10

Citizenship and Global Justice

Chandrachur Singh

But among the traits characteristic of the human being is an impelling desire for
fellowship, that is for common life, not of just any kind, but a peaceful life, and
organized according to the measure of his intelligence, with those who are of his
kind .… Stated as a universal truth, therefore, the assertion that every animal is
impelled by nature to seek only its own good cannot be conceded.
Hugo Grotius, On the Law of War and Peace

Introduction
Twenty-first century politics is undisputedly a global affair. Even though globaliza-
tion as a concept remains contested and has been used to describe either positively or
negatively the highly complex and multidimensional processes in the economy, pol-
ity, culture and in everyday life, there is now a growing consensus that it refers to the
worldwide phenomenon of technological, economic and cultural exchanges, brought
about by modern communication, transportation and legal infrastructure, primarily
operating through international trade and finance. It is a term used to describe how
human beings are becoming more interactive with each other around the world, both
economically and culturally. It would be pertinent to start this chapter by asking certain
questions: are the people on the globe living under equitable conditions? If the answer
is in the negative, then logically one should ask why and how such conditions could be
created. Who has the responsibility of creating a just global system? How can poverty be
globally eradicated? What obligations do the rich and prosperous nations have vis-à-vis
 Citizenship and Global Justice 169

the states facing problems of hunger, famines and ethnic hatred? What should be the
basis of the transfer of resources to the poor nations, also referred to as ‘the Wretched
of the Earth’ by Franz Fanon? Can states tackle the global problems unilaterally? These
answers in turn constitute the theoretical foundations of Global Justice. It is from these
principles that the characteristics of the contemporary Global Polity can be discerned.
This chapter attempts first to outline the effects of these interactions on human lives.
Through an examination of the widespread disparities amongst societies, it attempts
to bring in the idea of Justice on a global scale. In doing so, it not only examines how
adequate various approaches to understanding global diversity are, but also stresses the
need to build a value-based approach to deal with such issues.
Although societies have been interacting amongst themselves right from the Greco-
Roman period, these interactions became more formalized after the Treaty of West-
phalia (1648). However, what makes contemporary interactions different from the
traditional ones is the fact that they not only involve states, but also supra-, sub- and
even non-state actors. Further, the formation of new networks through the Internet
and the media and the simultaneous expansion in business and economic networks
catalysed through scientific and technological innovations not only bridge geographi-
cal space—what O’ Brian has called the ‘End of Geography’—but also question the
role of the state as the authoritative allocator of values. Globalization has led not only
to a rise in global regulations, but to a simultaneous increase in the sites of decision-
making, both at the level of international organizations and that of private and non-
state actors. The diffusion of state sovereignty brings new actors within the arena of
politics, and also paves the way for new organizational means of practising social,
political and civic rights.
Globalization has also resulted in growing community attachments, which appear
to be developing beyond the confines of the state. This attachment results in the
growth of a new consciousness of the world as one single unit. There has been a
tendency to look at the world as an identifiable sense of place or space where dif-
ferent values and assertions developed in response to human problems can contest
each other and yet coexist. There is definitely a readiness to both accept and consider
appropriate a global discourse in the public space. The growing number of global
conferences and meets bears testimony to such an assertion. The opening of Social
Forums—chapters of the World Social Forum—in many countries and the recogni-
tion of problems related to gender, environment, or even the abuse of basic human
rights point towards the shared understanding among people living in different plac-
es. In fact, the acceptance of human rights as principles of governance provides cred-
ibility to the idea of rights beyond nation-states. Simultaneously, there is an enhanced
focus on ideas of democracy and justice, which are to take on more demanding roles
in the global context.
170 Citizenship in a Globalizing World

Global Disparities
That we do not live in a just world is the least controversial claim that one could make.
Many people are extremely poor, while others are extremely rich. Many live under ty-
rannical regimes. Many are vulnerable to violence, disease and starvation. Many die
prematurely. According to the Human Development Report 2006 released by the Unit-
ed Nations Development Programme:

Ours is a world of extremes. The poorest 40 percent of the world population—the 2.5
billion people who live on less than $2 a day—account for five percent of global income,
while the richest 10 percent account for 54 percent. More than 800 million people
suffer from hunger and malnutrition, 1.1 billion people do not have access to clean
drinking water and, every hour, and 1,200 children die from preventable diseases.

