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The author or concept searched is found in the following 6 entries.
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Citizenship | Welfare Economics | Gaus I 216 Citizenship/Welfare economics/Moon: Because concepts of positive rights and equal opportunity are not well defined outside of specific social contexts, they are often combined with arguments appealing to ideals of citizenship and social solidarity. The basic argument is that the welfare state should guarantee the inclusion of all citizens as full members of a democratic society, which requires that an extensive range of social rights be provided. The reasoning is fairly straightforward: just as citizens must have civil and political rights, they must be guaranteed certain social rights if they are to be full members of a society, and specifically if they are to participate in democratic politics. The key premise in this argument is that citizenship must be universal. All who are capable of intentional or responsible action must be full citizens. The only legitimate basis for exclusion is incapacity for responsible action. T. H. Marshall: T. H. Marshall (1977)(1) offers a classical account of the welfare state as the necessary result of the universal extension of citizenship. He traces the emergence of universal citizenship by observing three successive phases, the first involving the general extension of civil rights, the second the universalization of the suffrage, and the third the growth of the welfare state and the creation of the 'social rights of citizenship'. * Individualism: There are a number of variants of this argument, but a common theme is a deep suspicion of the market and at least certain forms of individualism. Efficiency/solidarity: Whereas arguments from efficiency take the market as a baseline, and justify social policies on the ground that they can correct market failures, arguments from solidarity begin with something close to the opposite assumption - projecting an ideal in which all activities are organized through collective associations, in which individuals are oriented principally towards common needs and aspirations. Social order: Richard Titmuss (1972)(2) extols the 'gift relationship', and David Harris (1987)(3) speaks of the family as a model for social life. More concretely, Claus Offe (1984)(4) and Gosta Esping-Andersen (1985)(5) once expressed the hope that the growth of collective consumption and other forms of decommodification will eventually displace capitalism, leading to a socialist order of society. >Society/David Harris. * Like so much of social science, Marshall's account is blind to issues of gender, as he depicts these phases as a historical succession, the completion or virtual completion of one laying the basis for the realization of the next. His stages describe the gradual extension of the rights associated with citizenship for men, but they ignore the experience of women (and, I might add, other non-class-based exclusions), who often were able to claim various welfare rights (e.g. widows' pensions) before they were entitled to political or even full civil rights. 1. Marshall, T. H. (1977 119501) 'Citizenship and social class'. In his Class, Citizenship, and Social Development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2. Titmuss, Richard (1972) The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy. New York: Random House. 3. Harris, David (1987) Justifying State Welfare. Oxford: Blackwell. 4. Offe, Claus (1984) Contradictions of the Welfare State. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 5. Esping-Andersen, Gosta (1985) Politics against Markets. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Moon, J. Donald 2004. „The Political Theory of the Welfare State“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Distributive Justice | Welfare Economics | Gaus I 213 Distributive justice/welfare economics/Moon: It is important to stress that state provision is not necessarily superior to private provision. Even if there are clear examples of 'market failures' , areas in which voluntary provision is incapable of providing an optimal level of services of one sort or another, it does not follow that government action will be superior. Just as real-world markets are subject to market failure, so real-world governments are subject to non-market failure. >Market failure, >State provision/Moon, >Adverse selection/Barr, >Privatization/Moon, >Welfare state/Political philosophy. Gaus I 214 The policies of the welfare state do not simply make it possible for individuals to realize their own interests more effectively, but generally redistribute income (...). Efficiency- based arguments normally take the outcome produced by market exchange, prior to governmental taxation and transfers, as their baseline, and show that a particular policy can at least in principle make everyone better off than they would be given that baseline. But to the extent that welfare policies delib- erately redistribute income, those whose income goes down would normally (though not necessarily) be worse off; such policies could be justified, then, only by invoking values other than efficiency.