Why societies need public goods

The most distinctive features of public goods are usually understood to be the difficulty of excluding potential beneficiaries and the fact that one appropriator’s benefits do not diminish the amount of benefits left for others. Yet, because of these properties (non-excludability and non-rivalry), public goods cause market failures and contribute to problems of collective action. This article aims to portray public goods in a different light. Following a recent reassessment of public goods in political philosophy, this contribution argues that public goods are particularly suitable for sustaining a well-ordered society. Public goods contribute to social inclusion, they support the generation of the public, and they strengthen a shared sense of citizenship. This article scrutinizes these functions of public goods and offers a discussion of the interventionist thesis which states that governments should sustain public goods.     

Partisanship and public reason

In the large body of literature concerning John Rawls’s Political Liberalism (1993) and his conception of public reason, little attention has been paid to the implications that the constraints of public reason have for partisans, i.e. citizens who participate in politics through political parties. This paper argues that even on the basis of a ‘mild’ understanding of Rawls’s conception of the constraints of public reason, which takes into account the various stipulations Rawls provided throughout his later work, when applied to partisans the constraints of public reason lose none or little of their hindering force. This seriously undermines the contribution that parties and partisans can provide to the change and the varieties of public reason that Rawls himself advocates as a response to social change and, therefore, to political justification and legitimacy. Parties articulate, coordinate and enhance societal demands which, without their support, may remain unheard and fail to change the acceptable terms of public reason and political justification. If the political speech of partisans is restrained, this potential for change (and, therefore, its contribution to political legitimacy) is seriously undermined.     

论中国县级政府在公共物品提供中的职能定位

中国政府职能划分普遍存在“职责同构”现象,地方政府与中央政府在公共物品提供上存在职责不清现象。作为与居民联系最密切的县级政府,在职能划分上存在诸多困境。本文在分析了中国县级政府的职能困境和比较国外县级政府在公共物品提供方面的经验作法後,提出了县级政府在公共物品的供给土应准确进行职能定位。     

Why the intrinsic value of public goods matters

Abstract

Existing accounts of public-goods distribution rely on the existence of solidarity for providing non-universal public goods, such as the humanities or national parks. There are three fundamental problems with these accounts: they ignore instances of social fragmentation; they treat preferences for public goods as morally benign, and they assume that these preferences are the only relevant moral consideration. However, not all citizens unanimously require public goods such as the humanities or national parks. Public-goods distribution that is based only on citizens’ preferences, therefore, means that non-universal public good are at a constant risk of under-provision, and has negative implications for human flourishing. The paper, therefore, develops a complementary justification for the distribution of public goods, that decouples the distribution of public goods from ad hoc preferences, and grounds the distributive justification in the intrinsic value of these goods. There are three reasons to include intrinsic-value considerations in public-goods distribution: responding to crowding-out effects; promoting shared heritage and cross-fertilization. Finally, the intrinsic-value justification may indirectly promote solidarity. Thus, the intrinsic-value and the solidarity justifications need not be mutually exclusive, rather they can be mutually reinforcing.     

Self-respect and public reason

In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argues that self-respect is ‘perhaps the most important’ primary good, and that its status as such gives crucial support to controversial ideas like the lexical priority of liberty. Given the importance of these ideas for Rawls, it should be no surprise that they have attracted much critical attention. In response to these critics I give a defense of self-respect that grounds its importance in Rawls’s moral conception of the person. I show that this understanding of self-respect goes well beyond giving support to the lexical priority of liberty, also supporting Rawls’s still more controversial view of public reason. On my account, taking self-respect seriously requires the coercive enforcement of public reason. This is a novel argument for public reason, in that it grounds the idea in justice as fairness and mandates its coercive enforcement.     

Review Article: Modus vivendi versus public reason and liberal equality: three approaches to liberal democracy

Liberal democracy constitutes a particularly attractive political model with its emphasis on both popular sovereignty and individual liberty. Recently several new and innovative articulations of the liberal democratic ideal have been presented. This article reviews three of these recent theories and particularly their democratic credentials. The selection includes theories emphasizing modus vivendi, Rawlsian political liberalism and liberal equality. Taken together these theories show different ways to conceptualize democracy within liberal thought. I argue that ultimately all three approaches struggle with articulating a persuasive conception of democracy, but nevertheless these theories show that liberals do think seriously about the role of democracy in their theories.     

