If Nagel is right that global institutions authorized to show equal concern and enforce egalitarian justice can only come about voluntarily, a look at the present world and its recent history shows that there are reasons for pessimism.
Existing international institutions are dominated by the interests of their powerful members; international agreements like the Kyoto Protocol, that are designed to constrain leading economies, have been opposed by these states; rich countries only spend a negligible part of their resources on development aid; the IMF recently declared that the UN Millennium Goals will almost certainly not be reached.1 6 4 The European Union (that is thought to be based on a consensus regarding certain core values) presents one of the few cases where some trans-national distributive responsibilities have been accepted – and these are much debated compromises. Is Nagel therefore correct to think that unjust and illegitimate institutions serving the interests of the powerful are “the necessary precursors [of realizing some version of global justice] because they create the centralized power that can then be contested, and perhaps turned into other directions without being destroyed?”1 6 5
When we take into account how international institutions are dominated by the interests of powerful states and how much harm they have brought upon
1 64 See http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/surv ey /so/2010/RES042910A.htm (retriev ed
from the World Wide Web on August 15th, 2011.
1 65 Thomas Nagel, “The Problem of Global Justice”, Philosophy & Public Affairs 33(2) (2005):
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poor societies,1 6 6 this seems a tragic conclusion. It would mean we could not directly aim at creating a more just world. Instead, we would have to accept that many people have to die or suffer for the self-interested motives of the powerful before we can hope to have the means to make the poor better off as a matter of justice. Since for Nagel egalitarian distributive justice is not an inherent moral value but the price to pay for the exercise of common coercive authority, to him most detrimental global inequality in this world is of moral (humanitarian) concern but not a matter of enforceable distributive (egalitarian) justice.1 6 7 This means that, if we or the governments of our rich societies fail to help the poor, we are not as virtuous as we should be. However, we would not act unjustly and our governments would not lose in legitimacy for their refusal to send gifts of charity to those who are badly off.
As we discussed, it is possible for us to interpret Nagel’s argument against global justice in more charitable way. Nagel uses the term justice in an idiosyncratic way to refer only to egalitarian justice. Thus, on a more charitable view of Nagel, his restriction of duties of distributive justice to associations that are ruled by one authority can be read as merely limiting the concern for
equality to these associative contexts. This would leave open the possibility that Nagel endorses a sufficiency principle of global distributive justice and only rejects the idea of global egalitarian justice. It would then be the case that
1 66 For a description of such harm see Allen Buchanan, O. Robert Keohane, “The Legitimacy of
Global Gov ernance Institutions” in Allen Buchanan, Human Rights, Legitimacy, and the Use of Force (Oxford: Oxford Univ ersity Press, 2010): pp. 105 -133, pp. 119, 120.
1 67 Nagel believ es that “whatev er v iew one takes of the applicability or inapplicability of
standards of justice to such a situation [of global inequality ], it is clearly a disaster from a more broadly humanitarian point of v iew. […] Some form of humane assistance from the well-off to those in extremis is clearly called for quite apart from any demands of justice, if we are not simply ethical egoists” (Thomas Nagel, “The Problem of Global Justice”, p. 118).
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Nagel’s argument requires us to ensure that everyone, in Harry Frankfurt’s words, “have enough,”1 6 8 whatever that means in concreto.1 6 9
However, the charitable view would merely make Nagel’s rejection of global justice somewhat less tragic. The demand of guaranteeing a distribution of resources sufficient for living a decent life still leaves much normative space for allowing huge inequalities among people that are far from being mutually advantageous. These disparities can have momentous consequences for people’s well-being and life-chances without keeping people from living decent, but not very rich, lives. If the charitable interpretation of Nagel’s argument is sound,1 7 0 the question about the possibility of a plausible conception of global justice might lose some of its normative urgency. But, given the enormous differences in levels of affluence and life-chances in our world this question would not lose its moral importance. Nagel admits that “it may be impossible to fulfill even our minimal moral duties to others without the help of institutions of some kind short of sovereignty.”1 7 1 Still he is clear that, even if creating such emergency - relief institutions would be a stringent duty (a thought he does not explicitly endorse), “there remains a clear line, [on the actual practice view], between a call for such institutions and a call for the institutions of global socioeconomic justice.”1 7 2 Detrimental inequalities, this is Nagel’s conclusion, are not and cannot (except voluntarily) become subject to considerations of global distributive (egalitarian) justice.
1 68 Harry Frankfurt, “Equality as a Moral Ideal”, Ethics 98(1) (1987 ): pp. 21 -43, p. 21. 1 69 For a discussion of the shortcomings Frankfurt’s sufficientarian approach suffers from see
Casal, Paula, “Why Sufficiency is Not Enough”, Ethics 117(2) (2007): pp. 296-326 and Chapter 5, Section 2 of this thesis.
