About

Allen E. Buchanan was the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Duke University, as well as Investigator at the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy (Duke) and Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre. He is currently a Laureate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, where he is part of the Department of Philosophy in the Social Sciences. His professional roles include a focus on ethics and political philosophy. His background includes distinguished positions at Duke University and collaborations with research institutes related to genome sciences and policy. His work involves contributions to philosophical discussions in ethics and political philosophy, and he is engaged in academic activities at the University of Arizona.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Business
• Medicine
• Public relations
• Philosophy
• Operations research
• Epistemology
• Social psychology
• Management science
• Economics
• Psychology
• Law
• Virology
• Mathematics
• Nursing
• Medical emergency

Selected publications

• Responsibility for Ideological Beliefs

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-06-03

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter answers three questions in the affirmative: (1) Can individuals be morally blameworthy for their ideological beliefs? (2) Can individuals or organizations be morally blameworthy for forming a social-epistemic environment that creates or exacerbates the risk that individuals will come to have and sustain ideological beliefs that are either intrinsically bad (e.g., racist beliefs) or very likely to cause morally bad behavior? (3) When individuals or organizations culpably create such a social-epistemic environment, does their blameworthiness for doing so reduce or cancel the blameworthiness of those whose beliefs are negatively influenced by that environment? This chapter argues that one is blameworthy for believing something if believing it is either intrinsically bad or morally risky and one is responsible for believing it. The analysis operates with a relatively uncontroversial conception of ideology that is commonly employed by social scientists. An ideology is a set of beliefs, attitudes, and belief-management mechanisms that provide a shared evaluative map of the social world.

