The term was first used in print by political philosopher Hillel Steiner; while other writers followed, it has not been universally adopted and it is sometimes considered synonymous with carrot and stick.
"[2] Steiner differentiated offers, threats and throffers based on the preferability of compliance and noncompliance for the subject when compared to the normal course of events that would have come about were no intervention made.
In such systems, individuals receiving social welfare have their aid decreased if they refuse the offer of work or education.
Robert Goodin criticised workfare programmes which presented throffers to individuals receiving welfare, and was responded to by Daniel Shapiro, who found his objections unconvincing.
Several writers have also observed that throffers presented to people convicted of crimes, particularly sex offenders, can result in more lenient sentences if they accept medical treatment.
[4] Steiner had considered a quote from the 1972 film The Godfather: "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse".
[6] One prominent thinker who adopted the term was political scientist Michael Taylor,[7] and his work on throffers has been frequently cited.
For instance, literary scholar Daniel Shore calls it "a somewhat unfortunate term", while using it in his analysis of John Milton's Paradise Regained.
He concludes that the distinction is based on how the consequences of compliance or noncompliance differ for the subject of the intervention when compared with "the norm".
[22] Previous authors (Kristjánsson cites Joel Feinberg, Alan Wertheimer and Robert Nozick) provided moral and statistical analyses of various thought experiments to determine whether the proposals they involve are threats or offers.
[25] He concludes that the thinkers' methods are also inadequate for determining the difference between freedom-restricting and non-freedom-restricting threats, for which a test of moral responsibility would be required.
)[27] Rhodes presents seven different motivational-want-structures, that is, seven reasons why P may want to do what leads to B: Proposals that motivate P to act because of W1, W2 or W3 represent offers.
In the case of throffers, it is always going to be difficult or even impossible to determine whether an agent acts on the threatening aspect of the proposal or the offer.
[35] Consideration of throffers forms part of the wider question of coercion and, specifically, the possibility of a coercive offer.
All exercises of power by others to frustrate the relevant individual or group preferences constitute unwarranted 'interference' with liberty in purely private matters.
However, if both offer and threat aspects of the throffer are motivating factors, then it is tricky to determine whether the agent subject to the proposal was coerced.
For philosopher and political theorist Gertrude Ezorsky, the denial of welfare when subjects refuse work is the epitome of a throffer.
[50] In the words of Daniel Shapiro, also a political philosopher, the offer aspect of workfare is seen in the "benefits one receives if one learns new skills, gets a job, alters destructive behaviors and the like", while the threat aspect is executed with "the elimination or reduction of aid, if the person does not, after a certain period of time, accept the offer".
This is presented as an argument against workfare, and Goodin anticipates that advocates would respond paternalistically by claiming that, regardless of issues of freedom, the individual in question would benefit from taking part in the work or education offered.
[51] Shapiro responds to Goodin's argument by challenging his factual assumption that individuals would starve if they refused the workfare throffer.
As unconditional welfare does not mirror the situation of ordinary workers, it is unable to determine whether or not people are willing to take responsibility for their lives.
The compulsive aspect reveals that at least some recipients of welfare, in the eyes of policy makers, require coercion before they will accept offers of work.
Neither the chance of paid work nor participation in labour schemes are, alone, enough to encourage some to freely accept the offers they receive.
Thirdly, compulsion undermines consumer feedback, and so no differentiation can be made between good and poor programmes presented to those receiving welfare.
[48] In the case of sex offenders, a throffer is presented when they are offered release if they take up treatment, but are threatened with extended sentences if they do not.
[55] Concerns surrounding throffers proposed to convicted sex offenders have also been discussed in print by Alex Alexandrowicz, himself wrongly imprisoned, and criminologist David Wilson.
[56] The latter observed the difficulties for those innocent people wrongly imprisoned who are faced with the throffer of having their sentence shortened if they "acknowledge their guilt", but noted that, as perspectives of prisoners were rarely considered, the problem is usually not visible.
In community psychiatry, patients with mental health problems will sometimes be presented with the provision of social services, such as financial or housing aid, in exchange for changing their lifestyle and reporting for the administration of medicines.
Psychiatrist Julio Arboleda-Flórez considers these throffers a form of social engineering, and worries that they have multiple implications in regard to coercive mechanisms from implicit curtailments of freedom to ascription of vulnerability.
The ascription of vulnerability overrides the principle of equality between the partners, constitutes and invasion of privacy and impacts on the positive rights of individuals.