The Impossibility of a Paretian (Il)liberal. A historical review of the main debates arisen around Sen’s liberalism between the Seventies and the Nineties
This paper provides a historical review of the two main debates arisen around Sen’s liberalism between the Seventies and the Nineties since his “The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal” (1970). The first was published in the Journal of Political Economy and involved several contributions, such as those of Hillinger and Lapham (1971), Sen’s reply to Hillinger and Lapham (1971,) and Ng (1971). The second appeared on the pages of Analyse & Kritik through the contributions of Buchanan (1996), and Mueller (1996), along with Sen’s reply (1996). This analysis is historically relevant because offers the opportunity to simultaneously analyse the evolution of the main critiques of Sen’s paper, in particular, Sen’s liberalism, and Sen’s replies in these 25 years. The most important result of this paper is that these different perspectives, elaborated in different historical moments, reached the same conclusion, such as that Sen’s liberalism is rather “illiberal”.
Area:
Keywords: individual preferences; liberalism; rights; social choice; social welfare function;
Please Login in order to download this file