Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory.

Pogge, Thomas

Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory, Simon Caney (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 319 pp., $55 cloth.

Defending a cosmopolitan approach to global political theory against its three main rivals--realism, nationalism, and the society-of-states tradition--Simon Caney discusses six topics, each in a separate chapter, on which these approaches diverge: the existence of universal moral values, civil and political human rights, universal principles of distributive justice, the design of the global institutional order, just war theory, and humanitarian intervention. Caney's success in covering such a vast range of topics and approaches is truly impressive. He shows dazzling mastery of the relevant literatures--from Kant to Kennan, from Asoka's edicts to the Tobin Tax proposal. He achieves great lucidity, especially in the structural design of the book and its parts. The cosmopolitan position he develops has coherence and plausibility. And his specific arguments are clear and forceful even if, due to their large number, some are too brief to be fully convincing.

Unable to do justice to this superb book within the available space, I focus critically on disagreements concerning its earlier, more philosophical parts. The main issue is how cosmopolitanism should be conceived. Caney understands cosmopolitanism as a family of moral positions--more specifically, of conceptions of justice--characterized by the joint endorsement of "three principles: the worth of individuals, equality, and the existence of obligations binding on all" (p. 4) But he fails to clarify the subject matter of cosmopolitanism: What sorts of judicanda does it apply to--that is, what entities does it assess of call for the improvement of?

Moral predicates, such as "just" and "unjust," can be applied to at least four types of judicanda: to individual and collective agents, to the conduct of such agents, to social rules and practices and social institutions, and to facts and states of affairs. Caney has the last type in mind first and foremost. He understands cosmopolitan conceptions of justice as assessing, in the first instance, facts or combinations of facts: that some people lack civil rights or suffer malnutrition, for example, or that persons' opportunities vary greatly with the country in which they are born. The other three types of judicanda may then be assessed indirectly, on the basis of their impact on the justice of the world.

As ah alternative to Caney's model, one could hold with Rawls that conceptions of justice apply, in the first instance, to institutional schemes. So understood, a cosmopolitan conception of justice might diagnose as unjust any institutional order that, foreseeably and avoidably, produces malnutrition, violations of civil rights, or large inequalities of opportunity. And it could then support a moral critique of agents for their collaboration in the imposition of an unjust institutional order.

This divergence concerns the subject matter of justice. While Rawls and other "institutionalists" think of (in)justice as a feature of institutional schemes, Caney thinks of (in)justice as a feature of states of affairs. Unaware of this conceptual difference, Caney misconstrues the divergence as a normative one. He takes "institutional cosmopolitans" to hold that "all principles of justice apply only within systems of cooperation" (p. 110), and hence that persons have no duties to protect the civil and political rights of those who are not part of the same institutional scheme (p. 111), and that, in the absence of global interdependence, there are no human rights with obligations applying to all (p. 268). Given this misconstrual, it is unsurprising that Caney rejects institutional cosmopolitanism (pp. 106, 111) for attaching excessive moral significance to a commonality that--like those of race or ethnicity--is arbitrary. In fact, he is unjustifiably generous in recognizing institutional cosmopolitans as cosmopolitans at all, for institutional cosmopolitans, as Caney construes them, reject "cosmopolitans' central claim ... that, at the fundamental level, all persons should be included within the scope of distributive justice" (p. 105).

Construed as addressing the justice of institutional schemes, institutional cosmopolitanism does endorse "cosmopolitans' central claim." It imposes the same basic requirements of justice on all institutional schemes, national and global. And it assigns to all persons the fundamental right not to have an unjust institutional scheme imposed upon them, along with the correlative negative duty not to collaborate in imposing an unjust institutional scheme without making reasonable efforts to protect its victims and to promote institutional reform. Such an institutional cosmopolitanism does not, to be sure, entail positive duties to protect the human rights of those who are not part of the same institutional scheme--but it is certainly compatible with such duties. And it is also compatible with additional negative duties not to harm human beings in ways other than through social institutions.

In his first three chapters, "Universalism" "Civil and Political Justice" and "Distributive Justice" Caney seeks to support his cosmopolitan conclusions by arguing that certain moral principles widely held in the developed West are held on grounds that support interpreting them as having global scope. For example, we believe that we have certain civil and political rights. Standard rationales for this belief point to the great importance such rights have for human well-being. Because such rationales apply universally, we have reason to ascribe these civil and political rights to all human beings (pp. 76-77). Caney argues similarly for a human right to subsistence (p. 122).

This line of argument becomes more problematic when Caney moves on to egalitarian moral principles demanding certain goods defined in relative terms (pp. 122-23). We do indeed believe in equality of opportunity and equal pay for equal work. But do the standard rationales for these beliefs really entail that the desired equality should hold worldwide? Most people, certainly in the wealthier countries, reject any global application of such egalitarian principles, and so, pace Caney (p. 123), Article 23 (z) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights--"Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work" is generally interpreted as mandating such equality only within each country. In response, Caney can reiterate his claim that we are committed, by virtue of our standard rationales for the domestic application of egalitarian principles, to apply them globally as well. But what he offers in support of this claim merely begs the question: "If one thinks ... that it is unjust if persons fare worse because of their class or ethnic identity one should surely also think that it is unjust if persons fare worse because of their nationality" (p. 123).

Is there anything to be said in support of Caney's claim? A rationale that would work is the luck-egalitarian one: No one should be worse off than others due to factors not under her control. But this rationale is widely rejected, even by Caney, who specifically allows income and opportunities to be affected by persons' natural talents (p. 123). A better candidate for the title of a "standard rationale" is the view that unchosen inequalities matter among those whose circumstances frequently prompt them to compare themselves to one another, but not across "noncomparing groups," to use Rawls's term. This rationale differentiates nationality from ethnic identity, explaining why egalitarian concerns should apply across ethnicities within one country but not across national borders. Without discrediting this rationale and offering a widely acceptable substitute, Caney cannot show his readers that they are, in spite of themselves, committed to the global scope of egalitarian principles.

In light of these difficulties with Caney's position, it may after all be wiser to frame a cosmopolitan conception of justice in institutional terms. To be sure, such an institutional conception is informationally more demanding. In contrast to Caney's, it does not base a justice assessment on the mere fact that, avoidably, some enjoy a privileged life from birth while others are born into conditions of life-threatening deprivation. Instead, it draws in further causal information about the factors that give rise to severe deprivations and inequalities, and about the involvement of human agents in such factors. It attaches great moral significance to the severe deprivations in our world being mostly due to a global institutional order that foreseeably and avoidably aggravates inequalities among persons worldwide. And it attaches moral significance to whether and how specific human agents participate in designing and upholding this global order. By focusing on the causal role of social institutions and of those who design and impose them, such a conception of justice is more intuitive and more forceful through the negative duties it entails. And it does not prevent us f-com also recognizing additional negative duties not to harm human beings in noninstitutional ways, as well as positive duties to reduce severe deprivations and inequalities to which social institutions have made no causal contribution.

To stimulate thought about this terrific book, I have critically focused on how Caney conceives of the cosmopolitan approach to social justice. This critique should not obscure my admiration for his rich and learned work.

--THOMAS POGGE

Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics

(ANU) and Columbia University