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This chapter introduces a new framework for testing the recognition/redistribution hypothesis. It develops an index of twenty-three different types of MCPs that have been adopted for three different types of minority groups (immigrants, national minorities, and indigenous peoples). Western countries are then categorized in terms of their level of MCPs. Whether countries with higher levels of MCPs have faced an erosion of the welfare state as compared to countries with lower levels of MCPs is tested. It is shown that there is no negative correlation between the strength of a country's commitment to MCPs and its ability to sustain welfare spending or economic redistribution. The chapter also examines the heterogeneity/redistribution hypothesis, and shows that this too is overstated. In general, the size of immigrant groups, national minorities, and indigenous peoples in Western countries does not affect a country's ability to sustain its welfare commitments, although a rapid change in the size of immigrant groups does seem to have an effect. Yet even here, the authors of this chapter argue, there are hints that adopting MCPs can help to mitigate whatever negative effect a rapidly increasing immigrant population may have.

This chapter examines how the enlarged EU is likely to respond to three major economic challenges: Will the enlarged EU attempt to bridge the internal development gaps by flexible policies stimulating growth or by central redistribution from Brussels? Will the enlarged EU cope with the challenge of global economic competition by opting for more institutional differentiation or central regulation? Will it try to insulate itself from poor and unstable neighbors or try to govern them? In all three cases, the enlarged EU is more likely to embrace the neo-medieval rather than the neo-Westphalian alternative.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of two recent debates on the relationship between ethnic diversity, multiculturalism, and the welfare state. Some commentators argue that increasing levels of ethnic and racial heterogeneity make it difficult to sustain a welfare state (the ‘heterogeneity/redistribution trade-off’). This chapter reviews the evidence that has been emerged in previous research for both claims, which is shown to be inconclusive. There are many unanswered questions about the conditions under which the heterogeneity/redistribution and recognition/redistribution trade-offs may exist, about the causal mechanisms that underpin them, and about the possible strategies for reducing them. The subsequent chapters in this volume fill in some of these important gaps in our knowledge, drawing on cross-national statistical analyses, case studies, and theoretical reflections.

This essay examines the role of targeted transfers in poor countries in the light of the new theories on the social costs of unmitigated inequalities and uninsured risks. Recognizing that the policy implications depend crucially on whether there is good empirical evidence to support the theoretical arguments, the bulk of the first half of the essay discusses the evidence. The essay then takes up a key question for policy: Can the potential for efficient redistribution be realized in practice using targeted transfers, given the constraints faced in poor countries? It is argued that there can be too much uninsured risk and inequality, when judged solely from the viewpoint of aggregate output. For example, credit market failures can mean that it is the poor who are unable to exploit new economic opportunities; the more poor people, the fewer the opportunities that get exploited, and thus the lower the rate of growth. Persistent concentrations of poverty in poor environments can also arise from market failures, given geographic externalities whereby living in a poor area is a cause of poverty. This body of theory and evidence offers a new perspective on social protection policies in poor countries, suggesting that there is scope for using these policies to compensate for the market failures that help perpetuate poverty, particularly in high-inequality settings.

This chapter examines the question of whether there is a connection between income distribution and the macro-economy. The debate surrounding Kuznets’ inverted ‘U-shaped’ hypothesis is explained. Techniques for projecting income shares under the assumption of the ‘U-shaped’ hypothesis are demonstrated.

This chapter focuses on the role of the government in ensuring basic needs and how that may be managed through income taxes and public expenditure. The analysis is mainly done in the framework of income flows to and from quantiles of households.

Tax rates and tax structures differ markedly across the rich countries, and play a key role in reducing inequality but may also reduce employment. This chapter addresses the following questions: do taxes reduce inequality directly, or do they contribute to redistribution chiefly by providing the revenue for transfers? To what extent does globalization constrain governments' ability to maintain large and progressive tax systems? Have countries been moving toward more or less redistributive types of taxation? Do taxes in fact impede employment? The chapter argues that a tax policy conducive to low income inequality and high employment should have four principal features: taxes should generate a high level of revenues, in order to finance generous transfers and services; the tax system should be progressive, or at worst minimally regressive; payroll and consumption taxes should be moderate, so as not to impede employment growth in low-end services; and to encourage investment and entreneurship and prevent capital flight, there should be a relatively low statutory rate and a not-too-high effective tax rate on capital.

