Excellent book, well-written and thought provoking. Complex topics but very readable. I'd love to read his thoughts about crime and the justice system; he mentioned these issues a little bit but I think he didn't want to get side-tracked away from welfare-type issues. (And hurrah for 200 page books!) But the questions of responsibility and deservedness seem very similar.

I thought the one shortcoming of the book is that it seemed to be only looking at the relationship between the state and welfare recipients, and I think it may not have paid adequate attention to citizens who are (mostly, usually) not welfare recipients. Their perspective is important also - if they feel used and ignored (by both the state and the recipients) they turn into a nasty political force that isn't good for anyone... ( )

We live in the age of responsibility. But, Yascha Mounk argues, we have progressively narrowed our view of what responsibility means in the political sphere. It has been reduced solely to personal responsibility for outcomes in one's own life, and we have come to believe in the notion that benefits should be conditional on that responsibility. The left has responded by denying that individuals are responsible--focusing on structural flaws. While there is truth in their arguments, it ultimately buys in to the responsibility framework. Rather than attacking conditionality itself, it says that it doesn't apply. Since people don't like the perceived message that they lack personal agency, the argument can turn off those it's meant to excuse. Mounk argues that instead, we need to reconceive the notion of responsibility in a positive form.

This is not an easy book to read--it was Mounk's dissertation, and it shows. Familiarity with the basics of philosophy and political philosophy are mandatory, and although it's a short book, it's not an easy read. Nonetheless, the ideas are fascinating and potentially an important contribution to political debate. We spend all our time arguing about individual responsibility for outcomes, and none about our responsibility towards others and the responsibility of our institutions towards others. The last chapter is in some ways the weakest, because Mounk tries too hard to keep it apolitical and the examples are nonspecific. ( )

Promising book, but the writing style could be made tighter and the arguments more clearly spelled out. What, for instance, IS 'the age of responsibility' which no one can deny? ( )