Introduction to Contemporary Political Theory

Colin Farrelly

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780761949084, 9780761949077
• eBook ISBN: 9781446227954
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

`This text provides an up to date account of how things currently stand in political philosophy, and will provide an excellent introduction for students from any background. It gives a lucid and careful account of the central controversies and sites of disagreement in political theory over the last thirty years and rather than sacrifice theoretical sophistication and nuance for the sake of clarity and accessibility, it admirably achieves both? -

Catriona McKinnon, University of York

This comprehensive textbook provides a complete and accessible introduction to the main theorists and issues in contemporary political theory today.

The text is organized into two major parts. The first, Contemporary Liberal Theory, outlines four distinct liberal theories of justice to introduce the work of Rawls, Nozick, Gauthier and Dworkin. The second, Alternative Traditions, introduces the theorists and themes associated with four key areas of contemporary debate: communitarianism, multiculturalism, deliberative democracy and feminism.

By giving students questions for consideration and using applied examples throughout, the text illustrates the practical relevance of contemporary theoretical debates to everyday issues in policy and politics.

The result is an essential overview of all the main traditions, issues and positions in political theory today that will serve as an invaluable resource for all students of contemporary political theory, political ideas and political philosophy.

Colin Farrelly is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Introduction to Contemporary Political Theory will complement Contemporary Political Theory: A Reader edited by Colin Farrelly and also published by SAGE Publications.

Part One:

Contemporary Liberal Theory

1	Rawls and Justice as Fairness

Summary Contents

1.1 Introduction

1.2 The original position

1.3 Equal opportunity

1.4 Cohen on incentives

1.5 The principles that apply to individuals

1.6 Who are the least advantaged?

1.7 Beitz on global Justice

1.8 A political conception of justice

1.1 Introduction

John Rawls is arguably the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century. In his two most important books, A Theory of Justice (1971)¹ and Political Liberalism (1993), he defends his theory entitled ‘justice as fairness’. Justice as fairness is primarily concerned with ‘the way in which major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation’ (Rawls, 1999: 6). As such, justice as fairness is a theory designed to apply to what Rawls calls the ‘basic structure’ – the political, social and economic institutions of society. It provides a normative ideal by which we are to judge the political constitution of society and the principal economic and social arrangements. The just society, according to justice as fairness, is one governed by the two principles of justice. These principles are:

• Each person has the same indefensible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all (equal basic liberties principle).
• Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions. First, they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity (fair equality of opportunity principle); and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (difference principle).

The principles are presented in lexical order. This means that they are listed in order of priority. The equal basic liberties principle must be satisfied before the second principle is invoked and the fair equality of opportunity principle must be satisfied before the difference principle can be invoked.

In this chapter we shall consider the main components of Rawls’s liberal theory and some of the objections raised against it. Many of the theorists we shall examine in later chapters will also raise objections to Rawls’s liberal theory of justice. In constructing his theory of ‘justice as fairness’ Rawls appeals to the idea of the social contract. His theory is inspired by contractarians like John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. The main rival of the contractarian tradition is utilitarianism and Rawls offers his theory as an alternative to utilitarianism, which had been the dominant tradition prior to the publication of A Theory of Justice. It is perhaps best to begin then with a brief discussion of utilitarianism and Rawls’s objections to it.

In Contemporary Ethics: Taking Account of Utilitarianism William Shaw claims that two fundamental ideas underlie utilitarianism: ‘first, that the results of our actions are the key to their moral evaluation, and second, that one should assess and compare those results in terms of the happiness they cause (or more broadly, in terms of their impact on people’s well-being)’ (Shaw, 1999: 2). When stated like this, it is easy to see why utilitarianism has enjoyed an eminent list of devotees, which include David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. It captures some of our most basic moral intuitions concerning the importance of, for example, impartiality and human welfare. Utilitarians have put forth diverse accounts of what qualifies as ‘human happiness’, or ‘utility’, but they share the belief that the best outcome is the one that maximizes overall happiness or utility.

It is important to note that utilitarianism can be utilized as both an ethical theory designed to answer the question ‘what should I do?’ and as a political theory that applies to the conduct of political affairs – the decisions we make regarding how we are, collectively, to live together. It is this appeal to utilitarianism as a public philosophy that Rawls criticizes and thus I shall focus only on its viability as a normative political theory.

