Global Egalitarianism or National Self-Determination?

Abstract

This chapter examines the challenge that claims for global justice have been said to pose for the nation, and the value of national self-determination in particular. A debate has arisen between defenders of global justice and defenders of national self-determination, with the latter camp sometimes arguing that although some forms of global justice are valuable, the call for global equality, if realized, would seriously endanger any meaningful form of self-determination (and as such, global egalitarianism must of necessity be ‘postnational’ in form). The first section sets out the apparent opposition between the two positions. The second section looks a little more closely at the arguments of defenders of self-determination and examines just why, in their view, their concerns rule out global egalitarianism as a theory of global justice. The third section shows why the view that a concern for national self-determination rules out global egalitarianism as an account of global justice is mistaken for a number of reasons, as I have argued in more detail elsewhere (Armstrong, 2010). Actually, global egalitarians are able to carve out space for self-determination in a variety of ways. The fourth section concludes by asking whether they should. It is claimed here that there are good reasons to reserve room for legitimate forms of self-determination. But my argument will give limited relief to nationalists, because the forms of self-determination that are likely to be valuable to individuals worldwide are likely only partly to overlap with national forms of government.KeywordsDistributive JusticeNational ResponsibilityGlobal JusticeGlobal EqualityBrute LuckThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.