Global justice and practice-dependence: Conventionalism, institutionalism, functionalism

Journal of Political Philosophy

Volumn 19, Issue 4, 2011, Pages 399-418

  Valentini, Laura ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 80054713281     PISSN: 09638016     EISSN: 14679760     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2010.00373.x     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. For cosmopolitanism see, e.g., Charles R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, rev. edn (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
2. Thomas W. Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).
3. For social liberalism see, e.g.: John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
4. Thomas Nagel, 'The problem of global justice', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 33 (2005, 113-47.
5. David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) and National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
6. Andrea Sangiovanni, 'Justice and the priority of politics to morality', Journal of Political Philosophy, 16 (2008), 137-64.
7. Aaron James, 'Constructing justice for existing practice: Rawls and the status quo', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 33 (2005, 281-316.
8. Andrea Sangiovanni, 'Global justice, reciprocity, and the state', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 35 (2007), 3-39.
9. Samuel Freeman, 'The law of peoples, social cooperation, human rights, and distributive justice', Social Philosophy and Policy, 23 (200629-68.
10. Saladin Meckled-Garcia'On the very idea of cosmopolitan justice: constructivism and international agency', Journal of Political Philosophy, 16, 2008, 245-71.
11. Sangiovanni, 'Justice and the priority of politics to morality'.
12. Nagel, 'The Problem of global justice'. Rawls, The Law of Peoples. Miller, On Nationality.
13. Interestingly, in The Law of Peoples, p. 42 n. 52, Rawls assumes that fair background conditions obtain in the international realm. In so saying, Rawls paradoxically designs his theory of international justice already presupposing that international distributive justice has been realised. On this see Thomas W. Pogge, 'The incoherence between Rawls's theories of justice', Fordham Law Review, 72 (2004, 1739-59.
14. I offer a more detailed account of the distinction between justice and assistance in 'Justice and assistance: three approaches and a fourth one'CSSJ Working Paper Series, January, 2009.
15. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) and Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
16. Notice that assistance grounds genuine duties, and it is not just a matter of supererogation. See Allen Buchanan, 'Justice and charity', Ethics, 97 (1987, 558-75.
17. I owe this qualification to Thomas Pogge, 'Severe poverty as a violation of negative duties', Ethics and International Affairs, 19 (at p. 76. This qualification is very important. As a reviewer has pointed out to me, it would indeed be implausible to claim that justice always takes priority over assistance. For instance, it seems absurd to say that the duty to return someone's pencil is more stringent than the duty to help the starving, 2005, 55-83.
18. Brian Barry, 'Humanity and justice in global perspective', in Brian Barry, Liberty and Justice: Essays in Political Oxford: Clarendon Press Theory, 2, 1991, 182-210.
19. Sylvie Loriaux, 'Beneficence and distributive justice in a globalising world', Global Society, 20, 2006, 251-65.
20. On the distinction between absolute and relative deprivation in the context of the debate on global justice see Michael Blake, 'Distributive justice, state coercion, and autonomy', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 30, 2001, 257-96.
21. Someone might suggest that while social liberals do indeed deny global egalitarianism, they do not consider sufficientarian duties to help the needy a matter of assistance, but a stringent matter of justice. This is the view defended by Sangiovanni in 'Global justice, reciprocity, and the state', but it is unclear whether theorists like Rawls, Miller (in On Nationality), Nagel, and Meckled-Garcia also endorse it. Since they label their international duties 'duties of assistance' and 'humanitarian duties' it would seem not. (Note that Miller's more recent views on this matter are particularly complex. For discussion see Laura Valentini, 'Social liberal or cosmopolitan?'Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric, Moreover, social liberals typically prioritise the needs of fellow-citizens over those of distant strangers. This means that, holding the content of the duties constant, social liberals regard duties to help compatriots as more stringent than duties to help foreigners. Finally, even if we assumed that, for social liberals, domestic and international distributive duties have the same (justice-based) stringency, the former would still be egalitarian and the latter sufficientarian. This disanalogy alone is sufficient to trigger cosmopolitan concerns about arbitrary discrimination between compatriots and foreigners.
