Abstract
A concern for fairness appears to be a “wired” trait in humans, a universal norm and a product of both nature and nurture. Concern for fairness often begins as an emotion or intuition expressed as a moral judgment (“But that’s not fair!”). We then apply reasoning, somewhat after the fact, to justify to ourselves and to others the moral judgment we have made. Bromell shows that in everyday life, how we think about fairness depends on the context, the relationships between the parties, and time (and the passage of time). This chapter provides a framework for assessment of fair process and two approaches to the comparative assessment of fair outcomes. The proposed resolution for public leadership is to be fair. This implies practised skill in facilitating public reasoning and brokering agreements in local contexts on practicable options to make our life together fairer than it is now.
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Notes
- 1.
Fair Go is the title of New Zealand’s consumer affairs television programme, which first screened in 1977 and is one of the country’s longest running and highest rated programmes.
- 2.
“Sav” is an abbreviation of saveloy, a boiled sausage of English provenance, dyed red and customarily slathered in tomato sauce.
- 3.
See, for example, Alesina and Angeletos (2005); Fehr and Schmidt (2003); Gazzaniga (2005); Pfaff (2007); Sanfey (2007); Hausman (2008); Crockett (2009); and Corning (2011). This trait has also been found to exist, at least rudimentarily, in some non-human primates (Bräuer & Hanus, 2012; Brosnan & de Waal, 2003).
- 4.
See, for example, Rawls (1971, p. 17, 2001, 2005, p. xvii). Cohen (2008) also discusses justice and fairness, asserting his own “animating conviction … that an unequal distribution whose inequality cannot be vindicated by some choice or fault or desert on the part of (some of) the relevant affected agents is unfair, and therefore, pro tanto [to that extent], unjust, and that nothing can remove that particular injustice” (p. 7). Cohen goes on to explain: “It does not follow, and I do not say, that such unjust inequality cannot be part of a package of policy that is, all things considered, superior to any other (because considerations of nondistributive justice weigh in its favour). But it does follow that any package that contains that kind of unfairness cannot be through-and-through just” (ibid.).
- 5.
- 6.
Sen here expands on an argument in Aristotle’s Politics (1885) on the distribution of flutes: “When a number of flute-players are equal in their art, there is no reason why those of them who are better born should have better flutes given to them; for they will not play any better on the flute, and the superior instrument should be reserved for him who is the superior artist” (III.12). Aristotle, in other words, thought the purpose of a good should determine its proper allocation.
- 7.
Sen (2009) has similarly noted that: “Rationality is in fact a rather permissive discipline, which demands the test of reasoning, but allows reasoned scrutiny to take quite different forms, without necessarily imposing any great uniformity of criteria. If rationality were a church, it would be a rather broad church” (p. 195).
- 8.
Harsanyi (2008) comments: “No doubt talented people do not deserve any moral credit for their native talents. But they do deserve moral credit for developing their talents and using them for our common benefit” (p. 74, emphasis his).
- 9.
Here I take issue with Isbister’s rejection of reciprocity as a dimension of justice (Isbister, 2001, pp. 170–171). His empirical argument does not take into account inter-generational reciprocity—true, a parent has obligations to her child, even if the child does not (cannot) reciprocate in the same way, but obligations of reciprocity surely kick in when the child has grown up and the parent has become frail and dependent on others. Cf. Isbister’s discussion of future generations (pp. 224–228) and his closing quotation (p. 238) of the Covenant of the Unitarian Universalist Association (“respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part”). Surely this implies obligations of reciprocity.
- 10.
Zajac (1995) notes that the relationship of Pareto efficiency to fairness is a crucial issue, for at least three reasons: first, strict Pareto optimality rarely exists—almost every policy change generates some losers; secondly, if a Pareto-improving move were to be identified and implemented, how should gains from the exchange be divided?; and thirdly, Pareto optimality may be possible in a static, risk-free world with perfect information, but policy making happens in a risky, dynamic world of imperfect information (pp. 14, 77).
- 11.
Quantification can and should inform public policy making, but empirical analysis is not the cure for all policy ills. Chavas and Coggins (2003) report that, on their analysis, “while better information typically generates improved efficiency, it can also contribute to unfair allocations. It also stresses the effects of asymmetric information in the evaluation of equity” (p. 226).
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Bromell, D. (2019). Fairness, Justification and Transparency. In: Ethical Competencies for Public Leadership. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27943-1_6
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