Fresh pipes with dirty water: How quality of government shapes the provision of public goods in democracies

A large strand of research holds that democracy with its broad representation and electoral accountability is beneficial for the provision of public goods. Yet, there is a large variation in how democracies perform, indicating that democratic institutions alone do not suffice for securing citizens’ wellbeing. Recent studies have stressed the equal importance of state capacity for public goods delivery. These studies, however, rarely investigate how the lack of state capacity mutes the effects of democratic institutions on public goods provision. This article addresses this gap by using a mixed methods design. First, the conditional effects of democracy and quality of government (QoG) are tested on the previously under-researched domain of the provision of clean water. The results show that democracy is associated with higher water quality only in countries where QoG is high. If QoG is low, more democracy is even related to lower water quality. The second stage of the analysis proceeds by examining how poor QoG disrupts the effects of democracy on public access to safe drinking water using interview data from a typical case of Moldova. The analysis illustrates that democracy has a number of positive effects and incentivises politicians to focus on the visible aspects of water provision, including the expansion of the water pipe network. However, low QoG hampers adoption and implementation of long-term policies necessary for securing an aspect of water provision that is harder to achieve – namely water quality. This leaves the fresh pipes with dirty water.     

A theory of global public goods and their provisions

This paper develops a general theory of a global public good and its optimal provision. In a national public good problem that researchers have long been acquainted with, government taxation and public expenditure are an inevitable tool for an optimal provision. This paper shows that an efficient provision of a truly global public good through public taxation and expenditure becomes unattainable because of nationally disparate incentives, especially given large uncertainties about the future. This paper describes two alternative approaches. One is a technological solution, which is a high promise but has unresolved issues of uncertainties with regard to developments of necessary technologies. The other is an adaptation framework. This paper shows that the provision of a truly global public good becomes manageable through a framework of adaptation strategies as it overcomes both divergent national interests and uncertainties with regard to needed technologies. Adaptation strategies would unfold triggered by changes in private incentives over a long‐term time horizon in a private–public partnership. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The party road to representation: Unequal responsiveness in party platforms

This paper explores a major road to substantive representation in democracies, by clarifying whether demands of rich and poor citizens are taken up in the electoral platforms of political parties. Doing so constitutes a substantial broadening and deepening of our understanding of substantive representation – broadening the countries, issue-areas and years that form the empirical basis for judging whether democracies manifest unequal representation; and deepening the process of representation by clarifying a key pathway connecting societal demands to policy outcomes. The paper hypothesises that party systems in general will respond more strongly to wealthy than to poor segments of a polity. It also hypothesises that left parties will more faithfully represent poorer and less significantly represent richer citizens than do right parties. We find substantial support for these expectations in a new dataset that combines multi-country, multi-issue-area, multi-wave survey data with data on party platforms for 39 democracies.     

新农村建设中政府公共服务能力的限制因素及其对策

社会主义新农村建设是一个系统工程,仅靠市场机制的自发调节是无法完成的。政府必须承担起相应的责任,然而,政府责任不在于直接参与市场竞争,而在于提供公共服务。政府公共服务能力直接影响一个国家公共服务的总体水平。因此,政府必须强化农村公共服务职能,提升公共服务能力,提高公共服务水平。     

The politics of other citizens

In all kinds of political action, citizens are confronted with the performances of other citizens. An important guide to political behaviour is therefore likely to be the assumptions people make concerning how others can be expected to behave. This article explores common sense ideas about other citizens as potential political participants, drawing on a series of group interviews conducted with taxi-drivers in Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic. I argue the expectations voiced of other citizens tend to be pessimistic in nature, casting them as ill-informed, apathetic, passive and unduly self-interested, notwithstanding the appearance of a more optimistic view which holds they can be expected to follow the lead of those who ‘take a stand’. These empirical observations lead to a discussion of the theoretical issues they raise, notably where to locate the origins of such views, and how to appraise their implications for democracy.     

The politics of international redistribution: Explaining public support for fiscal transfers in the EU

As a consequence of the Eurozone crisis and the creation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the prospect of a transfer union has become a particularly contested aspect of European integration. How should one understand the public backlash against fiscal transfers? And, what explains voter preferences for international transfers more generally? Using data from the 2014 European Elections Study (EES), this article describes the first cross-national analysis of voters’ preferences on international transfers. The analysis reveals a strong association between voters’ non-economic cultural orientations (i.e., their cosmopolitanism) and their position on transfers. At the same time, it is found that voters’ economic left-right orientations are crucial for a fuller understanding of the public conflict over transfers. This counters previous research that finds economic left-right orientations to be of little explanatory value. This study demonstrates that the association between economic left-right orientations and preferences for international transfers is conditional on a person's social class. Among citizens in a high-income class an economically left-leaning position is associated with support for transfers, whereas it is associated with opposition to transfers among citizens in a low-income class.     

