Just Results: Ethical Foundations for Policy Analysis (Not In A Series) - Softcover

Ellis, Ralph D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0878406670 ISBN 13: 9780878406678

Publisher: Georgetown University Press, 1998

Synopsis

In Just Results, Ralph E. Ellis provides an authoritative solution to one of the major problems in the field of public policy. Until now, analysts and planners have had no practical or accurate means of incorporating qualitative social concerns into the traditional quantitative formulas used in policymaking. By introducing a justice factor―a quantitative measure for social values―Ellis opens the door for more balanced policy decisions.

Using concrete, real-world examples, Ellis shows how policy analysts can better account for the use value―or practical measurable utility―of universally agreed-upon social benefits such as life, health, safety, and environmental preservation when making cost-benefit analyses. In this way, policymakers, and by extension, society as a whole, can avoid making unjust tradeoffs between important social values and comparatively frivolous economic benefits.

Drawing on philosophical works on justice from Kant through John Rawls, this book is informed by a theoretical defense of distributive justice that emphasizes diminishing marginal utility, thus favoring the poor. Just Results is a stimulating and highly applicable book that will be of great interest to philosophers, political scientists, policy analysts and planners.

About this title

Review

"In this creative and ambitious study, Ellis seeks to reconcile the considerations of justice . . . and utility. . . . This is a vigorously transdisciplinary work that speaks to specialists in a range of fields, including applied ethics, moral and political philosophy, risk analysis, and legal history."―Religious Studies Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0878406670
• ISBN 13: 9780878406678
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224