What, if anything, is problematic about gentrification? This paper addresses this question from the perspective of normative political theory. We argue that gentrification is problematic insofar as it involves a violation of city-dwellers' occupancy rights. We distinguish these rights from other forms of territorial rights, and discuss the different implications of the argument for urban governance. If we agree on the ultimate importance of being able to pursue one's located life-plans, the argument goes, we must also agree on limiting the impact of gentrification on peoples' lives. Limiting gentrification's impact, however, does not entail halting processes of gentrification once and for all.

In times of a prevailing sense of crisis and disorder in modern politics, there is a growing sentiment that anger, despair or resignation are more appropriate attitudes to navigate the world than hope. Political philosophers have long shared this suspicion and shied away from theorising hope more systematically. The aim of this article is to resist this tendency by showing that hope constitutes an integral part of democratic politics in particular. In making this argument I draw on Kant's conceptualisation of hope as a psychological condition on action under circumstances where the chances of making a difference are dim. Given that the Kantian agent avoids the threat of despair in the pursuit of political goals by placing trust in her fellow citizens, hope has the potential to positively transform democratic practices.

This article is concerned with the impact of economic ideas on political processes and decision-making. We argue that economic models can serve as a transmission device between economic paradigms and policy programs, which allow actors drawing on the model to exercise power in decision-making. We illustrate this argument by focusing on the European Commission’s ‘potential output’ model, which represents a core pillar of EU fiscal governance as it provides estimates of ‘structural deficits’ for evaluating fiscal policies. We combine an analysis of the history and content of the model at stake with insights derived from policy documents, legal provisions, speeches and interviews. Our findings imply that economic models (a) allow for exerting power only under specific conditions, (b) align paradigmatic priors with policy proposals and (c) may constitute mutual feedback loops where political decisions are coined by technicalities and, as a consequence, seemingly innocent technical assumptions become objects of political demands.

The language of hope is a ubiquitous part of political life, but its value is increasingly contested. While there is an emerging debate about hope in political philosophy, an assessment of the prevalent scepticism about its role in political practice is still outstanding. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of historical and recent treatments of hope in political philosophy and to indicate lines of further research. We argue that even though political philosophy can draw on recent analyses of hope in analytic philosophy, there are distinct challenges for an account of hope in political contexts. Examples such as racial injustice or climate change show the need for a systematic normative account that is sensitive to the unavoidability of hope in politics as much as its characteristic dangers.The language of hope is ubiquitous in political life. Citizens hope for their cause or candidate to prevail, activists describe their fight against oppression and injustice as bolstered by shared hopes, politicians invoke hope to galvanise support. Yet, even in political discourse the value of hope no longer remains undisputed. Politicians who take on the growing disaffection by invoking hope are readily accused of leading people down the primrose path with empty rhetoric. 1 Citizens wonder which hopes can still be shared in societies characterised by deep disagreement about values and worldviews. And activists engaged in the fight against global warming prefer to instil an unvarnished fear of the imminent climate catastrophe rather than a hopeful outlook that might lead people to lean back complacently. 2 While there is an emerging debate about hope in political philosophy, an assessment of the prevalent scepticism about its role in political practice is still outstanding. In this article, we first give an overview of recent debates about the nature of hope in general (Section 1) as well as a number of critiques of hope specifically in political contexts (Section 2). Indicating lines of further research, we then zoom in on three distinct challenges for a systematic

In addition to summarising the book’s main themes as described, the Introduction gives an overview of recent work on Kant’s mature political thought. In particular, it sets the stage for the book’s interpretive project by reconstructing two predominant interpretive trends: the increasing focus on the Doctrine of Right’s famous property argument and the attendant duty to enter the state, on the one hand, and efforts to investigate Kant’s rationale for commending a specific set of cosmopolitan institutions (e.g., a voluntary, noncoercive league of states) as opposed to alternative ones, on the other. The book sets out to leave both paradigms behind in order to bring into view a much less familiar strand of argument that I introduce as Kant’s grounded cosmopolitanism. The Introduction also lays out the book’s methodological commitments, arguing that in-depth interpretive work in the history of philosophy can help us to get a new perspective on our own philosophical concerns, and be it by virtue of coming to appreciate an entirely different way of approaching the pertinent questions.