Phenomena like meat sharing in hunter-gatherers, self-sacrifice in intergroup conflicts, and voluntary contribution to public goods provision in laboratory experiments have led to the development of numerous theories on the evolution of altruistic in-group beneficial behavior in humans. Many of these theories abstract away from the effects of kinship on the incentives for public goods provision, though. Here, it is investigated analytically how genetic relatedness changes the incentive structure of that paradigmatic game which is conventionally (...) used to model and experimentally investigate collective action problems: the linear public goods game. Using recent anthropological data sets on relatedness in 61 contemporary hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies the relevant parameters of this model are then estimated. It turns out that the kinship patterns observed in these societies substantially reduce the negative effect of increasing group size on incentives for public goods provision. It is suggested, therefore, that renewed attention should be given to inclusive fitness theory in the context of public goods provision also in sizable groups, because its explanatory power with respect to this central problem in the evolution of human cooperativeness and altruism might have been substantially underrated. (shrink)

Some people voluntarily provide public goods while others take a free ride. Are the providers acting rationally? Should they instead follow the example of the free-rider? What are the rational and moral justifications for voluntary provision? This dissertation examines five ways to justify voluntary provision: rational prudence, social norms, group agency, fairness, and altruism. It suggests that altruism provides the best possible defense. Considerations of fairness may also provide a justification in some circumstances, but generally (...) this argument is vulnerable to the objection that free-riding is often a legitimate way of protecting oneself from exploitation by other free-riders. In places, the dissertation relies on simple game theoretic models and intuitive economic equilibrium notions to analyze public good situations. The dissertation closes with a discussion of the government's role in providing public goods. An argument is made that, for certain kinds of goods (those over which preferences are public, but whose benefits are private), the standard public goods argument is not appropriate to homogeneous populations. If this is correct, other justifications for governmental provision must be summoned for goods of this form. (shrink)

The provision of public goods is generally assumed to require compulsion by the state. Individuals may want them, but they have no incentive to contribute voluntarily to their production. David Schmidtz proposes ?assurance contracts? as a way around the problem of ?wasted? contributions. However, such contracts do not eliminate the incentive to free ride on public goods. Empirical evidence suggests that enforced contributions may be a more effective way of combatting this problem than assurance contracts. More generally, (...) we need to investigate different kinds of moral motivation to see how they may elicit voluntary contributions of public goods. (shrink)

The present work deals with an initiative that aims at creating and promoting rural development through high quality. It is called “Presidia”, it has been started by the Slowfood movement, and it relies on an approach to rural economies different from the standard spreading of industrialization. The phenomenon on focus is based upon the cooperative dynamics of several small producers, and thus some criticalities typical of social dilemmas have emerged in the case-based study on the field: they deal with the (...) role played by cooperation-supporting institutions. Through an empirically grounded agent-based model which allows what-if analysis of some policy suggestions, different mechanisms for promoting cooperation among producers are thus investigated. Simulation results outline how single altruistic actions are not capable of sustaining a positive aggregate while single selfish choices can determine very negative outcomes, and how only the strong commitment of most central actors can protect the system from random fluctuations in cooperation levels. Two main results are finally discussed: informal control mechanisms do not ensure the desired level of cooperation and high quality; interaction structure codetermines the outcome. (shrink)

This article presents a new classroom experiment in order to illustrate and initiate discussion on the public good provision of prevention of dangerous anthropogenic climate change. The classroom game aids students’ understanding of the difficulty associated with funding public goods; the role of fairness in climate change negotiations; the risks associated with catastrophic climate change impact; and the free riding concept. The classroom game has been played in various business, economics and political science courses. Feedback received (...) from students indicates a rewarding learning experience. (shrink)

This paper investigates the determinants of cost-(in)effective giving to public goods. We conduct a pre-registered experiment to elucidate how factors at the institutional and individual levels shape individual contributions and the cost-effectiveness of those contributions in a novel public good game. In particular, we examine the role of consequential uncertainty over the value of public good contributions (institutional level) as well as individual characteristics like risk and ambiguity attitudes, giving type, and demographics (individual level). We (...) find cost-ineffective contributions in all institutions, but total contribution levels and the degree of cost-ineffectiveness are similar across institutions. Meanwhile, cost-effectiveness varies by giving type—which is a novel result that is consistent with hypotheses we generate from theory—but other individual characteristics have little influence on the cost-effectiveness of contributions. Our work has important positive and normative implications for charitable giving and public good provision in the real world, and it is particularly germane to emerging online crowdfunding and patronage platforms that confront users with a multitude of competing opportunities for giving. (shrink)

