Stuart White
Biographic Data
| ID | 3704465 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stuart White |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stuart |
| FAMILY NAME | White |
| SIGNATURE | WHITE S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6841-8775 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 203 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Impact of augmented reality-enhanced biological taxonomy instruction on students’ knowledge gains and science motivation
Several studies have emphasized the importance of adopting innovative approaches to science education to foster students’ interest and engagement with science. Emerging technologies, such as augmented reality (AR), have shown great promise for enhancing science learning experiences and continue to be explored for their benefits. In this paper, we examine the impact of AR-enhanced versus 2D-image instruction on students’ knowledge gains and motiva…
The vulnerability of pragmatic anarchism: Contribution to a symposium on Sophie Scott-Brown’s Colin Ward and the Art of Everyday Anarchy
Sophie Scott-Brown's intellectual biography of Colin Ward does a superb job of putting Ward's anarchism in its historical and political context. In so doing Scott-Brown arguably draws attention to how Ward's pragmatic anarchism was dependent on post-war social democracy in the UK. This comment explores whether this makes Ward's anarchism vulnerable in the following sense: that, as an anarchism, it cannot take sides in the struggle between social …
Constitutions against Oligarchy
Political equality is a central feature of democracy but one that is continually under siege in a capitalist society from the power of the rich and business. This is intrinsically unfair and creates one risk of policy being skewed from the common good. What role can constitutions – bodies of codified and entrenched higher law – play in limiting these risks of oligarchy? The chapter discusses two possible approaches that constitutional designers m…
How Should a Progressive Parliament Advance Proportional Representation
Many supporters of democratic reform in the UK propose both a change in the electoral system to proportional representation (PR) and a shift to a formal (codified and entrenched) constitution. In principle, these two proposals are deeply complementary. There is, however, also a potential tension between them. Specifically, if a future UK government were to treat PR as a matter of ordinary legislation, this would conflict with the democratic const…
The Referendum in the UK’s Constitution: From Parliamentary to Popular Sovereignty
The 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU has led to much questioning of the place of the referendum in the UK’s constitution with a particular emphasis on the status of Parliamentary and popular sovereignty. Some commentary suggests that the UK has shifted from a constitution of Parliamentary sovereignty to one of the popular sovereignty. Drawing on A.V. Dicey’s discussion of the UK constitution in his Introduction to the Law of the C…
Brexit and the future of the UK constitution
This article discusses the potential for constitutional impact of Brexit on the United Kingdom’s constitution. Some argue that Brexit entails the restoration of effective parliamentary sovereignty and, thereby, a reaffirmation of the UK’s traditional constitution. However, Brexit increases pressure on unstable points in the traditional constitution, making other outcomes possible. One possibility is the emergence of a ‘populist’ democracy which, …
‘We are fireworks’: Anarcho-punk, positive punk and democratic individuality
This article explores the tensions within and around anarcho-punk concerning individuality and individualism by drawing on George Kateb’s discussion of the normative ideal of ‘democratic individuality’, developed to understand the work of the American Emersonian writers (Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman). The article elaborates the three core ideas of ‘democratic individuality’: positive, negative and impersonal individuality. The article interprets the…
Freedom of Association
Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition's Popular Heritage
Republicanism is a powerful resource for emancipatory struggles against domination. Its commitment to popular sovereignty subverts justifications of authority, locating power in the hands of the citizenry who hold the capacity to create, transform, and maintain their political institutions. Republicanism’s conception of freedom rejects social, political, and economic structures subordinating citizens to any uncontrolled power—from capitalism and …
James Meade, public ownership, and the idea of a citizens' trust
James Meade argued that public ownership of productive assets should have a central role in a 'liberal socialist' economy. While somewhat sceptical of the state seeking to run specific firms or industries, Meade argued that the state should own a significant share of a society's productive assets, using the return on the assets to promote a more equal distribution of income (e.g., through payment of a universal social dividend). This paper traces…
Justice in Exemptions: Integrity beyond Obligation?
