Just results : ethical foundations for policy analysis / Ralph D. Ellis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ellis, Ralph D.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Policy sciences--Moral and ethical aspects.

Policy sciences.

Political ethics.

Physical Description:

vii, 215 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : Georgetown University Press, 1998.

Summary:

In "Just Results", Ralph D. Ellis provides an authoritative solution to one of the major problems in the field of public policy. Until now, analysts and planners have had no practical or accurate means of incorporating qualitative social concerns into the traditional quantitative formulas used in policy making. By introducing a justice factor -- a quantitative measure for social values -- Ellis opens the door for more balanced policy decisions.

Using concrete, real-world examples, Ellis shows how policy analysts can better account for the use value -- or practical measurable utility -- of universally agreed-upon social benefits such as life, health, safety, and environmental preservation when making cost-benefit analyses. In this way, policymakers, and by extension, society as a whole, can avoid making unjust tradeoffs between important social values and comparatively frivolous economic benefits.

Drawing on philosophical works on justice from Kant through John Rawls, this book is informed by a theoretical defense of distributive justice that emphasizes diminishing marginal utility, thus favoring the poor. "Just Results" is a stimulating and highly applicable book that will be of great interest to philosophers, political scientists, policy analysts and planners.

Contents:

1 The Value Component of Policy Analysis 7

Policy Opinions and Value Opinions 7

Prima Facie Values and Value Conflicts 10

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Values 12

Five Basic Types of Value Systems 15

2 Why There Is No 'Incommensurable Pluralism' of Value Systems 33

Is the Value of Cultural Traditions Intrinsic or Extrinsic? 34

The Psychological Difficulty of Introspectively Distinguishing Intrinsic from Extrinsic Values 44

3 Crucial Problems with Utilitarian Decision Principles 57

Extreme Utilitarianism 58

Rule Utilitarianism 74

4 Crucial Problems with Rights-Based Decision Principles 86

Positive Law and Natural Law: In What Sense Do Rights "Trump" Beneficial Consequences? 88

Kant, Gewirth, and Nozick: Rights and Duties as Mandatory Rather than Merely Beneficial 97

Frankena and Rawls: The Need for a Commensurability of Justice and Utility 113

5 Toward a Nonutilitarian Consequentialist Concept of Distributive Justice 123

The Effect of Diminishing Marginal Utility 124

Nonutilitarian Consequentialist Distributive Justice and the Utility-Justice Conflict 128

The Problem of Individual Differences in the Rate of Diminishing Marginal Utility 134

6 A Method for Quantifying Distributive Justice 143

Why Cost-Benefit Analysis Fails: The Distinction Between Necessary and Less-Necessary Benefits 145

Measuring the Degree of Necessity 151

The "Wealth Effect" in Occupational Risk-Aversion Studies as a Measure of the Rate of Diminishing Marginal Utility and Thus of the 'Degree of Necessity' of Both Priced and Unpriced Values 155

A Mathematical Model for the Effect of Necessity/nonnecessity on Quantitative Decision Principles 161

7 The Problem of Empirical Uncertainties 173

How Scientific Uncertainties Inhibit Government Intervention 177

Incorporating Justice into a Consequentialist Approach 190.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-209) and index.

ISBN:

0878406662

0878406670

OCLC:

37567317