Global Equality and Open Borders

Author(s):  
Nils Holtug

Egalitarians disagree about the extent to which states should have open borders. Sometimes, this disagreement is due to a deeper disagreement about the scope of egalitarian justice. Egalitarians holding that equality has domestic scope only may be inclined to favor restrictive immigration policies to protect the welfare state. Egalitarians holding that equality has global scope, on the other hand, may be inclined to support more open borders in order to reduce global inequality. This chapter argues that equality has global scope and then considers the implications of global egalitarianism for the issue of open borders. Furthermore, the chapter provides an argument for why (more) open borders can be expected reduce global inequality. Then some objections to this argument are considered, based on brain drain, threats to welfare states, and in-group bias. Finally, the chapter considers the suggestion that (more) open borders is not the best (or most efficient) way of reducing global inequality.

1990 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe van Parijs

ABSTRACTNo major reform of the welfare state has a chance of going through unless one can make a plausible case as to both its ‘ethical value’ and its ‘economic.value’, that is, that it would have a positive effect in terms of both justice and efficiency. In this essay, this rough conjecture is first presented, and its plausibility probed, on the background of some stylised facts about the rise of modern welfare states in the postwar period. Next, the focus is shifted to the current debate on the introduction of a basic income, a completely unconditional grant paid ex ante to all citizens. It is argued that if basic income is to have a chance of meeting the strong twofold condition stipulated in the conjecture, some major changes are required in the way one usually thinks about justice and efficiency in connection with social policy. But once these changes are made, as they arguably must be, the chance that basic income may be able to meet the challenge is greatly enhanced.


2005 ◽  
Vol 70 (6) ◽  
pp. 921-948 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Brady ◽  
Jason Beckfield ◽  
Martin Seeleib-Kaiser

Previous scholarship is sharply divided over how or if globalization influences welfare states. The effects of globalization may be positive causing expansion, negative triggering crisis and reduction, curvilinear contributing to convergence, or insignificant. We bring new evidence to bear on this debate with an analysis of three welfare state measures and a comprehensive array of economic globalization indicators for 17 affluent democracies from 1975 to 2001. The analysis suggests several conclusions. First, state-of-the-art welfare state models warrant revision in the globalization era. Second, most indicators of economic globalization do not have significant effects, but a few affect the welfare state and improve models of welfare state variation. Third, the few significant globalization effects are in differing directions and often inconsistent with extant theories. Fourth, the globalization effects are far smaller than the effects of domestic political and economic factors. Fifth, the effects of globalization are not systematically different between European and non-European countries, or liberal and non-liberal welfare regimes. Increased globalization and a modest convergence of the welfare state have occurred, but globalization does not clearly cause welfare state expansion, crisis, and reduction or convergence. Ultimately, this study suggests skepticism toward bold claims about globalization's effect on the welfare state.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 269-276
Author(s):  
Doğa Başar Sariipek ◽  
Gökçe Cerev ◽  
Bora Yenihan

The focus of this paper is the interaction between social innovation and restructuring welfare state. Modern welfare states have been reconfiguring their welfare mixes through social innovation. This includes a productive integration of formal and informal actors with support and leading role of the state. This collaboration becomes significantly important since it means the integration of not only the actors, but also their capabilities and resources in today’s world where new social risks and new social challenges have emerged and no actor can overcome these by its own. Therefore, social innovation is a useful tool in the new role sharing within the welfare mix in order to reach higher levels of satisfaction and success in welfare provision. The main point here is that this is not a zero-sum competition; gaining more power of the actors other than the state – the market, civil society organisations and the family – does not necessarily mean that the state lost its leading role and power. This is rather a new type of cooperation among actors and their capabilities as well as their resources in welfare provision. In this sense, social innovation may contribute well to the debates over the financial crisis of the welfare state since it may lead to the more wisely use of existing resources of welfare actors. Thanks to social innovative programs, not only the NGOs, but also market forces as well as citizens are more active to access welfare provisions and social protection in the broadest sense. Thus, social innovative strategies are definitely a solid step taken towards “enabling” or “active” welfare state.


