The Forms and Limits of Insurance Solidarity

Lehtonen, Turo‐Kimmo; Liukko, Jyri

doi:10.1007/s10551-012-1221-x

Cited by 63 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(23 reference statements)

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“…Fundamentally, successful adaptation hinges on our capacity to work together as a society, and dependence on individualized insurance limits that capacity. Lehtonen and Liukko (2011) argue that aspects of solidarity and mutual dependency also exist within the private insurance industry, but have become hidden as the sector has become increasingly complex and technologized. While examples such as Takaful, or solidarity funds offer alternative models for insurance and climate adaptation, the proactive approach to climate change being taken by insurers in western democracies including the US, UK, and Australia is placing the insurance sector front and center, while governments step back through individual responsibilization agendas.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Privatizing climate adaptation: How insurance weakens solidaristic and collective disaster recovery

Lucas

Booth

2020

WIREs Climate Change

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As losses from extreme weather events grow, many governments are looking to privatize the financing and incentivization of climate adaptation through insurance markets. In a pure market approach to insurance for extreme weather events, individuals become responsible for ensuring they are adequately covered for risks to their own properties, and governments no longer contribute funds to post-disaster recovery. Theoretically, insurance premiums signal the level of risk faced by each household, and incentivize homeowners to invest in adaptive action, such as retrofitting, or drainage work, to reduce premiums. Where risk is considered too high by insurance markets, housing is devalued, in theory leading to retreat from risky areas. In this review article, we evaluate the suitability of private insurance as a mechanism for climate adaptation at a household and community level. We find a mismatch between social understandings of responsibility for climate risks, and the technocratic, market-based home insurance products offered by private insurance markets. We suggest that by constructing increasingly individualized, technical, and calculative evaluations of risk, market-based models of insurance for extreme weather events erode the solidaristic and collective discourses and practices that support adaptive behavior.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Privatizing climate adaptation: How insurance weakens solidaristic and collective disaster recovery

Lucas

Booth

2020

WIREs Climate Change

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“…While retaining some key intuitions and formulations by Thiery and Van Schoubroeck (2006) and our own earlier paper (Lehtonen and Liukko 2011), but modifying their terms, we arrive at a tripartite distinction between fundamental forms of insurance solidarity.…”

Section: Risk Solidarity and Income Solidaritymentioning

confidence: 93%

“…(Thiery and Van Schoubroeck 2006: 196) As we have noted in an earlier text, subsidizing solidarity comes in two distinct forms. These are subsidizing risk solidarity and subsidizing income solidarity (Lehtonen and Liukko 2011). The first of these is defined in the following way: '[…] the less the risks and fees correspond, the more subsidizing there is that is favourable to those with high risk' (Lehtonen and Liukko 2011, p. 39).…”

Section: Risk Solidarity and Income Solidaritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Producing Solidarity, Inequality and Exclusion Through Insurance

Lehtonen

Liukko

2015

Res Publica

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The article presents two main arguments. First, we claim that in contemporary societies, insurance enacts peculiar kinds of solidarities as well as inequality and exclusion. Especially important in this respect are life, health, disability and old age pension insurance, both in compulsory and voluntary forms. Second, the article maintains that the ideas of solidarity, inequality and exclusion are transformed by the machinery of insurance. In other words, the concrete ways in which insurance relations are practically arranged have an effect on the ways in which the related moral and political concepts are perceived. We elaborate on three different forms of insurance solidarity, which we call chance, risk and income solidarity. The existence of multiple forms of solidarity relevant to insurance is significant because practices of insurance require decisions concerning what kind of solidarity is emphasised, when it is emphasised, and on what grounds. Moreover, what is solidarity for some can entail exclusion and inequality for others. Showing these internal tensions within insurance practice underlines the inherently political and moral nature of insurance.

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“…A second idea is to pay attention to how insurance frames social, economic or power relations (Lehtonen and Jyri 2011). There is an evident link between this conception and Foucault's theoretical framework, exemplified in the work of François Ewald (1986Ewald ( , 1996.…”

Section: A Political Philosophy Of Public Insurancementioning

confidence: 99%

Insurance, Equality and the Welfare State: Political Philosophy and (of) Public Insurance

Landes

Holtug

2015

Res Publica

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Public insurance is both everywhere and nowhere. It is everywhere in the sense that it is omnipresent in industrialised societies: public health insurance, unemployment benefits and pensions. It is a sizeable part of modern nations' public budget (for many nations like the United States and France about half of it). It has permeated our understanding of societal institutions to the extent that now access to public insurance coverage is understood as being a struggle for equality and equal citizenship (Stone 1999-2000). Public insurance is only one aspect of a broader phenomenon: the transformation of modern societies into insurance societies, i.e. societies that are orientated toward risk-management (Beck 1992; Ericson and Doyle 2003). Nevertheless, public insurance is at the core of the welfare state as insurance system. Paul Krugman once said of the modern state that it is 'an insurance company with an army' while David Moss (2002) argues that government is the ultimate risk manager (e.g. money emission, banking system, workers protection, disaster relief, and so forth). At the same time, public insurance is almost nowhere in political philosophy and normative theory (although exceptions include Anderson, Forthcoming; Baker and

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The Forms and Limits of Insurance Solidarity

Cited by 63 publications

References 23 publications

Privatizing climate adaptation: How insurance weakens solidaristic and collective disaster recovery

Privatizing climate adaptation: How insurance weakens solidaristic and collective disaster recovery

Producing Solidarity, Inequality and Exclusion Through Insurance

Insurance, Equality and the Welfare State: Political Philosophy and (of) Public Insurance

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