Distributive Principles Research Articles

Merit, Need, Entitlement? Investigating Fairness of Housing Evaluations

Abstract The article empirically investigates how individuals evaluate unequal housing conditions with respect to the distributive justice principles of merit, need, and status entitlement. Also addressed is the “double standards” hypothesis. The data stem from an online survey fielded to a random sample of the population of a mid-sized German city (N = 1,154). In a factorial survey experiment, respondents rated example residential constellations of fictitious persons with respect to their perceived fairness. The vignettes varied merit-, need-, and entitlement-related factors, and housing conditions. The findings show that respondents take these justice principles into account when making judgments about fair housing, and that need-related factors (having children) are more important than merit (professional performance). Further, there are double standards of the form that performance is applied differently based on the gender and occupational status of fictitious residents. The article finishes by discussing issues that should be addressed by future work and calls for more empirical studies on fairness of housing evaluations.

The expressive injustice of being rich

According to limitarianism, it is morally impermissible to be too rich. We consider three main challenges to limitarianism: the redundancy objection, the inconclusiveness objection, and the commitment objection. As a distributive principle, we find that limitarianism fails to overcome the three objections—even taking recent theoretical innovations into account. Instead, we suggest that the core commitment of limitarianism can be drawn from the excess intuition. It entails that at some point, people's claims to retain wealth become qualitatively different: they become preposterous from the point of view of interpersonal morality and justification. Extreme wealth, we argue, adds a distinctive expressive reason to worry about inequality and insufficiency, compounding these other distributive injustices. In retaining or wasting excess wealth while others have too little, the wealthy send a message of complete disregard for the interests of their co-citizens. They express that their disadvantaged compatriots have a diminished moral standing.

Distributive Justice Analysis in the Context of Workers' Leave Time Regulation: A Legal Perspective

The controversy surrounding Law No. 6/2023 revolves around the loss of the two-day weekend holiday entitlement for workers, the provision of only one day off in a six-day workweek, changes in working hours, which also affect rest time to only one day per week for a 6-day work schedule. The existence of a law should inherently provide fairness to society and contribute to the happiness of the people, but on the other hand, the government must also strive consistently to foster the economic growth of the population as a means to achieve social welfare. This research aims to investigate the regulation of workers' rest time under Law No. 6/2023 and to assess whether the provisions for rest time under Law No. 6/2023 have met the criteria of fairness for workers. To address these objectives, a normative juridical method with legislative and conceptual approaches is employed. Based on distributive justice theory, Law No. 13/2003 better reflects justice in labor relations in Indonesia as it considers basic needs, equality, and workers' contributions more comprehensively. Conversely, Law No. 6/2023, despite providing benefits to employers and potentially stimulating economic growth, appears to reduce the protection and welfare of workers, which can be deemed less fair according to distributive justice principles. Therefore, strict monitoring and improvements are necessary in the implementation of Law No. 6/2023 to ensure fairness for workers is maintained.

Comparative view of Sandel's Distributive Justice Theory

In Western political thought, distributive justice has always been an important issue. Utilitarianism, liberalism and communitarianism represent three different views of distributive justice, but they try to solve the same problem, the inequality of income and wealth. Utilitarianism aims at welfare maximization, liberalism takes respect for freedom as its starting point, and communitarianism, represented by Sandel and MacIntyre, advocates Aristotle's deserved theory with the aim of promoting virtue and taking unity as the banner against inequality. This paper takes Sandel's Liberalism and the Limits of Justice as the core of the study, captures the central proposition of distributive justice from the standpoint of communitarianism, introduces the Marxist distributive justice principles of Marx and Cohen, and compares and interprets the characteristics of Sandel's communitarian distributive justice theory from a perspective different from utilitarianism and liberalism. Finally, based on the principles of Marxist view of justice, this paper briefly expounds the theoretical value, limitation and practical possibility of Sandel's distributive justice theory and communitarian view.