Author(s):  
Olof Petersson

In one sense, Sweden follows the general pattern of constitution-making. The major shifts in the constitutional history have occurred in the aftermath of great crises. Constitutions have been important as descriptions and justifications of the prevailing forces of power. On the other hand, the constitutions of Sweden have been relatively insignificant as norms regulating political and public life. Constitutions have been important as history writing but relatively unimportant as normative principles shaping society, and, indeed, profound changes such as the introduction of parliamentary government have taken place without constitutional reform. The Swedish welfare state was built upon negotiations and practical trade-offs rather than constitutional arguments.


2021 ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Stuart White

This chapter seeks to clarify some of the core ethical arguments surrounding welfare states. The analysis focuses on three key values. First, we will consider the concept of need. What are basic needs? How do we conceptualize and measure them? Do citizens have rights to what they need? Second, we focus on principles of equality and, third, we look at arguments surrounding the implications of the welfare state for liberty. A final section concludes by noting some normative issues moving increasingly to the forefront of debate. A changing global political context raises new issues about the international salience of these issues, questions which national welfare states have found it difficult to address.


Author(s):  
Luise Li Langergaard

The article explores the central role of the entrepreneur in neoliberalism. It demonstrates how a displacement and a broadening of the concept of the entrepreneur occur in the neoliberal interpretation of the entrepreneur compared to Schumpeter’s economic innovation theory. From being a specific economic figure with a particular delimited function the entrepreneur is reinterpreted as, on the one hand, a particular type of subject, the entrepreneur of the self, and on the other, an ism, entrepreneurialism, which permeates individuals, society, and institutions. Entrepreneurialism is discussed as a movement of the economic into previously non-economic domains, such as the welfare state and society. Social entrepreneurship is an example of this in relation to solutions to social welfare problems. This can, on the one hand, be understood as an extension of the neoliberal understanding of the entrepreneur, but it also, in certain interpretations, resists the neoliberal understanding of economy and society.


2021 ◽  
pp. 786-802
Author(s):  
Philip Manow

IN 1990, Gøsta Esping-Andersen published The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, a work which has turned out to be the single most important and decisive contribution to welfare state research in the past thirty to forty years. In essence, Esping-Andersen argued that we can observe systematic variation in the character of the developed welfare states of the West, which he grouped into three distinct welfare state models: a Scandinavian social democratic model, a conservative continental European model, and a liberal Anglo-Saxon model. This chapter provides a short description of Esping-Andersen’s three regimes; introduces a fourth, Southern European model, which will then be described in somewhat more detail; and outlines a historical and genealogical account of the development of all four models. Finally, the chapter briefly expands on the comparative perspective with a short discussion on whether the regime concept or the understanding of distinct welfare models can also be applied to other regions, such as Latin America and Asia.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Benjamin Kohlmann

The Introduction begins to outline a literary prehistory of the welfare state in Britain around 1900 by turning to a period that forces us to look beyond the connotations associated with the terms reform and revolution today. The chapter presents the book’s two intertwined goals, one reconstructive and literary-historical, the other conceptual and theoretical. First, British Literature and the Life of Institutions reconstructs the emergence of a reformist literary mode around 1900 by exploring how literary texts responded and adapted to the elongated rhythms of institutional change that characterized the emergence of new state structures in this period. But the book also, secondly, aims to make visible a reformist idiom which pervades literary, philosophical, political, and social writing of the period, and which insists that we need to think about the state as an idea, as a speculative figure, rather than as a set of administrative procedures and bureaucratic processes.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Jason Beckfield

This chapter provides an overview of the book’s main themes. The book argues that European integration has reorganized class struggle to the European level, entrenching a technocratic capitalism that weakens welfare states and raises income inequality. It asks: How have the fruits of European labor been distributed? Who wins and who loses from European integration? How are citizenship rights and economic fortunes being distributed? The remainder of the chapter discusses trends in welfare-state development and income inequality; current approaches to the welfare state and income inequality; and the turn toward to technocratic capitalism that now characterizes the EU’s policy priorities.


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