6 - Mechanisms and dispositional choice

Summary

Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question.

(Federalist papers, 1, Alexander Hamilton)

A simple model

In this chapter we take up the question – first broached in chapter 4 – of the relationship between the operation of institutions that seek to economise on virtue in use or in allocation, and the dispositional choices of individuals. The basic question is whether – or in what circumstances – institutions that economise on virtue in either of these senses may undermine or erode the virtue that they economise on. We will begin by sketching what we consider to be the simplest possible version of a model that is capable of capturing the feedback effect from institutions to dispositions; that is, a model that incorporates both dispositional choice and a structure of political institutions that operate as both sanctioning and screening mechanisms. In this context we will investigate the question of the conditions under which such an institutional structure has virtue producing properties, and the conditions under which the institutional structure may act to destroy virtue. Some of the limitations of this simple model will be addressed in the following section, where we will also outline some generalisations.

The basic model is organised around the choice between dispositions in the face of an imperfect screening device and an imperfect sanctioning device.