political science research paper

Review

Reviewed Work(s): Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond by Martin O'Neill and Thad Williamson

Review by: Keith Dowding

Source: Perspectives on Politics , June 2013, Vol. 11, No. 2 (June 2013), pp. 628-630 Published by: American Political Science Association

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Book Reviews | Political Theory

ment of our living with plural others, of our commitment to persuasion in lieu of force when we encounter differ- ences that must be negotiated in order for us to continue living side by side" (p. 111).

Democracy, says McGowan, "as a mode of association

is measured by the quality of the public interactions among

citizens" (p. xxiv). What matters is the act of deliberating, rather than the outcomes of this deliberation. This latter

claim is dubious, at least in some formulations. The author does not appear, here, to take seriously the possibility that quality deliberation can produce a commitment to thevision of society that looks more like the Right's than the Lefts ideal. In any case, his goal is to offer a program for action for the Left, and in his formulation, the New Left politics must find a way to emphasize what we have in common, as social beings inhabiting a political and social space together, to work cooperatively toward building a better future, where we are able and willing to communi- cate across the differences that only apparently divide us. Our challenges, and the remedies to these challenges, are necessarily collective.

The resources on which McGowan relies are impres-

sive. He draws capaciously from pragmatist political theory, as well as from a wealth of additional traditions. Scholars

seeking a detailed evaluation of any one particular scholar

or tradition will be disappointed and perhaps frustrated

by the quick dismissal of some theorists (Amy Gutmann

and Dennis Thompsons work on deliberative democracy,

for example, pp. 1 12-13), by the reduction of entire tra-

ditions to a few sentences (left egalitarian political theory,

for example, pp. 93-94), and by the easy adoption of the central ideas of others. But this minor vice is also one of

the books significant virtues: It successfully tells a plausi- ble and important story by drawing on resources from across a range of theoretical endeavors.

McGowan s explanation for the failure of American cit- izens to act in politics is perhaps the weakest part of the book. The author points to evidence that Americans are dissatisfied with the political system; they are alienated and isolated from the political representatives who govern them. Yet, he says, they remain tremendously active at the local level; they are trying more than ever to create the conditions under which the lives they live are meaningful and valuable (pp. 113-14). McGowan blames the Amer-ican Left for failing to tell a persuasive story, a story that will draw Americans into political life to fight for progres- sive values. Yet we are offered few insights into why it is that these Americans, increasingly active at the local level, fail to find a way to make inroads into national politics, and why they instead are withdrawing from national polit- ical life. Americans' participation in civic life "illustrate [s] citizens' power to get things done," but this "contrasts strongly with the pale and abstract forms of political par- ticipation currently on offer" (p. 114). What explains this disjuncture? And why do citizens who are powerful in the

local sphere not share the blame for the failure of Ameri- can politics to move in progressive ways? Neither of these questions is broached satisfactorily in McGowan's story.

Part of the explanation is connected to the specific social

relations in which citizens are embedded. Citizens' polit- ical focus is on those who are nearest to them. The chal-

lenge, McGowan proposes, is to redirect their gaze and their imagination to the broader American community - that is the point of emphasizing the importance of com- municating across difference. But achieving communication across difference is easier said than done; we need a story about how we get there. The author dismisses the delib- erative democratic emphasis on identifying and then rely- ing on publically acceptable reasons as a way to bind those who are otherwise different (pp. 112-13), but offers too little in its place. The point of pragmatism is that it is possible to expand the boundaries of our community, and our sense of what is possible within it, but we are still left without a concrete program for achieving this expansion at the conclusion of Pragmatist Politics. Deliberation appears to be what McGowan has in mind. Ultimately, however, he displays an optimism in the power of deliberation to bridge differences that may be unwarranted; at the very least, we need to hear more about the conditions under which deliberation can produce the unity that he desires.

These are minor complaints, however, about what is a beautifully written, persuasively argued book on demo- cratic renewal in contemporary America.

Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond.

Edited by Martin O'Neill and Thad Williamson. Maiden, MA:

Wiley-Blackwell, 201 2. 336p. $89.95. doi:1 0.1 01 7/S1 53759271 3000340

- Keith Dowding, Australian National University

John Rawls has dominated political philosophy since the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971. One reason, perhaps, is that his arguments there and in subsequent books are notoriously ambiguous, and so there is plenty of room for interpretations and thus interpreters. To left- leaning critics, Rawls was an apologist for contemporary welfare capitalism; when Rawls restated his position in

1991, however, it turned out that he was not, but rather wanted a radical new "property-owning democracy" (POD). As the essays in this collection make clear, how- ever, POD too is ambiguous. Rawls adopted the idea from the left-wing economist James Meade but, as Ben Jackson's chapter makes clear, POD was, and without the welfare provisions of welfare capitalism can still be, an idea of the Right. Many of the chapters in the book contrast the possibilities of POD with those of welfare-oriented state intervention under more traditional capitalist arrangements.

