scholarly journals The rat race and working time regulation

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-314
Author(s):  
Malte Jauch
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Working Time ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Working Time Regulation ◽  
The Ideal

To what extent, if at all, should a just society adopt public policies that regulate and limit the amount of time people work? Attempts to answer this question face a dilemma: Either, we can adopt a laissez-faire view, according to which governments must refrain from imposing working time policies on the labour market. But this view generates a situation in which many citizens experience deep regret about the balance between work and leisure in their lives. Or, we can endorse an interventionist view that advocates government imposition of working time policies. However, such a view appears to be objectionably perfectionist insofar as it imposes on citizens a particular conception of the ideal balance between work and leisure. This article proposes a way out of this dilemma. It shows that the interventionist view can be defended on the anti-perfectionist grounds that this helps address a collective action problem in the labour market – the working time rat race. Employers often use working time as a proxy for their employees’ productivity and commitment. Those who work particularly long hours are often awarded benefits such as raises or promotions or are spared from dismissals. This makes it individually rational for each worker to work extra hours in an attempt to outcompete colleagues. However, if many workers pursue this strategy, it loses its effectiveness. Workers with preferences for more leisure have a claim to state intervention to remove the rat race when this doesn’t impose disproportionate harm on third parties.

The Tyranny of the Ideal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Gaus
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Moral Inquiry ◽  
Open Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
The World ◽  
Diverse Society ◽  
Just Society ◽  
The Ideal

This book lays out a vision for how we should theorize about justice in a diverse society. It shows how free and equal people, faced with intractable struggles and irreconcilable conflicts, might share a common moral life shaped by a just framework. The book argues that if we are to take diversity seriously and if moral inquiry is sincere about shaping the world, then the pursuit of idealized and perfect theories of justice—essentially, the entire production of theories of justice that has dominated political philosophy for the past forty years—needs to change. Drawing on recent work in social science and philosophy, the book points to an important paradox: only those in a heterogeneous society—with its various religious, moral, and political perspectives—have a reasonable hope of understanding what an ideally just society would be like. However, due to its very nature, this world could never be collectively devoted to any single ideal. The book defends the moral constitution of this pluralistic, open society, where the very clash and disagreement of ideals spurs all to better understand what their personal ideals of justice happen to be. Presenting an original framework for how we should think about morality, this book rigorously analyzes a theory of ideal justice more suitable for contemporary times.

A Unified Spatial Model of Congress

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Buchler
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Spatial Model ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Legislative Session ◽  
Disciplinary System ◽  
Sincere Voting

This chapter presents a unified model of legislative elections, parties, and roll call voting, built around a party leadership election. First, a legislative caucus selects a party leader who campaigns based on a platform of a disciplinary system. Once elected, that leader runs the legislative session, in which roll call votes occur. Then elections occur, and incumbents face re-election with the positions they incrementally adopted. When the caucus is ideologically homogeneous, electorally diverse, and policy motivated, members will elect a leader who solves the collective action problem of sincere voting with “preference-preserving influence.” That leader will threaten to punish legislators who bow to electoral pressure to vote as centrists. Consequently, legislators vote sincerely as extremists and get slightly lower vote shares, but they offset that lost utility with policy gains that they couldn’t have gotten without party influence. Party leaders will rarely pressure legislators to vote insincerely.

scholarly journals Climate Change Inaction and Optimism

Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Philip J. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
Positive Action ◽  
Ideological Fantasy

The problem of climate change inaction is sometimes said to be ‘wicked’, or essentially insoluble, and it has also been seen as a collective action problem, which is correct but inconsequential. In the absence of progress, much is made of various frailties of the public, hence the need for an optimistic tone in public discourse to overcome fatalism and encourage positive action. This argument is immaterial without meaningful action in the first place, and to favour what amounts to the suppression of truth over intellectual openness is in any case disreputable. ‘Optimism’ is also vexed in this context, often having been opposed to the sombre mood of environmentalists by advocates of economic growth. The greater mental impediments are ideological fantasy, which is blind to the contradictions in public discourse, and the misapprehension that if optimism is appropriate in one social or policy context it must be appropriate in others. Optimism, far from spurring climate change action, fosters inaction.

scholarly journals The collective action problem in primate territory economics

2013 ◽  
Vol 280 (1759) ◽  
pp. 20130081 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik P. Willems ◽  
Barbara Hellriegel ◽  
Carel P. van Schaik
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Collective Action Problem

Politikberatung der Öffentlichkeit?

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Pitlik
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
General Public ◽  
Policy Advice ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Academic System ◽  
Countervailing Power

Abstract Due to the incentives of both suppliers and users of policy advice the influence of economists on government decisions is almost negligible. This paper aims to explore the prospects of policy advice addressed to the general public as a countervailing power. It is argued that in order to have some impact on public opinion economists must rely primarily on propaganda and have to overcome a serious collective action problem. Yet, the organization of the academic system provides no incentives for economists to fulfil the role of general-public-oriented advisers.

