Ronald Dworkin’s Theory of Equality

Introduction

Any legitimate government must, on Ronald Dworkin’s account, attempt to show equal concern for the fate of all persons it governs. A government can go wrong in what it properly means to show equal concern and still remain legitimate, so long as it is making a good faith effort to get it right and is acting on some plausible view of what the idea requires. Nonetheless, Dworkin has it that “equal concern” is a determinate and objective political ideal, and his theory of equality is an attempt to give an account of it. The foundation of his account of political equality is his theory of distributive justice, which holds that people ought to be equal in resources to pursue a life worthwhile by their own lights, where the value of any entitlement for the equality comparison is determined by the opportunity costs that entitlement imposes on others. Dworkin views political liberty as derivative of this basic idea, and hence, he thinks equality of resources is the fundamental...