James R. Heichelbech
University of Colorado at Denver, Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
INTRODUCTION
John Rawls was the most significant political philosopher in the United States during the 20th century. His work revitalized discussions of social equity in public admin-istration and provided a focal point for critical reflection about social institutions. Publishing in over a hundred articles and books between 1950 and 2002, Rawls presented most of his ideas in three books: A Theory of Justice,[1]Political Liberalism,[2]and Justice as Fairness:
A Restatement.[3] The following includes a summary of the development of the theory of justice within these three books, a discussion of its significance for public administration and public policy, and a summary of criticisms.
A THEORY OF JUSTICE
A Theory of Justiceis presented in three parts dealing with Theory, Institutions, and Ends. The first of these is undoubtedly the most important, as it presents the very idea of justice as fairness. Parts two and three concern the application of principles of justice and the relationship between these principles and the good (following the Kantian tradition of distinguishing the ‘‘right,’’ which concerns minimally necessary moral requirements, and the ‘‘good,’’ which concerns maximum positive happi-ness. Rawls explains the theory by clarifying the subject of justice, offering two principles of justice, and then presenting an argument for those principles from an original positionbehind a veil of ignorance.
The subject of justice, he says, concerns the basic structure of society—the way that social institutions distribute rights and duties resulting in division of advantages gained from social cooperation. The primary role of justice is to provide a standard for assessing the distributive aspects of the basic structure of society. Such principles are those that ‘‘free and rational persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamental terms of their association.’’ Justice as fairness views principles of justice as the basis for determining which kinds of social cooperation and forms of government are acceptable.[1]
Rawls defines the basic structure of society as ‘‘the arrangement of major social institutions into one scheme of cooperation,’’ where an institution is understood as ‘‘a public system of rules which defines offices and positions with their rights and duties, powers and immunities, and the like,’’ and says that, ideally, ‘‘the rules should be set up so that men are led by their predominant interests to act in ways which further socially desirable ends.’’ To that end, Rawls offers two principles: ‘‘Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others,’’ and ‘‘Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both 1) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and 2) attached to positions and offices open to all.’’[1]
An important feature of these principles concerns equality of opportunity. ‘‘The natural distribution,’’ he says, ‘‘is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position.
These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with those facts.’’ Accord-ingly, he suggests that a liberal interpretation of these two principles ‘‘mitigate the influence of social contingencies and natural fortune on distributive shares,’’ by requiring, for example, that ‘‘free market arrangements . . . be set within a framework of political legal institutions which regulate the overall trends of economic events, and preserves the social conditions necessary for fair equality of opportunity.’’[1]
The Original Position
The argument for these two principles uses the idea of the original position, a perspective from which we can devise a ‘‘fair procedure guaranteeing that any principle agreed to will be just.’’ As a preliminary step, Rawls lays out the formal constraints of the concept of right: ‘‘Principles should be general. . .It must be possible to formulate them in such a way that they are not tied to particulars. . . Principles are to be universal in application. . .The parties assume that they are choosing principles for a public conception of justice. . .[and] a conception of right must impose an ordering on conflicting claims.’’[1]
The appropriate position from which to arrive at principles within such constraints is that situated behind a
Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy DOI: 10.1081/E-EPAP 120024735 Copyright D 2004 by Marcel Dekker, Inc. All rights reserved.