22. Pogge, Realizing Rawls.
23. Simon Caney, Justice beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
24. Kok-Chor Tan, Justice without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Patriotism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
25. Charles R. Beitz, 'Cosmopolitan ideals and national sentiment', Journal of Philosophy, 80, 1983, 591-600.
26. Joshua Cohen and Charles Sabel, 'Extra rempublicam nulla justitia', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 34, 2006, 147-75.
27. A.J. Julius, 'Nagel's Atlas', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 342006176-92.
28. Charles Beitz's distinction between 'weak' and 'strong' cosmopolitanism in Political Theory and International Relations, pp. 198-9. For the distinction between concept and conception see Rawls, A Theory of Justice 5.
29. Sangiovanni, 'Justice and the priority of politics to morality138.
30. Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), ch. 2. For an overview of Dworkin's theory of interpretation see Stephen Guest, Ronald Dworkin, 2nd edn (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press1997.
31. Dworkin, Law's Empire, 52.
32. Nigel Simmonds, Central Issues in Jurisprudence (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 2002, 195.
33. Dworkin, Law's Empire66.
34. In Law's Empire Dworkin uses the practice of 'courtesy' as an example.46-9.
35. James, 'Constructing justice for existing practice', pp. 298 ff. See also: Freeman 'The law of peoples, social cooperation, human rights, and distributive justice, 41.
36. Sangiovanni, 'Global justice, reciprocity and the state', and 'Justice and the priority of politics to morality'; and Meckled-Garcia, 'On the very idea of cosmopolitan justice'. I do not mean to suggest that this is the correct interpretation of Rawls, but only that it is a plausible and increasingly popular one.
37. For this interpretation of Rawls see James, 'Constructing justice for existing practice, 300.
38. John Rawls, Political Liberalism New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
39. Note that, in the case of legal interpretation, Dworkin rejects the charge of indeterminacy and defends the so-called 'one right answer' thesis. See Law's Empire. For an overview of the debate on interpretation in legal reasoning see Julie Dickson, 'Interpretation and coherence in legal reasoning', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008.
40. For criticisms of the interpretive methodology, particularly with reference to its use by Michael Walzer, see Joshua Cohen, 'Review of Spheres of Justice', Journal of Philosophy, 83 (1986), 457-68.
41. Normal Daniels, 'Review of Spheres of Justice', Philosophical Review, 94, 1985, 42-8.
42. On the relevance of non-voluntary practices to judgements of justice see John Rawls, 'Justice as reciprocity', John Rawls: Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 190. See also 'Justice as Fairness', Philosophical Review, 67, 1958, 164-94.
43. Dworkin makes these remarks in the context of a famous dispute with Michael Walzer. Ronald Dworkin, 'What justice isn't', in Dworkin, A Matter of Principle (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989, 214-20.
44. Sangiovanni, 'Justice and the priority of politics to morality, 146.
45. Another, less important (and less clear), difference pointed out by Sangiovanni, is that while for conventionalists moral principles vary depending on the particular societal culture underpinning the practices they are meant to govern (on the assumption that this is homogenous enough to deliver a unique interpretive outcome), for institutionalists the content and scope of principles of justice is a function of the particular institutional form they are meant to regulate. In other words, instead of resting on culturally-specific instantiations of the practice of society (e.g., hierarchical societies, democratic societies, theocratic societies, etc.) institutionalist principles are a function of the particular type of institution to which they apply (e.g., societies, families, international organisations). This allows institutionalists to place institutions which are not underpinned by a particular societal culture-e.g., the WTO-under justice-based assessment. However, institutionalists are also ready to acknowledge that 'the form and structure of institutions often depend on underlying cultural beliefs and practices'. Sangiovanni, 'Justice and the priority of politics to morality', p. 146. Since, as Sangiovanni himself acknowledges, this second difference between conventionalism and institutionalism is far from sharp, and given that nothing hinges on it for the purposes of my argument, I shall not discuss it further in the article.
