Principles of Distributive Justice

Grzegorz Lissowski, Tadeusz Tyszka and Wlodzimierz Okrasa
Additional contact information
Grzegorz Lissowski: University of Warsaw
Tadeusz Tyszka: Polish Academy of Sciences

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1991, vol. 35, issue 1, 98-119

Abstract: In his famous book on a theory of justice, John Rawls argues that under some special conditions, referred to as an “original position,†people would unanimously choose as a principle of distributive justice, the principle of maximizing the welfare of the worst-off individual in the society. An experiment was conducted under conditions approximating Rawls's “veil of ignorance.†It was a replication of Frohlich, Oppenheimer, and Eavy's experiment, using Polish instead of American students. In accordance with Rawls's prediction, most of experimental groups in both samples reached the consensus. However, the chosen principle was not the Rawlsian principle of maximizing the floor income, but the principle of maximizing the average income with the floor constraint. Moreover, in individual rankings and choices, the principle of maximizing the average income with a floor constraint received the highest ranks, while the Rawlsian principle received the lowest ranks. Our interpretation of these results is that the notion of distributive justice should not be reduced to considering only the welfare of the poorest.

Date: 1991
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002791035001006 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:35:y:1991:i:1:p:98-119

DOI: 10.1177/0022002791035001006

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Conflict Resolution from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().