Developmental Freedom and Social Order

Rethinking the Relation between Work and Equality

Bibliographic Data

ID23239508
AuthorsLouise Haagh (University of York [York, UK], corresponding author)
Year2008
VolumeI Issue 1
IssueArticles
Publication date2008-03-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Philosophical Economics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1843-2298 • E-ISSN: 1844-8208
PublisherCentre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe (CCSD) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.46298/jpe.10559
OpenAlexW785751374
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited17

This essay points to an institutional account of our existential interest in work as a missing piece in welfare analysis. In contrast with social liberals in the postwar era, both liberal economic and egalitarian discourses today espouse a narrowly atomistic account of human nature and the modern economy. Therefore they are unable to take account of the institutional bases of economic development, individual autonomy and social order, and the way these connect. The essay shows that a patterning of distributional outcomes is a reality in both deregulated and densely governed capitalist economies, but that only the latter offers real scope for social and individual choice. The influence of the atomistic account on liberal egalitarian thought however has produced an unambitious, imprecise, and in the case of welfare contractualism, a coercive, account of both individual freedom and social community. What is needed is a more explicit inclusion of a temporal dimension in welfare and economic analysis and a more differentiated framework of pluralist governance.

Autonomy · Contractualism · Corporate governance · Economic system · Economics · Existentialism · Law and economics · Market economy · Order (exchange) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Relation (database) · Social order · Sociology · Welfare · Law · Political Economy and Marxism

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access