Nick Cowen

University of Lincoln
  •  5
    Neoliberal Social Justice and Taxation
    Social Philosophy and Policy 39 (1): 68-89. 2022.
    Liberal egalitarians argue that the state is justified in taxing members of a political community to achieve distributive justice and ensure political equality and regime stability. This involves an uneasy compromise between equality and efficiency, a compromise that many argue has recently been undermined by the growth of unchecked wealth and income inequality. This essay argues that there is also a trade-off between selecting fair processes for taxation and aiming for particular distributive o…Read more
  •  8
    Market Participation, Self-respect, and Risk Tolerance
    with Carlo Ludovico Cordasco
    Journal of Business Ethics 189 (3): 591-602. 2023.
    How important is the experience of risk in business endeavors for self-respect and moral development? Tomasi prompts this question with his attempt to reconcile Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness with free-market capitalism, by claiming that economic activity is a way for people to exercise their autonomy, responsibility, and self-authorship, including through voluntary risk-taking. Critics argue that the social environment generated through market institutions is ill-suited for developing a …Read more
  •  7
    Neoliberal social justice: Rawls unveiled
    Edward Elgar Publishing. 2021.
    This timely and provocative book challenges the conventional wisdom that neoliberal capitalism is incompatible with social justice. Employing public choice and market process theory, Nick Cowen systematically compares and contrasts capitalism with socialist alternatives, illustrating how proponents of social justice have decisive reasons to opt for a capitalism guided by neoliberal ideas. Cowen shows how general rules of property and voluntary exchange facilitate widespread cooperation. Revisiti…Read more
  •  273
    Disagreement about Evidence-based Policy
    In Maria Baghramian, J. Adam Carter & Richard Rowland (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Disagreement, Routledge. forthcoming.
    Evidence based-policy (EBP) is a popular research paradigm in the applied social sciences and within government agencies. Informally, EBP represents an explicit commitment to applying scientific methods to public affairs, in contrast to ideologically-driven or merely intuitive “common-sense” approaches to public policy. More specifically, the EBP paradigm places great weight on the results of experimental research designs, especially randomised controlled trials (RCTs), and systematic literature…Read more
  •  8
    The mirage of mark-to-market: distributive justice and alternatives to capital taxation
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 25 (2): 211-234. 2022.
    Substantially increased wealth inequality across the developed world has prompted many philosophers, economists and legal theorists to support comprehensive taxes on all forms of wealth. Proposals include levying taxes on the basis of total wealth, or alternatively the change in the value of capital holdings measured from year-to-year. This contrasts with most existing policies that tax capital assets at the point they are transferred from one beneficiary to another through sale or gifts. Are th…Read more
  •  14
    Capital, Ideology, and the Liberal Order
    with Vincent Geloso
    Analyse & Kritik 43 (2): 413-435. 2021.
    Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology offers a powerful critique of ideological justifications for inequality in capitalist societies. Does this mean we should reject capitalist institutions altogether? This paper defends some aspects of capitalism by explaining the epistemic function of market economies and their ability to harness capital to meet the needs of the relatively disadvantaged. We support this classical liberal position with reference to empirical research on historical trends in in…Read more
  •  234
    Edmundson has written an admirably concise yet powerful book. It blends a critical account of Rawls’ work with an original case for democratic socialism hewn from Rawlsian stone. In my opinion, this case has some flaws but it remains a timely contribution to the enduring quest for justice and social stability.
  •  350
    Hayek versus Trump: The Radical Right’s Road to Serfdom
    with Aris Trantidis
    Polity 52 (2): 159-188. 2020.
    Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been interpreted as a general warning against state intervention in the economy.1 We review this argument in conjunction with Hayek’s later work and discern an institutional thesis about which forms of state intervention and economic institutions could threaten personal and political freedom. Economic institutions pose a threat if they allow for coercive interventions, as described by Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty: by giving someone the power to force other…Read more
  •  37
    Evidence-based medicine, with its evidence hierarchies and emphasis on RCTs, meta-analyses and systematic reviews, sets the model for evidence-based policy almost everywhere, policing no exception. But how closely should policing follow this model? We argue that RCTs can tell you little about what you need to know for real-world practice: will this policy work where and when you implement it? Defending that it will do so takes good theory. For RCTs to play a role in theory development, they must…Read more
  •  343
    The mirage of mark-to-market: distributive justice and alternatives to capital taxation
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 25 (2): 211-234. 2022.
    Substantially increased wealth inequality across the developed world has prompted many philosophers, economists and legal theorists to support comprehensive taxes on all forms of wealth. Proposals include levying taxes on the basis of total wealth, or alternatively the change in the value of capital holdings measured from year-to-year. This contrasts with most existing policies that tax capital assets at the point they are transferred from one beneficiary to another through sale or gifts. Are th…Read more
  •  754
    Can John Stuart Mill’s radicalism achieve liberal egalitarian ends? Joseph Persky’s The Political Economy of Progress is a provocative and compelling discussion of Mill’s economic thought. It is also a defense of radical political economy. Providing valuable historical context, Persky traces Mill’s intellectual journey as an outspoken proponent of laissez-faire to a cautious supporter of co-operative socialism. I propose two problems with Persky’s optimistic take on radical social reform. First,…Read more
  •  692
    Randomized Controlled Trials: How Can We Know “What Works”?
    with Baljinder Virk, Stella Mascarenhas-Keyes, and Nancy Cartwright
    Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 29 (3): 265-292. 2017.
    ABSTRACT“Evidence-based” methods, which most prominently include randomized controlled trials, have gained increasing purchase as the “gold standard” for assessing the effect of public policies. But the enthusiasm for evidence-based research overlooks questions about the reliability and applicability of experimental findings to diverse real-world settings. Perhaps surprisingly, a qualitative study of British educators suggests that they are aware of these limitations and therefore take evidence-…Read more
  •  527
    Introduction: Symposium on Robust Political Economy
    Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 28 (3-4): 420-439. 2016.
    Mark Pennington’s Robust Political Economy is a systematic exposition of a framework for analyzing institutional performance. The Robust Political Economy framework evaluates institutions according to their ability to solve knowledge and incentive problems. On grounds of robustness, Pennington combines insights from Austrian market-process theory and public-choice theory to defend classical liberalism from several compelling critiques. These include theories of market failure in economics; commu…Read more
  •  711
    Millian Liberalism and Extreme Pornography
    American Journal of Political Science 60 (2): 509-520. 2016.
    How sexuality should be regulated in a liberal political community is an important, controversial theoretical and empirical question—as shown by the recent criminalization of possession of some adult pornography in the United Kingdom. Supporters of criminalization argue that Mill, often considered a staunch opponent of censorship, would support prohibition due to his feminist commitments. I argue that this account underestimates the strengths of the Millian account of private conduct and free ex…Read more