When (if ever) does justice require that individuals have exemptions from general laws on grounds relating to religion? In Liberalism’s Religion , Cécile Laborde argues that the focus ought not to be ‘religion’ but ‘integrity’, an interest shared by religious and non-religious people. Integrity-protecting commitments ( IPC s) include commitments expressive of the individual’s sense of what they are obligated to do (‘obligation- IPC s’) and commit…
Towards Popular Sovereignty: A Response to Bruce Ackerman's ‘Dis‐United Kingdom: Constitutional Choices after Brexit’
Liberal Philosophies of Ownership
This chapter discusses three liberal philosophies of ownership: right libertarianism, which advocates an expansive conception of private property and which holds that legitimate and strict rights to such property can emerge through the voluntary production and exchange of self-owning individuals on the basis of initial privatizations of external resources that can be very unequal but nevertheless just; left libertarianism, which modifies the righ…
Should a minimum income be unconditional?
In most Welfare States, for most citizens of working age, access to a minimum income is typically conditional on employment-related activity such as job search, training or work itself. This chapter explores a case for unconditional minimum income (UMI). It discusses the possible justifications for conditionality. Conditionality in the income support system is presented as a means of ensuring that citizens do not enjoy income support on terms tha…
Parliaments, constitutional conventions, and popular sovereignty
There is growing interest in the United Kingdom in holding a constitutional convention (CC) to deliberate possible reforms to the political system. What form should a CC take? Having identified a range of possible models, we examine their merits according to stated normative criteria, focusing specifically on (1) how CC membership is determined, (2) whether a CC should have agenda-setting power and (3) whether it should have power to send proposa…
Detailed water-use feedback: A review and proposed framework for program implementation
Republicanism and property-owning democracy: How are they connected
Recent years have seen a growth of interest in republicanism in academic political theory (Sandel, 1996; Pettit, 1997, 2012; Skinner, 1998; Honohan, 2002). There has also been a more modest growth of interest in "Property-Owning Democracy" (POD) as a form of economic organization, as advocated by John Rawls (Rawls, 1999). A POD is a market economy, with a significant role for private ownership of the means of production, but in which public autho…
Basic Capital in the Egalitarian Toolkit?
Under a basic capital grant policy ( BC ), every citizen receives a large capital grant as a right, typically in their early adulthood. Is BC part of the institutional framework of a just economy? Starting from John Rawls's discussion of just economic systems, this article clarifies Rawls's reasons for thinking we need to complement welfare state policies with property‐owning democracy and/or liberal socialist policies. It then seeks to clarify t…
Urban phosphorus sustainability: Systemically incorporating social, ecological, and technological factors into phosphorus flow analysis
Phosphorus flows through the Australian food system: Identifying intervention points as a roadmap to phosphorus security
Grass páramo as hunter-gatherer landscape
Tussock grass páramo constitutes the dominant vegetation of the high tropical Andes and cordilleras of Costa Rica. Its distribution, composition and the location of the upper forest line are ascribed, by broad consensus, to climate. The zonal argument finds support in the altitudinal movements of páramo during the Pleistocene, clearly responding to changes in precipitation and temperature. I ask here, however, if the principal ecological variable…
Property‐Owning Democracy and Republican Citizenship
This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Republicanism of Rawls's Liberalism: An Open Question Property-Owning Democracy Justice and Stability Tocqueville on the Ills of Democratic Personality The Republican Response Some Objections Conclusion: Lessons for Republicans and Liberals References
Religious Exemptions: An Egalitarian Demand
To what extent does the case for exemptions from laws to accommodate religious (and perhaps other conscientious) commitments rest specifically on egalitarian arguments? To what extent should specifically egalitarian or anti-discrimination concerns be used to determine when such exemptions should be granted? This Article considers both of these questions. It argues that while egalitarian considerations have a role to play in both the general justi…
Basic Capital
It is not often that radical ideas entertained by egalitarian political theorists and philosophers have an immediate impact on public policy. This paper looks at how one such proposal, the idea of a universal capital grant or “basic capital,” did apparently impact public policy in the UK in the form of the Child Trust Fund (CTF) enacted under the previous, Labour government. Some supporters of the CTF (such as the author) viewed it as potentially…
The Republican critique of capitalism
Although republican political theory has undergone something of a revival in recent years, some question its contemporary relevance on the grounds that republicanism has little to say about central questions of modern economic organization. In response, this paper offers an account of core republican values and then considers how capitalism stands in relation to these values. It identifies three areas of republican concern related to: the impact …
The story of phosphorus: Global food security and food for thought
