Nationalism and Global Justice

David Miller and His Critics

Helder De Schutter, Ronald Tinnevelt, Helder De Schutter, Ronald Tinnevelt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317996989
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Previously published as a special issue of the Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy, this collection brings together some of the most influential political contemporary philosophers to present a critical review of David Miller's co-national priority thesis and give a state-of-the-art overview of the prevailing positions on nationalism and global justice within political philosophy today.

The redistribution schemes of our democratic societies drastically prioritize the needs of co-nationals above those of other human beings. Is this common practice legitimate or is it a form of collective egoism? Answering this question brings us to the heart of two of the most significant debates in contemporary political philosophy: those on nationalism and global justice. Within contemporary political philosophy, Miller is one of the few political theorists who occupies a prominent place in both debates. His central argument is that national boundaries cannot be upheld at the cost of the basic rights of others, but that they do have ethical significance and therefore entitle us to prioritize the preferences of our co-nationals.

This volume will be of interest to students and scholars studying philosophy, politics, international relations and law.

David Miller’s theory of global justice. A brief overview

Helder De Schutter^a and Ronald Tinnevelt^b

^aInstitute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; ^bFaculty of Law, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Introduction

Contemporary political philosophy has only recently witnessed a widespread emergence of analyses of justice beyond the context of the nation-state. When modern political philosophers devised principles of justice in the past, they typically took for granted that these principles would be applicable within a bounded, politically autonomous society with a shared national culture. They, in other words, implicitly or explicitly relied on national homogeneity and political autonomy as basic circumstances of justice.

Since the past few decades, however, explicit attention is being paid to two sources of erosion of this nation-state model. The first concerns the repercussions for justice of sub-state cultural plurality – the fact that states are not always nationally unified. The presence of immigrant minorities as well as a growing assertion of minority nations has led political philosophers to spend much attention to the (un)desirability and (in)justice of issues like language rights, ethnocultural rights, representation rights, self-government rights, territorial rights, etc. The discussion this has fuelled is commonly referred to as the multiculturalism debate.¹

The second source concerns the fact of transnational levels of political decision-making, as well as the growing awareness of the justice-based claims of people outside the domestic state due to a globalizing economy, globalized threats like environmental issues and terrorism, technological advancement and global media. These changes call into question the immediate evidence of the idea that justice concerns only emerge within the context of a politically autonomous state. This second debate is typically referred to as the global justice debate.² It has led theorists to pay attention to global poverty, the value of equality and distributive justice beyond the domestic state, global democracy, human rights, humanitarian interventions, etc.

Within contemporary political philosophy, David Miller is one of few theorists who occupies a prominent place in both debates. In his work he not only develops an account of nationalism, but also provides a theory of global justice – in particular of how we should combine the duties we have toward our co-nationals with our duties of global justice.

This collection of articles aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the global justice dimension of Miller’s theory, which has in recent years partly appeared in several articles but has now been presented as a unified, full-fledged theory of global justice in his latest book National responsibility and global justice (2007). In this introduction, we delineate some of the central tenets of Miller’s theory of global justice, against the background of his earlier theories of social justice and nationalism. We also provide a brief overview of the contributions that make up the present collection.

Market socialism, nationalism and global justice

Miller’s recent work in normative political theory encompass three broad fields: social justice, nationalism and global justice. Social justice forms the focus of his Social justice (1976), Market, state and community (1989) and Principles of social justice (1999). A defence of nationalism is given in On nationality (1995) and in Citizenship and national identity (2000). The consequences of nationalism for the idea of global distributive justice, finally, is the central topic of his most recent articles and his most recent book. To better understand the reasons and motivation behind his account of global justice, and the role nationalism plays in it, it is useful to set it out against the background of relevant aspects of Miller’s earlier work on social justice and nationalism.

Market socialism and community

Miller started out his career as a strong proponent of the idea of social justice (Miller 1976). In Market, state and community this took the form of a defence of ‘market socialism’, a version of socialism that accepts market mechanisms as means of producing most goods and services, but aims at the same time at the socialization of the ownership of capital (1989, pp. 10, 321). It thus combines a defence of the market with a critique of the minimalist role libertarian philosophers ascribe to the state. But there is also a third component to Miller’s account of market socialism: community. Market socialists should value community. He provides two justifications for this belief. The first appeals to the value of community for intrinsic reasons: community enables people to regard themselves as ‘active subjects shaping the world according to their will’ (1989, pp. 237–238). His second justification is more instrumental in nature: it states that a shared communal identity is needed for the idea of distributive justice to be successful in practice.³ Distributive justice can only properly function when the givers (tax-payers) see themselves as bound to and identify with the beneficiaries of redistributive practices.

