Chapter 6 Robust Against Whom?

Cowen, Nick

doi:10.1108/s1529-213420180000023008

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Geographic monopolies are often the most efficient providers of certain goods and services, and this is probably the case for many of the goods that states provide, especially security and the rule of law. 73 Nevertheless, monopolies can behave badly and partially toward their customers. They can underproduce and overcharge for their services.…”

Section: I  T Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Neoliberal Social Justice and Taxation

Cowen

2022

Soc Phil Pol

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Liberal egalitarians argue that the state is justified in taxing members of a political community to achieve distributive justice and ensure political equality and regime stability. This involves an uneasy compromise between equality and efficiency, a compromise that many argue has recently been undermined by the growth of unchecked wealth and income inequality. This essay argues that there is also a trade-off between selecting fair processes for taxation and aiming for particular distributive outcomes. The way people accumulate wealth, and the way states tax often matters more than distributive outcomes. Policymakers must allow for the fair assessment of tax liabilities, avoid excessive enforcement costs and prevent political actors from using tax systems to achieve their partial ends. Recognizing these considerations justifies a systematic scheme of taxation while constraining the mechanisms for collecting revenue. I justify this position using comparative analysis, which I contrast with the conceptual intuitionistic approach associated with egalitarianism.

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Section: I  T Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Neoliberal Social Justice and Taxation

Cowen

2022

Soc Phil Pol

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“…Without an explicit normative standpoint, there is little to say in response to critics who prefer institutions that foster conflict. They could be rendered 'well-performing' on those perverse grounds (Cowen, 2018). Furthermore, even if we accept the reduction of social conflict as a shared goal, it is not clear that a minimal state is necessarily the most robust form of governance for maintaining a sustainable social order or even protecting individual liberty (Taylor and Crampton, 2009).…”

Section: A Rawlsian Framework Through the Lens Of Robust Political Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to Neoliberal Social Justice

Cowen¹

2021

Neoliberal Social Justice

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Government externalities

Trantidis

2023

Public Choice

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Governments are expected to tackle externalities such as pollution, epidemics and environmental catastrophes, but whether and how governments themselves generate externalities is a question equally important for exploring socially beneficial policies and institutional reforms. The problem with defining government externalities is that governments, through regulation and distribution, inevitably allocate costs and benefits asymmetrically due to preference heterogeneity in society. This problem also concerns the rules and rights governing market transactions, blurring the boundaries between market failure and government failure. In this paper, I define government externalities as costs passed on us by government actions taken outside a decision-making system in which we participate as insiders. Views about what being an insider is differ. Some will be content with democratic citizenship in majoritarian decision-making processes. Others may subscribe to Buchanan and Tullock’s liberal and more demanding normative theory based on constitutional consent. In either case, I argue, there will be externalities generated by clientelism, namely informal deals between politicians and special interests for the distribution of benefits that occur outside, and in violation of, the formal norms of participation. These are complex externalities, infiltrating policymaking and distorting institutions governing the operation of markets too. They create government failure on the same grounds that some market externalities are considered market failure: (a) the costs fall on outsiders and (b) negatively affect the terms for the production and exchange of goods and services. Government externalities influence both governance and markets simultaneously and illustrate the limits of what institutional design can constrain or achieve.

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Chapter 6 Robust Against Whom?

Cited by 4 publications

References 60 publications

Neoliberal Social Justice and Taxation

Neoliberal Social Justice and Taxation

Introduction to Neoliberal Social Justice

Government externalities

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