The American Express Model of Citizenship

1
The American Express Model of Citizenship
2
Recall last lecture

• Marshall thinks that researchers can know about
  the actual status of citizenship in a state by
  looking at what?
• How many principles of justice does Rawls think
  will be chosen behind the veil of ignorance?
  What are they?
• I suggested that SC is concerned with at least
  three issues. What are they?

3
Any questions about the last lecture?
4
Carolyns question

• What are social rights? I dont think the stuff
  Marshall is on about should be talked of in terms
  of rights.

5
Where are social rights institutionalized?

• 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  recognized economic, social and cultural rights.
• Article 22 establishes that everyone
• as a member of society, has the right to social
  security and is entitled to realization, through
  national effort and international cooperation and
  in accordance with the organization and resources
  of each State, of the economic, social and
  cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and
  the free development of his personality.

6
UDHR recognizes the rights

• to work,
• to free choice of employment,
• to just and favourable conditions of work,
• to equal pay for equal work,
• to rest and leisure,
• to an adequate standard of living including food,
  clothing, housing and medical care and necessary
  social services,
• to security in the event of unemployment,
  sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other
  lack of livelihood,
• to free and compulsory education, and
• to participation in the cultural life of the
  community and to enjoyment of the arts.

7
The Charter?

• Alludes to a right to equal opportunity by
  sanctioning affirmative action programs in
  section 15(2).
• But includes no explicit protections against
  material deprivations that undermine citizens
  abilities to participate fully in our cultural,
  political and economic spaces.

8
Soc. rights rarely built into national
constitutions in unequivocal way.

• Implication? There can be no doubt that social
  citizenship occupies a less secure footing
  compared to its civil and political counterparts.

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Why lesser legal status?

• Perhaps the fiscal conditionality of
  citizenships social dimension.
• The provision of social services and income
  transfers requires a level of public expenditure
  not associated with the civil and political
  rights of modern citizenship.
• Therefore, the full scope of social rights
  depends on a states institutional capacity to
  generate revenue (Marshall, 104).

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Intra-citizenship tension????

• Evaluating a states revenue capacity raises
  questions about income redistribution between
  members of a community, including the share of
  personal or family income that should
  appropriately be paid to purchase public services
  and fund income transfers.
• concerns about individual property rights.
• Implication? social dimension of citizenship
  exists in continual tension with citizenships
  civil element.

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Marshall is not naïve.

• Given the diverging class affiliations associated
  with civil and social rights, Marshall (87-88)
  implies that it is imprudent to assume the state
  will equally guarantee both dimensions of
  citizenship.
• If nothing else, the less formal expression of
  social rights ensures they are subject to
  recurrent political contestation, something we
  have witnessed in recent decades.

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Something appropriate about less formal
constitutional status???

• Marshall Social rights that demand benefits in
  the form of a service cannot be precisely
  defined (104).
• The abstract formulation of rights that
  legislation typically demands will be hard
  pressed to capture a social rights qualitative
  element.

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Qualitative element of Social Rights

• The full meaning of a right to education is not
  discernable from legislation that states all
  children of a certain age will attend school.
• Meaning contingent on the educational systems
  commitment to factors that impact the quality of
  childrens educational experience
• class-room size,
• teacher training, and
• the educational materials and opportunities
  available to students and instructors.

14
Reasonable expectations ? obligations on the
state???

• Marshall is adamant that qualitative element of
  SRs matter most to citizens what can citizens
  legitimately expect from a right to health care
  given their communitys socioeconomic context.
• Expectations officially recognized as
  legitimate become details in a design for
  community living (104).

15
THMs insight tracks tenor of political debate in
Canada

• THM relatively silent about the appropriate
  criteria by which to evaluate the reasonableness
  of citizenry demands
• But consider health care debates.
• The federal government created the Commission on
  the Future of Health Care largely in response to
  the fact that Canadians express concerns about
  waiting lists and timely access to certain
  medical procedures despite rising provincial
  expenditures (Romanow 2002, 4).

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THMs insight tracks tenor of political debate in
Canada

• The perception that lengthening waiting periods
  for non-elective surgery reflect a health care
  system in crisis reveals
• citizens share expectations about how much time
  we should reasonably wait for medical procedures
  
• the current trend towards longer waiting lists
  illegitimately ignores this expectation.

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How does the rest of this lecture contribute to
the goal of the course?

• Goal learn about five contemporary normative
  perspectives consider their implications for
  public policy.
• The five schools of thought all respond in some
  capacity to social liberalism.
• Last lecture focused on what is seen by many to
  be tremendously appealing about liberalism.
• This lecture will start to look at some of its
  idiosyncrasies that are more likely to receive
  critique/concern.

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Three characteristics of social liberalism that
attract criticism

• Focuses on state welfare
• Treats citizenship solely as a status
• Aligns autonomy with individualism

19
Social liberalism focuses on State Welfare

• Last lecture concluded with recognition that
  Marshall and Rawls are proposing significant
  institutional re-design (while working within the
  limits of capitalism).

