Nick Cowen
University of Lincoln, School of Social and Political Sciences, Faculty Member
- New York University, NYU School of Law, Faculty Memberadd
- Political Theory, Political Economy, Civil liberties, Gerald Gaus, Axel Honneth, Critique of Political Economy, and 29 moreCriminal Justice, Legal Theory, New Models Of Participatory And Direct Democracy, Pornography, Rational Choice, Direct Democracy, Gay Pornography, Substance Abuse, Drug Addiction, Alcohol Addiction, 2011 English riots, London Riots, Urban riots in london, Philosophy, Psychology, History, Sociology, Economics, Political Science, Social Sciences, Crime, Evidence Based Practice, Dissemination of Evidence Based Treatments, Evidence-based practice, Public Policy, Egalitarianism, Bernard Williams, Liberty, and John Rawlsedit
- I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lincoln. I wrote my doctor... moreI am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lincoln. I wrote my doctoral dissertation at King's College London on the political economy of distributive justice. I have a B.A. in Philosophy from University College London and an M.Phil. in Political Theory from the University of Oxford. I was a Fellow at the NYU School of Law from 2016 to 2019.
I have published research, among other places, in the American Journal of Political Science, The British Journal of Criminology, and Polity. My research explores the epistemic challenges of maintaining a stable society with minimal reliance on the exercise of power.edit
How do sexual and gender minorities use social media to express themselves and construct their identities? We discuss findings drawn from focus groups conducted with 17 sexual and gender minority social media users who shared their... more
How do sexual and gender minorities use social media to express themselves and construct their identities? We discuss findings drawn from focus groups conducted with 17 sexual and gender minority social media users who shared their experiences of online harms. They include people with gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, asexual, non-binary, pansexual, poly, and kink (LGBTQ+) identities. We find that sexual and gender minorities face several challenges online, but that social media platforms provide important spaces for them to feel understood and accepted. We use Goffman's work to explore how sexual and gender minorities engage in 'front region' performances online as part of their identity work. We then turn to Hochschild's concepts of 'feeling rules' and 'framing rules' to argue that presentations of self, or front region performances, must include the role of feelings and how they are socially influenced to be understood.
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We investigate the role of individualistic social rules and norms in charitable giving. Individualism in market societies is often criticized as corrupting morality and discouraging charitable giving. We contest that view. We propose... more
We investigate the role of individualistic social rules and norms in charitable giving. Individualism in market societies is often criticized as corrupting morality and discouraging charitable giving. We contest that view. We propose direct and indirect mechanisms through which individualism increases charity. In the direct channel, individualism encourages selfinterested giving. In the indirect channel, individualism contributes to charity by reinforcing economic freedom. We use evidence from a large cross-section of countries and several measures of individualism to investigate both channels. Our empirical findings confirm each channel and support the insights of classical liberals, such as Adam Smith and David Hume, and more recent studies in the humanomics tradition, which recovers the argument that individualism has its virtues.
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The severity, certainty and celerity (swiftness) of punishment are theorised to influence offending through deterrence. Yet celerity is only occasionally included in empirical studies of criminal activity and the three deterrence factors... more
The severity, certainty and celerity (swiftness) of punishment are theorised to influence offending through deterrence. Yet celerity is only occasionally included in empirical studies of criminal activity and the three deterrence factors have rarely been analysed in one empirical model. We address this gap with an analysis using unique panel data of recorded theft, burglary and violence against the person for 41 Police Force Areas in England and Wales using variables that capture these three theorised factors of deterrence. Police detection reduces subsequent burglary and theft but not violence while severity appears to reduce burglary but not theft or violent crime. We find that variation in the celerity of sanction has a significant impact on theft offences but not on burglary or violence offences. Increased average prison sentences reduce burglary only. We account for these results in terms of data challenges and the likely different motivations underlying violent and acquisitive crime.
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Liberal egalitarians argue that the state is justified in taxing members of a political community to achieve distributive justice and ensure political equality and regime stability. This involves an uneasy compromise between equality and... more
Liberal egalitarians argue that the state is justified in taxing members of a political community to achieve distributive justice and ensure political equality and regime stability. This involves an uneasy compromise between equality and efficiency, a compromise that many argue has recently been undermined by the growth of unchecked wealth and income inequality. This paper argues that there also exists a trade-off between selecting fair processes for taxation and aiming for particular distributive outcomes. The way people accumulate wealth and the way states tax often matters more than distributive outcomes. Policymakers must allow for the fair assessment of tax liabilities, avoid excessive enforcement costs and prevent political actors from using tax systems to achieve their partial ends. Recognising these considerations both justifies a systematic scheme of taxation while constraining the mechanisms for collecting revenue. I justify this position using comparative analysis which I contrast with the conceptual intuitionistic approach associated with egalitarianism.
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Purpose: Assess the impact of online platforms on the sex industry, focussing specifically on direct sex work, and evaluate what approaches to platform regulation is likely to align with the interests of sex workers.... more
Purpose: Assess the impact of online platforms on the sex industry, focussing specifically on direct sex work, and evaluate what approaches to platform regulation is likely to align with the interests of sex workers. Design/methodology/approach: A review of interdisciplinary conceptual and empirical literature on sex work combined with analysis of key issues using a transaction cost framework.
Findings: Online platforms generally make sex work safer. Regulation aimed at preventing platforms from serving sex workers is likely to harm their welfare.
Research limitations/implications: Regulation of online platforms should take great care to differentiate coercive sex from consensual sex work, and allow sex workers to experiment with governance mechanisms provided by entrepreneurs.
Originality/value: The paper demonstrates how a transactions costs approach to market behavior as applied to personal services like ridesharing can also shed light on the challenges that sex workers face, partly as a result of criminalisation, and the dangers of over-regulation.
Findings: Online platforms generally make sex work safer. Regulation aimed at preventing platforms from serving sex workers is likely to harm their welfare.
Research limitations/implications: Regulation of online platforms should take great care to differentiate coercive sex from consensual sex work, and allow sex workers to experiment with governance mechanisms provided by entrepreneurs.
Originality/value: The paper demonstrates how a transactions costs approach to market behavior as applied to personal services like ridesharing can also shed light on the challenges that sex workers face, partly as a result of criminalisation, and the dangers of over-regulation.
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How societies can cope with flood risk along coasts and riverbanks is a critical theoretical and empirical problem-particularly in the wake of anthropogenic climate change and the increased severity of floods. An example of this challenge... more
How societies can cope with flood risk along coasts and riverbanks is a critical theoretical and empirical problem-particularly in the wake of anthropogenic climate change and the increased severity of floods. An example of this challenge is the growing costs of publicly-funded flood defense in Britain and popular outcries during the regular occasions that the British government fails to protect property and land during heavy rains. Traditional approaches to institutional analysis suggest that flood management is either a public good that only the government is competent to provide or a private good to which individual landowners are ultimately responsible for supplying. We argue that an important cause of failure in flood management is mismatched property rights. This is where the scale of natural events and resources fail to align with the scale of human activities, responsibility and ownership. Moreover, the spatial dimensions of floods mean that their management is often appropriately conceptualized as a common pool resource problem. As a result, commons institutions as conceptualized and observed by Elinor Ostrom are likely to be major contributors to effective flood management. What governance process should decide the size and scope of these institutions? We argue that bottom-up responses to problems of mismatched property rights are facilitated within larger societies that are characterized by market processes. Moreover, the wider presence of price signals delivers to local communities essential knowledge about the cost of maintaining private property and the relative scarcity of the communal goods. We discuss how our theoretical positions align with experience in Britain and what the implications of our theoretical approach are for facilitating the development of better institutions.
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The moral status of economic liberty is a critical point of contention within liberal theory. Classical liberals, including Tomasi, suggest that economic activity is fundamental for exercising personal autonomy and its protection to be to... more
The moral status of economic liberty is a critical point of contention within liberal theory. Classical liberals, including Tomasi, suggest that economic activity is fundamental for exercising personal autonomy and its protection to be to the overall benefit of all persons. By contrast, egalitarian liberals, following Rawls, argue that economic activity is not a sufficiently significant site of moral development. Drawing on contemporary interpretations of Adam Smith, I argue that commercial practices cultivate attitudes of mutual trust and respect in a way that is unique and necessary for developing the moral powers. Although they need not be universally exercised, basic economic liberties must be available to all. While rejecting laissez-faire, this case suggests that well-ordered societies must protect a substantial degree of commercial activity as part of the basic structure.
