Thursday, September 15th, 2022 Political Equality: What is it and why it matters?

Description

Political inequality is a distinctive type of inequality and cannot be reduced to the factors that routinely go into thinking about economic inequalities or inequalities of power, although both have effects. Its currency is performative, not distributive, and is fundamentally about the nature and quality of social relations; politics is intrinsically process-oriented, comprising various ‘political transactions’ across citizens, representatives and interest groups, among others. Thus, to understand political equality, we need to appreciate how individuals relate to one another through the democratic process.In this lecture, Professor Margaret Levi presented the conceptual framework, that she, along with Professors Tim Besley and Pablo Beramendi developed since the publication of their paper, Political Equality: What is it and why does it matter? which forms the basis for their book-in-progress. A discussion and question and answer session followed the presentation.

The Cadario Visiting Lecture in Public Policy is possible because of the generous support of Paul Cadario, Distinguished Fellow, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.  

About the Speaker: Margaret Levi is professor of Political Science, Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, a faculty fellow and former Sara Miller McCune Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University. She is also co-director of the Stanford Ethics, Society, and Technology Hub.  She is the winner of the 2019 Johan Skytte Prize and the 2020 Falling Walls Breakthrough.  She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the British Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and served as president of the American Political Science Association. The most recent of her many books are In the Interest of Others (Princeton, 2013), co-authored with John Ahlquist, and A Moral Political Economy: Present, Past, Future (Cambridge University Press, 2021), co-authored with Federica Carugati.  She writes about what makes for trustworthy governance in states and organizations and what evokes citizen compliance, consent, and dissent.