 As an example of a distributive view, consider the view held by many philosophers, which defines the common good in terms of Rawls’s difference principle (see, e.g., J. Cohen 1996 [2009: 169–170]; see also  section 8 below).  According to this view, we can think of citizens as belonging to various subgroups, each consisting of all those born into a certain “starting position” in social life. Citizens in each group share certain choice-independent characteristics, such as their class position at birth and their level of innate talent. Group members have sectional interests in better life prospects (as measured in terms of primary goods), where these interests make partly competing claims on the basic structure of society. The difference principle says that social institutions should answer to the interests of each group equally, with the caveat that institutions should incorporate whatever inequalities would serve to maximize the prospects of the least advantaged group. Citizens are then understood to have a relational obligation to maintain a scheme of institutions that attends to everyone’s sectional interests in the way that the difference principle prescribes.