Democratic Distributive Justice

Explains how democratic countries with market systems should deal with high levels of income-inequality.

Ross Zucker (Author)

9780521790338, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 December 2000

348 pages, 6 tables
23.8 x 16.3 x 2.7 cm, 0.615 kg

'The book is erudite, closely reasoned and tightly written, and its tone engaged and serious … Zucker's thesis deserves widespread attention both for its tight and comprehensive character and for its substantive importance at a time of widening inequalities in market economies.' Contemporary Political Theory

By exploring the integral relationship between democracy and economic justice, Democratic Distributive Justice seeks to explain how democratic countries with market systems should deal with the problem of high levels of income-inequality. The book acts as a guide for dealing with this issue by providing an interdisciplinary approach that combines political, economic, and legal theory. It also analyzes the nature of economic society and puts forth a new understanding of the agents and considerations bearing upon the ethics of relative pay, such as the nature of individual contributions and the extent of community in capital based market systems. Economic justice is then integrated with democratic theory, yielding what Ross Zucker calls 'democratic distributive justice'. While prevailing theory defines democracy in terms of the electoral mechanism, the author holds that the principles of distribution form part of the very definition of democracy, which makes just distribution a requirement of democratic government.

Acknowledgements
1. Democracy and economic justice
Part I. Unequal Property and Individualism in Liberal Theory: 2. The underlying logic of liberal property theory
3. Unequal property and its premise in Locke's theory
4. Unequal property and individualism, Kant to Rawls
Part II. Egalitarian Property and Justice as Dueness: 5. Whose property is it, anyway?
6. The social nature of economic actors and forms of equal dueness
7. Policy reflections: the effect of an egalitarian regime on economic growth
Part III. Egalitarian Property and the Ethics of Economic Community: 8. Deriving equality from community
9. The dimension of community in capital-based market systems: between consumers and producers
10. Endogenous preferences and economic community
11. The dimension of community in capital-based market systems: between capital and labour
12. The right to an equal share of part of national income
Part IV. Democracy and Economic Justice
13. Democratic distributive justice
14. Democracy and economic rights
Conclusions
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Jurisprudence & philosophy of law [LAB], Economic theory & philosophy [KCA], Political science & theory [JPA], Social & political philosophy [HPS]