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Substantially increased wealth inequality across the developed world has prompted many philosophers, economists and legal theorists to support comprehensive taxes on all forms of wealth. Proposals include levying taxes on the basis of... more
Substantially increased wealth inequality across the developed world has prompted many philosophers, economists and legal theorists to support comprehensive taxes on all forms of wealth. Proposals include levying taxes on the basis of total wealth, or alternatively the change in the value of capital holdings measured from year-to-year. This contrasts with most existing policies that tax capital assets at the point they are transferred from one beneficiary to another through sale or gifts. Are these tax reforms likely to meet their aims of greater economic and political equality? We argue that these policies are likely to fail because, following neoclassical economic theory, they are based on a conception of capital as possessing given values in what amounts to a static equilibrium. This mischaracterizes the dynamic and subjective character of market economies and the contested value of real instantiations of capital goods. This makes them very difficult, often impossible, to value apart from at the point of voluntary transfer or profit realization. This means most taxes levied on a mark-to-market basis will be arbitrary and unfair. We propose alternative policies based on an income realization approach to taxation that are more likely to curb excessive wealth holdings. This includes introducing international treaties that prohibit preferential tax treatment for individual companies and specific sectors, and broadening the income tax base to include the imputed rent of personal housing wealth.
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Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been interpreted as a general warning against state intervention in the economy. We review this argument in conjunction with Hayek’s later work and discern an institutional thesis about which forms of state... more
Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been interpreted as a general warning against state intervention in the economy. We review this argument in conjunction with Hayek’s later work and discern an institutional thesis about which forms of state intervention and economic institutions could threaten personal and political freedom. Economic institutions pose a threat if they allow for coercive interventions as described by Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty: by giving someone the power to force others to serve one’s will by the threat of inflicting harm, in the absence of general rules of conduct. According to the logic of the argument, welfare-state provisions are not coercive insofar as they do not allow the identification and discriminatory treatment of individuals. By contrast, we claim that a structure of coercion is likely to emerge from the command-and-control nature of protectionist institutions and immigration restrictions currently advocated by the Radical Right.
Research Interests: Austrian Economics, Welfare State, Property Rights, Liberalism, Public Choice, and 14 moreLiberalism and Republicanism, Authoritarianism, Hayek, Classical Liberalism, Neo-liberalism, Social Democracy, Radical Right, Normative Political Theory, Clientelismo, Political Clientelism, Political economy of regulation, Freedom as Non-domination, Discretionary Powers, and Donald Trump
England and Wales have some of the highest incarceration rates in the developed world. Recent policy reforms have focused on developing alternatives to custody that offer credible protection for the public, and justice for victims of... more
England and Wales have some of the highest incarceration rates in the developed world. Recent policy reforms have focused on developing alternatives to custody that offer credible protection for the public, and justice for victims of crime. This paper uses unique detailed panel-level data acquired from the Ministry of Justice for all Police Force Areas from 2002 to 2013 in England and Wales to analyse the effects of custodial and non-custodial sentences on recorded crime. Our results suggest that non-custodial sentences can be an effective alternative to custody at reducing property crime but their effect is less consistent for violent crime. This suggests that non-custodial sentences are credible, cost-effective substitutes to incarceration.
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“Evidence-based” methods, which most prominently include randomized controlled trials, have gained increasing purchase as the “gold standard” for assessing the effect of public policies. But the enthusiasm for evidence-based research... more
“Evidence-based” methods, which most prominently include randomized controlled trials, have gained increasing purchase as the “gold standard” for assessing the effect of public policies. But the enthusiasm for evidence-based research overlooks questions about the reliability and applicability of experimental findings to diverse real-world settings. Perhaps surprisingly, a qualitative study of British educators suggests that they are aware of these limitations and therefore take evidence-based findings with a much larger grain of salt than do policy makers. Their experience suggests that the real world is more heterogeneous than the world imagined by evidence-based policy enthusiasts.
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How sexuality should be regulated in a liberal political community is an important, controversial theoretical and empirical question—as shown by the recent criminalization of possession of some adult pornography in the United Kingdom.... more
How sexuality should be regulated in a liberal political community is an important, controversial theoretical and empirical question—as shown by the recent criminalization of possession of some adult pornography in the United Kingdom. Supporters of criminalization argue that Mill, often considered a staunch opponent of censorship, would support prohibition due to his feminist commitments. I argue that this account underestimates the strengths of the Millian account of private conduct and free expression, and the consistency of Millian anticensorship with feminist values. A Millian contextual defense of liberty, however, suggests several other policy approaches to addressing the harms of pornography.
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This is a brief response to Alec Rawls's (2021) "Theory of Justice with Claims of Desert" that claims John Rawls's erred in dismissing the role of desert when establishing the institutions of a liberal society. In response, I defend John... more
This is a brief response to Alec Rawls's (2021) "Theory of Justice with Claims of Desert" that claims John Rawls's erred in dismissing the role of desert when establishing the institutions of a liberal society. In response, I defend John Rawls's' division between the appropriate institutions of a basic structure and justice as practised in civil society. I argue that a prospective justification for the basic structure, one that is focused on maintaining social cooperation indefinitely into the future, is the more solid basis for justifying liberal institutions, including a market economy.
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How should free societies deal with people who profess support for the use of unlawful violence to achieve political ends? I believe that what tends to be called extreme speech should not be subject to any additional legal restrictions... more
How should free societies deal with people who profess support for the use of unlawful violence to achieve political ends? I believe that what tends to be called extreme speech should not be subject to any additional legal restrictions beyond the ordinary legal constraints on criminal activity. Police and lawmakers should focus on preventing active conspiracies to commit violence against persons and property rather than identifying extreme speech for prosecution.
My argument is as follows. Violent rhetoric is a common part of political discourse. ‘Lawful’ violence itself is a core feature of the way all states maintain social order. People disagree a great deal about how violence may legitimately be used and for what ends. So advocating for the use of violence as a matter of policy or morality, rather than against specific individuals, cannot plausibly be considered extreme. It is hard to distinguish extreme political positions from mainstream political positions expressed in slightly different terms or from actors in different social positions. Any legal restrictions would be unevenly, and likely arbitrarily, enforced.
My argument is as follows. Violent rhetoric is a common part of political discourse. ‘Lawful’ violence itself is a core feature of the way all states maintain social order. People disagree a great deal about how violence may legitimately be used and for what ends. So advocating for the use of violence as a matter of policy or morality, rather than against specific individuals, cannot plausibly be considered extreme. It is hard to distinguish extreme political positions from mainstream political positions expressed in slightly different terms or from actors in different social positions. Any legal restrictions would be unevenly, and likely arbitrarily, enforced.
Research Interests: Human Rights, Liberalism, Political Extremism/Radicalism/Populism, Hate Speech, Free Speech, and 14 moreRacism, Freedom Of Expression, Homophobia, Islamism, Tolerance, Neo-Paganism and Western Esotericism, Freedom of Speech, John Stuart Mill, Extreme Right, Civil liberties, Freedom of Association, Countering Violent Extremism, Jihadism and Radical Islamism, and Human Rights and Civil Liberties
Commons provide private goods that are hard to exclude from non-contributing actors. They frequently underlie mismatches in property arrangements. Hardin asserted that the existence of commons produced a 'tragedy' remediable through... more
Commons provide private goods that are hard to exclude from non-contributing actors. They frequently underlie mismatches in property arrangements. Hardin asserted that the existence of commons produced a 'tragedy' remediable through strict division of natural resources into private property or state control. Elinor Ostrom, and the Bloomington School of Political Economy, revealed instead a range of long-lived, productive and peaceful commons institutions that rely on neither a central state nor individual private property. What governance process should decide the size and scope of these institutions? We argue that bottom-up responses to problems of mismatched property rights are facilitated within larger societies that are characterized by market processes. Moreover, the wider presence of price signals deliver to local communities essential knowledge about the cost of maintaining private property and the relative scarcity of the communal goods. We illustrate our case with an example of the failure and attempted reform of flood management schemes in Great Britain.
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Evidence based-policy (EBP) is a popular research paradigm in the applied social sciences and within government agencies. Informally, EBP represents an explicit commitment to applying scientific methods to public affairs, in contrast to... more
Evidence based-policy (EBP) is a popular research paradigm in the applied social sciences and within government agencies. Informally, EBP represents an explicit commitment to applying scientific methods to public affairs, in contrast to ideologically-driven or merely intuitive “common-sense” approaches to public policy. More specifically, the EBP paradigm places great weight on the results of experimental research designs, especially randomised controlled trials (RCTs), and systematic literature reviews that place evidential weight on experimental results. One hope is that such research designs and approaches to analysing the scientific literature are sufficiently robust that they can settle what really ‘works’ in public policy. Can EBP succeed in displacing reliance on domain-specific expertise? On our account, this is seldom, if ever, the case. The key reason for this is that underlying this approach is generally an appeal to argument by induction, which always requires further assumptions to underwrite its validity, and if not induction, some other argument form that also requires assumptions that are very often not validated for the case at hand.