Liberal Equality, Exploitation, and the Case for an Unconditional Basic Income
This paper considers whether arguments presented in Philippe Van Parijs' Real Freedom for All: What (if Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? succeed in rebutting the objection that the introduction of a substantial unconditional basic income (UBI) would allow non-working citizens to free-ride on the efforts of, and so exploit, working citizens. It considers Van Parjis' ‘external assets argument’ for UBI, and finds that this argument does not succeed…
Freedom of Association and the Right to Exclude
The Republican critique of capitalism
Although republican political theory has undergone something of a revival in recent years, some question its contemporary relevance on the grounds that republicanism has little to say about central questions of modern economic organization. In response, this paper offers an account of core republican values and then considers how capitalism stands in relation to these values. It identifies three areas of republican concern related to: the impact …
Parliaments, constitutional conventions, and popular sovereignty
There is growing interest in the United Kingdom in holding a constitutional convention (CC) to deliberate possible reforms to the political system. What form should a CC take? Having identified a range of possible models, we examine their merits according to stated normative criteria, focusing specifically on (1) how CC membership is determined, (2) whether a CC should have agenda-setting power and (3) whether it should have power to send proposa…
Making anarchism respectable? The social philosophy of Colin Ward
Anarchism suffers from a respectability deficit, a problem of achieving a threshold level of credibility in the eyes of non-anarchists. One anarchist thinker who has grappled persistently with this problem over 60 years of activism is the influential post-war British anarchist, Colin Ward. Responding directly to the respectability deficit, Ward helped to develop a 'pragmatist' anarchism characterized by direct engagement with urgent social proble…
Urban phosphorus sustainability: Systemically incorporating social, ecological, and technological factors into phosphorus flow analysis
What (if Anything) is Wrong with Inheritance Tax
The full-text of this article is not available in ORA, but you may be able to access the article via the publisher copy link on this record page. Citation: White, S. (2008). 'What (if anything) is wrong with inheritance tax?', Political Quarterly, 79(2), 162-171. [Available at http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0032-3179]
Brexit and the future of the UK constitution
This article discusses the potential for constitutional impact of Brexit on the United Kingdom’s constitution. Some argue that Brexit entails the restoration of effective parliamentary sovereignty and, thereby, a reaffirmation of the UK’s traditional constitution. However, Brexit increases pressure on unstable points in the traditional constitution, making other outcomes possible. One possibility is the emergence of a ‘populist’ democracy which, …
The Citizen's Stake and Paternalism
The introduction of a generous stakeholding or capital grant scheme promises to secure the material conditions of freedom for all citizens. But if citizens 'blow' their initial capital grants, as seems possible, they put this freedom in jeopardy. The paper argues that such 'stakeblowing' is a genuine cause of concern with the proposal and defends two responses to it: an 'educational response' that combines grants with training in asset management…
The Referendum in the UK’s Constitution: From Parliamentary to Popular Sovereignty
The 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU has led to much questioning of the place of the referendum in the UK’s constitution with a particular emphasis on the status of Parliamentary and popular sovereignty. Some commentary suggests that the UK has shifted from a constitution of Parliamentary sovereignty to one of the popular sovereignty. Drawing on A.V. Dicey’s discussion of the UK constitution in his Introduction to the Law of the C…
Grass páramo as hunter-gatherer landscape
Tussock grass páramo constitutes the dominant vegetation of the high tropical Andes and cordilleras of Costa Rica. Its distribution, composition and the location of the upper forest line are ascribed, by broad consensus, to climate. The zonal argument finds support in the altitudinal movements of páramo during the Pleistocene, clearly responding to changes in precipitation and temperature. I ask here, however, if the principal ecological variable…
Basic income versus basic capital: Can We Resolve the Disagreement
Some philosophers argue that a just society must provide all citizens with an unconditional resource endowment. But there is disagreement about whether this should take the form of a basic income or a capital grant. This article considers whether either of two of the types of argument used to defend the idea of a citizen's endowment (entitlement and freedom-based arguments) give reason to prefer one or the other. It argues that entitlement argume…
Revolutionary liberalism’? The philosophy and politics of ownership in the post-war Liberal party
Republicanism and property-owning democracy: How are they connected
Recent years have seen a growth of interest in republicanism in academic political theory (Sandel, 1996; Pettit, 1997, 2012; Skinner, 1998; Honohan, 2002). There has also been a more modest growth of interest in "Property-Owning Democracy" (POD) as a form of economic organization, as advocated by John Rawls (Rawls, 1999). A POD is a market economy, with a significant role for private ownership of the means of production, but in which public autho…