  PublisherDOI

• <i>The State</i>

  The Philosophical Review · 2025-07-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This is an exceedingly rich book. I know of no one who could have written it but Philip Pettit, a thinker of astonishing breadth and erudition. It contains nuanced accounts of individual and group agency, of the emergence of norms through conventions, of the transition from norms to laws, and of the development of secondary rules in legal systems, as well as illuminating excursions into the history of systematic thinking about the state, with insightful comments on the work of a number of ancient and modern theorists. To take only one example, Pettit provides a probing analysis of the Absolute Sovereigntist doctrines of Bodin, Hobbes, and Rousseau, arguing that what is correct in their thinking, the case for sovereignty, does not support their rejection of mixed constitutions. He also advances a plausible argument for the bold claim that the state itself (not the people) is the sovereign.None of this is history of political thought for its own sake. It is all supposed to be in the service of Pettit’s main two-pronged project in this book: developing a theory of the function of the state and showing that the state’s ability to perform this function makes the state “in principle” an effective agent of justice. He employs a genealogical method to identify the function of the state, constructing a hypothetical (indeed extremely counterfactual) account of how the state could emerge, not from deliberate efforts at state-making but through an unplanned process in which various agents pursue their own interests in adjusting to changing circumstances over time. According to Pettit, the function of the state—specifically, the modern state—“is that of individually assuring its citizens against one another under a regime of law that it safeguards against internal and external dangers” (26). He says that the performance of this function entails the satisfaction of “a subset of the demands of justice, but not full justice” (9). So the central thesis of the book is that the state can “in principle” serve as effective agent in satisfying at least some of the demands of justice that exceed those satisfied by its performance of the defining function of states.Both Pettit’s reliance on the concept of a function and the counterfactual genealogy are questionable. If the goal is to understand whether states have the capacity to be agents of justice, one need only discern what their capacities actually are and determine whether, if exercised appropriately, they can contribute to the achievement of justice. If the ultimate aim is to achieve progress toward full justice, then what matters is the capacities of states as they are or as they might be, given feasible modifications—and whether and if so under what conditions those capacities will be exercised in the pursuit of justice. Doing that does not require employment of a distinctive functionalist explanation. We may use “the functions of the state” interchangeably with “the characteristic activities of the state” in explanations that are in no significant sense distinctively functional. We can try to determine whether the state’s engaging in its characteristic activities is compatible with it promoting justice without invoking a distinctive “functionalist explanation.”Petit thinks that the fact that states have a function explains their resilience—the fact that they can persist in the face of changing, unpredictable challenges. Yet one can explain resilience without employing the concept of a function. Instead, one can show how the needs and interests that are served by the state are so important in human life that states will continue to receive sufficient support from individuals and groups even in adverse circumstances. Saying that it is the function of the state to satisfy important and pervasive needs and interests adds nothing to the statement that the state is resilient because it has the capacity to meet emerging challenges in ways that enable it to continue to satisfy them.Petit might reply that without identifying the function, we have no principled way of determining whether an institution is a state. It appears, however, that we can, at least provisionally, identify as states those institutions that maintain or have maintained control over a bounded territory in which they impose laws and that make plausible claims to being recognized as juridical equals in and primary members of the international system, entitled to enter into treaties, engage in diplomacy, and so on.Nor is it at all clear why a counterfactual history of the emergence of states is relevant for determining whether states can be effective agents of justice. How states actually came about might be relevant if they exhibit path-dependency—that is, if events in the history of their emergence, especially events that occur early on, constrain their current capacities or the ways in which those capacities will in fact be exercised. What matters is what they are like, where this may be in part due to how they actually came about, not the fact that something like what they are like could have emerged from a history that is radically different from their actual history. Most states came about in part through deliberate, intentional efforts to gain and consolidate power. The kinds of states that have resulted from revolutions, including the French, Bolshevik, and Chinese revolutions, have been stronger and more centralized than their predecessors and have also been authoritarian (Skocpol 1979: 285). That this is so indicates that how states actually come about (not how they might have come about) is relevant to determining whether they will act as effective agents of justice.Just how limited Pettit’s central thesis really is bears emphasis: his claim is that “in principle” the state can be an effective agent for achieving justice. This is where Pettit’s lack of attention to Marx in his historical excursions is quite revealing. Contrary to Marx, Pettit proceeds as if the state is autonomous, exogeneous to society. He has much to say about how key aspects of the economy, including markets and property rights, depend on state action, but he never takes seriously the fact that vast concentrations of wealth and correspondingly of power in private hands constrain what states actually do, limiting their ability to serve as agents of justice. For those who care about justice, the fact that “in principle” states can advance justice—that as states they have the capacity to do so—is of little consolation if there is good reason to believe that they will not exercise the capacity in that way in the sort of society we actually live in and are likely to continue to live in. In brief, Pettit ignores what may be Marx’s single most important insight—namely, that the state is not exogenous to society.It will not do for Petit to reply that the gap between “in principle” and “in our world” will be addressed in the companion volume on justice. It should have been addressed in The State; otherwise, the project of that book is of very limited value. If Pettit intends to address the Marxian point in the companion volume on justice that he is now writing, he should have at least acknowledged in the present work the fact that in our world states are not autonomous, if only to be frank about just how limited the significance of his main thesis is.If Pettit addresses the Marxist point that the inequalities that capitalism generates constrain the state as an agent of justice, he might try to show that certain institutional innovations—for example, constraints on lobbying and campaign contributions—could lessen the distorting effects on state behavior of the vast inequalities of wealth that exist in countries like the United States. My surmise, however, is that no such measures will be adequate. If I am right about that, then the companion volume should consider a rather depressing possibility: if we want to enjoy the prosperity that the unrivaled productivity of advanced capitalism provides, we must accept the fact that capitalism significantly constrains progress toward justice. We cannot have both capitalism’s high levels of welfare and full justice. Unless we are willing to try to scrap the capitalist system, we must face up to a justice/welfare trade-off.Another surprising omission is the absence of a discussion of state legitimacy—surprising since one would think that a book on the state would provide an account of what a state must be like to be legitimate. The terms legitimate and legitimacy do not occur in the book’s index. There is one rather elusive passage where one of these terms occurs, but the reference is to Bernard Williams’s “legitimacy demand” (11). Given the recent burgeoning of a rich philosophical literature on institutional legitimacy, this omission is questionable. Nevertheless, one can read Pettit’s claims about the function of the state as implying that an entity is a legitimate state if and only if performs the function of states.1 Still, it would have been helpful had this been made explicit and had Pettit engaged the best of the current literature on legitimacy, showing why his conception is superior to rival conceptions. One hopes that in the companion volume on justice, he will deal more fully and explicitly with questions of legitimacy and articulate the connection between legitimacy and justice.In closing, I must acknowledge that there is a sense in which my major concerns about this marvelous book may only be pro tanto. The problematic features of The State I have identified may be addressed satisfactorily in the companion volume on justice. Even if they are not, I have no doubt that when taken together, The State and that book will constitute a major contribution to political philosophy.I thank Nate Adams for his constructive comments on a draft of this review.

  PublisherDOI

• The Death of We the People—How Tribalistic Ideologies Destroy National Identity and Undermine Democracy

  2025-03-18

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Ideology and Revolution

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-03-13

  book1st authorCorresponding

  In our society there is a constant struggle between powerful, institutionalized hierarchies and people who try to resist them. Whether this resistance succeeds (either partially or completely) or fails, the struggle causes large-scale social change, including changes in morality and institutions and in how hierarchy and the struggle itself are conceived. In this book, Allen Buchanan analyzes the complex connections between the struggle for liberation from domination, ideology, and changes in morality and institutions, and develops a conflict theory of social change, which is systematically laid out in five clear components with a chapter dedicated to each. He examines the co-evolutionary and co-dependent nature of the struggle between hierarchs and resisters, and the appeals to morality which are routinely made by both sides. His book will be of interest to a broad readership of students and scholars in philosophy, history, political science, economics, sociology, and law.

