Justice and the Welfare State: A Non-Ideal Comparative Approach

FAIN: HB-50065-11

Daniel Albert Engster
University Of Houston (San Antonio, TX 78249-1644)

Most philosophical accounts of welfare state justice are highly abstract and idealized. As a result, they often fail to yield clear and useful guidance for policy-makers and citizens concerned with supporting just welfare state policies in the real, non-ideal world. My project develops a non-ideal, comparative approach to welfare state justice that offers clear and concrete guidance on the best welfare policies for promoting human well-being. I first outline a normative account of the specific goals that welfare states should aim to achieve given human vulnerabilities and recent shifts in family life, work, and ageing. I then draw on empirical data from 20 or so Western industrialized countries to identify the welfare state policies that best promote these normative goals in the areas of child well-being, education, health care, and old age and disability support. The ultimate result will be a book that outlines a clearer and more useful theory of welfare state justice.

Associated Products

Justice, Care, and the Welfare State (Book)
Title: Justice, Care, and the Welfare State
Author: Daniel Engster
Abstract: Due to changes in the nature of the family, economy, and society, Western welfare states are in a period of significant transition. While welfare state reform clearly raises important questions about social justice, political philosophers have been slow to address it. Justice, Care, and the Welfare State brings normative political philosophy directly to bear on public policy questions in order to outline a theory of welfare state justice. It address some of the most important social and political questions today, including: What role should welfare states play in post-industrial societies? What policies deserve public support and how should they be organized? Grounding his argument in existing facts about post-industrial societies, Daniel Engster offers detailed arguments about the nature of just policy arrangements in the areas of family policy, education, health care, old age pensions and long-term care, disability support and personal assistance, and unemployment and poverty. Highlighting the special relevance of care ethics in addressing many of the new social risks, Engster uses a public ethics of care to generate a policy-oriented theory of justice for the reform of contemporary welfare states. This book will be of interest to welfare state scholars, public policy analysts, care theorists, political philosophers, and anyone interested in better understanding the policy reforms necessary for achieving justice in contemporary post-industrial societies.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://http://www.worldcat.org/title/justice-care-and-the-welfare-state/oclc/907660938&referer=brief_results
Publisher: New York: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780198719564
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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