A community faces the obligation of providing an indivisible public good that each of its members is able to provide at a certain cost. The solution is to rely on the member who can provide the public good at the lowest cost, with a due compensation from the other members. This problem has been studied in a non-cooperative setting by Kleindorfer and Sertel. They propose an auction mechanism that results in an interval of possible individual contributions (...) whose lower bound is the equal division. Here, instead we take a cooperative stand point by modelling this problem as a cost sharing game that turns out to be a ‘reverse’ airport game whose core is shown to have a regular structure. This enables an easy calculation of the nucleolus that happens to define the upper bound of the Kleindorfer–Sertel interval. The Shapley value instead is not an appropriate solution in this context because it may imply compensations to non-providers. (shrink)

Does the desirability of social institutions for public goods provision depend on the extent to which they include mechanisms for endogenous enforcement of cooperative behavior? We consider alternative institutions that vary the use of direct punishments to promote social cooperation. In one institution, subjects participate in a public goods experiment in which an initial stage of voluntary contribution is followed by a second stage of voluntary, costly sanctioning. Another institution consists of the voluntary contribution (...) stage only, with no subsequent opportunity to sanction. In a third stage subjects vote for which institution they prefer for future interactions: do they prefer one that does allow sanctions or one that does not allow sanctions? Our results show that even though sanctions are frequently used when available, the clear majority of individuals vote for the institution that does not allow sanctions. Thus, a distinction is required between the principles that guide the choice of institutions and the principles that apply to actions guided by institutions. Our results indicate that it is the wealth generated by the institution that determines its desirability. (shrink)

We report an experiment on two treatments of an ultimatum minigame. In one treatment, responders’ reactions are hidden to proposers. We observe high rejection rates reflecting responders’ intrinsic resistance to unfairness. In the second treatment, proposers are informed, allowing for dynamic effects over eight rounds of play. The higher rejection rates can be attributed to responders’ provision of a public good: Punishment creates a group reputation for being “tough” and effectively “educate” proposers. Since rejection rates with informed (...) proposers drop to the level of the treatment with non-informed proposers, the hypothesis of responder’s enjoyment of overt punishment is not supported. (shrink)

The commons have emerged as a key notion and underlying experience of many efforts around the world to promote justice and democracy. A central question for political theories of the commons is whether the visions of social order and regimes of political economy they propose are complementary or opposed to public goods that are backed up by governmental coordination and compulsion. This essay argues that the post-Marxist view, which posits an inherent opposition between the commons as a sphere of (...) inappropriable usage and statist public infrastructure, is mistaken, because justice and democracy are not necessarily furthered by the institution of inappropriability. I articulate an alternative pluralist view based on James Tully’s work, which discloses the dynamic interplay between public and common modes of provision and enjoyment, and their civil and civic orientations respectively. Finally, the essay points to the Janus-faced character of the commons and stresses the co-constitutive role of public goods and social services for just and orderly social life while remaining attentive to the dialectic of empowerment and tutelage that marks provision by government. (shrink)

Across the European Union, the receipt of agricultural subsidisation is increasingly being predicated on the delivery of public goods. In the English context, in particular, these changes can be seen in the redirection of money to the new Environmental Land Management scheme. Such shifts reflect the changed expectations that society is placing on agriculture—from something that provides one good (food) to something that supplies many (food, access to green spaces, healthy rural environment, flood resilience, reduced greenhouse gas emissions). (...) Whilst the reasons behind the changes are well documented, understanding how these shifts are being experienced by the managers expected to deliver on these new expectations is less well understood. Bourdieu’s social theory and the good farmer concept are used to attend to this blind spot, and to provide timely insight as the country progresses along its public goods subsidy transition. Evidence from 65 interviews with 40 different interviewees (25 of whom gave a repeat interview) show a general willingness towards the transition to a public goods model of subsidisation. The optimisation and efficiency that has historically characterised the productivist identity is colouring the way managers are approaching the delivery of public goods. Ideas of land sparing and land sharing (and the farming preference for the former over the latter) are used to help understand these new social and attitudinal realities. The policy implications of these findings are discussed, with reference to the new scheme’s ‘priority themes’. (shrink)

This book considers traditional public economy theory of public goods provision as oversimplified, because it is state centered and fiscally focused.

