Insurance, Equality and the Welfare State: Political Philosophy and (of) Public Insurance (original) (raw)
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Public Insurance and Equality: From Redistribution to Relation
Res Publica, 2015
Public insurance is commonly assimilated with redistributive tools mobilized by the welfare state in the pursuit of an egalitarian ideal. This view contains some truth, since the result of insurance, at a given moment, is the redistribution of resources from the lucky to unlucky. However, Joseph Heath (among other political theorists) considers that the principle of efficiency provides a better normative explanation and justification of public insurance than the egalitarian account. According to this view, the fact that the state is involved in the provision of specific insurance (primarily health and unemployment insurance and pensions) is explained and justified by the greater efficiency of the state, in comparison with markets, in addressing market failures such as moral hazard or adverse selection. Our argument is that while insurance, intrinsically and idealistically, may diverge from a redistributive scheme, it is nevertheless difficult to deny that insurance has nothing to do with equality. More precisely, we argue that insurance may be understood as an egalitarian tool if our understanding of equality is broadened to include relational equality. Our paper aims to briefly recap the debates surrounding public insurance as a redistributive tool, advancing the idea that public insurance may be a relational egalitarian tool. It then presents a number of relational arguments in favor of the involvement of the state in the provision of specific forms of insurance, arguments that have been overlooked given the domination of luck egalitarian approaches in these debates.
Public Insurance and Equality: From Redistribution to Relation, in Res Publica, 2015
Res Publica
Public insurance is commonly assimilated with redistributive tools mobilized by the welfare state in the pursuit of an egalitarian ideal. This view contains some truth, since the result of insurance, at a given moment, is the redistribution of resources from the lucky to unlucky. However, Joseph Heath (among other political theorists) considers that the principle of efficiency provides a better normative explanation and justification of public insurance than the egalitarian account. According to this view, the fact that the state is involved in the provision of specific insurance (primarily health and unemployment insurance and pensions) is explained and justified by the greater efficiency of the state, in comparison with markets, in addressing market failures such as moral hazard or adverse selection. Our argument is that while insurance, intrinsically and idealistically, may diverge from a redistributive scheme, it is nevertheless difficult to deny that insurance has nothing to do with equality. More precisely, we argue that insurance may be understood as an egalitarian tool if our understanding of equality is broadened to include relational equality. Our paper aims to briefly recap the debates surrounding public insurance as a redistributive tool, advancing the idea that public insurance may be a relational egalitarian tool. It then presents a number of relational arguments in favor of the involvement of the state in the provision of specific forms of insurance, arguments that have been overlooked given the domination of luck egalitarian approaches in these debates.
The Normative Foundations of (Social) Insurance:Technology, Social Practice and Political Philosophy
2013
Xavier Landes was educated in economics (B.Sc.), political science (M.Sc.) and philosophy (B.A., M.A., Ph.D.). He is currently an external lecturer at University of Copenhagen after having occupied research positions at the Universities of Montreal and Toronto. His areas of specialization are political philosophy (multiculturalism and justice) and economic philosophy (regulation of markets, public insurance and happiness). He is ultimately interested by the issue of the moral responsibilities of the state for socioeconomic and ethnocultural justice. His work is to elaborate an ethics of public regulation. During the recent years, he published book chapters, tribunes and articles in international peer-reviewed journals such as Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review or Public Health Ethics.
The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance Theory, 1994
This paper first discusses the standard reasons why private insurance cannot be expected to function well and why public intervention in or public provision of insurance can improve on private market outcomes. These arguments are based on efficiency but also on equity considerations. Then the paper turns to new developments in modern societies that might affect the balance between social and private insurance. They pertain to the current working of labor markets, to the openness of our economies and the ensuing fiscal competition, and to the crediblity and commitment problems faced by the state. The paper concludes that the public sector will find it less and less affordable to provide both insurance and assistance and recommends that it focus on the latter objective by awarding tax-financed uniform benefits on the basis of specified contingencies.
Insurance and Equality Revisited
Public Affairs Quarterly, 2018
Theorists of the welfare state increasingly recognize that social insurance programs are not well-justified by distributive egalitarianism, distributive egalitarianism meaning concern for equality considered as a pattern in the distribution of some good. But recent work by several relational egalitarian theorists suggests that these programs may be justified on relational egalitarian grounds. Relational egalitarians hold that the proper object of egalitarian concern is the way that citizens relate to one another. In this paper, I review the problems facing a distributive egalitarian justification for social insurance before considering and rejecting three relational egalitarian justification. I close by offering a justification for these programs grounded in efficiency, not equality.
Producing Solidarity, Inequality and Exclusion Through Insurance
Res Publica, 2015
The article presents two main arguments. First, we claim that in contemporary societies, insurance enacts peculiar kinds of solidarities as well as inequality and exclusion. Especially important in this respect are life, health, disability and old age pension insurance, both in compulsory and voluntary forms. Second, the article maintains that the ideas of solidarity, inequality and exclusion are transformed by the machinery of insurance. In other words, the concrete ways in which insurance relations are practically arranged have an effect on the ways in which the related moral and political concepts are perceived. We elaborate on three different forms of insurance solidarity, which we call chance, risk and income solidarity. The existence of multiple forms of solidarity relevant to insurance is significant because practices of insurance require decisions concerning what kind of solidarity is emphasised, when it is emphasised, and on what grounds. Moreover, what is solidarity for some can entail exclusion and inequality for others. Showing these internal tensions within insurance practice underlines the inherently political and moral nature of insurance.
Private spanner in public works? The corrosive effects of private insurance on public life
The British Journal of Sociology, 2022
Contemporary societies are not only “risk societies”, but also insurance societies. While the shift of systemic risks from the community to the individual is a distinctive trait of modernity, research on the consequences of this process has focused almost exclusively on welfare state responses aimed at re-collectivizing societal risks. Individual-level reactions associated with the need for a private safety net against the uncertainty brought by risk societies have been largely overlooked. What happens to a society and its individuals when private insurance becomes commonplace? Focusing on Germany, we use the data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984–2018) to investigate the attitudinal antecedents and consequences of contracting private insurance. As one of the most important sources of private welfare, life insurance attracts risk-averse individuals who are highly concerned with public economic affairs and see the market-based solutions of conservative parties as the best way to safeguard their economic security. While short-term attitudinal effects are absent, a longitudinal approach reveals that becoming insured gradually increases economic security but also entails withdrawal from public life and aversion to parties that support social redistribution. The loss of dynamism of a society may thus be related not only to public welfare but also to a private institution at the heart of the financial markets, which moreover has privatizing, welfare-eroding effects. The paper argues for a more general sociology of insurance.
Escaping from the State? Historical Paths to Public and Private Insurance
Enterprise & Society, 2020
The history of insurance has been characterized in most countries by the coexistence of a wide range of organizational forms. The reasons for this plethora of vehicles remain unclear, as does the impact of this diversity on the development of insurance around the world. Drawing on the latest research, this paper examines, first, the different functions of the state in relation to insurance in a wide range of national markets from the early modern period to the present century; second, the path-dependent effects that determined the historical distribution of public and private forms of insurance; and third, the relation between public and private insurance and its impact on market development.