Review of: George Hull (ed.), The Equal Society: Essays in Theory and Practice, Rowman and Littlefield, December 2015, 354pp. (original) (raw)

Equality and Political Philosophy

Equality is an undisputed political and moral value. But until quite recently, political philosophers have not fully explored its complexity. This article tackles the vast literature on equality and egalitarianism of the past thirty-five years or so, and shows how complex and multi-layered the concept of equality can be. Specifically, it unpacks three major questions we might ask about equality. We first ask what is equality. This question can be unpacked into two sub-questions. Distinguishing first between formal and distributive accounts of equality, we may ask what the currency of egalitarianism can be. The article goes through currencies such as welfare, resources, and capabilities, showing their respective strengths and weaknesses. A second important sub-question here is what is the relevant scope as well as temporal dimensions of equality. Among whom is equality valuable, and in what time-frame, precisely, is it valuable? This hints at our second major question, namely concerning the value of equality. Is equality indeed valuable, or are we confusing it for some other value, be it giving priority to the worse off, or lifting individuals above a certain threshold of deprivation. The article goes through some famous criticisms to equality's purported lack of value (the leveling down objection), explores some potential answers, and then examines the relative strength of equality's two main rivals, namely priority and sufficiency. The third major question we ask concerns what is the proper account of egalitarian justice. In particular, setting aside the question of currency, should our conception of distributive justice be informed by responsibility-sensitive accounts, or rather be focused on a responsibility-insensitive accounts that moreover place an emphasis on equality of relations rather than individuals holdings? We explore this in the two final sections, one devoted to understanding luck egalitarianism, and the other to its rival, relational egalitarianism.

The Nature and Distinctiveness of Social Equality - An Introduction

Equality is not one idea, and one can advocate or criticize a number of forms of egalitarianism. Many egalitarians advocate the equal distribution of one of a range of equalisanda-in other words, what it is that should be equalized, such as political power, human rights, primary goods, opportunities for welfare, or capabilities. This notion that equality is best described according to some "thing" that should be distributed equally has been subject to criticism by a range of schools of thought. Of these critics, a number

THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUALITY. NEW AND OLD CHALLENGES

The principle of equality: new and old challenges Equality, as a concept, is as old as mankind. Conceived as a principle intimately related to the fundamental rights and freedoms of people, its political consecration can be traced back to the American and the French Declarations of 1776 and 1789. Since then, it began to exercise its innovative drive in the development of the legal systems all over the world, during the following Centuries. Equality in the modern sense of the notion, as equality of all people before the law, thus started to impose itself as a principle able to limit the power. After the Second World War, it became a core element of the "Postwar paradigm", as part of international documents and national constitutions. The spread of the principle in written legal texts was accompanied by the new awareness about the insufficiency of the merely affirmation of everyone's equality before the law, unable to effectively fight against social and economic discriminations. Public powers must act in the fight against social inequalities. Afterwards, substantial equality has been entrenched in many constitutions, in the context of the "transformative constitutionalism" movement, especially in the Global South. Equality principle represents a founding element of contemporary constitutionalism. Fundamental rights are universal, and the defence of human dignity must be placed at the centre within plural societies, notably with reference to the current globalised and multicultural world. Still, the increasing growth of inequalities currently represents a major topic to be addressed. How can law fill the gap between the equality political project and the discriminations constantly present in our societies? Which are the tools able to reconcile the tension between formal and substantial equality? Are the non-discriminations clauses enshrined in domestic constitutions and international documents enough to guarantee an effective implementation of the equality principle? How can the interpretation of such written clauses contribute to an extensive protection of human dignity and pluralism? Which tools can be used in case of unwillingness of the legislator to proactively act for the protection of substantive equality? Could courts make up for legislators, to fill in their omissions? Evidently, new challenges have developed in the 21st century, in the context of democratic decay. In many democracies, old and new, political forces hostile to liberal democracy appear to attack the rule of law and constitutional guarantees, after winning electoral majorities in the polls. Therefore, equality is even more challenged, and increasingly difficult to concretely guarantee. Those questions have driven the reflections exposed and debated within the IACL-AIDC Roundtable "The

The Real Value of Equality (Journal of Politics)

This paper investigates how political theorists and philosophers should understand egalitarian political demands in light of the increasingly important realist critique of much of contemporary political theory and philosophy. It suggests, first, that what Martin O'Neill has called non-intrinsic egalitarianism is, in one form at least, a potentially realistic egalitarian political project and second, that realists may be compelled to impose an egalitarian threshold on state claims to legitimacy under certain circumstances. Non-intrinsic egalitarianism can meet realism’s methodological requirements because it does not have to assume an unavailable moral consensus since it can focus on widely acknowledged bads rather than contentious claims about the good. Further, an appropriately formulated non-intrinsic egalitarianism may be a minimum requirement of an appropriately realistic claim by a political order to authoritatively structure some of its members' lives. Without at least a threshold set of egalitarian commitments, a political order seems unable to be transparent to many of its worse off members under a plausible construal of contemporary conditions.

Equality, social justice and social welfare: a road map to the new egalitarianisms

Social Policy and Society, 2007

This paper summarises the way equality has featured in the disciplines of social policy and political theory leading up to the presentation of a new egalitarianian framework for thinking about and acting for equality. The paper presents a broadly chronological, integrated review of the place of equality within the subjects concerned. The longstanding problems of universalism and targeting are themes which recur throughout, and in New Labour's approach to equality and social justice.