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A Review: Digital Archeology of the Modern American Libertarian Movement
The modern American libertarian movement began in the mid-1960s. The surviving written resources from this early era are vanishing, unless converted to digital format. This article provides background for the development of this movement and presents currently available online digital publication platforms. Along with some relevant publications in need of digital preservation.
Journal Article
The politics of behaviour change: nudge, neoliberalism and the state
Behaviour change is increasingly central to policy and politics. The exemplar of nudge, and its relationship to behavioural economics and psychology, is outlined. Nudge's claim to libertarian paternalism is evaluated in the context of the neoliberal state. A sociological critique of behavioural economic assumptions enables a still wider account of shifting state-citizen relations. Foucauldian analyses of such relations, as well as deliberative 'think' perspectives, are assessed. A more explicitly political, social-democratic model of the behaviour change state is advocated. This would be more attuned to the socioeconomic context of behaviour, and also be prepared to defend citizens against ubiquitous attempts to shape their subjectivity.
Journal Article
Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Dispositions of Self-Identified Libertarians
Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in U.S. politics, yet they have been largely unstudied. Across 16 measures in a large web-based sample that included 11,994 self-identified libertarians, we sought to understand the moral and psychological characteristics of self-described libertarians. Based on an intuitionist view of moral judgment, we focused on the underlying affective and cognitive dispositions that accompany this unique worldview. Compared to self-identified liberals and conservatives, libertarians showed 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle, and weaker endorsement of all other moral principles; 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style; and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. As predicted by intuitionist theories concerning the origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent relationships with libertarian emotional dispositions and social preferences. Our findings add to a growing recognition of the role of personality differences in the organization of political attitudes.
Journal Article
Libertarian Paternalism and the Problem of Preference Architecture
People often fail to make the choices that best satisfy their preferences. The design of the social environment inevitably makes some choices easier than others. According to Libertarian Paternalists, these facts justify governments nudging people towards better choices through changes to the so-called choice architecture. This is a form of means paternalism. However, the social environment affects not only people's choices or means, but also the preferences they adopt in the first place. Call this the problem of ‘preference architecture’. This article argues that preference architecture constitutes a fundamental challenge to the justificatory basis of Libertarian Paternalism. More generally, it explores when, if ever, government paternalism that influences preference formation can be justified. While Libertarian Paternalism cannot provide a satisfactory answer, the author defends a contractualist account of paternalism based on a notion of primary goods and democratic deliberation.
Journal Article
Governing temptation: Changing behaviour in an age of libertarian paternalism
This paper critically examines new modes of behaviour change promoted by the contemporary British state, providing a critique of libertarian paternalism as an emergent form of government in the UK. We analyse the multivalent principles and mechanisms associated with libertarian paternalism. We consider the contribution of Foucauldian theories of governmentality and psychological power within human geography to a critical analysis of libertarian paternalism. Reflecting on the example of Manual for Streets (DfT, 2007) for re-designing residential roads in the UK, we conclude by explaining why libertarian paternalist policies could lead to the formation of more, or less deliberative public spaces.
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Enough and as Good: A Formal Model of Lockean First Appropriation
In developing a theory of the first appropriation of natural resources from the state of nature, John Locke tells us that persons must leave \"enough and as good\" for others. Detailing exactly what this restriction requires divides right and left libertarians. Briefly, right libertarians interpret \"enough and as good\" as requiring no or very minimal restrictions on the first appropriation of natural resources, whereas left libertarians interpret \"enough and as good\" as requiring everyone to be entitled to an equal share of unappropriated resources, able to claim no more beyond this equal share. This article approaches the right versus left libertarian debate by developing a formal model that examines the welfare properties of different interpretations of the Lockean proviso. The model shows that underlying philosophical justifications for left libertarianism, when plausible assumptions hold, will actually be better served by a right libertarian proviso rather than a left libertarian one.
Journal Article
The People’s Perspective on Libertarian-Paternalistic Policies
We examine the views toward libertarian-paternalistic (soft) governmental interventions in a series of online experiments conducted in three countries. We use both standard and new methods to elicit attitudes toward soft interventions in various hypothetical scenarios. The majority of the participants accept these types of interventions by the government. However, a substantial proportion opposes them and would prefer that the government simply provide information to help the public make the right choice rather than use a more effective choice architecture intervention. Some even refuse to make the choice that the government promotes, although they would have done so in the absence of the intervention. The opposition to soft interventions appears to be driven by concerns about manipulation and the fear of a slippery slope to nonconsensual interventions. Opposition to soft interventions is reduced when they are implemented by employers rather than the government.
Journal Article
Was Fusionism a Fluke?
Do conservatives actually stand for anything in particular? Or are they only reactionaries, unified by nothing except cantankerous objection to some vague idea of progress? One way of answering is to look at “fusionism,” a theory expounded in the 1960s by figures like the political philosopher Frank Meyer. Fusionism was an effort to combine libertarian and traditionalist concerns under one conservative canopy, where the proponents of freedom and the defenders of moral order could unite against the forces that threatened both — chief among them the totalitarian ideology of “godless communism.” Practically, this meant a coalition in America between economic libertarians and religious conservatives. The coalition seemed to be going swimmingly through the Reagan era, but since the 1990s it has become increasingly fraught, culminating in the political realignment of 2016. We might wonder if fusionism was an unnatural match sustained only by common enmity toward the Soviet Union, and thus bound to fray after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But before leaping to this conclusion, we must ask why communism inspired such vehement antipathy from both libertarians and traditionalists. Was this joint opposition merely a matter of historical circumstance, or might it hint at deeper symmetries that remain instructive today?
Journal Article
Beneath the Black Robes of Ignatius and Mariana: Limited Liberty within an Interventionist Order
The Society of Jesus sprang from the devout faith of a sidelined soldier who traded in his weapons to form a militant order of Catholic Reformers sworn to serve the Papacy as missionary soldiers of Christ. Specialization in education led Jesuits to roles as theologians of the 16
Century, including as members of the School of Salamanca, whose Jesuit members mostly took pro-market positions on free enterprise. One learned Jesuit in particular deviated from his order’s default position of papal dirigisme to become an enemy of the state.
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