The Limits of Self-Governance: Inequality Objections

The second set of objections to the case for self-governance centre around the issue of inequality.

If citizens are allowed to devise their own solutions to a plethora of collective action problems, some communities will be successful and others will fall behind.

This can generate and compound structural inequalities that otherwise would not exist under a more monocentric or government-controlled allocation of public resources. In this lecture, we’ll consider these objections and potential responses.