Co-workers’ perceptions of the distributive justice of idiosyncratic deals – the roles of content, timing, and justice sensitivity

Research to date creates a predominantly positive image of idiosyncratic deals (i-deals). However, since i-deals lead to differences in employment relationships, they can trigger perceptions of unfairness and negative reactions among co-workers, thereby posing a threat to the overall effectiveness of i-deals. Against this background, it is important to gain more insights into how co-workers’ perceptions of distributive justice are shaped. Building on distributive justice theory and integrating distributive justice principles with the roles of emotions and personality, this study investigates three factors that are likely to influence co-workers’ perceptions of the distributive justice of an i-deal: the i-deal’s content, the negotiation’s timing, and co-workers’ justice sensitivity. The results of the vignette-based, between-subjects quasi-experimental study with 650 employees show that these three factors influence co-workers’ perceptions of an i-deal’s distributive justice. In addition, the results of the study reveal interaction effects between the factors under investigation. By examining what influences co-workers’ perceptions of distributive justice, this study contributes to a better understanding of i-deals from a third-party perspective and highlights that some types of i-deals, in terms of content and timing, should be approached with particular caution by supervisors.

Emissions Sufficientarianism

AbstractThis paper defends strong emissions sufficientarianism as an approach to assigning moral rights to generate greenhouse gas emissions. Strong emissions sufficientarianism holds that only subsistence emitting is morally permissible. This paper argues that, since it is uncertain how many subsistence emissions there will be, the present generation owes it to future generations to refrain from generating non-subsistence emissions, not to risk imposing on them a tragic choice between sacrificing themselves and contributing to very dangerous climate change. The paper also addresses the charge that emissions sufficientarianism, in general, is too permissive since it entails a right to contribute to very dangerous climate change. The overall message is that, given the moral urgency posed by climate change, there is little room for distributive principles besides emissions sufficientarianism. This casts doubt on the appropriateness of relying on carbon budgets in assigning rights to emit.

Ageism Without Anticipation-Blindness

Abstract Ageism is the view that it is of greater moral value to allocate health care resources to younger people than to older people. In medical ethics, it is well-known that standard interpretations of distributive principles such as utilitarianism and egalitarianism imply some form of ageism. At times, ethicists argue as if practical complications are the only or main reason for not abiding to ageism. In this article, we argue that inferences to ageism from such distributive principles tend to commit what we call the anticipation-blindness fallacy: A much too narrow focus on life quality benefits of health care treatments inclines us to overlook the importance of life quality benefits of health care safety, that is the mere trust in and expectation of being treated and cared for as one grows old. This is a key omission because health safety has value for a much larger population and for much longer time. Taking health safety into account therefore has important implications as for how ageist we ought to be.

From kilowatts to cents: Financial inclusion of citizens through Dutch community energy business model configurations

Community energy initiatives (CEIs) emphasize citizen empowerment, equitable distribution of energy transition costs and benefits, and the importance of local knowledge. While CEI goals align with energy justice principles, they have been criticized for not fully incorporating distributive justice, particularly the distribution of the benefits of a sustainable energy transition. Therefore, they may potentially perpetuate income inequalities. There are insufficient studies to conclusively determine whether CEIs perpetuate or address income inequalities. Moreover, the integration of transition studies, energy justice and business model literature is lacking, hindering effective analysis of CEI configurations that address income inequalities. This paper aims to connect the sustainability, energy justice and business model literature by dissecting the business model configurations of CEIs and assessing the inclusiveness of these components. To do so, we develop and employ an adapted business model canvas that incorporates societal and environmental considerations in the value proposition, value creation and delivery and value capture. The canvas is used to determine whether sustainability and energy justice considerations, particularly distributive justice principles, are embedded in the CEI business models. The research is focused on the Netherlands, a country with a high number of CEIs. However, the study may yield insights relevant to other countries and CEIs, informing the integration of principles for societal inclusion in their own contexts. We utilize a mixed-method approach, including interviews, desk research and surveys, to ensure robust analysis through data triangulation. The study finds that there are elements of CEI business model configurations that are aligned with energy justice principles. However, models specifically targeting and aligning with minimum income social groups are rare.