1 7 0 We might also think the charitable interpretation of his v iew is quite likely not the one Nagel
has in mind. After all, Nagel holds that “the gruesome facts of inequality in the world economy [are] a disaster from a more broadly humanitarian point of v iew,” (Thomas Nagel, “The Problem of Global Justice”, p. 118) and do not establish enforceable sufficientarian distributiv e obligations.
1 7 1 Thomas Nagel, ibid., p. 131. 1 7 2 Thomas Nagel, ibid., p. 132.
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However, even if we accept Nagel’s three normative premises (as well as his empirical claim that states currently are the only entities that exhibit the features necessary for the application of egalitarian distributive justice), it would be premature for us to end the argument about global distributive justice at this point. This is because, as we will see shortly, Nagel’s argument contains an important gap. This weak spot becomes apparent when we look closely at Nagel’s discussion of the state as a political authority that is crucial for the application of distributive equality.
Nagel’s central argument against the idea of global egalitarian justice is that there is a fundamental link between the justifiability of political authorities (that is to say: their legitimacy) and equal concern or egalitarian justice and democracy. For him, this connection runs both ways. On the one hand, equal treatment and concern (that ideally includes giving the subjects an equal say in the collective decision-making process) is the price authorities have to pay to be morally entitled to create duties and wield power to enforce them.1 7 3 On the other hand, though, the implication of this condition is that, where a coercive political authority does not or cannot display equal concern for its subjects, it cannot count as morally justified.
However, what Nagel is virtually silent about is the explanation for why we vest a political entity with authority in the first place, and under what circumstances such authority is not only morally justified but required. We can recall that Nagel attributes three primary functions to the state. The latter
1 7 3 To substantiate this claim Nagel quotes Ronald Dworkin who asserts that “a political
community that exercises dominion over its own citizens, and demands from them allegiance and obedience to its laws, must take up an impartial, objective attitude toward them all, and each of its citizens must v ote, and its officials must enact laws and form gov ernmen tal policies, with that responsibility in mind. Equal concern […] is the special and indispensable v irtue of sov ereigns,” (Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue. The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harv ard Univ ersity Press, 2000), p. 6) see Thomas Nagel, “The Problem of Global Justice”, pp. 120, 121.
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functions as: (a) the administrator of justice in a non-voluntary context, (b) the executor of the will of its subjects acting in their name, and (c) as the provider of collective goods that the subjects cannot easily forgo. At one point Nagel does describe the benefits he has in mind more concretely.1 7 4 However, none of these functions that authorities like states perform explain per se why a state needs to treat all its citizens with equal concern to be morally acceptable.1 7 5
Thus, what we require to evaluate Nagel’s argument about the particular role of coercive authority that acts in the name of its subjects is an understanding of the concepts of political legitimacy, authority, and obligation. These three concepts are interrelated. However, the philosophical debate about
how they are related is as old as the awareness of philosophers that these ideas are interconnected. In fact, the explanation of how political authorities can legitimately obligate their subjects is arguably as central as any question in political philosophy. The validity of Nagel’s rejection of the idea of global distributive justice therefore depends crucially on his view about what renders political authorities legitimate. If it can be shown that equal concern is not a necessary condition of legitimate political authority then this would give us some normative ‘leeway’ to theorize about global justice in the following ways.
On the one hand, equal concern and egalitarian justice would become normatively less important. Since authorities can be legitimate for reasons other than displaying equal concern, we could begin to think whether coercive (but non-egalitarian) authoritative institutions are morally possible (or even
1 7 4 See Thomas Nagel, “The Problem of Global Justice”, p. 127 . Here Nagel names “a right to
democracy , equal citizenship, nondiscrimination, equality of opportunity , and the amelioration through public policy of unfairness in the distribution of social and ec onomic goods.”
1 7 5 See, for instance, Dworkin’s résumé of Nozick’s critique of the argument from fair play in
Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harv ard Univ ersity Press, 1986), pp. 193 - 195.
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necessary) in the global sphere. Maybe considerations of justice demand of us to create them in order to promote justice globally. On the other hand, though, egalitarian justice might become normatively more significant. After all, equal concern would no longer be inseparable for existing coercive authority (as part of the latter’s justifiability). However, if equal concern would not be a necessary condition of morally justifiable political authority, we would first of all have to find another explanation of the moral relevance of egalitarian justice. However, on the basis of a new justification the significance of equal treatment might not necessarily be confined to the domestic rather international political arena.