Columbia International Affairs Online

CIAO DATE: 10/07

Theoria

Vol. 51, No. 2, Issue 104 (August 2004)

Articles

• Global Justice and the Challenge of Radical Pluralism
  Paul Voice

  Rawls fails in his attempt to address the challenge of pluralism and the neo-Rawlsians in taking on the theoretical framework of Rawls's programme cannot escape this failure as well. Moreover, by globalizing the DOP the neo-Rawlsians accentuate the problem if we reasonably suppose that the difficulties of pluralism are greater the more peoples we include in the founding agreement. I have tried to show in this paper how Rawls fails in his own efforts to avoid the difficulties of pluralism, and how these difficulties extend to undermine the neo-Rawlsian project.

• Cosmopolitanism and Its Limits: Comments on Cosmopolitan Justice
  Richard W. Miller

  In practice, at least in American politics, my disagreements with Darrel Moellendorf concerning international economic justice may be insignificant. We both think that political justice requires much, much more than the current pittance of aid ($35 per capita per year in tax-financed U.S. overseas development assistance), far more than is politically feasible for the foreseeable future. But our disagreement concerning intervention has great practical political importance. If citizens lack a reasonably complete and adequate grasp of the reasons relevant to intervention, then the speed with which political elites create crises and manipulate public opinion and the gap between powerful interests and the interests of humanity will increase the incidence of grave unjust harm. I fear that Moellendorf's cosmopolitan interventionism would, quite inadvertently, contribute to such harm. That this is at once a timely fear and a reflection of principled differences in approaching enduring facts of injustice is a tribute to the philosophical vigour and political relevance of Darrel Moellendorf's thought-provoking book.

• Justice and Sovereignty
  Mervyn Frost

  Why is the challenge by Moellendorf to the Hegelian claim about the constitutive relationship which holds between sovereign democratic states and citizenship rights, an important one to rebut? The answer to this question is that it is important to theorize properly the relationship between individuals and the social arrangements within which they live. Theorists in the liberal individualist tradition such as Moellendorf seek to make the argument that the right to democratic citizenship is prior to any particular form of polity including the sovereign state. The pre-existing individual right, according to him, grants to us a perspective from which we can judge the justice of particular institutional forms, including the sovereign state. For such theorists it would be possible for the value of democratic citizenship to be protected in some institutional arrangement which was not sovereign. For such theorists states are understood as mechanisms which either do or do not promote citizenship rights. The crucial point is that for such theorists states are a means to an end.

• Cosmopolitanism and the Need for Transnational Criminal Justice: The Case of the International Criminal Court
  Patrick Hayden

  Viewed from the perspective of cosmopolitanism as an ethical and political project, not only can the permanent ICC help to protect individuals against gross violations of their human rights, it also can contribute to the development of a humane system of global governance that takes seriously the equal moral standing of all human beings. As an institution dedicated to the interests of the entire human community and not simply the particularistic interests of states or compatriots, the ICC can act in accordance with and contribute to the promotion of global justice. Consequently, I believe the ICC has great potential to defend and advance essential cosmopolitan values and objectives. By introducing new rules, standards, and mechanisms of accountability into the global political system and prosecuting those responsible for mass atrocities, the ICC represents the constructive pursuit of a form of cosmopolitan lawenforcement that does justice to the imperative expressed by Arendt more than 40 years ago.

• Open Perfectionism and Global Justice
  Thaddeus Metz

  In Moellendorf's worldview, all states ideally should adopt one and the same end, namely, the promotion of justice conceived in liberal-egalitarian terms. By his outlook, something has gone wrong to some degree if states pursue different ends. No doubt states would invariably pursue the same end in different ways, e.g., by using different languages. In addition, Moellendorf of course recognises that democratic decisions generally need to stand and that majorities will decide different things. However, for him majorities all ought to direct their states to seek a single state of affairs: the fulfilment of liberal-egalitarian rights. From my perspective, nothing is necessarily the matter with a world in which states pursue different ends. There is nothing automatically wrong if citizens authorise their particular states to seek to promote radically heterogeneous conceptions of the good. My task in this article has been to show how a Kantian can agree with the Hegelian dictum that the world of universal liberalism would be like a night in which all cows are black.

