The Role of a Merit Principle in Distributive Justice

The claim that the level of well-beingeach enjoys ought to be to some extent afunction of individuals' talents, efforts,accomplishments, and other meritoriousattributes faces serious challenge from bothegalitarians and libertarians, but also fromskeptics, who point to the poor historicalrecord of attempted merit assays and theubiquity of attribution biases arising fromlimited sweep, misattribution, custom andconvention, and mimicry. Yet merit-principlesare connected with reactive attitudes andinnate expectations, giving them some claim torecognition and there is a widespread beliefthat their use indirectly promotes thewell-being of all. After critically evaluatingarguments for and against assigning a prominentrole to merit in a distributive protocol, it isargued that an entitlement to the ``doubtful andspeculative' but not the ``known andpresumptive' components of well-being can flowfrom perceived relative merit. However,statistical equality of outcome with respect togroups is mandatory. Semi-meritocracies aredefensible institutions, but existing rewardschemes by and large do not meet the conditionsof social justice.     

分配公正、程序公正、互动公正影响效果的差异

以大学生奖学金评比为例,探讨了组织公正各维度影响效果的差异。以661名大学生为被试,采用2×2×2的完全随机设计,以情境故事法（scenarios）呈现刺激,研究了奖学金评比中分配公正、程序公正、互动公正对大学生学习投入、班级荣誉感、班级归属感、与辅导员的关系的影响。结果表明,组织公正三个维度与效果变量之间存在清晰的对应影响关系：分配公正主要影响具体、以个人为参照的效果变量;程序公正主要影响与组织有关的效果变量;互动公正主要影响与上司有关的效果变量。     

分配制度公平对员工分配公平感的影响:中国组织情境下的实证研究*

西方组织公平领域的主流观点认为要想提高员工的分配公平感,应着力提高分配过程的公平性以及上下级互动的公平性,即程序公平和互动公平。本研究发现:在中国组织情境下,较之程序公平和互动公平(人际公平、信息公平),分配制度公平对员工分配公平感的解释力最强;在分配制度不公平的情境下,程序公平和人际公平才会影响分配公平感,仅仅起到亡羊补牢的作用。     

分配不公正下的退缩行为：程序公正和互动公正的影响

以160名中学教师为被试,采用2×2的完全随机设计,以模拟故事（scenarios）的方法呈现刺激,研究了在职称评定中分配不公正的前提下,程序公正/不公正,互动公正/不公正对教师的退缩行为（消极怠工、拒绝帮助、离职、对校长的消极态度）的影响。结果表明,在分配不公正条件下：（1）程序公正、互动公正均影响教师的消极怠工程度;（2）程序公正、互动公正均影响教师的拒绝帮助行为程度,而且交互作用显著;（3）互动公正影响教师对上司的消极态度,程序公正无显著影响;（4）程序公正和互动公正对离职意愿影响均不显著     

Two Senses of Justice: Confucianism,Rawls, and Comparative Political Philosophy

This paper argues that a comparative study of the idea of a sense of justice in the work of John Rawls and the early Chinese philosopher Kongzi is mutually beneficial to our understanding of the thought of both figures. It also aims to provide an example of the relevance of moral psychology for basic questions in political philosophy. The paper offers an analysis of Rawls’s account of a sense of justice and its place within his theory of justice, focusing on the features of this capacity and how it develops. It then provides an account of the sense of justice in Kongzi’s thought as it is seen in the Analects. Finally, it shows how examining the similarities and differences between the two accounts can deepen our understanding of both views, as well as our appreciation for the importance of understanding how a sense of justice develops.     

