Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives - Hardcover

Grant, Ruth W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691151601 ISBN 13: 9780691151601

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Incentives can be found everywhere--in schools, businesses, factories, and government--influencing people's choices about almost everything, from financial decisions and tobacco use to exercise and child rearing. So long as people have a choice, incentives seem innocuous. But Strings Attached demonstrates that when incentives are viewed as a kind of power rather than as a form of exchange, many ethical questions arise: How do incentives affect character and institutional culture? Can incentives be manipulative or exploitative, even if people are free to refuse them? What are the responsibilities of the powerful in using incentives? Ruth Grant shows that, like all other forms of power, incentives can be subject to abuse, and she identifies their legitimate and illegitimate uses. Grant offers a history of the growth of incentives in early twentieth-century America, identifies standards for judging incentives, and examines incentives in four areas--plea bargaining, recruiting medical research subjects, International Monetary Fund loan conditions, and motivating students. In every case, the analysis of incentives in terms of power yields strikingly different and more complex judgments than an analysis that views incentives as trades, in which the desired behavior is freely exchanged for the incentives offered. Challenging the role and function of incentives in a democracy, Strings Attached questions whether the penchant for constant incentivizing undermines active, autonomous citizenship. Readers of this book are sure to view the ethics of incentives in a new light.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ruth W. Grant is professor of political science and philosophy and a senior fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. She is the author of "John Locke's Liberalism" and "Hypocrisy and Integrity".

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"Strings Attached offers a fascinating tour of the history, morality, and unintended consequences of the modern obsession with using incentives to change behavior. Exploring cases from plea bargaining in criminal courts to paying students to earn good grades, Grant compellingly argues that using material incentives to get people to do things they otherwise would not raises important and previously unexamined questions about ethics, power, and character."--Lynn Stout, University of California, Los Angeles

"This remarkable book asks some deceptively simple questions: With what norms should we judge the use of incentives? How can we compare incentives to coercion and persuasion? With characteristically lucid prose and a productive blend of theory and case studies, Ruth Grant illuminates an often neglected arena of inquiry. At a time when philosophers advocate 'libertarian paternalism' as an alternative to coercion and governments deploy 'conditional cash transfers' as instruments of social policy, Grant's reflections could hardly be more relevant."--William Galston, The Brookings Institution

"Moving comfortably from Plato, modern philosophy, and organizational science to plea bargaining, medical research, and IMF loans, this impressive book lays bare some of the ethical complexities raised by the use of incentives in various social and political contexts. A comprehensive look at an underanalyzed topic, this book is a pleasure to read."--Alan Wertheimer, National Institutes of Health

"Strings Attached does a great job of exploring what needs to be considered when thinking about the ethics of incentives. Grant argues that choice and volition are not enough to answer ethical objections to the use of incentives, because not all choice and volition reflect the freedom and autonomy we aspire to. Policymakers and social scientists need to pay attention to this significant work. Thorough and accessible, it will be widely discussed and have a big impact."--Barry Schwartz, author ofThe Paradox of Choice

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"Strings Attached offers a fascinating tour of the history, morality, and unintended consequences of the modern obsession with using incentives to change behavior. Exploring cases from plea bargaining in criminal courts to paying students to earn good grades, Grant compellingly argues that using material incentives to get people to do things they otherwise would not raises important and previously unexamined questions about ethics, power, and character."--Lynn Stout, University of California, Los Angeles

"This remarkable book asks some deceptively simple questions: With what norms should we judge the use of incentives? How can we compare incentives to coercion and persuasion? With characteristically lucid prose and a productive blend of theory and case studies, Ruth Grant illuminates an often neglected arena of inquiry. At a time when philosophers advocate 'libertarian paternalism' as an alternative to coercion and governments deploy 'conditional cash transfers' as instruments of social policy, Grant's reflections could hardly be more relevant."--William Galston, The Brookings Institution

"Moving comfortably from Plato, modern philosophy, and organizational science to plea bargaining, medical research, and IMF loans, this impressive book lays bare some of the ethical complexities raised by the use of incentives in various social and political contexts. A comprehensive look at an underanalyzed topic, this book is a pleasure to read."--Alan Wertheimer, National Institutes of Health