This chapter considers the challenges to social citizenship resulting from greater diversity and inequality in a more globalized world. Migration has led to tensions in social provision in many western countries. Globalization and labour market change have generated greater inequality, and opportunities for social mobility seem to be declining. These changes generate substantial and growing challenges to the stability of welfare states. Evidence from recent studies, however, indicates that the problems can be addressed, provided that governments are willing to show political leadership and pursue policies that redistribute resources on a citizenship basis to mitigate inequalities and offer equal access to opportunities across all social groups.

Welfare states have enjoyed considerable success in containing the pressures of economic, political, and social change identified in Chapter 1. However, an important theme in their responses, the shift towards an individual rational actor approach to policy-making, risks weakening the values that sustain social citizenship. It may support reciprocity but undermines social inclusion and trust in welfare state institutions. Any response must recognise the continuing pressures for greater competitiveness arising in a more open economy. Cost-constraint is not the only factor contributing to productivity. Greater inclusiveness, more open opportunities and constraint on privilege at the top end may help to secure better mobilization of human resources. More democratic accountability will enhance trust in services. The individual rational actor approach to welfare state reform has considerable weaknesses as well as the strengths that make it attractive to governments.

This chapter outlines a number of critical responses to the project of seeking to rectify historic injustice, and explains why they largely do not apply to international libertarian accounts of international justice. It distinguishes between backward-looking and forward-looking accounts of distributive justice in both ideal and non-ideal theory, and looks at how both accounts relate to ideas of rectificatory justice. If one advocates a forward-looking account of distributive justice, and so advocates a redistribution of resources with each new generation, then the rectificatory project will seem to be of little importance. However, this nonchalance in the face of historic injustice is unsustainable if one advocates backward-looking principles. Since international libertarians resist cosmopolitan calls for a generational redistribution of resources across political boundaries, they must carefully scrutinize the provenance of modern day distributions.

Argues that the shift in the US policy from supporting authoritarianism to promoting polyarchy in much of the Third World corresponds to the emergence of a global capitalist economy and is meant to ‘make the world safe for capital’. Authoritarianism is seen as an increasingly ineffective mechanism of social control and is replaced by polyarchic regimes that do not pursue any fundamental class redistribution of political and economic power. The author examines some instances of US polyarchy promotion in Latin America.

Taxation has two primary functions. First, it determines how much of a society’s resources will come under the control of government, for expenditure in accordance with some collective decision procedure, and how much will be left in the discretionary control of private individuals, as their personal property; call this public-private division. Second, it plays a central role in determining how the social product is shared out among different individuals, both in the form of private property and in the form of publicly provided benefits; call this distribution. Though these functions are typically run together in political discussion--by the use of slogans such as “big government”–they are conceptually and normatively distinct. It is difficult, however, to address the two policy issues separately, since the two functions are mutually interdependent in practice.

Civic republicanism and procedural liberalism are–or should be–allies; exaggerating their differences is philosophically suspect and politically counterproductive. Liberals insist that whatever the object of public policy–whether it is legal rights, economic resources, political institutions, civic virtues, or communal identities–the aim of state policy should be to promote principles of right, not to promote particular conceptions of the good. However much Sandel describes republican freedom as an alternative to liberal justice, one may guess that he would not promote the former at the expense of the latter, and that he (tacitly) views principles of justice as setting constraints on the promotion of republican freedom. While right-wing liberalism has been influential, its influence has often been to rationalize nonliberal opposition to progressive policies, which it is able to do because it is right-wing (i.e. because it opposes redistribution), not because it is liberal (i.e. not because of its commitment to revisability and its rejection of perfectionism). If the traditional liberal commitment to national institutions as the site of collective self-government and distributive justice is no longer viable, then liberals will need to create new forums of self-government, new institutions of redistribution, and corresponding new forms of identity and virtues.