Public Talk
Legitimate Coercion: The Key to the Universe
Jane Mansbridge
Adams Professor Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Friday, February 12, 2:15PM-3:45PM, Oak Hall, Room 408
Free and Open to the Public
About the Talk: In a world of growing interdependence, we need more and more legitimate coercion to solve the ‘free-rider problems’ created by our growing need for ‘free-access goods.’ In large, anonymous societies, we cannot get anything approximating the number of free-access goods that we need without coercion. The more interdependent we become, the more coercion we need, and the best coercion is legitimate coercion. This lecture takes up the conditions that produce legitimate coercion.
About the Speaker: Jane Mansbridge is the Adams Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a former president of the American Political Science Association. Her work focuses on studies of representation, democratic deliberation, everyday activism, and the public understanding of collective action problems. She is the author of Beyond Adversary Democracy and the prize-winning Why We Lost the ERA, as well as editor of Beyond Self-Interest and four co-edited volumes: Feminism with Susan Moller Okin, Oppositional Consciousness with Aldon Morris, Deliberative Systems with John Parkinson, and Political Negotiation with Cathie Jo Martin.
This event is hosted by the Department of Political Science and the UCONN Humanities Institute’s Public Discourse Project.
Contact: Prof. Vin Moscardelli (vin.moscardelli@uconn.edu) or Prof. Michael Morrell (michael.morrell@uconn.edu).
