieve justice, and to express their defiance of an unjust political order. Pasternak shows that even in liberal democracies, resorting to violence on behalf of these important goals can be necessary and proportionate. Combining empirical analysis of political oppression in contemporary states with a normative assessment of ordinary citizens' duty to resist oppression, Pasternak asserts that violence in protest against state injustice can be permissible, while also acknowledging its key limits.

Can violent resistance ever be justified as a means of protest? Brought to the fore of national consciousness by protest movements such as Black Lives Matter, as well as the January 6th storming of the U.S. Capitol, questions around the ethics of uncivil unrest urgently call for a wider scholarly examination and debate. In this volume, editors Candice Delmas and Avia Pasternak bring together a collection of cutting-edge perspectives on the ethics of uncivil protest and resistance. The contributions in this book challenge the dominant consensus in liberal politics and philosophy that the only permissible form of illegal protest in democratic states is civil disobedience. The contributors argue instead that the distinction between civil and uncivil protest is far less rigid than was previously thought. The book explores the meaning of civility and incivility, as well as related concepts like power, resistance, activism, and legitimacy. The contributors draw new conceptual distinctions and offer new and bold defences of uncivil forms of protest, from rioting to prison escapes and revolutionary movements. Overall, the volume establishes uncivil protest as an important new area of study and presents new questions and new answers to these complex challenges.