Today I participated in a Festscrift for Duncan Ivison at the University of Sydney. Duncan has been a major influence on my own work on political legitimacy. My presentation was entitled “The Legitimation of Settler States”. Here’s the abstract:
How, if at all, might the exercise of political power by settler states over Indigenous peoples within their borders be made legitimate? In this presentation, I explore Duncan Ivison’s approach to answering this question—an approach that holds that we must “pluralise political legitimacy” to meet the challenge raised by Indigenous people for liberal settler states—and contrast it with both Rawlsian and realist approaches to political legitimacy in the context of settler states.
Other participants included: Christian Barry, Danielle Celermajer, Lisa Hill, Simon Tormey, Luara Ferracioli, Paul Patton, and Scott Stephens. The whole event was organised by my colleague Alex Lefebvre.