We investigate the effect of priming on pro-social behaviour in a setting where there is a clear financial incentive to free ride. By activating the concept of cooperation among randomly selected individuals, we explore whether it is possible to positively influence people’s voluntary contributions to the public good. Our findings indicate that cooperative priming increases contributions in a one-shot public goods game from approximately 25–36 % compared with the non-primed group. The results call for further explorations (...) of the role of priming in economic behaviours in general. (shrink)

Existing accounts of public-goods distribution rely on the existence of solidarity for providing non-universal public goods, such as the humanities or national parks. There are three fundamental problems with these accounts: they ignore instances of social fragmentation; they treat preferences for public goods as morally benign, and they assume that these preferences are the only relevant moral consideration. However, not all citizens unanimously require public goods such as the humanities or national parks. Public-goods distribution that (...) is based only on citizens’ preferences, therefore, means that non-universal public good are at a constant risk of under-provision, and has negative implications for human flourishing. The paper, therefore, develops a complementary justification for the distribution of public goods, that decouples the distribution of public goods from ad hoc preferences, and grounds the distributive justification in the intrinsic value of these goods. There are three reasons to include intrinsic-value considerations in public-goods distribution: responding to crowding-out effects; promoting shared heritage and cross-fertilization. Finally, the intrinsic-value justification may indirectly promote solidarity. Thus, the intrinsic-value and the solidarity justifications need not be mutually exclusive, rather they can be mutually reinforcing. (shrink)

In public goods experiments, stochastic choice, censoring and motivational heterogeneity give scope for disagreement over the extent of unselfishness, and whether it is reciprocal or altruistic. We show that these problems can be addressed econometrically, by estimating a finite mixture model to isolate types, incorporating double censoring and a tremble term. Most subjects act selfishly, but a substantial proportion are reciprocal with altruism playing only a marginal role. Isolating reciprocators enables a test of Sugden’s model of voluntary contributions. (...) We estimate that reciprocators display a self-serving bias relative to the model. (shrink)

Recent debate in the literature on political obligation about the principle of fairness rests on a mistake. Despite the widespread assumption to the contrary, a person can have a duty of fairness to share in the burdens of sustaining some cooperative scheme even though that scheme does not represent a net benefit to her. Recognizing this mistake allows for a resolution of the stalemate between those who argue that the mere receipt of some public good from a scheme (...) can generate a duty of fairness and those who argue that only some voluntary action of consent or acceptance of the good can generate such a duty. I defend a version of the principle of fairness that holds that it is the person’s reliance on a scheme for the provision of some product or service that generates duties of fairness to share in the burdens of sustaining the scheme. And, on this version, the principle of fairness is politically significant: regardless of whether the citizen has a duty to obey the law, she will still have important political duties of fairness generated by her reliance on the various public goods provided by those society-wide cooperative schemes sustained by the sacrifices of her fellow citizens. (shrink)

Various writers in the Western liberal and libertarian tradition have challenged the argument that enforcement of law and protection of property rights are public goods that must be provided by governments. Many of these writers argue explicitly for the provision of law enforcement services through private market relations.

We investigate how a group of players might cooperate with each other within the setting of a non-cooperative game. We pursue two notions of partial cooperative equilibria that follow a modification of Nash’s best response rationality rather than a core-like approach. Partial cooperative Nash equilibrium treats non-cooperative players and the coalition of cooperators symmetrically, while the notion of partial cooperative leadership equilibrium assumes that the group of cooperators has a first-mover advantage. We prove existence theorems for both types of equilibria. (...) We look at three well-known applications under partial cooperation. In a game of voluntary provision of a public good we show that our two new equilibrium notions of partial cooperation coincide. In a modified Cournot oligopoly, we identify multiple equilibria of each type and show that a non-cooperator may have a higher payoff than a cooperator. In contrast, under partial cooperation in a symmetric Salop City game, a cooperator enjoys a higher return. (shrink)

