Institutional Development and Justice

Paper Summary:

The paper looks at the work and beliefs of John Rawls, Alasdair MacIntyre and John Locke. The paper shows how all the schools of thought place high importance on the concept of institutional design, but they differ on how principles of morality and justice should be applied. The paper also discusses how both ideal and non ideal assumptions come to impact on this concept and therefore concludes that the use of such assumptions is necessary to offer a viable account of institutional design.

From the Paper:

"Institutions form an essential part of the administration of political power. As such, although the traditional study of history focused on great and powerful individuals, it nonetheless did so on the basis of assessing the institutional makeup through which they utilised and exercised their power base (Heywood, 1999). Therefore, even before the onset of the twentieth century the design of institutions was an important area of academic endeavour. However, the onset of social history or as E.P.Thompson termed it "history from below", brought about enormous changes in the way social science conceptualised institutional frameworks and designs (Thompson, 1968). It was clear that institutional design was hugely responsible for a variety of different issues and developments. Thus, since the early twentieth century social scientists have attempted to utilise institutional development in order to explain these issues (Heywood, 1999)."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Beitz, C. (1979) Political Theory and International Relations, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Gaus, G and Kukathas, C. (2004) Handbook of Political Theory, London: Sage.
• Goodin, R.E. (1998) The Theory of Institutional Design, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hamspher-Monk, I. (1992) A History of Modern Political Thought, Oxford: Blackwell.
• Held, D. (1996) Models of Democracy, Oxford: Polity.

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