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This chapter considers some of the confusions in the literature over the different terminologies used to describe various kinds of government paternalism, including legal paternalism, soft and hard paternalism, and means- and ends-related paternalism. More specifically, it discusses paternalistic interventions whose intention is to replace the individual's judgment because the government does not approve of the individual's ends—the aims or outcomes that he/she seeks to achieve. It also examines paternalistic interventions that arise because the government perceives problems with the judgment that the individual has made concerning the means that are appropriate for achieving those ends. The chapter concludes by describing the relationship between ends-related paternalism and perfectionism, Ronald Dworkin's understanding of “volitional” and “critical” forms of paternalism as they relate to the means-ends distinction, and moral paternalism and legal moralism.

This chapter discusses the upper and lower South's respective answers to the slavery question, which lay in different ways of reconfiguring the institution. In the upper South, that reconfiguration was a demographic one. The idea of a demographic reconfiguration of slavery emphasized the gradual whitening of the region and depended heavily on continued lower South demand for slaves and an active internal slave trade. The lower South's reconfiguration was ideological in nature, and it revolved around the embrace of race as the chief justification for slavery, the acceptance of white egalitarianism as the ethos of the region's political culture, and the triumph of paternalism as the lower South's prevailing ideology of slaveholding.

Cases illustrating variables relevant to decisions involving teenage pregnancy and motherhood, confidentiality, female genital surgery, and eating disorders are presented. For each topic, empirical and theoretical factors relevant to the cases are discussed from an egalitarian perspective that addresses the nondominance of minors as well as their capacity for moral agency. A conception of parentalism as an antidote to paternalism and maternalism is proposed.

Discusses the relationship between the exercise and development of autonomy and analyses their implications for liberalism and liberal education. Section 2.1 proves that since the liberal state values adults’ exercise of autonomy, it must also value children's development of autonomy. Section 2.2 argues that state paternalism towards children, in particular, state efforts to help children develop the capacity for autonomy even against their parents’ wishes, is consistent with liberal principles. Section 2.3 argues that parents have privileges rather than rights to control their children's upbringing, but that these privileges nonetheless offer ample scope for parents to exert independent paternalistic control. Finally, Section 2.4 argues that the liberal ideal of autonomy not merely permits but requires the intrusion of the state into the child's life, specifically in the form of compulsory, ‘detached’, autonomy‐driven schools.

This is the second of two chapters on preference democracy. It points out that theories of liberal democracy necessarily require systematic responsiveness to popular wishes, in ways that make them fundamentally ‘preference‐respecting’, but that there are many different kinds of preferences and correspondingly many different ways of respecting them. Different models of democracy are better at providing certain sorts of respect for certain sorts of preferences than others, and which model of democracy liberal democrats want to adopt therefore depends on which sorts of preferences they want to accord which sort of respect. The central claim of this chapter is that the author's preferred model of ‘democratic deliberation within’ is preference‐respecting in the right way, and that it therefore deserves a key role in any larger system of democratic accountability. The different sections of the chapter are: Respecting Preferences, Not Just Recording Them; Permissible Paternalism; Assessing Alternative Models of Preference‐Respecting Democracy; The Virtues of Sporadic Assessments: Preference‐Respecting Arguments for Indirect Democracy; and Combining ‘Democratic Deliberation Within’ and Trustee‐style Representative Democracy.

King concludes by summarizing his major themes and arguing that the policies examined in his book are significant due to their influence on the definition of citizenship, its development in liberal democratic polities, and the duties that such citizenship is said to entail. He explores how the social policies examined in his work have contributed to the implicit boundaries of the public and private as well as the historical balance of rights and obligations. King offers four typologies that aim to capture the ways in which citizenship has historically balanced rights and responsibilities: as a loss of certain rights altogether, citizenship duties, coercive obligations such as workfare and, finally, paternalism.