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veil of ignorance. Although persons in the original position are rational, which means that ‘‘in choosing between principles each tries as best he can to advance his interests,’’ those behind the veil of ignorance do not know how their choice will affect their particular case and they are obliged to evaluate principles solely on the basis of general considerations. In other words, ‘‘while they know that they have some rational plan of life, they do not know the details of this plan, the particular ends and interests which is calculated to promote.’’[1]
This strategy for devising principles of justice reflects the deontological character of the theory. Rawls tells us that his aim is ‘‘to work out a theory of justice that represents an alternative to utilitarian thought generally,’’
which he describes as the idea that ‘‘society is rightly ordered, and therefore just, when its major institutions are arranged so as to achieve the greatest net balance of satisfaction summed over all the individuals belonging to it.’’ The primary difference between a theory of justice as fairness and utilitarianism, according to Rawls, is that
‘‘utilitarianism is a teleological theory whereas justice as fairness is not.’’ It follows, then, that justice as fairness
‘‘is a deontological theory, one that either does not specify the good independently from the right, or does not interpret the right as maximizing the good.’’ Priority of the right over the good is an important deontological feature of justice as fairness, for it restricts the basic structure of society in ways that a utilitarian account could not. Whereas any and every desire has some value from a utilitarian perspective, those in the original position agree
‘‘to conform their conceptions of their good to what the principles of justice require.’’ In other words, principles of justice, as principles of right, allow us to distinguish satisfactions that have value from those that do not and thereby define a reasonable conception of one’s good.[4]
Political Liberalism
Political Liberalism is also presented in three parts, Fundamental Ideas, Three Main Ideas, and Institutional Framework. And again, the first part is critical for understanding the development of Rawls’s position. Here Rawls attempts to show how it is possible that ‘‘there may exist over time a stable and just society of free and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable though incom-patible religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines,’’ and how ‘‘deeply opposed though reasonable comprehensive doctrines may live together and all affirm the political conception of a constitutional regime.’’ In other words, Rawls hopes to ‘‘work out a conception of political justice for a constitutional democratic regime that the plurality of reasonable doctrines. . . might endorse.’’[2]
One of the primary tasks is to clarify justice as fairness as a political conception. Given the fact of reasonable
pluralism, that a ‘‘diversity of reasonable comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines found in modern democratic societies. . .is a permanent feature of the public culture of democracy,’’ justice as fairness is presented as ‘‘a conception of justice that may be shared by citizens as a basis of a reasoned, informed, and willing political agreement.’’ Such a conception, he says, should remain ‘‘independent of the opposing and conflicting philosophical and religious doctrines that citizens affirm’’
so that we ‘‘gain the support of an overlapping consensus of reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doc-trines.’’[2]
Rawls explains that a political conception of justice has three characteristic features. First, it is a moral conception to the extent that it is worked out for political, social, and economic institutions. Second, it is a ‘‘freestanding view,’’ which means that it is distinguishable from any comprehensive doctrine that it might be part of or derived from. Third, it is expressed in terms of ideas that are implicit in the public political culture of a democratic society.[2]
Although the remainder of Political Liberalism cer-tainly provides important details, most of the discussion serves to clarify concerns related to this political conception of justice. However, it is worth noting the three main ideas of political liberalism described in the second part. The first is the idea of an ‘‘overlapping consensus,’’ in which ‘‘the reasonable doctrines endorse the political conception, each from its own point of view.’’ The second is the priority of the right, which means that a political conception of justice limits conceptions of the good. And the third is the idea of public reason. Rawls explains that public reason is public in three ways: as the reason of citizens, its subject is the good of the public and fundamental justice, and its content is public.[2]
Justice as Fairness: A Restatement
Here Rawls revises the two principles of justice. Second, he reorganizes the argument for those principles. Finally, he revises his understanding of justice as fairness, now understood ‘‘as a political conception of justice rather than as part of a comprehensive moral doctrine.’’[3]
