Albert Weale
Biographic Data
| ID | 187772 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Albert Weale |
| GIVEN NAMES | Albert |
| FAMILY NAME | Weale |
| SIGNATURE | WEALE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Essex |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2623-9805 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 75 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 283 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 73 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Legitimate realism? On Tucker’s Global Discord
Taking Back Control as Democratic Theory
The slogan ‘take back control’ was central to Brexit. The conception of democracy this slogan embodies is the traditional Westminster model. It is a model in the sense that it is supposed to provide a simplified characterisation of the operative principles of UK politics and government, although practice in fact diverges from those principles. It is also a model in the sense that the Westminster system is seen by those favouring Brexit as an idea…
Should we partake in Adam Oliver's taste for desert
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Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarianism introduction to the symposium
Ganghof’s Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarianism advances three main claims: an innovative typology of comparative government, introducing the category of semi-parliamentarianism; an explication of two conceptions of majority rule, simple majoritarianism and complex majoritarianism; and a demonstration that there are viable systems of government embodying the political equality associated with each majoritarian conception. This paper expla…
Modern Social Contract Theory
This book provides an exposition and evaluation of major work in social contract theory from 1950 to present. It locates the central themes of that theory in the intellectual legacy of utilitarianism, particularly the problems of defining principles of justice and of showing the grounds of moral obligation. Subsequently, it demonstrates how theorists responded in a novel way to the dilemmas articulated in utilitarianism, developing in their diffe…
Meaning and context in political theory
The two books offer a contextual reinterpretation of Rawlsian and post-Rawlsian liberalism. Nelson’s main thesis is that debates in liberal political theory re-enact theological debates about theodicy going back to the Pelagian controversy. This claim is criticized for its historical inaccuracy. Nelson’s invocation of theodicy as a refutation of luck egalitarianism and the Rawlsian rejection of desert rest on a claim of possibility that is too we…
Brexit and British Politics
Evans and Menon explain Brexit is best understood as a result of the long-standing distinctiveness of the role of the UK in Europe combined with a particular set of social and political development
Three Types of Majority Rule
What’s so good about parliamentary hybrids? Comment on ‘Australian bicameralism as semi-parliamentarianism: Patterns of Majority Formation in 29 Democracies
Commenting on ‘Australian Bicameralism as Semi-Parliamentarianism’, this paper reconstructs the underlying justification of the issue-by-issue median as a rule of collective choice, a rule central to the theory of complex majoritarianism. In semi-parliamentary systems, this rule is institutionalised in parliamentary chambers that make law and policy by issue specific majorities. The comment questions whether it is necessary to balance the vision …
The Democratic Duty to Oppose Brexit
What should be the position of democrats in response to the Brexit referendum? Many urge a duty to accept the result. This article argues the contrary. If someone is a UK citizen, has a belief that leaving the European Union will be damaging to the common good of the UK and is a convinced democrat, then that person has a duty to oppose Brexit. Neither of the two principal reasons for accepting the result—a claim of popular sovereignty or of parli…
Democratic justice and the social contract: An overview
Democratic Justice and the Social Contract offers a theory of justicedemocratic contractarianismconstrued as the product of a social contract in which the contract is modelled as a form of joint agreement that can be empirically realized in a procedural democracy
On the logic of productive cooperation: A response to critics
This paper identifies and responds to four critiques of democratic contractarianism, as advocated in Democratic Justice and the Social Contract, to be found in this symposium. The first is that, as a contingent practice-dependent account of justice, democratic contractarianism lacks the capacity to explain civic cooperation. The second is that, despite its intentions, Democratic Justice does not lay out an authentic contractarian theory. The thir…
Nostalgic Democracy Triumphs over Democratic Internationalism
For democrats, two important lessons emerge from the Brexit referendum.First, it was a triumph of nostalgic democracy; second, it was a failure of democratic internationalism.'Take back control' and 'we want our country back' are pre-eminently the principles of engaged democratic citizens.No one listening to the foot soldiers of the Leave campaign could doubt their sincerity or their commitment.Many believed themselves to be fighting for a cause …
Dilemmas of political legitimacy in the European Union: A Contractarian Analysis
The European Union (EU) is a compound polity, which requires its member states to make credible commitments about their complying with the terms of their inter-state contract. Using contemporary social contract theory, the paper analyses what conditions of inter-state credibility are necessary in order for such a contract to be successful. However, since member states make their commitments as representatives of their peoples, those same commitme…
Changing the UK's policy paradigm