When is state coercion for the provision of public goods justified? And how should the social surplus of public goods be distributed? Philosophers approach these questions by distinguishing between essential and discretionary public goods. This article explains the intractability of this distinction, and presents two upshots. First, if governments provide configurations of public goods that simultaneously serve essential and discretionary purposes, the scope for justifiable complaints by honest holdouts is narrower than commonly assumed. Second, however, (...) claims to distributive fairness in the provision of public goods also turn out to be more complex to assess. (shrink)

The evolution and maintenance of cooperation in human and animal societies challenge various disciplines ranging from evolutionary biology to anthropology, social sciences, and economics. In social interactions, cooperators increase the welfare of the group at some cost to themselves whereas defectors attempt to free ride and neither provide benefits nor incur costs. The problem of cooperation becomes even more pronounced when increasing the number of interacting individuals. Punishment and voluntary participation have been identified as possible factors to support cooperation (...) and prevent cheating. Typically, punishment behavior is unable to gain a foothold in a population, while volunteering alone can efficiently prevent deadlocks in states of mutual defection but is unable to stabilize cooperation. The combined effects of the two mechanisms have surprisingly different consequences in finite and infinite populations. Here we provide a detailed comparison of the two scenarios and demonstrate that driven by the inherent stochasticity of finite populations, the possibility to abstain from social interactions plays a pivotal role, which paves the way for the establishment of cooperation and punishment. (shrink)

Incomplete information is a commonly cited barrier to the adoption of new innovations. We present a decision-making experiment, conducted with farmers in the field, that explores the extent to which information which reduces ambiguity may be provided as a public good. In the experiment, participants make a series of decisions between a risky gamble and an ambiguous gamble. An initial private decision is followed by second choice in which participants know that their chosen gambles and outcomes will be (...) publicly but anonymously revealed. Selection of the ambiguous option in this decision thus provide public good information which can be used to update beliefs about the ambiguous gamble. After the public revelation, participants make one final choice between the two options which we use to assess learning. We also test communication as a mechanism to increase provision of the public good. We find evidence that people with preference to avoid ambiguity contribute to public good information while risk averse people free ride. Communication does not affect the overall public good provision, either in a positive or negative direction. Finally, we find that people draw appropriate inference from the information that the public good provides. We relate our findings to the issue of new technology adoption in agriculture which is of particular importance for our participants. (shrink)

Public health ethicists face two difficult questions. First, what makes something a matter of public health? While protecting citizens from outbreaks of communicable diseases is clearly a matter of public health, is the same true of policies that aim to reduce obesity, gun violence or political corruption? Second, what should the scope of the government’s authority be in promoting public health? May government enact public health policies some citizens reasonably object to or policies that are (...) paternalistic? Recently, some theorists have attempted to address these questions by arguing that something is a matter of public health if and only if it involves a health-related public good, such as clean water or herd immunity. Relatedly, they have argued that appeals to the promotion of public health should only be used to justify the provision of health-related public goods. This public goods conception of public health (PGC) is meant to enjoy advantages over its rivals in three respects: it provides a better definition of public health than rival views, it respects moral disagreement, and it avoids licensing objectionably paternalistic public health policies. We argue, however, that the PGC does just as poorly, or worse, than its rivals in all three respects. (shrink)

We study a dynamic auction mechanism in the context of private provision of a discrete public good under incomplete information. The bidders have private valuations, and the cost of the public good is common knowledge. No bidder is willing to provide the good on her own. We show that a natural application of open ascending auctions in such environments fails dramatically: The probability of provision is zero in any equilibrium. The mechanism effectively auctions (...) off the ‘right’ to be the last one to contribute, but intuition suggests that neither player wishes to be the last one to contribute. Since the player who contributes first has the advantage of being able to free ride on the contributions of the other players, no player wants to ‘win’ the auction. (shrink)

As an important way to understand leadership based on voluntary contribution mechanisms, the importance of leading by example to teamwork is becoming more and more evident in recent years. However, existing theories based on signaling and reciprocity perspectives respectively provide incomplete theoretical explaining. This study adds clarity by conducting a cross-level study that indicates a possible integrative framework of both signaling and reciprocity perspective on leading by example. Results were using data gathered from 130 Chinese college students, which were (...) allocated into one baseline group and three experimental groups. A hierarchical model was used to examine the effects of leading by example on different levels. It is found that leading by example has positive effects on the cooperation of followers on both the group level and the individual level. Risk attitudes and trust attitudes have positive effects on the cooperation of followers while Machiavellianism has no significant effects. Our findings suggest that both leading by example and personal traits significantly influence cooperation but on different levels. It also reminds us that a more systematic way to understand leadership is needed. (shrink)

