Getting to justice?

This article addresses whether Albert Weale’s view in Democratic Justice and the Social Contract (OUP 2013) fits into one of two strands of social contract traditions, and how his account stands up to critics. He claims to stand in the contractarian tradition, which seeks to justify normative principles of justice from non-moral premises. The alternative is the contractualist tradition which assumes that individuals are also motivated by other-regarding moral considerations. The aim of the latter theories is often limited to systematise and specify vague and contested normative judgements concerning shared institutions. There are tensions in Weale’s account as to whether it addresses the question of concern to contractarians or rather that of contractualists. A second challenge concerns Weale’s attempt to extrapolate principles of justice from common property resource regimes within the basic structure of society to that basic structure of a ‘great society’ itself. The impact of the basic structure on individuals is so pervasive that the principle Weale proposes seems misapplied. A claim to the marginal product in complex modes of production supplemented by a social insurance scheme says little about the distributive principles for assessing how the basic structure as a whole should engender the distribution of marginal products among us.     

Negotiation in legislatures over government formation

We question results claiming to extend non-cooperative models of legislative bargaining to the theoretically general and substantively typical case with an arbitrary number of disciplined parties. We identify problems with both the derivation of formal results and empirical evaluation of these. No empirically robust formateur advantage is observed in field data on bargaining over government formation. Given this theoretical and empirical impasse, we reconsider the substantive premises that should form the foundation for any new attempt to model this fundamental political process, arguing that models should be grounded in binding constitutional constraints on the government formation process in parliamentary democracies.     

An experimental study of the efficiency of unanimity rule and majority rule

Scholars traditionally claim that unanimity rule is more capable of producing Pareto optimal outcomes than majority rule. Dougherty and Edward (Public Choice 151(3):655–678, 2012) make the opposite claim assuming proposals are either random, sincere, or strategic. We test these competing hypotheses in a two-dimensional framework using laboratory experiments. Our primary results suggest: (1) majority rule enters the Pareto set more quickly than unanimity rule, (2) majority rule leaves the Pareto set at the same rate as unanimity rule, and (3) majority rule is more likely to select a Pareto optimal outcome than unanimity rule at the end of the game.     

Social welfare functions when preferences are convex,strictly monotonic,and continuous

The paper shows that if the class of admissible preference orderings is restricted in a manner appropriate for economic and political models, then Arrow's impossibility theorem for social welfare functions continues to be valid. Specifically if the space of alternatives is R ₊ ⁿ , n ≥ 3, where each dimension represents a different public good and if each person's preferences are restricted to be convex, continuous, and strictly monotonic, then no social welfare function exists that satisfies unanimity, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and nondictatorship.     

Social order through constitutional choice: A contractarian proposal

The present paper consists of two closely related parts: one which outlines a normative criterion for evaluating the legitimacy of constitutional change and one which specifies a particular proposal of a constitution. The criterion used stems directly from the "pragmatic" brand of contractarianism developed by Buchanan, where an approximate rule of unanimity is utilized. The proposal aims at the highest possible freedom of choice for individuals when it comes to defining the political system of their liking: a core (dealing with public goods and rights) is common for all, but everything else can vary between different sub-constitutions between which individuals choose.     

Recognition as Redistribution

Abstract

This paper aims to explore and examine the implied commitment to the premises of recognition in Rawls’s account of redistributive justice. It attempts to find out whether or not recognition relations that produce humiliation and cultural injustice can be followed to their logical conclusion in his theory of redistribution. This paper makes two claims. Firstly, although Rawls does not disregard the harms of misrecognition as demonstrated in his notion of self-respect being the most important primary good, he cannot liberally accommodate the idea of humiliation as a case of injustice without compromising the basic premises of his theory. Secondly, while resource distribution produces indirect side effects that can impact upon cultural injustice, addressing recognition issues through the prism of redistribution can inadvertently result in further misrecognition. The paper concludes that in the final analysis Rawls wrongly takes redistribution as the overarching principle of justice to which recognition is but a subservient principle.     

Pennies from heaven: Entry fees to a socialist “paradise”

Based on a political-economic perspective, this paper assesses the former GDR-regime's policy of obligatory exchange (Pflichtumtauschsatz). ThePflichtumtausch, one of a wide array of instruments used to collect convertible currency and restrict access to the GDR, is briefly described. Following that, a demand function, relating visits to East Germany on the one hand to thePflichtumtauschsatz on the other, is estimated. The empirical evidence adduced suggests that visits to the East were considered a normal good. The next question considered is whether the GDR-regime, acting in its role as a monopolist, followed an optimal pricing policy. On both theoretical and empirical grounds this can be rejected. Visits to the East were underpriced. This resulted in a higher number of visits and lower revenue when seen from a profit-maximizing perspective. On the other hand the actual pricing was advantageous with respect to two goals: the deterrence of visits and the collection of convertible currency. Nonetheless, it is clear that the GDR-regime voluntarily restricted its revenue collection from thePflichtumtausch. This restraint, however, can be seen as its input into a political bargain. As a rule, such “good manners” in the matter of thePflichtumtausch were more than compensated by interest payments saved in the use of the Swing. The GDR-regime's generosity thus turned out to be a rather expensive good for the West Germans.     

