Social Justice and the Urban Predicament: The New York City Transit Strike of 1980

Abstract

It may seem strange to discuss an issue as earthy and recent as the New York City transit strike of 1980 in a book on social justice whose primary emphasis appears to be on rather theoretical issues. Nevertheless, it is surely in the brawling of everyday life in a city such as New York that the theoretical issues find their concrete expression. For that reason, I would like to analyze the strike with a view to answering—or at least addressing in a thought-provoking way—several questions. First, we want to know what happened. By this I do not simply mean we want to know the facts of the case; rather we want an explanation of what happened. For this I will turn to collective choice theory. More particularly, I will try to see whether game theory and spatial modeling theory can tell us anything significant about the strike. If we can acquire some understanding of what happened, we will then want to know how this relates to the question of justice. In particular we will ask not whether some aspect of this situation was “just,” but where the question of justice comes into a situation such as this.