IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/polstu/v57y2009i2p237-259.html

Making Justice Sensitive to Responsibility

Author

Listed:
  • Zofia Stemplowska

Abstract

When, if at all, can the fact that a person is responsible for his or her disadvantage justify leaving him or her to bear that disadvantage? Possibly no other question has caused more controversy among political theorists of egalitarianism in the last two decades. This article aims to show that it is possible to move beyond the answer to this question that is usually (rightly or wrongly) attributed to luck egalitarians without accepting the conclusion that a concern with responsibility is only marginal to theories of egalitarian justice. I identify the conditions under which disadvantage brought about through the exercise of responsibility should be accepted as just and show why egalitarians concerned with fair shares must sometimes accept as just even grave disadvantages.

Suggested Citation

  • Zofia Stemplowska, 2009. "Making Justice Sensitive to Responsibility," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57(2), pages 237-259, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:polstu:v:57:y:2009:i:2:p:237-259
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00731.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00731.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00731.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alexander Kaufman, 2004. "Choice, Responsibility and Equality," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 52, pages 819-836, December.
    2. Macleod, Colin M., 1998. "Liberalism, Justice, and Markets: A Critique of Liberal Equality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198293972.
    3. Alexander Kaufman, 2004. "Choice, Responsibility and Equality," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 52(4), pages 819-836, December.
    4. Fleurbaey, Marc, 1995. "Equal Opportunity or Equal Social Outcome?," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(1), pages 25-55, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jens Damgaard Thaysen & Andreas Albertsen, 2017. "When bad things happen to good people," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 16(1), pages 93-112, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Didier Blanchet, 1996. "La référence assurantielle en matière de protection sociale : apports et limites," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 291(1), pages 33-45.
    2. Denis Maguain, 2002. "Les théories de la justice distributive post-rawlsiennes. Une revue de la littérature," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 53(2), pages 165-199.
    3. Christian ARNSPERGER & Philippe DE VILLE, 2002. "Can competition ever be fair ? Challenging the standard prejudice," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2002016, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    4. Dolan, Paul & Tsuchiya, Aki, 2009. "Corrigendum to "The social welfare function and individual responsibility: Some theoretical issues and empirical evidence" [J. Health Econ. 28 (2009) 210-220]," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 758-759, May.
    5. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4404 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Denis COGNEAU, 2012. "The Political Dimension Of Inequality During Economic Development," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 35, pages 11-36.
    7. Fábio D. Waltenberg, 2010. "Essential educational achievements as the currency of educational justice," Revista Cuadernos de Economia, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, FCE, CID.
    8. Alexander Cappelen & Bertil Tungodden, 2011. "Distributive interdependencies in liberal egalitarianism," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 36(1), pages 35-47, January.
    9. Arnaud Lefranc & Nicolas Pistolesi & Alain Trannoy, 2006. "Equality of Opportunity: Definitions and Testable Conditions with an Application to Income in France," IDEP Working Papers 0609, Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France, revised 27 Sep 2006.
    10. Alexander Cappelen & Bertil Tungodden, 2007. "Local autonomy and interregional equality," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 28(3), pages 443-460, April.
    11. Kranich, Laurence, 1995. "Equity and economic theory: reflections on methodology and scope," UC3M Working papers. Economics 3919, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    12. Luis Fernando Gamboa & Fábio D. Waltenberg, 2011. "Inequality of opportunity in educational achievement in Latin America: Evidence from PISA 2006-2009," Working Papers 206, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    13. Elvisa Drishti & Blendi Gerdoçi, 2026. "Inequality of Opportunity, Social Mobility, and Life Satisfaction: A Comparative Analysis among Welfare Regimes," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 1-34, January.
    14. Peragine, Vitorocco, 2002. "Opportunity egalitarianism and income inequality," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 45-64, September.
    15. Bastian Steuwer, 2025. "Equal and ashamed? Egalitarianism, anti-discrimination, and redistribution," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 24(1), pages 72-97, February.
    16. Thébaut, Clémence, 2013. "Dealing with moral dilemma raised by adaptive preferences in health technology assessment: The example of growth hormones and bilateral cochlear implants," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 102-109.
    17. Marco Mariotti & Roberto Veneziani, 2018. "Opportunities as Chances: Maximising the Probability that Everybody Succeeds," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(611), pages 1609-1633, June.
    18. Bertil Tungodden, 2005. "Responsibility and redistribution: The case of first best taxation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 24(1), pages 33-44, June.
    19. Roland Luttens, 2010. "Minimal rights based solidarity," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 34(1), pages 47-64, January.
    20. Flaviana Palmisano, 2011. "Mobility and Long term Equality of Opportunity," SERIES 0035, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza - Università degli Studi di Bari "Aldo Moro", revised Feb 2011.
    21. Maniquet, Francois, 1998. "An equal right solution to the compensation-responsibility dilemma," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 185-202, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:polstu:v:57:y:2009:i:2:p:237-259. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0032-3217 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.