If we hope to see values of equality and democracy embodied in our societies’ institutions, then we have a range of good reasons to favor expansive public provision of goods and services, and to oppose many forms of privatization. While Joseph Heath is right to argue that there are at least some forms of ‘anodyne privatization’, and while he is also right to argue for a more nuanced philosophical debate about the different dimensions of choice between forms (...) of public and private provision, Heath fails to register various regards in which private provision can undermine these central public values. We often have strong egalitarian and democratic reasons to protect zones of decommodification; to resist the imposition of user-charges; and to favor insourcing and direct public procurement over various forms of outsourcing of public services. Public libraries provide a totemic illustration of some of the deep virtues of collective public provision in democratic societies. Overall, our reasons to reject privatization are stronger and more diverse than theorists such as Heath might have supposed. (shrink)

In this essay, we respond to Angelo Corlett’s criticism of our paper ‘Ethics, Brain Injuries, and Sports: Prohibition, Reform, and Prudence’. To do so, first, we revisit certain assumptions and arg...

In the past, for universities, the suggestion that they rather than other, commercial, actors should seek to control and profit from the results of research was hardly entertained at all, not least as in many cases these institutions jealously guarded their relative unconnectedness from the market.However, two political economic shifts have transformed this situation and the previous benign neglect of intellectual property in universities is unlikely to continue. On the commercial side, the increased share of value-added in many products has (...) focussed corporate managers on the issue of the ownership and exploitation of knowledge and information.On the other side, universities have themselves have been suffering varying, and in some cases quite extensive, pressure as regards their publicly funded budgets. Thus, in many developed and developing countries, encouraged by their own governments, and in the case of developing countries by international financial institutions, many universities have started to examine new ways of capitalising on their activities through market activities. This has led to many universities finding themselves torn between a norm of scientific community and the requirements to utilise their research-related resources as sources of income.This article explores this issues and concludes that the university’s most obvious competitive advantage is in the provision of publicly available knowledge and research; to become too like the corporate sector is to invite conversion into commercial actors. We already have quite enough commercial actors in the global information society; our attention must be focussed on maintaining and even expanding the realm of the public research institution by building on the many centuries of success universities have enjoyed in providing social goods. (shrink)

Safeguarding public interest was vital to early modern state legitimacy in Western Europe and East Asia. Wenkai He identifies similar patterns in state-society interactions surrounding public goods provision and explores how conflicts over public interest led to calls for fundamental political change and to modern representative politics.

Which goods should we be able to buy and sell on the market and, alternatively, which goods should remain sheltered from the market? For many goods in modern societies, this has proven to be a thorny question. Moreover, it is a question that cannot be answered by way of a theoretical shortcut, that is, by attributing certain general values (or disvalues) to the market and inferring from these general attributes that the market is (or isn’t) the best institution to govern (...) the provision of a specific good. Therefore, in the first part of this work, three theoretical building blocks are proposed to frame the way we should handle the market question. First, a social theory is formulated which treats the market as one out of five main socio-economic modes of provision, the others being public provision, professional provision, informal provision and self-provision. Second, in choosing the best institutional framework for a specific good, it is argued that we should not restrict ourselves to the option of implementing one of these modes of provision only. Special attention should be paid to the option of ‘institutional pluralism’, i.e. instituting a market and a non-market alternative simultaneously for the same good. Both the attractions and the limits of such an institutional pluralism are discussed. Third, in making institutional choices about these modes of provision, we need a normative theory providing the moral criteria to guide our choices. Here a capability theory is proposed, which consists of three central principles, parallel to a distinction between three types of capabilities: those that are ‘immoral’, those that are ‘morally required’ and those that are merely ‘morally permissible’. The principles prescribe avoiding the realization of the immoral capabilities and promoting the realization of morally required and permissible capabilities. In the second part, this threefold framework is applied to three specific goods. These are security (protection against criminal threats), media (mass communication by media such as television, radio and the press) and care (caring activities provided on a structural basis to dependents such as care for children, chronically ill and elderly people). For each of these goods a capability analysis shows that the most appropriate institutional framework is institutional pluralism. In the case of security this is a pluralism of market and public provision, in the case of media a pluralism of market and professional provision and in the case of care a pluralism of market and informal provision. In the final chapter I investigate the conditions that have to be fulfilled for these institutionally pluralist arrangements to be stable, that is, to have a robust chance of survival. The main challenge to stability comes from the dynamic toward capital accumulation that is inherent in contemporary capitalism, and if left unchecked requires an ongoing conversion of non-market practices into markets. Two solutions are proposed to counter this threat: a general working time reduction which reduces capital accumulation and a strategy of publicly funded investment of accumulated capital in non-market parts of institutionally pluralist practices. (shrink)