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How can Hayek's epistemic institutionalism contribute to seeking social justice? I contribute to Peter Boettke’s project by bridging the gap between the Hayekian critique of social justice and its reception among normatively committed... more
How can Hayek's epistemic institutionalism contribute to seeking social justice? I contribute to Peter Boettke’s project by bridging the gap between the Hayekian critique of social justice and its reception among normatively committed theorists and philosophers. I begin by summarizing some inter-related cases proposed by political theorists for rejecting Hayek’s critique of social justice. I add to Boettke’s resources some context around Hayek’s epistemology that establishes quite how deep the problem of coordination goes. I explain the necessary role that appreciative theory plays in our way of understanding the relationship between social morality and society. I then explain how appreciative theory goes some way to answering Hayek’s critics. This highlights the possible overlap between Rawlsian and Hayekian approaches to public policy. Finally, I outline how a positive research program might combine Hayekian insights with the pursuit of social justice, or at the very least the progressive amelioration of the conditions of the relatively disadvantaged.
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Twenty-five years ago, Sweden enacted the most ambitious school choice policy seen in the Western world, allowing families to select any school regardless of their residence and independent providers to open new Free Schools after... more
Twenty-five years ago, Sweden enacted the most ambitious school choice policy seen in the Western world, allowing families to select any school regardless of their residence and independent providers to open new Free Schools after satisfying some general regulatory requirements. This made Sweden, a paragon of social democracy, an unlikely opportunity to test Milton Friedman’s theory that open competition in education facilitated by state-funded vouchers would better serve the public than monopoly state provision. Has it worked? The premise of this chapter is that choice has produced observable benefits. It may also have contributed to a few unintended bad social consequences. However, it has not had the impact so far to justify some of the initial excitement. I explore possible explanations for this outcome and what we can learn when proposing future educational reforms.
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Purpose: Explore the possible contributions of blockchain technology to creating new governance structures that facilitate social cooperation. Methodology: Conceptual analysis with key ideas in new institutional economics and political... more
Purpose: Explore the possible contributions of blockchain technology to creating new governance structures that facilitate social cooperation.
Methodology: Conceptual analysis with key ideas in new institutional economics and political theory.
Findings: Blockchain technology provides a new tool through which political entrepreneurs can credibly alienate some of their power within a system of rules that they have established.
Originality: Links discussion of blockchain entrepreneurship in commercial markets to research into private governance and political thought.
Methodology: Conceptual analysis with key ideas in new institutional economics and political theory.
Findings: Blockchain technology provides a new tool through which political entrepreneurs can credibly alienate some of their power within a system of rules that they have established.
Originality: Links discussion of blockchain entrepreneurship in commercial markets to research into private governance and political thought.
Research Interests: Liberalism, Public Choice, Neoliberalism, New Institutionalism, Hayek, and 10 moreClassical Liberalism, Constitutional Political Economy, New Institutionalist Economics, Bitcoin, Seperation of power, Private Governance, Cryptocurrency, James Buchanan, Blockchains, and Limited Government and Separation of Powers
Hayek's anti-rationalism is founded upon a revival of Scottish Enlightenment scepticism combined with a compelling account of psychology that rejects a correspondence between our categories that impose order on experience and an external... more
Hayek's anti-rationalism is founded upon a revival of Scottish Enlightenment scepticism combined with a compelling account of psychology that rejects a correspondence between our categories that impose order on experience and an external reality. Despite the resulting austere epistemic standpoint, Hayek argues humans can harness their capacity for pattern recognition to generate and sustain cooperative social orders through non-rational processes of trial and error. Institutions that allow this cooperative order to persist include centrally private property, voluntary contract and the rule of law. Hayek's politics is less reliant on fundamental normative claims than those based on utopian ideals and is compatible with a cosmopolitan order made up of people with varied conceptions of morality.
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Evidence-based medicine (EBM), with its evidence hierarchies and emphasis on RCTs, meta-analyses and systematic reviews, sets the model for evidence-based policy almost everywhere, policing no exception. But how closely should policing... more
Evidence-based medicine (EBM), with its evidence hierarchies and emphasis on RCTs, meta-analyses and systematic reviews, sets the model for evidence-based policy almost everywhere, policing no exception. But how closely should policing follow this model? We argue that RCTs can tell you little about what you need to know for real-world practice: will this policy work where and when you implement it? Defending that it will do so takes good theory. For RCTs to play a role in theory development, they must be set into a larger body of knowledge, including local knowledge about the sites of implementation. Unfortunately the standard EBM model generally ignores the other kinds of knowledge needed. An alternative model for evidence-based policing, similar to that of the new movement for 'EBM+' and immanent in the practice of realist synthesis, focuses on the arguments that proposed policing policies will work where and when they are implemented and looks for the evidence needed to support those arguments.
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What role does scientific evidence play in educational practice? Supporters of evidence-based education (EBE) see it as a powerful way of improving the quality of public services which is readily applicable to the education sector.... more
What role does scientific evidence play in educational practice? Supporters of evidence-based education (EBE) see it as a powerful way of improving the quality of public services which is readily applicable to the education sector. Academic scholarship, however, points out important limits to this applicability. I offer an account inspired by Tullock's theory of bureaucracy that helps explain EBE's influence despite these limits. Recent configurations of EBE are an imperfect solution to two imperatives where policymakers are at an informational disadvantage: (i) guiding professionals working in the field and (ii) evaluating evidence from academic researchers. EBE, especially in the form of RCTs and systematic reviews, offers a way of filtering a complex range of research to produce a determinate result that is transparent to policymakers. However, this impression of research transparency is misleading as it omits theoretical background that is critical for successfully interpreting the results of particular interventions. This comes at a cost of relevance to the frontline professionals whom this research evidence is supposed to inform and help.
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Robust Political Economy (RPE) is a research program that combines insights from Austrian economics and public choice to evaluate the performance of institutions in cases of limited knowledge and limited altruism, or “worst-case... more
Robust Political Economy (RPE) is a research program that combines insights from Austrian economics and public choice to evaluate the performance of institutions in cases of limited knowledge and limited altruism, or “worst-case scenarios.” Many critics of RPE argue that it is too narrowly focused on the bad motivations and inadequacies of social actors while smuggling in classical liberal normative commitments as part of a purported solution to these problems. This paper takes a different tack by highlighting the ways that RPE as currently understood may not be robust enough to particularly bad conduct. It suggests that depending on the parameters of what constitutes a worst-case scenario, classical liberal institutions, especially a minimal state, may turn out to be less robust than some conservative or social democratic alternatives.
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How can liberal political theorists combine their normative commitments with realistic assumptions of human behaviour and capacities? This is an important question for scholars who wish to use their theories to evaluate existing political... more
How can liberal political theorists combine their normative commitments with realistic assumptions of human behaviour and capacities? This is an important question for scholars who wish to use their theories to evaluate existing political institutions and recommend practical alternatives. This chapter describes a particular approach to realism in political theory by using the notion of 'robustness' from the Robust Political Economy framework. Robust institutions are those that perform well even when people are neither omniscient nor perfectly motivated to follow the common good. I argue that these problems, of limited knowledge and self-interest, emerge from three assumptions about the constitution of human beings commonly found in the liberal theoretical tradition: methodological individualism, subjectivism and analytical egalitarianism. I propose a combination of public choice and market process theory as best suited to the task of evaluating the robustness of normative political theories because they allow us to apply these assumptions systematically to all domains of human activity. Compared to standard neo-classical methodology, this approach offers an enriched account of the epistemic challenge to social cooperation that individuals face and the role of institutions, including private property and voluntary exchange, in ameliorating this challenge. I show how this systematic evaluation of the motivational and epistemic properties of institutions can help critique and extend Rawls' contractarian theory of justice and offer a new perspective on the role of realism in political theory.
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This is the introductory section of my dissertation completed at the Department of Political Economy, King's College London under the supervision of Mark Pennington and John Meadowcroft. Rawls’ theory of distributive justice is... more
This is the introductory section of my dissertation completed at the Department of Political Economy, King's College London under the supervision of Mark Pennington and John Meadowcroft.
Rawls’ theory of distributive justice is attractive but policy proposals that have emerged from his theory do not deal adequately with several problems of political economy, especially knowledge and incentive problems. These weaknesses arise from Rawls’ reliance on some neo-classical economic assumptions that do not represent our best understanding of real-world economies. Evaluating these theoretical weaknesses allows us to prescribe a modified set of policies and institutions that are more likely to approximate justice as fairness.
