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2769Social Justice and the Future of Flood InsuranceJoseph Rowntree Foundation. 2012.What would be a fair model for flood insurance? Catastrophic flooding has become increasingly frequent in the UK and, with climate change, is likely to become even more frequent in the future. With the UK's current flood insurance regime ending in 2013, we argues that: - there is an overwhelming case for rejecting a free market in flood insurance after 2013; - this market-based approach threatens to leave many thousands of properties uninsurable, leading to extensive social blight; - there are a…Read more
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2417The Promise of PredistributionPolicy Network - Predistribution and the Crisis in Living Standards. 2012.If pursued with serious intent, Pre-distribution has the capacity to create an exciting and radical new agenda for social democracy. But the politics of Pre-distribution cannot be innocuous or uncontroversial. In its more radical forms, predistribution is a potentially radical and inspiring project for social democrats who have come to see the limitations of the old ways of doing things. It’s a project that promises a strategy to deliver abundantly on values of social justice, economic freedom, …Read more
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1424Three Rawlsian Routes towards Economic DemocracyRevue de Philosophie Économique 9 (1): 29-55. 2008.This paper addresses ways of arguing fors ome form of economic democracy from within a broadly Rawlsian framework. Firstly, one can argue that a right to participate in economic decision-making should be added to the Rawlsian list of basic liberties, protected by the first principle of justice. Secondly,I argue that a society which institutes forms of economic democracy will be more likely to preserve a stable and just basic structure over time, by virtue of the effects of economic democratizatio…Read more
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1200That Was the New Labour That Wasn'tFabian Review. 2013.The New Labour we got was different from the New Labour that might have been, had the reform agenda associated with stakeholding and pluralism in the early-1990s been fully realised. We investigate the road not taken and what it means for ‘one nation’ Labour.
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1103Piketty, Meade and PredistributionCrooked Timber Book Seminar on Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. forthcoming.If solutions to the problem of inequality are to be as radical as reality now demands, what is instead required is a reimagining of what would be involved comprehensively to tame capitalism through democratic means. This will involve much further development of the kind of plurality of institutional and policy proposals sketched by Meade, and will involve both the private and public – individual and collective – forms of capital predistribution that Meade advocated. Piketty, like Meade, sees the…Read more
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941Property-Owning Democracy and the Demands of JusticeLiving Reviews in Democracy 1 1-10. 2009.John Rawls is arguably the most important political philosopher of the past century. His theory of justice has set the agenda for debate in mainstream political philosophy for the past forty years, and has had an important influence in economics, law, sociology, and other disciplines. However, despite the importance and popularity of Rawls's work, there is no clear picture of what a society that met Rawls's principles of justice would actually look like. This article sets out to explore that que…Read more
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650Entreprises et conventionnalisme: régulation, impôt et justice socialeRaison Publique. 2009.The focus of this article is on the place of the limited-liability joint stock corporation in a satisfactory account of social justice and, more specifically, the question of how such corporations should be regulated and taxed in order to secure social justice. Most discussion in liberal political philosophy looks at state institutions, on the one hand, and individuals, on the other hand, without giving much attention to intermediate institutions such as corporations. This is in part a conseque…Read more
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389Turning the Tide on TaxIn Daisy-Rose Srblin (ed.), Values Added: Rethinking Tax for the 21st Century, Fabian Society. pp. 11-16. 2015.
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193Philosophy of money and financeIn Ed Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2012.
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183Priority, Preference and ValueUtilitas 24 (3): 332-348. 2012.This article seeks to defend prioritarianism against a pair of challenges from Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve. Otsuka and Voorhoeve first argue that prioritarianism makes implausible recommendations in one-person cases under conditions of risk, as it fails to allow that it is reasonable to act to maximize expected utility, rather than expected weighted benefits, in such cases. I show that, in response, prioritarians can either reject Otsuka and Voorhoeve's claim, by means of appealing to a di…Read more
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183The Facts of InequalityJournal of Moral Philosophy 7 (3): 397-409. 2010.This review essay looks at two important recent books on the empirical social science of inequality, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's The Spirit Level and John Hills et al .'s Towards a More Equal Society? , situating these books against the important work of Michael Marmot on epidemiology and health inequalities. I argue that political philosophy can gain a great deal from careful engagement with empirical research on the nature and consequences of inequality, especially in regard to empiri…Read more
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107Liberty, equality and property-owning democracyJournal of Social Philosophy 40 (3): 379-396. 2009.No Abstract
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103Explaining 'the hardness of the logical must': Wittgenstein on grammar, arbitrariness and logical necessityPhilosophical Investigations 24 (1). 2001.This paper explains Wittegnstein’s understanding of the ‘grammar’ of our language, tracing its origins in the Tractatus’s concept of logical syntax, and then examining the senses in which Wittegnstein, in his later work, viewed grammar as being ‘arbitrary’. Then, armed with this understanding, it moves on to the task of examining how, within the framework of a Wittegnsteinian view of language, we should understand the inescapable ‘compellingness’ of logical necessity – what Wittegnstein calls th…Read more
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94Survey Article: Philosophy and Public Policy after PikettyJournal of Political Philosophy 25 (3): 343-375. 2017.
