Martin Van Hees
Biographic Data
| ID | 219671 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Martin Van Hees |
| GIVEN NAMES | Martin |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Hees |
| SIGNATURE | VAN HEES M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Groningen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9933-0020 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 126 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Understanding sustainable cooperation
Societies need cooperation that is sustainable. We argue that understanding the mechanisms of sustainable cooperation requires a connection between current analyses of individual interactions and their institutional contexts, and studies of long-term patterns of cooperation at the societal level. We propose a focus on where institutional level arrangements connect with individual level decision making, namely where people interact in families, co…
Small amendment arguments: How they work and what they do and do not show
The small improvement argument has been said to establish that the standard weak preference or value relation can be incomplete. We first show that the argument is one of three possible ‘small amendment arguments’, each of which would yield the same conclusion. Generalizing the analysis thus, we subsequently present a strong and a weak version of small amendment arguments and derive the exact rationality conditions under which they reveal incompl…
Voids or Fragmentation: Moral Responsibility For Collective Outcomes
Institutional rules create difficulties for the allocation of moral responsibility. One problem is the existence of responsibility voids, i.e. situations in which an outcome results from individual interactions but for which no one is responsible. Another is that responsibility can be fragmented in the sense that responsibility-bearing individuals may be responsible for different features of the outcome. This study examines both problems together…
Ordering the Right and the Good, Practically Speaking
Rights, goals, and capabilities
This article analyses the relationship between rights and capabilities in order to get a better grasp of the kind of consequentialism that the capability theory represents. Capability rights have been defined as rights that have a capability as their object (rights to capabilities). Such a definition leaves the relationship between capabilities and rights to a great extent underspecified since nothing is said about the nature of those rights. Hen…
CHAPTER 15 Freedom of Choice
This chapter introduces and reviews the extensive literature using an axiomatic‐deductive approach to the measurement of freedom of choice and suggest some new avenues of research. It presents Pattanaik and Xu's (1990) axiomatic characterization of the simple but counter‐intuitive cardinality rule that the more alternatives in an opportunity set the more freedom the set provides. Within the various discussions of this ranking, we distinguish a di…
The Development of Capability Indicators
This paper is motivated by sustained interest in the capabilities approach to welfare economics combined with the paucity of economic statistics that measure capabilities at the individual level. Specifically, it takes a much discussed account of the normatively desirable capabilities constitutive of a good life, argued to be comprehensive at a high level of abstraction, and uses it to operationalize the capabilities approach by developing a surv…
In Praise of Manipulation
Many theorists believe that the manipulation of voting procedures is a serious problem. Accordingly, much of social choice theory examines the conditions under which strategy-proofness can be ensured, and what kind of procedures do a better job of preventing manipulation. This article argues that democrats should not be worried about manipulation. Two arguments against manipulation are examined: first, the ‘sincerity argument’, according to which…
Counterfactual Success and Negative Freedom
Recent theories of negative freedom see it as a value-neutral concept; the definition of freedom should not be in terms of specific moral values. Specifically, preferences or desires do not enter into the definition of freedom. If preferences should so enter then Berlin's problem that a person may enhance their freedom by changing their preferences emerges. This paper demonstrates that such a preference-free conception brings its own counter-intu…
Capabilities and achievements: An empirical study
Poverty and the local contingency of universal rights
This paper considers theoretically the relationship between what rights people may be said to have, the normatively defensible distribution of wealth between people within nations and across the world, and people's empirical responses to poverty within their own state and across the world. We argue that rights are universal, and that rights and freedoms do entail a duty to reduce poverty. However freedom is defined, greater poverty entails, eithe…
New Choices: Genomics, Freedom, and Morality
Examines and discusses the effects of genomics, focusing on the area of genetic testing and screening, on human freedom. Concepts of genetic testing and genetic screening; Definitions of freedom; Analysis of the opportunity concept of freedom and whether the availability of genetic tests expand choice options; Processes by which options are selected
The Construction of Rights