Despite a growing world economy and significant advances in medicine and tech-
nology, many people in developing countries are not reaping the potential benefits of
globalization. Global inequalities in income increased in the twentieth century, out of
proportion to anything experienced before. The distance between the incomes of the
richest and the poorest countries was about three to one in 1820, 35 to one in 1950, 44
to one in 1973, and 72 to one in 1992. Developing countries are home to more than
80 per cent of the world’s population, but command less than 20 per cent of its wealth.
According to Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the UNO, ‘even these statistics
fail to capture the humiliation, powerlessness and brutal hardship that is the daily lot
of the world’s poor’. According to Singer and Wildavasky (1993), the developing coun-
tries are ‘Zones of Turmoil’, in contrast to the developed states where ‘peace wealth
and democracy’ prevail, in these societies. People in developing countries live amidst
‘poverty, war, tyranny and anarchy’. The second concern is related to the gruesome fact
of socio-economic inequality between the states, given the fact that roughly 20 per cent
of the world’s population lives on less than $1 a day, and more than 45 per cent live on
less than $2 a day, whereas the 15 per cent who live in the high-income economies have
an average per capita income of $75 a day. The concept of global justice has been devel-
oped in the wake of such facts.
How should we understand and respond to these facts? What do the inhabitants of
the world owe one another? What institutions and ethical standards should we recog-
nize and apply throughout the world? These questions are related to the social and mor-
al obligations of humanity and necessarily highlight the issues of fairness and rightness
or, put simply, the issue of justice at the international level. In present times, such ideas
can be seen in the writings of Charles Beitz and Onora O’ Neill, who have examined
obligations across borders and the possibilities of transnational justice. Charles Beitz
in particular has argued strenuously against limiting considerations of social justice to
 Citizenship and Global Justice 171

considerations of domestic justice. The eminent theorist John Rawls has also published
his views on the issue in his famous work Laws of the People. Similarly, Derek Heater,
Richard Falk, Martha Nussbaum and Andrew Linklater have examined the issue in the
context of an ideal world citizenship.

Global Justice
Citizenship is related to the entitlement to rights; if we have reached a stage where the
nation-state can no longer be seen as the only agency wielding authority, then it brings
us to the possibility of realizing rights through various supra, sub and national actors.
In other words, the issue of individuals as cosmopolitan citizens becomes relevant.
Cosmopolitanism takes the individual as the ultimate unit of moral worth, entitled to
equal consideration regardless of his/her culture, nationality or citizenship. It rejects
the notion that national borders constrains moral obligations to others, and supports
the idea of World Citizenship. As Martha Nussbaum has put it, the cosmopolitan view
holds that, wherever s/he is, ‘each human being is human and counts as the moral equal
of every other’ (Nussbaum 1996: 133). It is based on Thomas Pogge’s belief ‘that every
human being has a global stature as the ultimate unit of moral concern’. Cosmopolitans
argue that some form of moral universalism is true, and therefore all humans, and not
merely compatriots or fellow-citizens, fall within the scope of justice. The behaviour
of individuals is seen as being based on some morally significant characteristics. Since
these characteristics are shared by all humans and not only by the members of some
nation, culture, society, or state, all humans have equal moral worth. Cosmopolitanism
is the idea of responsibility and appeals to the individual to think beyond local identi-
ties and allegiances. It stresses responsibilities that we have not only towards people
we know, but also towards those whom we do not. As a natural corollary, this blurs the
boundaries between nations, cultures, societies and states.

