Title
A New Progressivism
Publication Date
2006
Publication Title
Stanford Law and Policy Review
Abstract
There are serious problems with the two twentieth-century approaches to government: the way of markets and the way of planning. The New Progressivism simultaneously offers (1) a distinctive conception of government's appropriate means, an outgrowth of the late-twentieth-century critique of economic planning, and (2) a distinctive understanding of government's appropriate ends, an outgrowth of evident failures with market arrangements and largely a product of the mid-twentieth-century critique of laissez faire. The New Progressivism emphasizes the need to replace bans and commands with appropriate incentives, and to attend to social norms and social meanings in leading human behavior in welfare-promoting directions. The ultimate goal is to promote some of the goals associated with America 's New Deal and Europe's social democracy, but without using the crude, inflexible, and often counterproductive methods associated with those approaches. Some attention is devoted to the effects of globalization, the AIDS crisis, crime prevention, and the role of economic growth.
Recommended Citation
Cass R. Sunstein, "A New Progressivism," 17 Stanford Law and Policy Review 197 (2006).
