1st Bucharest Conference in Analytical Political Theory
Thresholds in Justice. Sufficientarianism and Limitarianism Revisited
Organizers: Bucharest Center for Political Theory (BCEPT) & The Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB)
Date & Venue: 13-15 June 2019, University of Bucharest
Keynote Speakers: Ingrid Robeyns (Utrecht University) & Liam Shields (University of Manchester)
The Bucharest Conference in Analytical Political Theory aims to provide an annual forum for the debate of salient contemporary topics and challenges within the field of political theory, with a specific methodological orientation towards the analytical philosophical tradition. The conference has an international scope, with both Romanian and international scholars amongst the ranks of participants.
The topic of the first edition concerns – in a broad sense – the value of justice, and in a more narrow sense, the question of thresholds in justice, with a distinct (but not exclusive) focus on the patterns of justice that employ thresholds as part of their conceptual framework: limitarianism and sufficientarianism. We therefore welcome papers that address questions such as:
- Are there reasons why one should not use thresholds when developing an account of (distributive) justice?
- How could we construct a non-arbitrary threshold for sufficientarian and limitarian views?
- Should thresholds in justice be single-level or multi-level?
- Are thresholds in justice supposed to ground absolute changes or just shifts in the proposed distributive principles above and below the threshold?
- Should we conceive thresholds in justice as being sensitive to cultural context or as being universally justified?
- How do other elements of a theory of justice, such as the currency, the site, or the scope, interact with the sufficientarian or limitarian patterns?
- What are the connections between threshold-sensitive theories of justice and democracy, or other important values such as freedom, responsibility, efficiency etc?
- What are the implications of threshold-sensitive theories of justice for the public allocation of resources in healthcare, education, social protection etc.?