Political egalitarianism

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Political egalitarianism describes an inclusive and fair allocation of political power or influence, fair processes, and fair treatment of all regardless of characteristics like race, religion, wealth or intelligence. [1] [2] Political egalitarianism, and its close cousin political equality, are key founding principles and sources of legitimacy for many democracies. [1] Related principles include one person, one vote and equality before the law. [3]

Contents

Discussion

Egalitarianism

Egalitarianism believes that all people are of equal fundamental worth and should have equal status. [2] Egalitarians tend to focus more on process and treating people as social equals than on the raw distribution of power. [4]

Political equality

Political equality is only achieved when the norms, rules and procedures that govern the community afford equal consideration to all. [4] Robert Dahl believes that the ideal of democracy assumes that political equality is desirable. [5] He goes on to argue that political equality and democracy are supported by the inherent intrinsic equal worth of every person (intrinsic equality) and the tendency of concentrated power to corrupt. [6]

Equality before the law

Equality before law means that the law applies to all peoples equally and without exceptions. For example, the freedom of speech should apply the same to all members of a society.

Laws can sometimes be designed to help minimize unequal application. [7] Well-designed constitutions, for example, can help protect political rights in functioning democracies. [8] [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

Egalitarianism, or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds on the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or moral status. As such, all citizens of a state should be accorded equal rights and treatment under the law. Egalitarian doctrines have supported many modern social movements, including the Enlightenment, feminism, civil rights, and international human rights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Justice</span> Concept of moral fairness and administration of the law

Justice, in its broadest sense, is the concept that individuals are to be treated in a manner that is equitable and fair.

Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory. Rights are of essential importance in such disciplines as law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Rawls</span> American political philosopher (1921–2002)

John Bordley Rawls was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the modern liberal tradition. Rawls has been described as one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century.

Distributive justice concerns the socially just allocation of resources, goods, opportunity in a society. It is concerned with how to allocate resources fairly among members of a society, taking into account factors such as wealth, income, and social status. Often contrasted with just process, which is concerned with the administration of law, distributive justice concentrates on outcomes. This subject has been given considerable attention in philosophy and the social sciences. Theorists have developed widely different conceptions of distributive justice. These have contributed to debates around the arrangement of social, political and economic institutions to promote the just distribution of benefits and burdens within a society. Most contemporary theories of distributive justice rest on the precondition of material scarcity. From that precondition arises the need for principles to resolve competing interest and claims concerning a just or at least morally preferable distribution of scarce resources.

<i>A Theory of Justice</i> 1971 book by John Rawls

A Theory of Justice is a 1971 work of political philosophy and ethics by the philosopher John Rawls (1921–2002) in which the author attempts to provide a moral theory alternative to utilitarianism and that addresses the problem of distributive justice . The theory uses an updated form of Kantian philosophy and a variant form of conventional social contract theory. Rawls's theory of justice is fully a political theory of justice as opposed to other forms of justice discussed in other disciplines and contexts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ronald Dworkin</span> American legal philosopher (1931–2013)

Ronald Myles Dworkin was an American legal philosopher, jurist, and scholar of United States constitutional law. At the time of his death, he was Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University and Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London. Dworkin had taught previously at Yale Law School and the University of Oxford, where he was the Professor of Jurisprudence, successor to philosopher H. L. A. Hart.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Equality of outcome</span> Political concept

Equality of outcome, equality of condition, or equality of results is a political concept which is central to some political ideologies and is used in some political discourse, often in contrast to the term equality of opportunity. It describes a state in which all people have approximately the same material wealth and income, or in which the general economic conditions of everyone's lives are alike.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Dahl</span> American political scientist (1915–2014)

Robert Alan Dahl was an American political theorist and Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University.

The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law.

In political science, the term polyarchy was used by Robert A. Dahl to describe a form of government in which power is invested in multiple people. It takes the form of neither a dictatorship nor a democracy. This form of government was first implemented in the United States and France and gradually adopted by other countries. Polyarchy is different from democracy, according to Dahl, because the fundamental democratic principle is "the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals" with unimpaired opportunities. A polyarchy is a form of government that has certain procedures that are necessary conditions for following the democratic principle.

