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Many political philosophers assume the state can coherently reform a society’s legal system to realize society-wide distributive justice. Gerald Gaus invoked social complexity to highlight the limitations of this ambition. Complexity theory holds that interdependent social interaction in large-scale societies leads to unpredictable outcomes with complexity constraining what the state can accomplish. This conclusion is strengthened once it is recognised that the state itself is not a unitary agent that comprehensively oversees the legal system. Rather, the state is a network of interactions between myriad political agents and the legal system is an emergent outcome of this interaction—the result of human action but not an overall design.
Location: Bush House Southeast Wing 1.05, King’s College London
About the speaker
Dr Kaveh Pourvand is currently an Assistant Professor at Universidad San Sebastián. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Arizona and a Lecturer in Political Economy at King’s College London. He holds a PhD in political science, specialising in political philosophy, from the London School of Economics.