Project Details
Projekt
Needs-based Justice, Group Membership and Expertise
Applicant
Professor Dr. Markus Tepe
Subject Area
Political Science
Term
from 2014 to 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 240285356
B2 studies the effect of the collective need-recognition procedure on the legitimacy of redistributive decisions and how this procedure is mediated by the use of expertise. The first project phase shows that the collective need-recognition procedure is subject to systematic distortions (equivalence framing, leaky-bucket effect, deservingness, entitlement, voting rule). However, empirical results from the first phase also show that groups are certainly capable of applying the principle of need-based justice and are even more likely to do so with the help of expertise. The social outreach and differentiation of the principle of need-based justice is at the center of the second project phase. To this end, B2 studies the conditions under which the social categorization of voters and experts leads to a more inclusive or exclusive application of the principle of need-based justice. B2 develops a novel game-theoretical framework to observe and manipulate the collective need-recognition procedure that translates individual need into collectively accepted need and redistributes accordingly. Predictions derived from the rational solution of this game serve as analytical reference points for the study of subjects’ behavior in the experimental tests. In a series of laboratory experiments, B2 gradually introduces the social categorization of voters and experts in order to test how social group membership affects the collective need-recognition procedure and the legitimacy of the redistributive decision.
DFG Programme
Research Units
Cooperation Partners
Professor Dr. Eric Linhart; Privatdozent Dr. Jan Lorenz
Co-Investigator
Professorin Dr. Adele Diederich