绩效、能力、职位对组织分配公平观的影响

旨在探索基于组织分配公平的认知评价和决策行为的影响因素,为此提出了不公平阈限的概念,即在追求公平和谋求自我利益的动机权衡中,个体为了追求公平而愿意放弃的最高限度的个人利益。采用最后通牒博弈和独裁者博弈的二阶段实验范式,样本量为60。结果发现,工作绩效、工作能力均对个体的不公平阈限有显著的影响;对于公平判断和基于公平的回应行为,工作绩效起着首要作用,工作能力的影响次之,再次是对方的提议数额的影响。第一阶段对方提议的分配方案对被试越有利,则第二阶段被试的回应行为越有利于对方。排除能力差别的作用之后,职位差别并未引起不公平阈限的显著差异。根据研究结果,总结出分配公平的三项原则：绩效原则、能力原则和互惠原则     

Reading the Public: Political Action and Its Relationship to Constructions of Political Disagreement and Opinion Climate in the Context of Brexit

This study applied a social representations approach to investigate the ways in which constructions of perceived political disagreement and the prevailing opinion climate were implicated in people's construals of political participation in the context of the United Kingdom European Union referendum of 2016. Interviews were conducted with 19 residents of the United Kingdom who voted to remain in the referendum, located in constituencies which represented diverse opinion climates in relation to the referendum. Thematic analysis of the data revealed that public opinion was a dilemmatic social representation; it was inscrutable and often ill-informed but also volatile and disruptive, which left open the possibility of it moving towards a more pro-EU position. Importantly, constructions of a polarized and dysfunctional political system worked to sustain a mode of political engagement which prioritized and positioned as efficacious individual rather than collective anti-Brexit political behavior. This implies that people may prefer different types of political participation depending on the opinion climate which they occupy and the way in which they construe it. Findings are discussed in relation to previous work linking meta-representations to political behavior and expression, and the implications of the findings for emergent forms such as Brexit are elaborated.     

Justice and Civic Friendship： An Aristotelian Critique of Modern Citizenry

Modem moral and political theorists make a sharp separation between justice and civic friendship, arguing that justice deals with the fair terms of co-operation in the social sphere whereas civic friendship is about an individual＇s contingent affections in the political domain. In addition, they also argue that the principles of justice must determine the nature and function of civic friendship in modem liberal society. Even though the historical origin of the above view can be traced to the writings of Immanuel Kant （2007）, John Rawls provides us with its most cogent formulation in recent times. In his book A Theory of Justice （1971）, Rawls argues that the considerations of right are prior to the considerations of good; therefore the principles of justice must determine the limits of civic friendship. Against RaMs, I argue that justice and civic friendship are intrinsically connected and that they cannot be separated in experience. I draw upon Aristotle＇s theory of virtue to strengthen my arguments. Following Aristotle, I show that both justice and friendship are virtues and that all virtues hold together. The Aristotelian coherence of virtues, I argue, can be useful in redefining the obligations of justice and civic friendship in contemporary liberal democracies.     

Distributive Justice for Others,Collective Angst,and Support for Exclusion of Immigrants

Harsh treatment of others can reflect an underlying motivation to view the world as fair and just and also a dispositional tendency to believe in justice. However, there is a critical need to refine and expand existing knowledge, not only to identify underlying psychological processes but also to better understand how justice may be implicated in support for exclusionary policies. Across two studies, we show that support for policies that restrict immigrants is exclusively associated with thoughts about fair outcomes for other people (distributive justice for others). In Study 1, Americans' dispositional tendency to believe in distributive justice for others was associated with greater support for a policy proposing to further restrict immigrant job seekers' capacity to gain employment in the United States. In Study 2, we experimentally primed thoughts about justice in a sample of U.S. police officers. Support for a policy that mandated stricter policing of illegal immigration was strongest among officers who first thought about fair outcomes for other people, relative to other unique justice primes. Across both studies, distributive justice for others was associated with greater collective angst—perceived threat towards the future existence of Americans. Moreover, collective angst mediated the link between distributive justice for others and support for restrictive policies. Overall, this research suggests that thoughts about distributive justice for others can especially diminish compassion towards immigrants and other underprivileged groups via support for exclusionary policies. In addition, merely thinking about distributive justice for others may be sufficient to amplify social callousness.     