I apply the analytical framework of robust political economy to Rawlsian theorising from fundamental principles all the way through to the resulting policy implications. My use of RPE both critiques and strengthens Rawlsian theorizing in a number of ways. First, it re-articulates the value of constitutional theorising, emphasising the epistemic properties of widely accepted stable rules of the game and how they permit widespread social co-operation. Second, it defends Rawls’ division between institutions that make up the basic structure of society and individuals acting within civil society as a whole. Third, it takes contractarian theorising beyond the original position, and shows how the more everyday politics of exchange can produce beneficial and just outcomes given a sound institutional framework. Fourth, it helps to reconcile a Rawlsian account of political regimes with real-world institutions and policies that arguably help to sustain actually existing liberal democratic regimes. Finally, the combination of RPE and Rawlsian concerns with inequality leads me to propose a new regime type, a ‘robust property-owning democracy’, an adaption of Rawls’ preferred regime which is potentially more stable in some real-world conditions.
Rawls’ theory of distributive justice is attractive but policy proposals that have emerged from his theory do not deal adequately with several problems of political economy, especially knowledge and incentive problems. These weaknesses arise from Rawls’ reliance on some neo-classical economic assumptions that do not represent our best understanding of real-world economies. Evaluating these theoretical weaknesses allows us to prescribe a modified set of policies and institutions that are more likely to approximate justice as fairness.
I apply the analytical framework of robust political economy to Rawlsian theorising from fundamental principles all the way through to the resulting policy implications. My use of RPE both critiques and strengthens Rawlsian theorizing in a number of ways. First, it re-articulates the value of constitutional theorising, emphasising the epistemic properties of widely accepted stable rules of the game and how they permit widespread social co-operation. Second, it defends Rawls’ division between institutions that make up the basic structure of society and individuals acting within civil society as a whole. Third, it takes contractarian theorising beyond the original position, and shows how the more everyday politics of exchange can produce beneficial and just outcomes given a sound institutional framework. Fourth, it helps to reconcile a Rawlsian account of political regimes with real-world institutions and policies that arguably help to sustain actually existing liberal democratic regimes. Finally, the combination of RPE and Rawlsian concerns with inequality leads me to propose a new regime type, a ‘robust property-owning democracy’, an adaption of Rawls’ preferred regime which is potentially more stable in some real-world conditions.
Research Interests: Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Political Theory, Austrian Economics, Liberalism, and 14 moreEgalitarianism, Public Choice, John Rawls, Hayek, Classical Liberalism, Constitutional Political Economy, John Rawls's theory of justice, Political Realism, Market Socialism, Robust Political Economy, Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory, Property-Owning Democracy, Israel Kirzner, and James Buchanan
This timely and provocative book challenges the conventional wisdom that neoliberal capitalism is incompatible with social justice. Employing public choice and market process theory, Nick Cowen systematically compares and contrasts... more
This timely and provocative book challenges the conventional wisdom that neoliberal capitalism is incompatible with social justice. Employing public choice and market process theory, Nick Cowen systematically compares and contrasts capitalism with socialist alternatives, illustrating how proponents of social justice have decisive reasons to opt for a capitalism guided by neoliberal ideas.
Cowen shows how general rules of property and voluntary exchange facilitate widespread cooperation. Revisiting the works of John Rawls, he offers an interdisciplinary reconciliation of Rawlsian principles with liberal democracy by introducing Robust Property-Owning Democracy, a new form of governance that aims to achieve social justice via practical, liberal means. Chapters address the knowledge problem and the incentive problem that emerge when aiming for a fair distribution of social resources and demonstrate how everyday political bargaining can help achieve just outcomes for all.
Utilising insights from philosophy, politics and economics to show the role of market institutions and constitutional government in producing social justice, this book is crucial reading for academics, researchers and students of PPE and the political sciences. Its practical policy proposals will further benefit policymakers interested in mechanisms that spread the benefits of economic growth equitably.
Cowen shows how general rules of property and voluntary exchange facilitate widespread cooperation. Revisiting the works of John Rawls, he offers an interdisciplinary reconciliation of Rawlsian principles with liberal democracy by introducing Robust Property-Owning Democracy, a new form of governance that aims to achieve social justice via practical, liberal means. Chapters address the knowledge problem and the incentive problem that emerge when aiming for a fair distribution of social resources and demonstrate how everyday political bargaining can help achieve just outcomes for all.
Utilising insights from philosophy, politics and economics to show the role of market institutions and constitutional government in producing social justice, this book is crucial reading for academics, researchers and students of PPE and the political sciences. Its practical policy proposals will further benefit policymakers interested in mechanisms that spread the benefits of economic growth equitably.
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F.A. Hayek, James Buchanan, and Elinor Ostrom are three intellectual giants of the 20th century. Each has contributed to reviving the tradition of liberal political economy and the ideal of self-governance. It would be easy for... more
F.A. Hayek, James Buchanan, and Elinor Ostrom are three intellectual giants of the 20th century. Each has contributed to reviving the tradition of liberal political economy and the ideal of self-governance. It would be easy for contemporary liberal exponents to slip into hagiography when inheriting such a powerful set of arguments. This book series, Tensions in Political Economy, fortunately takes a different tack. A diverse array of scholars offer nuanced and critical examinations of the weaknesses and incoherencies of these great thinkers. Undertaking this venture shows that classical liberal political economy is both a mature and resilient research program securely in the hands of contemporary developers who are eager to revisit and improve even on its fundamental assumptions. The focus on tensions, as it turns out, is also an efficient way of elaborating several core ideas of these thinkers. The result is a provocative and stimulating series of overlapping discussions. While the novel contributions range across philosophy and the social sciences, in the interests of ‘market fit’ we focus our remarks on how the ideas relate to key controversies in public choice.
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Edmundson has written an admirably concise yet powerful book. It blends a critical account of Rawls’ work with an original case for democratic socialism hewn from Rawlsian stone. In my opinion, this case has some flaws but it remains a... more
Edmundson has written an admirably concise yet powerful book. It blends a critical account of Rawls’ work with an original case for democratic socialism hewn from Rawlsian stone. In my opinion, this case has some flaws but it remains a timely contribution to the enduring quest for justice and social stability.
Research Interests:
Mark Pennington’s Robust Political Economy is a systematic exposition of a framework for analyzing institutional performance. The Robust Political Economy framework evaluates institutions according to their ability to solve knowledge and... more
Mark Pennington’s Robust Political Economy is a systematic exposition of a framework for analyzing institutional performance. The Robust Political Economy framework evaluates institutions according to their ability to solve knowledge and incentive problems. On grounds of robustness, Pennington combines insights from Austrian market-process theory and public-choice theory to defend classical liberalism from several compelling critiques. These include theories of market failure in economics; communitarian, deliberative-democratic, and liberal-egalitarian theories of justice; and concerns with social capital, domestic and international poverty, and ecology.
Research Interests: Political Economy, Austrian Economics, International Development, Welfare State, Social Capital, and 15 moreCapitalism, Ecology, Deliberative Democracy, Distributive Justice, Public Choice, Communitarianism, Heterodox Economics, Socialism, Individualism, Hayek, Liberal Egalitarianism, Robust Political Economy, Incentives, Market Failure, and James Buchanan
Can John Stuart Mill’s radicalism achieve liberal egalitarian ends? Joseph Persky’s The Political Economy of Progress is a provocative and compelling discussion of Mill’s economic thought. It is also a defense of radical political... more
Can John Stuart Mill’s radicalism achieve liberal egalitarian ends? Joseph Persky’s The Political Economy of Progress is a provocative and compelling discussion of Mill’s economic thought. It is also a defense of radical political economy. Providing valuable historical context, Persky traces Mill’s intellectual journey as an outspoken proponent of laissez-faire to a cautious supporter of co-operative socialism. I propose two problems with Persky’s optimistic take on radical social reform. First, demands for substantive equality have led past radicals to endorse exclusionary nationalist and eugenics policies. It pushes some contemporary radicals towards illiberal interventions into intimate social life. Second, the radical critique of capitalism relies on an account of profit that neglects the epistemic function of private-property markets. Once this is acknowledged, capitalism retains some progressive credentials against radical alternatives.
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This is a review of Clientelism and Economic Policy by Aris Trantidis, an application of public choice to explain the contemporary political economy of Greece, as well as a broader theoretical contribution to the study of clientelism as a... more
This is a review of Clientelism and Economic Policy by Aris Trantidis, an application of public choice to explain the contemporary political economy of Greece, as well as a broader theoretical contribution to the study of clientelism as a political and economic phenomenon.
