Ryan Muldoon and I are grateful to the PPE Consortium for funding our project on freedom and social norms.
How Social Norms Promote and Constrain Freedom
The relationship between social norms and freedom is complex. While social norms often constrain individual choice, they can also enable coordination, protect people from coercion, and help sustain liberal social orders. This project asks when norm-based constraints reduce freedom and when they instead enhance it, both for individuals and for societies. A motivating example is kidney markets: legalizing them may appear to expand freedom by adding options, but it may also create new social pressures that leave some people less free in practice. Combining formal and conceptual analysis with empirical research, the project develops a framework for understanding how social norms affect freedom and why that matters for markets and public policy.
Outputs
Freedom and Constraint, forthcoming in Philosophy & Public Affairs.