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Paternalism and Social Policy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Albert Weale
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Abstract

This paper discusses the notion of paternalism, and its application to the evaluation of social policies. It attempts first to define the concept, using Mill's distinction between self- and other-regarding actions. A paternalistic policy is one in which the government renders a self-regarding action less eligible for a citizen, with the intention of benefiting the citizen in question. This concept is then applied to the analysis of redistribution by means of social policy measures. Two questions are discussed: (a) whether any redistribution must be paternalist, and (b) whether redistribution in kind is more paternalist than redistribution in cash. It is argued that paternalism need not be the explanation for the policy in either case. Finally three criteria are specified in terms of which paternalistic interventions by the state might be assessed as justified or not.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , April 1978 , pp. 157 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 For example, ‘Public expenditure on goods and services, however desirable, leaves people with less to spend out of their pockets. Transfer payments are intrinsically less paternalistic (especially when, like pensions and unlike housing subsidies or investment grants, they are not tied to specific purchases). For they do not reduce the amount available for personal consumption and private investment, although they do redistribute it.’ Brittan, S., Steering the Economy, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1971, p. 112.Google Scholar

2 Mill, J. S., On liberty, edited by Acton, H. B., J. M. Dent and Sons, London, 1972, p. 73.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Hart, H. L. A., Law, Liberty and Morality, Oxford University Press, London, 1963, p. 34.Google Scholar

4 In some passages Mill seems to have recognized the validity of state intervention to secure collective goods. Mill, op. cit. pp. 74 and 132.

5 Hume, D., A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by Mossner, E. C., Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1969, p. 590.Google Scholar

6 For these cases, as counter-examples to the proposed definition, see Gert, B. and Culver, C. M., ‘Paternalistic Behaviour’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 6:1 (1976), 45–6.Google Scholar

7 Dworkin, G., ‘Paternalism’, The Monist, 56:1 (1972), 68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 This paragraph owes much to Davidson, D., ‘How is Weakness of Will Possible?’, in Feinberg, J. (ed.), Moral Concepts, Oxford University Press, London, 1969, pp. 93–113.Google Scholar

9 Nozick, R., Anarchy, State and Utopia, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1975, pp. 160–4 and 171.Google Scholar

10 Cf. Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice, Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, London, 1972, p. 104Google Scholar; and Weale, A., Equality and Social Policy, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Henley, 1978, ch. 3.Google Scholar

11 For this example see Roberts, R., The Classic Slum, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1973, p. 21Google Scholar. I owe this reference to Mr R. Hague of the Department of Politics, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

12 Cf. Arrow, K. J., ‘Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care’, American Economic Review, 53:5 (1963), 941–73Google Scholar; and Sen, A. K., On Economic Inequality, Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, London, 1973, pp. 77–8.Google Scholar

13 Lindsay, C. M., ‘Medical Care and the Economics of Sharing’, in Cooper, M. H. and Culyer, A. J. (eds), Health Economics, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1973, p. 87.Google Scholar

14 Cf. Nozick, op. cit.

15 Sidgwick, H., The Elements of Politics, Macmillan, London, 1891, p. 37.Google Scholar

16 For the notion of a plan of life, and a discussion of the way in which various ends are related to each other in such an overall plan, see Fried, C., An Anatomy of Values, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1970, pp. 97–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Ibid., pp; 179–82.