The rise and fall of spin: changes of fashion in the presentation of UK politics

Spin is the current dominant form of political presentation in the UK. Politics and presentation are inseparable and before the 1980s, political presenters were less aggressive towards and more respectful of journalists as watchdogs of politics. Labour introduced spin as a defensive response to editorial hostility but since New Labour came to terms with Thatcherism, spin has been used for the offensive promotion of policy. Changes in journalism, particularly a blurring treatment of fact and opinion, were an incubatory environment for spin. Moreover, the term became part of lay language and its vocabulary is deployed as a scrutiny of politicians via ridicule and satire. Conceptually, ‘spin’ can be characterised as an exchange or contest between information and publicity, with contingencies influencing where any presentation lies on that continuum. Wherever it falls, spin demeans elected politicians and tends to reduce their status to celebrities. That reduction is a cost too high for privileging presentation over policy and ought to be reversed. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

The second-order dilemma of public goods and capital accumulation

The second-order dilemma arises from each individual’s incentive to free ride on a mechanism to solve the public goods provision problem (the first-order dilemma). We show by a voluntary participation game that if the depreciation rate is low, public goods can be accumulated through voluntary groups for provision, and that the accumulation is effective in solving the second-order dilemma. This analysis also shows that population growth increases the accumulation of public goods in the long run.     

Collective and Private Resources and the Inequalities of Non-violent Political Protest in European Countries

Abstract

Political participation is deemed to be a fundamental component of democratic regimes. The literature on political participation has shown that some social groups of citizens tend to be less involved in politics than other social groups, and the consequence is that the interests of these specific groups of less involved citizens are underrepresented in the political process. Given the increasing popularity of non-violent protest in contemporary democracies, it is important to understand whether political inequalities are present in this form of political engagement. In this article, we argue that non-violent protest may present inequalities, that examining the consequences of public social spending can help in understanding the cross-national differences in the levels of non-violent political protest, and that political inequalities in non-violent protest may vary according to public social spending. We test our argument using sources that include the European Values Study (1980–2009), multilevel models, and contextual data provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.     

Estimates and public policy: The politics of numbers

Abstract

Estimates of the number of homeless persons in the United States are frequently said to range from 250,000 to three million. In fact, the latter number is an invalid guesstimate that developed staying power for political reasons. National estimates of homeless persons based on explainable methodologies actually range from 230,000 to 736,000, with the most likely estimates around the half‐million mark. Despite the confrontational politics surrounding the numbers issue in the 1980s, a consensus is developing in the 1990s among private groups, including some major advocacy organizations, and all levels of government regarding policy direction in assistance programs for the homeless. There is widespread recognition that the goal should be to end homelessness, not simply to provide emergency assistance. Permanent housing solutions for special populations are needed in the context of renewed efforts to combat poverty.

In the public debate about the policy implications of divergent national estimates of the numbers of homeless persons, a common assumption is that the estimates vary widely and inexplicably—anywhere from a few hundred thousand to three million or more. Those who do try to explain the odd discrepancy between the extremes seem to assume that any count is politically motivated. They say that it depends on how one defines homelessness and who is counting. In other words, the implication is that numbers derive from policy and politics, rather than the other way around.

Given such perceptions, it is not surprising that some who have neither the time nor, perhaps, the resources to judge the accuracy of estimates begin to feel that the truth must be somewhere in between, as if a mathematical average were equivalent to a political compromise. Others will believe the message if they like the messenger. In a recent book on homelessness, for example, the author confesses that he trusts estimates “made by people who live where ‘the rubber meets the road’… rather more than the bright theorists tucked away in ivory towers.”¹ Although many statistics are politically controversial, it is probably safe to say that the debate on homelessness during the past decade represents the apogee of political numerology. It is worth reviewing just how this came to pass.     

The aesthetic public sphere and the transformation of criticism

This article argues that criticism is fundamental for understanding how culture and politics shape the ambiguous self-interpretation of society. An initial exploration of Habermas's theory of the public sphere reveals that it is inadequately cultural. An alternative is thus offered by discussing the work of Jacobs, and especially his concept of an “aesthetic public sphere”. His insight that nothing is too trivial when it comes to broadening the limits of the public sphere prompts scholars to take into consideration the positive as well as negative aspects of criticism. As a cultural mediation, criticism is shaped by a struggle for recognition that gives rise to the interpretation of its own crisis. The purpose of the article, however, is to propose a more balance account of such predicament. By discussing online criticism, the rise of the “prosumer” and user-generated content, it is argued that there is now a new battle for authority and legitimacy undergoing. This creates the potential for the democratization of criticism, even though this potential has great chance to remain within an inescapable democratic tension.