The Egalitarian Earnings Subsidy Scheme
How should society structure income redistribution so as to correct for ineliminable inequalities in marketable talent? This article explores the strengths and weaknesses of an ‘egalitarian earnings subsidy scheme’ (ESS) in which individuals receive (or pay) a subsidy (or tax) for each pound earned based on the difference between their earnings potential and their society’s average earnings potential. ESS corrects for brute luck inequality in ear…
Needs, Labour, and Marx's Conception of Justice
This paper attempts to clarify the conception of justice that underpins Marx's tacit justice-based critique of capitalism. It argues that Marx's critique was based upon a Needs Principle, according to which each person has an equal right to needs satisfaction. It attempts to reconstruct this Needs Principle and, drawing on this reconstruction, shows how Marx's charge that the capitalist robs the worker of labour product is based on a view about t…
How Should a Progressive Parliament Advance Proportional Representation
Many supporters of democratic reform in the UK propose both a change in the electoral system to proportional representation (PR) and a shift to a formal (codified and entrenched) constitution. In principle, these two proposals are deeply complementary. There is, however, also a potential tension between them. Specifically, if a future UK government were to treat PR as a matter of ordinary legislation, this would conflict with the democratic const…
Towards Popular Sovereignty: A Response to Bruce Ackerman's ‘Dis‐United Kingdom: Constitutional Choices after Brexit’
Phosphorus flows through the Australian food system: Identifying intervention points as a roadmap to phosphorus security
A Modest Proposal? Basic Capital vs. Higher Education Subsidies
All young adults have a morally significant interest in having adequate opportunity for ambition formation. At present governments typically spend large amounts in support of young adults, such as in the form of higher education subsidies, but we do not ask if this expenditure is the most equitable way of ensuring adequate opportunity for ambition formation for all young adults. Would it be more equitable and desirable to use the resources to pay…
New Labour and the Politics of Ownership
Rights and Responsibilities’: A Social Democratic Perspective
Rethinking the Strategy of Equality: An Assessment of the Report of the Commission on Social Justice
Cedar and Mahogany Logging in Eastern Peru
TN SCATTERED areas of the Amazon Basin, removed from concentrations of activity along major rivers, small parties of natives and mestizos are extracting valuable timbers. Work is done without the assistance of power machines or animals and without direct financial support from corporate or governmental sources. Wood production per enterprise is generally low because numerous inconveniences, including environmental hazards and a prejudicial system…
Cedar and Mahogany Logging in Eastern Peru
TN SCATTERED areas of the Amazon Basin, removed from concentrations of activity along major rivers, small parties of natives and mestizos are extracting valuable timbers. Work is done without the assistance of power machines or animals and without direct financial support from corporate or governmental sources. Wood production per enterprise is generally low because numerous inconveniences, including environmental hazards and a prejudicial system…
Ecología y subdesarrollo en América Latina
Commentary: Landscape of Events
Preliminary Site Survey of the Punkuyoq Range, Southern Peru
The Use and Conservation of Natural Resources in the Andes of Southern Ecuador
Stuart White, Fausto Maldonado, The Use and Conservation of Natural Resources in the Andes of Southern Ecuador, Mountain Research and Development, Vol. 11, No. 1, Transformation of Mountain Environments (TOME). Part Two (Feb., 1991), pp. 37-55
Rethinking the Strategy of Equality: An Assessment of the Report of the Commission on Social Justice
Needs, Labour, and Marx's Conception of Justice
This paper attempts to clarify the conception of justice that underpins Marx's tacit justice-based critique of capitalism. It argues that Marx's critique was based upon a Needs Principle, according to which each person has an equal right to needs satisfaction. It attempts to reconstruct this Needs Principle and, drawing on this reconstruction, shows how Marx's charge that the capitalist robs the worker of labour product is based on a view about t…
Freedom of Association and the Right to Exclude
Liberal Equality, Exploitation, and the Case for an Unconditional Basic Income
This paper considers whether arguments presented in Philippe Van Parijs' Real Freedom for All: What (if Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? succeed in rebutting the objection that the introduction of a substantial unconditional basic income (UBI) would allow non-working citizens to free-ride on the efforts of, and so exploit, working citizens. It considers Van Parjis' ‘external assets argument’ for UBI, and finds that this argument does not succeed…
Rights and Responsibilities’: A Social Democratic Perspective
The Egalitarian Earnings Subsidy Scheme
How should society structure income redistribution so as to correct for ineliminable inequalities in marketable talent? This article explores the strengths and weaknesses of an ‘egalitarian earnings subsidy scheme’ (ESS) in which individuals receive (or pay) a subsidy (or tax) for each pound earned based on the difference between their earnings potential and their society’s average earnings potential. ESS corrects for brute luck inequality in ear…
New Labour: The Progressive Future?