BOX 10.1 A HELPING HAND

Bitterness between states on political issues is a thing of the past. Let us take the
example of an Iraqi boy, Mustafa Ahmed Hanish, who was operated upon by an
Indian doctor on the request of an American soldier. Of course, the Internet was the
main source of communication. Jonathan Miles, an American who worked for nine
months with the US forces in Iraq, led a mission of multiple faiths. Miles wrote an
email to Dr Cherian, the 63-year-old Indian doctor who had earlier performed the
first infant heart transplant in the country and operated on a Pakistani boy when
India and Pakistan were locked in the Kargil war, seeking help for Iraqi children
suffering from congenital heart defects. On his part, Dr Cherian quickly accepted
(Continued)
172 Citizenship in a Globalizing World

the request. Scared and unsure of their fates, the Iraqi children arrived in India
with hope; however, that hope rested on the cost of the operation, which was about
$4,000−$5,000. For the families from Iraq, where chaotic sprees of looting and an-
archy have disrupted local medical supplies and services, the amount was unimagi-
nable, and the prospects of travelling abroad for surgical help remote. But to their
surprise, the Indian doctor waived the entire cost of surgery and hospitalization for
the children. Their round-trip fare was covered by CBN, the Christian Broadcasting
Network based in Virginia Beach, US.

The broader philosophical context of the global justice debate is the issue of impartial-
ity, which assumes normative orientations. It is related to dealing with questions of hu-
manity, for instance, should individuals’ duties extend only to family members, friends
and compatriots, or should they be extended even towards strangers and foreigners?
Some of the chief concerns of the global justice concept centres on the recognition of
the widespread poverty, hunger and homelessness, and alienation from government, as
well as the increasing wage gaps. Agreeing with Amartya Sen’s argument that globaliza-
tion must address the issues of interdependence to be genuinely and universally accept-
able, the concept of global justice seeks to address and correct social ills, not through
traditional governmental organizations, but through the organization of humanity in
order to advance the genuine empowerment of society and maintain the security and
self-determination of all peoples. It is this vision that allows the idea of global justice to
be encompassed by many different movements, such as environmentalist movements,
women’s rights movements and anti-capitalist movements.
The concept of global justice breaks down the traditional separation of intra-national
and inter-national relations and extends institutional moral analysis to the whole field.
The motive behind this dramatic reorientation is the realization that the traditional
conception of the world of international relations as inhabited only by states is unsat-
isfactory. The emergence and increasing stature of other agents on the international
stage, such as multinational corporations, international organizations and regional
associations, means that this conception is rapidly losing its explanatory capacity. In
the contemporary global justice debate, the general issue of impartiality centres on the
moral significance of borders and shared citizenship. Realists, particularists, nation-
alists, members of the society of states tradition, and cosmopolitans take contesting
positions in response to these problems. Three related questions, those concerning the
scope of justice, justice in the distribution of wealth and other goods, and the institu-
tions responsible for justice, are central to the problem of global justice.
Realists such as Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz are sceptical of the existence
of any universal moral principles. They believe that states should not sacrifice their
 Citizenship and Global Justice 173

own self-interest in order to adhere to some indeterminate notion of ethical conduct.

