Democratic Distributive Justice

Abstract

By exploring the integral relationship between democracy and economicjustice, Democratic Distributive Justice seeks to explain how democraticcountries with market systems should deal with the problem of highlevels of income-inequality. The book acts as a guide for dealingwith this issue by providing an interdisciplinary approach that combinespolitical, economic, and legal theory. It also analyzes the natureof economic society and puts forth a new understanding of the agentsand considerations bearing upon the ethics of relative pay, suchas the nature of individual contributions and the extent of communityin capital based market systems. Economic justice is then integratedwith democratic theory, yielding what Ross Zucker calls `democraticdistributive justice'. While prevailing theory defines democracyin terms of the electoral mechanism, the author holds that the principlesof distribution form part of the very definition of democracy, whichmakes just distribution a requirement of democratic government.