How to Identify Disadvantage: Taking the Envy Test Seriously
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717720377 |
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2017
Article
Political Studies
2018, Vol. 66(2) 306 –322
How to Identify Disadvantage:
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321717720377
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Tom Parr
Abstract
In this article, I am concerned exclusively with the kind of comparative disadvantage an individual
suffers in having less valuable opportunities than another individual and that may entitle her to
corrective action, such that we ought to regulate the risk of this disadvantage and/or consider
compensating her if she suffers disadvantage. The dominant approach in both political philosophy
and public policy proceeds by identifying a metric by which to determine whether an individual’s
opportunities are less valuable than another’s. Let’s call this the Metric Test. However, there
is another way in which to proceed. Rather than appealing to a metric by which to determine
disadvantage, we could instead allow an individual to determine for herself whether or not she
is disadvantaged. On the version of this view that I shall defend, we should treat an individual as
disadvantaged if and only if that individual envies another’s opportunities. Let’s call this the Envy
Test. My overall aim in this article is to illuminate the appeal of the Envy Test and, in particular, to
explain its superiority over the Metric Test.
Keywords
Ronald Dworkin, distributive justice, disadvantage
Accepted: 9 April 2017
In this article, I am concerned exclusively with the kind of comparative disadvantage an
individual suffers in having less valuable opportunities than another individual and that
may entitle her to corrective action, such that we ought to regulate the risk of this disad-
vantage and/or consider compensating her if she suffers disadvantage. The dominant
approach in both political philosophy and public policy to identifying this kind of disad-
vantage is to employ one or another kind of metric. By this, I mean that we identify an
individual as disadvantaged by virtue of the fact that she enjoys less than others of some
specified good or goods. On this view, we should treat an individual as disadvantaged if
and only if her opportunities afford her an objectively lower level of well-being, a lower
level of welfare, or fewer social primary goods, say.1 Let’s call this the metric test.
However, there is another way in which to proceed. Rather than appeal to a metric to
determine disadvantage, we could instead allow an individual to determine for herself
Department of Government, University of Essex, Colchester, UK
Corresponding author:
Tom Parr, Department of Government, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK.
Email: tparr@essex.ac.uk
Parr
307
whether or not she is disadvantaged. On the version of this view that I shall defend, we
should treat an individual as disadvantaged if and only if that individual envies anoth-
er’s opportunities. Let’s call this the envy test.2 A distinctive feature of the envy test is
that it consults, rather than usurps, an individual’s own evaluation of the comparative
value of her opportunities.3 An individual can determine for herself whether or not she
is disadvantaged, rather than have it determined for her by an external agent who
reaches judgements that may not be fully consistent with what she believes (Dworkin,
2000: 294). This is initially appealing for two reasons. First, it takes seriously the idea
that the political morality of a community should be justifiable to each of its members.4
Second, it guarantees the avoidance of disrespectful judgements, such as when the state
treats an individual as disadvantaged even though she maintains that she is not
(Dworkin, 2011: ch. 16).
I have three main aims. The first is to clarify the demands of the envy test. The second
is to illuminate with greater clarity the appeal of the envy test and, in particular, to explain
its superiority over the metric test. The third is to rebut an objection to the envy test: the
mistakes objection. This objection holds that we should reject the envy test on the grounds
that it implausibly allows the claim that an individual is disadvantaged to depend upon
her mistaken judgements. My overall aim, therefore, is to offer a clear presentation and
defence of the envy test.
At the outset, it is essential to stress that, while the envy test states necessary and suf-
ficient conditions for an individual to qualify as disadvantaged, these conditions govern
only a specific form of comparative disadvantage. It is consistent with the view that I
defend here that an individual may be disadvantaged in other respects, even if she does
not envy another’s opportunities. That is, even if an individual is not disadvantaged
according to the envy test, and so not entitled to corrective action on grounds of suffering
a specific form of comparative disadvantage, she may nonetheless be entitled to correc-
tive action for other reasons, such as out of a concern for democratic values or political
equality.5 In other words, my approach is consistent with the idea that there are a diversity
of reasons to oppose relative disadvantage. I briefly return to this point in the penultimate
section, ‘Replying to the Mistakes Objections’.
The Envy Test
The term ‘envy’ has various connotations. On one reading, which perhaps aligns with
ordinary language, an individual is envious if, when she cannot (also) possess an oppor-
tunity that another enjoys, she prefers that the other individual not have it either (Nozick,
1974: 239).6 Understood in this way, envy is an emotion or judgement closely associated
with jealousy and spite (Rawls, 1999: 466). As Elizabeth Anderson notes, this can make
its use inadvisable, for it is likely both to fuel libertarian critiques of distributive justice
and to foster a disrespectful culture of contemptuous pity directed at individuals regarded
as sadly inferior (Anderson, 1999: 289, 307).
Importantly, the envy test does not understand envy in this way. Rather, the envy test
stipulatively states that an individual suffers disadvantage if and only if her opportunities
are less valuable than those enjoyed by another individual, as measured by her own judge-
ments about what makes one’s life go well.7 Thus, it is an individual’s own values that
determine whether or not she is disadvantaged. We can express this component of the
envy test in the following way: for an individual to envy another’s opportunities, her
sincerely held values must imply that her own opportunities are less valuable. This
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Political Studies 66(2)
distinguishes envy as it is used by the envy test from the sense of envy criticised by
Anderson (Dworkin, 2000: 117 fn. 19). To clarify this, let’s consider the following case:
Talent: Due to the high marketability of her natural talents, Lucky enjoys a wide range of
opportunities to which she attaches considerable value. By contrast, and due to the lack of
marketability of her natural talents, Unlucky does not. Unlucky regards Lucky’s opportunities
as more valuable than her own.
Since Unlucky regards Lucky’s opportunities as more valuable than her own, she
counts as disadvantaged, according to the envy test. The fact that Unlucky is (or is not)
disadvantaged according to some objective account of well-being, say, affects this result
only in so far as it affects Unlucky’s own judgements about the value of her opportunities.
This feature of the envy test may strike some readers as counter-intuitive. It is therefore
imperative to explain and to justify this result. I take up this task in subsequent sections.
Finally, it is important to note that the envy test is not necessarily sensitive to an indi-
vidual’s actual judgements. This is for two reasons. First, what matters is that her values
must imply that her own opportunities are less valuable than another’s, irrespective of
whether or not she actually makes the judgement or forms that belief (Williams, 2002b:
387). I return to this point when discussing the mistakes objection. The second reason for
eschewing appeals to actual judgements relates to the fact that they may be held only as a
result of injustice or irrationality. To see this point, let’s consider an individual who fails
to value an opportunity that she otherwise would only as a result of unjust indoctrination,
such that, were it not for the unjust indoctrination, she would regard herself as disadvan-
taged (Sen, 1987: 11). It is clear that our judgement about whether she is disadvantaged
should be unaffected by the unjust indoctrination that the individual experiences. We can
deliver this result by restricting the envy test’s concern to authentic judgements only.
Although we must specify what counts as an authentic judgement so as to rule out the two
kinds of case that I mention above, I shall say nothing more about this. For the most part,
I put aside these two complications.
The Appeal of the Envy Test
The metric test proceeds in two stages. First, we develop a metric by which to measure
disadvantage. Second, we appeal to this metric in order to judge whether an individual
suffers a disadvantage. On this view, an individual suffers a disadvantage if and only if
her opportunities are less valuable than another’s, measured in terms of whichever metric
we select.
This approach is...
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