  PublisherDOI

• The Explanatory Power of Ideology

  Social Philosophy and Policy · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This essay explores the range of phenomena that can be explained by application of a suitably broad but contentful concept of ideology. According to this concept, an ideology is an evaluative map of the social world, typically featuring an ingroup-outgroup distinction, at least in the case of political ideologies. This concept allows for ideologies that support the existing order and those that challenge it, including revolutionary ideologies. I refute the claim that the concept of ideology is not needed because “voluntary servitude” can be explained as a failure of collective action. I show that ideologies can inhibit revolutionary action as well as stimulate and guide it. They can inhibit revolutionary action by convincing the oppressed that their predicament is natural or inevitable or that they are not being oppressed. They can stimulate and guide revolution by debunking oppression-supporting ideologies and by supplying moral motivation that avoids the calculation of costs and benefits that cause failures of collective action.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Evolving Measures of Moral Success

  2023-03-23

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract For most of human natural history, moral success and evolutionary fitness were closely intertwined: the success of moral systems could plausibly be gauged by the cooperative advantages they conferred in the Darwinian competition among cultural groups. Recently, however, the premium of evolutionary fitness has given way to a truly normative project of human betterment, allowing for the proliferation of moral values and goals that are orthogonal or even contrary to the evolutionary fitness of groups. This chapter shows that the decoupling of fitness and moral success poses a serious problem for evolutionary defenses of ethical pluralism, the thesis that there is more than one valid morality. It develops a stronger evolutionary argument for ethical pluralism that is grounded not in local selective optimization but in the dynamics of individual moral ontogeny and the path dependency of moral cultural evolution. This analysis leads to the conclusion that it is unlikely there is only one valid morality for human beings.

  PublisherDOI

• Institutionalizing the Duty to Rescue in a Global Health Emergency

  2023-04-20

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter argues that the moral underperformance of wealthy states and pharmaceutical companies in the current pandemic is a predictable result of an institutional failure: the lack of a well-designed international institution that would “perfect” imperfect duties to prevent and mitigate harm to distant strangers. Wealthy states and pharmaceutical companies have publicly acknowledged that they ought to do something to aid pandemic responses in less wealthy countries, for example by supplying vaccines and ventilators, but for the most part their efforts have been meager and uncoordinated. The problem is that imperfect duties are indeterminate as to exactly what the duty-bearer is required to do. The solution is to develop an international institution that would clearly identify duty-bearers and recipients of aid, specify the content of the duties, achieve a fair distribution of the costs of fulfilling the duties, and supply effective mechanisms for compliance with the assigned duties.

  PublisherDOI

• Social Experimentation in an Unjust World

  2023-03-23

  book-chapterSenior author

  Abstract There is a resurgence of interest in social experimentation as a means of promoting social progress, including progress in justice. In this chapter, we first advance an argument in favor of social experimentation drawing on its capacity to resolve uncertainty both about how to achieve socially valuable goals and about which goals are worth pursuing. We then identify four challenges: the information problem (experiments may not yield relevant information), the selection bias problem (potentially informative experiments may not be undertaken), the uptake problem (the information generated by experiments may not be put to good use), and the risk problem (experiments may carry unacceptable risks). Finally, we argue that certain injustices can exacerbate all four problems, rendering social experimentation a less reliable path to progress, and, in cases of severe injustice, perhaps even a regressive force. The upshot is not that we should abandon social experimentation, but that we should temper our expectations and focus on constructing conditions under which experimentation is more likely to be progressive. Specifically, to render social experimentation a more reliable engine for social progress of any sort, we must remedy or mitigate the injustices that diminish its value.

  PublisherDOI

• PREPARING FOR THE NEXT PANDEMIC

  Social Philosophy and Policy · 2023-01-01 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract My aim in this essay is to argue for a better moral-conceptual framework and for institutional innovation in preparation for the next pandemic. My main conclusions are as follows. (1) The primary moral principle that should guide responses to the next pandemic is the duty to prevent and mitigate serious harms. (2) A proper understanding of the moral foundations and scope of the duty to prevent and mitigate serious harms requires rejecting both Extreme Nationalism and Extreme Cosmopolitanism. (3) A better response to the next pandemic requires transforming the moral landscape through institutional innovation by developing an international institution that can perfect indeterminate duties (i) by identifying duty-bearers, (ii) by specifying their duties to provide medical resources and other forms of aid, (iii) by allocating the specified duties to various public and private entities in such a way as to ensure effective coordination and that the costs of providing aid are fairly distributed, and (iv) by providing effective mechanisms for compliance with the specified duties. (4) Institutional innovation is morally required, regardless of whether the harm prevention and mitigation duties of the better-off are duties of justice or of beneficence, because without institutionalization, some duties of justice, including those requiring the prevention and mitigation of serious harms, suffer some of the same indeterminacies that are present in duties of beneficence.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• SOY volume 40 issue 2 Cover and Front matter

  Social Philosophy and Policy · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jeffrey Paul

  University of Manitoba

  101 shared

• Fred D. Miller

  Bowling Green State University

  101 shared

• James S. Fishkin

  Stanford University

  65 shared

• George Mason

  Royal North Shore Hospital

  65 shared

• Jason Brennan

  64 shared

• Richard A. Epstein

  Northwestern University

  64 shared

• Tamara Sharp

  New York Law School

  64 shared

• Jennifer M. Baker

  64 shared