Ensamblaje

The present chapter focuses on contemporary cosmopolitan critiques of the state and on their defence of global egalitarianism.¹ It exposes their flaws in arguing for global egalitarian principles and it ascribes such flaws to the cosmopolitan disregard of the normative relevance of particular political communities. It also introduces an alternative (Kantian-inspired) view of the role of political communities, which, far from weakening the case in favour of global egalitarian justice, lends support to it.²

The chapter targets in particular cosmopolitan arguments based on the claim that political communities are arbitrary for the scope of global justice. The argument from arbitrariness is usually invoked both with regard to the justification of principles of global justice (i.e. what kind of shares are global parties rightly entitled to) and with regard to the issue of agency (i.e. what motivates them to support institutions realizing cosmopolitan principles). This chapter tries to illustrate where cosmopolitans go wrong with regard to both issues and to explain why. It also emphasizes that it is unnecessary to criticize the state in order to prove the validity of cosmopolitan distributive principles or to solve the problem of agency in the global sphere. A strong case in favour of global equality could be made even if one conceded the normative relevance of political membership.

Let me start with a few methodological preliminaries. The focus of this chapter is rather narrow. Its critique targets only egalitarian forms of cosmopolitanism, i.e.

1 The terms “global egalitarianism”, “global distributive justice” and “global principles of distributive

“equality” are here considered synonymous.

2 Such an alternative is developed in further detail in the third part of this work.

accounts trying to obtain global principles of distributive equality by applying a revised contractarian method of justification to the global sphere.³ Such accounts usually represent a “strong” form of cosmopolitanism, advocating demanding principles of global distributive equality rather than the mere satisfaction of basic needs or the recognition of general moral obligations to everyone.⁴

This chapter does not extend its critique to strategies defending weaker forms of cosmopolitanism such as duty-based, right-based, or consequentialist, to mention but the most prominent theories.⁵ Such weaker perspectives provide a less demanding but

3 The defences of global distributive justice upon which I focus in the following pages are typically considered extensions of Rawls’s domestic theory of justice to the global sphere. See Arash Abizadeh,

“Cooperation, Pervasive Impact, and Coercion: On the Scope (Not Site) of Distributive Justice,”

Philosophy & Public Affairs 35, no. 4 (2007), Brian Barry, “International Society from a Cosmopolitan Perspective,” in International Society: Diverse Ethical Perspectives, ed. David Mapel; Terry Nardin (1998), Brian Barry, The Liberal Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973) 128-32, Charles Beitz, “Cosmopolitan Ideals and National Sentiments,” Journal of philosophy 80, no. 10 (1983): 591-600, Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton Princeton University Press, 1999) 127-83 and 98-216, Darrel Moellendorf, Cosmopolitan Justice (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2002) 6-67, Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca Cornell University Press, 1989) 211-80, Thomas W. Pogge, “An Egalitarian Law of Peoples,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 23, no. 3 (1994), David A. J.

Richards, “International Distributive Justice,” in Ethics, Economics, and the Law, Nomos Xxiv, ed. J.

Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York:: New York University Press, 1982), 275-79.

Despite his emphasis on some limits of the argument, Simon Caney is also broadly sympathetic to this approach. See Simon Caney, “International Distributive Justice,” Political Studies 49 (2001), Simon Caney, Justice Beyond Borders - a Global Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 107-15, Simon Caney, “Justice, Borders and the Cosmopolitan Ideal: A Reply to Two Critics,” Journal of Global Ethics 3 (2007). Some of the claims to which I refer in the following pages, in particular those regarding the distribution of natural resources, are also endorsed by Brian Barry, “Humanity and Justice in Global Perspective,” in Contemporary Political Theory. An Anthology, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), Tim Hayward, “Global Justice and the Distribution of Natural Resources,” Political Studies 54, no. 2 (2006). For one cosmopolitan-egalitarian perspective which does not share the premise of the arbitrariness of political membership see Tan, Justice without Borders : Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Patriotism.

4 For the difference between “strong” and “weak” cosmopolitanism see Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations 198-99, David Miller, “The Limits of Cosmopolitan Justice,” in In International Society: Diverse Ethical Perspectives, ed. David Mapel; Terry Nardin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 166. Along similar lines goes the distinction drawn by Simon Caney between “mild” and

“radical” cosmopolitanism and that discussed by Samuel Scheffler between “moderate” and “extreme”

cosmopolitanism. See Caney, “International Distributive Justice,” 974-77. and Scheffler Samuel Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 114-16.