The late Rawls s objection to welfare capitalism is that vast inequalities in wealth and power do not allow for social justice. Unregulated capitalism leads to massive

628 Perspectives on Politics

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inequalities, rendering social justice impossible, even if a welfare state exists to redistribute some of those resources.

Redistribution might ensure an end to poverty, but this will do little to stop the owners of capital from dominat- ing politically. The early chapters in the book examine these claims philosophically.

Simone Chambers argues that Rawls s theory of justice is

radical, requiring a revolution to bring it about. This sits

uneasily with Rawls s process of public reason for overlap-

ping consensus. After all, while capitalism might be criti-

cized, it is surely not unreasonable to maintain the current

dominant thesis that individuals should be personally

responsible for their own welfare. In other words, it is not

obvious that the difference principle would constitute an

overlapping consensus. Several of the contributors suggest,

therefore, that the difference principle needs to be hard-

wired into a constitution. It cannot be up for grabs. Alan

Thomas suggests so when defending Rawls against G.A.

Cohens criticism that the difference principle is incompat-

ible with the egalitarian ethos underpinning justice as fair-

ness. Stuart White suggests an ethos of republican citizenship

of public duty and engagement is required rather than Rawls s

liberal presuppositions. While both Thomas and White

make a case for POD, it is not clear that their arguments

really demonstrate that justice as fairness requires POD rather

than welfare capitalism. Nien-hê Hsieh provides one rea-

son, when he suggests that the existence of passive welfare

recipients does not allow for equal self-respect. If everyone

is a property-owner with the chance to take responsibility

for oneself then equal respect is attainable. Like so many

political philosophers today, Hsieh seems to assume that

meaningful work is a necessary component of a good life.

In reality, for many people, work is simply what brings home

the bacon (of course, work conditions can be good or bad,

and colleagues annoying or congenial), while meaning is

provided by other aspects of life - family, sport, hobbies. It

is not clear that respect and self-respect can come about only

if one is a property-holder or has a job one considers worthwhile.

Cory Brettschneider looks to fundamental issues of the right to own property, arguing that private property can be just only if everyone is guaranteed a livelihood. In his chapter he does not fully engage with a radical version of POD, since he envisages a state where some will not own property but still have the basic elements of a right to welfare. More is required to justify a right for all to own a broadly equal amount of property. But again the emphasis is on self-reliance for self-respect.

Ingrid Robeyns takes a rather different line. She sug- gests that POD could increase gender inequality if it enables people to turn their assets into an indefinite income stream, allowing people to withdraw from the labor mar- ket. She argues that any defensible care regime will be costly and require a mix of labor market regulations,welfare provisions and state services. While her case does

not undermine POD itself, it does suggest that gender

equality requires a substantial state welfare system -

unless, that is, we rely upon the slender stem of a shared

egalitarian ethos. Waheed Hussain likewise argues that a

liberal democratic POD locks people into economic com-

petition, but a welfare corporatist version, as evidenced

by public attitudes in such societies, leads people to more

public-spirited attitudes. Once again, the argument is

that POD requires the welfare state rather than being a

stand-alone alternative to welfare state capitalism. David

Schweickart compares POD to his own preferred account of democratic market socialism.

Other arguments presented in the book examine the plau-

sibility or political feasibility of POD as opposed to creat-

ing a fairer redistributive welfare system. Thad Williamson

suggests a fairly modest redistribution from the richest to

the poorest US citizens would allow all to be property own-

ers in housing, money, and stock. He does not model the

effects of such redistributions on their relative value, how-

ever, nor consider transfers across people even with such tax-induced forced redistributions. More modest basic

income or stakes is the subject of Sonia Sodhas contribu- tion, though again how close this comes to POD or whether it is just another welfare system inside capitalism is moot.

While individually all the chapters in this book display a high standard of reasoning and argument, together they have an air of incompleteness. The general theme is the relation- ship between property-owning democracy and Rawlsian social justice. Can POD, and only POD, provide for the sort of justice Rawls wants, or is capitalism with welfare provision, full-blown market socialism, or only a society with a strong and stable egalitarian ethos or republican val- ues capable of delivering justice as fairness? The problem is that no demonstration of such a relationship between insti- tutional forms and such general theory is possible.

One reason for the incompleteness of these philosoph- ical considerations of the nature of constitution for Rawls-

ian social justice is that the institutional details of general ideal formulations of such constitutions in fact play a vital role in generating social justice. The issue is not so much capitalism versus welfare-provision, or wide property own- ing versus state ownership, but rather what specific wel- fare provisions are required given different regulatory systems. And the different regulatory systems might well operate differently when subject to specific economic con- ditions. For example, historically, agricultural primogeniture clearly provided greater economic growth than more egal- itarian distributions of land, which tended to pauperize communities over time. The difference principle might be applied here, with primogeniture alongside welfare redis- tribution. But what exactly does this tell us about modern asset holding? Is higher growth maintained now onlythrough restricted inheritance? The answer, to say the least, is not obvious. Nor indeed is whether high growth rates are something we should still find desirable. The shift

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June 2013 I Vol. 11 /No. 2 629

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Book Reviews | Political Theory

from general ideal theory to institutional form is too big for one essay, or even one book. Perhaps it is better to keep general theory and institutional details apart. Gen- eral theory can provide a background, but the specific mechanics of institutions and how they interact with responsibility, welfare, or equality are questions that can- not be regarded as instantiations of general theory.