Research Interests:
The ban on possession of ‘extreme pornography’ was introduced in 2009 and extended in 2015. The law, as drafted, bans depictions of some sex acts that can be conducted safely and consensually between adults, with a specific risk of... more
The ban on possession of ‘extreme pornography’ was introduced in 2009 and extended in 2015. The law, as drafted, bans depictions of some sex acts that can be conducted safely and consensually between adults, with a specific risk of prosecution posed to LGBT minorities.
The Crown Prosecution Service reports more than a thousand offences prosecuted each year, implying significant enforcement costs that could be deployed effectively elsewhere.
A substantial minority of the British population enjoy sexually aggressive fantasy scenarios but do not pose a specific risk of committing violent or sexual offences.
Access to pornography has increased dramatically in recent years, yet social harms imputed to pornography (especially violence against women) have fallen moderately.
While some survey evidence claims a correlation between individual use of pornography and sexual aggression, econometric evidence suggests this is not a causal relationship and that, if anything, increased access to pornography can reduce measurable social harms.
The ban itself represents a potential risk to political integrity. Like the ban on homosexuality in much of the 20th century, prohibitions on private sexual conduct can be used to silence, blackmail and corrupt individuals in positions of authority and responsibility.
There are better policies for reducing violence against women in the dimensions of criminal justice, education and economic reform.
The prevailing free speech doctrine in the United States shows that it is realistically possible to simultaneously tackle damaging forms of expression and maintain strong protections for innocuous forms.
The Crown Prosecution Service reports more than a thousand offences prosecuted each year, implying significant enforcement costs that could be deployed effectively elsewhere.
A substantial minority of the British population enjoy sexually aggressive fantasy scenarios but do not pose a specific risk of committing violent or sexual offences.
Access to pornography has increased dramatically in recent years, yet social harms imputed to pornography (especially violence against women) have fallen moderately.
While some survey evidence claims a correlation between individual use of pornography and sexual aggression, econometric evidence suggests this is not a causal relationship and that, if anything, increased access to pornography can reduce measurable social harms.
The ban itself represents a potential risk to political integrity. Like the ban on homosexuality in much of the 20th century, prohibitions on private sexual conduct can be used to silence, blackmail and corrupt individuals in positions of authority and responsibility.
There are better policies for reducing violence against women in the dimensions of criminal justice, education and economic reform.
The prevailing free speech doctrine in the United States shows that it is realistically possible to simultaneously tackle damaging forms of expression and maintain strong protections for innocuous forms.
Research Interests:
What allows research evidence to contribute to successful social policy and improve practice in public services? The establishment of the What Works Network, a group of evidence ‘clearing houses’, that summarise academic research evidence... more
What allows research evidence to contribute to successful social policy and improve practice in public services? The establishment of the What Works Network, a group of evidence ‘clearing houses’, that summarise academic research evidence for practitioners in different policy areas, heralds a resurgence of evidence-based approaches in British policymaking. This report outlines the existing literature analysing the process of implementing evidence-informed policy, with a particular focus on the field of primary and secondary education. New data, based on interviews with teachers in primary and secondary schools, along with the analysis of existing literature, suggest that understanding the rationale for a particular policy approach and recognising relevant contextual factors are crucial for selecting and implementing successful policies. This suggests that local knowledge, as well as professional judgement and expertise, are critical contributors to policymaking alongside formal scientific research evidence.
Research Interests:
A guide to using research evidence when deliberating about educational policies. It is intended for teachers, for school heads, for boards of governors –for anyone who has to settle on policies, programmes or approaches, whether for a... more
A guide to using research evidence when deliberating about educational policies. It is intended for teachers, for school heads, for boards of governors –for anyone who has to settle on policies,
programmes or approaches, whether for a singe student, a whole class, a school or a local area. It supposes that research evidence can help make for better decisions about what will work but it recognises that there’s no recipe for how to use research evidence.
programmes or approaches, whether for a singe student, a whole class, a school or a local area. It supposes that research evidence can help make for better decisions about what will work but it recognises that there’s no recipe for how to use research evidence.
Research Interests:
'What Would Hayek Say About Gendered Violence?' (2013) in What Would Hayek Say Today (Really)?, Charles Street Symposium, Legatum Institute: London. pp. 27-29.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Systematic synthetic phonics will now be the first and prime method used to teach reading in state schools. The decision to drop the chaotic National Literacy Strategy method of teaching reading is a direct response to the grave level of... more
Systematic synthetic phonics will now be the first and prime method used to teach reading in state schools. The decision to drop the chaotic National Literacy Strategy method of teaching reading is a direct response to the grave level of illiteracy which the New Labour flagship literacy model has failed to impact on. The move to 'first and fast' synthetic phonics signifies the government's final rejection of so-called 'child-centred' methods. Poor achievement and related poor behaviour in secondary schools as well as the vast increase in the number of young people not in education, employment or training connect directly to poor literacy teaching at primary school level. Weak reading lies at the heart of both the educational apartheid between the advantaged and disadvantaged and stalled social mobility. The inability to read properly is the single greatest handicap to progress both in school and adult life. Systematic synthetic phonics is likely to be a highly effective way of tackling both our educational and social problems today. Evidence from longitudinal academic research as well as from Civitas' own Supplementary School project has shown that teaching children to read via systematic synthetic phonics can bridge the gap between readers from disadvantaged and advantaged homes better than any other method has so far managed. However, having witnessed the nationwide enforcement of the flawed National Literacy Strategy, we warn strongly against central prescription which, by definition, does not allow for individual differences in context and classroom and erodes teacher professionalism and responsiveness to pupils' needs.
Research Interests:
The New Labour government has made it clear that it wants its performance in education to be measured through exam performance. In itself, this demand is not necessarily problematic. What is deeply problematic, however, is the fact that... more
The New Labour government has made it clear that it wants its performance in education to be measured through exam performance. In itself, this demand is not necessarily problematic. What is deeply problematic, however, is the fact that the government has also made it clear that it is prepared to go to any lengths, however detrimental to 'stakeholders', to achieve the exam performance it is after in the short-term. Limited by flawed long-term education policies, it has resorted to quick-fix strategies to bolster results. Ultimately, the government's treatment of A-levels has displayed a greater commitment to generating its results than to the students who produce them.
Research Interests:
12-13 December 2013: As part of its 2013 Charles Street Symposium, the Legatum Institute brought together leading young economists to discuss the relevance - or irrelevance - of Austrian economist Friedrich August von Hayek's thought for... more
12-13 December 2013: As part of its 2013 Charles Street Symposium, the Legatum Institute brought together leading young economists to discuss the relevance - or irrelevance - of Austrian economist Friedrich August von Hayek's thought for today. The second session discussed participant papers on the subject of 'Wicked Problems', and included presentations from Helen Dale, Nick Cowen, Adam Martin and David Skarbek.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Nick Cowen, Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, and Juste Abramovaite analyse the effects of custodial and non-custodial sentences on recorded crime in England and Wales. Their results suggest that non-custodial sentences can be an effective... more
Nick Cowen, Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, and Juste Abramovaite analyse the effects of custodial and non-custodial sentences on recorded crime in England and Wales. Their results suggest that non-custodial sentences can be an effective alternative to custody when it comes to reducing property crime but their effect is less consistent when looking at violent crime.
Research Interests:
This is a blog post explaining recent changes to the Crown Prosecution Service's change of guidelines for the Obscene Publications Act in England and Wales. It explain how the guidelines relate to other laws effecting freedom of sexual... more
This is a blog post explaining recent changes to the Crown Prosecution Service's change of guidelines for the Obscene Publications Act in England and Wales. It explain how the guidelines relate to other laws effecting freedom of sexual expression.
Research Interests:
We will not know the full significance, for legal practice, of the acquittal of Simon Walsh of possession of extreme pornography for some time. However, the way the case has unfolded allows us to challenge some of the claims made by... more
We will not know the full significance, for legal practice, of the acquittal of Simon Walsh of possession of extreme pornography for some time. However, the way the case has unfolded allows us to challenge some of the claims made by academic legal theorists who either supported legislation banning possession of extreme pornography, or at least felt that the concerns raised by so-called “liberal fundamentalists” (such as myself) were somewhat overwrought or unjustified.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Presentation on updating Rawlsian political economy in both ideal and non-ideal theory.
Research Interests:
These are slides for my presentation of my draft paper, Markets for Rules. The emergence of blockchain technology heralds a potential revolution in our collective capacity to implement limited government. Blockchains offer a more secure... more
These are slides for my presentation of my draft paper, Markets for Rules.
The emergence of blockchain technology heralds a potential revolution in our collective capacity to implement limited government. Blockchains offer a more secure and transparent way of implementing rules while permitting individual choice between rulesets that can co-exist at the same time and place. What this could ultimately mean is that a great deal of what we have traditionally conceived to be governance might be disintermediated from the territorially defined monopolistic coercive authorities that classically define states.
