The most stable just regime

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 412-433

  Hussain, Waheed ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84886653383     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.2009.01460.x     Document Type: Review

References (60)

1. John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 178-79.
2. Rawls sometimes says that where social justice is silent, practical considerations should guide us. In A Theory of Justice, for example, he says that the principles of justice as fairness are compatible with both public and private ownership of the means of production, so the choice between these alternatives should be made in light of a practical assessment of society's actual "circumstances, institutions, and historical traditions" (John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, revised edition [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999], 248).
3. But Rawls also acknowledges that more substantive considerations may figure into our reasoning when justice itself is silent. In Justice as Fairness, Rawls considers the Marxist view that a POD is objectionable because it does not give prominence to democratic forms of government in the firm or the economy more generally. His response is not that practical considerations should decide the issue, but that considerations of stability may be relevant here: Would there be advantages from [subsidizing worker-managed firms] that could be justified in terms of the political values expressed by justice as fairness [...]? For example, would worker-managed firms be more likely to encourage the democratic political virtues needed for a constitutional regime to endure? If so, could greater democracy within capitalist firms achieve much the same result? I shall not pursue these questions. I have no idea of the answers, but certainly these questions call for careful examination. The long-run prospects of a just constitutional regime may depend on them. (Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 178-79).
4. For more radically egalitarian interpretations of Rawls's theory, see Norman Daniels, "Equal Liberty and Unequal Worth of Liberty," in Reading Rawls, ed. Norman Daniels (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989)
5. Richard Arneson, "Against Rawlsian Equality of Opportunity," Philosophical Studies 93 (1999), 77-112.
6. Joshua Cohen offers a somewhat less radical egalitarian reading in Joshua Cohen, "Democratic Equality," Ethics 99 (July 1989): 727-51.
7. G. A. Cohen criticizes Rawls's theory for allowing incentive considerations to justify potentially large inequalities-see his Rescuing Justice and Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).
8. For an overview of various interpretive disagreements, see Philippe Van Parijs, "Difference Principles," in The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
9. For a notable, early exception, see T. M. Scanlon, "Rawls's Theory of Justice," in Reading Rawls, 204.
10. My account of the democratic corporatist POD follows the main points of Philippe Schmitter's definition of corporatism: Corporatism canbedefinedasasystemofinterest representationinwhich the constituent units are organized into a limited number of singular, compulsory, noncompetitive, hierarchically ordered and functionally differentiated categories, recognized or licensed (if not created) by the state and granted a deliberate representational monopoly within their respective categories in exchange for observing certain controls on their selection of leaders and articulation of demands and supports. (Philippe Schmitter, "Still the Century of Corporatism?" The Review of Politics 36/1 [January 1974], 93-94.)
11. My account departs from Schmitter's and other mainstream accounts of corporatism in two important respects. First, corporatism, as I understand it, can operate at levels below that of the state. Schmitter, by contrast, understands corporatism primarily as a modeof interest representation atthe level of the state. (See Philippe Schmitter, "Reflections on Where the Theory of Neo-Corporatism Has Gone and Where the Praxis of Neo-Corporatism May Be Going," in Patterns of Corporatist Policy-Making, ed. Gerhard Lehmbruch and Philipppe Schmitter [London: Sage Publications, 1982], 262-64.)
12. He expresses a similar view in "Interest Intermediation and Regime Governability in Contemporary Western Europe and North America," in Organizing Interests in Western Europe: Pluralism, Corporatism and the Transformation of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
13. On his view, union representation on corporate boards would not obviously count as a form of corporatism. Gerhard Lehmbruch, another prominent theorist, also understands corporatism as operating primarily at the level of the state. On his view, corporatism involves a distinctive mode of economic decision making only insofar as the state enlists organized interests to help in designing and implementing its policies on wages, regional development and so on. (See Gerhard Lehmbruch, "Introduction: Neo-Corporatism in Comparative Perspective," in Patterns of Corporatist Policy Making, 1-28.)
14. Again, this would seem to exclude union representation on corporate boards as a form of corporatism. My account follows most contemporary theorists, who do not see corporatism as an exclusively state-level phenomenon. (See, for instance, Alan Cawson, Corporatism and Political Theory [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986];
15. Jukka Pekkarinen et al., ed., Social Corporatism: A Superior Economic System? [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992];
16. Harold Wilensky, Rich Democracies [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002].) The other major difference is that democratic corporatism, as I understand it, requires that the relevant parties deliberate with each other about appropriate laws and policies, while most theorists understand democratic corporatism as involving some form of bargaining. I take it that this difference reflects the fact that mainstream theorists of corporatism are not looking to describe an ideal arrangement, but rather to describe an arrangement that actually exists in many countries around the world.
17. For the distinction between deliberation and bargaining, see Joshua Cohen, "Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy," in Deliberative Democracy, ed. James Bohman and William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997);
18. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996);
19. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracyand Disagreement(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). I takeit that the process that leads to an agreement is a "deliberation" when: (i) each party wants to adopt an arrangement that promotes his own interests but also gives fair consideration to the interests of others; and (ii) each party attempts to convince the others to adopt a certain arrangement by presenting arguments that show that the arrangement advances everyone's interests in a fair way. Sometimes people will find themselves in a situation in which benefits to one party can only come at the cost of greater burdens for another. Wage negotiations, for example, sometimes reach a point where higher wages for workers can only comeatthe costoflower returns for shareholders and vice versa. The reasoning process that leads to a wage agreement in this situation would count as deliberative so long as the parties seek to find an arrangement that advances everyone's interests in a fair way and they try to convince each other through reasoned argument that a certain proposal fits the bill. A deliberation in this context would take the familiar form of a discussion-sometimes a heated argument-about which of several different divisions of benefits and burdens is fair (or most fair).
