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Is political equality viable when a capitalist economy unequally distributes private property? This book examines the nexus between wealth and politics and asks how institutions and citizens should respond to it.
List of contents
1. Introduction: The Wealth-Power Nexus
Michael Bennett, Huub Brouwer & Rutger ClaassenPart I: Theoretical Orientations2. What about Ethos? Republican Institutions, Oligarchic Democracy and Norms of Political Equality
Jessica Kimpell Johnson3. Two Liberal Egalitarian Perspectives on Wealth and Power
Richard Arneson4. Public Choice and Political Equality
Brian Kogelmann5. Private Wealth and Political Domination: A Marxian Approach
Igor Shoikhedbrod6. Anarchism and Redistribution
Jessica FlaniganPart II: Power in the Economic Sphere7. Why Does Worker Participation Matter? Three Considerations in Favour of Worker Participation in Corporate Governance
Thomas Christiano 8. Taming the Corporate Leviathan: How to Properly Politicise Corporate Purpose?
Michael Bennett and Rutger Claassen9. The Power of Big Tech Corporations as Modern Bigness and a Vocabulary for Shaping Competition Law as Counter-power
Anna Gerbrandy & Pauline Phoa10. Economic Power and Democratic Forbearance: The Case of Corporate Social Responsibility and Philanthropy
Emma Saunders-Hastings11. Independence in the Commons: How Group Ownership Realises Basic Non-Domination
Yara Al SalmanPart III. Wealth and Democratic Institutions12. Hidden in Plain Sight: How Lobby Organisations Undermine Democracy
Phil Parvin13. No Money, No Party: The Role of Political Parties in Electoral Campaigns
Chiara Destri14. Constitutions against Oligarchy
Elliot Bulmer & Stuart White15. Automation, Desert, and the Case for Capital Grants
Huub Brouwer16. The Power of Private Creditors and the Need for Reform of the International Financial Architecture
Anahí Wiedenbrüg & Patricio López Turconi
About the author
Michael Bennett is a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University, where he is working on how to render business corporations more politically accountable. All of his academic work has been related in one way or another to the relationship between democracy and capitalism. He wrote his PhD thesis in 2017 on 'Democracy and its relationship with the market: Impartial instrumentalism in politics and constitutional design', and aspects of this research have been published in the journal
Critical Review.
Huub Brouwer is a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University, where he is working on whether political institutions can still function legitimately in the presence of unjust individual wealth distributions. With a background in economics, he works at the intersection of economics and political philosophy, and was the editor of the
Erasmus Journal of Philosophy and Economics in 2018-2019. He obtained his PhD, on desert and justice, from Tilburg University in January 2020, and has published in journals such as the
Journal of Moral Philosophy,
Philosophical Studies and
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. He has been a visiting researcher at Oxford University, Pompeu Fabra University, and Yale University.
Rutger Claassen is Professor of Political Philosophy and Economic Ethics at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of Utrecht University. Rutger is an internationally respected research leader in this field. He is currently the principal investigator of the research project 'Private Property & Political Power in Liberal-Democratic Societies', and from summer 2020, he will be the principal investigator of the project 'The Business Corporation as a Political Actor, funded by the European Research Council' (ERC-Consolidator Grant). He has published extensively on the moral value of economic institutions such as markets, property, and corporations in journals such as
Economics & Philosophy,
Inquiry,
Law & Philosophy, the
Journal of Social Philosophy, and
Politics, Philosophy & Economics. Rutger is the author of
Capabilities in a Just Society: A Theory of Navigational Agency (2018). He is the founding Program Director of the BA-program in Philosophy, Politics & Economics (PPE) at Utrecht University.
Summary
Is political equality viable when a capitalist economy unequally distributes private property? This book examines the nexus between wealth and politics and asks how institutions and citizens should respond to it.
