CORPORATE PERSONALITY: A POLITICAL THEORY OF ASSOCIATION PHD THESIS Hans Kribbe Government Department London School of Economics and Political Science Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE UMI Number: U615608 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615608 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 T|4£S£S h / o i zoI ABSTRACT This thesis aims to rescue the tradition of corporation theory from the implications of ontological and ethical individualism, which form important tenets of mainstream political theory. My argument for corporate personality builds on the Lockean and Humean theory of personal identity over time. According to this theory, personal identity is not rooted in the identity of a deep and indivisible Self, but in the relatedness between temporally distinct psychological stages. A person is a group of desires, beliefs, memories, traits and other attitudes, tied together by a causal string. On the best interpretation of the Humean view, personal identity has normative consequences. We are bundles but the string that ties the stages of one life together is formed by the normativity of action-guiding principles and by the mutual recognition of certain associative obligations. This normative claim is often meant to buttress ethical individualism against those who deny that persons exist at all. However, this thesis demonstrates that the claim also reinvigorates the idea of corporate personality. The argument develops along two different strands. First, it is shown that corporate personality is a political theory. It is the theory that compares co-operative relations between people with the co-operative relations between the stages of one person. For contractualist theories, the core virtue is justice. For corporate theories, the highest virtue is integrity. Second, corporation theory makes a real contribution to the field of political theory, in particular in an area where contractualism has traditionally encountered problems, to wit, the continuity of the contract. This thesis argues corporation theory is much more successful in explaining our transgenerational obligations to the past and future. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This is the fruit of what have been five years of relative isolation and not a few debts. I would like to express my gratitude to all those on whom I relied or who lent me a helping hand. I should like to begin by thanking Paul Kelly, my supervisor, who pointed me in the right direction at the start and who helped me with sound advice on many occasions ever since. I also wish to acknowledge with thanks the financial support I received from the British Council and the Prince Berhard Fund. Many people took the trouble of reading and listening to my ideas at seminars, conferences and numerous other occasions. I have benefited enormously from their comments. I am particularly grateful to the participants of the Departmental Workshop in Political Theory at the London School of Economics, who have had to do so on several occasions. I count myself fortunate in having had the excellent company of many good friends and colleagues. I should mention Daniel Rubenson, Jurgen De Wispelaere and Cillian McBride in particular. One inevitably incurs many debts in life. But only few of them are impossible to repay. There are now three people to whom I owe such a debt. Two of them are my parents. The third is Beatriz. 3 INTRODUCTION. THREE JUSTIFICATIONS FOR CORPORATE PERSONALITY..............................................................................................................6 CHAPTER I. THE STRANGE RESURRECTION OF A LONG FORGOTTEN ANALOGY.....................................................................................................................29 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 29 1. The Psychological Principle of Personal Id e n t it y .............................................. 31 2. Person a nd St a t e..................................................................................................................... 38 3. The Extreme C la im................................................................................................................. 43 3.1 Prudence and Future Selves............................................................................................. 45 3.2 Desert, Responsibility, Obligation and Past Selves..................................................48 3.3 Justice and the Separateness of Persons.......................................................................49 C o n c lu sio n ...................................................................................................................................... 53 CHAPTER II. INTEGRITY.........................................................................................55 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................55 1. The M oderate C l a im..............................................................................................................58 2. The Practice Th eo ry..............................................................................................................60 3. Three Objections to the Practice Theory...................................................................66 3.1 Is Personal Identity Bifurcated?...................................................................................... 67 3.2 Rule and Indirect Utilitarian Justifications for Person-based Ethics................. 68 3.3 Pluralism and the Practice Theory..................................................................................70 4. From Identity to In tegrity.................................................................................................72 4.1. The Hierarchical Model ....................................................................................................73 4.2 The Reason Model............................................................................................................. 76 5. Integrity a n d M o r a lity.......................................................................................................81 6. Integrity a n d Time...................................................................................................................85 C o n c lu sio n ......................................................................................................................................93 CHAPTER III. CORPORATE PERSONALITY: A POLITICAL THEORY 95 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 95 1. The R eductionist Constraint ............................................................................................98 2. Sovereignty C onstraints .................................................................................................. 108 2.1 Conventionalism.................................................................................................................108 2.2 Contractualism...................................................................................................................110 2.3 Voluntarism and Obligations o f Shared Intention................................................... 116 C o n c lu sio n ....................................................................................................................................124 CHAPTER IV. THE PERSON OF THE STATE....................................................127 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 127 1. Problems of Sc a l e .................................................................................................................128 2. C ollective Intention: An Interpretive Approach................................................131 3. T w o U npromising So l u tio n s ............................................................................................ 135 3.1 Liberal Nationalism...........................................................................................................137 3.2 Liberal Impartiality...........................................................................................................141 4. Institutional Persons ..........................................................................................................142 4.1 The Social Acceptance o f Institutions.......................................................................... 146 4.2 Why Integrity Still Matters at the Institutional Level............................................. 149 4 4.3 Pluralism and Boundaries................................................................................ 155 C on c lu sio n .....................................................................................................................................159