From work sharing to temporal flexibility : working time policy in Belgium 1975-1990

Res Publica ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-51
Author(s):  
Jens Bastian
Keyword(s):  
Economic System ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Working Time ◽  
Market Effects ◽  
Work Sharing ◽  
Temporal Flexibility

The article focuses on working time policies introduced in Belgium during the period 1975-1990. As a country with early mass-unemployment, the magnitude of the unfolding Labour market problems fostered a specific set of responsive strategies. The initial trajectory of Belgian working time policies was centered around cutting standard weekly working hours in order to enhance Labour market effects. In the course of a marked issue transformation, work sharing objectives were substituted by the notion of temporal flexibility which focused primarily on concerns for and changes in the economie performance of individual firms. The author outlines various structural features of the Belgian socio-economic system and argues that these profoundly affected the goals identified with working time policies as much as the actor constellations endorsing the respective measures.

The Rule of Law: The New Leviathan?

1999 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olufemi Taiwo
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Global Level ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Ordering ◽  
Soviet Communism ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Different Parts ◽  
The Ideal

These are the best of times for the Rule of Law. In all parts of the world, states, governments, and individuals, have found in the rule of law, at various times, a rallying cry, a principle of social ordering that promises the dawn of a just society that its supporters in Euro-American democracies claim to be its crowning glory, or a set of practices that is a sine qua non of a good society. The pursuit of the ideal is nothing new: after all, even those states where it was observed more often in its breach always paid lip service to it. And the defunct socialist countries of Eastern Europe, while they existed, could not escape its lure even as they sought to give it a different nomenclature—socialist legality. The movement towards the rule of law has accelerated after the collapse of Soviet communism and its foster progeny in different parts of the world. Given the present momentum towards the rule of law and the widespread enthusiasm with which it is being embraced and pursued at the global level, some would consider it somewhat churlish for anyone to inject any note of doubt or caution. This is more so when such a note emanates from Marxist quarters. But that is precisely what I wish to do in this essay. Although I do not intend to rain on the rule of law’s entire parade, I surely propose to rain on a segment of it: the Marxist float. I propose to look at the issue within the context of the Marxist politico-philosophical tradition.

scholarly journals O LUGAR DAS POLÍTICAS DE MEIO AMBIENTE, AGRICULTURA E PESCA NO ORÇAMENTO PÚBLICO FEDERAL

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Nailsa Maria Souza Araújo ◽  
Ana Régia Santos Oliveira ◽  
Jailson Ramos Messias ◽  
Anny Robertta Santos Oliveira ◽  
Iris Karine Dos Santos Silva
Keyword(s):  
Public Policies ◽  
Environmental Policies ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Allocation Of Resources ◽  
Public Fund ◽  
Public Funds ◽  
Strategic Direction ◽  
Rural Producers ◽  
Agrarian Development ◽  
Budgetary Allocation

O presente artigo apresenta os dados parciais da pesquisa intitulada Mapeamento do financiamento das políticas públicas de trabalho dirigidas aos pescadores artesanais e pequenos produtores rurais no Brasil, desenvolvida no âmbito do PIBIC/CNPq/UFS. Os dados coletados foram obtidos através de sites e pesquisa bibliográfica. Na disputa pela destinação do fundo público, e observando seus resultados, constata que estes refletem na distribuição orçamentária dos recursos entre setores, áreas, políticas específicas, reconhecendo, assim, o direcionamento político-estratégico da intervenção estatal. Conclui que, especificamente no caso dos três ministérios pesquisados (Ministério da Pesca, Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário e Ministério do Meio Ambiente), eles não são prioridade nos governos Lula e Rousseff. Seus orçamentos são pífios, recebendo pouquíssima dotação no período estudado.Palavras-chave: Orçamento público; fundo público; financiamento; políticas públicasTHE PLACE OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES, AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES IN THE FEDERAL BUDGETAbstract: This paper presents preliminary data from a survey entitled "mapping the financing of public policies directed atjob artisanal fishers and small rural producers in Brazil", developed under PIBIC/CNPq/UFS. Data were obtained throughwebsites and bibliographic research. The dispute over the allocation of public funds and observing their results, which arereflected in the budgetary allocation of resources between sectors, areas, specific policies, one can recognize the politicaland strategic direction of state intervention. Specifically in the case of the three surveyed ministries (Ministry of Fisheries, Ministry of Agrarian Development and the Mystery of the Environment), it was shown that they are not a priority ingovernments Lula and Rousself. Their budgets are meager, receiving very little provision in the period studied.Keywords: Public budget, public fund, financing, public policies.

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