The conflict you see would really exist if the only way to reward the best ideas/practices were through superior opportunities (either for the person or for her offspring). This might happen in a society in which opportunities are for sale. In such a society, the more affluent people can buy a superior education for their children, one to which the children of poorer citizens have no access. And the children of the affluent can then qualify for jobs that children of the poor have no chance of obtaining. Our society is of this kind, and so are -- to a lesser extent -- most other societies. But societies don't have to be organized in this way. A society might financially reward the best contributions but then block conversion of these financial rewards into educational opportunities. The quality of the public schools of such a society would not vary with the affluence of the area it serves (as is the case when public schools are funded through local property taxes). And any private schools would be...

Suicide and highly risky acts of defiance can be, but rarely are, highly effective forms of political resistance. So one needs to analyze the conditions under which they are effective. The political suicide I remember most vividly is that of Jan Palach, a Czech student who burned himself to death with gasoline (in early 1969) to protest the Warsaw Pact invasion of his country. His suicide contributed greatly, I believe, to a deep and enduring change in attitude toward the Soviet Union on the part of young people esp. in Western Europe who, horrified by the brutality of the US war in Vietnam, had tended to view the Soviet Union as the more humane, less aggressive superpower. Many young people then did not really trust the established news media and vaguely suspected that the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia may indeed have preempted some sort of counterrevolutionary plot supported by the West. Jan Palach's suicide destroyed such excuses by focusing attention on the sentiments of young people in...

Rights give each of us claims on the conduct of others. Your right not to be tortured requires others to respect this right: not to torture you, not to order or abet your torture, and to organize their society so that you are safe from torture. Denying that others have such responsibilities is tantamount to denying that you have the right. This reasoning may not quite get us to the statement you query. It shows only that, for you to have rights, others must have responsibilities. But then it would be immorally self-centered for you to insist that you have rights that entail responsibilities for others and that no one else has rights that entail responsibilities for you. The last step is then a moral step. It is possible for someone to have rights but no responsibilities. But such a situation would be morally unacceptable because it would give this person a special moral status that could not be shared by others. For if everyone had no responsibilities, then no one would have rights.

The indicated difference often concerns merely where it is being done: in a political science department or in a philosophy department. Other than that, "political theory" is often used for more historical works of exposition and interpretation (say, of the writings of Locke or Rousseau), while "political philosophy" is used for works that defend or critically engage with a normative view (even a historical one). In this sense, Quentin Skinner might be a paradigm political theorist and John Rawls a paradigm political philosopher; but the distinction cannot be sharply drawn.

Christianity emphasizes foregiveness, mercy, and charity as a much-needed counterweight to human selfishness (the wide-spread human tendency to give much more weight to one's own perspective and interests than to those of other people). As your question brings out, this Christian emphasis on foregiveness, mercy, and charity can have morally dubious effects when third parties enter the picture. If a rape victim, rather than press charges, forgives her rapist, she may well thereby be increasing the risk other women will face from the same man. If (to use your example) we continue to channel foreign aid moneys through a ruler who has embezzled lots of such aid before, we are harming the poor in his country whom we ought to protect from poverty and disease. Yes, one should be sensitive to the perspective and interests of the rapist and the ruler. But one should certainly also be sensitive -- much more sensitive, in fact -- to the perspective and interests of potential future rape victims and of...

Where survival, basic health, or dignity are at stake, personsshould be entitled to society's support. In first approximation, a fairsystem of such support might be one that is funded out of revenuesraised from those who might call on it. For example, tobacco users areentitled to any additional essential medical care they may need as aresult of their habit, and the cost of such additional care is fundedout of tobacco taxes. Some may object to this system that itunduly restricts their liberty. They prefer not to fund the support andnot to receive it should they need it. These objectors fall into twogroups: Some want the support but pay for it as needed. The others want to forgo the support altogether. Insome cases it would make sense, ideally, to exempt people in the firstgroup. Thus consider some of your recreational ocean-going sailors, for example , who do not want to contribute to marine rescues of people theyconsider irresponsible amateurs. Each of them gives society somefinancial...

The practice "seems completely acceptable" to us , citizens of the wealthy countries -- presumably because we are used to it and seem to benefit from it. I doubt that it seems completely acceptable to the majority of the world's poor. Is the practice acceptable? Our practice of private property is often defended on the ground that it greatly increases human wealth -- so that human beings on average, or perhaps the poorest 20% on average, are better off than would otherwise (under any alternative practice or none at all) be the case. In a similar way, one could defend national jurisdictions with rights to exclude foreigners. Here, however, the argument is very unlikely to succeed. Many economists have argued that national mobility restrictions greatly dampen productivity worldwide. And such restrictions also make it very much harder for the poorest and most vulnerable human beings to protect themselves and their families. I agree they have a human right to move or to enjoy some compensating...

The reason for this is weaker in the case of organizations than in the case of societies -- mainly because the former are much easier to leave or to avoid altogether. If you don't like the undemocratic structure of General Motors or the Catholic Church, you can decline to join these organizations or exit fairly easily, perhaps finding another job or becoming self-employed, or joining another denomination or none. By contrast, people born into an undemocratic society could not avoid this fate and typically find it quite hard to exit: They must find another country willing to accept them and must then uproot themselves and move there. One can then say that, in the case of organizations, the resons for mandating democracy are outweighed by considerations of freedom: If people want to belong to a hierarchal corporation or church, there is some reason to give them this option. This sort of answer is pretty standard (suggested by Rawls and many others). But for it to work, it must really be fairly...

I think Will Kymlicka's Contemporary Political Philosophy is a very good text for beginners. It may be a little harder than what you're looking for, but it's a standard work now, one likely to have influenced the exam and those who mark it. It's broad and covers well the main schools of thought. The same is true to a somewhat lesser extent of Adam Swift's Political Philosophy: A Beginner's Guide for Students and Politicians . Swift is a British author teaching at Oxford.

National capitalism in the advanced industrialized countries worked after social security legislation -- pioneered by Bismarck in Germany -- was widely instituted (in the US through the New Deal). Such legislation became gradually accepted by the rich owners of capital (productive assets) as they understood (a) the workers' economic power wielded by their unions, (b) their own vulnerability in the event of civil unrest bred by severe domestic poverty, and (c) the advantages of the social security apparatus for stabilizing the economy. Once established, social security legislation is difficult to abolish given universal suffrage, which is now commonplace in the more affluent countries. The globalized capitalism that has been instituted mainly by the US and EU after the end of the Cold War is stimulated mainly by the economic gains it can bring to the owners of productive assets in those rich countries. These gains are of two main kinds. There are, first, the frequently emphasized economic gains from...