Both justifications give expression to the idea that in building a normative political theory, we should pay attention to people’s motivations (1989, p. 228):

It is no use viewing government as a benign perpetual motion machine that will turn out whichever policies we deem to be appropriate. We must give some account of the human agents who have in practice to turn its wheels (who they are, how they are related, what motivates them).

This motivating force, Miller argues, can be found in communal ties. The particular sort of communal ties he is interested in is shared national identity. Nations, according to Miller, ‘are the only possible form in which overall community can be realized in modern societies’ (1989, p. 245).

The principle of nationality

Much of Miller’s writings on social justice and the importance of community prefigure his later theories of nationality and global justice. In On nationality (1995), he presents a robust defence of nationalism and national cultures. Through doing so, Miller has become one of the intellectual fathers of the recent surge of normative theories of nationalism. Like Miller, theorists such as Margaret Canovan, Chaim Gans, Will Kymlicka and Yael Tamir are all committed to defend the importance of national cultures and the nation-state in times when both sub- and supranational developments put the ideal of the nation-state under pressure. What Miller also shares with these fellow nationalist thinkers is a moderate and progressive notion of nationalism, far removed from the xenophobic or illiberal traits often associated with it. This is for instance expressed in the crucial importance of the idea of social justice in his justification of nationalism, as well as in his open and broadly liberal understanding of national identity.

In On nationality, Miller investigates the appropriate relationship between nations and states. He develops an account of national self-determination, with the aim of showing that it is valuable that political and national boundaries coincide (1995, pp. 82, 188). The reasons given for this ‘principle of nationality’ have to do with the furthering of important goods which can best be provided in self-governing national units – characteristically in nation-states. In particular, there are four such goods.

The first is social justice. On Miller’s view, nations are ‘ethical communities’. They are ‘contour lines’ in the ethical landscape, as a result of which sharing a national identity entails duties to one’s co-nationals (1995, p. 11). Miller argues that it is because we have such obligations of nationality that the practice of citizenship includes the redistributive social justice elements that we find in contemporary (liberal democratic) states (1995, p. 72). Ideals of social justice occur mainly within national communities (1995, p. 85). In order, however, for these duties to be effectively discharged, they must be assigned, given a determinate content, and enforced. Where nations are also states, they can develop a set of institutions which ‘allocate rights and responsibilities to people in the way that their national conception of social justice demands’ (1995, p. 83).

The second is the good of national identity. In Miller’s view, a common national culture gives its members a sense of where they belong and a background against which choices about how to live can be made (1995, pp. 85–86). In contrast to the ‘radical chooser view’ of personal identity, Miller’s argument is that our personal identity does not start from a blank sheet. Rather, we begin from values inculcated in us, and these values are at least partly national in scope (1995, p. 44). So national cultures are important sources of individual identity. There are, moreover, strong reasons for thinking that states are most effectively capable of protecting national cultures (1995, p. 88). Certain dimensions of national culture, for example, tend to decay without state power used to protect it – the architecture of public buildings, the content of education, etc.

The third good is collective autonomy. People have an interest in shaping the world in association with others with whom they identify. Given that the national community is a community of identification, there is a widely shared interest in participating in a collective national ‘enterprise which sets its stamp on the world’ (1995, p. 89).

The last reason for national self-determination is based on the importance of trust. State activities in liberal democratic states involve the furthering of certain goals – such as the realization of social justice or of deliberative democracy – which cannot be achieved without citizens’ voluntary co-operation. ‘For [these] activit[ies] to be successful, the citizens must trust the state, and they must trust one another to comply with what the state demands of them’ (1995, p. 91). And since a shared national identity carries with it mutual loyalty, it will augment these forms of trust.

Before turning to the latest of his intellectual interests – his understanding of global justice – it may be useful to briefly indicate who Miller’s intellectual opponents are in On nationality. Miller’s defence of the principle of nationality can primarily be seen as a reaction against those who don’t see any value in the importance of collective identity among compatriots – stereotypically liberals who downplay the importance of communal ties. They neglect, Miller argues, the preconditions of the successful realization of goals like social justice or deliberative democracy, and the many other collective action problems to which the modern state aims to provide a solution. Without ties of nationality between citizens, there is no reason for people to go beyond strictly reciprocal interactions which provide mutual benefit and to uphold ideals of solidarity and justice. Such ideals typically require that individual talents can to some extent be seen as common assets, but without binding ties of nationality this is impossible. Miller often sees this view as correlating with a minimal state defence and sets it out against his more progressive nationalism: ‘Given the possibility of private insurance, we would expect states that lacked a communitarian background such as nationality provides to be little more than minimal states, providing only basic security to their members’ (1995, p. 72).

