Central Perspectives in Political Philosophy

Abstract

The bases for my comparative institutional evaluation are those principles and values that predominate in contemporary political philosophy, in particular those that are used to justify welfare states. These are egalitarianism (and a cousin, prioritarianism), positive-rights theory, communitarianism, and epistemic accessibility, a requirement common to many forms of liberalism. Before I describe these, some preliminaries are needed. First, I do not discuss every major principle or value in contemporary political philosophy. I ignore, for example, socialism. Socialist principles and values either support abolishing welfare-state institutions (perhaps because they are too tainted with or constituted by the evils of market capitalism) or support welfare-state institutions as an adjunct to socialist institutions. If the former is correct, then socialist concerns are not relevant for my project because the institutional choices under consideration in this book are welfare states versus more market alternatives. If the latter is correct (which is more likely because most socialists today do not favor abolishing all market institutions), then the principles or values that they rely on are likely to be the ones I will discuss – in particular, egalitarianism and communitarianism. I also will not spend time discussing libertarianism because it is quite obvious that libertarians will prefer market-based alternatives to welfare states. (Of course, libertarians would prefer pure free-market institutions to the qualified form of market institutions that are the focus of this book, but that is a separate matter).