* Privatization/problems: any private system of provision is limited to pooling the shared risks that people face in the future, and so presupposes a 'baseline' of a given distribution of advantages and disadvantages. But from a larger point of view, this restriction to a given status quo is arbitrary. Redistribution: (...) any distribution of 'the advantages of social co-operation' must be justified, whether it results from market transactions or from welfare state policies specifically designed to redistribute income. The presumption that distributions that result from 'government' action must be justified, and that pretax and pretransfer distributions are presumptively just, appears to be widespread at least in America, leading to hostility on the part of some towards the welfare state. Libertarianism/Nozick: Strong libertarians like Nozick hold that taxation to redistribute resources from some taxpayers to others is not only presumptively but actually unjust because it violates citizens' property rights (...) (Nozick 1974(1)). MoonVs: This critique obviously presupposes that the right we have to our property, including income from employment or business activity, is not created by the state, but exists in some sense 'prior' to political life, and so limits what governments may legitimately do. If such a theory of natural or prepolitical rights could be vindicated, it would block redistributive welfare state programmes. >Fundamental rights/Political philosophy. * The argument that the alleviation of poverty is a public good, discussed above, would be an example of justifying redistribution on efficiency grounds. 1. Nozick, Robert (1974) Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Oxford: Blackwell. Moon, J. Donald 2004. „The Political Theory of the Welfare State“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Equal Opportunities | Welfare Economics | Gaus I 215 Equal opportunities/welfare economics/Moon: Fair equality of opportunity requires not only that there be no 'arbitrary' barriers to the life choices one may make, such as restrictions on occupational or educational opportunity based on race or gender, but that everyone has access to the resources and experiences necessary to qualify for the different positions and careers that exist in society. Institutions: arguably, fair equality of opportunity supports not only a social minimum state, but an institutional welfare state, in which education, including perhaps early childhood education, and medical care are provided on a common basis for all. Problems: but, like welfare rights generally, the requirements of fair equality of opportunity cannot be specified except in specific social contexts; the kind Gaus I 216 of educational opportunities necessary in a largely agrarian society, to take an obvious example, are very different from those required in a postindustrial setting. (...) it is necessary to make trade- offs between equal opportunity and other values, such as the privacy and autonomy of families. >Citizenship/Welfare economics, >Welfare state/Political Philosophy. Moon, J. Donald 2004. „The Political Theory of the Welfare State“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Labour | Welfare Economics | Gaus I 218 Labour/work/welfare state/Welfare economics/Moon: the argument about the necessity for effective functioning, as opposed simply to having access to resources, has been most heated in the area of work. Cf. >Welfare state/Welfare economics, >Welfare state/Political philosophy. If democratic citizenship requires that all be enabled to participate fully in society, then people must have not only certain resources, but also certain capacities, skills, and dispositions. Gaus I 219 One can acknowledge that people rely upon 'welfare' because their options are so limited, and so their condition represents an indictment of the society rather than the individuals concerned, but the fact remains that receipt of social assistance does not enable one to attain full citizenship or membership in society. It simply sustains one in a marginalized condition. Social inclusion requires more than receiving benefits. Lawrence Mead: this line of argument has been advanced by a number of 'conservative' critics of the welfare state. Lawrence Mead (1992)(1), for example, argues that the character of poverty at least in America has changed in the past several decades, and that the social exclusion represented by poverty reflects the inability of poor people to act as rational agents in pursuit even of their own interests.* >Labour/Lawrence Mead. Nikolas Rose: Nikolas Rose has pointed out that the emphasis on paid employment is not a monopoly of the right: 'From the "social democratic left", too, work [is] now seen as the [principal] mode of inclusion, and absence from the labour market the most potent source of exclusion' (1999(2), 163). David Harris: In some solidaristic accounts, the emphasis on work invokes an older language of duties. In Harris's account, for example, the duties correlative to our welfare rights are 'strict obligations' and may be enforced by 'coercion' (1987(3): 161). Marshall: In this, [Harris] echoes Marshall, who looked beyond the social rights of citizenship to consider the duties of the enriched and inclusive model of citizenship he advocated, including 'the duty to work', which he thought was of 'paramount importance'. Gotmann/Thompson: Similarly, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson offer a justification for enforcing work obligations that draws on the idea of citizenship, arguing that 'work should be seen as a necessary part of citizenship' (1996(4): 293), because it is 