Global Justice: What is Necessary to Legitimate Coercion

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 563-589
Author(s):  
N. Hassoun
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Recent Criticism ◽  
Coercion Theory

There is little agreement about what grounds obligations of distributive justice. This paper defends cosmopolitan coercion theory against recent criticism that coercive rule is not even sufficient to generate obligations of distributive justice. On one of the most sustained arguments against the idea that coercion is sufficient to generate obligations of distributive justice, critics object that coercion, and other nonvoluntary relationships, cannot fix the scope, or content, of these obligations. At best, critics argue, nonvoluntary relationships can ground obligations of charity or humanity. This paper argues that this Scope/Content Critique fails, in part, because it does not recognize the motivation for coercion theories. Moreover, despite assertions to the contrary, the Scope/Content Critique assumes coercion must suffice to ground obligations of distributive justice. Nonvoluntarists can hold there are many things, in addition to nonvoluntary relations, that can ground them.

The Grounds of Justice

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Risse
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Systematic Theory ◽  
Comprehensive View ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Pluralist Approach

This book explores the question of what it is for a distribution to be just globally and proposes a new systematic theory of global justice that it calls pluralist internationalism. Up to now, philosophers have tended to respond to the problem of global justice in one of two ways: that principles of justice either apply only within states or else apply to all human beings. The book defends a view “between” these competing claims, one that improves on both, and introduces a pluralist approach to what it terms the grounds of justice—which offers a comprehensive view of obligations of distributive justice. It also considers two problems that globalization has raised for political philosophy: the problem of justifying the state to outsiders and the problem of justifying the global order to all.

Justice in a Complex World: An Introduction1

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulo Barcelos
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Complex World ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
The Web ◽  
National Borders

This introductory chapter provides an overview of global justice. Theorising about global justice starts by questioning the symbolic role classically attributed to national borders as not only physical and administrative circumscriptions but also frontiers demanding the contours of the groups of people that are included and excluded from a scheme of distributive justice, that is, from a system of rules and institutions designed to regulate the distribution of the benefits and burdens originated from social cooperation between the individuals that compose a given community's basic structure. Defenders of global liberal conceptions of justice employ two types of argument to justify the inclusion of all persons worldwide within the web of normative ties between persons that create duties of moral assistance.

Justice Across Borders

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Blake
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
Global Distributive Justice ◽  
Global Arena ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines how philosophical concepts of distributive justice ought to be applied at the global level. There has been a great deal of philosophical interest in this topic in recent years, and the field has quickly grown to include some sophisticated analyses of how we might think about global distributive justice. This chapter examines this field, and argues that it must become more sophisticated still in order to adequately deal with the complexities of the global arena. In particular, the article argues that we have reason to examine more precisely the nature of global institutions—what powers they actually have, and what it is that they might plausibly hope to become—as a key focus of our philosophical analysis. The relationship between political and distributive justice, in particular, ought to be made a particular focus in our efforts to understand the nature of global justice.

scholarly journals THE LIMITS OF BACKGROUND JUSTICE

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 352-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Porter Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Principles Of Justice

AbstractThe argument from background justice is that conformity to Lockean principles of justice in agreements and transactions does not preclude the development of inequalities that undermine the freedom and fairness of those very transactions, and that, therefore, special principles are needed to regulate society's “basic structure.” Rawls offers this argument as his “first kind of reason” for taking the basic structure to be the primary subject of justice. Here I explore the background justice argument and its implications for questions about the scope of distributive justice. As it turns out, the background justice argument can offer no independent support for conclusions about the scope of distributive justice. For the special principles that it justifies inherit their scope from conclusions that must be established or assumed in advance. These prior conclusions are precisely what is at issue in debates about global justice.

scholarly journals A Boundedly Rational Analysis of Global Distributive Justice

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 99-123
Author(s):  
Alexandru Volacu ◽  
Iris-Patricia Golopenta
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Bounded Rationality ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Identification Problem ◽  
Rational Analysis ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Global Distributive Justice ◽  
Complete Failure ◽  
Justice Theories ◽  
National Governments