In A Theory of Justice Rawls invokes two main concepts of ethics – the right and the good – in order to illustrate how his contractarian theory differs from utilitarianism. ‘The structure of an ethical theory is, then, largely determined by how it defines and connects these two basic notions’ (Rawls, 1999: 21). Rawls distinguishes between the following two ways of relating the right and the good. The first way is to define the good independently from the right, and then the right as that which maximizes the good. Suppose, for example, one defines the good as material prosperity. If we accept this definition of the good then we can determine which laws and policies are the right ones by simply choosing the institutional arrangement that will bring about the greatest level of material prosperity. Institutions and acts are right if, of the available alternatives, they produce the most good. Rawls calls this type of theory a teleological theory. It is contrasted with a deontological theory. Deontological theories can be defined as a theory ‘that either does not specify the good independently from the right, or does not interpret the right as maximising the good’ (Rawls, 1999: 26). Rawls wants to defend a theory that is deontological in this second sense, that is, it gives a priority to the right over the good.

The appeal of the deontological position can be brought out by considering the example noted above. A teleological theory instructs us to maximize the good. If we define the good as material prosperity, for example, the institutions of our society will be designed to maximize overall material prosperity. But such a goal may be pursued by measures we think are unjust. Maximizing overall material prosperity might justify restricting the number of children people can have or denying the terminally ill expensive health care provisions. By asserting a priority of the right over the good Rawls seeks to avoid the injustices that may be made in the name of maximizing utility. As Rawls puts it, ‘each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override’ (Rawls, 1999: 3).

The main target of Rawls’s critique is the classical utilitarian doctrine espoused by Jeremy Bentham and Henry Sidgwick. This version maintains that ‘society is rightly ordered, and therefore just, when its major institutions are arranged so as to achieve the greatest net balance of satisfaction summed over all the individuals belonging to it’ (Rawls, 1999: 20). Such an approach extends what is a commonsensical approach to the principle of choice for one person to the principle of choice for an association of people. Rawls explains how, as a principle of choice for one person, the utilitarian ethic seems like a rational ethic:

Each man in realizing his own interests is certainly free to balance his own losses against his own gains. We may impose a sacrifice on ourselves now for the sake of a greater advantage later. A person quite properly acts, at least when others are not affected, to achieve his own greatest good, to advance his rational ends as far as possible. (Rawls, 1999: 21)

But the reasoning that is appropriate for the choice of one person should not, argues Rawls, be extended to the choice for an association of people. This is what utilitarianism does. In doing so it does not take seriously the distinction between persons. There are some things we should not do to people, even if doing it ‘achieves the greatest net balance of satisfaction for all’. In particular, Rawls argues that ‘in a just society the basic liberties are taken for granted and the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests’ (Rawls, 1999: 25).

Utilitarianism treats questions of distributive justice as questions of efficient administration. ‘The nature of the decision made by the ideal legislator is not, therefore, materially different from that of an entrepreneur deciding how to maximize his profit by producing this or that commodity, or that of a consumer deciding how to maximize his satisfaction by the purchase of this or that collection of goods’ (Rawls, 1999: 24). But justice, claims Rawls, must trump the virtue of efficiency. The right is prior to the good. Justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others.

Rawls’s method

The task of determining which principles should govern the main institutions of our society is a monumental one and Rawls believes that we must begin this task with some criteria for assessing the viability of the principles on offer. Rawls claims that there is ‘a definite if limited class of facts against which conjectured principles can be checked …’(Rawls, 1999: 44). This class of facts comprises the considered judgements we have concerning what constitutes a just society. Our moral sensibilities tell us that acts of murder, slavery and discrimination, for example, are acts that our institutions should seek to prevent and, in cases where they do occur, the perpetrators should be appropriately punished. Any theory of justice that conflicts with these judgements will fail to be compelling. For example, a theory that permits denying ethnic minorities the right to vote will fail to secure our approval. One of our most firmly entrenched beliefs concerning justice is that all citizens should be entitled to the right to vote, regardless of their race, religion or gender. A theory that fails to accommodate such a widely shared belief fails to be a viable account of the demands of justice.

