Andrei Bespalov

I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Barcelona Institute of Analytic Philosophy, supported by a María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence grant CEX2021-001169-M (funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033), and a member of the Law and Philosophy research group at Pompeu Fabra University.

I work in political philosophy focusing on theories of public reason and their applications.

My initial research in this field addressed the question of whether or not demands for religious exemptions from generally applicable laws are publicly justifiable in a liberal democracy. In my PhD thesis (Pompeu Fabra University, 2019) and subsequent publications, I have defended a principled negative answer to this question.

In my early postdoctoral work at the University of Warwick, I addressed some of the major challenges to the Rawlsian consensus model of public reason, such as the self-defeat objection and the claims about the alleged practical advantages of the alternative convergence model developed by Gerald Gaus.

My current research project at Pompeu Fabra University and Barcelona Institute of Analytic Philosophy explores some practical implications of the Rawlsian duty of civility, understood as citizens’ duty to justify their exercise of political power over one another on the grounds of reasons that all may reasonably be expected to accept. For example, in one paper, which is now under review, I show that, in non-ideal conditions, citizens’ coercion of public officials by means of disruptive and even violent political disobedience may well be reasonably justified, therefore, it is not necessarily uncivil in the Rawlsian sense.