Thursday 6 June 2019 - Friday 7 June 2019

This conference celebrates the publication of 'The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy' edited by Annabelle Lever and Andrei Poama, which explores questions such as:

What does it mean to do public policy ethics today?
How should philosophers engage with ethical issues in policy-making when policy decisions are circumscribed by political and pragmatic concerns?
How do ethical issues in public policy differ between areas such as foreign policy, criminal justice, or environmental policy?

Kehinde Andrews is a Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University’s School of Social Sciences. Andrews is currently engaged in a project examining the role of Black radicalism in contemporary organising against racial oppression. At Birmingham, he has led the development of the Black Studies degree and is director of the Centre for Critical Social Research; founder of the Harambee Organisation of Black Unity; and co-chair of the Black Studies Association.

Most distributive theories in political economy understand individuals to be motivated by material self-interest, often approximated by their current positions in the income distribution. It has become increasingly common, however, to also conceptualise material self-interest inter-temporally.

To what extent has the emergence of cyber technologies affected how we think, and should think, about international relations? Has there been fundamental change, or are we simply seeing a continuation of existing trends? The dynamics of cyberspace seemingly challenge traditional approaches to the study of world politics. They raise important questions regarding what the potential sources of threats are, who is responsible for addressing them, and who or what is most vulnerable. In short, whose security is cyber security?

The talk will explore why modern governments find it so hard to make grand strategic choices. It will give a practitioner's insight into the forces which pull political leaders towards short-term crisis management and consider whether the nature of democratic politics in a digital age is a constraint on longer-term policymaking.