The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy

Annabelle Lever, Andrei Poama, Annabelle Lever, Andrei Poama

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315461717
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

What does it mean to do public policy ethics today? How should philosophers engage with ethical issues in policy-making when policy decisions are circumscribed by political and pragmatic concerns? How do ethical issues in public policy differ between areas such as foreign policy, criminal justice, or environmental policy?

The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy addresses all these questions and more, and is the first handbook of its kind. It is comprised of 41 chapters written by leading international contributors, and is organised into four clear sections covering the following key topics:

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• Methodology: philosophical approaches to public policy, ethical expertise, knowledge, and public policy
• Democracy and public policy: identity, integration and inclusion: voting, linguistic policy, discrimination, youth policy, religious toleration, and the family
• Public goods: defence and foreign policy, development and climate change, surveillance and internal security, ethics of welfare, healthcare and fair trade, sovereignty and territorial boundaries, and the ethics of nudging
• Public policy challenges: criminal justice, policing, taxation, poverty, disability, reparation, and ethics of death policies.

The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, politics, and social policy. It will be equally useful to those in related disciplines, such as economics and law, or professional fields, such as business administration or policy-making in general.

Part I
Ethics for public policy

Models and methods

1
Method in philosophy and public policy

Applied philosophy versus engaged philosophy

Jonathan Wolff

The attractions of moral and political philosophy

Many moral and political philosophers, I assume, became interested in their subject initially through a concern with particular ethical or political questions. I can remember, for example, as a teenager worrying about the justification of punishment. Later I became interested in questions of inequality and social justice, and the justification of authority. Moral and political philosophy, I hoped, would help me think about, perhaps even solve, some of these questions.

The experience of studying moral and political philosophy took me, though, in a different direction. Mainstream moral philosophy, when I was an undergraduate in the early 1980s, was concerned largely with questions about the metaphysics of value, making connections with epistemology and philosophy of language. Political philosophy was dominated by the study of the crisply formulated theories of justice of Rawls and Nozick, albeit elaborated in great, sometimes laborious, detail. Essentially political philosophy, as it was taught to me (and it will have been different for others), was identified with the construction of abstract principles, and the provision of arguments for or (more often) against, primarily in the form of counter-examples. The options for a political philosopher were to defend or attack an existing grand theory, or, in a daunting flight of fancy, attempt to construct a new one. There was little attention to practical issues, with the exceptions of civil disobedience and freedom of speech, which were hangovers of the flurry of philosophical activity generated by the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.¹

This led to a type of anxiety regarding the role of political philosophers. While the injustice in the world around them attracted students to political philosophy, the state of the discipline meant that what made them successful was abandoning passion and protest, and replacing it with analytical precision and abstract thought. R.M. Hare captures this attitude by asserting that ‘If philosophers are going to do good rather than harm in politics they must value clarity and rigour above excitement’ (Hare 1989, p. 1). What mattered was pointing out that an important theorist had overlooked a distinction or was vulnerable to a counter-example. Papers of this nature filled the most prestigious journals. Yet, at the same time, there were counter-currents: rejections of the abstractions of political philosophy, such as to be found in the communitarian critics of liberalism who sometimes themselves fell short of doing much more than making criticisms, and thereby struggled to rise above the abstraction they opposed (Sandel 1982). But at least this work had the virtue of raising the question of how political philosophy can be brought into contact with the real world of public policy, and some communitarians also showed a rich understanding of history and politics (e.g., Walzer 1983).

Such criticisms reflected the feeling that the dominant voices in political philosophy had encouraged the pursuit of only one path out of many possibilities. A deep concern with the injustices of the world is displaced or hijacked into a professionalised discourse that has become removed from those initial motivations. But is there an alternative?

Applied political philosophy and its discontents

One, apparently plausible, answer, is to address real-world problems by working out how to solve them by ‘applying’ a moral or political theory, thereby providing ‘philosophical foundations’ for social and public policy. I shall call this the ‘applied philosophy’ approach. So, for example, those convinced by Rawls’s theory of justice would seek to formulate policies that would move the basic structure of society closer to his principles of justice: equal basic liberties for all, fair equality of opportunity, and the difference principle, making the worst off as well off as possible. Laws would need to change, and taxes raised and redistributed, to bring us closer to Rawls’s conception of a just society (Rawls 1999a [1971]). Similarly, those inspired by Nozick’s libertarianism would set out steps that would strengthen property rights, reduce the sphere of government action, and lower taxes, again in the hope of moving society in a libertarian direction (Nozick 1974). These, however, are largely aspirational projects, as far as philosophers are concerned, for notably Rawls and Nozick said very little about how their theories can be applied to current circumstance. Indeed, setting out the connective tissue between theory and policy has rarely been done in detail, at least in relation to the topic of distributive justice. Even a book with such a title as Realizing Rawls (Pogge 1989) delivers little by way of concrete policy recommendation. This is not to say that there is no role for such work (I will return to this) but rather that something else is also needed.

