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PRIVATIZATION is a widespread phenomenon in contemporary liberal democracies. One facet of privatization is the state delegation of welfare and primary-good-supporting services to private associations. 1 Governments give subsidies to so-called “public charities” to deliver public services such as basic education, healthcare, and childcare. They hire and create incentives for nonprofits and NGOs to perform public functions and to implement social policies. 2 This process is called “privatization,” given the assumption, more normative than factual, that the state has a primary duty to provide their citizens with sufficient public options to access the above services. Privatization thus refers to the provision of these public goods through private nonprofits.

I will investigate whether, in the context of privatization, a normative division of labor between the egalitarian norms that govern the conduct of political institutions and those that govern voluntary associations is tenable. To put it differently, I will assess what happens to the scope of putatively political principles of distributive justice when government responsibilities are discharged through private associations. 3 I will then examine whether a clear institutional division of labor between these associations and political institutions ought to be preserved against the threat that privatization poses to it. For the current