This chapter examines arguments over government paternalism derived from considerations of individual well-being. It begins with a discussion of the classical economic model of rationality and the emergence of an alternative model during the twentieth century. It then reviews an increasing volume of evidence from behavioral economics and psychology of the so-called “reasoning failure”: the fact that individuals, in trying to achieve the end of improving their well-being, tend to make mistakes and do so in a systematic way. Four possible sources for such failure are discussed: limited technical ability, limited imagination, limited willpower, and limited objectivity. The chapter concludes by rejecting ends-related paternalism but accepting the well-being case for means-related paternalism.

This chapter examines the argument that government paternalism harms or inappropriately restricts individual autonomy. More specifically, it considers the criticism that the paternalist government is actually a “nanny state”: the state is seen to treat its citizens as a nanny treats her charges, instead of as autonomous adults. After elaborating on the notion of autonomy, the chapter explores the relationship between paternalism, autonomy, and motivation. It then assesses the claim, associated with soft paternalism, that the individuals affected in fact have little autonomy to be violated. This position is based on the so-called autonomy failure—that is, the justification for paternalism depends in large part on a prior diminution of the individual's capacity for autonomous decision making, so that autonomy is therefore not offended by the intervention. The chapter describes the various circumstances in which this autonomy failure takes place and concludes by analyzing hard paternalism.

On 1 Nov 1994, the UN Trusteeship Council voted to suspend operations after Palau, the last remaining trust territory, attained independence. The sovereign state has emerged out of decolonization as the supreme form of political organization in post‐colonial international society—an international society in which dominions, colonies, principalities, free cities, and, of course, mandates and trust territories have all but vanished. However, the ostensible failure of this post‐colonial project—the fact that the promise of peace and prosperity held out by independent statehood is too often betrayed by appalling violence and absolute poverty—has reinvigorated interest in trusteeship as a way of responding to problems of international disorder and injustice. The purpose of this chapter is threefold: first, it examines the principal dilemma of decolonization that has resulted in a renewed interest in trusteeship; second, it considers this renewed interest in trusteeship in the context of international involvement in administering Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and, until recently, East Timor; third, it reflects upon the normative implications that a resurrected practice of trusteeship carries for a society of states that is premised on the juridical equality of all its members. The five sections of the chapter are: The False Promise of post‐Colonial Independence; Innovation and Convention—the case for trusteeship in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and East Timor; The New International Legitimacy—the resurrection of trusteeship; A Universal Society of States?; and Answering the Call of Humanity.

Offers some thoughts about the idea of trusteeship and its place in the history of international society. The first section, Unity, Progress, and Perfection of Humankind, puts forward the claim that trusteeship is a historic idea that is distinctive of a particular time and place, and, specifically, that it is intelligible in relation to other ideas that are especially characteristic of the Enlightenment. Thus, trusteeship discloses moral excellence, and indeed obtains powerful justification, when it contributes to the unity, progress, and perfection of the human family. The second section, A Society of States and a Family of Peoples, argues that these ideas call forth an understanding of international life that conceives international society and human society as forming a perfect identity, and which is underwritten by the duty that we should act so as to secure the good of our fellows. The third section, The Limit of Obligation, considers the limits of this duty, and concludes that in seeking the good of our fellows we must stop short of treating people paternally. This conclusion casts a pall of doubt on the legitimacy of trusteeship in contemporary international society, even when it is aimed at protecting fundamental human rights, because it proposes to treat an equal unequally—indeed, trusteeship is morally objectionable because it offends the irreducible sanctity of human personality by repudiating the essence of what it means to be human, a thinking and choosing agent.

This chapter shows how the emergence of Jim Crow reform in the 1920s stimulated the emergence of what Jim Crow reformers would call the “golden age” of segregated education. In particular, the activities of northern foundations as well as the growing acceptance by many states of a minimal responsibility toward black public education led to this modernization of segregated education. This golden age rested on a mix of white paternalism, black pragmatism, and the institutionalization of state racial management structures.