This discussion takes place within the colloquium series "Rethinking Law in a Global Context" that this summer semester focuses on "Law‘s Conception of Politics and Political Conceptions of Law".
Can social policies be both effective at reducing social problems and inequalities, and politically popular? For a long time, scholars have thought that universal social policies were more effective and more popular than policies targeted at the disadvantaged. Scholars have also documented tremendous variation in the extent to which social policies are broadly supported by public opinion, constituencies of beneficiaries, and vested stakeholders.
Lea Ypi is Associate Professor in Political Theory in the Government Department, London School of Economics, and Adjunct Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.
Christoph Möllers is Professor of Public Law and Jurisprudence at the Faculty of Law, Humboldt-University Berlin. He was a Fellow at NYU School of Law and at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. Since January 2011 he has acted as a judge at the Superior Administrative Court in Berlin.