Abstract
This paper considers the sense in which the increasingly global nature of economic, social, and political interaction influences the moral obligations that individuals have to foreigners. I defend a view called “global institutionalism”, according to which individuals worldwide have duties of justice to one another in virtue of these forms of global interaction. The two main forms of criticism that confront global institutionalism come from opposing perspectives. On the one hand, “non-institutionalists” deem facts about global institutional interaction to be irrelevant for the purpose of determining the nature of our duties to others. They worry that many needy individuals will be excluded from our moral radar by grounding claims of justice on a morally arbitrary factor like institutional membership. “Domestic institutionalists”, on the other hand, accept that interaction has significant bearing on the scope of justice but deny that the right sort of interaction necessary to ground duties of justice is found in the global domain. Against these objections, I defend the global institutionalist position by showing why it is the case that global interaction gives rise to new duties of justice that are irreducible to universal duties; moreover, I reveal the inconsistency of the domestic institutionalist position, which maintains a stark dichotomy in the moral commitments we have to compatriots and to foreigners in the face of extensive cross-border interaction. The successful defense of this thesis means that as global interdependence increases, we must re-think what we owe to those who reside beyond the borders of our own states.
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Notes
- 1.
Hume, David. 1966 (1777). An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. 25. La Salle: Open Court.
- 2.
Two of the best known arguments for extending concerns of justice beyond state borders, those advanced by Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge, are global institutionalist in character. See Beitz, Charles R. 1999 (1979). Political Theory and international Relations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; and Pogge, Thomas. 2002. World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan responsibilities and Reforms. Cambridge: Polity. See also Moellendorf, Darrel. 2002. Cosmopolitan Justice. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
- 3.
The main proponent of non-institutionalism whose arguments I consider in the following is Simon Caney. See Caney, Simon. 2005. Justice Beyond Borders. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Caney, Simon. 2007. Global Poverty and Human Rights: The Case for Positive Duties. In Freedom from Poverty as A Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? ed. Thomas Pogge. 275–302. Oxford: Oxford University Press. See also Arneson, Richard. 2004. Luck Egalitarianism Interpreted and Defended. Philosophical Topics 32/1, 2: 1–20, 18.
- 4.
I include the following as a representative set of domestic institutionalist views: Blake, Michael. 2002. Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy. Philosophy and Public Affairs 30/3: 257–296; Miller, Richard. 1998. Cosmopolitan Respect and Patriotic Concern. Philosophy & Public Affairs 27/3: 202–224; Nagel, Thomas. 2005. The Problem of Global Justice. Philosophy and Public Affairs 33/2: 113–147; Sangiovanni, Andrea. 2007. Global Justice, Reciprocity, and the State. Philosophy and Public Affairs 35/1: 3–39. Inspiring all of these views is arguably the most influential domestic institutionalist view: Rawls, John. 1999. The Law of Peoples. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- 5.
In particular, recent writings on domestic institutionalism have focused on the scope of egalitarian justice and thus on the question of where inequalities ought to be addressed. As a result, we can differentiate between a stronger or weaker version of domestic institutionalism: On the strong version, it is argued that no duties of justice whatsoever apply outside of the state; the weaker version, by contrast, defends the claim that only duties of egalitarian justice do not apply outside of the state. On this clarification, see Cohen, Joshua and Charles Sabel. 2006. Extra Rempublicam Nulla Justitia? Philosophy and Public Affairs 34/2: 147–175; 150–151. They, and others, use the term “statism” for what I call “domestic institutionalism”.
- 6.
Strictly speaking, there are two potential sites of disagreement between domestic and global institutionalists. The first, philosophically less interesting disagreement plays out at the level of empirical facts concerning the state and the global domain. The second, more substantive, disagreement centers on the respective normative claims of domestic and global institutionalists regarding what form of interaction is needed to give rise to demands of justice.
- 7.
Caney, Simon. 2007. op. cit. 289, see also 283–285; Caney, Simon. 2005. op. cit. 114.
- 8.
Caney, Simon. 2007. op. cit. 284–285.
- 9.
Thomas Pogge nicely captures this sentiment in the following passage (which is also quoted by Caney in his consideration of this point): “whether the members of different societies can or cannot avoid mutually influencing one another is, though an empirical matter, surely not up to them. At this stage in world history we cannot realistically avoid international interaction”. See Pogge, Thomas. 1989. Realizing Rawls. 241, n3. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
- 10.
Caney, Simon. 2007. op. cit. 289; see also Caney, Simon. 2005. op. cit. 114.
- 11.
See Cohen, Joshua and Charles Sabel. 2006. op. cit. for use of the term “suprahumanitarian” in a closely related discussion.
- 12.
See Caney, Simon. 2007. op. cit. 298–299.
- 13.
