Deciding for the incompetent

Howard, Dana

doi:10.4324/9781315657080-26

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“…Successful contest of policy proposals such as these will be facilitated by enabling the voices of people affected by the intervention to be heard in public debate and contesting the othering they have been subjected to. Paternalist interventions are often necessitated by a concern for treating others with respect, such as in the case of those who are medically incompetent (Howard, 2018). Indeed, it is likely that many Australians interpret the paternalist framing of the drug policy proposal this way.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paternalism in Australian parliamentary debate: the case of drug testing social security recipients

Curchin,

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Ritter

2024

J. Soc. Pol.

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Across the globe, welfare conditionality and sanctioning increasingly permeate social welfare programs. Paternalism is one of the key normative rationales invoked when both scholars and politicians debate the legitimacy of this reform. With a view to bringing the scholarly and political debates into closer conversation with each other, this paper examines how paternalism manifests in political debate. We systematically analyse the paternalist arguments made by Australian federal parliamentarians in favour of the virtually identical 2017 and 2018 policy proposals to drug test welfare recipients, both of which resulted in a stalemate. We find that paternalistic arguments primarily employed soft, weak, and welfare paternalism, with heavy emphasis on the purported benefits of the intervention, limited emphasis on the issue of personal liberty, and noticeable silence about autonomy and consent. These findings shed light on the scholarly features of paternalism that are obscured in contemporary political discourse. This analysis can direct political philosophers to features of paternalism that need more attention as well as suggest ways that drug and welfare policy advocates may engage more effectively with paternalist arguments.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%