There are, however, philosophers who attempt to show in detail how their abstract philosophical theories can resolve particular policy issues. For example, in a series of volumes, Hare drew on his utilitarian moral theory to explore topics such as education, terrorism, slavery, punishment, and the environment (Hare 1972, 1989, 1996, 1998). These writings exemplify the idea of applied moral and political philosophy as the process of applying a theory to policy. This appears a reasonable, even obvious, way of proceeding. Yet there are difficulties.

The first is the most obvious; the apparent dogmatism of such an approach. Policy proposals derived from a particular moral or political theory are no more firmly based than the premises. Those who doubt the starting point will not be convinced. What happens next? Do we need to provide arguments for a philosophical theory as part of the policy debate? What are those arguments? Hare does not shirk this challenge, claiming that utilitarianism can be derived from an analysis of the logic of the moral concepts citing his other works where he has argued the point in detail. But, first, his arguments have convinced only a small number of other philosophers (Seanor and Fotion 1988), and second, even if sound, they need to be conveyed to people within the public policy process in a manner they understand. Yet if Hare’s arguments are not strong enough to bring about a consensus within philosophy, what hope is there of convincing all relevant decision-makers in the policy process (cf. MacIntyre 1981)? Without compelling arguments, Hare is arguing from his own authority, or perhaps the authority of a tradition, and one of the first lessons in philosophy is that arguments from authority have no weight other than to suggest promising lines of enquiry. Others such as William MacAskill have claimed to be arguing from an ‘ecumenical’ starting point, which in his case is a form of consequentialism that, he suggests, can make room for values such as freedom and equality, but still the framework remains a maximising consequentialist one, perhaps within constraints (MacAskill 2015, n. 42). And there are many who deny that this outlook encompasses all that is relevantly at stake (Srinivasan 2015).

I have assumed that it is possible to move directly from a theory to a policy recommendation. A second difficulty is that theories often under-determine policy outcomes. For example, John Rawls suggests that his theory of justice is compatible with both ‘property-owning democracy’ and ‘liberal socialism’. Hence those who agree on the philosophical theory can disagree about policy (Rawls 2001). In some cases disputes can be resolved by rejecting one approach on other grounds, such as what fits best with existing traditions, but not always. This leaves us unclear how to deal with remaining disagreements.

Even more significant, however, is the third problem of implausibility of recommendations. My first experience of policy work concerned a review of the law of gambling. Broadly, I had thought that I believed some version of John Stuart Mill’s ‘harm principle’, giving adults in possession of their normal reasoning capacities the right to act as they wish, provided that they do not harm others (Mill 2003 [1859]). The obvious application is that gambling should be regulated according to the harm principle, from which it follows that anything should be permitted between informed, consenting adults, provided there are no significant third-party effects. Yet gambling has never been regulated on this basis. To take a mundane example, in the US a roulette wheel must have 36 numbers and two zeros (and hence the odds of winning any bet is 36/38), while in the UK and Europe a roulette wheel has 36 numbers and only one zero. A UK casino cannot try to compete by making the game more favourable to the customer by, say, having 40 numbers and only one zero, even if it were to make this advantage very clear to every customer. The regulation is a type of paternalistic intervention to ensure that the odds can be relatively easily understood, to minimise the possibility of unfairness. Yet is arguable whether it is compatible with the harm principle, which would seem to call for a liberalisation of the games on offer, as long as there is full disclosure of odds. For perhaps a clearer example, in the UK you cannot play on a slot machine by inserting your credit card and repeating play until your credit card limit is reached. I doubt that anyone objects to this law, but again its justification seems paternalistic. Some may reply that extensive borrowing could harm third parties, most notably dependents, but this is a general argument against credit cards, rather than specific to gambling (for discussion, see Wolff 2011, pp. 37–60). Hence, the harm principle, though widely supported and recited, is not a sound basis for policy on its own (see Feinberg 1984, 1985).