This paper examines the sense in which rights can be said to exist. We examine various approaches to the definition and analysis of rights, focusing in particular on the compossibility of rights. Concentrating on three existing approaches to rights-social choice-theoretic, game-theoretic, and Steiner's approach-we suggest that rights are noncompossible in any interesting sense, that is, that the rights people have are nonexistent or vanishingly s…
Freedom of Choice
Legal Reductionism and Freedom
On Rights in Game Forms
The Choices Judges Make: Court Rulings, Personal Values, and Legal Constraints
In this paper we focus on the way in which courts affect public policy. We present a model of judicial behavior that combines insights from theories emphasizing the importance of policy preferences with those suggesting that courts are only motivated by formal-legal criteria. By embedding our model of judicial choice in a broader context of political decision-making we show how judges are able to affect policy and under what circumstances the jud…
Negative Freedom and the Liberal Paradoxes
In their game-theoretic formulations, the liberal paradoxes of Amartya Sen and Alan Gibbard show a tension between freedom on the one hand, and Pareto optimality and stability on the other. This article examines what happens to the liberal paradoxes if a negative conception of freedom is used. Given a game-theoretic definition of negative freedom, it is shown, first, that the liberal paradoxes disappear in this new context: there are game forms i…
Freedom and Opportunity
The article discusses recent attempts in rational choice theory to take account of the opportunity aspect of freedom, i.e., the value of alternatives, in measuring freedom. It is argued that each of these approaches (in terms of fixed preferences, of possible future preferences and of the preferences of reasonable persons) fails to solve important conceptual problems. Furthermore, we argue that differences between measures of opportunity freedom …
Explaining institutions: A defence of reductionism
New institutionalism is an approach to the study of social events that is becoming increasingly popular. Different lines of new institutional research can be distinguished. In one line of research it is argued that the social sciences should transcend reductionist modes of explanation, in particular the methodological individualism exemplified by the theory of rational choice. In this view, reductionism does not permit the endogenous treatment of…
Individual Rights and Legal Validity
The condition of liberty which Sen used in his famous theorem on the impossibility of the Paretian liberal was defined in terms of individual preferences. The preference-based approach has been the subject of much criticism, which led to the evolution of the game-theoretic analysis of rights. In this approach no references to individual preferences are made. Two questions are examined in this paper: how can different types of right be distinguish…
Rights and Decisions: Formal Models of Law and Liberalism
The Development of Capability Indicators
This paper is motivated by sustained interest in the capabilities approach to welfare economics combined with the paucity of economic statistics that measure capabilities at the individual level. Specifically, it takes a much discussed account of the normatively desirable capabilities constitutive of a good life, argued to be comprehensive at a high level of abstraction, and uses it to operationalize the capabilities approach by developing a surv…
In Praise of Manipulation
Many theorists believe that the manipulation of voting procedures is a serious problem. Accordingly, much of social choice theory examines the conditions under which strategy-proofness can be ensured, and what kind of procedures do a better job of preventing manipulation. This article argues that democrats should not be worried about manipulation. Two arguments against manipulation are examined: first, the ‘sincerity argument’, according to which…
The Construction of Rights
This paper examines the sense in which rights can be said to exist. We examine various approaches to the definition and analysis of rights, focusing in particular on the compossibility of rights. Concentrating on three existing approaches to rights-social choice-theoretic, game-theoretic, and Steiner's approach-we suggest that rights are noncompossible in any interesting sense, that is, that the rights people have are nonexistent or vanishingly s…
Counterfactual Success and Negative Freedom
Recent theories of negative freedom see it as a value-neutral concept; the definition of freedom should not be in terms of specific moral values. Specifically, preferences or desires do not enter into the definition of freedom. If preferences should so enter then Berlin's problem that a person may enhance their freedom by changing their preferences emerges. This paper demonstrates that such a preference-free conception brings its own counter-intu…
The Choices Judges Make: Court Rulings, Personal Values, and Legal Constraints
In this paper we focus on the way in which courts affect public policy. We present a model of judicial behavior that combines insights from theories emphasizing the importance of policy preferences with those suggesting that courts are only motivated by formal-legal criteria. By embedding our model of judicial choice in a broader context of political decision-making we show how judges are able to affect policy and under what circumstances the jud…