The need for survival requires states to distance themselves from traditional morality,
which attaches importance to the greater good of humanity as a whole. Morality is
constructed as having dual standards, that is, one moral standard for citizens within the
nation and the other for states in external relations. Self-help is the principle of action
and there is nothing called a global government. Realism argues that there are no global
ethical standards, and that to imagine there is is a dangerous fantasy. States are the main
actors in an international anarchy, and they should always attempt to act rationally in
their own interests. There is no obligation to help the poor, unless doing so helps to
further a state’s strategic aims. And the state system is taken as the fundamental and
unchallengeable global institution.
Communitarians such as Michael Walzer and James Tully argue that ethical stan-
dards arise out of shared meanings and practices, which are created and sustained by
discrete cultures or societies. Individuals acquire their most fundamental rights and re-
sponsibilities as members of particular communities, and not as members of the human
race (Walzer 1995a). Although the communitarians do not deny that societies have ob-
ligations to one another, they insist that it is right that most human beings are usually
moved by attachments to their community rather than by arguments about what is good
for humanity. Walzer’s position on the idea of world citizenship is representative of the
communitarian position on global justice. He argues that citizenship refers to a web of
political rights and duties, which only exist when there is a strong sense of identification
with the nation-state. Communitarians believe that moral and social criticism is pos-
sible within the boundaries of groups, but not across them. If a society is egalitarian, for
instance, its citizens can meaningfully criticize each other if they do not live up to their
own egalitarian ideals; however, they cannot meaningfully criticize another, caste-based
society in the name of those ideals. ‘A given society is just if its substantive life is lived in
a certain way—that is, in a way faithful to the shared understandings of [its] members.’ If
not, it is unjust. Each society has its own, different standards, and only those within it are
bound by those standards and can properly criticize themselves. So moral universalism
is false, because objective ethical standards vary between cultures or societies. We should
not apply the same criteria of distributive justice to strangers as we would to compatriots.
And nation-states that express their peoples’ shared and distinctive ethical understand-
ings are the proper institutions to enable local and different justices.

BOX 10.2 THE COMMUNITARIAN PERSPECTIVE

For the Communitarians, boundaries are essential aspects of human existence, es-
pecially those that reflect cultural divisions and provide an essential framework
for community living, identity and values. Communitarian morality is therefore
(Continued)
174 Citizenship in a Globalizing World

context-bound. Still, they accept that community standards cannot be privileged

over and above humanitarian concerns to justify genocide, torture or human sac-
rifice. This naturally brings us to the issue of assigning responsibility for these in-
human acts. Should communities be solely assigned the responsibility for solving
these vexed problems, or should the responsibility be extended to the global as well?
One of the major issues on which these notions converge is the situation of refugees,
who have fled either from conflict, or when threatened by natural disaster, or simply
because they were unable to eke out a living in their homelands sufficient to feed,
clothe, house and educate their families. The issue is important as official estimates
put the number of refugees in the world at over 16 million. An inward Communitar-
ian standpoint would be disastrous for humanity; hence, in order to deal with it, one
must think in terms of the rights of individuals to a decent, dignified life, and that in
turn should lead to a relaxation of the tight controls that are maintained.

Nationalists such as David Miller and Yael Tamir believe in stronger commitments
and obligations to the members of their own nations, and argue that demands for mu-
tual obligations are created by a particular kind of valuable association, the nation. We
may have humanitarian duties towards the particularly badly-off worldwide, but these
are much less stringent and pressing than our duties to our fellow-citizens. National-
ism has traditionally included this assumption of differing moral obligations to those
within and those outside the nation, reflected for example in the fact that the benefits of
the welfare state are not available to citizens of other countries. So moral universalism
is too simple, because the ethical standards that apply between compatriots differ from
those that apply between strangers (although some nationalists argue for the universal
ethical standard that nations should have in their own states). Distributive justice is an
issue within nations, but not necessarily between them. And a world system of nation-
states is the appropriate organizer of justice for all, through their distinct associational
groups.

Charles Beitz and Global Distributive Justice

The inadequacy of political realism in explaining international collaboration in recent
years, coupled with the acceptance of the neo-Kantian idea of a ‘democratic peace’,
has once again placed the liberalist viewpoint of international relations on the front
seat. It is in this context that the need for a defensible form of liberalism, one that can
guide international conduct, has been once again articulated. According to Charles Be-
itz, any defensible form of international liberalism should have at least four elements:
(i) a conception of the moral foundations of the principles of international conduct;
 Citizenship and Global Justice 175

