Dr Gabriele Badano
Lecturer

Profile

Biography

Gabriele Badano is a political philosopher with a track record of interdisciplinary work. His main research interests include liberal theories of public justification of political decisions, the task of countering the rise of extremist views in society without contradicting the basic commitments of liberal democracy, ethical principles applying specifically to public administration, and issues of justice and fairness in resource allocation and other dimensions of health policy.

Before taking up his position at York in 2018, Gabriele held a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge, where he was based at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and at Girton College. Gabriele holds a PhD from the Department of Philosophy at University College London as well as an MA and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Genova, Italy.

He is interested in supervising PhD students in political philosophy and normative political theory, especially but not exclusively in the research areas that are mentioned above.

Research

Overview

Gabriele’s current research includes a joint project with fellow Department member Alasia Nuti, for which they have received a book contract from Oxford University Press. In this project, they draw on and develop elements of John Rawls’s framework of political liberalism to illuminate how liberal democratic societies should fight illiberal and antidemocratic views without themselves contradicting any core liberal democratic commitments.

Gabriele has a long-standing interest in the framework of public reason, which in essence requires that political decisions be justifiable across widely different religious, philosophical, and to some extent even political doctrines. He is currently working on how to extend this framework so as to include a close focus on public administrators, exploring issues including what it means to reason publicly specifically at the level of public administration and how public administration agencies should be designed so as to protect the ability of their members to provide authentically public reasons.

Gabriele also plans to continue looking at issues in health policy, e.g. as case studies for his work on the political philosophy of public administration.

For his published papers and some work in progress, see here.

Available PhD research projects

Dr Gabriele Badano welcomes PhD applications in the following areas:

• Analytical political philosophy
• Normative political theory

Publications

Selected publications

Gabriele’s publications include:

Monographs

• Political Liberalism and the Containment of the Enemies of Liberal Democracy (provisional title), with Alasia Nuti, under contract with Oxford University Press.

Peer-reviewed articles 

• “Must the Subaltern Speak Publicly? Public Reason Liberalism and the Ethics of Fighting Severe Injustice”, The Journal of Politics, forthcoming (with Alasia Nuti). 
• “Public Reason, Partisanship, and the Containment of the Populist Radical Right”, Political Studies, 71 (2023): 198–217 (with Alasia Nuti).
• “Rescuing Public Reason Liberalism’s Accessibility Requirement”, Law and Philosophy, 39 (2020): 35-65 (with Matteo Bonotti).
• “The Principle of Restraint: Public Reason and the Reform of Public Administration”, Political Studies, 68 (2020): 110-127.
• “The Limits of Conjecture: Political Liberalism, Counter-Radicalisation, and Unreasonable Religious Views”, Ethnicities, 20 (2020): 293-311 (with Alasia Nuti). 
• “Equality, Liberty and the Limits of Person-Centred Care's Principle of Co-Production”, Public Health Ethics, 12 (2019): 176–187.
• “Substance in Bureaucratic Procedures for Healthcare Resource Allocation: A Reply to Smith”, The Journal of Medical Ethics, 45 (2019): 75-76.
• “Under Pressure: Political Liberalism, the Rise of Unreasonableness and the Complexity of Containment”, The Journal of Political Philosophy, 26 (2018): 145-168 (with Alasia Nuti).
• “If You’re a Rawlsian, How Come You’re So Close to Utilitarianism and Intuitionism? A Critique of Daniels’s Accountability for Reasonableness”, Health Care Analysis, 26 (2018): 1-16.
• “Still Special, despite Everything: A Liberal Defence of the Value of Healthcare in the Face of the Social Determinants of Health”, Social Theory and Practice, 42 (2016): 183-204.
• “On the Moral Importance of Numbers, Relevance and the Workings of Non-Aggregative Reasoning”, Ethical Perspectives, 23 (2016): 527-543.
• “Public Participation in Decision-Making on the Coverage of New Antivirals for Hepatitis C”, Journal of Health Organization and Management, 30 (2016): 769-785 (with Katharina Kieslich, Jeonghoon Ahn, Kalipso Chalkidou, Leonardo Cubillos, Renata Curi, Chris Henshall, Carleigh Krubiner, Peter Littlejohns, Lanting Lu, Steven Pearson, Annette Rid, Jennifer Whitty, James Wilson).
• “Political Liberalism and the Justice Claims of the Disabled: A Reconciliation”, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 17 (2014): 401-422.

Drafts of Gabriele’s published papers

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Introduction to Political Theory
• Contemporary Political Philosophy
• Topics in Philosophy, Politics and Economics
• Ethics and Public Policy

Postgraduate

• Justice, Legitimacy and Democracy