This appeal to a shared understanding of what justice demands is an important aspect of Rawls’s theory. When constructing a theory we must start somewhere, and Rawls wants to start with general and widely accepted premises, premises that reflect the considered judgements citizens of a democratic society have. These judgements serve as the moral data from which we are to construct and test a theory of justice. A theory that blatantly violates one of these convictions will fail to be a viable theory. While Rawls endorses appealing to some shared beliefs in the initial stages of his theory, he is quick to point out that he does not appeal to values that violate what he calls the fact of reasonable pluralism. ‘This is the fact of profound and irreconcilable differences in citizens’ reasonable comprehensive religious and philosophical conceptions of the world, and in their views of the moral and aesthetic values to be sought in human life’ (Rawls, 2001: 3). Citizens affirm diverse and often competing conceptions of what is of value in life. An appeal to contentious claims concerning, for example, what the Bible says concerning the sexual relations between a man and a woman, goes well beyond the shared judgements citizens of a free and democratic society have.

Rawls does not provide an exhaustive list of what these initial shared assumptions are. Nor does he claim that our initial convictions are exempt from scrutiny. On the contrary, once we begin to consider the complexities of issues raised by different conceptions of justice, we will find that we revise or perhaps even abandon some of the initial convictions we began with. What we seek is a fit between the principles of justice and our considered judgements. This is what Rawls calls reflective equilibrium. We will not find a perfect fit between these two things, but by striving for such a fit we can rule out various contending principles of justice as well as clarify what our considered judgements are regarding the demands of justice.

While Rawls does not provide an exhaustive list of what these initial assumptions are, he does invoke certain fundamental ideas he believes are embedded in the public political culture of a democratic society. These include the following:

1. The idea of society as a fair system of social cooperation over time from one generation to the next.
2. The idea of citizens as free and equal persons. As such, they are taken to possess two moral powers. Firstly, the capacity for a sense of justice. That is, the capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from (and not merely in accordance with) the principles of political justice that specify the fair terms of social cooperation. Secondly, persons have a capacity for a conception of the good. That is, the capacity to have, revise, and rationally to pursue a conception of the good. (Rawls, 2001: 18–19)

These fundamental ideas are, claims Rawls, viewed as being familiar from the public political culture of a democratic society.

Even though such ideas are not often expressly formulated, nor their meaning clearly marked out, they may play a fundamental role in society’s political thought and in how its institutions are interpreted, for example, by courts and in historical or other texts regarded as being of enduring significance. That a democratic society is often viewed as a system of social cooperation is suggested by the fact that from a political point of view, and in the context of the public discussion of basic questions of political rights, its citizens do not regard their social order as a fixed natural order, or as an institutional structure justified by religious doctrines or hierarchical principles pressing aristocratic values. (Rawls, 2001: 6)

If we begin with these fundamental organizing ideas, how are we to determine what the specific requirements of fair terms of cooperation actually are? To answer this question Rawls introduces the original position.

1.2 The original position

Appealing to our moral sensibilities concerning what we believe to be fair and just, Rawls constructs the original position. The original position is a hypothetical choice situation. It corresponds to the state of nature in traditional contract theories. Parties are placed in the original position and given two tasks. First, to choose the principles that are to govern the basic structure of society. And secondly, to choose the principles that are to apply to individuals. They are also given a limited list of principles from which to choose. This list includes Rawls’s two principles of justice and their priority rules, utilitarianism and perfectionism.²

Rawls describes the original position as the appropriate initial status quo. It is one in which all people are treated as equals. In order to be so, certain conditions must hold. In everyday life a number of unfair factors influence agreements that we want to rule out in the original position. For example, unfair bargaining advantages, threats of force and coercion, and deception and fraud. In order to ensure that the choice of principles of justice is impartial and fair Rawls invokes the following two constraints:

1. The principles must fulfil what he calls the formal constraints of the right.
2. They must be chosen behind a veil of ignorance.

The formal constraints of the right impose five restrictions on the choice of principles. The principles must be general in form and universal in application, they are to be publicly recognized as a final court of appeal for ordering the conflicting claims of moral persons. Rawls provides an explanation for each of the five constraints of the right.³ But none of the formal constraints of the right rule out the traditional conceptions of justice. What they do rule out are certain variants of egoism. The generality requirement, for example, rules out first-person dictatorships.

Further constraints are imposed on the choice situation by the veil of ignorance. By placing the parties behind a veil of ignorance Rawls believes that the choice situation will ‘nullify the effects of specific contingencies that put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own advantage’ (Rawls, 1999: 118). From behind the veil of ignorance the parties are denied c...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Part One: Contemporary Liberal Theory
• Part Two: Alternative Traditions
• Bibliography
• Index