46. Sangiovanni, 'Justice and the priority of politics to morality147.
47. Rawls, The Law of Peoples (esp. 'The idea of public reason revisited') and Gerald F. Gaus, 'The demands of impartiality and the evolution of morality', Partiality and Impartiality, ed. Brian Feltham and John Cottingham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
48. It is worth noting that Sangiovanni's own version of institutionalism is slightly different from Rawls's (see 'Justice and the priority of politics to morality' n. 30) and his take on international justice more nuanced than Rawls's (see 'Global justice, reciprocity, and the state').150.
49. Sangiovanni, 'Justice and the priority of politics to morality, 151.
50. Sangiovanni, 'Global justice, reciprocity, and the state'.
51. Sangiovanni, 'Justice and the priority of politics to morality151.
52. Aaron James, 'Constructing justice for existing practice, considers the objection that Rawls's methodology unfairly excludes non-participants from the scope of justice, and replies that interpretive reasoning need not exhaust (Rawls's) reasoning about justice: other aspects of it may allow us to take 'outsiders' into consideration. This answer, however, seems to confirm, rather than deny, that interpretive reasoning is indeed susceptible to the charge of unfair exclusion.308-16.
53. Sangiovanni, 'Justice and the priority of politics to morality, 152.
54. This is not to say that a further developed institutionalist view may not be able to offer a general concept of justice.
55. Recall my earlier remarks about non-voluntariness. These kinds of rules are often referred to using the Rawlsian term 'basic structure'. I agree with Miriam Ronzoni, however, that sufficiently intense patterns of interaction, with foreseeable effects on people's opportunities and well-being, can trigger concerns of distributive justice even if they are not yet regulated by basic structural rules. See Miriam Ronzoni, 'The global order: a case of background injustice? A practice-dependent account', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 37 (2009), 229-56. For an analytical account of different ways in which the idea of a basic structure might be characterised in relation to questions of global justice see Arash Abizadeh, 'Cooperation, pervasive impact, and coercion: on the scope (not site) of distributive justice', Philosophy & Public Affairs, 35, 2007, 318-58.
56. Cohen and Sabel, 'Extra rempublicam nulla justitia, 165.
57. Iris Marion Young, 'Responsibility and global labor justice', Journal of Political Philosophy, 12, 2004, 365-88.
58. Onora O'Neill, Faces of Hunger (London: Allen and Unwin, 1985), and Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical Reasoning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
59. Thomas W. Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms (Cambridge: Polity Press). In 'Global justice, reciprocity, and the state', p. 4, n. 5, Sangiovanni says that his view is meant to be compatible with Pogge's thesis that 'our joint imposition of the current global order makes us negatively responsible for massive human rights violations'. This, says Sangiovanni, is because Pogge does not advocate global equality, but only human rights fulfilment. Even though Pogge, like Sangiovanni, in his later work is not a global egalitarian, from a structural and methodological viewpoint his views seem to me considerably different from Sangiovanni's. In particular, Pogge's claims about the global order, and the principles of justice which should apply to it, are not defended on the basis of the interpretive approach Sangiovanni advocates, but on the basis of observations regarding empirical facts about international/global politics, 2002.
60. This claim differs from Arash Abizadeh's observation that fair cooperation cannot be an existence condition of justice because otherwise justice would (paradoxically) only apply to relations that are already fair ('Cooperation, pervasive impact, and coercion', Practice-dependent social liberals do in fact acknowledge that justice applies to practices in which fairness has not yet been achieved (e.g., to unjust societies), 330-1.
61. Caney, Justice beyond Borders, Tan, Justice without Borders, and Beitz, 'Cosmopolitan ideals and national sentiment'.
62. The powerful argument in Ronzoni, 'The Global Order'.
63. Cohen and Sabel, 'Extra rempublicam nulla justitia', and Beitz's account of weak cosmopolitanism in Political Theory and International Relations, 198-9.