Justice by Means of Democracy
Autor Danielle Allenen Limba Engleză Hardback – 27 apr 2023
At a time of great social and political turmoil, when many residents of the leading democracies question the ability of their governments to deal fairly and competently with serious public issues, and when power seems more and more to rest with the wealthy few, this book reconsiders the very foundations of democracy and justice. Scholar and writer Danielle Allen argues that the surest path to a just society in which all are given the support necessary to flourish is the protection of political equality; that justice is best achieved by means of democracy; and that the social ideals and organizational design principles that flow from recognizing political equality and democracy as fundamental to human well-being provide an alternative framework not only for justice but also for political economy. Allen identifies this paradigm-changing new framework as “power-sharing liberalism.”
Liberalism more broadly is the philosophical commitment to a government grounded in rights that both protect people in their private lives and empower them to help govern public life. Power-sharing liberalism offers an innovative reconstruction of liberalism based on the principle of full inclusion and non-domination—in which no group has a monopoly on power—in politics, economy, and society. By showing how we all might fully share power and responsibility across all three sectors, Allen advances a culture of civic engagement and empowerment, revealing the universal benefits of an effective government in which all participate on equal terms.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780226777092
ISBN-10: 022677709X
Pagini: 288
Ilustrații: 1 line drawing, 9 tables
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 25 mm
Greutate: 0.54 kg
Ediția:First Edition
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press
ISBN-10: 022677709X
Pagini: 288
Ilustrații: 1 line drawing, 9 tables
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 25 mm
Greutate: 0.54 kg
Ediția:First Edition
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press
Notă biografică
Danielle Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor and director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Her many books include the widely acclaimed Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality; Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.; Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education; and Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus, the last two also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Extras
The Great Recession of 2008; Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty First Century; earthshaking elections in the past eight years in the US and Britain, in South America, and across Europe; a global pandemic; and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have put questions of political economy, social stability, governance, and their entanglement on the map for everyone, not just economists. Prior to the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, many wondered whether the political surprises of recent years flowed from the dramatic increases in income and wealth inequality in developed countries, and from the suddenly diverging fates of those with and without university education. Many were the calls to revisit our approach to political economy. With the pandemic, in developed democracies like the US and the UK, we also witnessed profound failures of governance, coupled with economic ruin for many, even as the well-off sailed along relatively untouched. The need for a reinvented political economy has become only more pressing. Yet reinventing political economy actually requires stepping outside the domain of economics. Economists have, I think, been answering the questions set for them by political philosophers. If we wish for different answers, we have to devise different questions.
The purpose of this book is to propose some fresh questions—in particular, questions about political equality. The road to proposing fresh questions for economists lies through a reconsideration of the basic foundations of justice. I will propose in this book that the surest path to justice is the protection of political equality; that justice is therefore best, and perhaps only, achieved by means of egalitarian participatory constitutional democracy; and that the social ideals and organizational design principles that flow from a recognition of the fundamental importance to human well-being of political equality and democracy provide an alternative framework within which economists might do their work.
(...)
What is the relationship between political economy, political philosophy, and a theory of justice? As economic theorists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx to John Maynard Keynes to Friedrich Hayek have recognized, any given economic system is built out of a set of underlying rules for human interaction. For Smith and Hayek, the rules that undergird a healthy market economy were the products of long processes of social evolution generating a conventional morality anchored in practices like honesty, promise-keeping, property, and contract. For Marx, the relevant rules were designed by those with power in order to preserve their power and support their capacity to extract value from others. All recognized that the rules of the game structuring human interaction and those generating particular forms of economy embodied distinctive sets of social ideals and could be redesigned. Hayek expected improvement could be achieved at the margins through modest and restrained forms of experimentalism; he believed that innovations could be made to stick through processes of human imitation and adaptation. Marx thought the rules could be comprehensively reorganized and made to stick from the top down. Hayek recognized the power in self-organizing systems; Marx recognized operations of power in the institutions of human governance and believed they could be redirected in a wholesale fashion.
