Equality Of Opportunity Essay

Political contestation is triggered by our human desire to make a sense of the complex reality, in which we live in trough conceptualization, therefore it cannot be the same for every political thinker considering we come from a multitude of backgrounds and experiences. Political debate over concepts is a strenuous ideological and theoretical dispute over the use of concepts, the reason why they are so challenged, is contested itself. This essay will identify the main factors that contribute in an extent to this result. In doing so, I will reference to the various dimensions and principles that form the core of egalitarianism, emphasizing on the aspects of equality of opportunity and outcome to present a coherent argument: dominant scholars views on the subject, disagreements and controversies. The key factors that causes such a broad dissention in the definition of political concepts are various, but the most influential are mainly three. Political world uncertain borders and persistent changes in national and international history, diverse use and choice of political terms and endless clash of ideals that leads to continuous debates. To begin with, there are difficulties and differences in the political realm that makes it difficult to decisively set boundaries of the political. As Hay states: “boundaries have always been arbitrary drawn”, there is no certainty about where political analysis ends and where social and cultural analysis starts, or if “politics encompasses all sociological aspects” (Hay, 2002). The continuous and constant change of the political, international and historical dimension, prevents applying the same notions to every context. (Heywood, 2013) Another key factor is the language in political world: concepts and their correct use that considers sub variations. There can be two main application of concepts when we come across a new term in political language: Conceptual stretching and conceptual travelling. As G. Sartori elucidates, conceptual stretching is a problematic fact that occurs when there is a “hazardous worldwide comparison”, leading to “pseudo-equivalences” as a control method over an abstract notion (Lipjhart, 1969). This happens because the world, and consequently the political world is wider than it used to be, and there is tendency to assimilate the concept to a notion of our knowledge. On the other hand, conceptual travelling is an effective way to apply a known concept to a new and similar one. G. Sartori offers a system to achieve and deliver greater precision on conceptual application which is the “ladder of abstraction”. It involves different and progressive steps, such as “awareness of language”, classification in category, “identifying sub variants”,” greater precision and specificity” and “analysis at different levels”. Another line of thought which explains why political concepts are contested, is the way our personal background contributes in elaborating concepts. As Heywood explain, our political analysis is made through concepts, models and theories which are intrinsically loaded with social and historical events, personal bias or experiences, this might distort facts or ideologies for the purpose of explaining complex realities trough an ideal type, a methodological and mental construct. The most important and common analytical tool is the concept: it’s our way of perceiving the world, classifying or “building block of human knowledge”. Concepts are not independent, there a several factors that influence our concepts elaboration, such as sociological environment and personal opinions (Heywood, 2013). Hence it can be easily …show more content…
As John Rawl argues there is need for a further step to guarantee a fairer competition. Advantaged positions should be effectively and not formally open to everyone, regardless of any background, and especially not only to people with special talents, but to the ones willing to use them. "Inequalities are justified only if needed to improve the lot of the worst off, for example by giving the talented an incentive to create wealth.” According Rawl, it is not always a fair competition because some people get a further advantage, before even get to the competition (e.g. better education, healthcare, parenting or neighbourhood). Placing an accent on high quality education: as it can be easily deducted Rawl is an advocate for a midway between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome, more leaning on equality of opportunity because he fully recognises the importance of a society without barriers and discrimination but at the same time sees the problem in assuming that we are equal before “the race” and have the same importance. (Rawls,