Valuing Farm Animal Welfare in a Market Economy: A Philosophical Study of Market Failure

Do people in the UK care about farm animal welfare? How well are their concerns represented in society? How can we use economic policy to build a society that reflects public attitudes towards farm animals and their welfare? In this thesis, I contend that markets in animal products – which facilitate many people’s quotidian interactions with farm animal welfare – are susceptible to four forms of market failure: externalities, public good problems, information asymmetries and uncompetitive consumer behaviour. I analyse how these market failures can subvert the expression of altruistic preferences and prevent markets from reflecting the public’s concern for farm animal welfare, before considering how policymakers can address these market failures. I conclude that preference satisfaction theories of utility and welfare do not provide a suitable grounding for economic farm animal welfare policy, which should instead seek to ensure that public values are appropriately represented in society. I develop a policy framework that draws upon public values and facts about farm animal welfare in society to assist policymakers in this work. Where the public is almost universally opposed to certain husbandry practices, government intervention to directly protect farm animal welfare is likely to be in almost everyone’s interests, and animal welfare should be viewed as a public good. Where significant groups of people are opposed to the use of certain practices, market intervention through externality policies may be justified as a means of affording greater representation to the public’s altruistic concern for farm animal welfare: farm animal welfare should be viewed as a merit good in these cases. Where public values are largely represented in society, farm animal welfare should be treated as a private good: policymakers should empower consumers to express any further dissatisfaction towards animal agriculture through market mechanisms

Domestic analogy in proposals for world order, 1814-1945: the transfer of legal and political principles from the domestic to the international sphere in thought on international law and relations

The ways in which legal and political principles obtaining within states can profitably be transferred to the relations of states are among the contentious issues in the study of international relations, and the term 'domestic analogy' is used to refer to the argument which supports such transfer. The 'domestic analogy' is analogical reasoning according to which the conditions of order between states are similar to those of order within them, and therefore those institutions which sustain order within states should be transferred to the international system. However, despite the apparent division among writers on international relations between those who favour this analogy and those who are critical of it, no clear analysis has so far been made as to precisely what types of proposal should be treated as exemplifying reliance on this analogy. The first aim of this thesis is to clarify the range and types of proposal this analogy entails. The thesis then examines the role the domestic analogy played in ideas about world order in the period between 1814 and 1945. Particular attention is paid to the influence of changing circumstances in the domestic and international spheres upon the manner and the extent of the use of this analogy. In addition to the ideas of major writers on international law and relations, the creation of the League of Nations and of the United Nations is also examined. The thesis then discusses the merits of the five main types of approach to world order which emerge from the preceding analysis. Each embodies a distinct attitude towards the domestic analogy. The thesis shows that there are weaknesses in the approaches based on the domestic analogy, but that ideas critical of this analogy are not entirely flawless, and explores further the conditions under which the more promising proposals may bear fruit

Mill's 'very simple principle': Liberty, utilitarianism and socialism.

The thesis aims to examine the political consequences of applying J.S. Mill's "very simple principle" of liberty in practice: whether the result would be free-market liberalism or socialism, and to what extent a society governed in accordance with the principle would be free. 2 Contrary to Mill's claims for the principle, it fails to provide a clear or coherent answer to this "practical question". This is largely because of three essential ambiguities in Mill's formulation of the principle, examined in turn in the three chapters of the thesis. 3 First, Mill is ambivalent about whether liberty is to be promoted for its intrinsic value, or because it is instrumental to the achievement of other objectives, principally the utilitarian objective of "general welfare". The possibility that he might mean the latter implies that, because liberty and utilitarian objectives are at least potentially incompatible, application of the principle does not preclude the sacrifice of individual liberty in the pursuit of general welfare, and therefore does not preclude paternalistic (and illiberal) state socialism. 4 Arguments advanced by commentators, notably Gray, to suggest that there is no inconsistency between the liberal and utilitarian objectives in Mill's writing, are not sustainable. 5 Secondly, the principle's criterion for sanctioning interference in liberty - the prevention of "harm to others" - is so vague and elastic as to be compatible with almost any degree of interventionism and indeed totalitarianism. Because of the interdependence of men in society, there is virtually no limit to the classes of activity which can be said to cause harm to others, and hence no limits to the interference sanctioned by Mill's principle. Thus the principle does not preclude the suppression of legitimate economic activity by a socialist state committed to preventing economic "harm". 6 Attempts by commentators such as Rees and Ten to show that Mill's use of "harm" is narrower and more specific, are not supported by either textual or logical analysis. 7 Thirdly, Mill's principle fails to make clear whether "liberty" should be understood to mean classical ("negative") liberty or some form of "positive liberty" such as ability/power. It therefore does not preclude the adoption of socialist measures to promote "ability". On examination, "ability" can be seen to be an entirely different phenomenon from liberty. The promotion of "ability" (attainable through central allocation of material resources) can only be undertaken at the expense of liberty, particularly economic liberty. The justification for safeguarding economic liberty lies in respect for private property rights, the absence of which entails enslavement and inhumanity. 8 If a principle were to be framed avoiding these three ambiguities, it could serve as a firmer foundation for the protection and promotion of liberty