Building within planetary boundaries: setting and assessing absolute sustainability targets at the building level

The planetary boundaries (PBs) are a widely used framework defining a “safe operating space” for environmental sustainability at the global level. However, they do not straightforwardly translate into indicators applicable in a building project. This paper proposes a procedure to set and assess absolute sustainability targets related to the PBs in a building project, exemplified in the case of Denmark. The first step is to ensure that the targets and the assessment method use comparable indicators. Common building life cycle assessment (LCA) tools use impact categories that do not directly match the PBs. Two options are considered to address this issue. Dedicated characterization factors can be used to convey LCA results in indicators consistent with the PBs. Alternatively, PB targets can be converted into LCA impact categories. Then, several distributive justice principles are reviewed to allocate a share of planetary sustainability targets to an individual country, to the housing sector within that country, and to an individual project. We argue that principles that conserve existing unsustainable paradigms are not appropriate to set planetary sustainability targets, and propose a novel approach for sectorial allocation based on sufficientarianism and “decent living” scenarios. Finally, challenges related to the assessment of these targets are highlighted. In particular, the paper draws attention to differences in system boundaries between the LCA and the targets.

Social justice orientations: Exploring their impact on poverty attributions and support for social protection

AbstractDistributive justice remains a central issue in contemporary welfare states, even more during times of economic hardship and social uncertainty. In this article, we analyze how attitudes toward the principles of normative distributive justice (equality, need, equity, and entitlement) are related to support for the redistribution of resources (Study 2) and attitudes toward social protection policies (Studies 1 and 3). In Study 1 (N = 325), we found that equality and need positively predicted attitudes toward social protection policies while equity and entitlement negatively predicted these attitudes. In Study 2 (N = 49,519), using data from Round 9 of the European Social Survey, we replicated this linking normative orientation toward different distributive justice principles with support for redistribution. We replicated these results in Study 3 (N = 494). In addition, we explored the role of attributions for poverty in the relationship found in Studies 1 and 2. Attributions for poverty mediated the relationship between orientations toward justice principles and attitudes toward social protection policies.

Perlindungan Anak dari Kekerasan Ekonomi melalui Asuransi: Analisis Peran Otoritas Jasa Keuangan dalam Meningkatkan Jaminan Hak Anak

Purpose – This research aims to elucidate in detail how insurance can serve as a vital instrument in ensuring the rights of children and shielding them from the detrimental impacts of economic violence.
 Methods – The research methodology employed is a thorough literature review encompassing primary data sources from pertinent books, journals, and legal texts related to the research topic. Subsequently, the acquired data is subjected to descriptive-analytical analysis to unveil the underlying objectives of the research.
 Findings – The results indicate that the security provided by insurance contracts is instrumental in safeguarding the rights of children, particularly in situations where parental figures have passed away or retired from employment. While the fulfillment of children's rights may not have reached an optimal level, their financial needs can be met to a reasonable extent, thanks to the role played by insurance. Additionally, this research underscores the crucial role played by the Financial Services Authority (OJK) in upholding justice and ensuring effective protection for children who are vulnerable in the context of economic violence. The OJK is tasked not only with receiving complaints but also with resolving disputes related to insurance businesses and facilitating the settlement of insurance claim disputes in accordance with the agreements reached by the involved parties.
 Research implications – The theoretical implication of this research lies in its contribution to broadening our comprehension of the role of insurance in the realm of child protection. Moreover, its originality is underscored by the integration of distributive justice principles and contract theory, enriching our understanding of this dynamic interplay within the context of child protection mechanisms.
 Originality/value – In conclusion, this research underscores the significance of collaborative efforts among governmental bodies, financial institutions, and communities in enhancing the safeguarding of children from economic violence, utilizing insurance as a potent tool for protection.

The in-group egalitarian Owen values

This paper proposes a new class of allocation rules, which is referred to as the in-group egalitarian Owen values, that integrates two seemingly conflicting principles—marginalism and egalitarianism—in the framework of cooperative games with coalition structures. This class of allocation rules facilitates the use of different principles of allocation in different layers of a social structure such as allocation across coalitions and within a coalition. Therefore, each coalition can employ its specific distributive principle for intra-coalition distribution. Our main results provide axiomatic foundations for the class of allocation rules, in which monotonicity properties highlight the importance of the proposed solutions. We also show that various monotonicity properties generate various allocation rules, where the Owen value and the in-group egalitarian division value are special cases. These results extend the egalitarian Shapley values to the games with coalition structures and offer a rationale for monotonic allocation rules in the presence of social structures.