(ii) an account of international political justice, including the prerogatives of the state,
the authority of international law and institutions, and the minimum requirements of
fair participation in international governance; and (iii) an account of distributive jus-
tice, including the distributive responsibilities of states and the extent, if any, to which
the institutional structure of international order should seek to influence the global
distribution of resources and wealth. Together, these elements should form the basis
of (iv) a doctrine of human rights, understood as the universal minimum standard of
legitimacy for social institutions.
According to Beitz, a conception of international distributive justice is needed, as the
decisions we make impact not only us, but also societies far across. These include, for
example, choices concerning individual conduct (such as whether to donate to Oxfam);
the policies of our own government (concerning, for example, foreign aid or immi-
gration); the policies of international institutions and regimes (rules of international
trade, international monetary policy, environmental controls, labour standards, condi-
tions on multilateral aid and structural assistance); the constitutions of international
institutions, as distinct from their policies; and the policies of non-governmental or-
ganizations (the Ford Foundation, the International Red Cross). Since these decisions
have potential consequences, it is natural to wonder what moral considerations should
guide our judgement. According to Beitz, a theory of international distributive justice is
concerned with the basic structure of international society, that is, the institutions that
determine the international distribution of advantages.
Beitz believes that it is possible to discern three views concerning international
distributive justice within the liberal framework. These views differ not only on their
grounds for concern over the distributive characteristics of the structure of internation-
al society, but also on the grounds they exclude from consideration. Beitz has labelled
them thus:
1. Social Liberalism
2. Laissez-faire Liberalism
3. Cosmopolitan Liberalism

Social Liberalism and Global Justice

According to Beitz, social liberalism focuses on a two-level conception of international
society, in which there is a division of moral labour between the domestic and the
international levels. While the state is seen to have primary responsibility for the well-
being of its own people, the international community serves mainly to establish and
maintain the background against which domestic societies can develop and flourish.
International or transnational actors as well as individuals are not seen as agents of
international justice, which is the primary responsibility of states. David Miller, John
176 Citizenship in a Globalizing World

Rawls and John Vincent are important proponents of this view. Social Liberalism gives
prime importance to human rights as conditions that apply to all cultures. It allows for
external help, but only under special circumstances. As Miller states, this occurs when
there are extreme levels of deprivation that the local government is in no position to re-
lieve, and when foreign governments or other international actors can do so effectively
without a morally significant sacrifice.
John Rawls is the most outspoken theorist of the social liberalism perspective. In
his work The Law of Peoples, Rawls extends the arguments of his earlier work, A Theory
of Justice, to the question of global justice. In his earlier work, Rawls had developed a
detailed moral assessment of the alternative ways in which a society’s social order might
be designed. The Laws of the People exemplifies an interactional moral analysis applied
to the international realm. Rawls believes that in this work, he is endorsing a realistic
utopia: it is realistic in the sense that it takes into account the many real conditions by
(for instance) assuming that a fair amount of diversity exists in the actual world, and
that as such, all cannot endorse liberal principles.
Rawls offers a proposal detailing what the rules governing state conduct should be.
He provides an extension of his theory of justice beyond the individual state and modi-
fied his hypothetical contract device so that the parties for choosing the law of peoples
are representatives of peoples, not individuals. He concludes that these parties would
choose these principles:
1. People are free and independent, and their freedom and independence are to be
respected by other people.
2. All people are to observe treaties and undertakings.
3. All people are equal, and parties to the agreements that bind them.
4. All people are to observe a duty of non-intervention.
5. People have the right to self-defence, but have no right to instigate war for reasons
other than self-defence.
6. All people are to honour human rights.
7. All people are to observe certain specified restrictions in the conduct of war.
8. People have a duty to assist others living under unfavourable conditions which
prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime.
He argues that we can justify a global regime by showing that it would be chosen by
representatives of peoples in an imagined original position. Rawls imagines a contract
between people to create a just international society, which would accord primacy to
the independence and equality of all people and to individual rights. Since the contract
is between people who do not know each other, this decision-in-ignorance is justice as
fairness as it excludes selfish bias. When Rawls applied this method to domestic justice,
with the parties in the original position representing individual members of a single
 Citizenship and Global Justice 177