In Knowledge, Policy, and Expertise, Susan Owens provides an account of one of the most important postwar policy advisory bodies in the UK: the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP), o
Political legitimacy and European monetary union: Contracts, Constitutionalism and the Normative Logic of Two-Level Games
The crisis of the euro area has severely tested the political authority of the European Union (EU). The crisis raises questions of normative legitimacy both because the EU is a normative order and because the construction of economic and monetary union (EMU) rested upon a theory that stressed the normative value of the depoliticization of money. However, this theory neglected the normative logic of the two-level game implicit in EMU. It also negl…
Just Returns
Democratic Justice and the Social Contract offered a contractarian theory of democratic justice. This article responds to criticisms that its arguments either assume premises that are not genuinely constructivist or that the premises imply untoward conclusions. It also discusses the role of deliberation in a democracy and seeks to refute some alleged shortcomings of its method
Representing Europeans: A Pragmatic Approach
Democratic Justice and the Social Contract
This book offers a theory of democratic justice. According to the theory, justice emerges from collective agreement among political associates who enjoy approximate equality of power. Such situations can be seen as social contracts, and we find an empirical model for social contracts in the examples of successful common property resource regimes. In these regimes, participants craft collective rules of access to the means of production on an equa…
The Property-Owning Democracy vesus the Welfare State
The political theory of the property-owning democracy can be seen as a way of overcoming the ideological conflict between individualism and collectivism. Rawls offers the contemporary reference-point for this theory. Rawls contrasted the ideal-type of the property-owning democracy with the ideal-type of a capitalist welfare state. However, the terms of that contrast are not well drawn and raise a number of questions, in particular regarding Rawls…
Introduction: The value and limits of rights: essays in honour of Peter Jones
The right to health versus good medical care
There are two discourses that are used in connection with the provision of good healthcare: a rights discourse and a beneficial design discourse. Although the logical force of these two discourses overlaps, they have distinct and incompatible implications for practical reasoning about health policy. The language of rights can be interpreted as the ground of a well-designed healthcare system stressing the values of equality and inclusion, but it h…
In a Different Parliamentary Voice
One question at the heart of the analysis of gender and politics is whether women and men act and speak in different ways to significant political effect. In terms of political representation, this issue is particularly important. Arguments for increasing the number of women representatives in parliament, for example, are not about an abstract numerical parity, but rest on a claim about the distinctive voice and experience that women bring to pol…
Debating Abortion, Deliberative Reciprocity and Parliamentary Advocacy
An influential model of deliberative democracy advances a principle of reciprocity as a norm of democratic debate on morally controversial issues. This norm is at odds with behaviour that has been observed in political campaigning and policy making where advocates of competing positions talk past one another. Does this inconsistency stem from a contrast between the normative and empirical or from not considering empirically plausible practices of…
New Modes of Governance, Political Accountability and Public Reason
New modes of governance are said to create problems of political accountability. To understand this claim, we need a theory of accountability. Electoral accountability provides authorization and sanction, but it neglects the problems entailed in the requirement to provide explanation and justification. Political accountability in this discursive sense can be understood through the idea of public reason, where this is defined in terms of substanti…
Political legitimacy and European monetary union: Contracts, Constitutionalism and the Normative Logic of Two-Level Games
The crisis of the euro area has severely tested the political authority of the European Union (EU). The crisis raises questions of normative legitimacy both because the EU is a normative order and because the construction of economic and monetary union (EMU) rested upon a theory that stressed the normative value of the depoliticization of money. However, this theory neglected the normative logic of the two-level game implicit in EMU. It also negl…
The Standard of Living
Journal Article The Standard of Living Get access The Standard of Living. BY AMARTYA SEN with John Muellbauer, Ravi Kanbur, Keith Hart, Bernard Williams, and edited by Geoffrey Hawthorn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp. xiv+ 125. £15.00, US$24.95 hardback. ISBN 0 521 32101 8.) Albert Weale Albert Weale University of East Anglia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 9…
Environmental rules and rule‐making in the European Union
What does environmental policy‐making reveal about the rule‐making process in the European Union? In the light of environmental policy developments, this article proposes that the EU be regarded as a system of governance operating on the principle of concurrent majorities among leading actors. European environmental standards are neither functionally related to the Single Market nor a reflection of a dominant coalition of countries pushing their …
Is Rule by Majorities Special
One way of making decisions is for political associates or their representatives to vote on each issue separately in accordance with the majority principle and then take the cumulative outcomes of such majority decision making to define the collective choice for public policy. We call such a system one of majorities rule. Thought of in spatial terms, majorities rule is equivalent to the principle of making decisions according to the issue-by-issu…
