The politics of citizenship: Social justice and legitimacy in the welfare state

This thesis explores the connections between social justice and citizenship in the political economy of the advanced welfare states. It argues that the end of social justice is the legitimacy of institutions, and that principles of social justice function to establish a framework of legitimate institutional formation. Within this framework, both opportunity and outcome elements of distribution are taken as independent subjects of justice. Citizenship is central to the politics in this framework, and how it is institutionalized shapes the prospects for realizing social justice in the welfare state. This thesis defends a universal conception of citizenship as having the capacity to move societies towards social justice based on its capacity to effectively organize interests around institutions and to uphold the norms of equality in political justification. The proffered theory of citizenship, and its connection to social justice, has the capacity to justify group rights, and is defended against prioritarian, communitarian, and monistic objections. Finally, the approach to theorizing social justice and citizenship is brought to bear on the contemporary restructuring of the welfare state, and related theoretical challenges. The importance of unconditional social rights of citizenship is defended against opportunity-based theories of social justice and conditional forms of citizenship entitlement, and is used to illuminate problems with recent workfare policy developments.;Keywords: Social Justice, Citizenship, Welfare State, Legitimacy, Egalitarianism.