New Waves in Global Justice

T. Brooks, T. Brooks, T. Brooks

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137286406
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

With essays ranging from climate change and global poverty to just war and human rights and immigration, leading future figures present an ideal collection for anyone interested in the most important debates in global justice.

1

Introduction

Thom Brooks

Global justice is at the heart of some of the most exciting new work in philosophy. New Waves in Global Justice brings together the latest cutting edge research into many of the topics that matter. Traditionally, justice has been primarily about domestic justice within state borders. This overly narrow focus has been transformed in recent years – perhaps starting with a seminal paper on severe poverty by Peter Singer (1972) – to a now vast literature of depth and genuine significance. Global justice covers diverse topics such as capabilities, citizenship, climate change, future generations, global philosophy, human rights, immigration, just war and humanitarian intervention, and multiculturalism in addition to severe poverty. All of these topics and more are examined in this book.

The authors for each chapter have been carefully selected from among the leading new generation of philosophers advancing debates in global justice today. Together, they approach global justice appropriately from international perspectives and represent universities in the United States, Canada, Finland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. All have secured their PhD in the last 10 years (including the editor) and each has already made distinctive contributions to topics in global justice likely to help shape the future direction of this field in years to come.¹

The chapters in New Waves in Global Justice can be read in any order although there are six clusters organized thematically. This introduction will preview these clusters and summarize each chapter before concluding with some discussion of my special interests in editing this collection.

The first four chapters address issues relating to rights and duties in global justice. Luis Cabrera opens the book focussing on the idea of cosmopolitan democracy. Can some participatory form of shared rule be possible at the global level? Most claim it is not: global democracy is impossible. Cabrera attempts to reorient our focus towards the question of why global democracy is important to achieve. He argues that its importance lies in its potential to help secure the promotion of a crucial outcome: the protection of individual rights across state boundaries. If this analysis is correct, then our challenge is not to attempt the potentially fruitless path of trying to foster global democracy within existing institutional frameworks. But, instead, our focus should be on how the frameworks can be transformed to better guarantee the protection of individual rights at the global level. A global parliamentary assembly might be a result although not necessarily and so the preoccupation with denying global democracy because of a concern about the possibility of creating such an assembly is probably misplaced. Plus, there are some rights, such as rights to free movement across borders, that might require some form of global institution although its precise determination may be open-textured to some degree. Cosmopolitan democracy can be possible if we ask the right questions and approach the subject from a new perspective.

Gerhard Øverland considers the problem of severe poverty. He notes that the UNDP’s Human Development Report confirms that about half the world’s population live in severe poverty. Øverland next highlights a 2001 report on humanitarian intervention released by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty which claimed states have a responsibility to protect vulnerable people though intervention, if necessary. So should states have a just cause for humanitarian intervention in other states to alleviate severe poverty? This question is further complicated by claims that severe poverty in poor countries may be attributed to the policies and actions of affluent states (Pogge 2002). Poor states might then suffer twice: first, the poverty of their people may be a result of global institutional factors controlled by affluent states and, secondly, poor states might become subject to military invasion to provide humanitarian assistance to citizens by affluent states who are made worse off because of affluent states. Øverland grapples deftly with these and other complexities as he argues for new institutional reforms including a tax on global trade as part of a structural effort to overcome this pressing global problem.

Milla Vaha explores the relationships of responsibility between states in world politics. She examines whether, and if so how, we might justify some particular states bearing heavier duties than others. Vaha critically reassesses the dominant narratives: one is that greater power yields greater responsibilities and another that liberal states should be the greatest agents of global justice because of their greater normative justification. She argues that the all too popular move in the literature towards viewing some states as bearing more duties than others is a position resting on problematic foundations that may sacrifice more than it achieves.

The final essay in this cluster is by Endre Begby, who examines what role, if any, is there for coercive force in a theory of global justice. He notes that much of the history of global justice has been devoted to largely pacifist projects from Immanuel Kant’s ideal of a Perpetual Peace to Thomas Pogge’s Global Resources Dividend. However, increasingly recent work has turned to support for a wide range of social and political rights whose management may not be the exclusive domain for any individual state; but, rather, a matter for the international community. Moreover, the management of individual rights by individual states is mismanaged badly and far too often. Begby argues we have little choice but to accept some role for coercive force within any compelling theory about global justice.

The second cluster of papers focuses on global justice and future generations. Nicole Hassoun considers how we might best address the problem of non-humanitarian obligations across borders and generations. She defends a ‘cosmopolitan legitimacy argument’ whereby everyone is subject to a coercive global institutional system which is legitimated by ensuring all can enjoy basic reasoning and planning capacities. Hassoun argues that this argument can win over liberals and perhaps even libertarians thus far unconvinced by other cosmopolitan arguments, such as by Thomas Pogge.