This collection of essays examines New Labour's claim to stand in the vanguard of a new form of progressive politics. By examining the ideology of New Labour, the major policy initiatives of Labour go
The Ethics of Stakeholding
The Ethics of Stakeholding brings together leading academics in the fields of political philosophy and social policy to engage with one of the most exciting new paradigms in social policy. Stakeholder
Fair Reciprocity and Basic Income
The Civic Minimum: On the Rights and Obligations of Economic Citizenship
Many governments today are engaged in far-reaching programs of 'welfare reform'. But what would a just program of welfare reform consist in? Is the current emphasis on linking welfare 'rights' to 'responsibilities' justifiable? In this book, Stuart White reconsiders the principles of economic citizenship appropriate to a democratic society, and explores the radical implications of these principles for public policy. According to White, justice de…
Welfare Philosophy and the Third Way
Critics of the Third Way in welfare argue that it represents a break with the philosophy of the welfare state characteristic of mainstream social democracy. They argue that the Third Way is not genuinely egalitarian. They argue that it embodies ideas about personal responsibility and social duty that are incompatible with a social democratic commitment to a welfare state founded on ‘social rights’. This paper considers these claims. It argues tha…
What's Wrong with Workfare?
The Citizen's Stake and Paternalism
The introduction of a generous stakeholding or capital grant scheme promises to secure the material conditions of freedom for all citizens. But if citizens 'blow' their initial capital grants, as seems possible, they put this freedom in jeopardy. The paper argues that such 'stakeblowing' is a genuine cause of concern with the proposal and defends two responses to it: an 'educational response' that combines grants with training in asset management…
Reconsidering the Exploitation Objection to Basic Income
A common objection to unconditional basic income is that it is unfair because it allows people to live off the labour of their fellow citizens without making a reciprocal productive contribution to society (the 'exploitation objection'). The paper outlines four responses to the objection: the perfectionism, balance of fairness, balance of reciprocity, and inherited asset responses. While it finds little merit in the first, it argues that, taken t…
Can corporate social responsibility resolve the sanitation question in developing Asian countries
Too Few Tensions, But Not Enough Utopia? Comments on Equality: From Theory to Action
Making anarchism respectable? The social philosophy of Colin Ward
Anarchism suffers from a respectability deficit, a problem of achieving a threshold level of credibility in the eyes of non-anarchists. One anarchist thinker who has grappled persistently with this problem over 60 years of activism is the influential post-war British anarchist, Colin Ward. Responding directly to the respectability deficit, Ward helped to develop a 'pragmatist' anarchism characterized by direct engagement with urgent social proble…
What (if Anything) is Wrong with Inheritance Tax
The full-text of this article is not available in ORA, but you may be able to access the article via the publisher copy link on this record page. Citation: White, S. (2008). 'What (if anything) is wrong with inheritance tax?', Political Quarterly, 79(2), 162-171. [Available at http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0032-3179]
Revolutionary liberalism’? The philosophy and politics of ownership in the post-war Liberal party
The story of phosphorus: Global food security and food for thought
Political science (36 works) · Law (32 works) · Sociology (32 works) · Politics (26 works) · Economics (25 works) · Law (20 works) · Law and economics (19 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (18 works) · Democracy (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works)