society, he argued that it supported a redistributive, egalitarian liberal politics. In con-

trast to this, Rawls argues that when his method is applied to global justice, it would
support an ethical standard whereby states would obey treaties that would in turn
strictly limit war. However, Rawls agrees that this would not result in a global redis-
tribution of wealth. So different forms of justice would be applied to the domestic and
international cases. Even if justice requires egalitarianism within states, it does not call
for the same between them.
Martha Naussbaum, however, disagrees with Rawls, and has argued that the prob-
lem of global justice cannot be solved by envisaging international cooperation as a con-
tract for mutual advantage among parties placed similarly in a state of nature. Instead,
it can be solved only by thinking of all that human beings require to live a richly human
life—a set of basic entitlements for all people—and by developing a conception of the
purpose of social cooperation that focuses on fellowship as well as self-interest. Allen
Buchanan sympathizes with critics of Rawls who have complained that Rawls’ Law of
Peoples is a betrayal of liberalism because it accords legitimacy to very inegalitarian
regimes, including those that deprive women of important rights—such as the right to
education and equal opportunity in employment—which are not included in Rawls’ ba-
sic human rights. This is because of Rawls’ key assumption that the parties who choose
the Law represent peoples, not individuals.

Laissez-faire Liberalism and Global Justice

Laissez-faire liberalism, championed by theorists such as Adam Smith, is once again
finding favour. Also at times identified with libertarianism, it believes that a distribu-
tion is just when it has been arrived at from a previous distribution that itself was just,
provided that the series of transactions in the process did not violate anyone’s rights. In
his work Anarchy State and Utopia, Robert Nozick defends such a view. Such theories
are opposed to intervention in the market, except when required to remedy the effects
of prior violations of liberty. According to Beitz, however, this theory applies to the
world at large. Its redistributive potential arises from the prospect that intervention in
markets might be required to rectify injustices in the prior global division of benefits of
the earth’s resources.
Laissez-faire liberals are divided over whether injustice in initial appropriation
justifies subsequent remedial intervention by the state. Status quo theorists hold that
whatever injustices may have occurred in the first appropriation will have been recti-
fied subsequently, perhaps as a result of many generations of economic growth and
innovation. There is therefore no argument for redistribution to rectify inequalities in
benefits derived from resources. Laissez-faire redistributivists, in contrast, argue that
it may be necessary for the state to intervene to rectify the effects of injustices in earlier
178 Citizenship in a Globalizing World

appropriations of un-owned things, either by redistributing control over resources or

by compensating those who have less with transfer payments from those who have
more. Charles Beitz in particular supports the redistributive variant, especially as it is
relevant to the questions of global environmental justice that have recently been before
the international community.

