Freedom, Reciprocity, and the Citizen’s Stake

Abstract

A democratic social order is one in which individuals can mutually affirm the social arrangements in which they live as respecting their standing as free and equal citizens (Rawls, 1993; Cohen, 2003). For freedom and civic equality to be genuine, citizens must have a reliable claim on resources, on terms that do not compromise their independence. The policies and institutions of developed welfare states obviously go a long way towards meeting this goal. But it is not clear that they go far enough. While preventing a good deal of deprivation, these policies and institutions are often targeted at relieving the symptoms of underlying asset inequality, rather than reducing this inequality itself. As such, they do not necessarily provide the less fortunate with the dignity and self-confidence that can flow from asset ownership (Bynner and Paxton, 2001). Moreover, such policies and institutions often come with conditions and requirements that limit the immediate freedom of action of those they assist. Hence, there is a growing interest in what might be called citizen’s stake policies: policies which do aim to give citizens assets or their equivalent in the form of guaranteed income streams, and so enable economic cooperation to proceed on a footing of real equality between independent individuals. One way of providing this citizen’s stake is to pay each citizen a guaranteed, but non-mortgageable stream of income received periodically throughout his or her life.

the social state is advantageous to men only if all have a certain amount, and none too much.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract²

I would like to thank Bruce Ackerman, Selina Chen, Jurgen De Wispelaere, Keith Dowding, Jane Lewis, Erik Olin Wright, Will Paxton, and Karl Widerquist for comments on earlier versions of this chapter and/or on its topic that I have found helpful.