Spheres of Justice within Schools: Reflections and Evidence on the Distribution of Educational Goods

This article argues that there are distinct spheres of justice within education and examines a range of justice norms and distribution rules that characterize the daily life of schools and classrooms. Moving from the macro to micro level, we identify the following five areas: the right to education, the allocation of (or selection into) learning places, teaching–learning practices, teachers’ treatment of students, and student evaluations of grade distribution. We discuss the literature on the beliefs by students and teachers about the just distribution of educational goods in these five domains, and on the practices used in the actual allocation of these goods. In line with normative ‘spheres of justice’ arguments in social theory, we conclude that the ideals of social justice within schools vary strongly according to the particular resource to be distributed. Moreover, these ideals often do not correspond with the practices that actually guide resource distribution in education, which may go some way toward explaining explicit or latent conflicts in this sphere. Justice is a human construction, and it is doubtful that it can be made in only one way – Michael Walzer (1983, p. 5)     

Feasibility and Stability in Normative Political Philosophy: The Case of Liberal Nationalism

Arguments from stability for liberal nationalism rely on considerations about conditions for the feasibility or stability of liberal political ideals and factual claims about the circumstances under which these conditions are fulfilled in order to argue for nationalist conclusions. Such reliance on factual claims has been criticised by among others G. A. Cohen in other contexts as ideological reifications of social reality. In order to assess whether arguments from stability within liberal nationalism, especially as formulated by David Miller, are vulnerable to a comparable critique, the rationale for their reliance on factual claims is discussed on the basis of a number of concerns in John Rawls’s political liberalism. The concern with stability in liberal nationalism differs from stability in Rawls’s work, mainly because of the stronger non-ideal or ‘realist’ focus of the former. In so far as the ‘realism’ of arguments from stability for liberal nationalism is recognized, they are not vulnerable to the reification charge. But if the arguments are construed as realist, this at the same time makes for other tensions within liberal nationalism.     

Distributive Justice and Co-Operation in a World of Humans and Non-Humans: A Contractarian Argument for Drawing Non-Humans into the Sphere of Justice

Various arguments have been provided for drawing non-humans such as animals and artificial agents into the sphere of moral consideration. In this paper, I argue for a shift from an ontological to a social-philosophical approach: instead of asking what an entity is, we should try to conceptually grasp the quasi-social dimension of relations between non-humans and humans. This allows me to reconsider the problem of justice, in particular distributive justice. Engaging with the work of Rawls, I show that an expansion of the contractarian framework to non-humans causes an important problem for liberalism, but can be justified by a contractarian argument. Responding to Bell’s and Nussbaum’s comments on Rawls, I argue that we can justify drawing non-humans into the sphere of distributive justice by relying on the notion of a co-operative scheme. I discuss what co-operation between humans and non-humans can mean and the extent to which it depends on properties. I conclude that we need to imagine principles of ecological and technological distributive justice.     

The lottery of life and moral desert: An empirical investigation

As John Rawls makes clear in A Theory of Justice, there is a popular and influential strand of political thought for which brute luck – that is, being lucky (or unlucky) in the so-called “lottery of life” – ought to have no place in a theory of distributive justice. Yet the debate about luck, desert, and fairness in contemporary political philosophy has recently been rekindled by a handful of philosophers who claim that desert should play a bigger role in theories of distributive justice. In the present paper, we present the results of our attempts to fill in some of the missing empirical details of this debate. Our findings provide some preliminary evidence that, contrary to what most contemporary political philosophers have assumed, people are not as worried by natural luck as previously thought. Instead, people’s worries seem to be focused exclusively on inequalities generated by social luck.     

The Electoral Impact of Public Opinion on Religious Establishment

While previous work has examined the structure of public opinion on church and state, to date there has been little effort to connect public opinion on this group of issues to vote choice. I begin by hypothesizing that attitudes on religious establishment are distinct from attitudes on more often studied issues like abortion and gay marriage. Second, I argue that religious establishment meets the conditions for partisan voting: the parties and candidates have taken distinct, highly public stands on religious establishment, and the issue is highly salient among a certain segment of voters. Finally, I develop a theory that establishment attitudes should exert a greater impact among those individuals who feel that their values are threatened in contemporary society because such individuals may see religious accommodation as a means of returning to their understanding of traditional values. I test these hypotheses using data from the 2008 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project, and I find considerable support for my argument.     