Is There a Gender Gap in Support for Distributive Principles in Old Age Pension Schemes?

ABSTRACT A number of studies have identified a gender gap in social attitudes, but few have studied the phenomenon in the context of old age pension schemes. Using data from a 2019 Norwegian survey, we examined patterns of support for three distribution principles in pensions (anti-poverty, merit, and equality). Compared to men, women are more supportive of the anti-poverty and equality principles, and less supportive of the merit principle. The gender difference for the anti-poverty principle persists in multivariate analyses, but disappears for the merit and equality principles when we control for socioeconomic factors, particularly income. Analyzing men and women separately revealed that partnership status and health interact with gender. Income however appears to affect men and women equally; high-income women are as likely as high-income men to support the principle of merit and reject the principle of equality.

The Emergence of a New Business Approach in the Fashion and Apparel Industry: The Ethical Retailer

This study sought to examine new marketing ethics (ME) practices that can foster strong moral grounding in the fashion and apparel retail firms to delineate a new approach within this industry. We built on the distributive justice and stakeholder orientation literature to conduct a multi-case study with 15 self-proclaimed ethical fashion and apparel retailers to identify whether and how they differ from traditional and fast fashion retailers. Several data collection techniques were used to gather the evidence (i.e., direct observation, physical and online interviews) combined with a netnographic approach (i.e., online observation of websites and social media content). Our findings show that these firms are guided by ethical-centered values, which are reflected in their product components, purpose, communication practices, and sourcing practices, which point to the emergence of a new business approach. We contribute to the macromarketing literature by identifying a new perspective on the role of morality in ME based on distributive justice principles and stakeholder orientation. We also propose a more refined definition of ethical fashion and apparel retailers.

Using the Veil of Ignorance to align AI systems with principles of justice

The philosopher John Rawls proposed the Veil of Ignorance (VoI) as a thought experiment to identify fair principles for governing a society. Here, we apply the VoI to an important governance domain: artificial intelligence (AI). In five incentive-compatible studies (N = 2, 508), including two preregistered protocols, participants choose principles to govern an Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant from behind the veil: that is, without knowledge of their own relative position in the group. Compared to participants who have this information, we find a consistent preference for a principle that instructs the AI assistant to prioritize the worst-off. Neither risk attitudes nor political preferences adequately explain these choices. Instead, they appear to be driven by elevated concerns about fairness: Without prompting, participants who reason behind the VoI more frequently explain their choice in terms of fairness, compared to those in the Control condition. Moreover, we find initial support for the ability of the VoI to elicit more robust preferences: In the studies presented here, the VoI increases the likelihood of participants continuing to endorse their initial choice in a subsequent round where they know how they will be affected by the AI intervention and have a self-interested motivation to change their mind. These results emerge in both a descriptive and an immersive game. Our findings suggest that the VoI may be a suitable mechanism for selecting distributive principles to govern AI.

Global gas flaring and energy justice: An empirical ethics analysis of stakeholder perspectives

Global gas flaring harms human and non-human health and well-being while contributing to climate change. Flaring activity in the global oil and gas sector is a significant matter of energy justice – concerning the distribution of risks, benefits and harms, recognition of rights, and decision-making influence within gas-flaring-affected communities. This mixed method empirical ethical analysis of gas flaring and energy justice combines Q-methodology and stakeholder interviews with representatives of 14 gas-flaring-affected countries (n = 35) to evaluate the context-sensitivity of distributive, procedural, recognition, and cosmopolitan justice principles to gas-flaring governance. Four dominant normative perspectives emerge around this topic. These perspectives concern: a) government-led zero flaring policy; b) multi-scalar economic governance; c) business responsibility and social license; and d) localism and community empowerment. We find that: first, there is strong stakeholder support for zero-flaring globally. Second, coordinated multi-scalar governance from international-national-local regulatory authorities is desired to protect marginalised communities. Third, egalitarian rights-based approaches are prioritised over utilitarian approaches in planning for oil and gas extraction. Fourth, business responsibility necessitates transparent communication of flaring activities and impacts and the Polluter Pays Principle of environmental redress to affected communities. Finally, stakeholder disagreement centres upon the practical mechanisms to achieve just outcomes - including compensation, the role of local authorities, regulatory agencies, Environmental Impact Assessment, and efforts to tackle rent-seeking and corruption. We conclude that further stakeholder engagement is needed on the implementation processes for gas flaring elimination, rather than the goal itself, through carefully facilitated dialogue and negotiation.

