Global Justice and Resource Curse

Combining Statism and Cosmopolitanism

Frank Aragbonfoh Abumere

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000425444
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores whether any theory alone is sufficiently capable of resolving the complexity of global justice, arguing that a combination of statism and cosmopolitanism is needed.

In current times, xenophobia, nationalism and populism have amplified othering in both domestic and international politics. In global justice, the dichotomy between the 'polis' and the 'cosmopolis' separates statism from cosmopolitanism. Using resource curse as a complex case of global justice, the author demonstrates how neither statism nor cosmopolitanism alone are sufficient but goes on to argue that a combination of the two theories is simultaneously necessary and sufficient to resolve the complexity of global justice. He demonstrates how statism is primarily applied to the institutional dimensions of resource curse and only secondarily applied to the interactional dimensions, while cosmopolitanism is applied to the interactional dimensions but only secondarily applied to the institutional dimensions, and therefore a combination of both theories is needed to resolve the problem of resource curse – using the strength of the former to compensate for the weakness of the latter, and vice versa.

Global justice is widely taught and researched as one of the most important areas in political philosophy and political theory. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers, philosophers and political scientists of African politics, political theory, political philosophy, international relations and international development.

1Introduction

Global justice in the twenty-first century

In ancient Greek poleis (city-states), when he was asked where he came from, that is, which particular polis (city-state) he came from, Diogenes of Sinope (404–323 BC) famously declared, ‘I am a citizen of the world.’ The Cynic's declaration was brought into the spotlight in 2016 when Theresa May (the then prime minister of the United Kingdom) declared that ‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.’ The ancient Cynic's declaration resonates with our intensively and extensively globalised world. Just as it was important whether a person sees herself as, primarily, a citizen of a particular polis or a citizen of the universal cosmopolis during the Cynic's time, so too it is important – if not even more important – whether we see ourselves primarily as members of a particular polis or the universal cosmopolis today. In global justice, the above dialectic, in essence, is particularly what separates statists or statism from cosmopolitans or cosmopolitanism. Generally, it dictates the division between relationists or relational approach and non-relationists or non-relational approach. Finally, it stimulates the debate between minimalists or minimalism and egalitarians or egalitarianism. Consequently, and ultimately, it is the key problématique of the global justice discourse.

In the global justice discourse, to resolve the aforementioned key problématique, while some political philosophers and political theorists rely on a combination of ideal and non-ideal theory, generally political philosophers and political theorists rely on either ideal theory or non-ideal theory, preferring one to the other. On the one hand, ideal theory assumes strict compliance and works out the principles that characterise a well-ordered society under favourable circumstances. On the other hand, non-ideal theory deals with non-compliance or partial compliance and asks how the long-term goal of arriving at a well-ordered society might be achieved or worked toward (Rawls, 1971, pp. 245–246). However, matters of global justice are no less ideal theory matters than they are non-ideal theory matters and vice versa. Therefore, I will employ a combination of ideal and non-ideal theory in my contribution to the global justice discourse. This I shall do by using non-ideal theory to analyse a complex case of global justice (resource curse) and then based on the analysis, by using ideal theory to create a general theory of global justice.

Taking statism and cosmopolitanism as the major theories of global justice, I argue that neither the former nor the latter is sufficient for the theorisation of global justice (Abumere, 2016, pp. 7–8). Using the Lernaean Hydra¹ called resource curse or paradox of plenty as a complex case of global justice, I show the insufficiency of statism and cosmopolitanism in resolving the problem of resource curse. Nevertheless, using the strengths of statism to compensate for the weaknesses of cosmopolitanism and vice versa through a fusion of horizons, I arrive at what I refer to as the general theory of global justice. Given its robustness, the general theory is simultaneously necessary and sufficient for theorising about global justice and resolving the problem of resource curse as a complex case of global justice.