20. For the basic features of the codetermination system, see Herbert Wiedemann, "Codetermination by Workers in German Enterprise," The American Journal of Comparative Law 28 (1980): 79-82;
21. Sigurt Vitols, "Varieties of Corporate Governance: Comparing Germany and the U.K.," in Varieties of Capitalism, ed. Peter A. Hall and David Soskice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 337-60;
22. Jonathan Charkham, Keeping Better Company: Corporate Governance Ten Years On, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
23. For some examples of the dispersion of ownership approach, see Gar Alperovitz, America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Son, 2005);
24. James Meade, Efficiency, Equality and the Ownership of Property (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965);
25. John Roemer, A Future for Socialism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
26. I would argue that Rawls's sketch of a POD also represents a version of the dispersion of ownership approach. Some interpreters read Rawls as being committed to more than dispersion: see Samuel Freeman, Rawls (New York: Routledge, 2007), 219-35.
27. For some examples of the worker management approach, see Robert Dahl, A Preface to Economic Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985);
28. Carol Gould, Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, Economics and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);
29. John Stuart Mill, The Principles of Political Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 131-58;
30. Carol Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971);
31. Jaroslav Vanek, The Participatory Economy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971).
32. Shareholders in our society are typically passive and lack the tools effectively to shape the decisions of managers, so it is not clear that expanding the class of owners would substantially change how decisions are made in the economy. The classic discussion of the conflict between shareholders and managers is Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (Edison, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1991).
33. Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, "Associations and Democracy," Social Philosophy and Policy 10/2 (Summer 1993): 282-312;
34. Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, Associations and Democracy (London: Verso, 1995);
35. Paul Hirst Associative Democracy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994).
36. Associationalism is, in this regard, closer in spirit to Habermas's theory, which stresses the need for an active, dynamic, and engaged civil society. (See Habermas, Between Facts and Norms.)
37. For a helpful discussion of the relationship between associationalism and mainstream corporatism, see Lucio Baccaro, "Civil Society Meets the State: Towards Associational Democracy?" Socio-Economic Review 4/2 (May 2006), 185-208.
38. Here I adapt Rawls's description of a stable equilibrium state. See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 399-401.
39. See Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 143-44
40. For an excellent discussion of the role that Political Liberalism plays in Rawls's overall account of stability, see Samuel Freeman, "Congruence and the Good of Justice," in The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 277-315.
41. Immersion in associational life has important features in common with the condition that Alexis de Tocqueville calls "individualism." See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer (New York: Harper & Rowe, 1969), 506.
42. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 693.
43. James Madison famously discusses the problem of faction in Federalist 10. He argues that a large and diverse democracy is less susceptible to the dangers posed by unjust factions because it is harder for any kind of majority coalition to emerge and make changes to the laws in a society where there are many different groups with very different goals and values. (See James Madison, "The Federalist No. 10," in The Federalist [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 40-46). Madison does not pay much attention to the danger posed by unjust minority factions because he believes that majoritarian institutions will limit the impact of minority groups. But, as I have argued, there are many examples in the twentieth century of minority factions that were able to advance unjust legislative agendas because society was in a relatively disaggregated condition. Democratic corporatism addresses the danger posed by minority factions by empowering more groups in society to assert themselves in the political forum, thereby making it harder for any minority group to advance its agenda when the rest of society disapproves.
44. For the decline of associational life, see Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
45. Cohen and Rogers also emphasize the importance of taking measures to foster the right kind of secondary associations in civil society. See Cohen and Rogers, "Secondary Associations and Democratic Governance," in Associations and Democracy, 7-98.
46. See, for example, Peter J. Katzenstein, Small States in World Markets (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985)
47. The Origins of Non-Liberal Capitalism, ed. Wolfgang Streeck and Kozo Yamamura (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).
48. For an overview of recent findings (with an emphasis on Europe), see: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism, ed. Herbert Kitschelt et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
49. Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies, ed. Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2004);
50. Peter A. Gourevitch and James Shinn, Political Power and Corporate Control: The New Global Politics of Corporate Governance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
51. One important conclusion that emerges from several studies is that globalization does not seem to be producing a convergence in economic systems toward some form of liberal market capitalism. Corporatist mechanisms of coordination have evolved in the face of globalization, but they have not collapsed. So if globalization strengthens the bargaining power of capital, it does not do so in a way that leads to the destruction of corporatist coordination. There are many explanations for why these mechanisms have persisted. One prominent explanation is that corporatist institutions create an economic opportunity for firms because these institutions lead to an environment that is more conducive to a competitive strategy based on producing diverse, high-quality goods. See David Soskice, "Divergent Production Regimes: Coordinated and Uncoordinated Market Economies in the 1980s and 1990s," in Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism;
52. Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, "Introduction," in Varieties of Capitalism;
53. Harold Wilensky, Rich Societies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), chap. 17.
54. See also Michael Piore and Charles Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
55. See Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), chap. 16.
56. Another comprehensive assessment of the social consequences of corporatism is Wilensky, Rich Democracies.
57. The classic study of democracy in town councils is Jane Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).
58. For a discussion of local school councils and community-based policing, see Archon Fung, Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
59. See Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy, 293-300;
60. Hall and Soskice, "Introduction," in Varieties of Capitalism.