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MEASURING SPECIFIC FREEDOM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2006

MATTHEW BRAHAM
MATTHEW BRAHAM*
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg
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Abstract

This paper is about the measurement of specific freedoms – the freedom of an agent to undertake some particular action. In a recent paper, Dowding and van Hees discuss the need for, and general form of, a “freedom function” that assigns a value between 0 and 1 to a freedom or right and that describes the expectation that a person may have about being in a position to exercise (“being free to perform”) that freedom or right. An examination of the literature shows that there is as yet no agreed framework for defining such a function. Based on the framework of a game form, I develop a very simple and natural measure of specific freedom as the “conditional probability of success.” It is also shown that in an important way “negative freedom is membership of powerful coalitions.”

Type
Essay
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , November 2006 , pp. 317 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

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Footnotes

This paper has been long in preparation and I am deeply indebted to Ian Carter, Keith Dowding, Manfred Holler, Martin van Hees, and Peter Vallentyne for substantial and insightful comments. I would also like to thank Sebastiano Bavetta, Luc Bovens, Ad van Deemen, Rudy Fara, Christian List, Moshé Machover, Stefan Napel, Hannu Nurmi, Frank Steffen, Stefano Vannucci, and Peter Weikard for their comments on earlier versions.

References

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