The other intellectual opponent Miller addresses is civic nationalism or constitutional patriotism – the idea that citizens’ attachments should focus directly on political principles embodied in the state’s constitution. Civic nationalists do see the importance of collective identity, but aim for a conception of identity that appeals to a political notion of identity, not a pre-political one. Miller’s argument against this notion of political identity is that it is too thin to generate the required levels of trust and support for social justice and that it ‘cannot explain why the boundaries of the political community should fall here rather than there; nor does it give you any sense of the historical identity of the community’ (1995, p. 163, see also p. 189). We ought not to bracket off questions about shared history, shared language and common culture in building a well-functioning welfare state.

Global justice

In the past decade or so, Miller has turned his attention to global justice, and the implications of his defence of nationalism for the duties we owe to our fellow human beings. Global justice is currently one of the most studied topics in political theory. It is interesting to see that, after a period which saw the emergence of rather generous accounts of global (distributive) justice – which often took the form of a global extension of the Rawlsian difference principle (see Beitz 1979, Pogge 1989) – the past years have witnessed the emergence of positions which express more or less extended reservations regarding the idea of global justice (Rawls 1999, Nagel 2005, Mandle 2006, Dworkin 2006, Scheffler 2002). These theorists doubt that the basic notions of social justice and citizenship – which are prevalent within domestic states – can simply be transplanted to the global realm. As can be inferred from his earlier work on nationalism and social justice, Miller joins the rank of these theorists. He presents us with a comprehensive analysis of global justice and with a powerful argument as to why global justice should not be social justice writ large. In the years to come, Miller’s position, as it is developed in National responsibility and global justice, can be expected to become a central reference point for this ‘sceptical turn’ in global justice theory.

It is important to realize, though, that Miller’s position here is a balanced and refined one. To start with, Miller does not follow theorists like Thomas Nagel or realist theories in their rejection of the idea of global justice – the idea that we have positive duties of justice to people living outside of our state. Obligations of justice, according to Nagel, can only arise among people who are subject to a sovereign power which uses force to ensure the coordinated conduct of large numbers of people – a condition only fulfilled in this world by states. Against Nagel, Miller asserts that obligations of justice also obtain outside the context of the state. Issues like fair wages, for instance, also arise in multinational corporations, and there are principles of equality which apply among members of the Catholic Church (2007, pp. 277–278).

At the same time, however, Miller claims that the principles of global justice are fundamentally different from the principles of social justice that are valid within the domestic realm. Miller thus distances himself from both monism and Nagel’s dualism. Monism can be understood as the view that the same set of principles apply domestically and globally. Miller’s main argument against monism is that we live in a world of distinct nation-states, each of which is legitimately self-determining. Global egalitarianism is incompatible with such a world because of two problems associated with it: the metric and the dynamic problem. According to the first we can’t determine what equality means outside of national borders. We live in a culturally plural world in which different societies construct and rank goods in different ways (with no common set of cultural understandings). The second is the dynamic problem. This states that even if we could find a neutral currency of equality, equality will be upset by the fact that we live in a world made up of separate self-determining societies, and justice does not require redistribution where inequalities can be traced back to national preferences (2007, pp. 56ff).

Miller concludes that we should embrace some form of global justice, but not one that assumes that global justice is just an extension of social justice to the global realm. Global justice merely requires that everyone everywhere has access to a minimum set of resources, that global poverty is eradicated. The reason we think world poverty is unjust is not an egalitarian reason, but a concern about deprivation or absolute poverty. Of overriding importance is the fact that we all – regardless of our citizenship or worldview – have certain basic needs that need to be fulfilled to lead a decent life. These basic needs generate basic human rights and set a global minimum.

But once the minimum is reached, nation-states are responsible for their own behaviour: they may justifiably claim the benefits that their policies produce, but they must also bear the harm that they inflict on themselves or others.

Miller believes, then, (and this is the core argument in National responsibility and global justice) that we can sensibly talk of ‘collective responsibility’ – responsibility individuals have by virtue of their membership of groups – in the case of nations. He also believes that this responsibility extends to responsibility for past actions and decisions, so that the present generation bears both the burdens and the benefits of past national behaviour.

To develop this account of national responsibility, Miller first sets out to defend the idea of (individual) responsibility in itself, then extends it to collective responsibility, subsequently to national responsibility, and finally adapts it such that it is able to i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• Abstracts
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 David Miller’s theory of global justice. A brief overview
• 2 National responsibility and global justice
• 3 Human rights and equality in the work of David Miller
• 4 Reasonable partiality for compatriots and the global responsibility gap
• 5 What do we owe others as a matter of global justice and does national membership matter?
• 6 National responsibility, reparations and distributive justice
• 7 Collective responsibility and national responsibility
• 8 National and statist responsibility
• 9 Global justice, climate change and Miller’s theory of responsibility
• 10 Global justice as justice for a world of largely independent nations? From dualism to a multi-level ethical position
• 11 Global justice in complex moral worlds. Dilemmas of contextualized theories
• 12 A response
• Index