Choices Women Make: Agency in Domestic

Violence, Assisted Reproduction, and Sex Work.

By Carisa R. Showden. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

201 1 . 31 2p. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper. doi:1 0.1 01 7/S1 53759271 3000352

- Nichole M. Shippen, LaGuardia Community College

Carisa Showden's book is an ambitious and innovative fem-

inist project that draws upon multiple theoretical frame- works, including feminist political and legal theory, phenomenological theory, and poststructural theory to move feminist understandings of women's agency beyond the modern/postmodern debate over subjectivity as either self- determined or socially constructed. In her analysis, Show-den demonstrates how at the practical level, women's expressions of agency refuse such easy categorization of either self-determined agent or powerless victim. Situating agency not only structurally but temporally, she demon- strates the complex and varied nature of women's agency, which she sees as intimately related to the development of subjectivities that are in constant processes of becoming, not in isolation but in relations with others. In doing so, the author identifies the major weakness of the traditional liberal understanding of the relationship between auton- omy and freedom that conceives of subjects as fixed entities that either possess agency or do not, which too often leads to the conclusion that there is a "right" choice to be made regardless of context. She demonstrates that this faulty assumption remains highly problematic since it continues to inform public policies that directly impact women's lives.

Showden defines agency as "a product of both auton-

omy (the individual capacity to act) and freedom (the

conditions that facilitate action)" (p. ix). Her unique com-

bination of theoretical approaches captures the myriad

aspects of agency originating from the dialectical relation-

ship between the subject and the conditions that shape

the subject and her self-understanding to the develop-

ment of agency as "both a process and a capacity that is

shaped by subjects' temporal and relational circum-

stances" (p. ix). She argues that her combined theoretical

approach to women's agency captures a more accurate por-

trayal of the imperfect realities of women's lives, which in

turn validates their expressions of agency more than any one theoretical model alone.

In her analysis of domestic violence, for example,

Showden argues that the legal system "guided by funda- mental tenets of liberal individualism . . . makes it diffi-

cult for feminist lawmakers and legal advocates to get

courts, prosecutors, and legislators to see the structural,

extenuating factors shaping women's responses to violent

relationships" (p. 47). She highlights the fact that the "vic- tim" of domestic violence is often considered to exercise

agency only when she leaves the abusive relationship because this behavior embodies the liberal model of the

rational actor. In other words, choices women make in the context of domestic violence are often perceived as those of either victim or agent, and the possibility is not con- sidered that claiming victim status is very often the first step toward leaving abusive relationships. In fact, women do leave abusive relationships, and the author traces exam- ples of women developing the "internal capacities for auton- omy" over time, which explains why it takes a woman an average of six to eight times to leave an abusive domestic relationship (p. 37).

To avoid criticisms of essentialism, Showden attempts

to be as inclusive as possible by offering a range of multi-

ple and cross-cutting identities that make up the category

"woman." For example, she persuasively demonstrates that

simply having language interpreters in domestic violence

shelters is not enough to actually help South Asian women,

who may not speak about domestic violence in the same

terms as native English speakers due to cultural differ-

ences in their communities. Finally, "failed" agency may

be a form of resistance that simply was not successful due to structural failures rather than the individual's lack of

agency (p. 75). As Showden argues, "whether or not her acts count as agentic only ever gets judged by the out- come, rather than also by the web of conflicting demands and constraints that led to her choices" (p. 77). In effect, then, she develops the argument that agency is always "partial and constrained" (p. 40).

While her criteria for judging agency are decidedly based in feminist politics, Showden never explicitly identifies the feminist political tradition or tradition (s) in which she grounds herself. What she offers instead are "abstract, guid- ing norms" based on "recognition, redistribution, and polit- ical inclusion" (pp. 34-35). She seeks to make the feminist understanding of agency more generous by demonstrat- ing the various ways women express agency. This under- standable reluctance to deny agency to any woman leaves her reader with either a more meaningful and flexible understanding of women's agency or an apolitical under- standing of women's resistance precisely because it is not grounded in any specific political tradition. Although she argues that "[o]ne cannot simply say that anything a per- son does is evidence of agency" (p. xiii), she never gives the reader a firm way of making political judgments about whether or not a woman's expression of agency is further- ing the project of feminism to end

intersectional forms ofoppression. What she does offer is the following: "The primary criterion for whether one is an agent must be whether one's actions foreclose other possibilities, not

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