Freedom and Opportunity
The article discusses recent attempts in rational choice theory to take account of the opportunity aspect of freedom, i.e., the value of alternatives, in measuring freedom. It is argued that each of these approaches (in terms of fixed preferences, of possible future preferences and of the preferences of reasonable persons) fails to solve important conceptual problems. Furthermore, we argue that differences between measures of opportunity freedom …
Explaining institutions: A defence of reductionism
New institutionalism is an approach to the study of social events that is becoming increasingly popular. Different lines of new institutional research can be distinguished. In one line of research it is argued that the social sciences should transcend reductionist modes of explanation, in particular the methodological individualism exemplified by the theory of rational choice. In this view, reductionism does not permit the endogenous treatment of…
Voids or Fragmentation: Moral Responsibility For Collective Outcomes
Institutional rules create difficulties for the allocation of moral responsibility. One problem is the existence of responsibility voids, i.e. situations in which an outcome results from individual interactions but for which no one is responsible. Another is that responsibility can be fragmented in the sense that responsibility-bearing individuals may be responsible for different features of the outcome. This study examines both problems together…
Rights, goals, and capabilities
This article analyses the relationship between rights and capabilities in order to get a better grasp of the kind of consequentialism that the capability theory represents. Capability rights have been defined as rights that have a capability as their object (rights to capabilities). Such a definition leaves the relationship between capabilities and rights to a great extent underspecified since nothing is said about the nature of those rights. Hen…
On Rights in Game Forms
Negative Freedom and the Liberal Paradoxes
In their game-theoretic formulations, the liberal paradoxes of Amartya Sen and Alan Gibbard show a tension between freedom on the one hand, and Pareto optimality and stability on the other. This article examines what happens to the liberal paradoxes if a negative conception of freedom is used. Given a game-theoretic definition of negative freedom, it is shown, first, that the liberal paradoxes disappear in this new context: there are game forms i…
Rights and Decisions: Formal Models of Law and Liberalism
Individual Rights and Legal Validity
The condition of liberty which Sen used in his famous theorem on the impossibility of the Paretian liberal was defined in terms of individual preferences. The preference-based approach has been the subject of much criticism, which led to the evolution of the game-theoretic analysis of rights. In this approach no references to individual preferences are made. Two questions are examined in this paper: how can different types of right be distinguish…
Explaining institutions: A defence of reductionism
New institutionalism is an approach to the study of social events that is becoming increasingly popular. Different lines of new institutional research can be distinguished. In one line of research it is argued that the social sciences should transcend reductionist modes of explanation, in particular the methodological individualism exemplified by the theory of rational choice. In this view, reductionism does not permit the endogenous treatment of…
Freedom and Opportunity
The article discusses recent attempts in rational choice theory to take account of the opportunity aspect of freedom, i.e., the value of alternatives, in measuring freedom. It is argued that each of these approaches (in terms of fixed preferences, of possible future preferences and of the preferences of reasonable persons) fails to solve important conceptual problems. Furthermore, we argue that differences between measures of opportunity freedom …
Freedom of Choice
Legal Reductionism and Freedom
On Rights in Game Forms
The Choices Judges Make: Court Rulings, Personal Values, and Legal Constraints
In this paper we focus on the way in which courts affect public policy. We present a model of judicial behavior that combines insights from theories emphasizing the importance of policy preferences with those suggesting that courts are only motivated by formal-legal criteria. By embedding our model of judicial choice in a broader context of political decision-making we show how judges are able to affect policy and under what circumstances the jud…
Negative Freedom and the Liberal Paradoxes
In their game-theoretic formulations, the liberal paradoxes of Amartya Sen and Alan Gibbard show a tension between freedom on the one hand, and Pareto optimality and stability on the other. This article examines what happens to the liberal paradoxes if a negative conception of freedom is used. Given a game-theoretic definition of negative freedom, it is shown, first, that the liberal paradoxes disappear in this new context: there are game forms i…
New Choices: Genomics, Freedom, and Morality