More modestly, the American founders—authors of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers— also saw the power and value in intentionally designed institutions of human governance. Their goal was a set of institutions that recognized the natural dynamics of human interaction—both of competition and of cooperation—and worked to guide those dynamics in directions supportive of the “safety and happiness of the people” and its “general welfare.” Both self-organizing evolution and intentional governance can bring benefit to human society; both can also bring ill effects.
A theory of justice does not seek to describe the rules that have come to be in human society—whether as a result of the emergence of self-organizing systems of human cooperation or as a result of intentional efforts to organize human governance. Instead, a theory of justice seeks to identify the parameters for determining which among possible sets of rules for human interaction yields the best prospects for human flourishing, at both an individual and a species level. These parameters would then be relevant to political economy in setting directions for and bounds to our experimentalism, as we seek to identify which economic policies count as redesigns that improve, rather than worsen, human prospects.
Readers will initially be skeptical that an ideal of political equality can enrich our understanding of justice generally or help us renovate political economy. In our contemporary world, invocations of political equality most immediately call to mind topical challenges such as voting rights, campaign finance reform, and felon re-enfranchisement in the US; or the issues of party functioning and membership within nations and democratic deficits in the operations of the European Union in Europe. A few years ago, if you had asked someone what political equality was mainly about, I think those are the sorts of issues they would have offered in reply. The topics are precise and technical. Yet that was before we were all so seriously surprised by events—the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote, for example; the upending of German politics by the migration crisis; the governance crises emerging in the US with the pandemic and in Europe with the Russian attack on Ukraine. At stake in understanding political equality are deeper issues of the strength and health of human societies and their ability to advance the general welfare by building collaborative institutions and practices that deliver safety and happiness to all.
The purpose of this book is to propose some fresh questions—in particular, questions about political equality. The road to proposing fresh questions for economists lies through a reconsideration of the basic foundations of justice. I will propose in this book that the surest path to justice is the protection of political equality; that justice is therefore best, and perhaps only, achieved by means of egalitarian participatory constitutional democracy; and that the social ideals and organizational design principles that flow from a recognition of the fundamental importance to human well-being of political equality and democracy provide an alternative framework within which economists might do their work.
(...)
What is the relationship between political economy, political philosophy, and a theory of justice? As economic theorists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx to John Maynard Keynes to Friedrich Hayek have recognized, any given economic system is built out of a set of underlying rules for human interaction. For Smith and Hayek, the rules that undergird a healthy market economy were the products of long processes of social evolution generating a conventional morality anchored in practices like honesty, promise-keeping, property, and contract. For Marx, the relevant rules were designed by those with power in order to preserve their power and support their capacity to extract value from others. All recognized that the rules of the game structuring human interaction and those generating particular forms of economy embodied distinctive sets of social ideals and could be redesigned. Hayek expected improvement could be achieved at the margins through modest and restrained forms of experimentalism; he believed that innovations could be made to stick through processes of human imitation and adaptation. Marx thought the rules could be comprehensively reorganized and made to stick from the top down. Hayek recognized the power in self-organizing systems; Marx recognized operations of power in the institutions of human governance and believed they could be redirected in a wholesale fashion.
More modestly, the American founders—authors of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers— also saw the power and value in intentionally designed institutions of human governance. Their goal was a set of institutions that recognized the natural dynamics of human interaction—both of competition and of cooperation—and worked to guide those dynamics in directions supportive of the “safety and happiness of the people” and its “general welfare.” Both self-organizing evolution and intentional governance can bring benefit to human society; both can also bring ill effects.
A theory of justice does not seek to describe the rules that have come to be in human society—whether as a result of the emergence of self-organizing systems of human cooperation or as a result of intentional efforts to organize human governance. Instead, a theory of justice seeks to identify the parameters for determining which among possible sets of rules for human interaction yields the best prospects for human flourishing, at both an individual and a species level. These parameters would then be relevant to political economy in setting directions for and bounds to our experimentalism, as we seek to identify which economic policies count as redesigns that improve, rather than worsen, human prospects.
