The central argument advanced by the dissertation is that three hereto underappreciated sources of variation are critical for understanding popular support for redistributive public policies. First, redistribution is not a single undifferentiated policy goal. This dissertation distinguishes between ‘generalized’ and ‘targeted’ redistribution, and argues that critical determinants of citizens’ redistributive policy preferences play out differently depending on whether the redistribution is generalized or targeted in nature. Second, attitudes toward redistribution vary both across space and over time. The dissertation contends that many critical macrolevel determinants of citizens’ policy preferences illuminate how and why these variations occur. Third, in exceptional cases, specific political contexts matter. The dissertation maintains that while there are several common factors that influence popular support for redistribution throughout most advanced industrial democracies, in a limited number of cases, the citizens of distinct political contexts have substantially different orientations toward redistributive public policies. The dissertation draws on both cross-national data from eighteen advanced industrial democracies as well as cross-provincial data from the Canadian case to evaluate hypotheses

New Old Politics? Explaining Popular Support for Redistributive Public Policies

Interpreting Mill's 'On Liberty', 1831-1900

What would it mean for there to be a genuinely and legitimately global discourse on justice that involves Africa in authentic ways? There are various responses. On the one hand, there is the idea of “philosophical fieldwork” developed by Katrin Flikschuh. African thought that fell by the wayside due to European expansionism must be recuperated and inserted into that discourse. On the other hand, there is the world society approach pioneered by John Meyer and others. The point is that ideas from elsewhere in the world can be genuinely and legitimately appropriated, which is how ideas have always spread. Once ideas about justice are appropriated by African thinkers, they are associated with Africa as much as with any other region. My goal here is to explore both approaches and support the second, while also making room for the first. In doing so, I articulate a view about how my own ongoing work on global justice can be seen as a contribution to an actual global discourse. There are rather large (and sensitive) issues at stake here: how to think about respectful appropriation of ideas and thus respectful philosophical discourse. A great deal of nuance is needed.

Half a Century after Malcolm X Came to Visit

During the sixties, social critics visited institutions for the retarded and were shocked by the conditions they found (Blatt and Kaplan 1966; Rivera 1972). Scholarly research supported the conclusions of lay observers (see the studies cited in Balla, Butterfield, and Zigler [1974] and Biklen [1979]). Consensus was easy: people saw conditions that everyone believed were bad, and all agreed that policies should change. Only a small percentage of the retarded were in institutions or helped by specialized public programs, and many had been excluded from school. Care was inadequate both because it was of low quality and because many of the retarded received no services. Social critics were allied not only with scholarly experts but with many who had a deep personal interest in programs for the retarded. Both parents and professionals who cared for the retarded sought changes in treatment and educational methods and increases in public funding.' The key slogans were deinstitutionalization, normalization, mainstreaming, and a developmental model of care.2

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Mental Retardation and Society: The Ethics and Politics of Normalization

Though much attention has been paid to different principles of justice, far less has been done reflecting on what the larger concern behind the notion is. In this work, Mathias Risse proposes that the perennial quest for justice is about ensuring that each individual has an appropriate place in what our uniquely human capacities permit us to build, produce, and maintain, and is appropriately respected for the capacity to hold such a place to begin with. Risse begins by investigating the role of political philosophers and exploring how to think about the global context where philosophical inquiry occurs. Next, he offers a quasi-historical narrative about how the notion of distributive justice identifies a genuinely human concern that arises independently of cultural context and has developed into the one we should adopt now. Finally, he investigates the core terms of this view, including stringency, moral value, ground and duties of justice.

B. G. Parekh

Papers

Equality in political philosophy