New Modes of Governance, Political Accountability and Public Reason
New modes of governance are said to create problems of political accountability. To understand this claim, we need a theory of accountability. Electoral accountability provides authorization and sanction, but it neglects the problems entailed in the requirement to provide explanation and justification. Political accountability in this discursive sense can be understood through the idea of public reason, where this is defined in terms of substanti…
Analysing Parliamentary Debate with Computer Assistance
The analysis of parliamentary debates is at the confluence of a number of developments in political science. What light can automated and semi‐automated techniques throw on such analysis? In this paper we compare two such approaches, one semi‐automated (Hamlet) and the other fully automated (Alceste). We use both approaches to identify the prominent themes in debate and to assess how far speakers who favour different positions adopt a distinct pa…
Nostalgic Democracy Triumphs over Democratic Internationalism
For democrats, two important lessons emerge from the Brexit referendum.First, it was a triumph of nostalgic democracy; second, it was a failure of democratic internationalism.'Take back control' and 'we want our country back' are pre-eminently the principles of engaged democratic citizens.No one listening to the foot soldiers of the Leave campaign could doubt their sincerity or their commitment.Many believed themselves to be fighting for a cause …
The Democratic Duty to Oppose Brexit
What should be the position of democrats in response to the Brexit referendum? Many urge a duty to accept the result. This article argues the contrary. If someone is a UK citizen, has a belief that leaving the European Union will be damaging to the common good of the UK and is a convinced democrat, then that person has a duty to oppose Brexit. Neither of the two principal reasons for accepting the result—a claim of popular sovereignty or of parli…
Debating Abortion, Deliberative Reciprocity and Parliamentary Advocacy
An influential model of deliberative democracy advances a principle of reciprocity as a norm of democratic debate on morally controversial issues. This norm is at odds with behaviour that has been observed in political campaigning and policy making where advocates of competing positions talk past one another. Does this inconsistency stem from a contrast between the normative and empirical or from not considering empirically plausible practices of…
Political Theory and the European Union: Legitimacy, Constitutional Choice and Citizenship
List of Figures List of Abbreviations List of Contributors Preface 1. Introduction Michael Nentwich and Albert Weale Part 1: Political Legitimacy and the Democratic Deficit 2. Legitimacy and the European Union David Beetham and Christopher Lord 3. Democracy, Legitimacy and Majority Rule in the European Union Andreas Follesdal 4. Between Representation and Constitutionalism in the European Union Albert Weale 5. Defending the Democratic Deficit Sve…
Political representation and the normative logic of two-level games
This paper develops the normative logic of two-level games linking international negotiation and domestic acceptability. The kernel of the logic is to be found in the claim that normatively governed relations involve agents simultaneously asking whether the expectations that they have under an agreement are reasonable given the expectations of others under that agreement. This normative logic mirrors the empirical logic that Putnam (1988) identif…
Social Choice Versus Populism? An Interpretation of Riker's Political Theory
William Riker is one of the most influential political scientists at present writing on the theory and practice of democracy. A quick count on my part of the Social Science Citation Index, normally a Siva of academic reputations, revealed nearly one thousand entries under Riker's name between 1971 and the beginning of 1982. Not only is his work frequently cited, it is read long after it is originally published. The Theory of Political Coalitions,…
In a Different Parliamentary Voice
One question at the heart of the analysis of gender and politics is whether women and men act and speak in different ways to significant political effect. In terms of political representation, this issue is particularly important. Arguments for increasing the number of women representatives in parliament, for example, are not about an abstract numerical parity, but rest on a claim about the distinctive voice and experience that women bring to pol…
Can We Democratize Decisions on Risk and the Environment
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Metrics versus Peer Review
Between economy and ecology? The single market and the integration of environmental policy
For a number of years influential voices in the international environmental policy community, including policy-makers in the European Community, have been calling for the integration of environmental considerations into the making of economic policy. The reasons for this involve a complex mix of intellectual, organisational and political factors. Moreover, the failure to achieve an integration of environmental considerations into the making of ec…
What’s so good about parliamentary hybrids? Comment on ‘Australian bicameralism as semi-parliamentarianism: Patterns of Majority Formation in 29 Democracies
Commenting on ‘Australian Bicameralism as Semi-Parliamentarianism’, this paper reconstructs the underlying justification of the issue-by-issue median as a rule of collective choice, a rule central to the theory of complex majoritarianism. In semi-parliamentary systems, this rule is institutionalised in parliamentary chambers that make law and policy by issue specific majorities. The comment questions whether it is necessary to balance the vision …