The Role of Justice in Organizations: A Meta-Analysis

The correlates of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice were examined using 190 studies samples, totaling 64,757 participants. We found the distinction between the three justice types to be merited. While organizational practices and outcomes were related to the three justice types, demographic characteristics of the perceiver were, in large part, unrelated to perceived justice. Job performance and counterproductive work behaviors, considered to be outcomes of perceived justice, were mainly related to procedural justice, whereas organizational citizenship behavior was similarly predicted by distributive and procedural justice. Most satisfaction measures were similarly related to all justice types. Although organizational commitment and trust were mainly related to procedural justice, they were also substantially related to the other types of justice. Findings from laboratory and field studies are not always in agreement. Future research agendas are discussed.     

组织公平文献综述及未来的研究方向

文章的主要目的在于回顾组织公平自其产生至今的主要文献,并介绍Colquitt(2001)的组织公平四因素结构(即分配公平、程序公平、人际公平和信息公平)[1]。文章还讨论了组织公平的工具性和非工具性模型。最后,文章介绍了组织公平今后的几个研究方向。     

不同社会情境对儿童奖惩分配公平性的影响

为探讨社会排斥和社会接纳情境下儿童奖惩分配公平性,研究采用个体-偶然排斥范式和第三方奖惩分配范式,对8~9岁儿童奖惩分配公平性行为和奖惩分配公平性判断进行研究,结果发现：（1）社会排斥组被试的奖惩分配公平性行为显著多于社会接纳组,奖惩分配不公平性行为显著少于社会接纳组。9岁组被试的奖惩分配公平性行为显著多于8岁组,奖惩分配不公平性行为显著少于8岁组;（2）社会排斥组被试的奖惩分配公平性判断显著高于社会接纳组,9岁组被试的奖惩分配公平性判断显著高于8岁组,奖惩分配不公平性判断显著低于8岁组。结论：社会情境影响儿童的奖惩分配公平性,在排斥情境下,8~9岁儿童的奖惩分配公平性明显提升;8~9岁儿童的奖惩分配公平性随年龄增长有上升趋势。     

On Confucian Political Philosophy and Its Theory of Justice

Traditional Confucian political culture (including its concepts, systems, practices and folk customs) has a legacy that deserves careful reconsideration today. Its theories, institutions, and practices address the source, legitimacy, division and balance, and restriction of political power. Confucian politics is a type of “moral politics” which sticks to what ought to be and what is justifiable, and holds that political power comes from Heaven, mandate of Heaven or Dao of Heaven, which implies that justification and standards rest with the people referring to scholars peasants, workers and merchants. This type of justification is rooted in the public space and the autonomous strength of the people, and it finds guidance in the involvement, supervision, and criticism of the class of scholar-bureaucrats (shi 士). In this article, Western political philosophy will be taken as a frame of reference for evaluating Confucian conception of justice as well as Confucian ideas of distribution, fairness of opportunity, caring kindness for “the least advantaged,” and institutional construction. It will argue that the leading characteristic of Confucian political theory is that of “substantive justice.”     

社会公正与政治信任：民众对政府的合作行为机制

胡锦涛在中共十八大上提出：必须坚持维护社会公平正义。对社会公正的认知直接决定着民众的政治信任, 进而影响民众对政府的合作。近年来频发的群体性事件即是非合作行为的典型表征。然而, 国内外研究中至今没有直接探讨社会公正与政治信任影响合作行为的实证支持, 更无法进一步揭示其作用于合作行为的过程和条件。鉴于此, 本研究将社会公正分为分配公正和程序公正, 将政治信任分为工具信任和情感信任, 采用实验室研究、现场研究和问卷调查研究相结合的方法, 探讨社会公正对合作行为的过程机制, 建立其通过工具信任和情感信任作用于合作行为的双路径模型; 并进一步分析结果依赖性对这一路径模型的调节作用。本研究有望提出社会公正与政治信任影响合作行为的双路径模型及其调节变量, 一方面在理论上深化和拓展本领域的研究, 另一方面实践中通过提升公正感、强化过程变量(政治信任)、干预调节变量(结果依赖性)等策略促进合作行为。