The emergence of blockchain technology heralds a potential revolution in our collective capacity to implement limited government. Blockchains offer a more secure and transparent way of implementing rules while permitting individual choice between rulesets that can co-exist at the same time and place. What this could ultimately mean is that a great deal of what we have traditionally conceived to be governance might be disintermediated from the territorially defined monopolistic coercive authorities that classically define states.
Research Interests:
As part of the Adam Smith Institute's Practical Liberalism series, Nick Cowen will speak about his report "Nothing to Hide: The case against banning extreme pornography". The ASI Practical Liberalism series showcases radical,... more
As part of the Adam Smith Institute's Practical Liberalism series, Nick Cowen will speak about his report "Nothing to Hide: The case against banning extreme pornography". The ASI Practical Liberalism series showcases radical, evidence-based liberal ideas from leading philosophers, economists and politicians.
The ban on possession of ‘extreme pornography’ was introduced in 2009 and extended to 2015. The law, as drafted, bans depictions of some sex acts that can be conducted safely and consensually between adults, with a specific risk of prosecution posed to LGBT minorities.Access to pornography has increased dramatically in recent years, yet social harms imputed to pornography (especially violence against women) have reduced moderately but significantly. There are better policies for reducing violence against women in the dimensions of criminal justice, education and economic reform.
The ban on possession of ‘extreme pornography’ was introduced in 2009 and extended to 2015. The law, as drafted, bans depictions of some sex acts that can be conducted safely and consensually between adults, with a specific risk of prosecution posed to LGBT minorities.Access to pornography has increased dramatically in recent years, yet social harms imputed to pornography (especially violence against women) have reduced moderately but significantly. There are better policies for reducing violence against women in the dimensions of criminal justice, education and economic reform.
Research Interests:
Uses panel data from 43 Police Force Areas to analyse the impact of custodial and non-custodial sentences for property and violent crime in England and Wales. Marginal increase in custodial and community sentences are crime reductive for... more
Uses panel data from 43 Police Force Areas to analyse the impact of custodial and non-custodial sentences for property and violent crime in England and Wales. Marginal increase in custodial and community sentences are crime reductive for property crime, with community sentences presumably more cost-effective. Marginal increase in custodial sentences also reduce violent crime.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
How important is the experience of risk in business endeavors for self-respect and moral development? Tomasi prompts this question with his attempt to reconcile Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness with free-market capitalism, by... more
How important is the experience of risk in business endeavors for self-respect and moral development? Tomasi prompts this question with his attempt to reconcile Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness with free-market capitalism, by claiming that economic activity is a way for people to exercise their autonomy, responsibility, and self-authorship, including through voluntary risk-taking. Critics argue that the social environment generated through market institutions is ill-suited for developing a sense of responsibility and autonomy among citizens. We refine the case for economic liberty by looking at the link between risk-taking and attitudes toward democratic citizenship. We highlight the critical role of ethical business practice as a contributor to the stability of liberal-democratic societies.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
How do sexual and gender minorities use social media to express themselves and construct their identities? We discuss findings drawn from focus groups conducted with 17 sexual and gender minority social media users who shared their... more
How do sexual and gender minorities use social media to express themselves and construct their identities? We discuss findings drawn from focus groups conducted with 17 sexual and gender minority social media users who shared their experiences of online harms. They include people with gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, asexual, non-binary, pansexual, poly, and kink (LGBTQ+) identities. We find that sexual and gender minorities face several challenges online, but that social media platforms provide important spaces for them to feel understood and accepted. We use Goffman's work to explore how sexual and gender minorities engage in 'front region' performances online as part of their identity work. We then turn to Hochschild's concepts of 'feeling rules' and 'framing rules' to argue that presentations of self, or front region performances, must include the role of feelings and how they are socially influenced to be understood.
Research Interests: Sociology, Gender Studies, Gender and Sexuality, Gender, Social Media, and 10 moreMusic and identity, Sexual Identity, Gender Identity, Erving Goffman, Communication and media Studies, Sexual orientation and gender identity, Digital Platforms, Emotion Work, Social Media Platforms, and Arlie Russell Hochschild
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The severity, certainty and celerity (swiftness) of punishment are theorised to influence offending through deterrence. Yet celerity is rarely included in empirical studies of criminal activity and the three deterrence factors have never... more
The severity, certainty and celerity (swiftness) of punishment are theorised to influence offending through deterrence. Yet celerity is rarely included in empirical studies of criminal activity and the three deterrence factors have never been analysed in one empirical model. We address this gap with an analysis using unique panel data of recorded theft, burglary and violence against the person for 41 Police Force Areas in England and Wales using variables that capture these three theorised factors of deterrence. We find that the three factors affect crime in different ways. Increased detection by the police (certainty) is associated with reduced theft and burglary but not violence. We find that variation in the celerity of sanction has a significant impact on theft offences but not on burglary or violence offences. Increased average prison sentences (severity) reduce burglary only. We account for these results in terms of data challenges and the likely different motivations underlyi...
Research Interests:
Civitas is a registered charity (no. 1085494) and a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales (no. 04023541) Independence: Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society is a registered educational charity (No.... more
Civitas is a registered charity (no. 1085494) and a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales (no. 04023541) Independence: Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society is a registered educational charity (No. 1085494) and a company limited by guarantee (No. 04023541). Civitas is financed from a variety of private sources to avoid over-reliance on any single or small group of donors. All publications are independently refereed. All the Institute's publications seek to further its objective of promoting the advancement of learning. The views expressed are those of the authors, not of the Institute. Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA). Thanks are also due to the many members of staff at Civitas who kindly reviewed and commented on this report at various draft stages. A weekday evening, on a quiet street in a small church hall, a Cocaine Anonymous meeting is about to begin. Greeters at the front door draw in newcomers from the light rain, while other...
Research Interests:
Twenty-five years ago, Sweden enacted the most ambitious school choice policy seen in the Western world, allowing families to select any school regardless of their residence and independent providers to open new Free Schools after... more
Twenty-five years ago, Sweden enacted the most ambitious school choice policy seen in the Western world, allowing families to select any school regardless of their residence and independent providers to open new Free Schools after satisfying some general regulatory requirements. This made Sweden, a paragon of social democracy, an unlikely opportunity to test Milton Friedman’s theory that open competition in education facilitated by state-funded vouchers would better serve the public than monopoly state provision. Has it worked? The premise of this chapter is that choice has produced observable benefits. It may also have contributed to a few unintended bad social consequences. However, it has not had the impact so far to justify some of the initial excitement. I explore possible explanations for this outcome and what we can learn when proposing future educational reforms.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
How societies can cope with flood risk along coasts and riverbanks is a critical theoretical and empirical problem – particularly in the wake of anthropogenic climate change and the increased severity of floods. An example of this... more
How societies can cope with flood risk along coasts and riverbanks is a critical theoretical and empirical problem – particularly in the wake of anthropogenic climate change and the increased severity of floods. An example of this challenge is the growing costs of publicly-funded flood defense in Britain and popular outcries during the regular occasions that the British government fails to protect property and land during heavy rains. Traditional approaches to institutional analysis suggest that flood management is either a public good that only the government is competent to provide or a private good to which individual landowners are ultimately responsible for supplying. We argue that an important cause of failure in flood management is mismatched property rights. This is where the scale of natural events and resources fail to align with the scale of human activities, responsibility and ownership. Moreover, the spatial dimensions of floods mean that their management is often appro...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This is a guide to using research evidence when deliberating about educational policies. It is intended for teachers, for school heads, for boards of governors – for anyone who has to settle on policies, programmes or approaches, whether... more
This is a guide to using research evidence when deliberating about educational policies. It is intended for teachers, for school heads, for boards of governors – for anyone who has to settle on policies, programmes or approaches, whether for a singe student, a whole class, a school or a local area. It supposes that research evidence can help make for better decisions about what will work for your student, your class, your school or in your local area. But it recognises that there’s no recipe for how to use research evidence, there’s no simple read across from research evidence, no matter how good the quality of it, to what will be likely to work for you here and now. You have to reason that out as best you can. This pamphlet provides some information and some strategies that can make that reasoning easier and more reliable.
