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This chapter discusses the complaint that the statist ideal is excessively biased in favour of the status quo and argues that this critique is only partly successful. While the statists’ (especially Rawls’s) refusal to extend egalitarian justice to the global realm does not in itself indicate subservience to the status quo, statist principles have unduly conservative implications because they are insufficiently sensitive to morally relevant phenomena characterizing the global realm. Although statists rightly identify peoples (states) as important subjects of international justice in virtue of the particular forms of coercive power they exercise by directly interfering in one another’s affairs, they fail to appreciate that these are not the only forms of international coercion in need of justification. Because the normative outlook underpinning Rawlsian statism is blind to these other potential sources of injustice, its principles may very well turn out to be status-quo biased and, therefore, rightly criticized on guidance grounds.

This chapter discusses the constituency effect. By this, it is meant that when a labour market institution is in place, it creates its own political support. This in turn generates status‐quo bias and resistance to reform. The effect is illustrated in the case of employment protection. Other applications include the role of initial conditions and of pre‐announcing the reform.

This chapter identifies and discusses the methodological flaws that make statism excessively subservient to the status quo. It focuses on three methodological commitments on the basis of which statist conclusions have been advocated. These are (a) the view that principles of justice are constructed by interpreting the values informing the specific practices they aim to regulate; (b) the view that principles of justice can only guide the conduct of authoritative agents, such as the state; and (c) the view that principles of justice apply only in the presence of specific cooperative or coercive relations. The chapter shows that all of these methodological commitments contain a bias in favour of the status quo, preventing the principles developed on their basis from being genuinely critical and action-guiding.

This chapter argues that status quo biases in civic education can be and often are justified. The chapter begins by acknowledging the considerable force of two objections to such biases: the fallibility and legitimacy objections. The rest of the chapter explores the various arguments that could jointly defeat these objections in particular cases. It shows the possibility of constructing compelling content-dependent reasons for status quo bias, i.e., reasons that invoke widespread beliefs about the substantive merits of existing institutions, notwithstanding the fallibility objection. And it identifies four reasons that appeal not to the substantive merits of the institutions favored by status quo bias but merely to the fact that those institutions are the status quo: these content-independent reasons generate important arguments from stability, contentment, compliance, and civic identification.

This chapter introduces and analyzes the concept of status quo biased civic education, which is defined as education whose expected effect is to encourage a recipient’s belief in the substantive merits of existing laws or political institutions, where that effect does not derive solely from an improvement in the recipient’s ability and/or an increase in her inclination to engage in autonomous assessment of the best arguments and evidence for and against those laws or institutions. The chapter identifies the various forms and sources of status quo educational bias, distinguishes it from other educational phenomena with which it is liable to be confused, and investigates the costs and feasibility of reducing or even eliminating it. The conclusion is that civic education will realistically always exhibit some status quo biases but that the range and degree of those biases are very largely under the control of citizens, individually and collectively.

This chapter argues that status quo bias induced by numerous veto points in the American policy making process contributes to an inequality trap. Time series analysis is conducted showing that rising inequality changes the distributional consequences of status quo bias. When inequality is low and policy stagnates, this policy stagnation has no effect on inequality. But when inequality is high, policy stagnation tends to push inequality even higher, thereby creating a positive feedback loop between policy stagnation and income inequality. The analysis also shows that party polarization is not part of a feedback loop with inequality. Rather, it is the policy stagnation that polarization sometimes produces that is connected most directly to the inequality trap. A key conclusion of this chapter is that the American political framework via institutions contributes to entrenched inequality.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of loss aversion. After a historical account, it describes the experimental and empirical findings that demonstrate loss aversion and elucidate its relationships to more specific phenomena, such as the status quo bias and omission bias, endowment effect, escalation of commitment, and bounded ethicality. The chapter also reviews studies of the relationship between loss aversion and emotions; the neural basis of loss aversion; and hypotheses about its evolutionary roots. It examines what happens when competing and multiple reference points exist, and highlights the generality of reference-dependence in people’s perceptions and judgments. It also examines the effect of professional experience and group decision-making on loss aversion, and reviews attempts to “debias” loss aversion. It mentions other theories that share the notion that losses loom larger than gains, and discusses critiques of prospect theory. Finally, it points to the impact that loss aversion has had on several disciplines.

This chapter explores what the reasons for deviating from modified universalism in practice may be. To do so, it draws on behavioural international law and economics. The chapter argues that certain decision-making biases may play a role in cross-border insolvency and can explain both negative inclinations and instances of lack of cooperation, as well as the relative success of modified universalism. The key argument here is that instead of yielding to territorial inclinations, cross-border insolvency law has a debiasing role to play. It should attempt to align choices with optimal solutions, overcoming biases, and should also close gaps in the cross-border insolvency system in line with modified universalism.

Chapter 5 analyzes the contribution of loss aversion to our understanding of how legal norms affect human perceptions and behavior—that is, how loss aversion is sometimes the output of legal norms. One prime example of this is the powerful “default effect” of legal norms on human behavior in contexts such as posthumous organ donation. Similarly, the chapter argues that the burden of proof in civil litigation is much more than a tiebreaker for cases of evidentiary tie—it sets the baseline against which judges assess the evidence presented to them. Finally, the chapter discusses the use of temporary legislation as a means of overcoming objections to legal reforms—legislation that in turn changes people’s reference point and hence tends to become permanent.

This chapter reviews the core arguments made in the book and considers some of the implications for the possibility of reversing the trend toward higher inequality. One key point is that any effort to alter economic inequality should tackle both the economic and political side of the coin. Without reducing political inequality alongside economic inequality, reductions in inequality are less likely to happen and be durable. However, since economic and political inequality tend to reinforce each other, progress on either side of the coin could have reinforcing consequences on the other. So undermining economic inequality will tend to reduce political inequality and vice versa. Another key point is that economic inequality is particularly entrenched in contemporary America partly because inequality is so concentrated at the top. It is likely that top-heavy inequality induces economic inequality more than inequality in the middle of the distribution does. A comparison of the Great Depression and the Great Recession bolsters this point. Undermining racism, reducing status quo bias, expanding the political power of middle income groups, and prioritizing economic equality are discussed as policy recommendations toward escaping the inequality trap.