Publics are key stakeholders in population genomic screening and their perspectives on ethical considerations are relevant to programme design and policy making. Using semi-structured interviews, we explored social views and attitudes towards possible future provision of personalised genomic risk information to populations to inform prevention and/or early detection of relevant conditions. Participants were members of the public who had received information on their personal genomic risk of melanoma as part of a research project. The focus of the analysis (...) presented here is participants’ views regarding ethical considerations relevant to population genomic screening more generally. Data were analysed thematically and four key themes related to ethical considerations were identified: personal responsibility for health: ‘forewarned is forearmed’; perceptions of, and responses to, genetic fatalism; implications for parenting and reproduction; divided views on choosing to receive genomic risk information. Ethical considerations underlying these themes include the valorisation of information and choice, paternalism, non-directiveness and increasing responsibilisation of individuals in health and healthcare. These findings arguably indicate a thin public conceptualisation of population genomic testing, which draws heavily on how these themes tend to be described in existing social discourses. Findings suggest that further public engagement is required to increase complexity of debate, to consider the appropriate place of individual and social interests in population genomic testing. Further discernment of relevant ethical approaches, drawing on ethical frameworks from both public health and clinical settings, will also assist in determining the appropriate implementation of population genomic screening for complex conditions. (shrink)

Dialectic IV convenes contributions with new takes on the long held proposition that architects are providers of design services. They service everyone from the status quo all the way to the subaltern. We know well how architects have historically fashioned themselves to be able to procure the most valued building commissions a people have to offer. There are temples, churches, and shrines, palaces and private villas, and surely monuments, state institutions, and corporate headquarters. But how have the members of the (...) same profession managed to fashion themselves as the custodians of the public good? (shrink)

A key question in the theory of migration and in public debates on immigration policies is when migration can be said to be voluntary and when, conversely, it should be seen as nonvoluntary. In a previous article, we tried to answer this crucial question by providing a list of conditions we view as sufficient for migration to be considered nonvoluntary. According to our account, one condition that makes migration nonvoluntary is when people migrate because they lack acceptable alternatives (...) to doing so. In this article, we take the opportunity to further explore and clarify this crucial condition. More specifically, we focus on two main sets of questions. First, we ask whether migration is always voluntary when it serves goals that are voluntarily chosen, and whether those who decide to migrate voluntarily but only have the option of choosing among a limited set of dangerous, harmful, or illegal means for doing so, can be said to be forced to choose those means. Second, we ask whether what counts as “nonacceptable” alternatives should also include cases in which people could have their needs and fundamental rights met, but at the cost of betraying their moral principles or conceptions of the good. (shrink)

Problems of cooperation have often been simplified as the choice between defection and cooperation, although in many empirical situations it is also possible to walk away from the interaction. We present the results of two lab-in-the-field experiments with a diverse pool of subjects who play optional and compulsory public goods games both with and without punishment. We find that the most important institution to foster cooperation is punishment, which is more effective in a compulsory game. In contrast to Rand (...) and Nowak (Nat Commun 2(1):1–7, 2011), we find that loners are not responsible for anti-social punishment, which is mostly imputable to low-contributors (free-riders). Loners neither totally free-ride nor they significantly punish cooperators (or other types of players): they simply avoid all forms of participation whenever possible. (shrink)