• Just Wars and Cosmopolitan Hope
  Brian Orend

  My own judgement regarding international authorization is this: it cannot currently be seen as a necessary condition for a legitimate resort to force. It is too slow; it may ride rough-shod over a nation's legitimate self-defence for merely political reasons, or indeed, for reasons of strategic politicking that have nothing to do with the threat faced by the nation in question; and too many questions remain regarding the adequacy of the body proposed as authorizer. This does not necessarily imply that international institutions are to play no role. International public opinion will make itself felt in any case, for instance. But international institutions in the narrower sense, e.g., those under UN auspices, seem best suited to aid in the jus post bellum phase, to ensure in a more widespread and deliberative way the justice and durability of post-war settlements and the effective provision of humanitarian relief efforts. International bodies, such as the newly constructed permanent court for war crimes and crimes against humanity may also play a legitimate role in prosecuting and offering fair public trial to accused war criminals, including those accused of violating those jus ad bellum standards which Moellendorf discusses.

• Cosmopolitan Justice: Education and Global Citizenship
  Penny Enslin & Mary Tjiattas

  Darrel Moellendorf argues that duties of justice have global scope. We share Moellendorf's rejection of statism and his emphasis on duties of justice arising out of association in Cosmopolitan Justice. Building on Moellendorf's view that there are cosmopolitan duties of justice, we argue that in education they are both negative and positive, requiring redistribution of educational resources and transnational educational intervention. We suggest what kinds of intervention are justifiable and required, the kinds of international structures that could regulate them, and a conception of cosmopolitan citizenship to underpin education for global citizenship.

• What Does Cosmopolitan Justice Demand of Us?
  Gillian Brock

  In this article I raised three challenges for Moellendorf's account of Cosmopolitan Justice. First, I argued that in a reconstructed cosmopolitan original position we would choose a needs-based minimum floor principle rather than a global difference principle, if these are not co-extensive. Second, I argued that Moellendorf's version of the equality of opportunity principle is too vulnerable to criticisms of cultural insensitivity, though I also noted that there were problems with versions of the ideal that aim for a more general formulation. I argued that those trying to develop an ideal of global equality of opportunity thus face a dilemma concerning how best to develop that ideal. Third, I reviewed Moellendorf's account of justified intervention and indicated how we could make space for the importance of gaining proper authority under appropriate circumstance, without formally including it as a further necessary condition for justified interventions.

• On Trade and Justice
  Fernando R. Tesón

  In this article I address the issue of trade and global justice. I argue that the best way to enhance opportunity for the poor in the world is to establish conditions of global free movement of goods, services, and persons. Moellendorf deserves credit for having addressed the question of international trade, and even more credit for having criticized protectionist policies as inconsistent with global justice. Yet establishing free trade is, I believe, much more urgent than creating the global redistributive agency that Moellendorf favours, and it might well render that agency unnecessary. These comments are intended, then, as a friendly amendment to Moellendorf's views.

• Cosmopolitan Justice Reconsidered
  Darrel Moellendorf

  It is a great honour to have Cosmopolitan Justice reviewed in the pages of this journal. Indeed, the range and quality of the reviews are terrific, in the multiple senses of that word. I regret that I do not have the opportunity to respond fully to any of the reviews. Nonetheless, I shall try to do justice to the most serious issues raised. The next section, the most  of five, addresses challenges to the constructivist justification in Cosmopolitan Justice as well as the nature of duties of justice in the absence of a legal framework. Although this section may be particularly interesting to students of philosophy, those whose interests are relatively more applied can skip ahead. Section III takes up the issues of sovereignty and intervention; Section IV addresses matters of distributive justice.

• Reviews

  Alexander J. Motyl, Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities
  Alexander J. Motyl, Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires
  Reviewed by Roger Deacon
  Slavoj Zizek and Glyn Daly, Conversations with Zizek
  Reviewed by Richard Pithouse
  Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship
  Reviewed by Laurence Piper
  Nigel Gibson, Frantz Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination
  Reviewed by Richard Pithouse
  G.A. Cohen, If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?
  Reviewed by Ben Parker