National self-determination, global equality and moral arbitrariness

Journal of Political Philosophy

Volumn 18, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 313-334

  Armstrong, Chris ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77955265414     PISSN: 09638016     EISSN: 14679760     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2009.00353.x     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. David Miller, 'National responsibility and global justice', Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 11 (2008), 383-99.
2. Lea Ypi has recently examined the role the notion of moral arbitrariness plays in debates about political membership and the distribution of natural resources in 'Political membership in the contractarian defense of cosmopolitanism', The Review of Politics, 70 (2008), 442-72. I am sympathetic to many of her criticisms of the way the notion of arbitrariness has come to be mobilised in those debates, but do not share her conclusion that the claim that political communities are morally arbitrary should be rejected in toto. In section IV, I attempt to delineate the ways in which nationality may be considered as having a morally arbitrary influence on distribution; though the arbitrariness objection has commanded too central a role in global egalitarian arguments, this is not to say that it could or should be dispensed with.
3. See, e.g., Simon Caney, 'Cosmopolitan justice and equalizing opportunities', Metaphilosophy, 32 (2001), 113-34
4. Darrel Moellendorf, Cosmopolitan Justice (Boulder: Westview, 2002).
5. See Joseph Carens, 'Aliens and citizens: the case for open borders', Review of Politics, 49 (1987), 251-73.
6. Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 247. See also Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 138-40; Moellendorf, Cosmopolitan Justice, pp. 78-9; Kok-Chor Tan, Justice Without Borders (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 56.
7. Simon Caney, Justice Beyond Borders (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 122.
8. See Caney, 'Cosmopolitan justice and equalizing opportunities', or Moellendorf, Cosmopolitan Justice. For criticisms, see, e.g., Bernard Boxill, 'Global equality of opportunity and national integrity', Social Philosophy and Policy, 5 (1987), 143-68; Gillian Brock, 'Egalitarianism, ideals and cosmopolitan justice', Philosophical Forum, 36 (2005), 1-30; David Miller, 'Against global egalitarianism', Journal of Ethics, 9 (2005), 55-79; David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 72-8; Margaret Moore, 'Justice within different borders: a review of Simon Caney's global political theory', Journal of Global Ethics, 3 (2007), 255-68.
9. David Miller, 'Defending political autonomy: a discussion of Charles Beitz', Review of International Studies, 31 (2005), 381-88, at p. 388.
10. Miller, National Responsibility, pp. 32-3. For arguments to the effect that the injunction against 'morally arbitrary' inequalities only pertains within the shadow of the institutions of the state, see Thomas Nagel, 'The problem of global justice', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 33 (2005), 113-47; Andrea Sangiovanni, 'Global justice, reciprocity and the state', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 35 (2007), 3-39. For a rebuttal of Nagel's and Sangiovanni's arguments, see Chris Armstrong, 'Coercion, reciprocity and equality beyond the state', Journal of Social Philosophy, 40 (2009), 297-316.
11. Miller does suggest that we might attribute national responsibility even in the absence of self-determination, but does not make such cases a central part of his account. See National Responsibility, p. 127.
12. David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 108.
13. Miller, National Responsibility, p. 21.
14. Will Kymlicka, 'Territorial boundaries: a liberal egalitarian perspective', Boundaries and Justice: Diverse Ethical Perspectives, ed. David Miller and Sohail Hashmi (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 249-75; Margaret Moore, 'Cosmopolitanism and political communities', Social Theory and Practice, 32 (2006), 627-58. See also Daniel Philpott, 'In defense of self-determination', Ethics, 105 (1995), 352-385.
15. Miller, On Nationality, p. 86.
16. But this cannot be just any action. Miller claims, for instance, that the receiving nation-state cannot demand too much of immigrants in terms of integration into the norms of the dominant culture, and should instead accept that this culture should be expected to change over time (notwithstanding the proviso above, which suggests that a large degree of continuity is desirable). David Miller, 'Immigrants, nations, and citizenship', Journal of Political Philosophy, 16 (2009), 371-90, at pp. 384-8.