Cosmopolitan Liberalism and Global Justice

Cosmopolitanism stems from the philosopher Diogenes’ view. When asked where he
came from, he was reported to have replied, ‘I am a citizen of the world.’ The point of
view suggested by this remark seeks to regard the whole world as a single entity, and to
see each part of the whole in its true relative proportion. In the cosmopolitan tradition,
states are seen as individual entities that can mutually agree on common interests and
rules of interaction, including moral rules, in much the same way that human individu-
als can. Globalization is seen as a system that creates new opportunities for promoting
the idea that all human beings are equal. It is argued that efforts to solve global prob-
lems such as environmental damages should promote the welfare of the species as a
whole. Global institutional arrangements such as the International Criminal Court are
welcomed as important steps in law enforcement. Cosmopolitanism supports a sys-
tem of cooperating, but independent states as the basis for a just global institutional
arrangement.
It is difficult, though, to determine the preferred moral characteristics of humanity.
Theorists such as Peter Singer have argued that the proper standard of moral judge-
ment for actions, practices or institutions is their consequences, and that the measure
of consequences is the welfare of not only humans, but all sentient beings. The capac-
ity to experience welfare and suffering is therefore taken as the shared basis for moral
standing. This means that the fact that some people are suffering terrible deprivations
of welfare caused by poverty creates a moral demand for anyone able to help them to do
so. Neither the physical distance between the rich and the poor, nor the fact that they
are typically citizens of different countries, has any moral relevance. Human rights have
also been taken as the basis while defending cosmopolitanism. Writers such as Thomas
Pogge and Simon Caney argue that all humans have rights, perhaps those set out in the
UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It may be argued that these rights mean
that the rich have a positive duty to provide what they guarantee (security, a livelihood,
etc.). Overall, the Cosmopolitans believe that the contemporary world has failed badly
to live up to their standards, and that doing so would require considerable changes in
the actions of wealthy individuals and states. It might, for instance, require them to
transfer most of their wealth to the poor. It might require the building of international
institutions able to limit, or even replace, the self-interested actions of powerful states
 Citizenship and Global Justice 179

and corporations. It might require each of us to do much more than most of us now
do. All cosmopolitans, however, believe that it is individuals, and not states, nations, or
other groups, who are the ultimate focus of universal moral standards.

BOX 10.3 THE COSMOPOLITAN APPROACH

The cosmopolitan approach can in fact be seen as welcoming some of the aspects
of globalization, especially in the context within which it is conceptualized, insofar
as it brings humanity closer together through dispensing with, or at least softening,
certain artificial boundaries that have proved their divisiveness in a number of ways.
Cosmopolitans are critical of state sovereignty, which they believe has been used to
shield gross human rights violations by the emphasis placed on non-intervention in
the internal affairs of the state. They are equally critical of communitarian thinking,
which states that morality depends primarily on viewpoints derived from culture,
and is hence not amenable to a univeralist project concerning the promotion of hu-
man rights and other goods. It cannot be said, though, that the cosmopolitans place
no value on community and its sense of identity, belonging and security; however,
this in no any way provides a justification for crimes against humanity. This natu-
rally raises the question of morality, which transcends all boundaries in its focus on
humanity. Environmental problems such as pollution, land management, the avail-
ability of water and other natural resources all around the world—all of which are
likely to worsen in the future—is a case in point, showing that cosmopolitans believe
that both the local and the global community must take responsibility and work to
remedy these problems as best they can.

According to Beitz, cosmopolitanism occurs in international thought in at least two

different senses—in the forms of institutional and moral cosmopolitanism. The first re-
fers to the way the world’s political institutions should be set up. It holds that the world’s
political structure should be reshaped so that states and other political units are brought
under the authority of supranational agencies of some kind—a ‘world government’, for
example, or perhaps a network of loosely associated regional bodies. The second kind of
cosmopolitanism concerns itself not with institutions themselves, but with the basis on
which institutions should be justified or criticized. As Thomas Pogge put it, moral cosmo-
politanism is the notion ‘that every human being has a global stature as the ultimate unit
of moral concern’. It applies to the whole world the maxim that choices concerning what
we should do and the institutions we should establish should be based on an impartial
consideration of the claims of each person who would be affected. Moral cosmopolitan-
ism is distinguished not by any particular view about world political organization, but
rather by a view about the moral basis on which this question should be decided.
180 Citizenship in a Globalizing World