Learning to Live More Equitably

AbstractAlthough seventeenth‐century societies fell far short of contemporary standards of justice, early modern philosophers thought deeply about what social justice consists in. At a theoretical level, they aimed to articulate distributive principles. At a practical level, they asked what qualities we need to possess in order to make just judgments. In the first part of this article, I discuss two interpretations of the conception of equity on which justice was held to rest. On either interpretation, I suggest, treating people equitably was held to be compatible with treating them in ways that we would consider radically unjust. This raises the practical question: What qualities was an equitable or just judge thought to need? The middle section of the article sketches a reply, drawing on a genre of early modern works about how to reason. As this section reveals, early modern thinkers were alive to the many ways in which we can fall short of justice and possessed many techniques for self‐improvement. Greater justice was not beyond the bounds of their imaginations; so, what prevented them from defending it? In the final section of the article, I propose a partial answer, as relevant to us as to our early modern forebears.

Weakly institutionalized, heavily contested: Does support for contemporary welfare reforms rely on norms of distributive justice?

AbstractThree reforms each appealing to a different logic of (re)distribution are strongly politicized in contemporary welfare states: means-tested benefits, demanding activation policies and basic income schemes. While the policy design of means-tested benefits relies on the distributive justice principle of need, demanding activation policies are intrinsically related to the principle of equity and basic income schemes depend on equality. Based on the moral economy and policy feedback literatures, which assume that public opinion adapts to the normative conceptions of justice encapsulated by institutions, attitudes towards these welfare reforms are expected to be grounded on these distributive logics. However, as these reforms are weakly institutionalized and their underlying principles are politically contested, the normative foundation of their public support remains unclear. This study investigates how distributive justice preferences shape support for these proposals by applying structural equation modelling on data from the CRONOS panel linked to the European Social Survey round 8 (2016/2017). Results indicate that only basic income schemes and demanding activation policies are to some extent connected to each of the justice principles. Overall, this study nevertheless indicates that the justice principles have limited explanatory power, which confirms that attitudes towards contemporary welfare reforms rely weakly on justice norms.

ПУТИ ПОВЫШЕНИЯ ФИНАНСИРОВАНИЯ РЕГИОНАЛЬНЫХ ПРОГРАММ ПРОФИЛАКТИКИ ПРЕСТУПЛЕНИЙ (ГОСУДАРСТВЕННО-ЧАСТНОЕ ПАРТНЕРСТВО)

The article studies the state, issues, and patterns of criminological planning at the level of the subject of the Russian Federation. The study primarily aims to detect shortcomings in the mechanism of financial support for regional criminological programming. The analysis conducted helps determine a mainly internal source-based distributive principle of complex regional programs financing. At the same time, the resources of private investors are practically not involved in the implementation of regional criminological planning documents, resulting in missed opportunities for public and private partnership. The study has determined a number of important measures effective in attracting private investments to the process of criminological programming in the subject of the Russian Federation and at the municipal level, and to the increase in the level of coordination between the law enforcement agencies and the state authorities of the subjects.

Belief in egalitarianism and meritocracy

Why do people often distribute joint surplus in an egalitarian way when the payoffs for more productive people are lower than those distributed in a meritocratic way? In particular, does a stationary state exist in which more productive people believe in egalitarianism even when distaste for meritocracy decreases as meritocratic payoffs increase? We extend the Bisin–Verdier model of cultural transmission to address these questions and demonstrate that such a stationary state exists, but is stable only under certain conditions. Therefore, the fractions of people believing in egalitarianism and meritocracy may continue to fluctuate. • We analyze the cultural emergence of egalitarianism and meritocracy. • Distaste for the other distributive principle varies depending on relative payoffs. • A stationary state exists but is stable only under certain conditions. • The fraction of people believing in each principle may continue to fluctuate.