The Landless Workers’ Movement has been the principal protagonist developing an alternative educational proposal for rural public schools in Brazil. This article analyzes the MST’s differential success implementing this proposal in municipal and state public schools. The process is both participatory—activists working with government officials to implement MST goals—and contentious—the movement mobilizing support for its education initiatives through various forms of protest. In some locations, the MST has succeeded in institutionalizing a participatory relationship with government actors, while in (...) other regions the MST has a more limited presence in the schools or has been completely banned from participating. Drawing on the concept of coproduction—the active participation of civil society actors in the provision of public goods—the author argues that coproduction is a joint product of high levels of social mobilization and government orientation. The former is necessary in all cases, while the latter can take the form of either a left-leaning or clientelistic government. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, we explore the debate on corporate citizenship and the role of business in global governance. In the debate on political corporate social responsibility it is assumed that under globalization business is taking up a greater political role. Apart from economic responsibilities firms assume political responsibilities taking up traditional governmental tasks such as regulation of business and provision of public goods. We contrast this with a subsidiarity-based approach to governance, in which firms are seen as intermediate (...) actors who have political co-responsibilities in society endowed upon them by national governmental institutions. We argue that both approaches face conceptual and empirical problems, and do not make clear the content and scope of political corporate responsibility. Based on Iris Marion Young’s account of political responsibility we argue that corporate actors and governmental actors have a shared responsibility to tackle societal problems. Taking political corporate responsibility not only entails engaging in private action or engaging in public–private partnerships, but it also includes aiding governmental actors to remedy injustice or even create public institutions where they do not yet exist. By adding this perspective we contribute to the debate on responsibility in corporate citizenship and clarify the political role business can play in global governance. (shrink)

By examining the global public good nature of pandemic preparedness we can identify key social justice issues that need to be confronted to increase citizens’ voluntary compliance with prevention and mitigation measures. As people tend to cooperate on a voluntary basis only with systems they consider fair, it becomes difficult to ensure compliance with public health measures in a context of extreme inequality. Among the major inequalities that need to be addressed we can find major (...) differences in the extensiveness and intensiveness of quarantine experiences, lack of opportunities to participate in common efforts, hardship in complying with disease control recommendations, and an unfair distribution of the cooperative surplus. (shrink)

Mandatory vaccination, including for COVID-19, can be ethically justified if the threat to public health is grave, the confidence in safety and effectiveness is high, the expected utility of mandatory vaccination is greater than the alternatives, and the penalties or costs for non-compliance are proportionate. I describe an algorithm for justified mandatory vaccination. Penalties or costs could include withholding of benefits, imposition of fines, provision of community service or loss of freedoms. I argue that under conditions of risk (...) or perceived risk of a novel vaccination, a system of payment for risk in vaccination may be superior. I defend a payment model against various objections, including that it constitutes coercion and undermines solidarity. I argue that payment can be in cash or in kind, and opportunity for altruistic vaccinations can be preserved by offering people who have been vaccinated the opportunity to donate any cash payment back to the health service. (shrink)

This article compares two transnational public–private partnerships against hunger and malnutrition, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and the International Alliance Against Hunger with regard to their degree of business involvement and their input and output legimacy. We examine the participation of stakeholders, the accountability and transparency of the decision-making process, and the perceived provision of a public good. We identify a link between business involvement and output legitimacy, and we discuss the implications for public (...) and private food governance. (shrink)

Nearly 400 million adults have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Children have been excluded from the vaccination programmes owing to their lower vulnerability to COVID-19 and to the special protections that apply to children’s exposure to new biological products. WHO guidelines and national laws focus on medical safety in the process of vaccine approval, and on national security in the process of emergency authorisation. Because children suffer much from social distancing, it is argued that the harms from containment measures should be (...) factored in a broader perspective on the good of the child. Considering the available knowledge on the disease, vaccine, and coping strategies, the decision about vaccine access to children is a public responsibility. The ultimate choice is a matter of paediatric informed consent. Moreover, jurisdictions that permit non-participation in established childhood vaccination programmes should also permit choice of vaccines outside of the approved programmes. Even if vaccine supply is too short to cover the paediatric population, the a priori exclusion of children is unjust. It may also exacerbate local and global inequalities. The second part of the paper delineates a prudent and ethical scheme for gradual incorporation of minors in vaccination programmes that includes a rigorous postvaccination monitoring. This is a theoretical paper in ethics that uses the Pfizer vaccine as a stock example, without discussing possible differences among existing vaccines. The key purpose is reflection on the good of the child in emergencies and vaccine policymaking. All data relevant to the study are included in the article and in its refernces. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Anthony de Jasay's "anarcho-liberalism" as based oon his game-theoretic approach to the problem of public goods provision.