Research Interests:
The severity, certainty and celerity (swiftness) of punishment are theorised to influence offending through deterrence. Yet celerity is rarely included in empirical studies of criminal activity and the three deterrence factors have never... more
The severity, certainty and celerity (swiftness) of punishment are theorised to influence offending through deterrence. Yet celerity is rarely included in empirical studies of criminal activity and the three deterrence factors have never been analysed in one empirical model. We address this gap with an analysis using unique panel data of recorded theft, burglary and violence against the person for 41 Police Force Areas in England and Wales using variables that capture these three theorised factors of deterrence. We find that the three factors affect crime in different ways. Increased detection by the police (certainty) is associated with reduced theft and burglary but not violence. We find that variation in the celerity of sanction has a significant impact on theft offences but not on burglary or violence offences. Increased average prison sentences (severity) reduce burglary only. We account for these results in terms of data challenges and the likely different motivations underlyi...
Research Interests:
Liberal egalitarians argue that the state is justified in taxing members of a political community to achieve distributive justice and ensure political equality and regime stability. This involves an uneasy compromise between equality and... more
Liberal egalitarians argue that the state is justified in taxing members of a political community to achieve distributive justice and ensure political equality and regime stability. This involves an uneasy compromise between equality and efficiency, a compromise that many argue has recently been undermined by the growth of unchecked wealth and income inequality. This paper argues that there also exists a trade-off between selecting fair processes for taxation and aiming for particular distributive outcomes. The way people accumulate wealth, and the way states tax often matters more than distributive outcomes. Policymakers must allow for the fair assessment of tax liabilities, avoid excessive enforcement costs and prevent political actors from using tax systems to achieve their partial ends. Recognising these considerations both justifies a systematic scheme of taxation while constraining the mechanisms for collecting revenue. I justify this position using comparative analysis which ...
Research Interests:
Civitas is a registered charity (no. 1085494) and a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales (no. 04023541) Independence: Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society is a registered educational charity (No.... more
Civitas is a registered charity (no. 1085494) and a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales (no. 04023541) Independence: Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society is a registered educational charity (No. 1085494) and a company limited by guarantee (No. 04023541). Civitas is financed from a variety of private sources to avoid over-reliance on any single or small group of donors. All publications are independently refereed. All the Institute's publications seek to further its objective of promoting the advancement of learning. The views expressed are those of the authors, not of the Institute. Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA). Thanks are also due to the many members of staff at Civitas who kindly reviewed and commented on this report at various draft stages. A weekday evening, on a quiet street in a small church hall, a Cocaine Anonymous meeting is about to begin. Greeters at the front door draw in newcomers from the light rain, while other...
Research Interests:
Twenty-five years ago, Sweden enacted the most ambitious school choice policy seen in the Western world, allowing families to select any school regardless of their residence and independent providers to open new Free Schools after... more
Twenty-five years ago, Sweden enacted the most ambitious school choice policy seen in the Western world, allowing families to select any school regardless of their residence and independent providers to open new Free Schools after satisfying some general regulatory requirements. This made Sweden, a paragon of social democracy, an unlikely opportunity to test Milton Friedman’s theory that open competition in education facilitated by state-funded vouchers would better serve the public than monopoly state provision. Has it worked? The premise of this chapter is that choice has produced observable benefits. It may also have contributed to a few unintended bad social consequences. However, it has not had the impact so far to justify some of the initial excitement. I explore possible explanations for this outcome and what we can learn when proposing future educational reforms.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
How societies can cope with flood risk along coasts and riverbanks is a critical theoretical and empirical problem – particularly in the wake of anthropogenic climate change and the increased severity of floods. An example of this... more
How societies can cope with flood risk along coasts and riverbanks is a critical theoretical and empirical problem – particularly in the wake of anthropogenic climate change and the increased severity of floods. An example of this challenge is the growing costs of publicly-funded flood defense in Britain and popular outcries during the regular occasions that the British government fails to protect property and land during heavy rains. Traditional approaches to institutional analysis suggest that flood management is either a public good that only the government is competent to provide or a private good to which individual landowners are ultimately responsible for supplying. We argue that an important cause of failure in flood management is mismatched property rights. This is where the scale of natural events and resources fail to align with the scale of human activities, responsibility and ownership. Moreover, the spatial dimensions of floods mean that their management is often appro...
Research Interests:
How can liberal political theorists combine their normative commitments with realistic assumptions of human behaviour and capacities? This is an important question for scholars who wish to use their theories to evaluate existing political... more
How can liberal political theorists combine their normative commitments with realistic assumptions of human behaviour and capacities? This is an important question for scholars who wish to use their theories to evaluate existing political institutions and recommend practical alternatives. This chapter describes a particular approach to realism in political theory by using the notion of 'robustness' from the Robust Political Economy framework. Robust institutions are those that perform well even when people are neither omniscient nor perfectly motivated to follow the common good. I argue that these problems, of limited knowledge and self-interest, emerge from three assumptions about the constitution of human beings commonly found in the liberal theoretical tradition: methodological individualism, subjectivism and analytical egalitarianism. I propose a combination of public choice and market process theory as best suited to the task of evaluating the robustness of normative po...
Research Interests:
This is a guide to using research evidence when deliberating about educational policies. It is intended for teachers, for school heads, for boards of governors – for anyone who has to settle on policies, programmes or approaches, whether... more
This is a guide to using research evidence when deliberating about educational policies. It is intended for teachers, for school heads, for boards of governors – for anyone who has to settle on policies, programmes or approaches, whether for a singe student, a whole class, a school or a local area. It supposes that research evidence can help make for better decisions about what will work for your student, your class, your school or in your local area. But it recognises that there’s no recipe for how to use research evidence, there’s no simple read across from research evidence, no matter how good the quality of it, to what will be likely to work for you here and now. You have to reason that out as best you can. This pamphlet provides some information and some strategies that can make that reasoning easier and more reliable.
Research Interests:
Liberal egalitarians argue that the state is justified in taxing members of a political community to achieve distributive justice and ensure political equality and regime stability. This involves an uneasy compromise between equality and... more
Liberal egalitarians argue that the state is justified in taxing members of a political community to achieve distributive justice and ensure political equality and regime stability. This involves an uneasy compromise between equality and efficiency, a compromise that many argue has recently been undermined by the growth of unchecked wealth and income inequality. This paper argues that there also exists a trade-off between selecting fair processes for taxation and aiming for particular distributive outcomes. The way people accumulate wealth, and the way states tax often matters more than distributive outcomes. Policymakers must allow for the fair assessment of tax liabilities, avoid excessive enforcement costs and prevent political actors from using tax systems to achieve their partial ends. Recognising these considerations both justifies a systematic scheme of taxation while constraining the mechanisms for collecting revenue. I justify this position using comparative analysis which ...
Research Interests:
How can liberal political theorists combine their normative commitments with realistic assumptions of human behaviour and capacities? This is an important question for scholars who wish to use their theories to evaluate existing political... more
How can liberal political theorists combine their normative commitments with realistic assumptions of human behaviour and capacities? This is an important question for scholars who wish to use their theories to evaluate existing political institutions and recommend practical alternatives. This chapter describes a particular approach to realism in political theory by using the notion of ‘robustness’ from the Robust Political Economy framework. Robust institutions are those that perform well even when people are neither omniscient nor perfectly motivated to follow the common good. I argue that these problems, of limited knowledge and self-interest, emerge from three assumptions about the constitution of human beings commonly found in the liberal theoretical tradition: methodological individualism, subjectivism and analytical egalitarianism. I propose a combination of public choice and market process theory as best suited to the task of evaluating the robustness of normative political ...
Research Interests:
How can liberal political theorists combine their normative commitments with realistic assumptions of human behaviour and capacities? This is an important question for scholars who wish to use their theories to evaluate existing political... more
How can liberal political theorists combine their normative commitments with realistic assumptions of human behaviour and capacities? This is an important question for scholars who wish to use their theories to evaluate existing political institutions and recommend practical alternatives. This chapter describes a particular approach to realism in political theory by using the notion of 'robustness' from the Robust Political Economy framework. Robust institutions are those that perform well even when people are neither omniscient nor perfectly motivated to follow the common good. I argue that these problems, of limited knowledge and self-interest, emerge from three assumptions about the constitution of human beings commonly found in the liberal theoretical tradition: methodological individualism, subjectivism and analytical egalitarianism. I propose a combination of public choice and market process theory as best suited to the task of evaluating the robustness of normative po...
How can liberal political theorists combine their normative commitments with realistic assumptions of human behaviour and capacities? This is an important question for scholars who wish to use their theories to evaluate existing political... more
How can liberal political theorists combine their normative commitments with realistic assumptions of human behaviour and capacities? This is an important question for scholars who wish to use their theories to evaluate existing political institutions and recommend practical alternatives. This chapter describes a particular approach to realism in political theory by using the notion of ‘robustness’ from the Robust Political Economy framework. Robust institutions are those that perform well even when people are neither omniscient nor perfectly motivated to follow the common good. I argue that these problems, of limited knowledge and self-interest, emerge from three assumptions about the constitution of human beings commonly found in the liberal theoretical tradition: methodological individualism, subjectivism and analytical egalitarianism. I propose a combination of public choice and market process theory as best suited to the task of evaluating the robustness of normative political ...