20
Concern with institutional redesign reflects

• Rawls assertion that the primary subject of
  justice is the way in which the major social
  institutions distribute fundamental rights and
  duties and determine the division of advantages
  from social cooperation (p. 7).
• Major institutions include
• the political constitution
• competitive markets,
• private property in the means of production and
• the monogamous family.

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Major social institutions are important because

• Interrelationships between them generate
  different social locations into which individuals
  are born.
• Some of these starting places are more
  favourable than others, and the inequalities that
  result run especially deep (p. 7)

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Unequal starting points the first order of
business for justice

• Not only are they pervasive, but they affect
  mens initial chances in life yet they cannot
  possibly be justified by an appeal to the notions
  of merit or desert. It is these inequalities,
  presumably inevitable in the basic structure of
  any society, to which the principles of social
  justice must in the first instance apply.
• -- Rawls, p. 7

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Some starting points are advantageous because
they provide greater access to primary social
goods.

• PSGs things that every person is presumed to
  want because they normally have a use whatever a
  persons rational plan of life.
• PSGs include
• rights and liberties, powers and
  opportunities, income and wealth (62) and
• the conditions required for self-respect (440).
  

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Primary social goods

• social because they are generated,
  distributed and regulated by the rules of the
  major institutions that constitute societys
  basic structure (92).
• primary because they are necessary means
  regardless of ones goals and commitments (93).
• The more primary social goods one possesses, the
  more one can be assured of success in carrying
  out her or his intentions, whatever the
  objectives may be.

25
Job of negotiators in Rawlss thought experiment
is to decide how to allocate PSGs fairly

• The parties behind the veil of ignorance can be
  seen as representing a communitys (hypothetical)
  first parliament or senate.
• They are determine the distribution of the PSGs
  that accompany group membership through their
  design and organization of the communitys major
  institutions.

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Implication?

• All major institutions are malleable to the
  agreements that initial legislators make in the
  original position.
• The thought experiment thus retains pride of
  place for a governing body (i.e. the state) in
  terms of welfare provision.

27
Class analysis dominates social liberalism

• Difference principle THMs title Citizenship
  and Social Class
• Implication?
• Social liberalism susceptible to
  overemphasizing the social security made
  available by state services and obscuring the
  contributions of non-state sources of welfare.

28
The risk arises for two reasons

• Class analysis has tendency to
• Ignore welfare produced by domestic sphere
• Treat market principally as a source of
  inequality

29
Patriarchal assumptions

• Men of their time, THM and Rawls both take for
  granted the sexual division of labour perpetuate
  a public/private dichotomy that rejects the
  latter as an appropriate subject of political
  theorizing.
• By the time Rawls (p. 303) announces that his
  sketch of the system of institutions that
  satisfies the two principles of justice is now
  complete, he has examined all of the major
  institutions that he initially listed under this
  heading except the family.
• Think of the parties behind the veil of
  ignorance as heads of families (128).
• The family a small association, normally
  characterized by a definite hierarchy, in which
  each member has certain rights and duties (467).
  

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The Family is Just???

• If negotiators play a traditionally male role,
  it implies that the status quo within families
  and the distribution of labour between the sexes
  is taken for granted.
• Rawlss (p. 490) first law of moral psychology
  presumes that family institutions are just.
• Implication? Thought of the possibility of
  there being any discrimination in private
  families is lost to the decision-makers behind
  the veil of ignorance.

31
Ambivalence toward markets

• A class-infused lens is especially likely to
  portray capitalism, as Marshall (84) often does,
  as a system, not of equality, but of
  inequality.
• When so characterized, competitive markets are
  viewed primarily as forces to dampen, contain and
  tame by the state.
• The resulting emphasis on state delivered welfare
  risks minimizing the positive contributions of
  the wage-system to the well-being and personal
  security of paid workers and their dependents.

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Questions?
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The Citizen as Rights-Claimer

• The preoccupation with state delivered welfare
  renders the social liberal vision of citizenship
  more passive than active.
• THM (84) Citizenship is a status. It is not
  conditional on some form of social participation,
  but is conferred on full members of a community.

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American Express Model of Citizenship

• Credit card slogan Membership has its
  privileges
• The social liberal emphasizes that community
  membership comes with privileges the rights,
  liberties, powers, opportunities, income and
  wealth that institutions distribute.
• The theme of duties, especially in Marshall, is
  relatively underemphasized in relation to its
  emphasis on the new social rights of individuals
  in the postwar welfare state.

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Why less focus on duties?

• Historical context
• Sense that citizenry was owed repayment for
  suffering and sacrifices during the Great
  Depression and the Second World War.
• State was deemed capable of managing the
  expansion of the public sphere to protect new
  social rights given its performance organizing
  the military effort and regulating the war-time
  economy.
• New found prosperity in the 1950s and 60s.
• ? a widely accepted belief that an activist
  state could resolve the pressing problems of
  modern society by assuming increased
  responsibility for welfare-related needs formerly
  identified as the appropriate domain of private
  individuals, families or charity.

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Why less focus on duties?

• They are Liberals!
• Prioritize liberty freedom of choice.
• very reluctant to impose citizenship
  obligations that may imply a state preference for
  specific opinions, values or modes of action.

