Individual Choice and Institutional Constraints

1986 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktor Vanberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
Classical Liberalism ◽  
Liberal Conception

AbstractNormative individualism appears to be an obvious normative premise underlying a liberal conception of the desirable social order. The shortcomings of some common Interpretations of this premise are discussed and a more consistent as well as a more workable standard for assessing the ‘goodness’ of alternative socio-institutional arrangements is specified. With such an Interpretation of normative individualism, a contractrarian conception as advocated by J.M. Buchanan can be viewed as a systematic extension of classical liberalism.

THE PARADOX OF JOHN STUART MILL

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Alan Charles Kors
Keyword(s):  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Voluntary Association ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
Classical Liberalism ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Theoretical Underpinning ◽  
Social Interventions ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractJohn Stuart Mill is the critical transitional figure between the classical liberalism of the 19th century, with its emphasis upon the creative power of free individuals unfettered by government or social interventions, and the welfare-state liberalism of the 20th century, with its combination of individual choice in matters of belief and lifestyle and the political redistribution of wealth. In On Liberty and The Subjection of Women, Mill offered a defense of self-sovereignty and voluntary association that appeared to extend explicitly to the economic spheres. Both works are celebrations of the productive and moral enhancements of individual liberty. In The Principles of Political Economy, however, Mill's categorical distinction between “production” and “distribution” assigned the latter to the “expedient” discretion of the state, inviting, in theory, a democratic redistributionist state. Mill's posthumous Essays on Socialism reveal that he was no friend of socialism or Marxism, but that he welcomed a more active and interventionist state. One of individual liberty's most notable defenders, paradoxically, provided the theoretical underpinning of its current diminution.

State, Market and Social Order

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Gabusi
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Social Order ◽  
National Development ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Reform Plan ◽  
The Government ◽  
New Phase

Since the beginning of the latest and most convincing phase of transition, Myanmar has emerged as the new possible frontier of economic development in Southeast Asia. Investors, political analysts, businessmen and NGOs alike have all rushed to the country in search of a new El Dorado. Are these hopes justified? Can Myanmar—one of the poorest countries in Asia—start a new phase of economic development which would not only benefit the owners of global capital, but also lift Myanmar’s population from poverty? Drawing on the literature on the political economy of institutions and some field research, the paper assesses whether policy choices made by the new government are heading the country in a direction which could generate a ‘new miracle’ in East Asia. To this purpose, domestic institutional constraints and the system of patronage are examined. Looking beyond the democracy vs dictatorship debate, the paper finds that Myanmar could well start a new phase of economic growth, provided that the government builds a strong vertical and horizontal institutional capacity. However, a more open political environment, and the consequent multiplication of economic interests, could hijack the reform plan the government has adopted, unless these stakeholders are inserted into a coordinated framework revolving around a transformational project of national development.

Legislative Involvement in Parliamentary Systems: Opportunities, Conflict, and Institutional Constraints

2009 ◽  
Vol 103 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
FABIO FRANCHINO ◽  
BJØRN HØYLAND
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
The Political ◽  
Member States ◽  
Parliamentary Systems ◽  
Different Types ◽  
European Union Legislation

In parliamentary systems, the need to preserve the political agreement that sustains the executive often motivates legislative involvement in policymaking. Institutional arrangements regulating executive–legislative relations and ministerial autonomy also structure parliamentary participation. However, empirical evidence of these effects remains limited to a few policies and countries. European Union legislation provides the opportunity to test expectations about legislative involvement for different types of measure across various institutional arrangements, across multiple policy areas, and across time. In this article, we investigate legislative involvement in the transposition of 724 directives in 15 member states from 1978 to 2004. Our results confirm that involvement increases as conflict between the responsible minister and her coalition partners intensifies. The discretionary scope embedded in the directive further inflates this effect. Additionally, parliamentary involvement decreases as the government's institutional advantage over the legislature increases, especially if intracoalitional conflict deepens.

Breaking the Wall: Emotions and Projective Agency Under Extreme Poverty

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (5) ◽  
pp. 919-962 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Martin de Holan ◽  
Alberto Willi ◽  
Pablo D. Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Low Power ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Emotional Engagement ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Extreme Poverty ◽  
Effective Interventions ◽  
Cycle Of Poverty ◽  
Vulnerable Persons

In this inductive, exploratory study, we explore how emotions affect the agency of vulnerable persons and their engagement in social innovation to challenge oppressive institutional constraints. By presenting the in-depth case of a successful entrepreneur from a shantytown, we show how emotions affect the construction of a self that contributes to the reproduction of social order rather than change, and how effective interventions can break the cycle of poverty and hopelessness that is dominant among excluded people. We find that this process is fragile and contingent on the presence of known strangers—that is, a web of actors that contributes not only resources but also emotional engagement that helps the emergence and development of low-power actors’ projectivity. We identify mechanisms for and provide a model of the development and emergence of the projective self that is necessary to engage in future-oriented agency.

The Use of Money in Society: Friedrich Hayek’s Social Work

2020 ◽  
pp. 009059172098047
Author(s):  
Jacob Swanson
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Integration ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Spontaneous Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
The Social

Recent studies of Friedrich Hayek have focused on his theorization of spontaneous order and its relationship to his views on freedom and market individualism. For many scholars, the impersonal nature of Hayek’s spontaneous order, which optimally coordinates human action without human coordination, and/or Hayek’s contention that freedom consists of the exercise of individual choice in a market, reveals Hayek’s neoliberal project to replace or erase the social domain of human life and activity. This article makes the claim that two different, but related, versions of the social exist in Hayek’s writings. The logic of his first and prominent view of social order as spontaneous order depends, I argue, upon a second account of the social, found in Hayek’s writings on money, which consists of forms of conscious and collective social integration and subject formation that the first view requires but cannot account for. In this way, Hayek’s social order is sustained not spontaneously but by money-based collective activities and social(ized) subjectivities that make it possible, and his neoliberal project thus depends on fundamental, if disavowed, connections between the social and the political.

Dilemmas of Secularism: Europe, Religion and the Problem of Pluralism

2008 ◽  
pp. 78-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Delanty
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Liberal Conception ◽  
The Social

Gerald Delanty’s ‘Dilemmas of Secularism: Europe, Religion and the Problem of Pluralism’ argues that contemporary discussions of migration, exclusion, and belonging must be understood in the context of broader tensions around religion, secularism, and transformations in the liberal conception of the social order.

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