Research Interests:
This is a brief response to Alec Rawls’s (2021) “Theory of Justice with Claims of Desert” that claims John Rawls erred in dismissing the role of desert when establishing the institutions of a liberal society. In response, I defend John... more
This is a brief response to Alec Rawls’s (2021) “Theory of Justice with Claims of Desert” that claims John Rawls erred in dismissing the role of desert when establishing the institutions of a liberal society. In response, I defend John Rawls’ division between the appropriate institutions of a basic structure and justice as practised in civil society. I argue that a prospective justification for the basic structure, one that is focused on maintaining social cooperation indefinitely into the future, is the more solid basis for justifying liberal institutions, including a market economy.
Research Interests:
This is a brief response to Alec Rawls’s (2021) “Theory of Justice with Claims of Desert” that claims John Rawls erred in dismissing the role of desert when establishing the institutions of a liberal society. In response, I defend John... more
This is a brief response to Alec Rawls’s (2021) “Theory of Justice with Claims of Desert” that claims John Rawls erred in dismissing the role of desert when establishing the institutions of a liberal society. In response, I defend John Rawls’ division between the appropriate institutions of a basic structure and justice as practised in civil society. I argue that a prospective justification for the basic structure, one that is focused on maintaining social cooperation indefinitely into the future, is the more solid basis for justifying liberal institutions, including a market economy.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
How should free societies deal with people who profess support for the use of unlawful violence to achieve political ends? I believe that what tends to be called extreme speech should not be subject to any additional legal restrictions... more
How should free societies deal with people who profess support for the use of unlawful violence to achieve political ends? I believe that what tends to be called extreme speech should not be subject to any additional legal restrictions beyond the ordinary legal constraints on criminal activity. Police and lawmakers should focus on preventing active conspiracies to commit violence against persons and property rather than identifying extreme speech for prosecution. My argument is as follows. Violent rhetoric is a common part of political discourse. ‘Lawful’ violence itself is a core feature of the way all states maintain social order. People disagree a great deal about how violence may legitimately be used and for what ends. So advocating for the use of violence as a matter of policy or morality, rather than against specific individuals, cannot plausibly be considered extreme. It is hard to distinguish extreme political positions from mainstream political positions expressed in slightly different terms or from actors in different social positions. Any legal restrictions would be unevenly, and likely arbitrarily, enforced.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Austrian Economics, Property Rights, Political Science, Liberalism, Public Choice, and 15 moreNeo Liberalism, Liberalism and Republicanism, Authoritarianism, Hayek, Classical Liberalism, Social Democracy, Radical Right, Normative Political Theory, Clientelismo, Political Clientelism, Political economy of regulation, Polity, Discretionary Powers, Donald Trump, and Serfdom
Research Interests:
Hayek's anti-rationalism is founded upon a revival of Scottish Enlightenment scepticism combined with a compelling account of psychology that rejects a correspondence between our categories that impose order on experience and an... more
Hayek's anti-rationalism is founded upon a revival of Scottish Enlightenment scepticism combined with a compelling account of psychology that rejects a correspondence between our categories that impose order on experience and an external reality. Despite the resulting austere epistemic standpoint, Hayek argues humans can harness their capacity for pattern recognition to generate and sustain cooperative social orders through non-rational processes of trial and error. Institutions that allow this cooperative order to persist include centrally private property, voluntary contract and the rule of law. Hayek's politics is less reliant on fundamental normative claims than those based on utopian ideals and is compatible with a cosmopolitan order made up of people with varied conceptions of morality
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Research Interests: Business, Corporate Governance, Liberalism, Public Choice, Neoliberalism, and 14 moreNew Institutionalism, Hayek, Classical Liberalism, Constitutional Political Economy, New Institutionalist Economics, Social Science Research Network, Bitcoin, Seperation of power, Private Governance, Cryptocurrency, James Buchanan, Blockchains, Limited Government and Separation of Powers, and Blockchain
Commons provide private goods that are hard to exclude from non-contributing actors. They frequently underlie mismatches in property arrangements. Hardin asserted that the existence of commons produced a 'tragedy'... more
Commons provide private goods that are hard to exclude from non-contributing actors. They frequently underlie mismatches in property arrangements. Hardin asserted that the existence of commons produced a 'tragedy' remediable through strict division of natural resources into private property or state control. Elinor Ostrom, and the Bloomington School of Political Economy, revealed instead a range of long-lived, productive and peaceful commons institutions that rely on neither a central state nor individual private property. What governance process should decide the size and scope of these institutions? We argue that bottom-up responses to problems of mismatched property rights are facilitated within larger societies that are characterized by market processes. Moreover, the wider presence of price signals deliver to local communities essential knowledge about the cost of maintaining private property and the relative scarcity of the communal goods. We illustrate our case with an example of the failure and attempted reform of flood management schemes in Great Britain.
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Research Interests: Entrepreneurship, Cognitive Science, Economics, Philosophy, Tax Law, and 14 moreAustrian Economics, Political Science, Taxation, Tax reform, Distributive Justice, Tax Policy, Taxation of Financial and Capital Markets, Hayek, Social Science Research Network, Tax Avoidance, Tax Justice, Israel Kirzner, Capital Gains Tax, and Piketty
Research Interests: Teacher Education, Formative Assessment, Educational evaluation, Education Policy, Public Choice, and 9 moreSocial Science Research Network, Randomized Controlled Trials, Summative Assessment, Evidence Based Education, Evidence Based Policy, Nancy Cartwright, Gordon Tullock, Meta Analysis and Systematic Review, and What Works
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Philosophy, Epistemology, Educational Research, and 12 moreEducation (Social Policy), Expert evidence, Education Policy, Philosophy of Social Science, Qualitative Research, Critical, Social Science Research Network, Randomized Controlled Trials, Evidence Based Policy, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Semi structured interviews, and Meta Analysis and Systematic Review
Robust political economy (RPE) is a research program that combines insights from Austrian economics and public choice to evaluate the performance of institutions in cases of limited knowledge and limited altruism, or “worst-case... more
Robust political economy (RPE) is a research program that combines insights from Austrian economics and public choice to evaluate the performance of institutions in cases of limited knowledge and limited altruism, or “worst-case scenarios.” Many critics of RPE argue that it is too narrowly focused on the bad motivations and inadequacies of social actors while smuggling in classical liberal normative commitments as part of a purported solution to these problems. This chapter takes a different tack by highlighting the ways that RPE as currently understood may not be robust against particularly bad conduct. It suggests that depending on the parameters of what constitutes a worst-case scenario, classical liberal institutions, especially a minimal state, may turn out to be less robust than some conservative or social democratic alternatives.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Sociology, Economics, Political Economy, Philosophy, Austrian Economics, and 13 moreLiberalism, Political Extremism/Radicalism/Populism, History of Political Thought, Socialism, Radical Democracy, John Stuart Mill, Classical Liberalism, Social Science Research Network, Workplace Democracy, Luck Egalitarianism, Political Economy and History, Mill, and Laissez Faire
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Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Economics, Political Economy, Philosophy, Austrian Economics, and 15 moreInternational Development, Capitalism, Ecology, Deliberative Democracy, Distributive Justice, Communitarianism, Heterodox Economics, Critical, Individualism, Hayek, Liberal Egalitarianism, Incentives, Market Failure, Curriculum and Pedagogy, and James Buchanan
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Peter Boettke’s take on Hayek is basically right. Conservatively, let’s say 98%. The actual number is probably higher, but it is hard enough to write a meaningful response to a book that had me saying: “Yes. Yup. Good. Right on.... more
Peter Boettke’s take on Hayek is basically right. Conservatively, let’s say 98%. The actual number is probably higher, but it is hard enough to write a meaningful response to a book that had me saying: “Yes. Yup. Good. Right on. Indubitably.” And so on. So we’ll say 98%, leaving me 2% of a point to make. Buckle in. I divide my 2% contribution evenly between two distinct nits I want to pick with Boettke’s account. Nit-picking is not the most interesting sort of response essay to write. But nor is it the least interesting. It is at least better than the subgenre that criticizes a book because “it’s not what I would have written” or because “it ignores this part of the topic that I like.” Unfortunately, both of these approaches to criticism characterize some corners of the world of Hayek Studies and adjacent fields. When I was a graduate student, I observed one of Boettke’s classes that arguing about how to interpret Hayek was a veritable cottage industry. He pointedly (literally, he w...