Readers will initially be skeptical that an ideal of political equality can enrich our understanding of justice generally or help us renovate political economy. In our contemporary world, invocations of political equality most immediately call to mind topical challenges such as voting rights, campaign finance reform, and felon re-enfranchisement in the US; or the issues of party functioning and membership within nations and democratic deficits in the operations of the European Union in Europe. A few years ago, if you had asked someone what political equality was mainly about, I think those are the sorts of issues they would have offered in reply. The topics are precise and technical. Yet that was before we were all so seriously surprised by events—the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote, for example; the upending of German politics by the migration crisis; the governance crises emerging in the US with the pandemic and in Europe with the Russian attack on Ukraine. At stake in understanding political equality are deeper issues of the strength and health of human societies and their ability to advance the general welfare by building collaborative institutions and practices that deliver safety and happiness to all.
Cuprins
Part I: A Theory of Justice Revised
Prologue. On Surprise and the Purpose of Political Philosophy
Chapter 1. Justice That Sacrifices Democracy: An Error
Chapter 2. Justice by Means of Democracy: An Ideal and Its Design Principles
Part II: Subsidiary Ideals of Justice for Each Domain
Chapter 3. The First Subsidiary Ideal: Egalitarian Participatory Constitutional Democracy
Chapter 4. The Second Subsidiary Ideal: A Connected Society
Chapter 5. The Third Subsidiary Ideal: Polypolitanism
Chapter 6. The Fourth Subsidiary Ideal: Empowering Economies
Part III: From Ideal to Design Principles to Practice
Chapter 7. A New Model for the Practice of Democratic Citizenship
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Prologue. On Surprise and the Purpose of Political Philosophy
Chapter 1. Justice That Sacrifices Democracy: An Error
Chapter 2. Justice by Means of Democracy: An Ideal and Its Design Principles
Part II: Subsidiary Ideals of Justice for Each Domain
Chapter 3. The First Subsidiary Ideal: Egalitarian Participatory Constitutional Democracy
Chapter 4. The Second Subsidiary Ideal: A Connected Society
Chapter 5. The Third Subsidiary Ideal: Polypolitanism
Chapter 6. The Fourth Subsidiary Ideal: Empowering Economies
Part III: From Ideal to Design Principles to Practice
Chapter 7. A New Model for the Practice of Democratic Citizenship
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Recenzii
“Allen is an important political theorist and classicist who’s tried to turn theory into action. . . . And Allen’s vision, which she puts forward in her new book, Justice by Means of Democracy . . . is something called power-sharing liberalism. To her, one mistake liberalism has made has been that it is willing, again and again, to deprioritize political equality in favor of material redistribution. But she thinks renewal isn’t going to come from people just getting more from government. They’re going to have to be more full participants in government, and that’s going to require fundamentally overhauling the system. And maybe more than that, it’s going to require potentially constructing entirely new possibilities within it.”
"An important book. . . . Allen’s big idea is that justice can’t be achieved simply by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, and liberty isn’t just about being left alone to do your own thing. People care about more than money, and we are social creatures. We flourish when we participate as equals in the public sphere. 'Justice is therefore best, and perhaps only, achieved by means of democracy,' she wrote in the opening pages."
“Such a strong argument for people getting involved in politics. Not everyone has to run for governor of Massachusetts, but so many people in our movement, our prognosticators, opinion people who are pushing a message of doom and—maybe just getting up and getting involved, maybe that’s a good answer to that. . . . [Allen’s] arguments that freedom emerges from conditions where people are empowered to participate, to architect, to structure the world around them, it’s great.”
"Allen’s latest book, Justice by Means of Democracy, has little patience for abstractions that neglect real-world constraints. Allen argues instead for greater attention to the background conditions that make real disagreement possible, in part by critiquing and reframing the arguments in John Rawls’ seminal work of political philosophy, A Theory of Justice. . . . Her vision of ensuring that 'all people have an experience of ownership, belonging, and equal footing in relation to our political institutions' is compelling. . . . There’s much to appreciate about both the style and substance of Allen’s argument."
"It is hard to understate the importance of Allen’s insistence that political equality is diminished or enhanced not only or even primarily by the proper design of governmental institutions, but also and maybe more importantly in the realms of civil society and political economy. It is not enough to have 'egalitarian participatory constitutional democracy' if the social and economic conditions under which people must participate are not themselves structured with political equality in mind."