Decision costs in legislative bargaining: an experimental analysis

We conduct an experiment to assess the effects of different decision rules on the costs of decision making in a multilateral bargaining situation. Specifically, we compare the amount of costly delay observed in an experimental bargaining game under majority and unanimity rule. Our main finding is that individual subjects are more likely to reject offers under unanimity rule. This higher rejection rate, as well as the requirement that all subjects agree, leads to more costly delay. This result provides empirical support for a classic argument in favor of less-than-unanimity decision rules put forth by Buchanan and Tullock (The calculus of consent: logical foundations of constitutional democracy, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1962).     

Voting for Pareto optimality: a multidimensional analysis

We compare unanimity rule and majority rule in their abilities to produce Pareto superior and Pareto optimal alternatives in fixed number of rounds of voting using a two-dimensional spatial voting model with random proposals, sincere proposals, and strategic proposals. Our findings show that for random or sincere proposals, majority rule is at least as likely to select a Pareto optimal outcome as unanimity rule. For strategic proposals, the subgame perfect equilibrium under unanimity rule is Pareto optimal. For other k-majority rules, the outcome is Pareto optimal or very close to it. For outcomes that are both Pareto optimal and Pareto superior, unanimity rule outperforms majority rule.     

Institutional Arrangements and Logrolling: Evidence from the European Union

This article illustrates how voting rules used to pass a piece of legislation and the structure of the legislation, in terms of whether or not it has single or multiple issue dimensions, influence the frequency and the purpose of position changes in legislative negotiations. Through analysis of data on a set of legislative proposals negotiated in the European Union, I show that position changes are less common under unanimity rule than under majority rule. More importantly, I argue and show that when the negotiated legislation is multidimensional (i.e., contains multiple issues) and the voting rule is unanimity, position changing is a lucrative strategy for legislators. Multidimensional legislation creates opportunities for logrolling, and legislators’ veto power under the unanimity rule enables them to exploit these opportunities. Accordingly, under this scenario, legislators often engage in what I call a within‐legislation logroll and secure favorable legislative outcomes.     

Was Knut Wicksell a conservative or a radical? A note on an early monograph by Knut Wicksell

The article reviews a small monograph by K. Wicksell entitled Our taxes. Who pays them and who should pay them? It sheds some light on why Wicksell, a radical of his time, was so conservative as an economist. This paradox comes because Wicksell, as an economist, is often brought in line with the unanimity principle. Correctly seen, Wicksell pleaded for general franchise and proportional representation under the unanimity constraint. This was a radical proposal in his time because it contributed to shift the burden of taxation from the poor to the rich by implementing the benefit principle.

     

Forming stable coalitions: The process matters

Players are assumed to rank each other as coalition partners. Two processes of coalition formation are defined and illustrated:

• Fallback (FB): Players seek coalition partners by descending lower and lower in their preference rankings until some majority coalition, all of whose members consider each other mutually acceptable, forms.
• Build-up (BU): Same descent as FB, except only majorities whose members rank each other highest form coalitions.

BU coalitions are stable in the sense that no member would prefer to be in another coalition, whereas FB coalitions, whose members need not rank each other highest, may not be stable. BU coalitions are bimodally distributed in a random society, with peaks around simple majority and unanimity; the distributions of majorities in the US Supreme Court and in the US House of Representatives follow this pattern. The dynamics of real-life coalition-formation processes are illustrated by two Supreme Court cases.

     

Legislative bargaining with costly communication

We investigate the effects of voting rules on delay in a multilateral bargaining experiment with costly communication. Our design is based on a variant of the Baron–Ferejohn framework. Communication takes place after a proposer is selected and before a proposal is made. In contrast to prior experiments, communication is directly associated with costs in our setup. Specifically, every second of communication increases the probability that the game is terminated before a proposal can be made. In case of ‘breakdown’, each player receives an exogenously fixed disagreement value. Those values sum up to less than the amount of the available surplus, implying that delay owing to communication is costly. We vary the decision rule (majority versus unanimity) as well as the distribution of disagreement values (symmetric or asymmetric). We find that unanimity rule leads to longer communication delays and more frequent breakdowns in asymmetric, but not in symmetric situations.

     

What Mr. Spock told the earthlings: the aims of political philosophy,action-guidingness and fact-dependency

Abstract

Recently, G. A. Cohen introduced an influential distinction between fact-sensitive and fact-insensitive principles arguing that all basic normative principles are of the latter type. David Miller rejects this claim submitting that the validity of basic normative political principles depends on some general propositions about human nature and societies; for example, that men’s generosity is ‘confined’ and that nature has made ‘scanty provision’ for his wants. Miller ties this view of the nature of basic political principles to the view that political philosophy ought to guide people engaged in real-world politics and claims plausibly that in order to fulfil this purpose, political philosophy must be informed by social science. I argue that Miller neither succeeds in showing that basic principles can be fact-sensitive, nor establishes any connection between the Cohen-Miller disagreement on fact-sensitivity, on the one hand, and the nature and aims of political philosophy, on the other hand.     

