Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-vmclg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-15T10:11:44.457Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

In Defense of A Mandatory Public Service Requirement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2022

Debra Satz
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper defends mandatory national service as a response to democratic decay. Because democracy cannot be maintained by laws and incentives alone, citizens must care about the quality and attitudes of their society's members. In an age of increasing segregation and conflict on the basis of class and race, national service can bring citizens from different walks of life together to interact cooperatively on social problems. It offers a form of ‘forced solidarity’. The final sections of the paper consider objections to this proposal.

Type
Paper
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 91: A Philosophers' Manifesto: Ideas and Arguments to Change the World , May 2022 , pp. 259 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allport, Gordon, The Nature of Prejudice (New York: Knoph, 1954).Google Scholar
Applebaum, Binyamin, The Economist's Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets and the Fracture of Society (New York: Little Brown & Company, 2019).Google Scholar
Foa, R.S., Klassen, A., Slade, M., Rand, A., & Collins, R., ‘The global satisfaction with democracy report’, (Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge, 2020).Google Scholar
Gilens, Martin, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2012).Google Scholar
Gneezy, Uri and Rustichini, Aldo, ‘A Fine is a Price,’ Journal of Legal Studies 29 (2000), 1-17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, T.H., Class, Citizenship and Social Development (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1964).Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert and Garrett, Shaylyn Romney, The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020).Google Scholar
Satz, Debra, Why Some Things Should Not be For Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tawney, R.H., Equality (London: Unwin Books, 1952).Google Scholar