Fabian Wendt Publishes on Universal Basic Income, Property Rights, Political Authority, and the Conduct of Politics

Fabian Wendt, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and PPE Core Faculty member, has published the following journal articles and a book.

The article, “The Limits of Liberty-Based Arguments for a Universal Basic Income” appeared in Social Theory and Practice.

Here is a link to the abstract and publication: The article argues that liberty-based arguments alone are not enough to justify a universal basic income, whether as a replacement of current welfare programs, or as an addition to them. Appeals to negative liberty, real freedom, republican liberty, and autonomy cannot establish that a universal basic income is superior to (all kinds of) conditional benefits. To do so, proponents of a universal basic income will have to invoke values beyond liberty.

The publication “Property Rights in the Face of Historic Injustice” appeared in the European Journal of Political Theory.

Here is a link to the abstract and publication: It seems natural to adopt a historical approach when it comes to property titles: When property titles have a clean history, they are to be respected as a matter of justice; when they do not have a clean history, for example, in cases of prior theft, they must be returned to the original owners or their descendants. But the historical approach has serious drawbacks. This paper presents an alternative. Starting from the idea that property rights must be stable, we offer an account of why historic injustices sometimes do, but sometimes do not, undermine current titles. This account offers a standard of better or worse claims, and maintains that current titles are not undermined unless there are contestants who can put forward comparatively better claims.

The article “The Practice Account of Political Authority” appeared in the Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy.

Here is a link to the abstract and publication: The most fundamental problem of political philosophy is to explain the authority of the state. This article presents a novel account: the practice account of political authority. The practice account belongs to the family of natural duty accounts, but in contrast to other such accounts, it highlights the role that rules of conventional practices can (and must) play in explaining political authority. The idea is that we have a natural right to participate in justifiable conventional practices that secure basic justice and peace, as well as a natural duty to respect this same right in others; that duty explains why the rules of such practices can confer political authority on the state. Other natural duty accounts, the article shows, cannot explain political authority because they fail to provide a working mechanism that links people’s natural duties to the authority of the state.

The book The Conduct of Politics appeared in the Cambridge Elements in Political Philosophy series.

Here is a link to the abstract and publication: Do politicians have to get dirty hands – and what does that mean? Is it okay to be corrupt, when corruption is systemic? When is it a good thing to make compromises in politics? These are questions about political conduct that are raised in political ethics, a somewhat underappreciated subfield of political philosophy. This Element offers a fresh, systematic introduction to political ethics. It starts with a discussion of two challenges to the discipline: One comes from political realists who reject moralism in political philosophy and the other from public choice theorists who model politicians as rational egoists. It then discusses the problem of dirty hands, political corruption, and political compromise as three core topics of political ethics.

(Photograph by Holly Belcher for Virginia Tech)