The general theory is important because it fulfils the aim of theories of, and approaches to, global justice. Essentially, theories of, and approaches to, global justice are attempts by political theorists and political philosophers to resolve, through ideal theory and non-ideal theory, the theoretical problems of global injustice in relation to the practical problems of global injustice. However, the question is what is global justice? Since ‘global’ is an adjectival qualifier of ‘justice,’ to answer the question I shall first tease out what justice is. Long before John Rawls’ (1971) ‘justice as fairness,’ justice has almost always been associated with fairness. From Plato's Republic (ca. 375 BC) to Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics and Politics (ca. 340 BC), justice is generally seen as doing what is fair or dealing with people in a fair manner. Even in legal parlance, where justice is categorised into procedural and substantive justice, we often hear of fair and unfair trials and fair or just laws and unfair or unjust laws. Procedural justice, as the name suggests, has to do with consistently and impartially applying principles of law, following legal procedures or due process in the course of trials. Even if the principles, procedures or processes were in themselves unjust or unfair, as long as they are followed, then procedural justice is achieved. But substantive justice, in jurisprudence, goes beyond mere principles, procedures or processes to deal with the legitimacy of judgements and what is morally due to individuals or what they can morally ask of others or society. Such demands are basically the freedoms of the individuals whether those freedoms are negative, positive or republican.

Justice can also be divided into distributive justice, corrective justice, commutative justice, retributive justice and so on. The concept of justice is a multifaceted one. But it can still be dealt with as that one holistic concept called justice. In this book, my intention is not to deal with the various categories of justice or to deal with justice as a holistic concept. I shall be dealing with only one category or a particular type of justice in that the focus of this book is on global justice which falls under distributive justice albeit ‘global’ distributive justice rather than ‘domestic’ distributive justice. Rawls (1999a) says we can call many things just or unjust. Just as we can call laws, institutions or social systems just or unjust, so too we can call certain actions of different kinds, be they decisions, judgements or imputations, just or unjust. Also, we can call persons themselves, including their attitudes or dispositions, just or unjust. However, for Rawls (1999a):

the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society … the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation. (p. 6)

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls (1971) is not only concerned with social justice, but he is particularly concerned with social justice in the domestic society. Hence, he prescribes certain principles of justice which he thinks will ensure a just basic structure which will, in turn, ensure a just domestic society.

To attain a just basic structure, domestic societies are to be guided by justice as fairness. In justice as fairness, individuals sitting in the original position, behind a veil of ignorance, choose Rawls’ two principles of justice. The first principle is the liberty principle and the second principle is the equality principle. The second principle is further divided into two principles, namely, the difference principle and the fair equality of opportunity principle.

First, each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others. Second, social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.

(Rawls, 1999a, p. 53)

Despite Rawls’ intention to limit the application of these principles to domestic societies, the principles contributed immensely to charting the course of the debate on global justice.

Two facts made Rawls’ principles of justice the centrality of the global justice debate (Blake & Smith, 2013). The first is that Rawls argued that his principles are for domestic societies and not for the global society. Except for a few remarks like the ones made in paragraph 58 of A Theory of Justice (1999a, revised edition), Rawls did not concern himself with global justice. When Rawls finally concerned himself with global justice in The Law of Peoples (1999b), he seemed to be almost negligent of the inequality which he had made a central focus in domestic distributive justice. Second, Rawls’ principles, especially the difference principle, reinvigorated or even determined the course of the global justice debate. In their first forays into the global justice debate, Charles Beitz (1979; 1999) and Thomas Pogge (1989) – two leading authorities in the global justice debate – merely extended Rawls’ principles of justice, especially the difference principle, from domestic society to the global society. Therefore, arguably, Rawls can be seen as originating the contemporary debate on global justice (Blake & Smith, 2013) which has pitted statists against cosmopolitans.

Taking a cue from Rawls's (1999a) definition of domestic distributive justice (p. 6), global justice can be construed as the way in which fundamental rights and duties are distributed globally and how the division of advantages (and disadvantages) from global cooperation, competition, engagements, activities, events and conditions (institutional and interactional) are determined. My concern is not with individual states, I am concerned with the world as a whole. I see the primary subject of justice as how the world is structured. Now, let me pause to ask whether there is any critical need to be discussing global justice. Rather than answer this question by mere affirmation or negation, I will present an overview (in the remainder of this sub-chapter) of the key issues that make global justice contentious.