The Privatisation of Public Services : a Privatisation of Democracy ? The article argues that the role of public services goes beyond the provision of « public goods », insofar as they provide « social goods » which form the necessary conditions for the exercise of citizenship, in its political, social and economic dimensions. The article shows that the arguments put forward in support of privatisation are in fact specious, and have been refuted by what has (...) emerged in the wake of privatisation : in essence, a privatisation of democracy, insofar as universal democracy has given way to a consumer vote conditional on a property qualification, a process carried out in dutiful subservience to the interests of financial capitalism. (shrink)

This article explores the development of professional training for youth leaders (now, youth workers) in England and Wales between 1939 and 1945. The article identifies the state's construction of young people as a problematic social category at a time of national crisis and its mobilization of youth leadership as part of the war effort. The Board of Education supported, sometimes tacitly, the development of courses in some universities and voluntary organizations for youth leaders. By 1942 full-time courses of training (...) existed at five universities and university colleges and one voluntary organization and were recognized by the Board under Circular 1598. This article explores tensions between the discourse of voluntarism, in which youth leadership had traditionally been set, and the newly developing discourse of professionalism. The article suggests that these discourses are fundamentally ethical and tensions lay in contested definitions of the ?good youth leader?. Little consensus existed on what counted as the good leader, animating a conflict between voluntarism and state provision. The article concludes by drawing distinctions and continuities between the war years and the present day. (shrink)

How did bioethics manage to grow, flourish and ultimately do so well from a very unpromising birth in the 1970s? Many explanations have been advanced. Some ascribe the field9s growth to a puzzling, voluntary abnegation of moral authority by medicine to non-physicians. Some think bioethics survived by selling out to the biomedical establishment—public and private. This transaction involved bestowing moral approbation on all manner of biomedicine9s doings for a seat at a well-stocked funding table. Some see a sort (...) of clever intellectual bamboozlement at work wherein bioethicists pitched a moral elixir of objective expertise that the morally needy but unsophisticated in medicine and the biological sciences were eager to swallow. While each of these reasons has its defenders, I think the main reason that bioethics did well was that it did good. By using the media to move into the public arena, the field engaged the public imagination, provoked dialogue and debate, and contributed to policy changes that benefitted patients and healthcare providers. (shrink)

Health checks identify disease in people without symptoms. They may be offered by the government through population screenings and by other providers to individual users as ‘personal health checks’. Health check providers’ perspective of ‘good’ health checks may further the debate on the ethical evaluation and possible regulation of these personal health checks. In 2015, we interviewed twenty Dutch health check providers on criteria for ‘good’ health checks, and the role these criteria play in their practices. Providers unanimously (...) formulate a number of minimal criteria: Checks must focus on treatable/preventable disease; Tests must be reliable and clinically valid; Participation must be informed and voluntary; Checks should provide more benefits than harms; Governmental screenings should be cost-effective. Aspirational criteria mentioned were: Follow-up care should be provided; Providers should be skilled and experienced professionals that put the benefit of users first; Providers should take time and attention. Some criteria were contested: People should be free to test on any disease; Health checks should only be performed in people at high risk for disease that are likely to implement health advice; Follow up care of privately funded tests should not drain on collective resources. Providers do not always fulfil their own criteria. Their reasons reveal conflicts between criteria, conflicts between criteria and other ethical values, and point to components in the organisation of health care that hinder an ethical provision of health checks. Moreover, providers consider informed consent a criterion that is hard to establish in practice. According to providers, personal health checks should meet the same criteria as population screenings, with the exception of cost-effectiveness. Providers do not always fulfil their own criteria. Results indicate that in thinking about the ethics of health checks potential conflicts between criteria and underlying values should be explicated, guidance in weighing of criteria should be provided and the larger context should be taken into account: other actors than providers need to take up responsibility, and ideally benefits and harms of health checks should be weighed against other measures targeting disease. (shrink)