Krushil Watene examines future generations in light of Martha Nussbaum’s fascinating work on the capabilities approach. Watene argues that future generations are underexplored in Nussbaum’s capabilities approach and this has important bearings for Nussbaum’s larger project in global justice. Watene offers not only an insightful critique of capabilities, but she also reveals how Nussbaum’s capabilities approach might be revised to better account for future generations and overcome its present shortcomings.

The next cluster concerns climate change. Clare Heyward focuses on the socio-economic impacts of climate change. She argues that much of the debate on how to respond to climate change concerns values at their core. So it is not merely what present and future scientific advances might offer us, but how we determine public policy choices in light of the growing threats arising from climate change. Moreover, climate change is a threat to our values, such as our cultural identities. This threat is manifest through territorial dispossession and the loss of traditional ways of life. Heyward shows us the importance of these issues and the implications for our taking seriously the cultural dimension of climate justice for public policy in this area.

The following cluster brings together two chapters exploring asylum and migration. Eric Cavallero examines the justification of the duty to provide asylum. Nearly all states acknowledge this duty, but why? What justifies asylum? Cavallero exposes the many complexities and intricacies in an insightful unpacking of the many claims for a moral duty on states to provide asylum. He discovers only one, welfare protection, firmly grounded in mutual aid with most others grounded in more demanding principles of justice.

Patti Tamara Lenard proposes how we might structure what she calls a World Migration Organization charged with matching migrants and states to their mutual satisfaction. Our world is unjust which leads many individuals to choose migration to new states and also leads many states to restrict borders. Lenard argues that just migration is possible in our unjust world.

The next to last cluster considers NGO accountability. Alice Obrecht argues that NGOs are at the coalface of global justice as they engage in the delivery of aid and assistance to the world’s poorest regions. Yet, NGOs have been criticized for how they have delivered services, such as a lack of sufficient accountability in terms of organizational transparency. How should accountability be applied to NGOs? Obrecht offers a new model for how we should understand NGO accountability in an illuminating essay bringing together important issues of both the theory and practice of global justice on its traditional front line.

The final cluster is a chapter about global philosophy and international thought. Thom Brooks considers what is global about global justice. A defining feature about the burgeoning literature in global justice is its operation within a bounded tradition. Global justice research is too often a product of one tradition in self-isolation from others that nonetheless claims to speak for what is best for all. Brooks argues for the idea of global philosophy and breaking down the barriers between philosophical traditions to ensure that global justice becomes more global. Examples are highlighted from classical and modern Indian philosophy. The purpose is to illustrate how a philosophical tradition can improve its ability to address philosophical problems by its own lights through greater engagement with the literature in other traditions. We need not all share one philosophical tradition: such a view is likely unachievable and probably undesirable. Nonetheless, we should share our traditions much more and for mutual benefit. Brooks indicates some of the pay-offs for Western global justice in advancing a more global (and globally informed) philosophy.

I conclude with a few comments about my special interests in editing this important collection of new essays about global justice. The topic of global justice has been a focus for much of my work since graduate school that has intensified in recent years.² My latest work provides a comprehensive and critical examination of the most important contributions by leading figures while defending a framework built around the idea of justice as stakeholding that brings together elements of the capabilities approach, political liberalism and philosophical republicanism (Brooks 2014).³ A second contribution is the promotion of what I call global philosophy within global justice and a topic examined in my essay for this book noted above.

But I have a second special interest in editing this book. I have held a longstanding interest in the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel and the work of British Idealists, such as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, James Seth and others.⁴ After I was invited to edit this book, I...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  The Pursuit of Global Political Justice, or, Whats Global Democracy for?
• 3  Global Poverty and an Extraordinary Humanitarian Intervention
• 4  Duties of Whom? States and the Problem of Global Justice
• 5  A Role for Coercive Force in the Theory of Global Justice?
• 6  Cosmopolitan Commitments: Coercion, Legitimacy and Global Justice
• 7  Beyond Nussbaums Capability Approach: Future Generations and the Need for New Ways Forward
• 8  Climate Change as Cultural Injustice
• 9  Moral Grounds of the State Duty of Asylum
• 10  MigrationMatch.Com: Towards a World Migration Organization
• 11  NGO Accountability: The Civil Society Actor Model for NGO-Stakeholder Relationships
• 12  How Global Is Global Justice? Towards a Global Philosophy
• Index