Past Events

Brian Coyne is a fifth year Political Science PhD candidate studying political theory. His dissertation, currently in progress, addresses how the liberal principle of legitimacy can be revised to take into account the involvement of non-state actors, such as NGOs and corporations, in governance around the world. His other research interests include public reason, global justice, and representation. He has been a graduate fellow at the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society and served as a Teaching Assistant for Justice, Global Justice, the Ethics and Politics of Public Service, and Theories of Civil Society, Philanthropy, and the Non-Profit Sector.

Alex Voorhoeve is a Reader in Philosophy at the London School of Economics. His research interests include Political Philosophy, Rational and Social Choice Theory, Moral Philosophy.   He is currently pursuing two research projects: Liberal Egalitarianism and The Economy of the Soul. 

Edward Miguel is the Oxfam Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics and Faculty Director of the Center for Effective Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 2000.

He earned S.B. degrees in both Economics and Mathematics from MIT, and received a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow.

Ted's main research focus is African economic development, including work on the economic causes and consequences of violence; the impact of ethnic divisions on local collective action; and interactions between health, education, environment, and productivity for the poor. He has conducted field work in Kenya, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and India.

Abstract: The need for further exploration of the economic injustice of unemployment should be obvious.  Unemployment is currently at historically high rates and these high rates may be becoming structural.  Aside from inequality, unemployment is accordingly the problem that is most likely to put critical pressure on our political institutions, disrupt the social fabric of our way of life, and even threaten the continuation of liberalism itself.  Despite the obvious importance of the problem of unemployment, however, there has been a curious lack of attention paid to this issue by contemporary non-Marxist political philosophers.  Non-Marxists typically view unemployment as a technical matter, and doing something about it a question of means not ends, with the solution to this question depending on the kind of empirical determinations about what causes what that are best left to economists, not political philosophers.  But I think this is a mistake.  Because work is a major part of our social life, as well as something that for a great many people grounds their sense of who they are and provides the basis of their sense of self-respect, those unable to find work are missing out on a great deal of what makes for a meaningful life, and not just the economic benefits that social cooperation has to offer.  Those who are unemployed accordingly have something to complain about, even if we do not let them starve, and the rest of us (or at least the institutions that represent us) may have some sort of moral obligation to take action to increase the number of employment opportunities currently available regardless of any uncertainty surrounding the effects that any actions open to us might have.  The nature and extent of this moral obligation is what this paper is dedicated to exploring.