"Strings Attached does a great job of exploring what needs to be considered when thinking about the ethics of incentives. Grant argues that choice and volition are not enough to answer ethical objections to the use of incentives, because not all choice and volition reflect the freedom and autonomy we aspire to. Policymakers and social scientists need to pay attention to this significant work. Thorough and accessible, it will be widely discussed and have a big impact."--Barry Schwartz, author ofThe Paradox of Choice

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Strings Attached

Untangling the Ethics of IncentivesBy Ruth W. Grant

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2011 Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-15160-1

Contents

Preface............................................................................ixAcknowledgments....................................................................xvONE ? Why Worry about Incentives?.............................................1TWO ? Incentives Then and Now The Clock and the Engineer.....................14THREE ? "Incentives Talk" What Are Incentives Anyway?........................31FOUR ? Ethical and Not So Ethical Incentives..................................45FIVE ? Applying Standards, Making Judgments...................................60SEVEN ? Beyond Voluntariness..................................................123EIGHT ? A Different Kind of Conversation......................................133Notes..............................................................................141References.........................................................................171Index..............................................................................189

Chapter One

Why Worry about Incentives?

Express traffic lanes are set aside during rush hour for cars with more than two passengers. A will stipulates that a daughter will inherit only if she agrees to be a stay-at-home mom. West Virginia pays married couples on welfare an extra $100 per month, funded by a federal program to promote marriage. The government authorizes tax deductions for charitable contributions. Companies pay schools to install soda machines or televisions in their lunchrooms. Schools pay students when they get good grades. A prominent economist suggests that the government tax calories in order to reduce obesity. Legislators in South Carolina discuss a proposal to reduce prison sentences for inmates who donate organs. A soup kitchen feeds the homeless only if they attend a church service first. Cities across America offer large tax breaks to entice businesses to relocate. A donor funds college courses on the condition that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is on the reading list. A state legislator suggests paying poor women $1,000 to have their tubes tied while others debate making welfare conditional on the use of the Norplant contraceptive device. All of these are real examples, and the list could be multiplied endlessly.

Increasingly in the modern world, incentives are becoming the tool we reach for when we wish to bring about change. In government, in education, in health care, in private life, and between and within institutions of all sorts, incentives are offered to steer people's choices in certain directions and to bring about desired policy outcomes. So what? you might well ask. Where is the ethical issue here?

From a certain point of view, there is none. Incentives could be viewed as a form of trade. A person is offered something of value to him or her in exchange for doing something valued by the person making the offer. If the offer is accepted, both parties are better off according to their own lights. If that were not the case, and the benefit being offered were not sufficient, the offer would be rejected. This looks like a trade, and a trade is inherently ethical. It is a voluntary transaction that will occur only if both of the parties involved believe that they benefit from it. Thus, trading is free and rational and, for that reason, it can be considered an ethical relation between persons.

Nonetheless, all incentives and disincentives are not alike. We do recognize bribery and blackmail as wrong even though both can be described in neutral terms as situations in which a simple trade takes place: how much is it worth to a customs official to let his duty slide and ignore a smuggling operation? How much is it worth to one person to know that another will not reveal his criminal past?

But are these cases really the same as our trading your two apples for my three oranges? How can we justify distinguishing between legitimate incentives and disincentives on the one hand, and bribery and blackmail on the other? Viewing incentives as simple trades will not get us very far in answering that question.

Moreover, the question is broader than that: there are incentives and disincentives that we might judge illegitimate that nonetheless cannot be classified as bribery or blackmail. The use of incentives in public policy often leaves people with vaguely defined ethical qualms. I expect that some of the examples in the opening paragraph elicited some discomfort in you. What do those "gut reactions" tell us? Should some incentives elicit ethical concerns? How do we make sound ethical judgments in the gray areas?

We often meet these issues in everyday life. Some cases are clear. Most people do not object to rush hour express traffic lanes for multi-passenger cars, for example; most people do condemn actions like bribing a judge. But many cases are not so easily agreed upon. In North Carolina, at one time, a licensed driver of high school age could lose that license temporarily if he were failing a course. On hearing of this regulation, my young daughter said, "That's a good idea." My teenage son said, "That's blackmail!"

Examples in the realm of politics are equally controversial. Environmental policies allow companies to buy and sell pollution credits—but does treating pollution as a commodity distort the moral claim that supports its regulation in the first place? The federal government routinely shapes state policies through the use of federal grants in areas it certainly could not constitutionally regulate by federal law—but is this an illegitimate encroachment of power or not? State and local governments offer benefits to businesses to relocate in their area—is this a use of public resources for the public good or an unfair advantage for new businesses? None of these are examples of bribery or blackmail, but all involve the use of incentives in ways that some people find unprincipled and others find perfectly justifiable.

