The limits of limitarianism Why political equality is not protected by Robeyns’ democratic argument

Limitarianism takes an important step towards an appropriate concern in normative theory about the danger that financial power can pose to political equality. Despite its significant merits, this paper will show that Robeyns’ proposal still has serious shortcomings. These criticisms pave the way for an alternative proposal that we call proportional justice. In the first section, we briefly reconstruct the limitarian approach. In the second section, we formulate a series of criticisms that expose the inadequacies of limitarianism. In the third section we explain how proportional justice is better equipped than limitarianism to defend political equality.