While Rawls has quite a bit to say about his revised principles, there are no radical changes and the arguments for them are more of an adjustment than a departure from the original formulation. The revised principles are: ‘‘1) Each person has the indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all. 2) Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and
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second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (the difference princi-ple).’’[3]
On the other hand, while the explanation of justice as fairness as a political conception is similar to what Rawls presented in Political Liberalism, he provides additional clarification of the idea of free and equal persons within such a conception. ‘‘Justice as fairness,’’ he says,
‘‘regards citizens engaged in social cooperation, and hence as fully capable of doing so, and this over a complete life.’’ Accordingly, persons are assumed to have two moral powers, the capacity for a sense of justice and a capacity for a conception of the good. He describes a conception of the good as ‘‘an ordered family of final ends and aims which specifies a person’s conception of what is of value in human life or, alternatively, of what is regarded as a fully worthwhile life.’’ Such persons are equal in having these two moral powers and are free both because they ‘‘conceive of themselves and of one another as having the moral power to have a conception of the good,’’ and because they ‘‘regard themselves as being entitled to make claims on their institutions so as to advance their conceptions of the good.’’[3]
RAWLS AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Rawls’s work had and continues to have a profound impact on the normative dimensions of public adminis-tration and public policy. According to Terry Cooper, the publication of A Theory of Justice coincided with the development of administrative ethics as a field of study, especially significant with respect to social equity as an important part of the New Public Administration emerg-ing in the late 1960s. In particular, he says, two essays contributed directly to administrative ethics as a field of study: ‘‘Social Equity and Organizational Man: Motiva-tion and OrganizaMotiva-tional Democracy’’ by Michael Harmon and ‘‘Social Equity, Justice, and the Equitable Adminis-trator’’ by David K. Hart.[4,5] Both focused on the Rawlsian conception of social equity as applicable to public administration, ‘‘thus providing evidence of the practical significance of administrative ethics and build-ing confidence in the possibility of developbuild-ing it as a field of study.’’[6]
In practical terms, two aspects of the Rawlsian perspective have been important within discussions of ethical public institutions. First, the requirement of impartiality, which is implicit within the very idea of neutral competence or merit system, gained theoretical grounding as an axiom of ethical decision making in the public sector. Second, the Rawlsian conception of political justice required attention to distributive inequi-ties and helped articulate the basis for various policy
initiatives, such as affirmative action. In other words, Rawls provided a practically useful argument for demanding equity both in decision-making processes and in determining who should benefit from them.
CRITICISMS OF RAWLS
The primary sources of criticism have come from communitarian and feminist perspectives. Stephen Mul-hall and Adam Swift present a concise summary of various communitarian criticisms of Rawls offered by such theorists as Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer, and Alasdair MacIntyre, who argue that the liberal emphasis on the individual implies a ‘‘neglect of the formative significance of their social context and the moral significance of relations between them.’’[7]Mulhall and Swift identify four types of criticisms along these lines. First, the Rawlsian conception of the person requires a radical detachment from one’s nature and ends that is psychologically impossible and deprives one of resources needed to reason about social justice. Second, this asocial individualism neglects the extent to which the societies in which people live shape who they are and what values they have. Third, while Rawls requires the theory to be universally applied, it cannot take into account the different ways in which different cultures embody values and practices. Finally, while Rawls emphasizes the neutrality of the theory with respect to comprehensive doctrines, he ‘‘smuggles’’ in particular ideas of the good life for human beings.
Feminist criticisms of Rawls are of two sorts. One is a methodological concern about the legitimacy of the detached perspective of the original position. Another deals with concerns about the application of principles of justice to particular institutions, such as family.
Just as communitarian criticisms focus on the cultur-ally nonneutral conception of rationality reflected in the original position, feminists point out that the original position reflects a gendered conception of rationality. For example, Carol Gilligan’s account of differences in moral reasoning between boys and girls helped clarify the ways in which abstract, detached, and rule-oriented conceptions of moral reasoning can be considered gender-specific.