17. Miller, National Responsibility, p. 214.
18. David Miller, Citizenship and National Identity (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), pp. 81-96.
19. Moore, 'Justice within different borders', p. 258.
20. Jon Mandle, 'Coercion, Legitimacy and Equality', Social Theory and Practice, 32 (2006), 617-25, at p. 622.
21. Leif Wenar, 'Human rights and equality in the work of David Miller', Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 11 (2008), 401-11, at p. 406.
22. For further discussion of the nature of global egalitarianism, see Christian Barry and Laura Valentini, 'Egalitarian challenges to global egalitarianism: a critique', Review of International Studies, 35 (2009), 485-512; and Chris Armstrong, 'Global Egalitarianism', Philosophy Compass, 3 (2009), 〈http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/〉.
23. The present distinction is unconnected to the site-specific distinction between 'monist' theories which account for structures and individual actions, and 'dualist' ones which suggest different principles for each. The distinction at hand is one about scope; it pertains between theories which, whether they apply to institutions or actions or both, apply without regard to borders (scope-monist) and those which suggest different principles for global and local, national or trans-national levels (scope-dualist or scope-pluralist). On the distinction between arguments about site and scope in theories of global justice, see Arash Abizadeh, 'Cooperation, pervasive impact, and coercion: on the scope (not site) of distributive justice', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 35 (2007), 318-58.
24. This forms the substance of Darrel Moellendorf's view, which is on our terms a dualist egalitarian one. A dualist egalitarian approach is also canvassed by Mathias Risse. See Darrel Moellendorf, 'Equal respect and global egalitarianism', Social Theory and Practice, 32 (2006), 601-16
25. Mathias Risse, 'What to say about the state', Social Theory and Practice, 32 (2006), 671-98.
26. See Barry and Valentini, 'Egalitarian challenges to global egalitarianism'.
27. Miller, Citizenship and National Identity, p. 161.
28. Why do I say 'if then'? I say this because a scope-monist mitigation approach (as discussed in part D of Section II) might still leave normative space for national self-determination and national distributive variation; even a neutralization approach will allow national variation with regards to any goods or relations which do not fall under the purview of its scope-monism. This depends on the purposes for which nationality is to be considered as morally arbitrary, a point discussed further in Sections III and IV.
29. The stated goal of Kok-Chor Tan's book on cosmopolitanism and nationalism was to show that we might be global egalitarians - in the sense that we believe it to be important that 'inequalities are mitigated and justified' - whilst still 'accepting that there may be moral reasons for certain kinds of special obligations that are not ultimately explainable in cosmopolitan terms.' Thus Tan may be a scope-dualist global egalitarian. See Justice Without Borders, pp. 7, 11-2.
30. Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity, 2002), p. 176.
31. Tan, Justice Without Borders, pp. 71-2. See also Barry and Valentini, 'Egalitarian challenges to global egalitarianism'.
32. A version of global egalitarianism which takes the state or nation-state as a proper unit of normative concern was once defended by Brian Barry in 'Humanity and justice in global perspective', Liberty and Justice: Essays in Political Theory, Volume 2 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), pp. 182-210, at pp. 203-8. It has also been suggested by Lea Ypi; see for example her 'Statist cosmopolitanism', Journal of Political Philosophy, 16 (2008), 48-71.
33. Alexander Capellen defends a global form of luck egalitarianism which takes nation-states rather than individuals as its subject in 'Responsibility and international distributive justice', Real World Justice, ed. Andreas Føllesdal and Thomas Pogge (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), pp. 215-28.
34. According to David Miller, for instance, the defence of national self-determination is 'iterative' in the sense that one nation's autonomy must be respectful of another's; as such the proper relationship between nations is not one of exploitation or subjugation, but one of 'friendly rivalry'. See On Nationality, p. 190.
35. Miller's ambition for domestic equality of opportunity would be satisfied by the granting of adequate access to key public goods, combined with some measure of meritocracy in filling key social positions. See David Miller, Principles of Social Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
36. See, e.g., Peter Singer, One World: the Ethics of Globalization (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002).
37. David Miller, 'Collective responsibility and international inequality in The Law of Peoples', Rawls's Law of Peoples: a Realistic Utopia? ed. Rex Martin and David Reidy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 191-205. It might be said that the resulting distribution of carbon-quotas would not be egalitarian, but the resulting distribution would almost certainly meet something like Dworkin's envy test, for instance. See Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
38. John Rawls A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).
39. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples, with 'The Idea of Public Reason Revisited' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 117.