The problem, though, is not with the harm principle but the goal of applied philosophy to formulate concise philosophical principles that can directly determine policy. For another example, when I was working on the policy question of how invasive experiments on animals should be regulated Peter Singer and Peter Carruthers were the most prominent voices in the philosophical debate. Singer, famously, on the Benthamite basis that sentience is a critical factor, argued for animal liberation (Singer 1995). Although in his book of that name he did not discuss experiments for critical medical research, the obvious conclusion of his argument is that we are no more justified in experimenting on animals than we would be on humans without consent. Carruthers, by contrast, argued that we owe animals a lower level of concern than humans because of their limited cognitive capacities (Carruthers 1992). Strictly, it seems, Singer’s view entails that no experiments on animals are permitted (unless they would also be permitted on humans), while Carruthers’s position suggests that there are minimal moral limits to what humans can do to animals. But in their extremes neither view has any prospect of being adopted by policy-makers. Currently, experiments are permitted under licence for some purposes (human and animal health) on some animals (no great apes) under strict controls. The policy question is whether current regulations require adjustment, and suggestions of very radical change to fit a philosophical theory will make no impression (however, as I will argue later, philosophical theories are vital to the policy process on a longer arc).

The three problems for ‘applied philosophy’ mentioned so far are dogmatism, under-determination, and implausibility of recommendations. A fourth is that sometimes a theory requires several steps for implementation, but partial implementation could be worse than doing nothing. This is a version of the theory of the second best. Consider, for example, Ronald Dworkin’s theory of equality of resources (1981). For Dworkin the just society combines background equality in distribution with respect for individual choice and ambition. People should receive the benefits and burdens of their freely made choices. Suppose a government seeks to put this theory into practice. Equalising background resources will be a very long, politically arduous programme, likely to meet a great deal of resistance. Moving towards a system in which people reap the costs and benefits of their choices seems more straightforward, leading to reduction of taxes on incomes and profits, and reducing the benefits of those who could work but choose not to. Suppose this ‘responsibility for choice’ element is introduced before background conditions are equalised. Unfortunately, rather than half-way to equality of resources, we would find ourselves in something like the ‘everyday libertarianism’ encouraged by Margaret Thatcher; few restrictions on property transfers, but taking existing property ownership for granted (cf. Murphy and Nagel 2002). Although there is no necessity that any theory is implemented as incompetently as described, it is natural to try to change the easy things first. Hence, at a minimum, it is something for which we should be on our guard.

The fifth problem is what we can call blindspots. This is well illustrated with Charles Mills’s criticism of Rawls (Rawls 1999a [1971]; Pateman and Mills 2007). Suppose that US society transitions to become fully compliant with Rawls’s theory of justice. Everyone has equal basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity, and the worst off have as much as any worst-off group could have. Mills asks whether we would, therefore, have eliminated race-based injustice. Perhaps surprisingly, he answers in the negative. The worst off in terms of income and wealth in the US are disproportionately Black and Hispanic. Suppose we greatly improve the fortunes of the worst off. Nevertheless, there is little reason to believe that the racial composition of the worst-off group would have changed. The worst-off group is still likely to be overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic. Other policies of compensation and rectification will be needed to eliminate racial difference in life fortune in order to overcome racial injustice.

Finally, I need to mention the problem of conceptual inadequacy, which can be illustrated with the example of disability. Although there is important work making a conceptual bridge between the concerns of philosophers and activists (see, e.g., Silvers et al. 1998; Kittay 1999; Barnes 2016), on the whole the abstract concepts of justice employed by philosophers provided no, or poor, policy proposals for the area. John Rawls, notoriously, assumes the problem away, at the most fundamental level (Rawls 1999a [1971], 1999b). Dworkin addressed disability by means of an ingenious hypothetical insurance market to set levels of redistribution (Dworkin 1981). However, this conceptualises the disadvantage experienced by people with disabilities in purely economic terms, with tax and transfer as the proposed solution. At a time when disability studies was gripped with the debate between the ‘medical’ model (repair the person) and the ‘social’ model (change the world so everyone can find their place), and in other disciplines academics engaged in participatory research with people with disabilities to understand their concerns (Shakespeare 2000), the dominant phi...