'essential to social dignity'. Since 'earning is not only a means of making a living but also a mark of equal citizenship', paid employment has a 'political dimension' that 'provides a further justification for the obligation to work' (1996(4): 302). Giddens: But this obligation to work is not, or is not merely, a demand to be made on the individual, one which he might reasonably wish to resist, for ultimately it is rooted in an ideal of social inclusion and active citizenship through which the individual's own interests and needs can be realized. Anthony Giddens sounds this theme in his call for 'the positive welfare society', in which 'the contract between individual and government shifts, since autonomy and the development of self - the medium of expanding individual responsibility become the prime focus' (1998(5): 128). Nikolas Rose: (...) the contemporary 'organization of freedom' views individuals as best able to 'fulfil their political obligations in relation to the wealth, health and happiness of the nation not when they are bound into relations of dependency and obligation, but when they seek to fulfil themselves as free individuals', which depends 'upon the activation of the powers of the citizen' (1999(2): 166). * It should be noted that Mead would reject the charactenzation of his position as 'conservative', arguing that at least in America the conservative position shares the liberal assumption that the poor are 'competent', and believes that the problem of poverty is caused by the way in which welfare programmes distort the incentives poor people face. The solution, then, is not to reform the poor, but to abolish welfare programmes. No doubt this view reflects the thinking of some conservatives, but other self-identified conservatives do view the issue in terms similar to Mead's. 1. Mead, Lawrence M. (1992) The New Politics of Poverty. New York: Basic. 2. Rose, Nikolas (1999) Powers of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge Umversity Press. 3. Harris, David (1987) Justifying State Welfare. Oxford: Blackwell. 4. Gutmann, Amy and Dennis Thompson (1996) Democracy and Disagreement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 5. Giddens, Anthony (1998) The Third way: The Renewal of Social Democracy. Cambridge: Polity. Moon, J. Donald 2004. „The Political Theory of the Welfare State“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Solidarity | Welfare Economics | Gaus I 217 Solidarity/justice/Welfare economics/Moon: An adequate account of the welfare state, one that can justify its redistributive aims, must ultimately be based upon a theory of justice, and the most promising theories are those which Phillipe Van Parijs calls 'solidaristic conceptions of justice' (1995(1): 28), such as those offered by Rawls, Dworkin, Amartya Sen, and Van Parijs himself. Solidaristic conceptions of justice are based upon a commitment to 'equal concern' for the interests of all, and to 'equal respect, that is, the view that what counts as a just society should not be determined on the basis of some particular substantive conception of the good life' (1995(1): 28). Liberalism: The 'liberal' commitment to equal respect in solidaristic theories of justice underlies their support for the standard 'negative' and democratic rights characteristic of the welfare state, and the commitment to equal concern underlies their accounts of social justice and so the redistributive elements of the welfare state. >Van Parijs. Institutions: No theory, by itself, directly supports the institutional welfare state. Van Parijs, for example, rejects it in favour of a system providing the highest possible basic income for all, and Rawls explicitly rejects the welfare state on the grounds that it tolerates the highly unequal distribution of wealth produced by a capitalist society, and so undermines democracy by concentrating too much economic and political power in a wealthy elite. Solidaristic approaches: Still, solidaristic theories can supply the deficiencies, noted above, in justifications of the welfare state that appeal to membership and solidarity, and to the baseline problem in efficiency-based arguments. Membership: with regard to the appeal to membership, solidaristic theories of justice provide grounds for the value of social inclusion on a principle of equality. And they address the serious lacunae in efficiency-based arguments, specifically the fact that they take a market generated outcome as their starting point, and ask whether that outcome could be improved through some government policy. Distributive equality: But because there is nothing privileged about market generated outcomes, market institutions and the 'initial' distribution of resources must themselves be morally justified, and solidaristic theories of justice address that problem. Welfare state: while solidaristic arguments do not necessarily justify the welfare state as the ideal regime, they do Gaus I 218 provide grounds for central welfare state policies. Rawls: Rawls's ideal regimes, a property-owning democracy or market socialism, would have to be welfare states in the sense I have used the term here: that is, they would have to have social policies that would collectively provide for certain needs, justified in terms of efficiency and their redistributive conse- quences. Van Parijs: (...) Van Parijs allows significant scope for collective provision including the area of medical care.