Tough Choices: Structured Paternalism and the Landscape of Choice

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To what extent should government be permitted to intervene in personal choices In grappling with this question, liberal theory seeks to balance individual liberty with the advancement of collective goals such as equality. Too often, however, society's obligation to provide meaningful opportunities is overshadowed by its commitment to personal free

Reviews

"This is an important and ambitious book. It is important because it challenges head on, and in a serious, non-polemical but engaging and lively way, the widely held view that politics should fundamentally be concerned with the protection and promotion of individual freedom of choice. It is ambitious because its 180 pages not only present a distinctive theoretical framework for thinking about the relation between state regulation and individual choice but also illustrate that framework by applying it to a range of topics, many of which have been the subject of extensive scholarly debate."--Adam Swift, Theory and Research in Education "Sigal Ben-Porath's thought-provoking book Tough Choices, advances a thoughtful and systematic defense of structured paternalism in several domains, including the regulation of intimacy, the treatment of children, the treatment of members of minority cultural groups, and school choice... Ben-Porath's structured paternalism is devoid of much of what critics find alarming about paternalism and offers novel solutions to pressing issues facing policymakers."--Jennifer M. Morton, Educational Theory

Author Bio

Sigal R. Ben-Porath is assistant professor at the Graduate School of Education and special assistant to the president at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Citizenship under Fire: Democratic Education in Times of Conflict (Princeton).