"Allen offers a compelling and wide-ranging articulation of liberalism. She shows that not only do liberalism and democracy often go together, but also that they are inseparable partners in the quest for human flourishing. In Allen’s view, human freedom is predicated on political equality, which is increasingly under threat as power becomes concentrated among the wealthy. . . . Justice by Means of Democracy provides the road map that contemporary liberalism so desperately needs."
"Allen has done political philosophy a great service with this book. . . . Liberals and non-liberals alike should applaud its arrival."
"In sum, Justice by Means of Democracy moves us away from parochial definitions of identity and nation to an active model of democratic power and citizenship—one that is in the service of a just, relational, economically empowering, dignity-enhancing, and inclusively democratic society. And by elaborating the principles that could form the basis of such a society, Allen is also able to lay out criteria for making policies that might actually create it."
"A major political philosophical work. . . . Allen’s agenda is about making democracy much more responsive, representative and dynamic and ensuring greater parity of esteem between democratic and economic equality."
"Allen integrates both scholarship and democratic activism into her work as an academic and as an activist. Justice by Means of Democracy examines these different threads as well; what is justice, and how does democracy work towards achieving justice? And what is the role of the citizen in these pursuits?"
"A work of political philosophy drawn from Allen’s lifetime of scholarly interests and her analysis of traumatic socioeconomic and political events during the past decade. A just society is secured by political equality, she explains—and justice itself depends on democracy. But she argues further that 'power-sharing liberalism' is the best way to achieve the equality and justice essential to human flourishing: a prescription for inclusion and careful avoidance of any group’s monopoly on political, economic, or social power. Aspirationally, 'Justice by means of democracy will exist when all people, regardless of background, fully share power and responsibility.'"
"Allen's new book lays out vision for power-sharing liberalism that will lead to greater inclusion, responsiveness, participation—and better lives for all. In Allen’s vision for a just society, every citizen would experience empowerment—both in their private lives and in our shared governing. Achieving this, according to Allen, requires a world where people have a work-life-civic balance and certain foundational needs assured: straightforward and affordable healthcare, low housing and energy costs, and good jobs that integrate people into the productivity of a dynamic, inclusive economy."
"A profound political theorist and classicist, Professor Allen was my dean when I received my PhD, and I have long admired her intellectual rootedness in theory and practice."
"Allen’s book presents a bold thesis: ‘Justice . . . requires egalitarian participatory constitutional democracy.’ Allen persuasively argues that neither liberalism nor democracy can stand alone. In addition, the argument incorporates equality by deploying the republican conception of liberty as non-domination. As such, the book presents an important critique of much of twentieth-century liberalism, which emphasized the distinction between liberty and democracy. . . . An important and provocative work of political theory. Essential."
“With a philosophically rich set of arguments, Allen brilliantly reveals how democracy is the means to achieve justice. As impressively, she derives from her political theory practical steps for the achievement of our common purpose and flourishing. This is a book in the tradition of Rawls and Dahl, but it is a book informed by the recognition of difference and diversity and the search for more encompassing standards of justice. It is without doubt one of the most important books ever written on democracy.”
“Justice by Means of Democracy is a compelling, major statement by one of the most important, influential, and original political philosophers working today. The goal of the book, which is admirably achieved, is to reorient current discussions of justice, away from the primary economic focus on equal distribution of material goods (income or wealth) and toward democratic political equality. This book will transform academic debates in political philosophy and set the terms for how justice is made manifest in social policy. Superb.”
“Ambitious in scope, Justice by Means of Democracy rivals John Rawls’s Theory of Justice, the standard twentieth-century go-to text for liberal political philosophies seeking to address structural inequalities. Taking the idea of the ‘basic structure of society’ as its point of departure, Justice by Means of Democracy adds positive liberties and public autonomy to Rawls’s emphases on negative liberties and private autonomy and replaces Rawls’s famous ‘difference principle’ with a principle of ‘difference without domination.’ Offering an exciting new theory of justice for the twenty-first century, Justice by Means of Democracy is a remarkable achievement.”