5 For a duty-based approach, see Onora O'Neill, “Agents of Justice,” Metaphilosophy 32, no. 1/2 (2001), Onora O'Neill, “The Dark Side of Human Rights,” International Affairs 81, no. 427-39 (2005), Onora O’Neill, Bounds of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).. Some prominent consequentialist strategies may be found in Garret Cullity, “International Aid and the Scope of Kindness,” Ethics 105, no. 1 (1994), Garrett Cullity, The Moral Demands of Affluence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), Robert E. Goodin, Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of Our Social Responsibilities (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985), Robert E. Goodin, “What Is So Special About Our Fellow Country-Men?,” Ethics 98, no. 4 (1988), Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice (Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 2006), Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), Amartya Sen, “Justice Across Borders,” in Global Justice and

often also rougher account of the exact distributive form cosmopolitan claims take when applied to existing political institutions.⁶ One objection they have attracted is that it is difficult to see who would not ascribe to the idea that there are duties owed to all human beings, regardless of their race, gender or citizenship, and that such duties may comprise the satisfaction of minimal subsistence claims worldwide. As one prominent critic of cosmopolitanism has put it, “my own position is also cosmopolitan by this criterion, since I have explicitly defended a universal obligation of justice to respect the basic rights of people everywhere”.⁷ This clarifies why my critique will be limited to strong cosmopolitan accounts: if we can reconcile statism and cosmopolitanism even when more demanding obligations of distributive justice are at stake, extending the argument to weaker forms of cosmopolitanism should be straightforward.

Further, it is also important to emphasize that in defending the role of political communities against global egalitarians using the contractarian device, this chapter does not attempt to restate familiar communitarian or particularist objections to contractarianism as such. It also does not emphasize the non-arbitrary standing of political communities in order to undermine the validity of cosmopolitan principles of distributive justice. Its main claim is more restricted and more constructive. The chapter does not deny the general possibility of using the social contract device to justify global distributive principles; it only argues against present cosmopolitan defences of global egalitarianism that consider political communities arbitrary for that purpose.⁸ It tries to Transnational Politics, ed. Pablo De Greiff and Ciaran Cronin (Cambridge (MA): Mit Press, 2002), Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 1, no. 3 (1972), Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization (New Haven Yale University Press, 2002). For a rights-based perspective, see Charles Beitz, “Human Rights as Common Concern,” American Political Science Review 95 (2001), Charles Jones, Global Justice : Defending Cosmopolitanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). One of Thomas Pogge’s seminal works on global justice, World Poverty and Human Rights, defends global justice from both a contractarian and a rights-based perspective. Pogge’s apparently shifting position is due to the attempt to develop what he calls an

“ecumenical” case in favour of global justice, which appeals to defenders of different strategies of justification. See the clarification in Thomas Pogge, “Real World Justice,” The Journal of Ethics 9 (2005): 36-37. In this chapter I am only concerned with Pogge’s arguments for distributive equality.

6 See for the critique Charles Beitz, “Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice,” The Journal of Ethics, no. 9 (2005): 17-18, Tan, Justice without Borders : Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Patriotism 41-55.

Some of these strategies may nevertheless be fruitfully employed to advocate more demanding global egalitarian principles. I return to this issue in chapter IV.

7 See David Miller, “Caney’s ‘International Distributive Justice’: A Response,” Political Studies 50 (2002): 975.

8 This is also the main difference between my defence of political membership and that of Rawls in The Law of Peoples. Indeed the original position advocated by Rawls in this latter work starts with

show that the cosmopolitan normative critique of political communities is both flawed and unnecessary. While failing to establish global distributive principles, a contractarian-styled cosmopolitan critique of political membership simply weakens the method’s potential of justification.

In order to illustrate these points I examine a number of contractarian assumptions regarding both the choice situation and the background conditions required to develop principles of distributive justice. More particularly, I focus on some features of the original position concerning: i) the circumstances of justice; ii) the nature of the parties; iii) the use and function of the veil of ignorance. In the following three sections, I endorse the cosmopolitan version of the original position and try to illustrate some of its flaws in arguing for global distributive justice. Exposing some internal inconsistencies of this particular way of applying the contractarian model will serve to refute the argument that political communities are arbitrary for the scope of justice and to illustrate some weaknesses in existent defences of global egalitarianism.