The tension between property and equality, as the Founders expressed it, or liberty and equality as commonly expressed today, has been a central issue for democracy since its beginning in Athens. The US founders addressed the problem with commitments to the protection of individual liberty and to equality of opportunity. Central to these commitments are private property rights and their enforcement, recognizing the diversity of individual interests and abilities and their rights to develop both as they choose. As James Madison put it in "The Federalist Papers," "the protection of the faculties (of men and their diversity, the original source of the rights of property) is the first object of government." That this is the greatest obstacle to a pursuit of a uniformity of interest as it would imply an equality of outcomes instead of opportunity. Thus, a political commitment to the pursuit of equality fosters continual questioning of its achievement and on what terms. In his new book, Property v. Equality--America's Enduring Political Rivalry, Mack Ott weaves the history of our democracy with the evolution of its political parties, the role of voting, its government and its institutions, with the central concern for the evolving tension of equal liberty with various and different levels of property. From the outset, Ott argues the problem of slavery presented deep moral and political problems. The importance of political compromise between the states to secure the adoption of the Constitution led the founders to put off abolition and settle initially for an end to importation of the enslaved in twenty years. Most states outlawed slavery well before 1860, but the end of slavery did not come easily. It was the presidency of Abraham Lincoln and his restoration of the Union that removed the biggest obstacle to liberty and equality. Ott explains that Lincoln also had a full agenda of other policies. Lincoln's "fair chance" aimed to provide Federal assistance to the emergence of greater equality. He successfully introduced three programs to enhance public welfare and the common good: assistance to develop roads and a federal highway system, the Homestead Acts to aid people to acquire property and residences at subsidized prices, and the Land Grant College program to assist states in developing institutions of higher education for young people. Lincoln's notion of a fair chance reflected his desire to expand the Federal role in promoting the common good and the enhancement of economic equality. The Civil War also brought to the center of political attention a practical obstacle to the achievement of balance between liberty and equality, according to Ott. This was the inability of federal revenue to provide a growing revenue base to support economic growth and intervention in major shocks, especially war. Except for a brief period during the Civil War, income taxation had not been available because it was viewed to be unconstitutional. In 1913, the Supreme Court ruled that direct taxation of citizens did not violate the Constitution. In the implementation of the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress allowed for progressive taxation--people of higher incomes would face higher tax rates than those with lower incomes. Lincoln laid the basis for an expanding Federal role in the economy and showed the way to progressively fund the Federal government. Perhaps the second major challenge to the pursuit of liberty and equality led to the election of Franklin Roosevelt. To confront the Great Depression, Roosevelt embarked on a major expansion in the Federal role in the American economy and control of much of the private sector. His success led to new debates over that role, in which liberty-versus-equality issues were central. With the death of Roosevelt and end of the Second World War, the political economy continued to expand the role of the government and to st

When philosophers put forward claims for or against 'property', it is often unclear whether they are talking about the same thing that lawyers mean by 'property'. Likewise, when lawyers appeal to 'justice' in interpreting or criticizing legal rules we do not know if they have in mind something that philosophers would recognize as 'justice'. Bridging the gulf between juristic writing on property and speculations about it appearing in the tradition of western political philosophy, Professor Harris has built from entirely new foundations an analytical framework for understanding the nature of property and its connection with justice. Property and Justice ranges over natural property rights; property as a prerequisite of freedom; incentives and markets; demands for equality of resources; property as domination; property and basic needs; and the question of whether property should be extended to information and human bodily parts. It maintains that property institutions deal both with the use of things and the allocation of wealth, and that everyone has a 'right' that society should provide such an institution.

Quotas for women in government have swept the globe. Yet we know little about their capacity to upend entrenched social, political, and economic hierarchies. Women, Power, and Property explores this question within the context of India, the world's largest democracy. Brulé employs a research design that maximizes causal inference alongside extensive field research to explain the relationship between political representation, backlash, and economic empowerment. Her findings show that women in government – gatekeepers – catalyze access to fundamental economic rights to property. Women in politics have the power to support constituent rights at critical junctures, such as marriage negotiations, when they can strike integrative solutions to intrahousehold bargaining. Yet there is a paradox: quotas are essential for enforcement of rights, but they generate backlash against women who gain rights without bargaining leverage. In this groundbreaking study, Brulé shows how well-designed quotas can operate as a crucial tool to foster equality and benefit the women they are meant to empower.

3 Framework for research

First published in 1964, this is a study of the extreme inequalities in the ownership of property, in economies across the globe. Professor Meade examines in depth the economic, demographic and social factors which lead to such inequalities. He considers a wide range of remedial policies – educational development, reformed death duties and capital taxes, demographic policies, trade union action, the socialization of property, the development of a property-owning democracy, the expansion of the welfare state. The argument is expressed in precise analytical terms, but the main exposition is free of mathematics and technical jargon and is designed for the interested layman as well as the economist.