* * See Rawls (2001(2): 135—40) and the preface to the revised edition of his Theory of Justice (1999)(3) for his discussion of politico-economic regimes; and see Van Parijs (1995(1): 41-5). 1. Van Parijs, Philippe (1995) Real Freedom for All. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2. Rawls, John (2001) Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 3. Rawls, John (1999) A Theory of Justice, rev. edn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Moon, J. Donald 2004. „The Political Theory of the Welfare State“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Welfare State | Welfare Economics | Gaus I 218 Welfare state/Welfare economics/Moon: In spite of the importance of functioning as opposed to possessing, most evaluations of welfare state performance focus on what people have, rather than on what they can do. Rothstein: One common measure, for example, is 'percentage of poor households lifted out of poverty as a result of taxes and transfers', where poverty is defined as having an income below 50 percent of adjusted median household income of the country in which one lives (Rothstein, 1998(1): 183—4). But if the objective of the welfare state is to enable citizens to participate effectively, this measure is problematic because income, or income alone, does not provide the capability to achieve many of the most important functionings. Susan Mayer: In a recent study aptly titled What Money Can Buy (1997(2)), Susan Mayer has examined the 'functionings' of children, adolescents, and young adults, and correlated them with family income. Work: The argument about the necessity for effective functioning, as opposed simply to having access to resources, has been most heated in the area of work. If democratic citizenship requires that all be enabled to participate fully in society, then people must have not only certain resources, but also certain capacities, skills, and dispositions. Gaus I 219 One can acknowledge that people rely upon 'welfare' because their options are so limited, and so their condition represents an indictment of the society rather than the individuals concerned, but the fact remains that receipt of social assistance does not enable one to attain full citizenship or membership in society. It simply sustains one in a marginalized condition. Social inclusion requires more than receiving benefits. Lawrence Mead: this line of argument has been advanced by a number of 'conservative' critics of the welfare state. Lawrence Mead (1992)(3), for example, argues that the character of poverty at least in America has changed in the past several decades, and that the social exclusion represented by poverty reflects the inability of poor people to act as rational agents in pursuit even of their own interests. * >Labour/Lawrence Mead. Nikolas Rose: Nikolas Rose has pointed out that the emphasis on paid employment is not a monopoly of the right: 'From the "social democratic left", too, work [is] now seen as the [principal] mode of inclusion, and absence from the labour market the most potent source of exclusion' (1999(4), 163). David Harris: In some solidaristic accounts, the emphasis on work invokes an older language of duties. In Harris's account, for example, the duties correlative to our welfare rights are 'strict obligations' and may be enforced by 'coercion' (1987(5): 161). Marshall: In this, [Harris] echoes Marshall, who looked beyond the social rights of citizenship to consider the duties of the enriched and inclusive model of citizenship he advocated, including 'the duty to work', which he thought was of 'paramount importance'. Gotmann/Thompson: Similarly, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson offer a justification for enforcing work obligations that draws on the idea of citizenship, arguing that 'work should be seen as a necessary part of citizenship' (1996(6): 293), because it is 'essential to social dignity'. Since 'earning is not only a means of making a living but also a mark of equal citizenship', paid employment has a 'political dimension' that 'provides a further justification for the obligation to work' (1996(6): 302). * It should be noted that Mead would reject the charactenzation of his position as 'conservative', arguing that at least in America the conservative position shares the liberal assumption that the poor are 'competent', and believes that the problem of poverty is caused by the way in which welfare programmes distort the incentives poor people face. The solution, then, is not to reform the poor, but to abolish welfare programmes. No doubt this view reflects the thinking of some conservatives, but other self-identified conservatives do view the issue in terms similar to Mead's. 1. Rothstein, Bo (1998) Just Institutions Matter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2. Mayer, Susan (1997) What Money Can 't Buy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 3. Mead, Lawrence M. (1992) The New Politics of Poverty. New York: Basic. 4. Rose, Nikolas (1999) Powers of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge Umversity Press. 5. Harris, David (1987) Justifying State Welfare. Oxford: Blackwell. 6. Gutmann, Amy and Dennis Thompson (1996) Democracy and Disagreement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Moon, J. Donald 2004. „The Political Theory of the Welfare State“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
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