Reimagining Prosperity: The Transformative Power of Private Law
Law
- Date
- 25 October 2024
- Time
- 16:30
- Location
- Aula - Lutherse kerk
The most urgent danger that the rise of far and extreme right presents is that it forces the shift in the political register from the questions of ‘prosperity’ to the questions of ‘identity’. Such a shift would undermine modern institutions - democracy, science and the rule of law - which are predicated on shared imaginaries of prosperity: guiding democratic politics in widely pluralist polities, holding power accountable and at least not obstructing the claims for inclusion. Democratic institutions are, in turn, fundamental for prosperity as these institutions need to mediate change in the content and a route to prosperity in the face of crises. Their incapacity to do so after the 2008 great financial crisis has set grounds for the rise of the far and extreme right. However, the road to tribalism, which dispenses with modern institutions, is not inevitable.
Sustainable and Shared
Unlike in the 1920s and 1930s of the 20th century, the European Union can live up to its historical responsibility to aid its MSs to develop and institute (without wars) a new imaginary of prosperity, that can ground hope to enduring access to basic material, social and institutional goods, both now and in the future. To be able to respond to all current crises, however, such prosperity will have to be both more sustainable and more shared than the neoliberal one was.
Focus on Pre-Distribution
The EU has already taken modest steps toward a more sustainable and shared prosperity, when trying to reshape the ‘microeconomic institutions’ (such as corporation or consumption) and the rules of market exchange. This focus on the policies of pre-distribution, rather than solely re-distribution, is crucial for ensuring a better sharing of economic surplus as well as a broader access to social recognition, which has been one of the main victims of neoliberal imaginary of prosperity. However, the EU, and by extension its MSs, must go further in transforming the rules of market exchange to deliver conditions for, a priori, more egalitarian and sustainable outcomes of economic relations. They need to place ‘(bargaining) power’ and legal forms that are ‘distributive by design’ at the centre of (private) law reform.
