Daniel Engster

Child poverty and family policies across eighteen wealthy Western democracies

While a good deal has been written about the potential value of family policies in reducing child poverty in Western countries, few cross-national quantitative studies have been carried out on this topic. This article uses ordinary least squares regression analysis on panel data from 18 Western democracies from 1987 to 2007 to test the significance of family policies and other welfare policies on child poverty rates. It extends existing research on the relationship between family policies and child poverty by utilizing a broader data-set in terms of time, countries, and child poverty measures. The main finding is that all three of the main family policies studied – child cash and tax benefits, paid parenting leaves, and public support for childcare – correlate significantly with lower child poverty rates. Somewhat surprisingly, disability and sickness insurance also correlates significantly with lower child poverty in nearly every model and test. These findings provide valuable insight for future research and policy-making in the area of child poverty.

Care Ethics and Stakeholder Theory

Stakeholder theory suggests that businesses have moral and social responsibilities beyond just obeying the law, avoiding deceptive business practices, and providing stockholders with high returns on their investments. According to stakeholder theory, businesses also have a responsibility to consider the interests and attend to the needs of all individuals and groups who are affected by their policies and operations, including employees, consumers, suppliers, the local community, and others. Several business ethicists have identified care ethics as a fruitful resource for developing stakeholder theories. Yet, existing care-based stakeholder theories are vague in some critical areas and consequently do not yield clear practical advice. In this article, I extend and clarify a care-based stakeholder theory in order to spell out more fully what it means to conduct business in a caring manner. I outline three priority rules for guiding difficult managerial decisions or trade-offs, and offer practical examples to show how care ethics can apply to the everyday management of a successful business enterprise. By addressing the weaknesses of existing accounts of care-based stakeholder theories, I further demonstrate how care ethics can contribute to a more robust and useful account of stakeholder theory in general.

Mary Wollstonecraft's Nurturing Liberalism: Between an Ethic of Justice and Care

Contemporary feminist scholars have devoted much attention to analyzing the relationship between justice and care theories but little to the ideas of early feminist authors. I bring the political philosophy of the Mary Wollstonecraft to bear on contemporary justice/care debates in order to highlight her unique contribution. Although usually interpreted as a classical liberal or republican thinker, Wollstonecraft is better understood as a feminist care theorist. She aimed at a revolutionary transformation of liberal society by emphasizing the importance of care-giving duties. Unlike some recent feminist scholars, however, she still recognized an important role for justice. She argued that before personal care-giving activities could transform the political, political justice had first to be extended to personal caring relationships. Wollstonecrafts political philosophy thus provides a feminist model for synthesizing justice and care theories and represents an innovative reformulation of classical liberal and republican ideas that incorporates the care perspective.

Justice, Care, and the Welfare State

1. Introduction 2. Justice, Care, and Children Appendix 1 Health Care Systems 4. Justice, Care, and the Elderly 5. Justice, Care, and Disabled People Appendix 2 Disability Policies 6. Justice, Care, and the Poor Conclusion

Strategies for Building and Sustaining a New Care Movement

While care theorists have made great headway over the last 20 years in developing a political theory of care, and care advocates have developed numerous public policy proposals for supporting care work, few theorists or advocates have paid much attention to strategic questions about how best to forge and sustain a political care movement. In this article, I outline a number of strategies for fostering the development and growth of such a movement in the United States. I first provide a brief survey of the recent history of care ethics and the rise of care advocacy organizations in this country, and then outline four general strategies for unifying and expanding the care movement. These include proposals for (1) linking particular care constituencies and initiatives to a larger care movement, (2) supporting universal over means-tested programs, (3) working with market mechanisms and business interests, and (4) finding ways to garner greater public support among the American people for care policies. I conclude by discussing several of the unique challenges that face the care movement and offering some ideas for overcoming them.

Toleration and Identity: Foundations in Early Modern Thought and Sensual Philosophy: Toleration, Skepticism, and Montaigne's Politics of Self

Toleration and Identity: Foundations in Early Modern Thought. By Ingrid Creppell. New York: Routledge, 2003. 212p.

The heart of justice

75.00 cloth,

Care Ethics and Natural Law Theory: Toward an Institutional Political Theory of Caring

22.95 paper. Sensual Philosophy: Toleration, Skepticism, and Montaignes Politics of Self. By Alan Levine. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001. 336p.

Do Family Policy Regimes Matter for Children's Well-Being?

80.00 cloth,

Care Ethics and Animal Welfare

26.95 paper. Toleration has once again become a central focus of liberal theories of justice. In recent years, many liberal theorists have put aside foundational arguments about autonomy and equality in order to explore directly how individuals with diverse identities and beliefs can live together peacefully. Early modern proponents of liberalism were similarly animated by concerns about identity and difference, originally developing the modern concept of toleration amidst the conflicts of the European wars of religion. In the works under review here, Ingrid Creppell and Alan Levine admirably plumb the insights of these authors in order to propose more fruitful ways for conceptualizing toleration in our own times.