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An Epistemic Theory of Democracy
Democracy has many attractive features. Among them is its tendency to track the truth, at least under certain idealized assumptions. That basic result has been known since 1785, when Condorcet published his famous jury theorem. But that theorem has typically been dismissed as little more than a mathematical curiosity, with assumptions too restrictive for it to apply to the real world. In An Epistemic Theory of Democracy, Goodin and Spiekermann propose different ways of interpreting voter independence and competence to make jury theorems more generally applicable. They go on to assess a wide range of familiar political practices and alternative institutional arrangements, to determine what constellation of them might most fully exploit the truth-tracking potential of majoritarian democracy. The book closes with a discussion of how epistemic democracy might be undermined, using as case studies the Trump and Brexit campaigns.
Reasons for Welfare
Robert Goodin passionately and cogently defends the welfare state from current attacks by the New Right. But he contends that the welfare state finds false friends in those on the Old Left who would justify it as a hesitant first step toward some larger, ideally just form of society. Reasons for Welfare, in contrast, offers a defense of the minimal welfare state substantially independent of any such broader commitments, and at the same time better able to withstand challenges from the New Right's moralistic political economy. This defense of the existence of the welfare state is discussed, flanked by criticism of Old Left and New Right arguments that is both acute and devastating. In the aut...
Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy
Goodin defends utilitarianism and shows how it can serve as an excellent guide to public policy makers.
The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis
The Oxford Handbooks of Political Science is a ten-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science. Each volume focuses on a particular part of the discipline, with volumes on Public Policy, Political Theory, Political Economy, Contextual Political Analysis, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Law and Politics, Political Behavior, Political Institutions, and Political Methodology. The project as a whole is under the General Editorship of Robert E. Goodin, with each volume being edited by a distinguished international group of specialists in their respective fields. The books set out not just to report on the di...
Reflective Democracy
Democracy used to be seen as a relatively mechanical matter of merely adding up everyone's votes in free and fair elections. That mechanistic model has many virtues, among them allowing democracy to 'track the truth', where purely factual issues are all that is at stake. Political disputes invariably mix facts with values, however, and then it is essential to listen to what people are saying rather than merely note how they are voting. The great challenge is how to implement that deliberative ideal among millions of people at once. In this strikingly original book, Goodin offers a solution: 'democratic deliberation within'. Building on models of ordinary conversational dynamics, he suggests ...
Protecting the Vulnerable
Our narrower obligations often blind us to larger social responsibilities. The moral claims arising out of special relationships—family, friends, colleagues, and so on—always seem to take priority. Strangers ordinarily get, and ordinarily are thought to deserve, only what is left over. Robert E. Goodin argues that this is morally mistaken. In Protecting the Vulnerable, he presents a comprehensive theory of responsibility based on the concept of vulnerability. Since the range of people vulnerable to our actions or choices extends beyond those to whom we have made specific commitments (promises, vows, contracts), we must recognize a much more extensive network of obligations and moral clai...
Global Basic Rights
Politically, as well as philosophically, concerns with human rights have permeated many of the most important debates on social justice worldwide for fully a half-century. Henry Shue's 1980 book on Basic Rights proved to be a pioneering contribution to those debates, and one that continues to elicit both critical and constructive comment. Global Basic Rights brings together many of the most influential contemporary writers in political philosophy and international relations - Charles Beitz, Robert Goodin, Christian Reus-Smit, Andrew Hurrell, Judith Lichtenberg, Elizabeth Ashford, Thomas Pogge, Neta Crawford, Richard Miller, David Luban, Jeremy Waldron and Simon Caney- to explore some of the most challenging theoretical and practical questions that Shue's work provokes. These range from the question of the responsibilities of the global rich to redress severe poverty to the permissibility of using torture to gain information to fight international terrorism. The contributors explore the continuing value of the idea of "basic rights" in understanding moral challenges as diverse as child labor and global climate change.
No Smoking
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The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy
This is part of a ten volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science. This work explores the business end of politics, where theory meets practice in the pursuit of public good.
