Morality and Public Policy


Book Description

This anthology explores a variety of positions on recent, controversial, social problems--all of which involve government policy. The wide-range of contemporary issues includes allowing/encouraging immigration, use of school vouchers, government control over drugs and guns, same-sex marriages, government support of the arts, affirmative action, the death penalty, and the legitimacy of legally restricting the sale of pornography. For anyone seeking to clarify their understanding and thinking about rights and wrongs in public affairs.




Public Philosophy


Book Description

In this book, Michael Sandel takes up some of the hotly contested moral and political issues of our time, including affirmative action, assisted suicide, abortion, gay rights, stem cell research, the meaning of toleration and civility, the gap between rich and poor, the role of markets, and the place of religion in public life. He argues that the most prominent ideals in our political life--individual rights and freedom of choice--do not by themselves provide an adequate ethic for a democratic society. Sandel calls for a politics that gives greater emphasis to citizenship, community, and civic virtue, and that grapples more directly with questions of the good life. Liberals often worry that inviting moral and religious argument into the public sphere runs the risk of intolerance and coercion. These essays respond to that concern by showing that substantive moral discourse is not at odds with progressive public purposes, and that a pluralist society need not shrink from engaging the moral and religious convictions that its citizens bring to public life.




Morality and Public Policy


Book Description

With an increasingly bitter secular religious divide, there is a messy, defective relationship between the state and morality in the UK. In response, Morality and Public Policy puts forward proposals to enhance the capacity of public policy to respond more effectively to morality and associated shifts in social mores in different cultural settings. Spanning religion, moral philosophy and scientific understanding of the human condition, this unique book draws together and adds to the latest thinking on morality, its causes, mutations, tensions and common features. It challenges misplaced concepts of ‘moral progress’ and the supremacy of empathy, and puts forward the management of the full span of human impulses - some complementary, some conflicting - as the function of morality with major implications for the interface between morality and public policy.




The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy


Book Description

This is part of a ten volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science. This work explores the business end of politics, where theory meets practice in the pursuit of public good.




Political Ethics and Public Office


Book Description

Are public officials morally justified in threatening violence, engaging in deception, or forcing citizens to act for their own good? Can individual officials be held morally accountable for the wrongs that governments commit? Dennis Thompson addresses these questions by developing a conception of political ethics that respects the demands of both morality and politics. He criticizes conventional conceptions for failing to appreciate the difference democracy makes, and for ascribing responsibility only to isolated leaders or to impersonal organizations. His book seeks to recapture the sense that men and women, acting for us and together with us in a democratic process, make the moral choices that govern our public life.




Public and Private Morality


Book Description

Collection of essays by well-known British and American philosophers on the moral principles by which public policies and political decisions should be judged: does effective political action necessarily involve and justify actions which the individual would regard as unacceptable in "private" morality?




Morality Politics in Western Europe


Book Description

Why do some countries have 'Culture Wars' over morality issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage while other countries hardly experience any conflict? This book argues that morality issues only generate major conflicts in political systems with a significant conflict between religious and secular parties.




Do Morals Matter?


Book Description

What is the role of ethics in American foreign policy? The Trump Administration has elevated this from a theoretical question to front-page news. Should ethics even play a role, or should we only focus on defending our material interests? In Do Morals Matter? Joseph S. Nye provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of how modern American presidents have-and have not-incorporated ethics into their foreign policy. Nye examines each presidency during theAmerican era post-1945 and scores them on the success they achieved in implementing an ethical foreign policy. Alongside this, he evaluates their leadership qualities, explaining which approaches work and which ones do not.




Public Policy and Public Morality


Book Description

The book deals with two very important but imprecise terms in contemporary law, namely public policy and public morality. It is commendable that such a comprehensive work about general clauses has been prepared. They are the elements of the common good which refers directly to Article 1 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. The aim of these clauses is to protect the integrity of Polish legal order and the reason why they are applied boils down to the public interest. The clauses refer to the extralegal criteria of a moral, economic or political nature. That is why, for a legal practice, it appears vital that experts contribute to the clarification of their content and meaning as a legal categories. No less important is entrusting or leaving this task to the courts and other legal bodies. These efforts serve to ensure necessary flexibility in applying, in particular, the public policy clause – a safety valve of legal order. prof. Franciszek Longchamps de Bérier, Jagiellonian University in Kraków The theme of the volume and the studies included in it are very interesting and important from a cognitive and applied perspective. The authors of the book represent various academic circles and different legal disciplines, whereas their conclusiveness is an essential value of the presented analyses. Dr hab. Krzysztof Motyka, The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland The idea of the authors of the book to discuss the issues of “public policy” and “public morality” as legal clauses in Polish law against the background of legal solutions of the European Union and international law deserves recognition. It efficiently combines the findings of the legal doctrine and the judicial decisions which allows to view these problems not only from the theoretical and legal perspective, but also from a practical angle. The presented definitions, theoretical and legal considerations, as well as the rulings regarding the clauses of “public policy” and “public morality” constitute a starting point for the authors to formulate their own arguments and conclusions de lege lata and de lege ferenda. The authors also skillfully describe the afore-mentioned clauses and demonstrate their close relationship with constitutional axiology, emphasizing their limitative nature and homeostatic role. Dr hab. Paweł Cichoń, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland




Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy


Book Description

This book shows how careful attention to moral reasoning can enrich economic understanding and clarify the importance and the limits of an economic analysis of policy problems.