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"Perfectionism" published on by Oxford University Press.

AbstractEuropean law manifests powerful perfection-seeking internal dynamics, nudging—even compelling—legal actors to strive to make the European legal order 'the best it can be'. This chapter uses a comparative approach to show that this perfectionism is contingent (that is, not necessarily shared by all legal orders), and that it is a highly distinctive characteristic of European legalism specifically. Uncovering the hidden dynamics of this juridical perfectionism is an important step towards rethinking European law's agency and its correlate: our own ability to shape European integration through law.

Abstract
Joseph Raz's The Morality of Freedom (1986) is well known for defending both a perfectionist form of liberalism and an 'externalist' conception of autonomy. John Christman proposes that there is a logical connection between the two theses and argues that externalist accounts of autonomy should be rejected on the basis that they are perfectionist. Christman's perfectionism argument contains two premises: (i) externalist theories of autonomy entail political perfectionism and (ii) political perfectionism is not defensible. I argue that neither premise is true. Externalist theories of autonomy do not entail political perfectionism. Further, even assuming for the sake of argument that premise (i) is true, premise (ii) is false. The strongest challenge to political perfectionism is that it is incompatible with the value of respect. I argue that those defending political perfectionism misconstrue what is required for respect. Once we see that respect is secured through features inherent in processes, the value of respect can be reconciled with political perfectionism. Political perfectionism is a defensible thesis and premise (ii) is false.

Perfectionism can be healthy: striving for perfection requires the ability to selfregulate, namely willpower. This paper formalizes the intuitive relation between healthy perfectionism and willpower in the presence of temptation. The value of a menu of options for an individual with limited willpower corresponds to the lower bound of the value assigned to the same menu by a perfectionist, when temptation and perfectionism intensities are free to vary. Moreover, the higher the perfectionism strive, the higher the willpower. The relation between overwhelming temptation and the Strotz model is a particular case of the result. When there is uncertainty about temptation, we generalize Dekel and Lipman (2012) providing conditions such that a preference is represented by a random willpower representation, if and only if, it has an equivalent random perfectionism representation.