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82Constructing a Contractualist Egalitarianism: Equality after ScanlonJournal of Moral Philosophy 10 (4): 429-461. 2013.T. M. Scanlon’s work on the value of equality provides the resources for developing a powerful and distinctive contractualist egalitarian view. This view acknowledges a range of egalitarian concerns, of a diverse nature, and points us towards a picture of the place of equality in the normative landscape that is richer and more complex than some other alternative views. I describe the outlines of this contractualist egalitarian view, addressing questions regarding its strength and scope. I then d…Read more
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60Radical Democratic Inclusion: Why We Should Lower the Voting Age to 12Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 91 185-212. 2022.Democratic societies such as the United Kingdom have come to fail their young citizens, often sacrificing their interests in a political process that gives much greater weight to the preferences and interests of older citizens. Against this background of intergenerational injustice, this article presents the case for a shift in the political system in the direction of radical democratic inclusion of younger citizens, through reducing the voting age to 12. This change in the voting age can be jus…Read more
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50Work, Justice, and Collective Capital Institutions: Revisiting Rudolf Meidner and the Case for Wage‐Earner FundsJournal of Applied Philosophy 41 (2): 306-329. 2024.This article makes the case for a specific variety of what we call Collective Capital Institutions (CCIs), by returning to the idea of Wage-Earner Funds (WEFs) – a 1970s Swedish policy proposal designed gradually to shift ownership and control over parts of the economy to democratically controlled institutions. We identify two attractive rationales in favour of such a scheme and argue that both can fruitfully be transposed to the current worldwide economic situation. The egalitarian rationale is…Read more
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47Justice, Power, and Participatory Socialism: on Piketty’s Capital and IdeologyAnalyse & Kritik 43 (1): 89-124. 2021.Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology constitutes a landmark achievement in furthering our understanding of the history of inequality, and presents valuable proposals for constructing a future economic system that would allow us to transcend and move beyond contemporary forms of capitalism. This article discusses Piketty’s conceptions of ideology, property, and ‘inequality regimes’, and analyses his approach to social justice and its relation to the work of John Rawls. I examine how Piketty’s pr…Read more
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44Social Justice and Economic SystemsPhilosophical Topics 48 (2): 159-201. 2020.This essay is concerned with the question of what kind of economic system would be needed in order to realize Rawls’s principles of social justice. Hitherto, debates about ‘property-owning democracy’ and ‘liberal socialism’ have been overly schematic, in various respects, and have therefore missed some of the most important issues regarding the relationships between social justice and economic institutions and systems. What is at stake between broadly capitalist or socialist economic systems is …Read more
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44Free (and Fair) Markets without CapitalismIn Martin O'Neill & Thad Williamson (eds.), Property‐Owning Democracy, Wiley‐blackwell. 2012-02-17.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: Rawls Against Capitalism Rawls's Critique of “Welfare State Capitalism” Rawls (and Meade) on the Aims and Features of “Property‐Owning Democracy” Putting the Democracy into Property‐Owning Democracy: POD and the Fair Value of the Political Liberties Power, Opportunity, and Control of Capital: POD and Fair Equality of Opportunity Power, Status, and Self‐Respect: POD, the Difference Principle, and the Value of Equality Welfare State Capitalism a…Read more
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30Power, Predistribution, and Social JusticePhilosophy 95 (1): 63-91. 2020.The idea of predistribution has the potential to offer a valuable and distinctive approach to political philosophers, political scientists, and economists, in thinking about social justice and the creation of more egalitarian economies. It is also an idea that has drawn the interest of politicians of the left and centre-left, promising an alternative to traditional forms of social democracy. But the idea of predistribution is not well understood, and stands in need of elucidation. This article e…Read more
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30Free (and Fair) Markets without Capitalism: Political Values, Principles of Justice, and Property-Owning DemocracyIn Martin O'Neill & Thad Williamson (eds.), Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 75-100. 2012.
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29Public Provision in Democratic SocietiesErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 16 (2): 136-166. 2024.If we hope to see values of equality and democracy embodied in our societies’ institutions, then we have a range of good reasons to favor expansive public provision of goods and services, and to oppose many forms of privatization. While Joseph Heath is right to argue that there are at least some forms of ‘anodyne privatization’, and while he is also right to argue for a more nuanced philosophical debate about the different dimensions of choice between forms of public and private provision, Heath…Read more
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23IntroductionIn Martin O'Neill & Thad Williamson (eds.), Property‐Owning Democracy, Wiley‐blackwell. 2012-02-17.This chapter contains sections titled: Justice as Fairness and Property‐Owning Democracy Part One: Property‐Owning Democracy: Theoretical Foundations Part Two: Interrogating Property‐Owning Democracy: Work, Gender, Political Economy Part Three: Toward a Practical Politics of Property‐Owning Democracy: Program and Politics References.
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22Symposium on the Political Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon IntroductionJournal of Moral Philosophy 10 (4): 371-374. 2013.
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22Genetic information, social justice, and risk-sharing institutionsJournal of Medical Ethics 47 (7): 482-483. 2021.Under conditions with a low level of available genetic information, mutualistic private insurance markets will often create broadly just outcomes, even if by accident rather than by design. Normatively acceptable outcomes of this kind would come under threat if insurers were to have increased access to genetic information with substantial predictive content.1 As the availability of relevant individual genetic information grows, mutualistic forms of market-based insurance face a dilemma between e…Read more
Areas of Specialization
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Philosophy of Action |
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Equality |
Freedom and Liberty |
Justice |