Abstract

Many libertarian and egalitarian theorists accept that adequate welfare standards are some of the most basic conditions required for making the life of each citizen of contemporary Western democracies worth living. However, their philosophical differences prevent them from agreeing on particular standards. In this work I describe and analyze this disagreement. And I offer a theory and a model for democratically establishing adequate standards of welfare that can be acceptable to and trusted by libertarians and egalitarians alike. ;In Chapter 1 I survey the essential elements of libertarian and egalitarian approaches to welfare and present my own tentative view of the meaning of welfare and the means by which it can be best institutionalized. In Chapter 2 I show that normatively prioritizing liberty or equality is counterproductive. I thus conclude that the institution of adequate welfare standards must be preceded by the elimination of such normative priority. I also present several reasons to motivate strict libertarians to join a democratic process of negotiation and compromise regarding unified standards. ;Based on the results of the first two chapters, in Chapter 3 I examine three recent models of distributive justice. I conclude that the principles and model Rawls proposes are best suited for my purpose. However, I point out some implementation problems, resulting from a certain discontinuity between ideal and practical levels in Rawls's theory. This discontinuity, I argue, prevents the actual development of adequate standards of welfare from Rawls's principles of justice. In Chapter 4 I utilize a Rawlsian framework to propose a theory and a model for determining welfare standards in current democratic regimes. The proposal aims at accommodating the plurality of approaches to welfare while utilizing democratic procedures in establishing such adequate welfare standards. ;In this dissertation I do not aim at resolving all the controversies related to the determination of adequate welfare standards. Rather, I propose a procedure that is philosophically plausible, and one that can be useful for making such political decision in the here and now