Beitz states that there are many different cosmopolitan views about international dis-
tributive justice—human rights theories, globalized utilitarianism, various forms of glo-
bal egalitarianism, and pluralistic theories of global scope. He believes that if there is a
major axis of differentiation among these theories, it has to do with the extent to which
each treats the state or national (or other) community as an enclave of special distributive
responsibilities, which are distinct and justified separately from general or global respon-
sibilities. Some views treat special responsibilities, to the degree that they may be said to
exist at all, as merely ‘administrative device[s] for discharging our general duties more ef-
ficiently’. Such views hold that distributive justice at the domestic level is continuous with
distributive justice at the global level: once the requirements of international distributive
justice are settled, there is no further, separate question about domestic justice.
Other views hold that special responsibilities can arise from sources other than gen-
eral duties—for example, from relationships that have value for their participants (in-
cluding membership in social groups)—but that these responsibilities are constrained
by global distributive considerations. Such theories are discontinuous, meaning that
they allow for distributive requirements within sectional units which are different from,
and possibly more stringent than, those at the global level. For example, a theory might
establish a global distributive threshold, perhaps in terms of subsistence rights or basic
needs, and permit variations at the sectional level consistent with the threshold. Both
Henry Shue and Thomas Pogge have proposed theories of this kind. Pogge associates
himself with the institutional understanding, while an interactional understanding is
attributed to Shue.

Global Justice through Global Governance

Global governance is an attempt to create a better social order that cuts across national
boundaries, notwithstanding the fact that the idea of a global government is an impos-
sibility given that states are sovereign. Global governance aims to establish peace and
prosperity by taking into account the multiplicity of interests in areas such as trade,
economy, environment and health. It accepts that there is no one body in global affairs
that can claim the monopoly over the exercise of legitimate physical force; yet there can
be several mechanisms to encourage compliance and accountability, such as mecha-
nisms concerning consumer choices in the market, citizens’ decisions, NGO activities,
professional codes of conduct, self-regulation of industries, etc. (Gillian Brock, cited in
Mckinnon 2008: 301). Two arguments have been advanced in support of the idea of
global governance. First, it is argued that global problems—also referred to as Global
commons—require collective effort on a global scale, as no state is in a position or has
the competence required to tackle them. Second, global governance is required from the
standpoint of global justice, especially since globalization is a fact that cannot be ignored.
 Citizenship and Global Justice 181

Both arguments rely on each other as there are many problems affecting all our lives, for
example the global warming that all of us are facing, or diseases such as AIDS, SARS, etc.,
which spread from one country to another and can be dealt with effectively only through
common efforts. These require global cooperation for an effective solution. The duty to
ensure global governance emanates from the fact that we are associated with everyone
else on the planet through a global economic order, and that we all benefit from such
arrangements. Morally, it is based on the argument that all humans are owed at least the
minimum simply because they are human beings. It arises from an acceptance of the fact
that global affairs at present are unjust, and that this injustice needs to be addressed.

Conclusion
The world contains inequalities that are morally alarming, and the gap between the rich
and poor nations is widening. Which nation a child is born in subsequently determines
her/his life chances. Any theory of justice that proposes political principles must there-
fore take into account basic human entitlements in order to confront these inequalities
and the challenges they pose, in a world in which the power of the global market and
multinational corporations has considerably eroded the power and autonomy of na-
tions. The dominant theory of justice in the Western tradition of political philosophy is
the social contract theory, which sees principles of justice as the outcome of a contract
people make to their mutual advantage, and which enables them to leave the state of
nature and govern themselves by law. John Rawls has tried to extend such theories, but
despite their great strengths when it comes to thinking about justice, they yield very
imperfect results when applied to the world stage, precisely because they presume the
contracting parties to be equal—and that is not the case in reality. The capabilities ap-
proach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Naussbaum suggests a set of basic hu-
man entitlements, similar to human rights, as a minimum of what justice requires for
all, and does seem to offer a prospect of thinking about the goals of development in this
increasingly interdependent and interconnected world.

Questions For Discussion

1. Examine the major features of the Global Polity.
2. What is meant by Global Justice? Analyse the various perspectives of the Global Justice
debate.
3. Would it be fair to say that Charles Beitz’s ideas on Global Justice are in essence a develop-
ment over John Rawls’ ideas in The Laws of the People?
4. Compare the Communitarian and Cosmopolitan perspectives on Global Justice.
5. To what extent does liberalism hold good in accommodating the debate on Global
Justice?