Why economic agency matters: An account of structural domination in the economic realm
| Date | 01 July 2021 |
| Author | Rutger Claassen,Lisa Herzog |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885119832181 |
| Published date | 01 July 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article EJPT
Why economic agency
matters: An account of
structural domination in
the economic realm
Rutger Claassen
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht
University, The Netherlands
Lisa Herzog
School of Governance, Technical University of
Munich, Germany
Abstract
Authors like Iris Youngand Philip Pettit have come up with proposals for theorizin g ‘structural
injustice’ and social relations marredby ‘domination’. These authors provide conceptual tools
for focusing on concrete economic structures and re-focus the debate about justice onto
questions of power. In this article we build on their work, but we argue that a positive notion
of economic agency is needed as a criterion for what makes economic structures dominatingand
potentially unjust. We propose a notion of economic agency, which we relate to a more
general notion of autonomous agency to create a dual-level account. Domination in the
economic sphere happens where individuals are deprived of their economic agency, to the
extent that such agency is necessary to lead an autonomous life in general. Using the example
of creditor-debtorrelations we argue for the usefulness of this theoretical framework. Finally,
we define injustices in terms of threshold levels of economic agency, the latter being spelled
out in terms of a set of capabilities. This proposal overcomes the artificial boundaries between
those theorizing ‘justice’ and those theorizing ‘power’ when analyzing the economic domain.
Keywords
Domination, economic agency, republicanism, structural justice
Corresponding author:
Rutger Claassen, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University, Janskerkhof 13, 3512
BL Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Email: r.j.g.claassen@uu.nl
European Journal of Political Theory
2021, Vol. 20(3) 465–485
!The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1474885119832181
journals.sagepub.com/home/ept
Introduction
When theorizing about justice, power and domination in today’s world, it is a
natural move to consider not only political, but also economic structures. While
many mainstream economic theories describe the economic realm as based on
voluntary contracts, in contrast to the political realm in which coercive power
can be used, other economic and political theories take seriously the possibility
that economic circumstances can lead to unjust forms of power and domination.
This especially holds for two strands of normative theorizing that have recently
received much attention: Iris Young’s theory of structural injustice, and neo-
republican theories of (non-)domination as proposed by Philip Pettit and others.
While taking our inspiration from them, we think that the debate needs to be
moved further by delivering a substantive normative account for diagnosing eco-
nomic structures as just or unjust (see the second section). Hence, we argue for a
positive notion of economic agency: to prevent agents from being dominated by
economic structures, we need to protect their economic agency. To understand
which instances of a lack of economic agency constitute unjust domination,
we first need to connect economic agency to the general ability for autonomous
agency. Hence, an ideal of positive freedom is indispensable, or so we will argue,
to make sense of the idea of structural injustice (third section). Once this is in
place, we connect it to a notion of economic agency, as the ability to acquire
resources for general agency (fourth section). The merits of this theoretical frame-
work are shown by applying it to the case of creditor-debtor relations
(fifth section).
To give flesh and bones to this perspective, we argue for understanding eco-
nomic agency as requiring a set of capabilities, i.e. personal characteristics and
social options that empower agents to fulfil certain economic roles. What these are
depends on the economic context: renters need specific capabilities to stand up
against landlords, low-income households need specific capabilities not to be dom-
inated by the structures of debt markets, etc. (sixth section). Finally, we respond to
two objections, namely whether a focus on structural justice, spelled out in terms
of economic agency, is necessary and sufficient for an analysis from the perspective
of justice (seventh section). A final section concludes, by mentioning two important
additions to our approach (eighth section).
By arguing for a specific conception of economic agency, providing a set of
criteria for picking out cases in which it is violated, our account moves beyond the
use of intuitive examples, such as the domination of industrial workers by capital-
ists in the late 19th century, or of serfs by their lords in feudal societies. This is
important because not all forms of economic inequality and dependence are prob-
lematic. For example, if A wishes to possess a special breed of roses for her rose
garden and B is the only producer of its seeds, is this dependence unjust? Not all
preferences that individuals happen to have, and the forms of dependence that
result from them, make for unjust economic structures. Hence, a more substantive
account is needed; as we suggest below, it should be cashed out in terms of
466 European Journal of Political Theory 20(3)
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