Paternalism and Social Policy
This paper discusses the notion of paternalism, and its application to the evaluation of social policies. It attempts first to define the concept, using Mill's distinction between self- and other-regarding actions. A paternalistic policy is one in which the government renders a self-regarding action less eligible for a citizen, with the intention of benefiting the citizen in question. This concept is then applied to the analysis of redistribution…
Nature versus the state? Markets, states, and environmental protection
Is it possible to reconcile a classical liberal approach to economics with a concern for the environment? The contributors to Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation contend that it is. But they fail to distinguish properly between classical liberalism and a widespread orthodoxy in environmental policy communities in Europe and North America to the effect that economic instruments for environmental policy need more serious attention than …
Administrative Reorganization and Policy Change: The Case of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution
Environmental protection nowadays is a major issue of policy and administration. It is well recognized that an effective approach to pollution control requires it to be integrated, but UK governments have been slow to respond to this need. The creation of a new unified pollution inspectorate in England and Wales must be set in the context of a general transition in British pollution control practice, where the incorporation of more formal procedu…
Brexit and British Politics
Evans and Menon explain Brexit is best understood as a result of the long-standing distinctiveness of the role of the UK in Europe combined with a particular set of social and political development
A Contractual Reformulation of Certain Aspects of Welfare Economics
Within the discipline of welfare economics, one tradition-the BergsonSamuelson tradition-has been dominant for over a quarter of a century. The most basic concept in this tradition is the social welfare ordering or social welfare function. This represents the judgments of some private individual, public official or ethical observer concerning what is better or worse for society. Certain restrictions are placed on the form such an ordering may tak…
Three Types of Majority Rule
Dilemmas of political legitimacy in the European Union: A Contractarian Analysis
The European Union (EU) is a compound polity, which requires its member states to make credible commitments about their complying with the terms of their inter-state contract. Using contemporary social contract theory, the paper analyses what conditions of inter-state credibility are necessary in order for such a contract to be successful. However, since member states make their commitments as representatives of their peoples, those same commitme…
Political Theory and Practical Public Reasoning
Political theory and political philosophy (used interchangeably in this article) have always played a role in public life. The argument pursued here is that this is not accidental. We cannot understand in an explanatory sense developments in public policy without understanding the structure of ideas that influence those developments, including the normative presuppositions at the core of those structures of ideas. However, we can pass from explan…
Consent
This paper analyses the notion of consent. Two approaches to the topic are distinguished: one which analyses consent in terms of the ethical concepts associated with an established institutional practice and a second in which the concept is analysed by reference to behavioural and mental concepts. The second approach is used to develop an analysis by which consent is taken to consist in the inducing of reliance in a hearer by a speaker who undert…
Paternalism and Social Policy
This paper discusses the notion of paternalism, and its application to the evaluation of social policies. It attempts first to define the concept, using Mill's distinction between self- and other-regarding actions. A paternalistic policy is one in which the government renders a self-regarding action less eligible for a citizen, with the intention of benefiting the citizen in question. This concept is then applied to the analysis of redistribution…
Reply to Nicholls' Comment
William Beveridge: The Patriarch as Planner
A Contractual Reformulation of Certain Aspects of Welfare Economics
Within the discipline of welfare economics, one tradition-the BergsonSamuelson tradition-has been dominant for over a quarter of a century. The most basic concept in this tradition is the social welfare ordering or social welfare function. This represents the judgments of some private individual, public official or ethical observer concerning what is better or worse for society. Certain restrictions are placed on the form such an ordering may tak…
Equality and Social Policy
The Impossibility of Liberal Egalitarianism
Journal Article The impossibility of liberal egalitarianism Get access Albert Weale Albert Weale University of York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Analysis, Volume 40, Issue 1, January 1980, Pages 13–19, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/40.1.13 Published: 01 January 1980
Freedom: Facts and Figments’–A Reply
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Freedom and the Welfare State: Introduction
Does the welfare state contribute to the development of human freedom? This central problem of political evaluation has been answered in various ways. Some have seen the mechanisms of a redistributive tax-transfer scheme and the state supply of education and health services as steps down the road to serfdom. Others have seen the welfare state as providing a set of institutions through which individuals could realize the positive freedom that came…
Political Theory and Social Policy
Regulating for Equal Employment Opportunities: The Case of the Disabled Quota