The Normalization of Foreign Relations Law

The defining feature of foreign relations law is that it is distinct from domestic law. Courts have recognized that foreign affairs are political by their nature and thus unsuited to adjudication, that state and local involvement is inappropriate in foreign affairs, and that the President has the lead role in foreign policymaking. In other words, they have said that foreign relations are exceptional. But foreign relations exceptionalism — the belief that legal issues arising from foreign relations are functionally, doctrinally, and even methodologically distinct from those arising in domestic policy — was not always the prevailing view. In the early twentieth century, a revolution took place in foreign relations law. Under the intellectual leadership of Justice Sutherland, the Supreme Court adopted the idea that foreign affairs are an exceptional sphere of policymaking, separate from domestic law and best suited to exclusively federal, and primarily executive, control. The exceptionalist approach has dominated foreign relations law since that time, but it has always had questionable foundations. Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a second revolution in foreign relations law, one whose scope and significance rival the Sutherland revolution, but one that has gone largely unrecognized. Over the last twenty-five years, the Supreme Court has increasingly rejected the idea that foreign affairs are different from domestic affairs. Instead, it has started treating foreign relations issues as if they were run-of-the-mill domestic policy issues, suitable for judicial review and governed by ordinary separation of powers and statutory interpretation principles. This “normalization†of foreign relations law has taken place in three waves. It began with the end of the Cold War and the rise of globalization in the 1990s. It continued — counterintuitively — during the war on terror, despite the strong case for exceptionalism in a time of exigency. And it has proceeded, during the Roberts Court, to undermine justiciability, federalism, and executive dominance — the very heart of exceptionalism. This Article documents the normalization of foreign relations law over the last twenty-five years. It demonstrates how normalization can be applied to a wide variety of doctrines and debates in foreign relations law, ranging from the proper interpretation of Youngstown to the applicability of administrative law doctrines in foreign affairs to reforms in the foreign sovereign immunity and state secrets regimes. Ultimately, this Article argues that courts and scholars should embrace normalization as the new paradigm for foreign relations law

The Easy Case Against Tax Simplification

There is growing political momentum to simplify the Internal Revenue Code. While the federal tax laws should be no more complex than necessary, this Article demonstrates that tax complexity is not as bad as political rhetoric leads us to believe. The Article makes four arguments in support of this thesis. First, the forces comprising tax complexity are either inevitable or net beneficial, so calls for simplification are ultimately pointless. Second, the alleged harms of tax complexity are either unproven or overstated, so the need for simplification is questionable. Third, significant proposals for simplification are flawed because they either overcorrect for the perceived problem or actually result in increased complexity. Finally, as a criterion of tax policy, simplicity is overrated. While many scholars use the criteria of equity, efficiency, and simplicity in conducting tax policy analysis, simplicity is best characterized as a component of the efficiency criterion. By elevating simplicity to a plan equal with efficiency and equity, therefore, one gives greater weight to simplicity than to equity and the other components of efficiency. To the extent equitable-but-complex laws are superior to inequitable-but-simple laws, the emphasis on simplicity is misguided