The Methodology of Contractarianism in Economics

The paper explores the methodology of hypotheticalcontractarianism as a means of justifyingrules of social conduct. Formally, thecontractarian argument has the logicalstructure of a familiardeductive-nomological (rational choice)explanation. It necessarily requires,however, that at least some premises usedin its explanans be empiricallyfalse. It is argued that, in contrast toordinary explanatory arguments, thecontractarian thought experiment would bepointless if all assumptions wereempirically true. As a consequence, even inthe case that a given contract theory canbe proven to be logically consistent, itfails to justify binding obligations ofreal individuals due to an insurmountablelogical problem of induction.     

The Body Politic as Spatial Metaphor

As part of a special issue on the geographies of citizenship, this paper considers the longstanding and popular metaphor of “the body politic” for a polity. The metaphor's comparative power is successful because it imports key geographic assumptions about how polities are best organized. It makes claims about society and space (premises about location, spatial organization), nature–society relations (how the two spheres do and do not connect) and cartographic representation (the human body is the optimal representation of spatial and natural relations in a polity). We describe three ways in which geographical imaginations are constructed: organic, mechanical, and posthuman bodies politic. Our goal is twofold: first is to consider the ways the deployment of the metaphor of the body is used in political theory to convey a normative conception of citizenship; second is to bridge the gap between political theory and geography by paying special attention to the ways the body is a space. The metaphor of the body politic is a political geography that links citizenship to particular geographical and normative relationships.     

Philosophical Argument and Political Practice: On the Methodology of Normative Theory*

The article discusses methodological issues in normative political theory. The basic assumption is that normative theory has a dual purpose in both establishing valid principles of differentiating right from wrong and influencing actions and institutions in the right direction. The article starts by distinguishing between two approaches to normative political theory: one stresses the interpretation of existing ideas and conventions; the other takes on the constructivist task of finding out what is really right. Then the relationship between theory and practice is explored. The question is how philosophical arguments can instigate practical reform. It is argued that practical considerations should be incorporated as an explicit element of normative political theory. The recommendation is. in particular, that philosophical theories enter into dialogue with the moral conventions of everyday life. whose normative force people already acknowledge.     

The effect of membership rules and voting schemes on the success of international climate agreements

We empirically test the role of membership rules and voting schemes for climate change coalitions with the STAbility of COalitions model (STACO). The model comprises twelve world regions and captures long-run effects of greenhouse gas accumulation. We apply three stability concepts that capture the notion of open membership and exclusive membership with majority and unanimity voting. We show that exclusive membership leads to superior outcomes than open membership and that unanimity voting is preferable to majority voting in welfare and environmental terms. Our results suggest restricting membership in future international environmental agreements and they provide a rationale for unanimity voting as applied in many international organizations.     

The Priority of Legitimacy in Times of Political Transition

This paper interprets the relation between justice and legitimacy found in John Rawls's Political Liberalism and then applies it to the field of transitional justice. The author argues that transitional mechanisms can be better defended in terms of “legitimacy” than in “justice,” because the circumstances of transitional justice admit of reasonable disagreement over “just” public policy. In such circumstances, policy recommendations can always be construed as falling short of justice, thus raising plausible concerns over their normative justification. This paper attempts to answer such concerns by justifying transitional mechanisms as morally appropriate yet less than fully just. The author explains how the concept of legitimacy facilitates such a justification and how such a justification can secure the normative grounds that are ironically threatened by investigations relying on a concept of justice.     

Fact-sensitive political theory

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to argue for the importance of attention to facts in normative theorising. I discuss the problems that arise from both not displaying such attention (as some idealists do) and from doing so in the wrong way (as, for example, realists do). I propose a different brand of theorising – fact-sensitive political theory, which aims to avoid these two problems by paying attention to key facts while retaining a solid normative anchoring in abstract normative principles. The merit of abstract vs. non-abstract reasoning is that the normative debate is not torn between two distinct ends of a spectrum in the way the idealist–realist debate is. By contrast, the locus of the investigations is vertical in the sense that abstract and concrete normative discussions are given equal status and can co-exist compatibly. One of the main differences between abstract and concrete normative principles is whether abstract or concrete facts are considered necessary for the determination of the normative principles. The fact-sensitive account of normativity is neither realist nor non-ideal: it is an ambitious and demanding normative theory that contains both abstract and concrete normative reasoning. The fact-sensitive account of political theory meets the two criteria set out in this article: to integrate concrete and empirical facts about the subject matter and to subject the selection of facts to theoretical and methodological discussion and justification.