In our world today, we have made some progress in lifting many people out of poverty. If we accept the United Nations (UN)'s threshold of poverty, we will have to accept that the end of the last century and the beginning of this century have witnessed improved economic conditions and the vanquishing of poverty for hundreds of millions of people. The economic progress manifests even more if we accept the UN's threshold of abject poverty. We only need to look at emerging markets to see how relatively fast they have moved hundreds of millions out of poverty, especially abject poverty. Even if we look at China and India alone, given China and India's populations, we will have to accept that our world has taken some giant strides in fighting poverty. Brazil and Indonesia too, given their populations, are a testament that poverty may possess intractability but not invincibility.

If we add the economic progress of all the other emerging markets and growth economies, we might be persuaded to believe that we are witnessing the end of poverty and poverty is being made history in our time. Terence James O’Neill – Jim O’Neill – (2011) coined the acronym BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China). The acronym later came to be known as BRICS with the addition of South Africa. He used the term to show how economic power is shifting from developed to developing countries. O’Neill (2013) also coined the acronyms MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) and MIST, also known as MIKT (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey), to show how some developing countries are the next emerging markets and growth economies the world should expect to progress rapidly and tremendously. With the memories of the East Asian miracle still fresh, there was euphoria over the aforementioned acronyms and the expected wonders emerging markets and growth economies will perform. However, poverty has not been made history and there are very strong indications that poverty will not be made history in our lifetime.

All over the world, especially in low-income economies or developing countries, there are still hundreds of millions of people living below the UN's poverty and abject poverty thresholds. These are the people Paul Collier (2007) calls the bottom billion. A cogent moral approach to the aforementioned economic issues is to adopt distributive justice, that is, adopt normative principles which will guide us in ‘the allocation of the benefits and burdens of economic activity’ (Lamont & Favor, 1996, p. 1). The limitation of this approach is that it only focuses on the economic aspect of life or it considers other crucial aspects of life to be economic. The contention is that ‘it might exclude some “goods” which are important to us but which are not usually considered part of economic life (such as education and health care)’ (Armstrong, 2012, p. 16) (emphasis in original). Since, ceteris paribus, the economic status of persons determines the sort of education and health care they can have access to, perhaps the above approach is not flawed. Even in countries where education and health care are free, it is because the governments of such countries have infused distributive justice principles into their public policy, in this case, education policy and health policy.

In both relative and absolute terms, some people are well-off while others are worse-off. Distributive justice is not only concerned with both relative and absolute ‘well-offness’ and ‘worse-offness.’ Also, it is crucially concerned with ‘worst-off’ persons. While, within the structures of the state, assisting the worst-off is not always contentious, assisting the ‘merely’ worse-off is very contentious. Even more contentious is assisting the ‘merely’ global worse-off. Although assisting the global worst-off is not as contentious as assisting the ‘merely’ global worse-off, by a very big margin it is more contentious than assisting the ‘merely’ worse-off within the structures of the state. This is because while domestic distributive justice is faced with only two critical central contentions, global distributive justice is faced with three critical central contentions. For domestic distributive justice, the two critical central contentions are whether the principles of distributive justice are justifiable and, if they are justifiable, to what extent are they justifiable. Here, I use ‘to what extent’ to refer to relative and absolute worse-off scenarios. For global distributive justice, the first and second critical central contentions are the same as those of domestic distributive justice. But the third critical central contention, accepting that principles of distributive justice are justifiable, goes on to contend whether they are justifiable globally. It is this third critical central contention that mainly separates statists from cosmopolitans. I use the term ‘mainly’ because the ‘to what extent’ term also separates some cosmopolitans from some statists, and even separates some statists from other statists, and some cosmopolitans from other cosmopolitans. These separations and divides will be discussed in detail in due course.

Theories of, and approaches to, global justice

To say that morally the worst-off or the worse-off oug...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The complexity of resource curse
• 3 Resource curse as a complex case of global justice
• 4 General theory of global justice
• 5 The robustness of the general theory
• Index