What is the ground of the moral sensibility that so often finds the use of incentives offensive? Some people object, for example, to offering incentives to encourage participation in medical research. In their view, participants ought to be willing volunteers committed to furthering the research enterprise. Otherwise, they are being objectified, used like lab rats for other people's purposes. On the other end of the spectrum of moral sensibilities are those who don't even condemn blackmail. A blackmailer who asks for something in exchange for refraining from revealing an extramarital affair is only threatening to tell the truth, after all. What is wrong with threatening to do something that is perfectly acceptable to do?

The question of the ethics of incentives goes to the heart of a longstanding confrontation between two sorts of moral attitudes. The first might be called the "moralistic attitude," according to which the quality of character of the members of society ought to be a central public concern. Since societies can only function at their best if their members, especially their leaders, are capable of virtues like self-restraint, personal sacrifice, and public responsibility, matters of motivation and character formation are critical for politics. The contrasting view I will call the "economic attitude" or the "Mandevillian attitude." The latter refers to Bernard Mandeville, a Dutch author who famously argued in The Fable of the Bees (1714) that private vices often yield public benefits. In this view, our proper concern should be the aggregate outcomes of individual choices and not their motivation or moral quality. The skillful politician is the one who so manages society that even the self-indulgence and vanity of its members produce public goods. The "Mandevillians" scorn the "moralists" as soft-headed and irrational, willing to sacrifice all sorts of beneficial developments on the altar of an illusory project of moral perfection. The "moralists," in turn, condemn the "Mandevillians" as reductionist cynics who destroy, by denying, the higher human possibilities.

It is an argument that goes back a long way and still takes many forms. One can find it today whenever the ethics of incentives arises as an issue. For example, in the debate over whether to offer payment as an incentive for people to give blood, some worry that altruistic motives will disappear once payment becomes accepted practice (which will lead to blood shortages as well). Others question whether a system that relies on altruism can efficiently ensure a sufficient supply of blood.

Controversies like these have been around for a very long time, and there is every reason to believe that they will continue in one form or another. There are two recent versions of "Mandevillian" thinking worthy of note. For the last ten years or so, "conditional cash transfer programs" have been popular in Latin America and the Caribbean and have recently been tried in the United States as well. These are programs where poor mothers are given cash payments on the condition that they get their children vaccinated, or send them to school regularly, or some similar requirement. The term is new, but the general idea is not. Similarly, there has been much discussion recently of "libertarian paternalism." This approach seeks to change people's behavior by structuring choice situations in certain ways. For example, one can ensure that people will save more for retirement if they are automatically enrolled in a 401k plan and have to make the effort to "opt out" than if they have to make the effort to "opt in." These approaches seek to increase responsible behavior without dealing directly with responsibility as an aspect of character. This "Mandevillian attitude" obviously favors the use of incentives of all kinds, while the "moralists" condemn them. But neither position gives grounds for making ethical distinctions among incentives themselves.

I hope to do exactly that by adopting an alternative approach to the question of the ethics of incentives—by looking at incentives as a form of power. The use of incentives is one possible answer to the following question: How can one person get another person to do what he wants him to do? When considering forms of power, the classic alternatives are force and persuasion: people can make you do what they want you to do, or they can convince you to want to do what they want you to do. But bargaining—including incentives—is a third form of power. People can give you something that you want in exchange for your compliance with what they want. Suppose I want you to do X, and you are reluctant to do it. If I cannot persuade you to do it and I do not have the capability to coerce you to do it, I may still be able to induce you to do X by offering you an incentive. Coercion, persuasion, and bargaining are different forms of power. Each is sometimes legitimate and sometimes not. Examining the standards for the legitimacy of all kinds of power will help clarify the criteria for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate uses of incentives.

Considering incentives as an exercise of power raises ethical issues that are not brought to light by the typical approach. When incentives are considered exclusively as a type of trade, the crucial ethical question is, "Is this transaction voluntary?" The approach suggested here goes further. It raises many additional ethical questions in considering the use, and abuse, of incentives. It explains why some incentives are generally recognized as problematic despite their formal similarity to other kinds of trades. It takes seriously the ethical impulse behind the discomfort that many people experience in reaction to incentive programs, such as some of those presented at the beginning of this chapter. And, most important, it allows us to establish standards for making crucial ethical distinctions. Different kinds of incentives are not alike in the ethical considerations they raise; if we consider incentives exclusively within an economic framework—as simple trades—these important differences are obscured.