‘‘Listening to people talking about morality and about themselves,’’ Gilligan ‘‘began to hear a distinction in these voices, two ways of speaking about moral problems, two modes of describing the relationship between other and self.’’ She distinguishes these two voices in terms of a contrast between an ethic of justice and an ethic of care—
‘‘the logic underlying an ethic of care is a psychological logic of relationships, which contrasts with the formal logic of fairness that informs the justice approach.’’ The ethic of care ‘‘evolves around a central insight, that self
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and other are interdependent’’ and ‘‘a consciousness of the dynamics of human relationships then becomes central to moral understanding.’’[8]
These insights have been developed further in various ways. Martha Nussbaum provides a succinct overview of a rather diverse set of criticisms. For example, some argue that because ‘‘rationality of the parties in the original position is described as self-interested prudential ratio-nality,’’ and ‘‘the parties are characterized as mutually disinterested, unaware of strong ties to others,’’ it discounts emotionally grounded approaches to moral reasoning and favors an egoistic conception of human beings. Those influenced by the work of Jurgen Habermas also question the ‘‘monological’’ nature of the original position in which ‘‘the parties are imagined as basically all alike, and as reasoning on their own, rather than exchanging claims and counterclaims in a dialogue in which different perspectives can be presented and investigated.’’[9]
In contrast to the methodological concern about how the principles of justice are chosen, feminists have also questioned the limited application of those principles of justice.
In Justice, Gender, and the Family, Susan Moller Okin suggests that Rawls’s assumption that those in the original position are heads of families ‘‘is far from being neutral or innocent,’’ for it ‘‘has the effect of banishing a large sphere of human life and a particularly large sphere of most women’s lives from the scope of the theory.’’[10]
Although Rawls assumes that individuals have a sense of justice, he does not explain his assumption that family institutions are just. Still, Okin acknowledges that if we assume that those behind the veil of ignorance do no know their sex, there is implicit in Rawls’s theory a potential critique of social institutions with respect to gender.[10]
CONCLUSION
Although Rawls has acknowledged that principles of justice have some application to social institutions, such as family, his responses to both communitarian and feminist criticisms tend to reemphasize the importance of
a political conception of justice derived apart from more comprehensive conceptions. And it is worth noting that he consistently offers his account as merely part of a more complete story about social institutions. From the perspective of public administration and public policy, this resonates with the treatment of social equity as merely part of what we need to consider when we think about ethical public institutions. However, he argues that justice as fairness is implicit within a commitment to democratic institutions, and therefore the relative priority of social equity reflects the relative priority of democracy itself.
REFERENCES
1. Rawls, J. A Theory of Justice; The Belknap Press:
Cambridge, MA, 1971; pp. 7–11, 30–31, 55–60, 73, 102, 130–136, 141–142.
2. Rawls, J. Political Liberalism; Columbia University Press:
New York, 1993; pp. xviii–xx, 9–13, 36, 134, 174, 213.
3. Rawls, J. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement; The Belknap Press: Cambridge, MA, 2001; pp. xv–xvi, 18–34, 42–43.
4. Harmon, M. Social Equity and Organizational Man:
Motivation and Organizational Democracy; Frederickson, H.G., Ed.; Public Administration Review Symposium on Social Equity and Public Administration, 1974; Vol. 34, 11 – 18.
5. Hart, D.K. Social Equity, Justice, and the Equitable Administrator; Frederickson, H.G., Ed.; Public Adminis-tration Review Symposium on Social Equity and Public Administration, 1974; Vol. 34, 3 – 11.
6. Cooper, T. The Emergence of Administrative Ethics as a Field of Study in the United States. In Handbook of Administrative Ethics, 2nd Ed.; Cooper, T., Ed.; Marcel Dekker: New York, 2001; 11 – 12.
7. Mulhall, S.; Swift, A. Rawls and Communitarianism. In The Cambridge Companion to Rawls; Freeman, S., Ed.;
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2003; 460.
8. Gilligan, C. In a Different Voice; Harvard University Press:
Cambridge, 1982; pp. 73–74, 149.
9. Nussbaum, M. Rawls and Feminism. In The Cambridge Companion to Rawls; Freeman, S., Ed.; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2003; 488 – 520.
10. Okin, S. Justice, Gender and the Family; HarperCollins:
U.S., 1989; 95 – 105.
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