The shopfloor experience of regional policy: work and industrial relations at the Bathgate motor plant, c.1961-1986

This thesis explores the experience of work and industrial relations at the British Motor Corporation’s commercial vehicle assembly plant at Bathgate in West Lothian, from its establishment in 1961 until its closure in 1986. The plant opened in Scotland as a result of a government regional development policy which sought to create jobs and ameliorate the rundown of heavy industry in areas of high unemployment. The thesis considers the role of such policy in shaping industrial development since 1945, and, using the oral history testimony of former Bathgate workers to examine the impact of economic and social change on Scotland’s industrial population, contributes to the regional policy literature by extending the analysis beyond questions about its efficacy and considering the experiences of the workers and communities directly affected by such initiatives. What emerges from this study of regional policy from the perspective of the shopfloor is the extent to which the plant’s establishment on a greenfield site, in an area of high unemployment, very much on the periphery of the UK motor industry and with little tradition of mass assembly production processes, shaped the subsequent evolution of its working conditions, industrial relations, and worker attitudes, as well as its position within the Bathgate community. The Bathgate experience therefore illuminates a number of key debates in the wider historiography of Britain and Scotland since 1945, not only in relation to regional policy itself, but also with regard to the motor industry, its industrial relations, and the development, in the post-war context of relatively high wages and the increasing stability of work, of a more typically ‘affluent’ working class. The thesis is divided into two parts. Part One explores some of the issues surrounding the plant’s establishment in West Lothian, particularly the regional policy aspects, and the plant’s position within and relationship to both the wider BMC – later British Leyland – organisation and the British motor industry more generally. Part Two draws extensively on the influential ‘affluent worker’ thesis, as well as the literature around the industrial relations of motor manufacturing, in developing and exploring questions related to the way in which work was experienced at Bathgate, and the extent to which the attitudes and behaviour of its workforce came to reflect those which typified the motor worker elsewhere. Throughout, the thesis engages with and adds nuance to debates over the role of shopfloor organisation and strike activity in damaging the performance of British motor manufacturing, and, by drawing on the oral testimony of former Bathgate workers themselves, offers a fresh perspective on the post-war experience of regional policy both in a particular, under-researched regional policy plant, and in Scotland and Britain more broadly

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

The method of democracy: John Dewey’s critical social theory

This thesis argues that John Dewey’s theory of collective intelligence presents a unique critical social theory that escapes the dead-ends of Frankfurt School critical theory and speaks directly to the political situation faced today by academics and the public. In Part 1, Dewey’s critical social theory is argued to present a ‘method of democracy’ that proposes a form of ‘intelligent populism’ as the mode of collective action in contemporary ‘political democracies’. Part 2 applies the method of democracy to the contemporary ‘problematic situation’ of neoliberalism in crisis. It is argued that ‘third-wave neoliberalism’ in the UK has turned to higher education (HE) as a solution to this crisis, seeking to redirect HE through the TEF, REF and KEF national performance management systems to the needs of a stagnating monopoly capitalist economy. Part 3 explores ways out of the current crisis based on Dewey’s theory of collective intelligence. Beginning with the institutional context of social theory today, Michael Burawoy’s theory of public sociology is reconstructed as ‘democratic sociology’ based on a practice of ‘co-inquiry’ with the public. While Burawoy argues that the ‘founding tension’ in sociology between professional and radical sociology can be resolved by establishing an ‘organic solidarity’ within the discipline, the analysis of marketisation presented in the thesis suggests that only by uniting with other academics and the public in the fight against neoliberalism can sociologists avoid co-optation. The method of democracy then provides the basis for a reconstruction of the academic profession on a model of ‘democratic collegiality’. Democratic collegiality in turn offers a solution to the contradictions in governance arising from marketisation, pointing to the ‘social co-operative’ as an ideal form for democratised universities. Finally, Corbynism is argued to be a ‘verification’ of Dewey’s hypothesis of intelligent populism, and the book concludes with an analysis of the Lucas Plan, which offers valuable lessons for activist-academics seeking to help realise this genuine alternative to neoliberalism today

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Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH