Leveling down, all things considered
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Because all cases of leveling down involve harms without offsetting gains along some dimension of well-being, resources, or opportunities, there is a broad agreement across the political spectrum regarding cases like these: essentially, that one must never level down to equality, all things considered. And yet, this never-level-down conclusion would seem to rule out some practices that, at least in democratic societies, are widely held—and for good reason. Consider, for instance, the egalitarian practice of giving one vote—and one vote only—to all members of the political community. According to the leveling down objection, this practice can only be defended on instrumental or non-egalitarian grounds. "One person, one vote" (OPOV) should be otherwise abandoned if it does nothing to serve the cause of utility, freedom, autonomy, or the like. This sort of thinking seems to me deeply misguided. Of course, having the right to vote in the upcoming election might make my life go better, but that stipulated fact does not seem to capture all the ways in which it might matter for me to have, like you, one vote. And more importantly, this way of thinking about the value of "one person, one vote" (OPOV) gives the wrong sort of response to a hypothetical case in which we would all be better off under epistocratic or other forms of non-democratic authority, both of which seem objectionable under straightforwardly egalitarian grounds. I argue in this dissertation that a reasonable theory of distributive justice will level down to equality in some cases, as evidenced by the principle of "one person, one vote." I argue that this practice is valuable given a certain understanding of what sorts of relationships are required by justice: egalitarian relationships not marked by different forms of domination and subordination. And I argue, too, that this grounding of the value of OPOV might have implications for the distribution of other things that matter: resources among them
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Peña Rangel, David |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Satz, Debra |
| Thesis advisor | Satz, Debra |
| Thesis advisor | Ober, Josiah |
| Thesis advisor | Reich, Rob |
| Degree committee member | Ober, Josiah |
| Degree committee member | Reich, Rob |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Political Science. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | David Peña Rangel |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Political Science |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by David Pena Rangel
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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