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Immigration is a divisive policy issue in modern liberal
democracies. A common worry is that immigration poses a threat to
social cohesion, and so to the social unity that underpins
cooperation, stable democratic institutions, and a robust welfare
state. At the heart of this worry is the suggestion that social
cohesion requires a shared identity at the societal level. In The
Politics of Social Cohesion, Nils Holtug gives a careful assessment
of the impact of immigration on social cohesion and egalitarian
redistribution. First, he critically scrutinizes an influential
argument, according to which immigration leads to ethnic diversity,
which again tends to undermine trust and solidarity and so the
social basis for redistribution. According to this argument,
immigration should be severely restricted. And second, he considers
the suggestion that, in response to worries about immigration,
states should promote a shared identity to foster social cohesion
in the citizenry. Holtug argues that the effects of immigration on
social cohesion do not need to compromise social justice, and that
core principles of liberty and equality not only form the normative
basis for just policies of immigration and integration but, as a
matter of empirical fact, are also the values that, if shared, are
most likely to produce the social cohesion among community members
that provides the social basis for implementing justice.
National identity plays an increasingly important role in Western,
liberal democracies. Thus, national identities are experienced as
threatened by immigration and diversity and restrictions on
immigration and nation-building policies are being implemented in
response. Specifically, it has been suggested that diversity drives
down social cohesion and thus the ties that bind people together in
stable, democratic welfare states. This book addresses challenges
to stable liberal democratic institutions and to social cohesion
resulting from immigration and diversity. Thus, immigration has
been considered an important factor in political polarization and
political responses and movements. National identity plays a
significant role both as something that, according to some, is
threatened by diversity and as something to which populist
politicians positively appeal in their justification of restrictive
immigration policies and efforts towards nation-building. In some
cases, political leaders have framed minorities as a threat to the
nation state warranting a departure from liberal democratic
institutions. This book considers the role of national identity in
contemporary societies and in particular its significance for
social cohesion. What role does national identity play for
political polarization? Do national identities mediate/moderate the
impact of diversity on social cohesion, including trust and
solidarity? Has identity politics contributed to a politics of
resentment and can more inclusive national identities serve to
diminish polarization? In the book, these and other questions about
the relation between national identity, belonging and social
cohesion are considered by a number of the most prominent scholars
in the field.
In our lives, we aim to achieve welfare for ourselves, that is, to
live good lives. But we also have another, more impartial
perspective, where we aim to balance our concern for our own
welfare against a concern for the welfare of others. This is a
perspective of justice. Nils Holtug examines these two perspectives
and the relations between them.
The first part of the book is concerned with prudence; more
precisely, with what the necessary and sufficient conditions are
for having a self-interest in a particular benefit. It includes
discussions of the extent to which self-interest depends on
preferences, personal identity, and what matters in survival. It
also considers the issue of whether it can benefit (or harm) a
person to come into existence and what the implications are for our
theory of self-interest. A 'prudential view' is defended, according
to which a person has a present self-interest in a future benefit
if and only if she stands in a relation of continuous physical
realization of (appropriate) psychology to the beneficiary, where
the strength of the self-interest depends both on the size of the
benefit and on the strength of this relation.
The second part of the book concerns distributive justice and so
how to distribute welfare or self-interest fulfilment over
individuals. It includes discussions of welfarism, egalitarianism
and prioritarianism, population ethics, the importance of personal
identity and what matters for distributive justice, and the
importance of all these issues for various topics in applied
ethics, including the badness of death. Here, a version of
prioritarianism is defended, according to which, roughly, the moral
value of a benefit to an individual at a time depends on both the
size of the benefit and on the individual's self-interest, at that
time, in the other benefits that accrue to her at this and other
times.
Egalitarianism, the view that equality matters, attracts a great
deal of attention amongst contemporary political theorists. And yet
it has turned out to be surprisingly difficult to provide a fully
satisfactory egalitarian theory. The cutting-edge articles in
Egalitarianism move the debate forward. They are written by some of
the leading political philosophers in the field. Recent issues in
the debate over equality are given careful consideration: the
distinction between 'telic' and 'deontic' egalitarianism;
prioritarianism and the so-called 'levelling down objection' to
egalitarianism; whether egalitarian justice should have 'whole
lives' or some subset thereof as its temporal focus; the
implications of Scanlon's contractualist account of the value of
choice for egalitarian justice; and the question of whether
non-human animals fall within the scope of egalitarianism and if
so, what the implications are. Numerous 'classic' issues receive a
new treatment too: how egalitarianism can be justified and how, if
at all, this value should be combined with other values such as
desert, liberty and sufficiency; how to define the 'worst off' for
the purposes of Rawls' difference principle; Elizabeth Anderson's
feminist account of 'equality of relations'; how equality applies
to risky choices and, in particular, whether it is justifiable to
restrict the freedom of suppliers who wish to release goods that
confer different levels of risk on consumers, depending on their
ability to pay. Finally, the implications of egalitarianism and
prioritarianism for health care are scrutinized. The contributors
to the volume are: Richard Arneson, Linda Barclay, Thomas
Christiano, Nils Holtug, Susan Hurley, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen,
Dennis McKerlie, Ingmar Persson, Bertil Tungodden, Peter
Vallentyne, Andrew Williams, and Jonathan Wolff.
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