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Why care about reactions? : the case for a sensitive state
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Carpan, Catalina (2019) Why care about reactions? : the case for a sensitive state. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3492179~S15
Abstract
Drawing on insights into human psychology, this thesis takes seriously the idea that perceived social status may shape individual interpretations and responses to state action and aims to frame it within mainstream debates in Political Theory. Its central concept, reaction-insensitivity, characterizes coercive institutional policies and actions whose justification does not give sufficient weight to the reactions they may trigger among vulnerable citizens. Some of these reaction-harms include perceptions of costs to the exercise of rights and to accessing opportunities, adaptive preference formation and the development of debilitating dispositions, such as stigma-consciousness and learned powerlessness. It argues that, in some cases, political agents ought to give due weight to the foreseeable reactions triggered by their actions, because, in failing to do so, they may threaten core individual rights and entitlements. The aim of this discussion is three-fold. First, it sets out to offer a non-exhaustive taxonomy of reaction- harms which, in light of the existing political theory literature, are either non-instrumentally or instrumentally significant. Second, it seeks to argue that, although the treatment of these cases has been limited so far, the concerns raised by reaction-insensitivity are compatible with several mainstream accounts such as Rawlsian self-respect, Dworkin’s conception of authenticity and several views about the wrongness of discrimination. Thirdly, it considers when political actors may be unjustified in acting insensitively and it lays the foundation for a state duty of reaction-sensitivity. The thesis uses its normative analysis as the basis for engaging with current policymaking and for setting out a reaction-sensitive policy framework to guide the design state action in practice. The extended argument presented in these pages offers a distinctive and timely contribution to this underexplored issue, setting out arguably the most sustained and complete philosophical assessment of this kind in the literature to date.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology J Political Science > JA Political science (General) |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Political psychology, Political sociology, Social status -- Political aspects | ||||
Official Date: | September 2019 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Politics and International Studies | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Clayton, Matthew, 1966- ; Mason, Andrew, 1959- | ||||
Format of File: | |||||
Extent: | 218 leaves | ||||
Language: | eng |
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