Lecture
Public Ethics Talk: Time for Democracy: The Case for the 4 Day Work Week
- Date
- Thursday 2 October 2025
- Time
- Address
- The presentation will take place online (MS Teams)
- Room
- MS Teams
On Thursday 2 October, the Centre for Public Values & Ethics organises a Public Ethics Talk on ' Time for Democracy: The Case for the 4 Day Work Week'.
Democracy and capitalism have often been celebrated as the success formula of the West. But nowadays, they are on a collision course with each other: financialized capitalism has led to massive inequality, and barriers against the exploitation of human beings and nature have been weakened. The economic system needs to be rethought fundamentally, introducing democratic principles into the economic realm - through practices such as workplace democracy, the democratic regulation of markets, and a focus on functions instead of a blind trust in growth. One of the battlefields on which the conflict between democracy and capitalism currently plays out is time politics: while the labor movement has, for centuries, fought for work time reduction by cutting down on the maximum number of daily working hours, this momentum has lost steam. Workers, especially those who also have care responsibilities, are often overworked or bound to work at inconvenient times. This does not only mean that work overtakes their time. It also means that they lack the time required for proper civic and democratic engagement. While this problem is somewhat less pronounced in the Dutch context compared to other countries, “time for democracy” is an idea that could also help to strengthen democracy here, by encouraging engagement of citizens across all economic classes. This talk argues that giving time to democracy in the Netherlands would require reducing the working week from four to five days, and discusses the political, legal, economic and moral implications of this policy proposal.
No pre-registration is needed for this event.
Note that this event takes place on MS Teams.
Public Ethic Talks
The series Public Ethics Talks is organised by the Centre for Public Values & Ethics of the Institute of Public Administration, in collaboration with the Institute of Security and Global Affairs and Leiden University College. The talks aim to bring in cutting- edge work in ethics, moral philosophy, political theory and the normative theory of law to reflect on the practice of public policy, organisation and management. The talks are held in public and are open to a wide audience of public professionals, students and academics.
Lisa Herzog is professor of political philosophy at the University of Groningen and works at the intersection of political philosophy and economic thought. She holds a master in economics from LMU Munich, and an M.St. in Philosophy and D.Phil. in Political Theory from the University of Oxford. She has published on the philosophical dimensions of markets, economic justice, ethics in organizations, and the future of work. The current focus of her work are economic democracy and the philosophy of work. Her most recent monograph is The Democratic Marketplace. How a More Equal Economy Can Save Our Political Ideals (HUP 2025).