Examines and discusses the effects of genomics, focusing on the area of genetic testing and screening, on human freedom. Concepts of genetic testing and genetic screening; Definitions of freedom; Analysis of the opportunity concept of freedom and whether the availability of genetic tests expand choice options; Processes by which options are selected
The Construction of Rights
This paper examines the sense in which rights can be said to exist. We examine various approaches to the definition and analysis of rights, focusing in particular on the compossibility of rights. Concentrating on three existing approaches to rights-social choice-theoretic, game-theoretic, and Steiner's approach-we suggest that rights are noncompossible in any interesting sense, that is, that the rights people have are nonexistent or vanishingly s…
Poverty and the local contingency of universal rights
This paper considers theoretically the relationship between what rights people may be said to have, the normatively defensible distribution of wealth between people within nations and across the world, and people's empirical responses to poverty within their own state and across the world. We argue that rights are universal, and that rights and freedoms do entail a duty to reduce poverty. However freedom is defined, greater poverty entails, eithe…
Capabilities and achievements: An empirical study
Counterfactual Success and Negative Freedom
Recent theories of negative freedom see it as a value-neutral concept; the definition of freedom should not be in terms of specific moral values. Specifically, preferences or desires do not enter into the definition of freedom. If preferences should so enter then Berlin's problem that a person may enhance their freedom by changing their preferences emerges. This paper demonstrates that such a preference-free conception brings its own counter-intu…
In Praise of Manipulation
Many theorists believe that the manipulation of voting procedures is a serious problem. Accordingly, much of social choice theory examines the conditions under which strategy-proofness can be ensured, and what kind of procedures do a better job of preventing manipulation. This article argues that democrats should not be worried about manipulation. Two arguments against manipulation are examined: first, the ‘sincerity argument’, according to which…
CHAPTER 15 Freedom of Choice
This chapter introduces and reviews the extensive literature using an axiomatic‐deductive approach to the measurement of freedom of choice and suggest some new avenues of research. It presents Pattanaik and Xu's (1990) axiomatic characterization of the simple but counter‐intuitive cardinality rule that the more alternatives in an opportunity set the more freedom the set provides. Within the various discussions of this ranking, we distinguish a di…
The Development of Capability Indicators
This paper is motivated by sustained interest in the capabilities approach to welfare economics combined with the paucity of economic statistics that measure capabilities at the individual level. Specifically, it takes a much discussed account of the normatively desirable capabilities constitutive of a good life, argued to be comprehensive at a high level of abstraction, and uses it to operationalize the capabilities approach by developing a surv…
Rights, goals, and capabilities
This article analyses the relationship between rights and capabilities in order to get a better grasp of the kind of consequentialism that the capability theory represents. Capability rights have been defined as rights that have a capability as their object (rights to capabilities). Such a definition leaves the relationship between capabilities and rights to a great extent underspecified since nothing is said about the nature of those rights. Hen…
Ordering the Right and the Good, Practically Speaking
Voids or Fragmentation: Moral Responsibility For Collective Outcomes
Institutional rules create difficulties for the allocation of moral responsibility. One problem is the existence of responsibility voids, i.e. situations in which an outcome results from individual interactions but for which no one is responsible. Another is that responsibility can be fragmented in the sense that responsibility-bearing individuals may be responsible for different features of the outcome. This study examines both problems together…
Small amendment arguments: How they work and what they do and do not show
The small improvement argument has been said to establish that the standard weak preference or value relation can be incomplete. We first show that the argument is one of three possible ‘small amendment arguments’, each of which would yield the same conclusion. Generalizing the analysis thus, we subsequently present a strong and a weak version of small amendment arguments and derive the exact rationality conditions under which they reveal incompl…
Understanding sustainable cooperation
Societies need cooperation that is sustainable. We argue that understanding the mechanisms of sustainable cooperation requires a connection between current analyses of individual interactions and their institutional contexts, and studies of long-term patterns of cooperation at the societal level. We propose a focus on where institutional level arrangements connect with individual level decision making, namely where people interact in families, co…
Political science (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Law and economics (12 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Economics (11 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works)