In the present paper we analyze two prominent global distributive justice theories, i.e. Pogge’s Global Resource Dividend theory (1994) and Dorsey’s maxificing welfarism (2005) under an assumption of bounded rationality. We consider that the agencies responsible for distributing resources are informationally constrained in regard to the assessment of economic positions in society and cognitively constrained in regard to the decision making process within the agency. We argue that under these conditions the distributive patterns prescribed by both theories can be severely distorted. Further, in Dorsey’s case bounded rationality can even lead to a complete failure of the theory, since not only are the resulting distributions sub-optimal if we introduce the possibility for a single mistake in the identification process, but they can also be completely redundant by prescribing distributions which are not capable of lifting a single citizen to the minimum level required for the fulfillment of basic needs. We further show that for both theories the identification problem becomes more severe and that the agencies are more susceptible to make mistakes in circumstances of extreme poverty, i.e. the circumstances primarily targeted by the theories. Aside from this main result, we also obtain three secondary results: 1. we extend the ongoing debates in political philosophy between ideal and non-ideal theories and in particular between fact-insensitivity and fact-sensitivity, 2. we provide a preliminary defense of a proportional distributive principle for global justice and 3. we provide a new starting point for the construction of arguments regarding the nature of the agency (e.g. global government, national governments, UN institutions, international NGOs) entitled to distribute resources in global justice theories.

scholarly journals Justice and Public Health

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-46
Author(s):  
Govind Persad
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Health It ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Individual Choices

This chapter discusses how justice applies to public health. It begins by outlining three different metrics employed in discussions of justice: resources, capabilities, and welfare. It then discusses different accounts of justice in distribution, reviewing utilitarianism, egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism, as well as desert-based theories, and applies these distributive approaches to public health examples. Next, it examines the interplay between distributive justice and individual rights, such as religious rights, property rights, and rights against discrimination, by discussing examples such as mandatory treatment and screening. The chapter also examines the nexus between public health and debates concerning whose interests matter to justice (the “scope of justice”), including global justice, intergenerational justice, and environmental justice, as well as debates concerning whether justice applies to individual choices or only to institutional structures (the “site of justice”). The chapter closes with a discussion of strategies, including deliberative and aggregative democracy, for adjudicating disagreements about justice.

Global Justice and the Mission of the European Union

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Van Parijs
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Equal Distribution ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
Equal Respect ◽  
To Come ◽  
Equal Concern

This concluding chapter argues that any conception of justice relevant today must combine two elements, both strongly rooted in European traditions, but neither of them exclusive to them: equal respect for the diversity of conceptions of the good life that characterises pluralist societies and equal concern for the interests of all members, present and yet to come, of the society concerned. This concern, moreover, must be responsibility-sensitive — distributive justice is not a matter of outcomes but of opportunities — and it must be efficiency-sensitive, a fair distribution need not be a strictly equal distribution, but rather one that sustainably maximises the condition of the worst off. Justice, in brief, means real freedom for all, the greatest real freedom for those with least of it. Therefore, justice means global justice.

Neoliberalism versus distributional autonomy: the skipped step in rawls’s the law of peoples

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-181
Author(s):  
William A. Edmundson ◽  
Matthew R. Schrepfer
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Minimum Degree ◽  
International Justice ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Law Of Peoples ◽  
Global Distributive Justice ◽  
The Law

AbstractDebates about global distributive justice focus on the gulf between the wealthy North and the impoverished South, rather than on issues arising between liberal democracies. A review of John Rawls’s approach to international justice discloses a step Rawls skipped in his extension of his original-position procedure. The skipped step is where a need for the distributional autonomy of sovereign liberal states reveals itself. Neoliberalism denies the possibility and the desirability of distributional autonomy. A complete Rawlsian account of global justice shows the necessity and possibility of a charter between liberal states, assuring each a proper minimum degree of distributional autonomy

Global Distributive Justice: An Egalitarian Perspective

2005 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 139-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cécile Fabre
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Basic Needs ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Thomas Pogge ◽  
Global Distributive Justice ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
National Boundaries

A good deal of political theory over the last fifteen years or so has been shaped by the realization that one cannot, and ought not, consider the distribution of resources within a country in isolation from the distribution of resources between countries. Thus, thinkers such as Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge advocate extensive global distributive policies; others, such as Charles Jones and David Miller, explicitly reject the view that egalitarian principles of justice should apply globally and claim that national communities have only duties to help other countries be viable economically and meet the basic needs of their members. In the global justice debate, pretty much all parties acknowledge that we have obligations of distributive justice to for-eigners. The question is how strong those obligations are, and in particular whether national boundaries can make any difference to the distribution of resources between members of different countries.

scholarly journals Global Justice and Stakeholding

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Thom Brooks ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Stakeholder Theory ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Negative Duties

The orthodox position in global justice is to consider questions about international distributive justice from a perspective of what duties, if any, affluent states have towards people in severe poverty. The debate has focused on whether positive or negative duties are most relevant and how they should be applied. This article challenges this orthodoxy by defending stakeholder theory as a promising new approach overcoming limitations in current debates through promotion of the virtue of stakeholders having a say where they have a stake.

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