40. Chris Armstrong, 'Defending the duty of assistance?' Social Theory and Practice, 35 (2009), 461-82.
41. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 72. For a very enlightening discussion of these issues, see Seana Shiffrin, 'Egalitarianism, choice-sensitivity, and accommodation', Reason and Value, ed. R. Jay Wallace, Philip Pettit, Samuel Scheffler, and Michael Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 270-302.
42. Rawls's 'Aristotelian Principle' states that 'human beings enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities (their innate or trained abilities), and this enjoyment increases the more the capacity is realized, or the greater its complexity.' That enjoyment is not objected to by Rawls's theory. See A Theory of Justice, p. 426.
43. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue.
44. Though the point is not very significant here, my own view is that, were we to compile a list of features or characteristics which either should not influence distributive outcomes, or which do not give a prior claim to greater or lesser reward, we should not be steered exclusively by considerations of responsibility. Thus we might want to say that distributive outcomes should not be influenced by one's sexuality whether or not we might come in the fullness of time to see that as a chosen or unchosen feature of a person's identity. See also Shiffrin, 'Egalitarianism, choice-sensitivity, and accommodation'.
45. To put it one way, nations are at least in theory groups capable of collective action, whereas gender is better described as a seriality. Unlike a group with a self-consciously collective identity and common goals, what Sartre called a seriality possesses neither, but comprises individuals with a non-self-conscious commonality - Iris Young gives the example of individuals waiting at a bus stop, united by nothing other than that simple fact. See Iris Young, 'Gender as seriality: thinking about women as a social collective', Signs, 19 (1994), 713-38.
46. See for instance Jacob Levy, 'National and statist responsibility', Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 11 (2008), 485-99.
47. Miller, National Responsibility.
48. Miller by contrast does suggest that individuals can 'inherit' responsibilities. However one of the ways in which they can do so is by identifying with their national community, which presumably infants cannot do. It is hence quite unclear whether, or how, we might apply the argument fully in the case of infants. See National Responsibility, pp. 135-66.
49. This move is suggested by Cecile Fabre in 'Global distributive justice: an egalitarian perspective', Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Supplementary), 31 (2007), 139-64, at pp. 142-44.
50. See the statements from Pogge and Caney cited in section I of this article, for instance.
51. Miller, National Responsibility, p. 265.
52. Fabre, 'Global distributive justice', p. 153.
53. Christian Barry has put the following question to me. Suppose it was the case that some policy package would serve the luck egalitarian principle - say a national health service - much better than would the policy that is favoured by a majority of locals - say a system of fully private health provision. Would the luck egalitarian be wrong to say the majority is here imposing an injustice? The claim I am making is that a thorough-going luck egalitarian view will be forced to condemn all nationality-regarding inequalities as unjust by definition, and that it will likely sometimes be wrong to do so. But of course there will be many nationality-regarding inequalities that we should condemn as unjust, and indeed which are so serious that we should put a higher priority on tackling them than we do on national self-determination. It may be that we would be right to say, in the health-care example, that the majority would here be wrongly imposing an injustice. But there will be other cases where local variation looks less suspicious. My point is simply that other global egalitarian views are not driven by the logic of their own position to condemn such local variation as giving rise to injustice, but that the global luck egalitarian does seem to be - despite Fabre's assertions that the two values are partially compatible.
54. It might be that luck egalitarians could endorse local autonomy in an instrumental fashion, if they that believed local autonomy was for some reason most likely to deliver on their favoured principles in the long run. Perhaps delegating authority to the local level could bring epistemological benefits valuable to the implementation of luck egalitarian principles (if local authorities proved more able to make fine-tuned attributions of responsibility than global agencies). Luck equality would then be the fundamental principle, but we could derive a commitment to local autonomy at the level of principles of regulation. See Robert Goodin, 'Political ideals and political practice', British Journal of Political Science, 25 (1995), 37-56.
55. Caney, Justice Beyond Borders, pp. 177-80.
56. See, for instance, Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations; Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights.
57. Miller, National Responsibility, p. 53.