37
BIG Caveat! While downplaying social
responsibilities

• The social liberal tradition accentuates how
  rights empower the individual to pursue
  self-selected activities.
• Rights give people capacities.
• The citizen as rights-claimer the hero of
  liberal theory, the autonomous individual, who is
  free to participate in whatever activities he or
  she desires
• The vision does not require political
  participation or civic-spiritedness. But it
  prioritizes the individuals capacity to be
  active in some individually chosen domain(s).
• Questions???

38
Notion of autonomy in SL is distinctive and
conflicted

• On one hand social liberals are very concerned
  about the preconditions for liberty.
• Focus on social citizenship intimates a view of
  autonomy receptive to the idea of interdependence
  and which resists aligning agency with
  individualism.
• Rawlss presumption society is a cooperative
  venture for mutual advantage that is typically
  marked by a conflict as well as by an identity of
  interests (4).

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On the other hand

• The majority of analysis in A Theory of Justice
  is very cautious about interdependence.
• Rawls often favours the language of
  individualism that is a prominent feature of
  liberalism more generally.
• The veil of ignorance presupposes an
  individualist model of personhood that is
  insensitive to the role that community and
  relationships play in imbuing citizens with
  values, life-pursuits and social roles.

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The Unencumbered Self à la Sandel

• For the veil of ignorance to operate, there is
  always a distinction between the values I have
  and the person I am.
• To be capable of choice before I know my class
  or social status, intelligence, physical
  abilities, interests, or system of values, I must
  stand to my circumstances always at a certain
  distance.
• There must be a subject me that is prior to
  and independent of any ambitions or desires.
• the vision of the unencumbered self.

41
A worthy ideal of human agency

• Sandel (1984, 86) what appears most essential
  to our personhood, are not the ends we choose but
  our capacity to choose them.
• a liberating vision
• Our allegedly essential capacity to choose our
  values and life-defining projects suggests that
  at some fundamental level we are unfettered by
  either nature or culture.
• Human beings sovereign agents, capable of
  adopting, and perhaps more importantly resisting,
  custom, tradition or inherited status.

42
But the ideal often becomes associated with
other characteristics as well.

• Beyond the encumbrances of custom, tradition and
  inherited status, the ideal of autonomy
  associated with the unencumbered self often
  aligned with separation which secures our status
  to choose.
• The autonomous individual is unencumbered by
  personal relations or caring commitments which
  may require self-sacrifice or place restraints on
  his/her ability to pursue self-selected
  interests.

43
Atomistic tendeny most obvious given assumption
that negotiators are mutually disinterested
(pp. 13, 127)

• Contractors are assumed to be occupied first and
  foremost with the advancement of their own
  concerns and take no interest in one anothers
  interests except insofar as the pursuit of
  personal goals requires it.
• ? Negotiators have no relations premised (at
  least in part) on affection or other sentiments
  that may motivate individuals to prioritize
  satisfaction of the pursuits of others on par, if
  not above, their own.

44
When we remove the veil

• Rawlss commitment to mutual disinterestedness
  is not intended to rule out the possibility that
  once the veil of ignorance is removed, the
  parties find that they have ties of sentiment and
  affection (129).
• Foremost among these ties, we can assume, are
  close family members and other intimate relations
  whose interests and ends we wish to advance.

45
Weak assumptions

• Rawls (p. 129) excludes motivational factors
  associated with affect for methodological
  reasons.
• At the basis of theory, one tries to assume as
  little as possible.
• Rs thought experiment is therefore constructed
  to incorporate widely shared and yet weak
  conditions that do not depend on contentious
  assumptions.
• Contentious to assume that a conception of
  justice may accommodate extensive ties of
  sentiment between individuals???

46
A gradual alignment of autonomy with individualism

• Entrenching a commitment to mutual
  disinterestedness in the thought experiment ?
  this alignment.
• There is no interdependence recognized in the
  original position.
• The point of the original position is to
  establish the terms of future collaboration.
• Initial contractors at the bargaining table are
  depicted as self-sufficient individuals willing
  to concede, if not welcome, a series of new
  interdependencies to capitalize on the social
  cooperation that makes possible a better life for
  all than any one could live by his or her own
  efforts alone (4).

47
A gradual alignment of autonomy with individualism

• The starting point for Rawlss thought
  experiment is a set of autonomous, self-reliant
  agents who cautiously approach interdependence as
  an afterthought through the protected mechanism
  of a contract.
• The contract establishes a set of rights to
  protect their highly valued independence from the
  undue intrusion of others who are intent on
  achieving their own personal goals.

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Next week

• Just one reading.
• Enter Lawrence Mead into the debate.
• One of the most influential neoliberal critics
  Marshalls view of social citizenship.
• Think about what makes Marshall and Mead both
  liberals? Where do social and neoliberals depart
  most dramatically.

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Small group discussion

• Marshall indicates that the three elements of
  citizenship can be associated with three
  centuries respectively
• 18th century civil
• 19th century political
• 20th century social
• What do you think? When did women get the vote
  in Canada? Inuit women? Did all countries
  become democratic in the 19th century?