Democratic ideals is an expression used to refer to personal qualities or standards of government behavior that are felt to be essential for the continuation of a democratic policy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Equality before the law</span> Judicial principle

Equality before the law, also known as equality under the law, equality in the eyes of the law, legal equality, or legal egalitarianism, is the principle that all people must be equally protected by the law. The principle requires a systematic rule of law that observes due process to provide equal justice, and requires equal protection ensuring that no individual nor group of individuals be privileged over others by the law. Sometimes called the principle of isonomy, it arises from various philosophical questions concerning equality, fairness and justice. Equality before the law is one of the basic principles of some definitions of liberalism. It is incompatible with legal slavery.

Isonomia was a word used by ancient Greek writers such as Herodotus and Thucydides to refer to some kind of popular government. It was subsequently eclipsed until brought back into English as isonomy. Economist Friedrich Hayek attempted to popularize the term in his book The Constitution of Liberty and argued that a better understanding of isonomy, as used by the Greeks, defines the term to mean "the equal application of the laws to all."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberal democracy</span> Form of government

Liberal democracy, Western-style democracy, or substantive democracy is a form of government that combines the organization of a representative democracy with ideas of liberal political philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Preamble to the Constitution of India</span> Set of guidelines to the nation and the Constitution of India

The Preamble to the Constitution of India presents the principles of the Constitution and indicates the sources of its authority. The preamble is based on the Objectives Resolution, which was moved in the Constituent Assembly by Jawaharlal Nehru on 13 December 1946 accepted on 22 January 1947 and adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949, coming into force on 26 January 1950, celebrated as the Republic Day of India, and was initially drafted by V. K. Krishna Menon. Menon explicitly did not include the words "socialist" or "secular", after consultation with Nehru; the text was later amended during the Indian emergency by Indira Gandhi where the words "socialist", "secular" and "integrity" were added.

Criticism of democracy, or debate on democracy and the different aspects of how to implement democracy best have been widely discussed. There are both internal critics and external ones who reject the values promoted by constitutional democracy.

Larry Temkin is an American philosopher specializing in normative ethics and political philosophy. His research into equality, practical reason, and the nature of the good has been very influential. His work on the intransitivity of the "all things considered better than"-relation is groundbreaking and challenges deeply held assumptions about value, practical reasoning, and the goodness of outcomes. His 1993 book Inequality was described by the Times Literary Supplement as "brilliant and fascinating," and as offering the reader more than any other book on the same subject.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Embedded democracy</span>

Embedded democracy is a form of government in which democratic governance is secured by democratic partial regimes. The term "embedded democracy" was coined by political scientists Wolfgang Merkel, Hans-Jürgen Puhle, and Aurel Croissant, who identified "five interdependent partial regimes" necessary for an embedded democracy: electoral regime, political participation, civil rights, horizontal accountability, and the power of the elected representatives to govern. The five internal regimes work together to check the power of the government, while external regimes also help to secure and stabilize embedded democracies. Together, all the regimes ensure that an embedded democracy is guided by the three fundamental principles of freedom, equality, and control.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social equality</span> Comparable status amongst peoples with regard to certain respects

Social equality is a state of affairs in which all individuals within a specific society have equal rights, liberties, and status, possibly including civil rights, freedom of expression, autonomy, and equal access to certain public goods and social services.

References

  1. 1 2 Peter, Fabienne (2007-08-01). "The Political Egalitarian's Dilemma". Ethical Theory and Moral Practice . 10 (4): 373–387. doi:10.1007/s10677-006-9057-z. ISSN   1572-8447. S2CID   144836352.
  2. 1 2 Arneson, Richard (2013), "Egalitarianism", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2023-11-05
  3. Verba, Sydney (January 2001). "Political Equality: What Is It? Why Do We Want It?". Russell Sage Foundation . p. 19.
  4. 1 2 Beramendi, P., Besley, T. and Levi, M. (2022), ‘Political equality: what is it and why does it matter?’, IFS Deaton Review of Inequalities
  5. Dahl, Robert Alan (2006). On Political Equality. New Haven (Conn.): Yale University Press. p. 2. ISBN   978-0-300-11607-6.
  6. Dahl, Robert Alan (2006). On Political Equality. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press. p. 4. ISBN   978-0-300-11607-6.
  7. Lucy, William (2011). "Equality under and before the law". The University of Toronto Law Journal. 61 (3): 411–465. doi:10.3138/utlj.61.3.411. JSTOR   23018555. S2CID   144874942.
  8. Jessica Bulman-Pozen & Miriam Seifter, The Democracy Principle in State Constitutions , 119Mich. L. Rev. 859 (2021).
  9. Lepore, Jill (2021-03-22). "When Constitutions Took Over the World". The New Yorker. ISSN   0028-792X . Retrieved 2023-07-01.