In recent years there has been considerable political controversy surrounding the quota employment scheme for disabled workers. In a report published in 1981 the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) proposed that the quota scheme should be abolished, and replaced by an obligation upon employers to take reasonable steps to promote equality of employment opportunity for disabled people.' A similar proposal to abolish the quota was made in 1973 by the…
Social Choice Versus Populism? An Interpretation of Riker's Political Theory
William Riker is one of the most influential political scientists at present writing on the theory and practice of democracy. A quick count on my part of the Social Science Citation Index, normally a Siva of academic reputations, revealed nearly one thousand entries under Riker's name between 1971 and the beginning of 1982. Not only is his work frequently cited, it is read long after it is originally published. The Theory of Political Coalitions,…
Mr. Fowler's Psychology: Reform of Social Security
The Welfare State and Two Conflicting Ideals of Equality
THE WELFARE STATE IS WIDELY THOUGHT TO HAVE SOME connection with the ideal of equality. But what is the nature of that connection and what is the relevant sense of equality? The purpose of this paper is to identify two conflicting ideals of equality and to discuss their im lications for the political label these ideals ‘equality of welfare’ and ‘equality of resources’, though I shall define them somewhat differently from Dworkin. The conclusion I…
How Much is Due to Health Care Providers
How much by way of economic reward is due to health care providers? Although this problem usually presents itself as a practical matter of policy, it has buried within it a number of philosophical issues, for it can be regarded as a question in the theory of economic justice. The formal principle of justice is that we should render persons what is due to them. But on what consideration in the case of health care providers can we make an assessmen…
The Standard of Living
Journal Article The Standard of Living Get access The Standard of Living. BY AMARTYA SEN with John Muellbauer, Ravi Kanbur, Keith Hart, Bernard Williams, and edited by Geoffrey Hawthorn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp. xiv+ 125. £15.00, US$24.95 hardback. ISBN 0 521 32101 8.) Albert Weale Albert Weale University of East Anglia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 9…
Administrative Reorganization and Policy Change: The Case of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution
Environmental protection nowadays is a major issue of policy and administration. It is well recognized that an effective approach to pollution control requires it to be integrated, but UK governments have been slow to respond to this need. The creation of a new unified pollution inspectorate in England and Wales must be set in the context of a general transition in British pollution control practice, where the incorporation of more formal procedu…
Equality, Social Solidarity, and the Welfare State
Resourcing the National Health Service
Service (NHS). The starting point for the analysis is the current controversy as to whether improvements in the quality of care depend upon greater resources being devoted to health care or upon better use of existing resources. The theory developed is basically contractual in character, and depends upon conceptualizing the relevant issues as a hypothetical bargain between patients
Can Homo Economicus Have a Political Theory
Universities in Wonderland
Perhaps the allusions and references contained in the first part of this article might not be readily intelligible to someone whose childhood was not spent listening to stories from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland or to someone not presently involved in the current debates about the finance of United Kingdom universities. Let me therefore offer a few words of explanation.Alice in Wonderland, and its companion Alice Through the Looking Glass, …
Citizenship Beyond Borders
Can the notion of citizenship be used to ground obligations that go beyond the borders of generation or nation? At first sight it would appear not. The concept of citizenship, and the baggage of presuppositions that it carries with it, are normally used to limit, rather than expand, obligations.1 The usual way in which this works is that citizenship is made a condition of participation in practices that define social and political rights and duti…
The greening of the European polity
Acid Politics: Environmental and Energy Policies in Britain and Germany. By Sonja Boehmer‐Christiansen and Jim Skea. London and New York: Belhaven Press, 1991. Pp.xiii + 296. £39.50 (hardback). ISBN 1–85293–116–7. Integrated Pollution Control in Europe and North America. Edited by Frances Irwin and Nigel Haigh. Washington DC: The Conservation Foundation, 1990. Pp.xiv + 241. $20 (paperback). ISBN 0–89164–117–3. Wassergefährdung durch die Landwirts…
Aids in Industrialized Democracies: Passions, Politics, and Policies
In the ten years since the first cases of AIDS were reported, the disease has spread around the world. Every country has had to come up with policies suited to its own conditions, economy, culture, and institutions. The differences among their approaches are striking. This volume, the first international comprehensive comparison of responses to AIDS, is a unique guide to the world's most urgent public health crisis. Sixteen leading experts in pub…
Nature versus the state? Markets, states, and environmental protection
Is it possible to reconcile a classical liberal approach to economics with a concern for the environment? The contributors to Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation contend that it is. But they fail to distinguish properly between classical liberalism and a widespread orthodoxy in environmental policy communities in Europe and North America to the effect that economic instruments for environmental policy need more serious attention than …
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