Thinking about incentives as a form of power, along with coercion and persuasion, also brings to light important concerns about democratic politics. We are accustomed to thinking about incentives as an alternative to coercion: economic sanctions, rather than military attack, for example, or pollution credit markets, rather than regulation (sometimes called "command and control"). And incentives certainly seem to have the moral high ground over coercion as an alternative. But coercion is not the only alternative.

Incentives might just as readily be considered in contrast to persuasion. Persuasion, after all, is also a means of exerting power. Incentives attempt to circumvent the need for persuasion by giving people extrinsic reasons to make the choices that the person or institution offering the incentive wishes them to make. When incentives are employed, there is no need to convince people that collective goals are good or to motivate them to pursue those goals by appeals to rational argument, personal conviction, or intrinsic motivations. Experts and powerful elites can thus direct institutions and shape people's choices without the sort of public discussion and consent that ideally characterize democratic processes of decision-making. To take an example close to home: at many colleges and universities, collective bodies of faculty members have a primary role in designing the curriculum. At the same time, individual faculty members often receive incentives from private donors to develop specific kinds of courses. At what point does this practice of private incentives preempt or undercut collective faculty deliberation over educational goals and practices? At what point does the faculty as a collective body lose control over the curriculum? In this case, incentives seem problematic indeed. When the alternative to an incentive is persuasion rather than coercion, the ethical superiority of the use of incentives is not obvious at all.

Yet there is always pressure toward the use of incentives in politics and government. I have drawn examples from all arenas of social interaction, private and public. But the approach taken here is particularly important for politics. Politics—especially in democracies—is at least as much a matter of noncoercive forms of power as it is a matter of coercion. Politicians cannot govern without popular support or the cooperation of coalition partners and allies of all sorts—and that cooperation cannot be compelled. Government must operate with carrots as well as with sticks. The only options besides coercion are bargaining and persuasion, and persuasion is often limited in its effectiveness. This is why some form of bargaining often will be the only effective method available—usually incentives. It is particularly important, then, to understand and articulate the complex ethical issues involved in their use as a tool of government: to recognize that incentives are not necessarily preferable to all forms of coercion; that incentives sometimes substitute for persuasive processes, which is a real cost in a democracy; and that the fact that incentives are voluntary transactions does not settle the ethical questions raised by their use.

It is impossible to address ethical questions without first making them visible. The danger is that once incentives are introduced in certain areas and people become habituated to their use, the important questions simply no longer arise. Consider plea bargaining. There was a time when the courts condemned plea bargaining. Today, nearly 95 percent of felony convictions involve a guilty plea. Plea bargaining can appear to be acceptable because it is a voluntary agreement where both parties seem to be satisfied with the terms of the agreement. But if the criminal justice system is meant to mete out punishment that is deserved, plea bargaining ensures that that goal will never be met. Either innocent people plead guilty falsely or guilty parties receive punishment that is less than they purportedly deserve. The important point here is that today, these are not major issues for general public discussion. Over time, we have moved from consensus around the idea that plea bargaining is illegitimate to tacit acceptance of the practice. I hope that this book will make its readers worry about things they did not worry about before.

Once worried, we need to reach some kind of judgment. This book assesses incentives, along with the various forms of coercion and persuasion, in order to articulate standards for making those judgments. This is the task of chapter 4, and that is where the theoretical heart of the argument can be found. Before embarking on that task, I present, in chapter 2, an historical account of the use of the term "incentives" and of the introduction of incentives in scientific management and behavioral psychology. This history, surprising in many respects, lends considerable support to my approach. "Incentives" came into the language in the early part of the twentieth century in America. During this period, the language of social control and of social engineering was quite prevalent, and incentives were understood to be one tool in the social engineers' toolbox—an instrument of power. Not coincidentally, incentives were also extremely controversial at this time and were criticized from several quarters as dehumanizing, manipulative, heartless, and exploitative. When incentives are viewed as instruments of power, the controversial ethical aspects of their use come readily to the fore.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Strings Attachedby Ruth W. Grant Copyright © 2011 by Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691151601
• ISBN 13: 9780691151601
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
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• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar