The Pecking Order

The Pecking Order provides a powerful articulation and defense of its master idea of noninferiority. That idea is already percolating through political philosophy, but nobody has done anything like the systematic development of it that Kolodny achieves. This book stands out for its ability to animate so many different debates in political philosophy through a single idea, deploying it to address a wider range and variety of moral and political phenomena. Carefully argued, clearly written, and remarkable for both the depth of its analysis and the scope of its engagement, Kolodny’s book is one that everyone working in political philosophy and many in democratic theory will want to read.
-- Arthur Ripstein, author of Force and Freedom

In this far-reaching study, Niko Kolodny illuminates everyone’s fundamental interest in being an equal. The claim against hierarchy—against being socially subordinate to others—is offered as a key to more stuck doors in political philosophy than other time-honored projects around freedom and equality, liberalism, and democracy. Relentless in method and vivid in style, the book will be widely studied, and rightly so.
-- David Estlund, author of Utopophobia

This book is smart, provocative, timely, and deeply informed. It engages and carries to a new level of clarity and sophistication a set of themes associated with social egalitarianism. It also offers as comprehensive a critical view of central themes in recent democratic theory as I can imagine. Reading The Pecking Order is a rare and bracing experience.
-- Charles R. Beitz, author of The Idea of Human Rights

Social and political discourse is full of claims about what we owe each other and why. In this compelling book, a perceptive philosopher argues that much of that talk is grounded in our shared aversion to subordination. In his hands, the principle of ‘noninferiority’ provides a powerful touchstone for assessing contentious issues ranging from the limits of authority in the workplace to the reach of the welfare state and the role of money in politics.
-- Larry M. Bartels, author of Unequal Democracy and Democracy for Realists