Campbell is explicit on this point: “humanity is a basis for obligation generally, and not just the sort of moral obligations that are not legally enforceable but as a basis for the moral justification of having legal obligations”. See Campbell, Tom. 2007. Poverty as a Violation of Human Rights: Inhumanity or Injustice?. In Freedom from Poverty as A Human Right : Who Owes What to the Very Poor? ed. Thomas Pogge, 55–74: 67. Oxford: Oxford University Press. See also Singer, Peter. 2002. One world : The Ethics of Globalization. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
- 14.
In his Justice Beyond Borders, 110–115, Caney rejects what he calls “restricted institutionalism”, which is the position that some principles of justice apply exclusively to those bound by institutional interaction while other duties of justice apply to all (compared to “unrestricted institutionalism” on which all principles of justice derive from institutional interaction). Although in his “Global Poverty and Human Rights: The Case for Positive Duties”, he approvingly considers the compatibility of some institutionally grounded duties of justice with other universal duties of justice.
- 15.
For arguments in favour of globalizing the difference principle see: Beitz, Charles. 1999 (1979). Part 3. op. cit.; Pogge, Thomas. 1989. Part 3. op. cit.; Moellendorf. Darrel. 2002. op. cit. Chs. 3 and 4.
- 16.
For the sake of argument, here I grant the hypothetical possibility that some individuals may fall outside of the global institutional purview.
- 17.
That morally arbitrary factors should not influence individuals’ relative positions is the central argument put forward by “luck egalitarians”. See Cohen, Gerald Allan. 1989. On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice. Ethics: 99/4: 906–944; Dworkin, Ronald M. 2000. Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Arneson, Richard. 2004. op. cit.
- 18.
See Pogge, Thomas. 1989. op. cit. 247; see also Moellendorf, Darrel. 2002. op. cit. 80.
- 19.
See Caney, Simon. 2005. op. cit. 111.
- 20.
This discussion and the example I use draw on Christopher Wellman’s argument that association-specific duties can be justified in universal terms, and that there is no need to claim that certain relationships themselves have basic moral significance. See Wellman, Christopher. 2001. Relational Facts in Liberal Political Theory: Is There Magic in the Pronoun “My”?. Ethics 110/3: 537–562. See also Scanlon, Thomas. 2000. The Diversity of Objections to Inequality. In The Ideal of Equality, eds. Matthew Clayton and Andrew Williams, 41–59; 44. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
- 21.
Of course, I cannot avoid a pre-existing general duty to do something simply by not promising to do so.
- 22.
Nancy Fraser discusses this point in her article “Abnormal Justice” (Fraser, Nancy. 2008. Abnormal Justice. Critical Inquiry 34: 393–422.) She writes, “Thus, sub-Saharan Africans who have been involuntarily disconnected from the global economy as a result of the rules imposed by its governance structures count as subjects of justice in relation to it, even if they are not officially recognized as participating in it”. (412).
- 23.
Pogge and Moellendorf advance this second line of argument according to which individuals are inextricably part of the global order and are thus owed special justification.
- 24.
In particular, all of the domestic institutionalist accounts I discuss here focus on the specific case of limiting egalitarian duties of justice to the state. Of these, only one explicitly defends the stronger claim that all duties of justice apply only within the state and only humanitarian duties to address absolute deprivation apply globally (Nagel). The others (Blake and Sangiovanni) are at least open to the possibility that some non-egalitarian duties of justice might transcend state borders.
- 25.
Sangiovanni, Andrea. 2007. op. cit. 8.
- 26.
Blake, Michael. 2002. op. cit.; and Miller, Richard. 1998. op. cit.
- 27.
Nagel, Thomas. 2005. op. cit.
- 28.
Sangiovanni, Andrea. 2007. op. cit.
- 29.
In this section, I focus on the scope of those duties of justice discussed by domestic institutionalists: namely, egalitarian ones.
- 30.
See the following important critiques of the domestic institutionalist position: Abizadeh, Arash. 2007. Cooperation, Pervasive Impact, and Coercion: On the Scope (not Site) of Distributive Justice. Philosophy & Public Affairs 35/4: 318–358; Cohen, Joshua and Charles Sabel. 2006. op. cit.; Julius, A. J. 2006. Nagel’s Atlas. Philosophy and Public Affairs 34/2: 176–192; Pevnick, Ryan. 2008. Political Coercion and the Scope of Distributive Justice. Political Studies 56/2: 399–413; Risse, Mathias. 2006. What to Say About the State. Social Theory and Practice 32/4: 671–698.
- 31.
Pevnick uses this term in his critical discussion of the coercion thesis. See Pevnick, Ryan. 2008. op. cit. 402.
- 32.
Sangiovanni, Andrea. 2007. op. cit. 25–29.
- 33.
See Blake, Michael. 2002. op. cit. 280; and Sangiovanni, Andrea. 2007. op. cit. 34–35.
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Nath, R. (2010). Global Institutionalism and Justice. In: van Hooft, S., Vandekerckhove, W. (eds) Questioning Cosmopolitanism. Studies in Global Justice, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8704-1_11
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